by Anna Windsor
This surprised her and, he saw with a measure of relief, relaxed her a bit, too. “Even the strongest Sibyl, or group of Sibyls, can get overwhelmed by an unstoppable force.” Her tone and expression shifted farther toward professional, toward work and safety and not running away from him. “It’s not common, but it happens. The wave that took out Motherhouse Antilla was created by projective energy, and it was so large and forceful even an army of water Sibyls couldn’t stand against it. The weight and speed and force of the water crushed them, or they died from being battered by heavy debris.”
Jack tried to imagine the magnitude of that wave, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it—though it did help him to understand a little better about the potential dangers of projective elemental energy. “I’m sorry they all got killed.”
“It was hundreds and hundreds of years ago.” She seemed comfortable now, even warming to the conversation despite her waiting obligations upstairs.
“But it left you alone.”
“Not anymore, thank God.” A smile. A real one, no smirk involved. “I’ve got Elana now, and she’s like a miracle to me. She’s teaching me so much.”
She had started talking faster as she went, but she seemed to catch herself and put the brakes on before she went farther.
Progress. Jack would take it. He’d take whatever she chose to give him. “One more question,” he said before she could take off upstairs. “What do you think about sketch artists?”
For a moment she seemed confused, then understanding flared in her eyes. “You mean, for me to try to describe what I saw when I made contact with the hair at the crime scene? Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Want me to line one up?”
Andy looked at her watch again. “I’ll try to get back from Greece an hour before patrol tonight. Will that work?”
It’s a date. The words almost came out, but Jack caught himself in time. “We’ll make it work. Thanks for your help. I’m glad you’re here.”
She started to say something, and he could have sworn it was, I’m glad I’m here, too, but that was probably wishful thinking.
Jack decided to quit while he was ahead. “Okay, then. Catch you tonight.”
He turned and headed to do more unpacking, but Andy stopped him. “Hey, that’s not your office.”
“It is now.” He faced her again. “I swapped out with the Brent brothers.”
Her eyebrows lifted, then pulled together. “Why?”
“Seemed like the right thing to do. I need to carve my own niche here, and I didn’t want it to bother you that I was in Sal’s old space.” Jack’s throat went a little dry as he said all that, hoping it was explanation enough—and not too much.
For a few seconds Andy didn’t say a word.
Right about the time Jack was about to decide he’d made yet another in a long line of bad mistakes with this woman, she said, “I don’t know whether to be touched or pissed off. What are you trying to do, Jack?”
“Clean up a lot of messes I’ve made.” He hoped she could hear the truth in his voice. “I want this to be a start.”
Her voice broke to a whisper. “A start for what?”
“Whatever you want.” He wanted to touch her so badly he could already feel her soft skin under his palms.
The blush came back, flowing across her freckles, and she actually leaned toward him, moved like she might take a step in his direction. He was more than ready to let her come even if she intended to slap him cross-eyed, but she seemed to think better of it.
“I’m … going upstairs now.” She pointed toward the steps.
“Okay.” That was the best he could do, and she did go, walking slowly away, and he couldn’t stop looking until he lost sight of her heading off the first-floor landing.
Before he could stop himself, Jack let himself imagine Andy playing with the cute fire Sibyl kid, Nick’s daughter Neala. If they had daughters together, and if those little girls looked like Andy—now those would be some gorgeous children.
Jack stopped himself and walked into his office, but the image wouldn’t leave his mind.
What the hell—was he trying to drive himself batshit?
He liked kids. He was good with kids himself, but he’d long ago abandoned the idea that he could have kids of his own.
Christ, this thing in my head about her—it’s getting out of hand.
Mistake.
Griffen could have chosen to see the projective trap in that light, but he preferred to consider it experience.
He sucked in a breath of antiseptic air and crushed the can of soda he had been carrying in his hand. The liquid blew toward the ceiling, but he used his elemental ability to capture and curtail it so it wouldn’t stain the white squares above his head. As an exercise in focus and self-control, he banked the can off the lab’s refrigerator and watched it drop into the deep stainless-steel sink positioned along the right-hand wall. As soon as all motion stopped, Griffen made himself direct the trapped soda into the ruined can. Not an easy trick in the low lighting. Sickroom theater, Rebecca called it.
True enough.
The rhythmic click and hiss of medical machinery helped him stay calm, helped him regain his center and complete his task. Not a drop of soda spattered on the glass doors of the refrigerator, the white cabinets, or the countertops. Not a drop hit the sink itself, until it oozed from the ruined can and ran directly down the drain.
“Better,” he said aloud, keeping all traces of emotion from his voice. Then he reminded himself that he was standing in his small but efficient laboratory, in the corner of his completely protected warehouse full of Coven members and their genetically enhanced fighters. All of this—all of it—testaments to his many successes. He’d had plenty of good moments, from his early alliance with the Rakshasa to his taming of Rebecca to the Coven’s robust and powerful ranks. He still had an active under-Coven as well, thirteen ready and willing men who could replace anyone in his current group, should they fall in battle, and a training group beneath that. Everyone had backup. Everyone was dispensable.
Everyone but him, of course. And Rebecca.
Everything … is … under … control.
A soft knock on the lab door made him turn. “Open,” he said, happy with the placid sound of his voice.
The lab door swung until he could see Rebecca standing there with one of his Coven, who was holding the chain lead to her elemental cuffs. Griffen smiled at his sister and gestured for the man to let her come inside.
She brought her chain lead past two lab tables lined with empty syringes. With a glance toward the full syringes visible through the refrigerator’s glass doors, she handed the chain over without guile or protest. “What happened? Did the trap fail?”
“It worked beautifully.” Griffen said this with pride, because that much was true. He and his Coven had never attempted such a complex elemental working without the Rakshasa assisting them—and they had done a fine job. “One of the Sibyls had a strange sword with properties and strengths no blade should have. She used it to smash one of the coins and break the trap. If she hadn’t, Andy Myles would be dead now, along with Bela Argos Sharp and the other three Sibyls who were helping them.”
Rebecca’s lip curled at the mention of Bela Sharp. Bela had cost Rebecca a love interest in the past, and she apparently hadn’t forgiven the earth Sibyl for her meddling. For his part, Griffen had been grateful. That boy had been useless and elementally barren. Absolutely not worthy of his sister.
“Perhaps the next time you attack, you can let me fight Bela,” Rebecca said. Her eyes moved back to the full syringes, and Griffen didn’t much like the thought of what might happen if his sister got hold of the various batches of experimental enhancement formula. Whom would she choose to inject—and what would be the outcome?
He tightened his grip on her chain. “I wouldn’t risk you in combat. You’re far too valuable for that.”
She gave him a quick pout but let it go fast and walked forwar
d, past the tables and Griffen, to the hospital bed where they kept their only patient. Heavy elemental shackles bound the creature’s great clawed paws to four metal poles set into the floor, just outside the bed. A fifth metal pole, also elementally treated, riveted him to the bed, directly through his heart. A respirator forced oxygen into the Rakshasa’s lungs. A set of IV poles held bags that carried food and fluid to his veins, while a second set stood ready to receive his blood the next time Griffen chose to access the permanent catheter he had placed in the demon’s chest.
Tarek’s eyes were closed and his fanged mouth hung open even though the machine did all his breathing through a trache in his throat. His golden fur had grown tattered and matted during his time in captivity, and some of his skin was bare and scarred due to poorly healed burn wounds from the molten ore attack that killed the rest of his kind. Griffen couldn’t risk taking the elementally treated metal out of his heart long enough for him to heal himself. No guarantees Tarek wouldn’t wake with enough strength and fury to deflect attempts to stab him again. As it was, Tarek was alive—or more to the point, he couldn’t die.
“Sometimes he wakes up,” Rebecca said, obviously hoping now would be one of those times.
Griffen studied the Rakshasa Eldest, who didn’t show any signs of agitation and movement, as was usually the case just before the demon roused for a few seconds—long enough to try to swear at him but fail due to the invasive placement of the respirator tubing.
“Now and then he opens his eyes,” Griffen agreed, “but the elemental metal in his heart sends him right back to dreamland and keeps him immobile. I’m not sure he’s really awake.”
Rebecca leaned down until her ethereal face seemed dangerously close to the Rakshasa’s big fangs. “If I behead him, he’ll die.”
“But he can come back if you don’t burn his head and body and scatter the ashes.” Griffen didn’t let himself rise to the bait or the subtle threat, and used the opportunity for reminders instead. “If you do have to kill him, don’t forget that part.”
“Will you ever be able to make the enhancement formula without him?” She touched the tip of Tarek’s fang with one delicate fingertip.
Griffen reached down and moved her hands away from the Rakshasa. “Once we have an ideal mixture, it’s possible we can synthesize the blood. For now, he’s not bothering anybody—and he doesn’t eat much.”
Rebecca didn’t laugh at the joke because she was already focused on the laboratory refrigerator again. “What do you think the formula would do to me?”
“The effects on people with elemental talents aren’t predictable.” Dread crawled up Griffen’s neck. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“I’d end up like the Coven members you tried it on—crazy and dead.” She smiled, and her slender features made her seem so young and innocent.
“Probably.” Griffen relaxed a little. This was curiosity, not plotting. Rebecca’s curiosity tended to be a good thing, and it often led to breakthroughs, like figuring out how to leave traces of sound in the elementally treated coins he used to make the trap, just to add a little extra touch of terror for his victim. To play with her mind. “My Coven members who volunteered and died, they were brave men. They gave their lives for our cause.”
Rebecca’s blue eyes twinkled. “If Andy Myles is your cause, she’s still alive.”
Okay, so it would be this way today. Tease and poke. Griffen didn’t flinch. He could handle this mood from Rebecca, and he shrugged off his initial irritation with a teaser of his own. “For now. As for later—we’ll see.” He made sure to smile, to keep Rebecca’s interest and attention. “I’m thinking she’ll make a good test run for the fighters.”
Andy sat in a dark leather chair in the dark wood and stone section of Motherhouse Kérkira, where the handiwork of earth Sibyls and fire Sibyls joined to create the largest—and maybe the worst—section of frankenhouse. The big stone room with its hardwood floors had a few redeeming features, like the giant window overlooking the ocean—and a few weird ones, like wooden etchings of wolves built into the walls and stone carvings of winged creatures fighting what looked like dragons sitting on lots of the shelves.
“Boxing gloves?” Elana didn’t exactly sound disapproving. More like confused.
“They’re twelve.” Andy chewed the last few bites of her roast beef and pineapple sandwich, wondering if sourdough had been the right choice for the bread, as she watched the two brown-headed adepts through the big window. “I didn’t want them to hurt themselves.”
The girls walked with a lithe grace, like the waves beyond them, and they seemed to be talking instead of fighting. Blue-purple bruises still marked both of their cheeks, but Andy knew they’d heal quickly.
They’re Sibyls, she thought with a bittersweet wistfulness she didn’t fully understand. They don’t have any choice.
Elana shrugged. “Having them punch each other silly with leather-padded fists under the water—I suppose it could have been worse.”
“We used to do that all the time when I still walked a beat for the NYPD. Young kids would be going at it, have some beef, and we’d set them up in a ring with gloves and show them how to work it out with a little honor.” Andy battled a surge of sadness, remembering all of that, because it seemed so logical and simple. “Lots of them went on to take up boxing as a sport,” she added, her voice cracking on the last word.
Elana let out a sigh of sympathy. “You miss your old life.”
“I don’t know what I miss anymore, Elana. I just know I’m a Sibyl now, so that’s what I have to be.”
For a time the old woman didn’t say anything, her fierce, concerned expression reminding Andy of one of the shelf dragons.
We have so got to get another place to live. And soon. Someplace right. Someplace more peaceful than this.
“You have a heart as vast as any sea,” Elana said. “You can’t deny one aspect of yourself in favor of another. The sea can’t reject its mountains or its coral reefs, or turn its back on storms or whales or how moonlight ripples on night waves. It is what it is. All of what it is.”
Andy scuffed her heel against the hardwood. “I don’t have time to be everything I am. Or everything I want to be.”
“That’s because you’re trying to make everything separate.” Elana waved her hands in the air, then brought them together. “You have to flow, to make it all work as one stream.”
That made Andy bang her head against the chair’s leather headrest. “But everything is separate. I’m a Mother. I fight in a group. The two things don’t seem compatible all the time.”
Elana went quiet again, and Andy tensed, getting ready for another onslaught of tough observations.
“You used to work in law enforcement and still feel very loyal to that old fighting group also.” Elana’s observations sounded distant, almost scientific. “You’re a friend to some, companion to others, trusted confidante to many more. And, if I’m not much mistaken, you’re a woman, too. A woman with flesh and bones and emotions and … interests.”
Waves crashed onto the beach below Motherhouse Kérkira, scattering the few young adepts who had gathered to play in the sand. Andy realized she’d brought the water flying toward her. Her jeans and yellow tunic dripped steadily on the stone floor, soaking her socks and sneakers and making her want to go home.
She just wasn’t sure where home was anymore. Certainly not here, in this chaotic place. And the brownstone—it was okay, but she and Dio often felt like the odd women out with their married sister Sibyls keeping house all around them. She hated the townhouse where OCU was headquartered, since that’s where she’d had to face Sal’s death and see him so torn apart and cold. She didn’t get to go to any other NYPD precincts too often. The park stressed her out because half the paranormal battles she’d been in happened in its fields and clearings. And New York City itself had turned alien to her as she developed the ability to sense supernatural energy around every other corner.
Tears meld
ed with the water droplets on her cheeks, and she dug her fingers into the leather arms of the chair. Outside, adepts laughed and danced in and out of the crashing waves, and Andy wished she could be one of them—all girl, all kid, all Sibyl, with her future path clear in her mind again.
“Okay, we’re stopping now,” she told Elana before Elana tried any more therapy or teaching with her.
“You have much to reconcile.”
“You say that like time’s running out or something. I’m going to live hundreds of years. I’ll get it figured out.” Andy touched her tears with her fingertips and dried them. It felt like cheating.
“Andy, you must grow comfortable with reading and challenging the emotions of your group. Of all the pieces of your scattered life, of all the fragments of duty and purpose and self you’re trying to pull together, that is the most important. The most sacred.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Andy didn’t even bother to say anything to that. Elana might be ancient and wise, but she didn’t have live with Dio—or Bela or Camille.
Elana leaned toward Andy and reached out, holding her fingers in the air until Andy touched them. “If I had taken my emotional duties to my group more seriously, I might have prevented the disaster that left us so damaged and alone in this world, and living here instead of where our hearts belong.”
Andy gripped Elana’s hand. “Come on. How could you have stopped the destruction of the water Sibyls?”
“I might have realized we were all being drained by tapping into such great but terrible power.” Elana pulled away from her and sat back. “I might have understood action and reaction, decision and consequence. It’s the flow, don’t you see? How everything moves, how everything connects to the next thing? Patterns. They’ll become familiar to you. You’ll be able to follow them, sense them, perhaps even predict them.”
