by Anna Windsor
Andy thought about Sal’s death and how her former life had ended in a split-second paranormal attack that woke her water abilities. She thought about dead officers and dead Sibyls and how she and her entire group had lost everything at various times in their lives. Was Elana trying to say that if she understood flow, if she allowed herself to plunge into the stream of feelings and connect more fully with her sister Sibyls and the water of the world, she might sense such tragedies coming? That she might be able to stop them?
Is that wonderful—or horrible?
“Do you understand what I’m trying to say to you, Andy?” Elana sounded strange, and Andy wondered if the old woman was scared about something. She didn’t even want to ask.
“No, I don’t fully understand it, but like I said, I’m going to live practically forever, so I’ll have time to learn.”
Elana turned her face away, like she could see everything happening on the beach outside the Motherhouse’s big window. “Forever,” she said, “can be shorter than it seems.”
Andy got back to the brownstone in time to change clothes and get out the door to headquarters to work with the sketch artist. She more or less stumbled off the communications platform in the brownstone’s living room and gave a quick wave to the projective mirror attuned to Motherhouse Kérkira.
Ona, the zillion-year-old fire Sibyl who had opened the channels for her, nodded. The mirror winked into darkness, and silence and stillness settled like a silky blanket around Andy’s mind. She so wanted to collapse on the leather sofa, maybe after a gourmet sandwich and five or ten servings of corn chips—but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Maybe later, or lots later, after patrol tonight.
Andy sensed the elemental energy of her sister Sibyls, familiar to her and welcome. Camille’s fire rose from downstairs, while Bela’s earth energy drifted languidly from the main-floor bedroom near the staircase closet. Dio’s wind moved softly through the space, moving with a soft lack of pressure that only happened when Dio was sleeping. Andy assumed they were all napping, storing up energy for tonight’s patrol. She’d love to do the same, but oh well.
She headed up the polished wooden stairs to the floor she shared with Dio and turned left, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible. Her little bedroom seemed to welcome her, and did that bed ever beckon … damn it. No time, no time.
“Stretch, shower, and dress,” she told herself as she gazed at the pictures on her walls. Neatly arranged. Fairly sedate—a big change from her previous life. In her old apartment, she’d had dozens of posters, covers from Gourmet magazine, concert prints and ticket stubs from bands she liked, and teetering stacks of romance novels. And crime novels. And a bunch of fantasy novels, too. Now, who had time to read? And concerts? Poster browsing? None of that was happening anymore.
“Maybe I should just get dressed. I’m not that filthy.” She scratched at a layer of salt residue she’d probably picked up refereeing the underwater boxing match. “Well, maybe a little filthy.”
The bathroom was centered in the hallway, between Andy’s room and Dio’s room-library combo, and it was pretty small, too. The tile, however, was top-notch and decorative, with little water-burst patterns Bela had grouted in just to make Andy feel welcome. Bela never mentioned it, but Andy sensed her care and attention each time she came into the bright little space, as if Bela had layered her soothing, accepting earth energy into each crack and seal.
Andy turned on the shower.
When she first met Bela, she had hated her. Bela had seemed arrogant and bossy and brash, but she had turned out to be the most solid, loving, and loyal person Andy knew.
She stepped into the shower thinking about Jack Blackmore.
Maybe there were similarities.
Bela had started off trying to kill Andy—or, more to the point, her then-partner Creed Lowell, who was half demon. Warm water struck Andy’s face, rivulets and steam flowing across her body as she closed her eyes and soaked in the absolute peace and restoration of standing in the midst of her element.
Yeah, Bela had acted like a total ball-busting ass, but the minute she’d learned the truth of Creed’s strong, good nature, she did a 180 and defended him to the death. And when Andy had needed somebody, really needed another human being for the first time in her adult life, Bela had been right there. It had been Bela standing resolutely and lovingly at Andy’s side when Andy had to see Sal’s mutilated body and tell her lover goodbye.
“Just goes to show, no asshole is totally beyond rehabilitation.”
Except maybe Jack.
Andy put both hands on the heated tile in the shower, breathing in water and the mingled scents of Dio’s coconut soap and her own rain-scented shampoo. She snitched Dio’s soap and lathered herself up, then worked the shampoo into her salty curls.
What the hell was happening between her and Jack, anyway?
Andy opened her eyes as she stepped back into the water for a rinse. He agitated her. He knocked her off balance. But he also had her interest. What did she want it to be? Because he’d made sure she understood the call was hers to make …
Six months ago, this whole line of thinking would have been ludicrous. She’d hated the man worse than she’d ever hated Bela. She might still hate him—but no, that wasn’t true. Not anymore.
So what did she feel?
Attracted?
In lust?
Terrified?
All of the above?
She rinsed more shampoo out of her hair and let it slide down her skin, relaxing her. A fantasy kindled in the multicolored hue of the bubbles. Jack, in the shower with her, working the soap into her skin with his big hands. She could imagine his dark brown eyes studying her naked skin, choosing where to touch her, exactly how to make her moan and whimper and beg him never to stop.
The screaming started a few seconds later.
Andy’s heart skipped and she jerked her palms away from the shower’s slick tile. It was all she could do to keep from pitching out of the tub.
Dio.
Dio was screaming.
She sounded terrified. Dio was never terrified.
Breathing hard, Andy threw back the shower curtain, jumped out of the tub, and pelted down the hallway, wishing like hell her dart pistol wasn’t downstairs in the weapons closet.
“Dio? Hey!” Her own voice sounded harsh and desperate, almost as jagged as the screams. “Dio!”
Andy burst into Dio’s bedroom looking left, looking right, natural and elemental senses running so hot she probably could have sighted a spider at twenty paces and blown it to smithereens.
Identify the threat. Left and right again. Nothing. The light blue walls seemed normal and free of blood spatter or smudges. The bookshelves covering every inch of Dio’s walls looked neat as ever. Her half-dozen tan file cabinets stood undisturbed. Her desk was immaculate. All of that would have been a sign of psychosis in most air Sibyls, but Dio had been maniacally neat since Andy met her.
Andy’s brain blasted along at a thousand miles per hour, her eyes searching each fraction of an inch. Dio herself sat on the edge of her bed gripping her covers, red-faced and wide-eyed. She looked like she was choking.
“Honey?” Andy made it to her in seconds, reaching for her with wet hands but stopping just shy of grabbing her shoulders. “What is it?”
“I—I—” Dio’s startling gray eyes stayed wide, like she could see things invisible to Andy’s senses. A haziness in the depths let Andy know Dio had been sleeping, might still be clinging to some dream or horrible nightmare. In that instant, she seemed so childlike Andy wanted to wrap her in her arms and rock her.
Instead, she tugged a throw from the foot of Dio’s bed and wrapped it around her own soap-covered body.
“Talk to me,” Andy said. “Tell me what you saw.”
Dio blinked, seemed to be trying to shake off her fear. But her teeth started to chatter and she shook so hard the bed trembled with her.
“Not good,” Andy muttered, pulling the covers
around Dio’s bare shoulders. Dio had nothing but a silk shortie covering her to her knees, and the blue fabric seemed filmy and insubstantial even though it was summer.
“Dio?” Bela’s voice. She was coming hard up the stairs with Camille right behind her. When they charged into the bedroom, Bela had her scary serrated blade drawn, which didn’t jive with her WORLD PEACE T-shirt. Camille had on one of John’s button-downs, red with a Crimson Tide football logo on the pocket. It hung below her knees, but her ivory-handled scimitar, an Indian weapon made for beheading with one vicious stroke, took away from the cute factor.
“I think she was dreaming,” Andy said, aware of the fact that Camille didn’t give off smoke and sparks like most fire Sibyls did. That didn’t mean she wasn’t deadly. For all her gentle looks, Camille could be more lethal than a volcano at full blow when she used her projective abilities.
“Dreaming.” Bela didn’t lower her weapon. “And she’s still tranced out? Shit. It wasn’t a dream. It was a vision.”
Camille eased her grip on the scimitar and lowered it to her side. “Dio doesn’t have visions. She’s never talked about seeing the future.”
“Any air Sibyl can have prescient dreams,” Andy said, studying Dio more closely and easing some cooling water energy in Dio’s direction in case she wanted to accept it. Andy had learned about air Sibyls and their dreams from Elana. “So can any water Sibyl, or fire or earth Sibyl, too. It’s just that air Sibyls are more likely to see the future because of their shared genetic heritage with the Keres—the death spirits near Mount Olympus. In ancient times, some people called the Keres the Fates, because they seemed to know what was coming, at least in general terms.”
“Just a dream,” Dio muttered, coming back to herself a little more each second. The bed slowly stopped shaking from the force of her tremors.
Bela sheathed her sword but kept her distance, which was always prudent when dealing with Dio. “What did you see?”
For a moment Dio seemed about to argue, to insist she had just repeated some childhood nightmare and maybe they should all just get out and leave her the hell alone. Indecision flickered across her features, followed by guilt, then resignation.
“Rakshasa,” she said, more to Andy than anyone. “I saw the tiger-demon Eldest, or one of them. Tarek.” She pointed to one of the dozens of drawings tacked to her walls, and Andy found herself staring at the sketch she liked the least. The picture showed three Rakshasa demons in full battle gear, fanged mouths opened in threatening snarls. One had white fur, one had black fur, and Tarek had golden fur with dark stripes down his legs and arms.
Just looking at the damned picture gave Andy the creeps because Dio could draw with a skill and power that brought the essence of her subject right into the room. Rakshasa essence was nothing but evil. Heavily muscled chests and arms, big swords, armor like chain mail suffused with tiny metal spikes—and the eyes. Blazing and soulless, yet sharply intelligent. Tarek’s eyes seemed to be the brightest and most awful of all.
“He was here in the brownstone,” Dio said. “He came after us and this time he got us. Me. He got me. He tore me apart.”
She shivered and shook the bed again.
“How could that dream be prescient?” Andy asked Bela, confusion and concern mingling like cool streams in her chest. “The Rakshasa leader is dead. All the Eldest are toast. We saw what happened this winter down in the Croton Aqueduct offshoot. Camille called up molten ore from the earth’s core, and it coated the Eldest. We took them out. All of them.”
It had been a stroke of amazing fortune. To kill a Rakshasa Eldest, the heart had to be pierced with elemental metal, which immobilized the demon. Then it had to be beheaded, burned, and the ashes of head and body scattered in different directions. Otherwise, the Eldest could re-form and heal—literally pull themselves back together again. When Camille had summoned the ore from the earth’s core, elemental metal hadn’t just pierced the hearts of the Eldest. The metal had suffused through their hearts, then coated them externally as well, hardening them into statues so the Sibyls could work at leisure to dispose of them.
“We even destroyed the metal casings that held the Eldest,” Camille added, staring at Dio. “There’s nothing left.”
Bela didn’t ask any questions or make any challenges. Andy felt the flow of her earth power, wrapping them all like a soft, shielding cloak.
“In my dream Tarek came back from the dead,” Dio said. Andy had never heard her sound so tentative. “He seemed stronger and more powerful, like one of the demons from time before time. Like the—” Dio’s furtive glance at Andy told Andy she didn’t want to say the name of the most ancient demon the Sibyls had ever battled, the one who formed the Legion cult—the one who killed Sal and almost killed them all.
“The Leviathan,” Andy said so Dio wouldn’t have to. Her heart chilled and tried to crust with ice at the thought of that fucking murderer straight from hell, her own worst-ever monster that she still had nightmares about, but she kept herself focused on Dio and what Dio needed. “Are you saying that the body and some aspects were Tarek, but the essence, the power, were like the Leviathan?”
Dio nodded and looked everywhere but at Andy. If it had been anyone else, Andy would have touched her arm or knee to soothe her, to let her know she was up for hearing the name. Touching Dio uninvited could get a person’s skull split by lightning.
“Tarek becoming Bartholomew August.” Bela used the Leviathan’s human name, and Andy’s teeth clamped together on reflex. “Has to be some kind of symbolism since Tarek and August are both dead.”
“Tarek had help.” Dio seemed to pick up strength as she got everything out of her mind, out in the open for them all to see and evaluate. “A group of chanting people, all men except one, like the Coven. Samuel Griffen and his sister, Rebecca—I never saw them clearly, but I think it might have been them. They brought him back with—”
Again, Dio couldn’t keep going, and again she wouldn’t look at Andy.
“I can take it,” Andy murmured, making sure her voice sounded low and calm. She kept her gaze direct and tried to invite the answer. When Dio did catch her eye, Andy didn’t falter. “I mean it. You’re not hurting me. Just spit it out.”
“They used a blood sacrifice. A child. And you.” The words spilled out like a scream. “Tarek rose off this table thing, like an altar. He ate you and the little girl, then he came after the rest of us. He killed Bela and Camille, and when he started tearing me apart, I woke up.”
“The little girl.” Bela drew closer to Dio, letting her earth energy serve as a buffer to the air starting to move around Dio’s shoulders. “Do you know who she was?”
Dio closed her eyes and grimaced like she was forcing herself to look back, or maybe step back, into the bloody nightmare. “I couldn’t see the kid, either, but she had red hair like Neala.”
New chills of dread prickled across Andy’s neck. Since Sal’s death, her fighting group and her godchildren had been what sustained her. Even the hint that something might take them away, that something wanted to hurt one of them, made her so angry water started to leak from her knees and elbows even as the rest of her went completely dry.
“We’ll need to write it all down,” Bela was saying. “We’ve known the Coven is involved in all of this, but the Rakshasa connection’s been eluding us. Maybe this is some kind of hint. Make a record of it and let the Mothers evaluate it. They’ll have a better idea of what to make of symbols like that.”
Dio pushed herself off the bed and shed the blanket from her shoulders. “Maybe it wasn’t a vision. I haven’t had them before, not really, not like that.”
Bela responded with a look that made Dio say, “Okay, it probably was a vision, but fuck, it was weird. It can’t be literal. We know that.”
“Write it down,” Bela said again. “Every detail, every color and nuance. Anything might be important. We’ll all keep it in mind until the meaning gets clearer. If you have any more dreams that even might
be visions, we need to know, Dio, okay?”
“Write it down,” Andy muttered, thinking about notebooks—then about sketches. Her heart stuttered as she remembered where she was supposed to be. “Shit. Sorry. I’ve gotta go.”
“The proportions are good, but the face—the face doesn’t feel right.” Andy handed the sketch back to the artist she’d been working with for the last hour. “The too-big legs and arms, the disproportionately long midsection, all of that’s dead on. Don’t change any of that.”
Saul Brent sat in one of the townhouse’s interrogation rooms with Andy and the artist. He squinted at the picture, the tribal tattoos on his neck seeming to pulse with the effort of his concentration. “Bastard’s muscled up enough to be a ’roid freak.”
“His name is Frank, not bastard,” Andy shot back. It helped her to give the thing a name, especially one like Frankenstein, so it seemed cartoonish and less real.
“Let’s go over this part one feature at a time.” The artist rendered the face blank again. “Start with any identifying marks, scars, moles, lines—anything.”
“Christ, I only saw the image for a few seconds.” Andy put her face in her hands and tried to breathe through her sudden irritability before she accidentally tore off sprinkler heads by sucking water toward her. Her mind kept flipping back to Dio, scared and shaking on her bed, and what Dio had said about a little girl, maybe Neala, getting killed. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’m up for any more this evening.”
When she looked up, both Saul and the artist gave her smiles that communicated patience and understanding. Saul even looked worried about her, enough that she felt a flash of guilt. To the artist she said, “It looks … older in the face, somehow. Definitely male like you’ve got, and human-like—but not that close to human. More square. More ridged along the cheeks. Like some ancient movie star that had way too much plastic surgery. Or maybe Botox, you know? Where the features don’t move?”
Saul listened, then watched as the artist roughed in some basics. “Maybe it’s some sort of new human-demon hybrid? Maybe it used to be human?”
