Captive Heart

by Anna Windsor

  Yet.

  Somewhere between the last bite of garlic and cheese and the sunlight on the sidewalk, Andy had lost her mind. She’d touched Jack. She’d kissed him.

  And now—

  Now he was bending forward, tilting her head back, and taking what he wanted.

  His lips covered hers, firm and hot, and pepper spice scorched her senses as he held her closer and tighter. The pressure on her mouth turned insistent, commanding her to give him everything, to keep absolutely nothing back for herself, nothing that might save her sanity. The world ceased to exist save for the burning taste of his lips, the rough demand of his tongue. Her mouth moved against his, and she slid her hands under his shirt to find the hard ridges of muscle defining his waist.

  She wanted him naked.

  She wanted him, period.

  She wanted the hard proof of his desire out of those jeans and in her hands. What she could do to him … what she would let him do to her …

  She got wet in every way just letting herself imagine. Water soaked her clothes, soaked his, and he kept kissing her out on the sidewalk in front of anybody who cared to watch. Wild as she was, she’d never done anything as public as this in her life.

  When Jack ended the kiss and gazed down at her, Andy didn’t want anything but another kiss, so she took it, and another after that, until they were both half drenched with random water she’d pulled toward them.

  “Somebody’s gonna think we’re auditioning for a wet T-shirt contest,” Jack murmured against her ear, making Andy shiver from the deep, delicious sound.

  “You’d win.” God, her voice was nothing but a shaking rasp. “Maybe tonight would work out—if you don’t mind dates at four in the morning when I get off patrol.”

  The tension in his muscles let her know he was thinking about it, that he wanted to take her up on it, but he kissed the top of her head and said, “No. Work, then rest. I want you strong and ready because I’m going to wear you out. Still on for tomorrow night, though?”

  I might die here, and I think I’d be happy. Andy liked the feel of his face in her hair, of his hands on her body. Every second with him made her want another second, then a minute, an hour, a day. She could get used to this way too fast.

  “You’re a tease, Jack Blackmore.”

  “And you’re beautiful.” His hot breath tickled her neck this time, driving her nearly crazy.

  Her body ached from wanting him, but she managed to keep her act together enough to say, “I’m still picking the restaurant tomorrow night.”

  He pulled away from her again, this time letting her go as he smiled at her. “We’ll see about that.”

  Andy wanted him back right away, wanted him next to her, rubbing her, holding her, stroking her. Her mind heaved and the sky seemed to give off colored light. Kaleidoscopic New York, and she hadn’t even needed a shot of Jack Daniel’s to see the world in living color.

  It’s been so long, part of her mind thought while her mouth came up with, “There’s no sense fighting me for control.”

  “The fight’s half the fun.”

  That smile. It really could kill a woman. “Tease, tease, tease.”

  Andy got in the Jeep breathing like she’d run five miles on a sandy beach. She knew her face had to look like a freckled cinnamon drop. As Jack got in the car, she realized the water stains on his clothes lined up with hers.

  Oh, they were so not walking into OCU headquarters with matching water spots.

  Her face got even hotter. “I’m going to dry us off, okay?”

  Jack turned the key but didn’t move the Jeep from its parking spot. “If it involves touching me, don’t do it while I’m driving.”

  Andy made herself look straight ahead, but the second he pulled into traffic, she slipped her hand toward his leg and rested it on his knee as she drew the water out of their clothing and shunted it onto the Jeep’s floor. “Am I a distraction, Jack?”

  “You’re way more than that, sweetheart.” He waited until he was dry, then nudged her fingers off his leg.

  “I’d kill most men for calling me sweetheart.”

  “You’ve already tried to off me a few times, and I’m still here.”

  The iron crescent moon around Andy’s neck gave a sharp tingle against her damp skin, and she lifted her fingers to it. Weird. That had happened before with Sibyl distress calls and emergencies, any power dark enough or strong enough to fire through projective metals and surfaces.

  She reached out with her water energy, but didn’t feel anything beyond people and dogs and asphalt and concrete.

  The tingling got worse.

  Something snakelike and wrong slithered through her mind, muttering, almost like it was searching for her, calling out for her.

  Andy …

  She heard the sound. Just a whisper, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining it.

  Andy …

  Close. In front of her.

  What the hell was this, some psychotic demon ghost about to make a grab for her throat?

  Andy’s heartbeat changed, skipping instead of pounding. She picked up more wavy wrongness around them. Unnatural energy, like darkness rippling across the lit surface of their world.

  Andy …

  “Jack, I think you should stop the Jeep.”

  He put the brakes on without asking why.

  At the same moment the Jeep jerked hard to the right, screeching across pavement and straight toward a line of parked cars by the sidewalk.

  “Jack!”

  “Tire.” His voice rose over the squeal of other cars and cabs peeling away from the Jeep.

  Andy heard a loud pop. The Jeep jerked even more violently. She held the panic bar so tight she felt like her fingers might crack. Jack swore and fought the wheel as the Jeep smashed past a Toyota Prius, knocking the little blue hybrid sideways before hopping the curb and blasting through a gate into somebody’s private alley.

  Jack rode the brakes hard. They spun. Smacked off something. The hood flew up. Airbags deployed with a chest-splitting crack, and for a second Andy saw nothing but white powder and cloth. She heard nothing but fluid hissing out of hoses and the bang of the Jeep’s hood as it crashed down.

  Stopped.

  After all the motion and squealing of tires, Andy’s senses buzzed, making noise in the relative silence. She fought with the airbag, clawing it and pushing it off her. Where was the street? The back of the alley?

  She was facing the street out her passenger window. The crunched front of the Jeep sat about five feet from an alley wall. Behind them, another stone wall.

  Three men—three very big men—seemed to materialize at the ruined alley gate.

  Andy’s necklace burned her like steam off an iron. Wrong. Darkness. These men were all wrong. Every nerve in her body fired, and she wanted to claw her way through the Jeep’s metal roof.

  “These aren’t friendlies,” she said to Jack, grabbing her SIG out of its ankle holster.

  “Neither are those.” Jack jerked a thumb toward three more men heading toward them, alley-side. They were each carrying a MAC-10 “spray and pray” with a sound suppressor.

  Jack drew his Glock, but Andy couldn’t quit looking at the submachine guns.

  A thousand rounds per minute, her mind informed her, the words jamming between her ears. “Fuck.”

  The three assholes at the alley mouth pulled out matching MAC-10s.

  Andy moved even as Jack yanked her down to the Jeep floor and covered her with his own body.

  The charm around Andy’s neck sizzled into her skin and the Sibyl tattoo on her right forearm seemed to catch fire as bullets ripped into the Jeep from both sides.

  Glass shattered. The thump-thump of holes punched in metal nearly deafened Andy. The Jeep rocked and pain blasted into her left leg. She bit her lip instead of crying out, but when fire lanced her right arm, she figured they would die right here, and quickly. She couldn’t see anything but black carpet and torn leather and metal and now light pop
ping into the Jeep from hole after hole as the MAC-10s chewed it to pieces.

  She yanked on her elemental energy, not caring how much water came or how hard. The Jeep rocked all over again as water sprayed through the shattered metal and glass, and the gunfire cut off. Andy heard the whooshing roar of waves underneath them. The sudden silence outside made the clang of a manhole cover hitting alley walls twice as loud. Something exploded. Another manhole cover bashed stone. Water mains gave up everything she asked them to send her, and she knew she was rupturing several of them. Thank God. Panting, trying to ignore the agony in her arm and leg, Andy drew the water forward, pulled it all, every bit, and hoped she was turning the alley into one big psychotic waterslide.

  “Cover your weapon,” Andy warned Jack just as the Jeep slid and spun in the current and water flooded through the ruined windows on her side.

  As the big waves passed, Andy thought she heard screaming. From farther away, sirens cranked into the background noise.

  The Jeep went still again.

  “Out,” Jack said, and she knew they had to move. If the shooters were still standing, they’d reach the Jeep in seconds, cram their MAC-10s through the jagged glass, and shred them like so much bloody paper. Andy had to get a fix on these bastards and drown them properly.

  “One … two …” Jack hesitated, then grunted, “Three.”

  His weight shifted off her and Andy didn’t let herself think. She ignored the throbbing fire in her arm and leg, shoved open the Jeep door, and fell out shooting, splashing as she landed in the waterlogged alley.

  Gunfire erupted on Jack’s side of the Jeep, and Andy didn’t hear anything but the noise, couldn’t smell anything but gunpowder and water—and something like a wet, moldy cat.

  Her eyes focused.

  One shooter on her side down. Two more coming at her fast, weapons pointed.

  Human, her brain said. But not.

  Whatever. She pumped three rounds into the one closest, then the one farthest away.

  They staggered—and kept coming.

  They looked big, too big at the shoulders. Built like men, but enhanced. Disproportionate. Their faces seemed too square, like cartoon thugs, but those MAC-10s weren’t funny at all.

  “Shit!” She lowered her SIG and strafed the first shooter’s ankles. The bastard tumbled onto the wet pavement, yelling his head off. Andy dropped the second shooter the same way, at close range, using her bullets like a sword and nearly cutting his feet right off his legs. Just in case the big bastards did have demon blood, she shot them both in the head, and crowned the one lying in the wet alley behind them, just for good measure.

  “Jack!” Why was she yelling? She couldn’t hear a damned thing. And the shooters—the ones she had pumped full of bullets—were starting to move.

  “Jack, goddamnit, are you alive?”

  Andy tried to lift her right arm to line up her shots to kill the assholes all over again, but the damned weapon wouldn’t budge. Her left leg had gone dead on her, too. Water poured into the alley from every direction, bashing against the shooters and Andy and the Jeep. Nothing contained the waves, so they moved on through. Damn it! If she could fill the alley, she’d have a fighting chance since she could breathe water and maybe the shooters couldn’t.

  Don’t drown Jack. Be careful. Be careful!

  But she couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him, still couldn’t hear shit-all. No idea if Jack was still alive. Andy let out her rage in a massive scream—and she heard the answering, thunderous roar of a wind funnel storming across the streets of New York City.

  “Cover and anchor!” she yelled in case Jack could hear her, and she rolled against the Jeep and wrapped her good arm around the front tire, turning her face away from the alley mouth and the weird, writhing shooters who absolutely were trying to get up despite being shot in a dozen places, including their big, thick heads. The third shooter, the one who hadn’t charged her yet, had already made it to his feet.

  The sky darkened to near night, and wind blasted down the alley, pushing Andy’s wet hair away from her face and staggering the struggling shooters.

  A big tornado came screaming into the alley, blasting gate and shooters and Jeep alike as it whirled to a stop and vanished, thunder crashing over the spot where it had been.

  Dio hit the ground less than three feet in front of Andy, knives drawn and teeth bared.

  Andy rolled over and lifted her SIG with her left hand. The shooters were up, all right, but they were moving back. Turning. Now they were running, splashing through puddles and sluices. Three more bashed around the Jeep and ran past Dio.

  Andy would have brought more waves, but she couldn’t muster the force. Too much pain. Too much blood mixing with the water all around her. Everything felt like congealing ice except the hot spots in her arm and leg. Everything smelled like copper and burned powder.

  Dio planted three-sided African blades in the shooters’ backs—and they kept running. Dio hit them again, and still they kept moving.

  “What the hell are they?” Dio’s yell barely trickled into Andy’s numb ears.

  A shadow rounded the back of the Jeep, and Andy almost shot Jack between the eyes before she realized it was him. He was bleeding from the chest and neck, and his eyes—dear God. Andy had never seen a human male with eyes so cold and furious.

  He shot at the retreating figures and Dio kept burying knives in them until they pelted out of the alley. Each blade and bullet hit its target, Andy knew, but the shooters spilled onto the sidewalk, scattering civilians. Nobody could take a safe shot now, not without risking friendlies.

  Seconds later, two black leather blurs rocketed past the alley. Bela and Camille, charging after the shooters on foot. A few more leather-clad women hurtled by. Sibyls. Andy realized that all over the city, wind chimes would have jangled in Sibyl houses, and anyone with the tattoo of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood would have heard her instinctive, automatic call for help.

  Emergency sirens got louder.

  “You’re hit,” Jack muttered, his deep voice cutting underneath the growing chaos. He sounded as furious as he looked.

  “So are you.” Andy tried to pull herself to sitting but couldn’t do it.

  He didn’t answer that, and the expression on his face didn’t change.

  New cold washed across Andy’s wet skin.

  Jack wasn’t really with her, was he? New York City, the ruined Jeep, the acrid tang of Dio’s weather-making energy and the howl of her barely contained wind, the wet alley—none of that was getting through to him. The look on his face and the icy blue fire in his eyes told her he had gone somewhere else, somewhere other.

  Before she could say anything to get him back to here and now, he scooped her off the ground. The pain from sudden movement nearly made Andy scream, and tears exploded from both of her eyes. She wanted to hit him, but then he’d drop her and everything would hurt that much worse. Instead, she grabbed his arms and dug her nails in as hard as she could.

  Jack didn’t seem to notice. He turned like he intended to carry her out of the alley.

  Dio blocked his path. “Hold on, Blackmore. Help’s almost here.”

  “She’s hit. Got to find a medic.” Jack’s voice came out flat, robotlike. No inflection. Barely any volume.

  Dio’s wind shifted and she looked at Andy, hands and eyebrows raised. The implication was clear: Should I blast him on his ass?

  Robo-Jack walked straight at her. “Get out of my way.”

  Andy sensed on a soul-deep level that Jack wouldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t feel confident that he wouldn’t hurt other people. Not at all.

  “It’s okay,” she told Dio. “I’ve got this.”

  What a fucking lie.

  Dio frowned at Andy, but she stepped aside and Jack kept walking, carrying Andy toward the streets, toward the crowds and sirens.

  Her leg and arm hurt so badly her head swam, but she made herself lean into Jack. “Listen to me. We need to wait for the OCU.”


  Nothing. He kept walking. His breathing sounded labored, and his blood flowed down his shoulder, soaking into Andy’s jeans. Her acute senses picked up his heart rate. Irregular. Way too fast. She sent energy through him on instinct, pacing the beat as best she could. Her thoughts moved to his wounds. Bullets. Two through-and-through at the neck and shoulder, two still lodged in his upper right forearm. More energy left her as everything Sibyl inside her took over, making her want to heal him, need to heal him.

  Her vision flickered.

  Jack stumbled.

  “Sorry,” Dio said from behind them as marked cars, unmarked cars, and ambulances screeched to a halt on the street outside the alley. Andy felt the impact as Dio hit Jack hard enough to knock him down.

  Jack grunted with pain, and Andy felt him falling. Felt herself falling. Sharp bolts of agony made her senses dim before she hit the pavement, but she was all too aware of Jack’s warm weight beside her.

  Heal him, her mind demanded, and her water energy flowed out of her, working, trying, pushing harder until somebody tore her away from him, crammed a needle into her arm, and turned out her lights.

  Failure.

  It pounded Griffen like blows to the gut. It stabbed him like shattered bone in the lungs. It festered like rotting thorns in his heart.

  He hated standing here in the quiet warehouse next to his second in command and his chained, smug sister. His jeans felt too tight. His black sweatshirt felt too heavy, and it only added to the heat of his rage. Rebecca gave him a smirk as she eyed the proof of his missteps, the six blood-covered fighters back from the failed ambush on Andy Myles, but she didn’t say anything. Neither did the twelve men in his coven—the ones handling the fighters and the ones standing quietly, as if showing support. That, at least, was a small miracle.

  Rage flared through Griffen, and he punched the first fighter in the face. The big fuck went to his knees, unable to keep his balance because of his badly damaged ankles. The bone and flesh near the fighter’s feet had healed—but badly. No more blood, no more exposed tissue, but very little function, either. The other five fighters who had blown the ambush stood next to their handlers, quiet and subdued. Dried blood crusted their clothing, but at least they were whole. For the moment. Of course, two had been blinded, but eyes could be replaced.