Captive Heart

by Anna Windsor

  She tended to get in trouble at night, when her brother slept, when the Coven took turns standing guard over the warehouse in pairs and keeping track of Sibyl movements and activities. They had been especially active this last week, since the head of the OCU got out of the hospital—and since Rebecca got out of the prison her brother had designed for her. Her wrists ached as if remembering the elemental cuffs that had bound them for so many months after the last time she ran away from Griffen. At night, of course.

  She wasn’t even sure why she’d run, or what she had been looking for, but it didn’t matter. Griffen always found her. They each had inherited different gifts from their father, and one of his was recognizing and tracking specific energies.

  Hers, apparently, served as a beacon Griffen could follow to her whenever he liked. She didn’t think she’d try running again, at least not until she knew where she was going.

  Rebecca took care to stay well away from the watchmen as she moved through the ground floor of the warehouse. She didn’t need light to see. Not anymore. For the past few years, she’d been able to see in the dark like most people saw at noon on sun-filled days. Seeing in the daytime—now, that was getting trickier. Bright light burned her eyes, making her head ache and her skin and insides feel like she had some terrible, feverish infection. She had taken to wearing sunglasses almost all the time, but she had them off now so she wouldn’t miss any subtleties or detail.

  She bypassed the small apartments holding sleeping fighters, bound into their quarters with elemental locks that dulled their senses and lust for action and blood. She ignored the off-limits lab in the corner where the—thing—was, and went instead to the heavily barred cell built into the farthest corner next to the lab.

  In the stark, bare space inside, the old man sat staring at nothing. His abnormally large and muscled body heaved with the force of his breath, a symptom of the lungs he’d damaged during his human years.

  Couldn’t fix all of that, Griffen had explained. Damage done before the injection can’t be reversed. Only new damage.

  Rebecca knew the old man had expected to be young again, that he had imagined himself fit and full of fresh air as he joined with Griffen and the Coven to take control of the more powerful crime families in New York City. He’d been played, of course. Griffen had promised him these things without having a clue what that injection would do. The first few rounds had killed recipients outright. The next few attempts at revising the formula—not pretty or appetizing, though she had at least gotten to kill the misbegotten creations Griffen couldn’t stand to look at, much less study.

  Her brother thought she liked killing, but in truth, she sought death, or being around dying things. The bigger the animal, the more its death energy fed her.

  Sometimes she thought she’d starve, but sooner or later something around her would die or, like Griffen’s pitiful experiments, present itself to be slaughtered. She’d do the killing, but only for the sight of the blood and the deep, strengthening flow of nearby death.

  When this creature in its cage finally died, his final throes might sustain her for months. The old man’s lined face had a sour tightness that might have made her laugh a few years back, or even a few months ago. Now the creature just looked sad. She pitied him, but she also needed him. That knowledge came from instinct, and lately her instincts had become much stronger and more accurate.

  Rebecca breathed in the stale, motionless air around the creature’s cage. Ammonia, sweat, and despair. The stench made her wrinkle her nose, but she held back comment. She hadn’t come here to anger the thing. She’d come to help him remember his anger—and what to do with it.

  She leaned as close to the bars as she could get without actually touching the metal and whispered, “I know you can speak.”

  She had expected the old man to ignore her, but his comeback was fast. “Leave me.”

  His resonant, raspy voice disturbed Rebecca’s composure. He sounded very much like the thing in Griffen’s lab, and she despised that thing for what it had done to her when it walked the earth free and in control of its own destiny.

  It took a few moments to get herself back in control, but when she could think again, she went right back to her task. “You and I, we have a few things in common.”

  “Go away, girl.”

  Rebecca’s gut reacted to the voice again, and she had to hold back a scream of pure rage and hatred. This time, it took longer to bring herself back under good management, and she did so only with great force of will.

  “We don’t belong,” she said to the creature when she was sure she could speak rationally. “Not in this world.”

  This brought silence from the monster, and Rebecca watched as the big creature glanced down at his massive hands. Demon claws extended from his fingertips, and the smell of ammonia grew stronger.

  She coughed, but kept herself in check. When she touched his cage bars with her fingertips, she almost gagged at the stifling elemental energy. The locks seemed heavy and cruel, like they had been designed to crush the monster’s essence instead of just control him for the safety of the Coven.

  “This is terrible,” she said aloud, shoving back at the energy enough to realize it might prove too powerful for her, too. Just the single contact had bled out some of her will.

  The monster nodded, agreeing that the locks were unpleasant.

  Gratified, Rebecca reached for the cage door, quite capable of working the elemental energies keeping the actual mechanical locks in place. She almost unlatched the bars, but hesitated, then had a storm of second thoughts.

  Instinct again. Given her recent experiences, those instincts were likely correct.

  Rebecca stepped back from the bars. “If I let you out of that cage, you’ll kill me.”

  The old man didn’t answer at first. He just kept looking at his clawed fingers. After a time, he nodded once.

  Rebecca folded her arms. “Why?”

  Silence ensued for a time, but the creature did at last manage an answer. “Because you are there. Because you breathe.”

  The reasonless reason didn’t distress her, but it also didn’t tell her what she needed to know. “Is it the killing you like, or the death?”

  The creature raised his head enough to look at her, to study her, as if he might be seeing her for the first time. He seemed to be considering her question, and she could tell when he settled on the correct words.

  “The pain. I like the pain and the fear. It … fills me.”

  Interesting. So the thing craved dark, violent energy, much like death—especially death from attacks and wounds, like the Rakshasa from whom the creature took its supernatural power. Death from murder had the most explosive energy of all. Now Rebecca knew they were headed in the right direction. “Does it have to be people?”

  She could tell the creature didn’t understand what she was asking, so she figured out a new wording and tried again. “Would the pain of animals satisfy you and help you grow stronger?”

  The old man studied her for a longer period of time before answering. “Some.”

  Rebecca got closer to the bars but held herself apart from the locks coursing through the bars. “Enough to free yourself from my brother and the Coven?”

  “Perhaps.”

  There it was. A possibility. Maybe one day a solution. Instinct drove her questions almost completely now, and this time she asked, “Could you clean the mess from the animals so nobody would know you were getting them?”

  “I could.” The creature’s calm certainty reached her even through the dense energies containing him, and Rebecca knew he was telling her the truth.

  Now it was her turn to trade truth for truth, and to see if they could reach a bargain. “If I do you this favor, one day I’ll want a favor in return.”

  The creature in the cage didn’t hesitate. Once more Rebecca received a single nod. She knew for a fact that the monster had struck many such deals in his human life, and he understood that if he failed her, one or b
oth of them might die. If Griffen didn’t kill the monster for his deceit and betrayal, then Rebecca surely would.

  They had an agreement, then, her and the creature. And what fed him would in small ways feed her, too. Not so much the pain suffered by the creatures, but the power of their fear and panic, the energy released during their deaths. She had no idea why she wanted to grow stronger, why she needed so much energy from other creatures, but her rampaging instincts urged her not to ask such questions. It didn’t matter, anyway. Not yet. When the time came for her to understand, she’d know the answers—and she’d know what to do.

  Wordless and silent, Rebecca slipped away from the cage and into the darkened warehouse. Tonight she’d deliver her new friend some rats. Tomorrow, whenever she could escape Griffen’s stifling supervision and protection, she’d go in search of larger game.

  Andy …

  She tried to see who was calling her, but smoke and fire blotted out everything except the bars in front of her face. Cage bars. She grabbed them. Heat rattled through her fingers and hands, up her arms.

  She realized she was naked, and she started to sweat. Everything smelled like sulfur. Her eyes watered.

  Andy …

  August’s voice drifted through her awareness. Seductive and powerful. The sick sound of it made her heart race so fast she worried her chest would explode.

  Andy let go of her cage bars as a figure stepped out of the swirling clouds of smoke. The stench of sulfur got stronger, with a spike of stagnant seawater and raw sewage. She coughed and squinted at the tall, thin man. His features seemed blurred but generally normal.

  He came a few steps closer, and Andy registered his black silk suit just about the time she heard whimpering in the cage beside her.

  She glanced at the barred floor—and all the blood in her body stopped rushing. Her breath caught so hard she pitched forward into the bars before she recovered and scrambled to grab Neala away from the flames licking toward the bars. The little girl had been wrapped in a blanket, and her red curls lay limp against her pale face. She moaned but didn’t open her eyes.

  “It’s been a while,” the oily-voiced man said.

  Andy gripped Neala and turned toward him, shielding the girl’s face with her hands like that would keep August from knowing who she was, or doing whatever he chose.

  The tall man had red eyes now. A dart wound opened in his forehead. Black blood trickled down his face, which was rapidly growing scales.

  “Vengeance is a dish best served hot,” the demon snarled.

  It lunged for Neala.

  Andy screamed.

  “Look at me.” Jack’s voice sliced into everything, ripping the world in half. Flames exploded, sizzling into Andy’s skin everywhere at the same time, immolating her, burning Neala—

  “Look at me, sweetheart.” Jack again.

  The flames faded into sparkles. The red-eyed man vanished. Neala disappeared, too, and Andy opened her eyes. Sweat and water covered her whole body, and she shook as she lay in Jack’s arms. He held her gently, gazing down at her with brown eyes full of worry.

  “You’re safe. I’m right here, and nothing in this room will hurt you.” His voice seemed as magnetic as the voice from her dreams, but without the menace.

  Andy took slow breaths, letting her pulse slow as she made a quick check. Leather couch, hardwood floors, big bed—Jack’s room in the townhouse, the same room where she’d spent every night of the past two weeks. His firm embrace helped her calm down from the dream, but then the content started to piss her off.

  “Great. Now I’m dreaming about dead demons, too.”

  “Rakshasa?” Jack kissed her forehead.

  “Worse. Bartholomew August.”

  That made him draw back and stare at her. “The Leviathan? The demon you killed near Mount Olympus, with the Keres helping?”

  “None other.” Andy pressed her head hard into her pillow. “He wanted revenge, of course.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  “I’m not scared of him. I killed him. What was awful—” She broke off, not wanting to say the rest aloud, but knowing she should. Jack brushed his lips across her forehead again and gave her the long seconds she needed to get out the true horror. “Neala was there. He wasn’t just killing me. He was cooking Neala, too.”

  Jack didn’t offer any lame comforts or try to reason with her. He just turned her over, straddled her waist, and rubbed her shoulders more expertly than any professional masseur. Now and then he kissed her back, her neck, her head, until all the pieces of the dream faded from her senses and her temper eased.

  Andy let him spoil her for another few moments, then turned over and gazed up at him, pressing her palm to his cheek. “Thanks.”

  “Like I’ve said before, I have my share of nightmares.” He took her hand and kissed it. “And I’m feeling a little guilty because I’ve been keeping you from a full night’s rest for nearly two weeks.”

  Andy blinked at him, trying to absorb that. Time had been moving so strangely she hadn’t been keeping up. Each day seemed too full—and yes, each night, patrol or no, turned into another blazing hot session in Jack’s big bed. When she was with him, she couldn’t stay focused on anything but him, and when she was away from him, all she wanted to do was find him again and end up like this, lying beneath him and staring into his brown eyes for hours.

  I might be going insane. No, not might be. I’d say it’s pretty definite.

  “When I’m tired, that’s when I have the worst of my dreams,” he said. “The kind I can’t shed for a few hours after I finally get myself awake. The Rakshasa in the Valley of the Gods. Other times …” He trailed off and seemed to debate with himself for a few quiet moments. When he met her gaze again, the stark vulnerability she saw startled her. “I had a difficult childhood. Not all of it, but the last few years turned out to be a serious bitch.”

  Andy sat up in the bed, pushing him up with her and covering herself with the sheet. He settled himself beside her almost shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped, and she waited, knowing he had something he needed to say. Something major. She got a fluttery sensation in her belly, like when Dio had warned her that Jack was a man with wind in his heart.

  Was he about to tell her one of the reasons he blew in and out of places with no more care than a summer storm?

  “My father was a bad man,” Jack said, and just getting those words out seemed to hurt him.

  Andy thought about touching him, but decided against it. “How bad?”

  Jack frowned. “The worst. A hired killer. We lived in Jersey, Atlantic City, and the casino he bought, he funded by carrying out mob hits. My mother and younger sister and me, we were just cover for the sociopathic bastard.”

  Andy could tell there was more, something much worse, and Jack was still arguing with himself about telling her. She risked laying her fingers on his forearm. “You don’t have to censor with me.”

  He looked around the room, at the walls, the ceiling, everything but her. “Some things I censor with everyone.”

  She scooted closer, her hip against his, her leg pressing into his thigh, and she kept her hand on his arm. “Except me.”

  His expression changed, and now Andy saw something like fear and worry. Maybe shame. “My aunt—his sister—talked to the FBI, and he killed her for it. I saw him do it, and that’s when I realized what he was.”

  “Jesus. How old were you?”

  “Seventeen. For a while, it messed up my brain, but then I knew what I had to do. I started spying on the asshole, collecting whatever evidence I could.”

  Jack stopped talking again, and his eyes had gone dark. The lines of his face hardened. Rage and despair rolled off his skin like little tides, and Andy didn’t so much as take a breath, because she knew he didn’t need to stop.

  “It got close to my eighteenth birthday, and I was going to turn over what I had to the FBI, but Mom and Ginger beat me to it. They had made their own realizations about him and
started talking, and he found out, and I knew what he’d do to them. I got them out and told the FBI where to pick them up, and then I went back and took care of him.”

  This time when he stopped, Andy knew he’d gotten out the worst of it—and it was bad.

  Dear God. He had to kill his own father. He was just a kid, and he had to do something like that. No wonder he seems detached so much of the time.

  Jack’s stubbornness and lack of social graces when she’d met him—all of that made more sense now. He needed that persona, that gruffness, because he didn’t have wind in his heart, like Dio thought. He had too much agony for any normal man to bear.

  Andy tightened her grip on his arm, wanting to do so much more, wanting to give him something that might ease that kind of pain, but she knew that would just push him away. Instead, she let the police officer still living in her soul say what needed to be said. “With a man like that, your mother and sister never would have been safe as long as he lived.”

  Jack nodded. “He would have found them himself, or paid somebody to do it.” He stared at the ceiling for a long minute, then added. “When we faced off, I couldn’t shoot him—not until he tried to pump a round into my head.”

  Shame. Definitely the emotion now. Shame mixed with regret and self-doubt.

  Andy wanted to cry for his pain, couldn’t stop the tears from coming to her eyes, but she held back the rest. “You hesitated because you weren’t like him. You had doubts—and still have them—because you’ve got a heart and soul and mind. You’re not a stone-cold son of a bitch.”

  “Thanks.” His hand covered hers, and finally, finally, she sensed a little relief mingling with his frustration and distress.

  “What happened to your mother and sister?”

  “I don’t know. We got to see each other one more time, then we had to go our separate ways to keep my father’s associates from coming after us.”