Captive Heart

by Anna Windsor

  The soft ding of the elevator’s bell cranked Andy’s anticipation to fresh heights. The bad taste in her mouth had drained away. Now she swallowed the tang of adrenaline, and the hammer of blood in her ears let her know she was ready. She zipped down her face mask and saw most of the other Sibyls doing the same thing.

  OCU SWAT swept past her wearing typical gear—boots, black fire-resistant coveralls, and body armor. Black gloves, black face covers, black Kevlar helmets, and night vision goggles completed the ensemble. Their assault rifles had been loaded with the new elementally locked bullets Camille had designed, and a few carried flashbangs, Stingers, and tear gas grenades in case the situation went seriously south.

  Jack and Saul Brent had suited up, and they moved with the main raid unit. Jake Lowell, wearing nothing but jeans and a nice blue shirt, brought up the rear.

  “Nothing like this,” Andy whispered to Jack as he passed.

  His carnivorous grin felt like a reward.

  She tensed as the raid team surrounded the wooden doors. They didn’t knock or announce. They just swung their big battering ram.

  With an explosion like a small bomb, the doors splintered and burst inward. OCU poured inside the stock trading office, yelling, “NYPD! On the ground! On the ground now!”

  Jack and Saul and Jake disappeared from view.

  Shouting erupted, and gunfire, and all the Sibyls in the hallway drew their weapons. Maggie’s sword caught fire, and so did two other swords. Camille’s scimitar didn’t flame, but the damned thing looked terrifying enough, its curved blade gleaming in the low lighting.

  Four men in jeans thundered out the ruined front doors, looking both pissed and triumphant until they came face-to-face with all the women in leather with their knives, swords, and big, burning blades.

  Three of the men ran back inside, preferring the police to the Sibyls. The fourth man wheeled toward Andy’s group, but Bela warned him off with a quick “Wouldn’t try it.”

  He raised his hands and backed slowly into the office as Bela, Camille, and Andy advanced on him.

  Andy walked through the doors beside Bela and Camille and quickly located Jack and Saul and Jake putting cuffs on swearing, furious men. Two men lay on the floor, clearly past medical help thanks to expertly placed head shots. They still had pistols in their hands. Some of the men getting cuffed had obviously been disarmed, and OCU officers were picking up discarded weapons.

  “None of our people down,” Bela said, and relief eased the battle energy surging through Andy’s veins. She caught the scents of smoke, blood, leather, and wood, and the room smelled like victory to her.

  She turned her attention back to the man they had stopped outside the office, and her jaw locked as she processed how much he looked like the monster she’d seen in her vision in the warehouse. Broad shoulders, dark hair, oil-black eyes. Yeah. This guy was nothing more than a younger version of his father.

  “Ari Seneca, Jr.” She smiled at him as she made sure her dart pistol was leveled at his face. “We need to talk.”

  He kept his hands in the air. With a heavy but understandable foreign accent, he said, “You have the gun. Or whatever it is.”

  Bela searched him quickly, first with elemental energy, then with her hands to rule out any plastic weapons or other items they might not easily detect. He stood very still and didn’t stare at any of them even as Bela locked a pair of elemental cuffs on his wrists just to be sure he didn’t have any secret elemental abilities.

  He’s not too surprised by Sibyls, Andy thought, and she could see the same realization on Bela’s face, and Camille’s, too. Wind stirred in the hallway outside, and Andy sensed the air Sibyls getting closer now that the main operation had succeeded.

  “Secure,” the OCU raid leader called, and Andy gave Junior another big, friendly smile.

  “Time for phase two,” she told him as she grabbed him by the elbow and steered him toward the office’s conference room door. “A little chat with us before we hand you over to the people who really want to lock your ass up forever.”

  A few minutes later, Andy, Bela, Camille, and Dio had settled into seats at a long table in the stock office’s conference room, along with Saul and Jake. Jack stayed out in the main area, supervising arrests, coordinating with other agencies, and overseeing the arrival of the OCU’s computer crime techs. Andy put Ari Seneca, Jr., right next to her, and even though she no longer had her weapon drawn, he kept a respectful demeanor.

  From directly across the table, Saul started to speak to Junior, but Jake, who was sitting next to Saul, stopped him with a single shake of his head. “Let Andy do it.”

  Saul cut Jake a look. “But Jack—”

  “Has never seen Andy work.” Jake’s expression had a hint of fangs, and Saul went instantly quiet. He gave Andy an all-yours gesture, then folded his arms and leaned back to watch.

  Andy turned to face Junior, who studied her with his mean black eyes for a few seconds before saying, “I want a lawyer.”

  “Good for you.” Andy smiled, and hoped she was still keeping it sweet. She made no move to stop questioning or grant the man’s request, because Sibyls functioned outside normal law enforcement protocols and procedures—and because she didn’t give a shit what Junior wanted.

  He seemed to understand this, and his meaty face darkened a few shades. “I have rights, yes? Lawyer, please.”

  Andy ignored him. She kept herself relaxed in her chair despite the fact she was almost knee to knee with her suspect. “Where’s your father, Junior?”

  Junior seemed to debate going silent and repeating his demands for a lawyer, but the sight of Dio picking her nails clean with one of her African throwing knives might have changed his mind.

  “My father disappeared months ago,” he said. “You know as well as I do, he’s dead.”

  Andy waved a hand at the conference room with its decent chairs and nice oak table. “So you’ve taken over the few operations still profitable in this country and sent everyone else back to the Balkans?”

  Junior went sullen again. “I do not know what you’re talking about.”

  “We don’t think your father is dead.” Andy kept her eyes locked with his. “We think he’s different.”

  For a moment Junior didn’t move. Then he tried a jowly smile of his own. “Now you speak in riddles.”

  Andy glanced at Jake.

  Jake stood and walked slowly around the conference table, passing Dio, then Camille, then Bela until he was standing on Junior’s other side.

  “Look at me,” Jake said.

  Junior didn’t move. “I want a lawyer. I have asked three times. Nothing you do will convince me—”

  Jake turned the man’s chair to face him, then vanished.

  When he reappeared, he started his transformation into his Astaroth form. He took his time, too, probably to be sure Junior appreciated the pearl-white skin and scary eyes, the length of his claws, the size of his double set of wings, and just how sharp his fangs looked in the conference room lighting.

  Junior sat transfixed, shaking like a man seeing a ghost for the very first time. His cuffed hands started to tremble, and he swallowed twice, really fast, as Andy turned his chair to face her again.

  “Where’s your father?” Jake asked Junior from over the back of the chair, allowing a full measure of demonic resonance to ring through his voice. “And why did he let himself be changed into something like me—only worse?”

  Even with all her training and learning, Andy couldn’t help thinking that Jake sounded like an entire legion from hell when he talked like that.

  “My father is dead.” Junior’s voice shook as he spoke, and Andy had a sense that he was telling the truth as he knew it, or wanted it to be. She nodded to Jake, who backed off and let himself go human again.

  “So tell us where Daddy’s body is and we’ll get you that lawyer,” she said to Junior.

  “No, no. You fail to understand. Somebody might have killed my father, but even if
they let him live, he would be dead by now. When he disappeared, he was very sick.”

  Interest stirred deep in Andy’s gut. Okay, now they were getting somewhere. “How sick?”

  “Dying. He had lung cancer. We tried the best hospitals, even experimental drug and radiation treatments—but the tumors in his lungs kept growing. When my father vanished, he had weeks to live. We assumed, my younger brothers and I, that he walked away to make it easier on us. To show no weakness to our enemies.”

  Junior looked down at his knees, and for a moment he seemed genuinely saddened.

  Andy glanced at Jake and Saul and her group. At least now they understood why Seneca had let himself be used as a demon biology experiment.

  “Interesting that you mentioned enemies,” Andy relaxed again, staying tuned to both sets of instincts—her police experience and her Sibyl intuition. “Before he died, your father made some unusual friends, didn’t he?”

  “I knew something of that,” Junior admitted, “but I believed little of what he said. He told me of—of women like you, and men who had abilities beyond those of normal humans. At first I thought his mind might be slipping, but he showed me a few things.” He glanced up, his black eyes bright with pride and determination. “He wanted to ensure the vitality of his family. For that, he faced fear. He was willing to take pain and risk everything, and now he is dead.”

  Translation—Seneca wanted to make as much money for his sons as possible, and leave the syndicate in a powerful position. “And now he’s dead. But if that’s true, don’t you think it’s odd that right after he vanished, thugs from your rival gangs start getting butchered? That all your criminal buddies are so terrified they’re taking potshots at each other?”

  “Odd? No.” Junior seemed genuine with that answer, too. His cuffs rattled as he shrugged. “Fortunate for me, yes. But I have no knowledge of any of that, or how it has happened.”

  Truth. Except the part about it not being odd. Junior thought it was odd, all right. In fact, it scared him shitless, just like it did everyone else.

  “You had, what, six armed men to protect a bunch of computer hacks?” Andy leaned toward him again. “You’ve been worrying maybe you or your crew might be next. That’s why you brought so much extra muscle to where you were running a stock-trading scam.”

  Junior hesitated, then gave it up easier than Andy had imagined he would. “The murders of Foucci’s men were beyond anything I have seen or even imagined, even in a nightmare.” His eyes flicked to Jake Lowell, now seated across the table again, polite and human and watching with interest. “It would take a monster to handle human beings in such a fashion.”

  “We think that monster might once have been your father,” Jake said. “And we don’t think he can control himself or distinguish friends from enemies—or family. Want to tell us where he might be holed up, just in case we’re right?”

  “I don’t believe what you’re saying.” Junior stared at Jake, but broke the eye contact pretty fast. “My father has not become some devil who can tear men apart with nothing but his hands.”

  There was no conviction in his words anymore, and he’d really started to shake.

  So he did know. As much as he let himself acknowledge, anyway. Junior had also figured out that the killing might be indiscriminate, or out of his father’s control, and he’d done what he could to protect himself from things he didn’t understand.

  Andy knew she didn’t have to spell out the simple bargain—help us, and we’ll keep him from killing you. It went unspoken, and Junior’s slump-shouldered posture suggested he was ready to lay everything bare if they’d just get him out of this nightmare.

  Andy gave Saul a nod, and Saul slid a piece of paper over to Junior. “Here’s the list of Seneca properties we know about. We’ll be raiding each one of them within the next hour.”

  Junior read the list. “My father is not in any of those places. I have been to all of them in the last month.”

  Taking your cut of Daddy’s business, Andy thought. “Any properties we don’t know about? Think carefully, Junior.” She waited for Saul to slide a photo across the table, this one a full-color shot of the Foucci crew reduced to body parts and blood. “Because you could be next if you don’t help us put a stop to this.”

  From the corner of her eye, Andy saw Jack standing in the conference room doorway, watching. He seemed pleased. She could sense that emotion, along with leftover exhilaration and something like pride and admiration.

  Stay focused …

  Junior rattled off the addresses of three properties that weren’t in Seneca’s records. “They’re in my wife’s sister’s name, Tamlyn Jones.” He gave her social security number, birth date, phone number, and address of record. When he finished, Andy could tell he didn’t have anything left to offer. She stood and dusted a few wood fragments off the front of her leathers.

  “He’s done,” Andy told Jack, and Jack moved in to take charge of the man and get him to whatever agency had the strongest claim to prosecute him.

  As Junior got to his feet and made his way toward the door with Jack, Jack glanced back at Andy. The look he gave her said they’d talk about all this later—after a lot of touching, kissing, groaning, and definitely, definitely not talking. Not with words, anyway.

  Good thing she didn’t need her focus anymore, because it evaporated like water droplets in the desert.

  “No disasters,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing unexpected. Guess I’ll have to admit the son of a bitch was right after all.”

  Saul and Jake went out the door behind Junior, and Bela and Camille and Dio came to a stop beside Andy.

  “You’re still law enforcement,” Bela told her, “even though you’re a Sibyl, too.”

  “You did good with Junior,” Dio told her. “Smooth. I was impressed.”

  Before Camille could add any praise, Sheila Gray, Maggie Cregan, and Karin Maros filled the conference room doorway.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Maggie asked, her strange green eyes bright with confusion and maybe a little fear. “We can’t sense you. It’s like you don’t exist. You’re all like those coins we found, the traps that nearly killed us behind that closed-down storefront restaurant. You’re giving off absolutely nothing.”

  Andy saw that the other Sibyls from the raid detail had crowded in behind the East Ranger group. Apparently all of them had been surprised by the same thing and they wanted answers.

  Camille’s lips tugged into a smile, unusual for her around a group of Sibyls. She was usually pretty shy, especially with her successes. “Guess my charms work,” she said to Bela. “Maybe we should have warned everybody before we field-tested them.”

  Bela gave this a moment’s consideration before blowing it off by rolling her eyes. To Maggie and their audience, she said, “Camille and I have been experimenting with elemental treatments to repel projective traps.” She touched the copper crescent moon pendant around her neck. “They’re also designed to mute our signatures so hostile creatures can’t track us directly.”

  “Well, Camille’s right. They definitely work.” Karin sounded impressed, but impressed didn’t describe the other expressions Andy could see. Wary, worried, angry, suspicious—those would be better words.

  “If you got taken or got in trouble, we Sibyls couldn’t track you, either, no matter what kind of energy we used.” Sheila’s calm voice cut across the currents of agitation flowing between the Sibyls outside the conference room. “You should take that into consideration before using those charms on a regular basis.”

  Andy wasn’t sure, but she thought she picked up a note of condescension in Sheila’s warning, and it irked her. They’d heard crap like that before from the Mothers when they all began to explore their projective talents, then again when Camille first started crafting her charms to help them with their projective energy.

  Real Sibyls don’t need jewelry to fight battles.…

  “Yeah, thanks.” Andy took Camille by the elbow. “We�
��ll keep that in mind if we get snatched or dropped down a storm drain. I thought we were the big bad trackers, anyway.”

  Bela started for the conference room door, and Sheila’s group stepped out of her way. All the Sibyls moved enough to make a path for them, but Andy sensed their stares as well as the curious gazes from OCU officers and technicians as she steered Camille through the crowd. Behind her, Dio’s wind energy picked up to dangerous levels for an indoor setting, and light fixtures and the pieces of the broken office doors started to rattle.

  Not soon enough, they made it to the stairwell and started out of the building the same way they came in for the raid.

  “I can’t believe there’s still so much prejudice against projective energy and improving the science we’re using.” Camille’s voice sounded young and vulnerable, making Andy feel even more protective.

  “People can be assholes,” she said. “Even Sibyls.”

  Camille sighed. “They have a point about us not being able to sense and track each other.”

  “I can sense all of you just fine.” Dio’s tone screamed don’t listen to those uptight bitches. “And we are the ones who would be doing the tracking. They’re just weaker in the elemental detection department than we are.”

  “Or maybe since we’re all wearing the same charms except for the differences in the metals, we aren’t blocked from detecting each other,” Bela suggested.