Captive Heart

by Anna Windsor

  Oh, yeah. These were strong. Almost like a casing designed to repel elemental attacks and elemental suppressions.

  “Who are the extras for?” Dio fished her silver charm out of the remaining pile, and Andy saw that, like before, it had a rune signifying wind etched into the widest part of the moon. She pointed to the rest of the charms, all of which seemed to be made out of silver, too, though none had runes.

  “The Astaroths.” Camille slipped her gold charm over her head and let it dangle at her neck. “They’ve been chatting with the Host, and they’re definitely helping with the search and the next raid, so I wanted to be sure nobody keyed projective traps for them, either.”

  “At least Astaroths aren’t afraid to try extras and enhancements.” Bela finished putting on her copper charm. “Would that our sister Sibyls might be so adventuresome.”

  We have armor, Andy thought, enjoying the silky feel of her charm’s protective energy. Armor nobody can see. Then she realized Elana wasn’t totally off her nut with all her talk about how finding flow and working with flow would help Andy settle down and focus. She felt better than she had in a while. More relaxed herself. More energized. More like she was paying attention to all the little bits and pieces she needed to understand and balance.

  Finally. A sense that she was getting somewhere overcame Andy, and she smiled. The patterns and angles of the building plan she had picked to study took on fresh clarity, as did the list of available Sibyl groups and OCU officers. Now it was time to get somewhere in the real world, too, and find the stupid Coven and their supermobsters before bad went to worse and everything in New York City went to hell.

  Jack did not like this.

  Did. Not. Like it.

  Andy’s group moved across the pavement with her out of position and in the lead, cloaked in a night so dark even the city’s endless lights had trouble driving it back. He watched the four women through night vision goggles, itching to get closer. For this to work, he had to stay back. They all did, all except Bela and Camille and Dio, who could accompany Andy without anything seeming out of the ordinary.

  He had left enough Sibyl and OCU patrols on the streets to keep down suspicion and control minor disturbances, but the rest of New York City’s Dark Crescent Sisterhood and all additional OCU officers and allies had been pulled for this operation. They had crowded into the closed factory with him, and they had taken vantage points at all available windows. Jack’s mouth ran dry as a desert. With each step Andy took toward the Garment District property, a new twist formed in his gut. He kept his hand on the third-floor doorknob, ready to pound down the fire escape stairs at the first sign of anything going wrong.

  Pretending to be doing a routine sweep, Andy and Bela halted their group near the front door of the warehouse. Andy gestured, and they moved out south, around the building’s edge toward the service entrance behind.

  From their position at a right angle, Jack had a clear view of that entrance, too. No people he could see, friendly or otherwise.

  The Sibyls nearest him, Sheila Gray’s triad, tensed.

  Andy reached the service entrance, and she and her group made like they were inspecting it. They had their weapons sheathed. They intended to make themselves targets.

  Any second now …

  Maybe they were wrong. Maybe nobody would notice or care about the Sibyls getting so close. Maybe nobody had any special interest in Andy at all.

  Jack’s fingers tightened on the doorknob. His heart rate doubled in a few seconds. A quick glance told him everybody was ready to move.

  The back doors of the warehouse’s service entrance burst open, knocking Andy and Bela on their asses. Dio and Camille didn’t go down, but they got swarmed in a big damned hurry. Ten men at least. Not as big or as bulky as Jack expected.

  Elemental cuffs flashed as some of the men secured Camille and Dio and the rest mobbed Andy and Bela. Jack’s jaw clenched so hard he might be cracking teeth.

  “Not yet,” he told himself, told everyone in the room. “Hold. Another few. Hold.”

  Fuck, this was killing him.

  The men dragged Andy and her group through the service entrance doors, which had been standing open the entire time they had been capturing their prey.

  The second the doors slammed shut, Jack gave the signal to move out. He yanked open the door and charged out, and Sibyls and OCU officers flowed down the fire escape like a black-clad army.

  Andy’s eyes adjusted quickly to the low yellow lighting in the warehouse as the men who had captured her shoved her down beside Bela. Camille and Dio hit the ground next, both on their knees, both wearing matching expressions of disgust.

  Grimacing, Andy moved her wrists in the elemental cuffs and quickly took stock. Looked like some sort of small rooms against the far wall, with a barred cell in the corner and a white door next to that. The twelve men who had attacked them had on jeans and black sweatshirts, and they felt powerful—though not as powerful as Andy had imagined the Coven to be.

  Something about this felt a little off. Not horrible. Just slightly sideways.

  The Coven stepped back from them, ringing them like they planned to start some ritual.

  Andy carefully used her water energy to check for other signs of life in the place. She was surprised by how little she noticed the power dampening she should have experienced from the cuffs. In the past, getting slapped with a pair of elementally treated metal shackles made her feel like she’d been kicked in the head—fuzzy and unfocused—but thanks to Camille’s new charms, they barely fazed her. Apparently, the charm’s protections kept the elemental bindings from actually making contact with Andy’s skin. Such a subtle difference, but so important.

  Bela and Camille and Dio were making their own checks of the place, Andy could tell. They all could target their projective energy in narrow beams, making it unlikely that the Coven would sense the working of their power.

  One living being behind the white door—but that signal’s not strong. It wasn’t human, either. She couldn’t get enough of a read to figure out what it was, but she marked the spot in her mind.

  “We’ve all been looking for you,” said one of the men in hooded sweatshirts. “Master Griffen says you hide almost as well as we do.”

  “Shut up,” said another man, and Andy realized how young the two seemed to be. Nineteen? Twenty at the most. She also realized from what the first man said that Griffen wasn’t present.

  Damn.

  Where the hell was he, then?

  Was that why the other rooms in the warehouse were empty? He had his supermobsters out with him?

  That, or they were never here to start with.

  Her pulse picked up.

  Not good. Maybe this situation was more than sideways. Maybe they were about to be completely fucked.

  Air stirred around Andy, and she understood that additional protections had just arrived. Good. Not soon enough, as far as she was concerned.

  “You’re, like, what—twelve?” Dio asked the Coven member nearest to her. “What are you doing playing at witchcraft?”

  He kicked out at her face, but she easily dodged the blow.

  “Don’t,” the guy nearest Andy commanded. He sounded like he was in charge. “We need them alive and unmarked. Griffen will want to do this himself—including dishing out all the pain.”

  Bela cut Andy a quick glance, and her meaning was clear. Where is Griffen? And who are these boys?

  Nobody had come here to kill kids.

  A huge, splintering boom scattered the boys as the OCU and the Sibyls broke down the service entrance doors and stormed into the warehouse. Andy leaped up as Jack got to her and unlocked her cuffs, then lunged past her to help Saul Brent catch hold of one of the boys.

  “I’ll kill you!” the kid shouted. “I’ll kill you all!”

  “Watch them,” Andy called to Jack. “They’re young but they’ve got skills.”

  “An under-Coven?” Bela rubbed her newly freed wrists as Duncan hooke
d the cuffs he’d taken off her to his belt.

  Dio let Duncan unlock her cuffs, then threw them to the nearest OCU officer. “Too young for that, even. Put these on their ankles. The more protections, the better. I’d double-cuff every last one of them.”

  John Cole removed Camille’s cuffs, and she pointed to the boys. “They’re like adepts. Maybe Coven members in training, but they’re not cohesive enough to be the real group, or even the backup group.”

  Jack’s voice dropped low, but Andy heard the concern and irritation when he asked, “How many backup groups do you think Griffen has?”

  A burst of wind knocked a kid down so the OCU could grab him, and Dio said, “Where the hell is Griffen? That’s the better question.”

  Saul Brent shoved a blubbering kid forward, and without his hood up, seriously, the kid did look twelve, though he could have been a scrawny fifteen, max.

  “Killing cops,” the kid snarled. “That’s where he is. Cutting down cops and Sibyls, and tearing up a few more Russian assholes so the crime families will all kill each other.”

  Andy filtered some of that, then all of it. She grabbed the kid by the collar, tore off the sprinkler over his head, and let frigid water douse him as she tried to find out what she needed to know. “The Coven’s out after our patrols?”

  The kid’s teeth chattered, but he gave her a hateful smile as he nodded.

  Andy shoved the boy back into Saul’s grip and spun to face Jack, her gut twisting.

  “Shit,” he said. “We’re all here. There’s nobody to cover them.”

  “Go,” Andy told him, and seconds later, Jack, Saul, Duncan, and John were on the move with all the Sibyls and every officer save for two small OCU squads. She watched him go as he led them back out of the warehouse to fan out across the city and locate every police and Sibyl patrol and bring them in to the townhouse. Camille, who could dance with no communications platform, sent a warning message that left Andy’s tattoo tingling against her skin. A few of the remaining officers led the handcuffed boys out of the warehouse.

  “We’ve still got something in that room.” Dio pointed to the closed door at the back of the room.

  “Yeah.” Andy stared at the door. “Kinda makes me nervous.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s very strong,” Camille said. “That or it’s got even better ways than we do of hiding its powers.”

  Bela told the OCU officers to take positions around the warehouse floor and keep them secure, and Dio backed off to keep a good view as Bela, Camille, and Andy approached the white door.

  They each used their energy to sample the room on the other side, but felt nothing out of the ordinary. The creature inside didn’t react to their probes or the presence of elemental energy.

  “I think it’s asleep,” Andy said, straining for more energy traces but coming up with nothing.

  “Maybe unconscious.” Bela shifted the earth beneath the door frame while Camille heated the heavy metal hinges. A few seconds later, the door fell away.

  Camille glanced into the space. “It’s a lab.”

  Andy sniffed at the alcohol-antiseptic stench and frowned. “More like a hospital room, or that’s how it smells.”

  “Dear, sweet Goddess,” Bela muttered, pointing to what looked like a hospital bed impaled by a metal post.” What is that?”

  Andy’s pulse thumped harder.

  Hospital bed … post … something was really wrong with that picture, especially since the bad energy was coming from that exact spot.

  She went in first with Bela beside her, both of them with weapons at the ready, easing across the floor toward a creature in a bed, hooked to a respirator, intravenous tubes, and other lines and machines Andy couldn’t even identify. Camille headed right, toward several glass refrigerators full of what looked like shot needles. Dio came to the doorway, still hanging back, but Andy felt the shift in her air energy when she saw the “patient” trapped in the bed before them.

  “Tarek.” Dio’s identification carried across the room, a whisper on a light breeze. “Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know what you’d call this.” Andy couldn’t believe the metal rod, floor to ceiling, seemingly fixed in place and running straight through the Rakshasa’s heart. “But alive wouldn’t be the word I’d choose.”

  The four of them inched forward, circling the bed, studying everything. Andy just couldn’t make sense of the mess she was seeing.

  “I don’t get it.” Bela poked at Tarek’s clawed foot with one finger. “I just don’t understand.”

  “They’re keeping him alive, but elementally restrained,” Camille said.

  “That’s not restrained.” Dio shivered. “That’s tortured.”

  They changed positions one more time, and Andy looked up when she heard a noise at the lab door.

  A blond man with cold blue eyes stood staring at her. Andy had a chance to process the jeans, the black shirt, to form the name Griffen in her mind.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “Thanks for saving me a lot of trouble, bitch.” He raised his pistol and fired before Andy could even begin to move.

  The shot should have hit her right in the face, but the air in front of her flickered and an Astaroth demon rippled into view. Jake—no doubt the only reason Jack had been willing to leave Andy alone with her group to manage the warehouse raid scene—changed to his human form, then back to demon again, shedding the wounds and effects from the bullets. One of Camille’s silver charms gleamed at his neck, right before he vanished again.

  Griffen swore and opened fire again, this time in a wider arc. Andy whipped out her dart pistol and summoned all the water energy she could control as the rest of her fighting group spread out across the warehouse floor. The men pouring into the space behind Griffen—these were no boys with strong potential. These were grown men with real power, and they immediately used that power to cover the room with a crushing set of elemental barriers, forcing all the Astaroths to become visible. Six of the winged demons lifted into the air, fangs bared as they snarled at the sorcerers.

  “Cover!” Bela shouted, and Andy and Camille and Dio leaped with her into one of the apartment-like rooms. They grabbed furniture and turned it over, dropping behind the heavy wood as the real shooting started outside.

  Andy could see enough through the door to know that the twelve OCU officers were emptying their clips at the intruders. Most of their shots fell useless to the warehouse floor as the treated bullets slammed into energy stronger than anything Andy had anticipated. The Coven got out of the way, and in came five broad-shouldered, bullet-eating supermobsters, already covered in so much blood Andy knew people had died tonight. Probably officers. Probably Sibyls.

  Her insides twisted and she wanted to throw up.

  Griffen, who was still firing wildly at the demons darting down to slash at him from above, accidentally shot one of the mobster brutes. The big man dropped to his knees and fell face-first to the concrete, down from a single shot.

  Andy grabbed Bela’s forearm and pointed. “We need that gun.”

  Bela, who had her serrated blade on the ground beside her, hand still firmly gripping the hilt, lifted her weapon and bared her teeth. “We can’t go out there until the bullets slow down. We won’t be much good full of holes.”

  The four remaining supermobsters opened fire with their MAC-10s, and the OCU and Astaroths retreated, shouting to coordinate and get out the service doors alive.

  Bela tried knocking down a wall with her earth energy, but the protections on the building were too strong, even with their repelling charms. Andy made an effort to summon a wave from a nearby water main, but she failed. “I’ve got nothing here. Dio, can you make a funnel?”

  “I think so.” Dio’s voice already had the deep echo of mad wind rushing to answer her call. “It’ll get us to the main doors, but the protections on the entrances will probably crush it as we pass across them.”

  Bela gave an up signal with her right hand. “Let’
s go.”

  As one, they stood and Dio raised her arms. Thunder exploded in the warehouse, and seconds later, a tornado spun furniture away and the wind sucked them into a tightly whirling cone.

  Andy’s stomach lurched, and she knew she’d have to fight to keep her dinner. “I hate this!” she yelled as Dio fired them out of the room, knocking bits of plaster in every direction.

  They flew out of the lab, across the warehouse, and straight to the front door. As Dio predicted, the funnel blew apart before they made it outside. All four of them hit the ground tumbling, but free of the warehouse. Andy rolled to her feet just in time to hear Dio scream.

  The sound seemed to split the night, unearthly and horrible and mind-chilling.

  She spun around, pistol up.

  Too late.

  Dio crashed to the pavement, blood spraying in every direction.

  The monster Andy had seen in her brief vision from the warehouse full of corpses stood over Dio’s flailing form. With a detachment beyond horror, Andy realized the creature was holding an arm.

  “That’s enough.” A female voice cut through Dio’s moans, battering Andy’s ears with its supernatural calm, with its absolute coldness. “They aren’t worth risking you. Let’s go.”

  And they walked away, just like that. The blond-haired girl and the monster carrying the arm.

  Dio …

  Andy threw herself toward her sister Sibyl, reaching her at the same time as Bela and Camille.

  Don’t think. Don’t look at it. Just stop the bleeding. Andy pressed her hands against Dio’s empty shoulder socket. So much blood.

  Dio’s gray eyes blinked twice, then went wide and closed. Her breathing stayed ragged even though Andy knew she’d gone into a healing trance against her will, her body’s last-ditch effort to save itself. Earth and fire energy poured into Dio from Camille and Bela. Both of them sobbed and tried to help press the wound. Andy opened her mind, her heart, and poured her own essence into Dio’s, as much as she could, as much as Dio’s energy would allow.