by Anna Windsor
The heart of Áno Ólimbos rumbled, and flames actually crackled from Camille’s shoulders and arms. It started raining in the antechamber even though Andy hadn’t been completely aware of her pull on all nearby water. The notebook and pencil clattered off the work desk, and the desk chair chattered across the floor until it hit a big puddle and splashed around in the same spot for a few seconds. Then it caught on fire.
Mother Anemone stood in the middle of the earthquake, firestorm, and semi-flood, her powerful air energy wrapping around the three of them like a parent’s gentle but restraining caress. Other air energy joined hers, driving all the smoke and rain out of the antechamber and lessening the mountain’s menacing growl. Andy realized Mother Anemone must have gathered every air Sibyl Mother in Greece in the infirmary to back her up in case it came to a fight.
A fight we could win—but at what cost?
Hating herself for capitulating but knowing on some level it was the right course to follow, Andy forced herself to dial back her water power a few notches. She breathed and relaxed and made herself absorb as much of the water as she could. Camille’s flames died almost as fast, but Bela’s earth energy rolled out of her, relentless and nearly desperate.
“I know this must be terribly difficult.” Mother Anemone’s tone shifted to quiet and careful. “Perhaps it’s better if the three of you leave, at least for a time. When Dio’s ready for your company—if that comes to pass—I’ll send word immediately.”
“We can’t just go,” Bela clutched at the edges of her T-shirt as her earth energy finally dissipated and the mountain stopped its shaking. “How can you ask us to leave her?”
Mother Anemone’s smile seemed as kind as always, despite the firm edge to her stance. “It’s not me who’s asking that of you, my dear. That’s why you must respect the request.”
She left the rest unsaid, but Andy felt it like a sledgehammer to the heart.
Dio.
Dio wanted them to go.
Camille hung her head, and Bela looked nearly destroyed. Their emotions blasted through Andy like a tsunami of grief, intensifying her own pain and indecision, but somehow, she left herself open to the flow until it left her shaking and spent and biting at her bottom lip. She knew Bela and Camille sensed her sympathy, her empathy, that they felt stronger knowing that someone understood exactly what was happening in their hearts and minds.
“Bela?” Camille asked, giving the decision to the quad’s mortar.
Andy waited, trying to get ready for anything, because if Bela said they were going through the Mothers to reach Dio—well. They’d just be going through.
“We’ll head home,” Bela said, not sounding happy about it all. “But only for now. As soon as we rest, we’ll be back, and you’ll tell her we’re here. You’ll tell her we didn’t want to leave, too. I won’t have her thinking we’ve abandoned her, no matter how big an ass she decides to be.”
Mother Anemone nodded once. “As you wish. I’ll walk you to our communications room.” Her relief was obvious as she headed toward the chamber door.
“That won’t be necessary,” Camille said, beginning a furious dance to open the channels only she could access with no platform and no mirrors—and three times faster than any other fire Sibyl on the planet, especially when she was pissed. “You first, Bela.”
She grabbed Bela’s hand, and the two of them melted into the floor.
Mother Anemone’s fingers moved to her throat, fluttering like she might be struggling to swallow. She gave Andy a furtive glance. “I apologize. I’m aware of her powerful projective skills, of course, but a sight like that still unnerves me.”
Good, Andy had time to think before Camille reappeared and grabbed her by the arm, twirling them both even as she started the transport. Andy felt herself yanked into one of earth’s ancient energy channels, pelting back toward New York City with all the speed of the rage and sorrow she knew her entire fighting group felt—Dio included.
Jack let himself into the brownstone with a key he had gotten from Duncan Sharp. He still had the location guarded by two cars, one out front and one covering the private alley in back, but he and John and Duncan had been taking turns checking the inside and making sure the women hadn’t left notes about needing something when they didn’t have time to come by the townhouse.
When he got in the door, he found himself facing Bela, who was standing on the communications platform with a look on her face like somebody had just stolen her favorite kitten. Half her shirt was wet and the other half had been scorched. She had soot and water and tears on her face, and both her fists were clenched.
Not good.
Jack’s gut did a funny twist. He grabbed his phone and punched the emergency button to bring Duncan and John on the run. His next thought was Andy, and he slammed the door behind him and rushed forward, startling Bela so badly she took a fighting stance. The floor beneath Jack’s feet started to shake, and all around him, plaster cracked. Mirrors crashed off the walls, splintering and spraying glass as they hit the tile floor.
Cursing to himself over his stupidity, Jack pulled up and let Bela see who he was. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Bela stared at him like she didn’t quite know him, but she relaxed her stance and the room stopped shaking.
Right about then, the air in the room shimmered, and the hair lifted off the back of Jack’s neck. His ears popped like he was sliding down the side of a mountain way too fast, and he heard a crack like somebody just snapped the world’s biggest whip over his head. Andy and Camille dropped onto the platform beside Bela, both breathing hard, both looking like they’d been caught in some kind of fire-and-water disaster. They were so focused on whatever was going on, they didn’t even notice him.
Camille whirled to face Bela and lifted the gold crescent moon charm she wore around her neck. “I don’t agree that we should have left her.”
Bela’s frown turned epic. “What did you want to do, draw weapons on the air Sibyl Mothers?”
“Anything would have been better than leaving.” Camille sounded beyond pissed, and a little smoke drifted up from her shoulders. “As for the Coven, we can find them. With these new charms, I know we could do it.”
Andy seemed set on the same thing. She bounced her fist off her own iron crescent moon charm. “They’ll never see us coming. We can tear them apart before they know what hit them.”
Bela hesitated for about three seconds, then jumped off the platform and headed for the closet where Jack knew the fighting group stored their gear and weapons. He stood there like an idiot, just occupying space between the alcove and the front door, and it slowly dawned on him what he was seeing.
A unit that just lost a soldier.
Shit. Had Dio died? Something sure as hell happened, and now the warriors left behind were slamming on armor and steel and getting ready to take some vengeance. Furious. Blinded by grief. Ready to take chances no sane fighter would take.
A move like this ended one of two ways—total victory or absolute defeat.
Sorry, sweetheart, but this just isn’t happening.
“Andy,” Jack called into the clatter and rustle of sword belts, dart guns, and battle leathers getting thrown from the closet under the stairs. Like a fast-speed ballet, the women shed their jeans and T-shirts and stepped into their protective suits, and almost as fast they were strapping on their weapons. Jack wanted to stride across the floor, take Andy in his arms, and hold her until she came to her senses and remembered her years of police training and experience. He wanted to hold her no matter what the outcome, but he wasn’t the kind of man to go where he didn’t think he was welcome.
All three women seemed to process his presence at the same time, and they turned on him like a pack of rabid dogs. Bela and Camille both grabbed the hilts of their swords. Andy didn’t try to draw her dart pistol, but she glared at him for a full three seconds before she really seemed to register who he was.
H
e half expected her to snarl instead of speak, but she still had enough grasp of language to form words. “Jack.” Toneless. No emotion at all. “What are you doing here?”
The sound of her voice warmed him, but it also shook him. She looked so pale and drawn he knew she hadn’t rested well since the raid.
“Don’t do this.” He kept his voice level and tried to talk to her rationally, to her intelligence instead of her rage and sadness. “You’ve got no intel and no plan, and the odds suck.”
“We’re going.”
Jack shook his head. “You’ll have to kill me to come through this door. If you manage that—and my resilience might surprise you now—I’ve got officers covering front and back with reinforcements on the way. Duncan and John will be here in five flat, maybe sooner if they come like Bengals instead of humans. I dialed them 911.” He dared to shift his gaze to Bela, then Camille. “At least talk to your husbands first. If they can’t sway you, then we’ll all give you cover and support.”
Camille’s answer had a little smoke behind it. “We don’t need help, thanks.”
“Everybody needs help.” Jack tried again with Andy. “Think, sweetheart. Revenge ops are for two kinds of cops.”
He waited.
She waited, too. He could tell she didn’t want to answer. Then she let out an angry breath and finished the axiom. “Morons and idiots. Which one are you today?”
Some commotion broke out near the front door, and the chimes over Jack’s head rang like somebody had bashed them with a baseball bat.
“It’s John and Duncan.” Camille sounded relieved, but also pissed. “Better let them in before they claw down the door.”
Jack didn’t turn his back on the women. He managed to get to the door, reach behind him, and pull the door open right about the time a very furry John and Duncan scrabbled up the front steps. They were through the foyer and halfway to the alcove before Jack finished signaling his patrols to stand down and call off the reinforcements, and all the way to the alcove before Jack saw human skin showing under the fur from their speed-enhancing demon essence. They had probably blasted through the park so fast human eyes never saw them.
“What happened?” Duncan spoke first, reaching Bela and taking her by both shoulders. “Is it Dio? Did she get worse?”
John had Camille by then, hugging her even though she was giving off sparks, which was very atypical for her. “No, honey. Tell me she’s not—”
“She’s not dead,” Andy said to Jack. Her blank expression cracked open enough to show him an agony so acute it broke his heart. “She’s awake, but she refused to see us. The Greek Mothers more or less threw us out.”
Jack knew he couldn’t sense emotions like Andy could, but he felt the weight and depth of her pain like it was his own. If he could have drawn it out of her like a poison, he’d gladly have taken the burden for her.
“I know you want these bastards, but this isn’t the way,” Duncan said, keeping Bela tight against him.
“Shut up,” Bela told him, but without much conviction.
John didn’t say anything to Camille, but Jack saw that she’d stopped flaming and sparking and trying to push him away from her.
He wanted to offer himself to Andy in any way she’d have him. He wanted to take control, to make her accept his support, but instinct held him back.
Instinct or cowardice?
Andy stared at him.
He felt seventeen again, looking his bastard of a father in the face, not able to pull that trigger even to save Ginger and his mom.
You always clutch in tight situations, don’t you?
He didn’t get a chance to say or do anything before everything fell apart even worse. Bela pulled back from Duncan, head hanging, all traces of fight seemingly squeezed right out of her. She faced Andy and Camille and said, “We left her. I let them drive us away. What kind of mortar am I?”
Camille’s sparks started up again, and Andy’s jaw went rigid. Jack could feel the energy souring, sense the women teetering on a dark edge. If they fell over, they’d tear themselves—and each other—apart with their own grief and frustration.
“Go to your Mothers,” he suggested, desperate to do something to head off the disaster. “See what your options are. You can’t take on Motherhouse Greece alone, but maybe Mother Yana and Mother Keara can reason with them and get you back in the door.”
And maybe you’ll benefit from a few days to recharge, to get your heads together. Somewhere neutral and away from here.
He left that part unsaid, but he could tell Duncan and John caught his meaning.
Fresh pain splashed across Andy’s pretty face, and he added, “You can talk to Elana and Ona. They’d be powerful backup if you have to fight your way in, right?”
Andy didn’t answer him.
Camille let go of John and ran her hand through her red hair. “I’m not best buddies with Mother Keara, but I do okay with the rest of them. John and I will go to Ireland and I’ll try.”
“Get them on board,” Andy said, sounding so broken Jack felt like she might physically fracture right before his eyes. “Elana and Ona and I, we’ll be waiting.”
In an uncharacteristic moment of panic, Jack wondered if he’d suggested the wrong thing. If he’d screwed everything up by urging the women to part company. But he knew in his gut he had the right idea. They weren’t thinking straight. They’d be safer if they cooled down in their neutral spaces. An army regiment couldn’t protect them any better than a house full of Mothers and elemental adepts.
Maybe that’ll even keep them safe from themselves.
Which was better than he could do.
It didn’t take long for Camille to open channels, this time using the mirrors like most fire Sibyls did. Duncan and John shifted into demon form, getting furry all over again because projective energy and traveling through those ancient channels would strip them down to their demon essence anyway. Camille tried to send Andy to Kérkira first, but she said she’d go later, after she packed a few things here. Duncan and Bela went instead, then Camille and John departed without saying anything else to Andy.
When everybody was gone, Andy just stood on the big table, staring into the smoky mirrors and shaking her head.
Jack couldn’t take it anymore. He had to do something. He walked to the table, almost climbed up and took hold of her, but she saw him coming and moved away.
He stopped at the platform’s edge and made himself look her in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hoping she knew he meant he was sorry for everything, from the raid disaster to Dio’s injury to not knowing what to do to help her now.
“Don’t.” Andy waved her hands and looked at her feet, obviously fighting to control herself. “I can’t right now. Don’t even come close to me.”
Jack took the words like cuts to his heart, but he respected what she said and stayed put beside the table.
“I’m sorry,” he told her again.
“It’s not all your fault, you big asshole. It was my raid, too. And Saul’s, and Cal’s, and Jake Lowell’s. We all put it together, and we all let it fall to hell. It doesn’t help that the only water Sibyl involved was a huge piece of shit who doesn’t even know what she’s doing.”
Jack’s fists tightened at those words. “You did everything you could.”
“Yeah. That’s a big comfort, isn’t it?” Andy’s laugh only cut him deeper because he’d covered with laughter so many times himself.
“Let me do something, Andy. Please. Anything. Just tell me.”
“You’ve given me plenty of space already. How about a little more?” She pointed toward the front door.
Jack didn’t move even though he wanted to get the hell out now, more than anything. He didn’t so much as twitch because he didn’t like the mood she was in or the thought of what she might do when he didn’t have eyes directly on her. He could see her hunting down the Coven on her own and going down in a blaze of bullets even as she cut to pieces as many sup
ermobsters as possible.
She let out a breath. “Look. I’m going to sleep for a few hours, pack some clothes, and get hold of Ona and Elana to transport me to Kérkira, okay? If I go out, I’ll take the patrols with me, but I can’t see me going anywhere but the store or headquarters. I’m not going to do something stupid, Jack. That ship has sailed.”
He kept right on staring at her, not trusting his own instincts any more than he trusted what she was saying. “Is that a promise?”
“I don’t owe you any promises, but yeah, it’s a promise.”
He made himself relax, and tried one more time to connect with her. “I’m—”
“Not again, please.”
Jack closed his mouth and gave up.
She let him get to the front door before she asked, “Why didn’t you come to Motherhouse Greece when you got better?”
Shit. Was that what I was supposed to do? He turned and studied Andy, her posture and her expression, and realized fuck yes, it was.
“I didn’t think I’d be welcome.”
Way to blow it, you stupid jackass.
“You would have been welcome,” she said. “I could have used the visit.”
“You told me not to apologize again, but I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing and giving you the time you needed.”
She didn’t look like she believed him, but she nodded. “Just about the time I think I’m getting a grip on understanding everybody’s emotions, I realize I don’t know shit about anything. It sucks, you know?”
Jack really did understand that concept, but he figured she wouldn’t appreciate him agreeing with her.
She got off the platform, walked slowly to the stairs, and climbed them until he couldn’t see her anymore.
Jack let himself out of the brownstone, then locked the door behind him. All the way back to the townhouse, he wondered what he should have done differently, and by the time he got to his office and started working on packing more of his stuff, he knew the answer.
Just about everything.
Later that day, Elana sat with Andy on the edge of Andy’s bed in the brownstone.
