by Anna Windsor
Slowly, slowly, Andy’s thoughts gathered themselves and started flowing in a straight line. She started noticing details, like the slight damp chill in the air and the scents of mold and bleach and alcohol, with hints of freshly sawed wood. Siobhán’s admission worked its way through her sputtering, fitful mind, and she muttered, “You and your people were hunting the Coven and you found them.”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re the ones who have something that belongs to you.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still not going to tell me what it is.”
Silence from the Host woman. Then, “Griffen believes me to be unconscious. I give him that appearance whenever he is present, even when he strikes me or takes my blood. Perhaps we can use his assumptions to our advantage.”
Andy stared at the rickety walls and ceiling. “Do you have any ability to fight the bindings?”
“No, but you might,” Siobhán said. “Your charm has different properties. I can sense them from here.”
Andy rolled her head back and forth in frustration. “I’ve tried, but the chains drain me every time I use my elemental energy.”
“Direct it through the charm only.” Siobhán sounded excited, like she knew she was on to something. “Focus it like a beam.”
More frustration. Andy knew what she meant, but she also knew she sucked at that. “My sister Sibyl Camille is good at focusing her energy. Me, not so much.”
“I see.” Disappointment filled the Host woman’s voice. “Water is a difficult element to control.”
“Aaaandy,” Neala whimpered in her sleep.
Damn it. Andy wanted to break her chains in half. “I’m right here, honey. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Andy heard a few sniffles, then caught the slightest whiff of smoke. “A bad man with lizard eyes stucked me with a needle. You, too. Why?”
Andy thought about the syringes Jack had taken in the leg and wondered if he’d gotten a good dose of some mixture containing Siobhán’s blood. “Because he’s a jerk. But we’ll get him. Don’t you worry.”
And now, somewhere in this lab, Griffen’s storing syringes full of my blood, and Neala’s, too. Asshole. What’s he trying to do?
“Is the tiger sick?” Neala asked, obviously fearful. “I been sick before.”
Andy managed to turn her head toward Siobhán, who directed her own gaze to a spot near the room’s new stainless-steel door. “The Rakshasa Tarek is to your right, but behind you. The child has a clear view of him.”
Andy’s stomach lurched. She remembered the horrific sight of Tarek impaled on the bed in the warehouse, nothing but a zombie-demon hovering at the edges of life. She’d give anything if Neala didn’t have to see that.
“I don’t know where it will go, or what it might do, but I’m going to try to use my charm to direct my energy. Neala, if any of my water power touches you or hurts you, tell me. I’ll stop.” To Siobhán she said, “Same for you.”
“Pain is no issue for me, Sibyl. Do what you must.”
Andy sank into one of the relaxation exercises Elana had worked so hard to teach her. She let herself sink into the water in her mind, float there, drifting along like she did in her dreams about the quiet place in the endless ocean. A peaceful place. A safe place where she could finally be happy and have a home.
Without Jack …
An image of Jack’s office in boxes intruded, breaking her concentration. She swore and went back at it, doing her best to erase Jack completely from her thoughts. About five seconds later, she opened her eyes, pissed as hell and blinking back tears.
Fuck him for leaving. Fuck him for lying to her. And really, really, fuck him sideways for distracting her when she most needed to focus.
Damn it, I’m a Sibyl, and before that I was a good police officer. I can do this.
She opened her senses to locate Neala, and tried to gain a feel for the bars around the child. Projective. Waiting to suck energy just like her chains. But theoretically, her charm should resist the projective trap. Maybe the resistance would be stronger since the bars weren’t actually touching her.
I can do this. I have to. I will.
She let herself sink deeper, close to the bottom of that chasm that seemed to surround her when she woke from Griffen’s nasty designer drug. She let herself sink into the quiet place in the ocean she had dreamed about so many times, let the memory of water’s bliss flow into her. In her mind, she shaped it, pressed it, coaxed it into the thinnest of streams, and she directed her energy to the charm she wore.
The little bit of iron at her neck vibrated and got hot, but Andy sensed no reaction from her chains. She envisioned the tiny sliver of her water power rushing between the heavy links crushing her against the table, touching nothing but air.
The charm shivered and bucked against her skin, and the pressure on her chest and arms and belly doubled. Damn it. The elemental traps were trying to spring.
Hold it steady. Hold it. Keep it going.
She changed the imagery in her mind to cell bars, to a cell door, to a locking mechanism. With no idea if she was even getting close to Neala’s cell door, Andy lowered her stream of energy and directed it as best she could, imagining it splashing through a key-sized opening. She blended the elements of water and air and metal, wove them together like tying a knot with gossamer thread until she could taste oxidation and rust on her tongue.
Her crescent moon charm burned and shook. The chains squeezed so tight one of her ribs cracked, but she jammed her teeth together. Air squeezed out of her lungs. Sunbursts blasted across her vision and she got so dizzy she dug her nails against the metal table.
For Neala. Keep going.
Killing her. The chains. Squeezing her like some giant constrictor.
Rust. Work the water into the air, the metal.
Behind her, something rattled. A tiny child’s voice snarled a few words a tiny child shouldn’t know but probably had learned from her mom or her mom’s friends.
“That’s it, little one.” Siobhán sounded eager. “Use your shoulder and ram it hard, but keep your fire tightly contained.”
The rattling behind Andy turned into a loud bang, followed by a sharp cry and the sound of flesh hitting metal. Andy’s heart crashed and her focus exploded. Pain seared her chest just below her throat. Hot shrapnel. Her charm had deflected just enough of the traps. It had absorbed all the projective energy it could before it broke into bits. The chains, God, the chains—
The chains were moving. The links across Andy’s forehead slipped off, but the rest stayed stubbornly in place.
“Stupid locks.” Neala sounded miserable and pissed as she smoked and jerked at the heavy metal. “They’re stucked to you. And they bite me. Take my fire.”
“Don’t try.” Andy’s voice shook. “Don’t use your energy at all.”
“I break them!”
“Just get out of here, honey.” Andy fought not to yell at the little girl. “Can you do that?”
“Nooo,” Neala whimpered, and Andy knew the little girl was terrified at the thought of trying to run away by herself.
Breathe. Just breathe. “You can do it. Get to a police officer, get to a safe place.”
“Scared, Andy. Can’t.”
Andy’s composure finally snapped. “Damn it, Neala, run! Torch a wall and go straight to your mother. Burn down anybody who gets in your way and don’t look back!”
“No!” Fire blasted along Neala’s arms and she squealed and dropped the chains. Then she doubled up her tiny fists and bashed the thin edge of Andy’s table. Her skin was so hot she softened the ancient metal, making a knuckle-sized dent.
Neala stared at the dent, then at her fists.
Andy was about to yell at her to get out of their prison again, but the next thing she knew, her jeans and shirt were on fire.
“Table doesn’t bite,” Neala muttered, her tone half psychotic in the huge, dilapidated room.
Andy bit back a scream and pitc
hed all of her elemental energy away from the chains, toward the now molten and dripping table beneath her. It was all she could do to keep her ass and back from cooking like a pig on a roasting spit.
“Burn,” Neala told the table, sounding as dark and angry as the Host woman chained behind her.
Siobhán laughed, adding to the absolute madness.
The table melted right out from under Andy, and she crashed to the floor in a heap of chains and molten metal. The blisters forming all across her butt hurt bad enough to focus her completely. She scrambled to her knees, then her feet, shrugging out of the chains and drawing water from everywhere she could find it to cool herself down. Her shirt and jeans fell off in a heap of ashes, and she picked up the rags, tying them across the important parts even as she grabbed Neala’s hand and rushed to Siobhán’s table.
Andy faced the Host woman, once more struck by her unearthly beauty. “Can Neala free you without putting herself at risk?”
“Yes.” Siobhán hissed the word, and the black light burning in her eyes made Andy grab Neala’s shoulders. She started to pull Neala back, but the little girl scorched her palms. Andy yelped and turned loose.
Neala had already gone to work, softening then melting the metal beneath the Host woman’s tall frame. As the molten heat bit into her jeans and T-shirt and the fabric smoked, Siobhán laughed again, holding herself rigid as if daring the fire to take her. Andy realized she was absorbing Neala’s fire even as it melted the metal, taking it into her body and saving her flesh even if she couldn’t save her clothes.
Seconds later, Siobhán hit the floor and came straight out of her chains.
The room’s metal door banged open, and a red-faced Griffen barged in, clearly with no idea that some of his lab rats had sprung themselves from his maze. Andy turned on him and yanked hard on her water power, blasting him with jets from both hands and ramming him against the door. It banged shut just as Andy felt the warning tug of a projective trap beginning to drain her all over again.
That fucking tiger tooth around his neck!
She broke off her attack. Water splashed to the floor and rushed through the thousands of cracks in the aged wood and metal patches.
Griffen crashed to his knees, holding the tooth and coughing up gouts of the moisture he had swallowed.
Fury swelled through every inch of Andy. She looked left and right for a weapon, any weapon, but what she saw was Siobhán grabbing Neala and shoving the child behind her.
Neala screamed and sagged, wilting like a leaf in Siobhán’s grip. In her half-burned rags, with her dark eyes wide and feral, Siobhán snarled at Griffen like a wild animal.
“Let her go!” Andy lunged toward Siobhán, but the Host woman moved preternaturally fast, dragging Neala like a ragdoll.
Griffen was talking.
Andy wasn’t listening.
She pulled water to her again, getting ready to flood Siobhán and snatch Neala back from the crazed woman.
Without looking in her direction, Siobhán threw Neala at Andy, then leaped between Andy and Griffen.
Andy caught Neala to her chest. Limp. But warm. Breathing. Alive. She pressed her hand to the little girl’s head, then turned in time to see Griffen, arms raised, start a phrase that would create a crushing elemental dampener.
Siobhán let out a banshee howl that stabbed Andy’s ears. The Host woman lifted her own long arms, and seemingly every bit of the fire in the universe blasted out of her body.
The flames crackled across Griffen like a white-hot wind, burning every bit of wood and cloth and flesh that it touched. For three seconds, the sorcerer became a human torch, belching black smoke and a skin-crawling stench that made Andy cough and press Neala’s face into her neck.
Then he was gone.
Griffen was just gone.
A pile of charred bone and teeth and ashes.
Siobhán collapsed, and before she ever struck the metal-patched floor, Andy knew the Host woman had done just what she vowed to do—die to save Neala. Somehow, using Neala’s fire energy, Siobhán had made herself a living bomb. Now, spent, she collapsed like she had no bones, not breathing, no sign of life registering at all when Andy checked with her elemental senses.
Have to deal with this later. Come back for her later. Her and what’s left of Tarek.
Choking back bitter waves of shock and sadness, Andy forced herself to turn away from Siobhán’s body. She drew as much water to her as she dared, then hurled a barely controlled tidal wave at the nearest wall. Old brick and wood and metal plates gave like children’s blocks, tumbling away from the rushing stream of water.
Moonlight, Andy’s mind registered as she wrapped her arms double-tight around Neala and ran through the hole in the wall into a dark, overgrown courtyard.
She didn’t even get time to feel the exultation of escape before she had to pull up hard in the face of a curtain of elemental energy so thick and vicous it felt like boiling oil when she brushed against it. Strange, dark energy rippled off a blond-haired girl a few feet in front of her, distorting the moonlight but doing nothing to obscure Andy’s view of the Frankenstein mobster, four enhanced fighters with MAC-10 spray-and-prays, and twenty-four men in jeans and black sweatshirts, each with their own tiger-tooth necklaces dangling dead center on their broad chests.
The blond girl, Rebecca, Griffen’s psycho sister, glanced from Andy to the ruined lab, where Siobhán lay dead in front of her brother’s ashes.
Andy tried to get Neala closer to her body, to protect her as much as she could. She waited for the torrent of rage, for the blast of energy she wouldn’t be able to withstand. Whatever came, she’d take it. She’d do anything not to let that horrid, body-ripping freak that used to be Ari Seneca get near Neala.
The creature just stared at her. Stared at both of them, like the fighters and what Andy had to assume was Griffen’s true Coven and under-Coven. All of them, men and monsters alike, seemed subdued and under complete control.
Rebecca’s control.
She nodded once, as if approving everything she had just seen and sensed in the devastated lab.
“Well done,” she said to Andy. “Though I would have preferred you left that Fae woman alive. She was unique. It’s sad when something unique has to die, don’t you think?”
Andy didn’t answer.
“It’s time we stop such tragedies,” Rebecca continued. “Now’s as good a time as any, and you and the kid will be useful in our next round of experiments.”
Andy’s insides went cold. Her eyes darted around the courtyard. The ancient brick building surrounding them looked like a run-down medieval castle. All the doors but one had been boarded up, and Rebecca and her friends were blocking that exit. Andy figured she could run back into the lab, but she wouldn’t get far. No way she could risk using elemental energy against the damping force the Coven had created. That much elemental blowback would crush her like a bug, and Neala with her.
She was still reeling through possibilities when four of the Coven took Neala from her, spiriting the still-sleeping girl into the lab. Four more took hold of Andy and started chaining her all over again, ankles and wrists, elemental shackles even more powerful than the last she had escaped.
When she had been thoroughly trussed, Rebecca came close to her, right in her face, her nose just inches from Andy’s. Her expression seemed to be a combination of curiosity and sadness as she lifted a syringe. Amber liquid glinted in the barrel, and the needle looked long enough to hit bone.
“I’d say we’ll make it painless,” she murmured as she jabbed the needle into Andy’s arm, “but that would be a lie. Will fast be good enough?”
As sunlight broke over the city, Jack maxed the OCU van’s speedometer, rolling up pavement behind him on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island. He kept his gaze straight ahead and his mind clear. Andy and Neala had been gone a little over sixteen hours. Too damned long—but maybe it wasn’t too late. He had what he needed now. All the resource
s. A good plan. A solid target. He’d get them back.
Goal one—Andy and Neala out safe.
Goal two—nothing left of the Coven but blood, bits, and bones.
He was going for broke. A total gamble. This time he wouldn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t lower his gun or leave his men lying torn apart in some faraway desert. This time Jack didn’t intend to lose, and everybody he knew in New York City—hell, even people and demons and Sibyls he’d barely met—they were square behind him and thinking with the same mind.
The townhouse had been locked down with a single squad of regular NYPD officers standing guard. Every OCU officer not on medical leave followed in vans and Jeeps and SUVs, official and unofficial. Every Sibyl in the state was driving, walking, running, or pouring in through projective mirrors to meet them at the corner of Stanley Avenue and Castleton. Astaroth demons formed an invisible cloud above the caravan, so dense it blocked shadows as it moved, and Cursons and Bengal fighters hammered along below on the bottom deck, running as strong and as fast as Jack could drive.
If he’d had time, he would have called in favors from the National Guard. From the Army. From any damned organization that could give him bodies, weapons, and a chance.
Saul held the van’s panic grip with his right hand and his cell with his left. “Shut it down,” he barked to Homeland Security’s local office after giving them FBI and NYPD clearance codes. “Shut it all down tight and keep it closed. Goethals, Outerbridge, Bayonne—all of it. Call MTA and stop the buses and the Staten Island Railway. Hold the ferry on the Manhattan side. No fly, no buzz, no news crews. Nothing moves unless it’s ours. Come up with whatever cover story you want and we’ll back it.”
Five seconds later, he had a conference call going with the 120th, 122nd, and 123rd Precincts on Staten Island. “It might get loud and it might get nasty, but stay clear. Keep the roads empty.”
Nobody argued. Everybody moved fast. The OCU was low-profile but it wasn’t invisible, and no regular NYPD officer wanted anything to do with the crazy shit Occult Crimes handled.
