by Anna Windsor
She heard shouting, Rebecca and the Seneca monster.
“Breaking locks—”
“Don’t be stupid—”
“She’s breaking through them!”
Neala’s smoke blended with droplets and fire turned some of the moisture into sizzling mist. Outside the growing maelstrom, nearly grayed completely from her view by the bulk of water between them, the Seneca monster loomed beside Neala. The girl screamed and leaped across the cage to Andy.
Andy couldn’t move. Couldn’t comfort the little girl. Couldn’t even get a whole breath or keep her eyes completely open—but she could still call the flow, let it rush into her and through her and out around Neala, battering the elemental traps and locks.
The energy containing Andy and Neala shattered with a great, yawing howl that seemed to come from the depths of the sea itself.
Mine, the oceans of the world seemed to scream, possessive and huge and endless, yet utterly feminine—a blind, rage-filled mother come to claim her own.
This one, she’s mine!
Andy welcomed the sea’s smothering embrace, breathing deep and drawing the salty spray into her lungs. Even more water poured through her, faster and harder. She became her own lake, her own river, her own ocean, expanding, expanding, and she thought about Dio, and how endless the world’s air must feel, how Dio must have known this same feral exultation when she called tornadoes and brought weather crashing to earth at her whim.
Dio …
Jack …
Grief only opened Andy’s essence wider. Water thundered into the lab, crushing and shoving and battering and pushing. Neala clung to Andy’s neck and pressed her tiny body into Andy’s arms, screaming and burning anything that lunged toward them through the water.
Off balance now, the cage heaved and washed off its tables, slamming them to the floor so hard Andy’s teeth cut into her lip. Her body cushioned Neala’s fall, and the cage door burst open.
Rebecca was nowhere in sight.
Neither were the men in black shirts and jeans.
The Seneca monster let out a bellow and half lunged, half swam straight at them. Neala shouted and scrambled out of the cage so fast Andy couldn’t even tell which direction she went except for the slightest trail of steam as she fried her way through the sweeping, onrushing water, vaporizing a path as she made her escape.
Run, baby, run! Fresh joy surged through Andy, and the water she channeled took the path of least elemental resistance, out the open cage door and into the Seneca monster’s misshapen, brutal face. Andy realized the water level in the room was actually starting to rise, that she must have flooded the space and floors below the lab, that she must be moving so much water in so fast it couldn’t get out fast enough despite the gaping hole in the lab’s wall.
Flow. Yes.
Andy knew her thoughts were breaking down, but she didn’t care if the whole ocean washed through her now. Neala was out. Neala was gone. Neala never lost a game of battle. Andy hoped the little girl wouldn’t stop running until she leaped into her mom and dad’s arms—and even God couldn’t help anybody who tried to go after the child then.
She thought about Dio again, about weather and windstorms and endless air and water, swirling across the world.
She thought about Jack and let the pounding waves beat away her pain and anguish. No matter what, she had loved him. No matter what, he had loved her, too. She was sure of it. With nothing in her soul but the pure, screaming ecstasy of her element, everything seemed so clear.
More water.
Still more.
Andy floated, and as she closed her eyes for the last time, she smiled.
Jack led his attack line through the ranks of Sibyls and OCU officers. Saul, Bela, Camille, Duncan, and John had one wing of their wedge, while Cynda, Riana, Merilee, and the Lowell brothers formed the other. Jack kept himself on point, weaving them through packs of Sibyls and OCU officers.
Something inside the building went off like a bomb, rattling the ground and tossing them all back a step.
Saul and Duncan went down, and so did Creed, Nick, and Riana. Jack kept his balance, kept his focus on the patch of courtyard he could see through broken-down windows and doors—Coven men, fighting back, trying to advance on them.
Behind them, water blasted into the air like some kind of volcanic mountain just born, rising huge and angry, straight out of the earth. The thing was monolithic and blue-black, and it was spinning so fast it almost looked still.
Officers shouted. Even Sibyls screamed.
Saul got to his feet beside Jack, his weapon temporarily lowered as he stared at the funnel lifting skyward. “What the living fuck is that?”
“Waterspout.” Jack heard himself laughing as he started forward again. That was his woman. That was his warrior. She was alive and kicking major ass.
Bela whooped and Camille let out an excited cry. Then both of them yelled the same name, so loud it seemed to echo in Jack’s soul.
“Andy!”
The Lowells and their wives were up and moving, and they all ran forward now, keeping the wedge formation.
“Keep it going, sweetheart,” Jack shouted into the growing roar of the water tornado.
“Will it stop?” Saul called from behind him.
“I hope not,” Jack hollered back at his friend. “Hold your breath if it scares you, little boy.”
Saul hurried to keep up, calling him a few names and polishing off his fit with, “Fuck you, Blackmore!”
The circle of Sibyls around the Smith Infirmary regained their composure, tightened their ranks, tightened them again, and pressed toward the building. OCU officers got hold of themselves and laid down a withering carpet of cover fire, keeping the Coven men and their enhanced fighters holed up behind the infirmary’s piles of bricks and stone.
From the corner of his eye, Jack saw the four Mothers in leathers change course and head straight toward the waterspout. At first they were running, but almost as fast, they started moving like they were walking into a hundred-mile-per-hour headwind.
At the same moment, Bela and Camille fell off the pace.
“Energy,” Bela choked out from behind him. “Bad energy. Crushing us. Go. We’ll break through … soon as … we can.”
Jack glanced at the fury on Bela’s face and the determination on Camille’s. John and Duncan had gone Bengal, stripped to demon essence by the brutal energy Jack could barely sense, much less feel. They bared fangs, Cynda and her triad screamed with frustration, and the Lowell brothers, all in full demon form, roared and thrashed limbs, trying to push through and getting nowhere.
“Looks like we’re it,” Jack told Saul, and Saul nodded.
Adrenaline pumped through Jack until he tasted metal and salt.
He and Saul stormed forward and pressed through the ranks of OCU officers laying down another round of cover fire. Immediately the officers opened a corridor for them, and Jack and Saul ran single file to stay clear of the bullets. They steered around the courtyard, where they could see the bastards in black sweatshirts and the big-ass altered mobsters with big-ass guns holding off the OCU and trying to advance on the Sibyls.
“Fucking mess of a place has to have a side door,” Saul yelled, kicking at the first boarded window they came to. Jack kicked it with him and the wood split, revealing a bricked up window behind it.
“Fuck.” Jack kicked it once more in anger, and they plowed toward the next bunch of wood.
More bricks.
Damn it.
The waterspout rained on them, light at first, then harder as they got closer. A minute later, Jack crammed his Glock in its holster to save it and shielded his face from the monsoon. He spotted a boarded door with a few holes in the wood, no bricks in sight.
“There!” he shouted to Saul, then lowered his shoulder and rammed his full weight against the wood. It gave too easily, rotten and wet, and he barreled into a ruined, graffiti-filled hallway full of bricks, bottles, broken glass, trash, and discarded
needles from decades of junkies. He hit his knees and rolled forward, barely missing a few rusty old needles, and stopped just shy of a huge hole in the floor that went all the way to hell, as far as he could see.
Saul stumbled in behind him, and Jack was up, skirting the hole, then running toward the spout. He couldn’t see the funnel anymore, but he could sure as hell hear it, picking up force as it gathered more and more water.
Don’t stop. Don’t let it stop, because that’ll mean she stopped. He couldn’t stand the thought. Couldn’t live with it. No way.
“Metal door, three o’clock,” Saul called, and Jack squinted in the building’s dim light. He saw the door, too new, hanging open, partly off its hinges. From behind it came the angry bellow of whirling, flooding water. Like a thousand tidal waves. Like hundreds of rivers flooding at the same time.
Like Andy.
Jack drew his Glock and charged through the open door.
The ugliest creature he’d ever seen hulked in front of him. The big fucker looked something like Ari Seneca, but too tall, too wide, too muscular. Jack didn’t give a shit who or what the thing was. He filled its face full of elementally treated bullets and blew right past it, trusting Saul to give the monster a run for its money and get out of the way before it could do him any damage.
The waterspout swelled through the room, pressing toward him, holding a deep well in its center. Furniture and bricks and people whipped past in the violent water, and now and then, way down deep in the center, Jack caught sight of bars and cuffs anchoring a floating, pitching figure in a black robe.
“Andy.”
Jack rammed himself forward against the gut-bashing force of the water spout.
Shit. She didn’t even look conscious.
His blood surged. He holstered his Glock again, spotted a broken chain on the ground, picked it up, and looped it around a jagged pile of stone and brick and bent metal until he got purchase and tension. His own anchor. He looped the other end around his waist and hooked a broken link into a closed link to secure it.
“Hold on, sweetheart.”
No hesitation. No real thought.
Jack took a run and go and hurled himself into the blasting funnel, trusting the weight of the chain to hold him down as his momentum carried him through.
Water flayed at his skin, scouring him like sandpaper as he dove forward. Bricks and wood and bodies bashed against him, and he lost perspective as he whirled and snapped in circles so fast he didn’t know up from down, right from left. No air. Just water. Too much weight on his chest, his ribs—
And he was through to the center well, and sinking.
His chest burned. His eyes throbbed and ached like he’d been in a three-hour bar fight. He was moving, though. Knifing straight down and picking up speed.
Andy drifted in the currents below him, but the water flowing through her pushed Jack back so hard he had to swim like hell to get through it. Closer. His head started to spin. A little closer. A mile for an inch of progress. A foot. Almost there.
Andy …
She looked like a flower in a hurricane, blowing back and forth, back and forth, chained to some fucking cage like an animal.
Jack let out his last bit of air in a swarm of bubbles, and he swam harder. Her hand drifted past him, and he grabbed her wrist. Using her for leverage, he pulled himself toward her as carefully as he could.
Damned chains wrapped around her legs and arms. They weighed like a bitch, and the cage—
Jack’s ribs and throat seemed to catch on fire, and he almost took a convulsive breath. Force of will. No breathing, goddamnit. No passing out.
He gave a big yank. The cage moved a half inch. No more.
Fuck! His cheeks puffed out and he gathered Andy to him. Either we get out together, sweetheart, or we’re both staying right here.
His vision started to go gray as he fought not to breathe.
Andy’s eyes fluttered. They opened. She looked at him and didn’t seem to see him, didn’t seem to know him.
And then she did.
The water around them blew apart like somebody dropped a depth charge in the center.
Jack felt like he’d been flushed down the world’s biggest drain. His ears roared and popped as he plunged to the floor, doing all he could to roll so he caught Andy. They hit the floor together and he wheezed in a breath, coughing and holding her to him as all kinds of debris, humantype included, rained down around them. Jack had a sense that Andy was moving water big-time, sending it out, more or less throwing the weight of it back into nearby oceans and rivers and bays so it didn’t flood Staten Island and New Jersey, too.
More bodies hit the busted floor.
Jack didn’t know who all the dead guys were, but given their waterlogged sweatshirts and jeans, he figured them for Coven or under-Coven, or maybe both. No sign of Saul and the Seneca thing, but from somewhere down the hall came gunfire and clattering and lots of swearing. Saul was still holding his own.
Through a hole in the lab wall, Jack could see live Coven members and too-muscled mobsters up and moving. They seemed closer to the building, and the mobsters tried to lift their big guns, but they weren’t doing too well. The earth kept rattling beneath them. Wind howled, driving against them and shoving them to their knees. Some of them caught fire. Arrows and throwing knives flashed in the sunlight as they rained into the courtyard, hitting targets with murderous accuracy.
Four seconds. That’s all Jack gave himself to breathe before he rolled to his side and yanked the cuffs and chains right off the bent, battered cage that had been Andy’s anchor. He had her free in moments, and in his arms long enough to squish his hands against her waterlogged robe and feel her warmth seeping through to his fingers, to sense the beating of her heart against his, in rhythm, just like it should have been. Then he pulled back and tried to help her stop the bleeding. So many cuts and wounds. He rolled up her sleeves and saw that the worst cut seemed to be on her wrist, which was torn open just below her palm. She yanked out the remnants of an intravenous needle and pressed the site with two fingers.
“Griffen’s dead,” she said, then bared her teeth at something Jack couldn’t see.
Jack let her go, spun around, and drew his waterlogged Glock all in one motion. The thing standing behind him—it defied all description.
Sort of female. Sort of male. With a few scales and something that might have been a wing pointing out of one arm.
Its eyes—Christ.
It had red, bleeding eyes straight from hell, with absolutely no trace of human in them at all.
Jack squeezed the Glock’s trigger, praying it would fire, and the faithful weapon pumped six rounds right through the crimson centers of those satanic orbs.
The winged thing fell away from them, howling and waving its arms. It bashed into something even bigger as it went stiff and crashed to the floor. Something a lot more muscular, with golden fur, fangs, and claws big enough to slice a man open from nose to gut in one swipe.
Tarek drew himself to his full height, well over seven feet. The massive tiger’s eyes flashed gold, then red, as he opened his fanged mouth and let out a roar that rattled the tumbledown hospital’s piles of brick.
Jack’s chest seized.
All these years of tracking these bastards, of fighting from a distance, of trying to wipe them off the face of the earth and make up for what he and his men unleashed in Afghanistan—and here was the last surviving Rakshasa Eldest, up close and personal and ready to eat him.
“Time to die, asshole, once and for all.” Jack fired, intending to pump an elementally treated bullet into the demon’s chest, but this time, the Glock gave a wet click. Useless.
Every muscle in Jack’s body went stiff. If the beast hadn’t been disoriented, Jack would have died on the spot, or been turned into a Rakshasa demon by a bite or a claw wound. Tarek didn’t seem to understand what was happening. He roared again, getting a clue faster than Jack wanted. He hurled the Glock at the demon’s face.
Tarek grabbed at the hook, but Jack ducked away from him, grabbed Andy’s arm, and yanked her out of the way just before Tarek’s claws found her throat. As the elementally treated metal reached its target, the beast froze, and Andy and Jack both looked around the body-riddled room searching for something big enough, sharp enough—
“There!” Jack pointed to a dagger lodged at the base of the wall closest to Andy.
“That was in his chest before.” Andy ripped the blade free and tossed it to him. “My water must have knocked it loose. It’s treated, so it should work.”
It was messy business, beheading a tiger-demon with a small blade, but Jack managed it as fast as he could. “We’ll never get him dry enough to burn,” he said as he got off the carcass and tossed the head a few feet away from the body.
Tarek’s head burst into flames, and the demon’s body went up like a torch, too. Jack had to jump back a few steps to keep from immolating right along with what was left of his enemy. The blood on his dagger caught fire, and the blade burned clean in a matter of seconds.
Andy washed the ashes of the Rakshasa’s head and body in two different directions. Instead of looking relieved, she had gone wide-eyed. As she finished disposing of the demon, her mouth came open, her hands started to shake, and she turned a slow circle, squinting into the shadows.
Jack saw the little girl before she did.
Neala had wedged herself between some boards and bricks in the room’s far corner. She was sobbing like a kid who had seen way too many monsters. He crossed the patched floor in a hurry, gathered her up, and carried her back to Andy, who wrapped her in her arms.
“Scared,” the little girl said between big, gulping cries.
“It’s okay,” Andy told her. “I was scared, too. Scared’s okay. Scared’s just fine.”
