“Don’t throw out any trash!” Cynda called after her.
When Andy and Creed looked confused, Riana explained about the soda can the Legion used to direct the fire Asmodai to them. “We’ll have to take our trash elsewhere, or risk making life too easy for the Legion.”
Andy shook her head. “What a pain in the ass.” She gestured to Creed. “Well, Tarzan, I suggest you get up and find a way to tuck in that long loincloth. I’m parked a block away.”
Riana stiffened. “I’m sorry, but no. He’s not leaving.”
Cynda’s hand twitched as if she might reach for her sword, but she stayed still. Her sleepy stupor gave way to a sharp, wary frown as Andy said, “Excuse me?”
Riana stood and made herself face Creed, who sat forward in his chair, his body rigid. “The signet ring that controls you—we told you it bears the Legion’s crest. A coiled serpent like I’ve only seen on ancient Greek and Roman coins. You and that ring are the only connection to the Legion we’ve ever been able to capture. You understand that we can’t possibly let you go. Not until we can contact the Mothers again.” She gestured to the broken mirrors, hoping they would understand. “Not until we learn more.”
“I don’t know anything about the Legion.” He squeezed his hands, obviously battling his temper. Riana wondered if he was battling the
other,
too. “And this is out of the question. It’s not safe. I’m not safe to be around you.”
“We’re grown women,” Riana shot back. “We’ll decide what we can and can’t handle. And we’ll do better with protecting ourselves now that we’ve seen the
other
.”
Creed twisted his signet ring, his expression clouded. “What if I don’t agree to stay? Are you going to chain me up again?”
“Absolutely.” Cynda stood and bent to retrieve her sword.
Before she got the blade raised, Andy had drawn a shiny black Beretta from her ankle holster and trained it at Cynda’s head. “Fr—” she started, but an arrow whistled between Andy and Cynda. It struck the pistol with a
thock
. The shaft snapped in two as the pistol sailed out of Andy’s hand and spun into the air.
Andy grabbed her wrist as Riana caught the gun. Both women whirled toward where Merilee stood in the kitchen doorway, half a sandwich hanging out of her mouth, fresh arrow already nocked. Somehow, she actually managed to chew and swallow without dropping a bite or the arrow.
Andy groaned and rubbed her wrist again, drawing a look of sympathy from Riana, who had been on the receiving end of a few of Merilee’s well-placed strikes in the past. She popped the Beretta’s magazine without really concentrating on the weapon, and tucked it inside her bodysuit. Then she tilted the gun on its side, pulled back the Beretta’s slide, caught the chambered bullet and tucked it against her skin with the magazine. When she finished, she offered the gun back to Andy, grip first.
Andy shook out her hand before accepting the pistol with a quiet, “Shit on a shingle.”
“My decision isn’t open for discussion.” Riana took hold of Andy’s wrist and examined it for injuries. The other woman didn’t even struggle. “You’re free to remain or come and go as you please, but Creed stays here. He won’t be harmed. You have my word.”
As Riana let go of Andy’s wrist—no doubt sore, but not bruised or damaged—Andy glanced from Riana to Merilee to Cynda. Cynda lowered her sword and said, “Sorry. She’s the boss.”
“Mortar, pestle, broom. Right. I remember.” Andy looked at Creed with a questioning expression. “We aren’t on the clock until Monday. Should we fight our way out of here, or do you just want me to break into your place and bring you some pants?”
To Riana’s shock and relief, Creed’s frown slid into a devastating grin. He turned those blazing black eyes on her, showing her that he was still angry, but also intrigued, and cooperating only because of his interest in her.
How am I going to handle this? How am I going to handle
him?
Hesitating just long enough to make her tremble inside, Creed shrugged and said, “Who am I to refuse a grown woman’s invitation?”
8
If Creed had known Riana lived in a dungeon with a mad-scientist laboratory
and
an eight-by-eight elementally locked jail cell in the back corner—complete with cot and toilet, no less—he never would have agreed to stay.
Too late now.
When Riana had showed him the cell and asked him to get inside, he had thought about telling her to go to hell. In truth, though, after a few hours of being behind the elementally treated lead bars, he had relaxed a little and felt more confident that the
other
couldn’t escape his control and menace Riana or the other women again. He had the ring firmly in place, after all. The ring had always given him more control and stability.
At first, Creed settled down on the cot with only the singed green blanket Riana had loaned him. He tried to sleep away his captivity, but his mind knew it was daylight outside, and he had cases to solve, like the vicious occult murder of a little boy. Despite his exhaustion from trying to fight some kind of man-made demon, getting his head bashed, staying up all night handcuffed to a ceiling beam, and spending time as the
other,
he couldn’t seem to drift off. Instead, as he lay on his back on the cot in his cell and stared at the stone ceiling above him, his brain picked through details of the Latch case. Over and over, he added together what he knew with what Riana and her buddies had told him the day before. He also added in the detail of Alisa James being a Sibyl.
“Riana’s damned sure Alisa couldn’t be our perp,” he said aloud, as if Andy might be hanging out across the room, taking notes. “But Merilee said something about sea salt, right? Used in rituals to purify. Did somebody purify the kid before they killed him? And if so, why?”
And Cynda had told them the salt could be used to keep something inside the circle and protect it—but protecting it would trap it, too, according to Riana. So had Alisa James tried to save the child but accidentally doomed the boy to murder? And why
that
boy? Who targeted him? Did some psychopathic bastard use a bit of the kid’s trash to send a demon after him, like some jerk had done to the Sibyls?
And again, if so, why?
Why…
Creed kept coming back to that question, and his instincts told him that was the key. Find out why, and he’d find out who.
Instincts. Yeah.
He glanced around his little cell.
Your glorified cop instincts let you walk into this house. And into this mini-prison. Great job so far.
Did Riana know real practitioners of the occult? Did she know why someone would sacrifice a child?
Definitely the next question he needed to ask her head-Sibyl-ness, whenever she showed up again. A small part of him acknowledged that Riana might not show up, that she could leave him in the cell as long as she wanted to. She didn’t have to come around, she didn’t have to bring him food, and she didn’t have to talk to him.
But somehow, he thought she would.
No, he hoped she would.
That had to be worse, wanting something from a woman who might not want anything to do with him. Creed sighed and shifted on his cot. The squeak of bedsprings echoed through the dark, cavernous laboratory.
Riana did want something to do with him, though. He had seen the attraction in her eyes, tasted it in her kiss. Riana was interested in him, even though she had seen the
other
. Could he really have a chance with a woman who knew all of him, and wanted him anyway? A woman who excited his mind
and
his primal desires?
With that fascinating thought, he finally dozed off for a while.
Soon after, he woke to the smell of food. When he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the cot, he saw a plate with a steaming sandwich and chips resting on the floor just inside his cell door. Beside it sat a metal pitcher full of ice water, a metal cup, and a few napkins.
Yeeaaaah. Great cop instincts. Great cop senses. A beautiful woman slips me a hot roast beef on rye, and I don’t even jerk an eye open.
He yawned and adjusted his blanket. Then his stomach growled like some monster in a B-grade horror flick. He glanced up to see if Riana was still in the lab.
She was, standing on the far side of the room, with her back to his cell. In the soft lighting, he could make out her shiny black hair against the bright white of her lab coat.
He cleared his throat.
She didn’t turn around.
Well, fine. Lock a guy in a cage, then ignore him.
Creed could play the I’m-not-interested game just as well as she could, and better than most. He’d eat the sandwich and chips, drink about half of the pitcher of water, and rest to get his strength back. Maybe then she’d feel like talking. In the meantime, the bars would keep his mind at ease, even while he watched the woman who had begun to menace his sanity.
Riana’s laboratory-and-jail took up most of the brownstone’s downstairs space. When she had brought him down, he saw one other door on the opposite side of the stairs, and he suspected that door concealed Riana’s private bathroom and bedroom.
Bedroom. Shit. I don’t need to say that word and her name in the same sentence.
He stopped eating long enough to allow himself the fantasy of Riana in that bedroom, which he imagined to be lit by candles, not to mention full of unusual scents and sculptures and patterns. Maybe runes and mirrors on the wall. He envisioned her naked, stretched across a white fur bedspread designed to highlight her tanned curves. Would her nipples be pink and tight, or ample and wine-dark? His money was on dark. And his cock was on high alert.
Gotta stop. Knock it off. Concentrate on the roast beef. And what kind of mustard is this?
It was sort of nutty and rich and sweet, but so spicy his eyes watered and he had to breathe deeply each time he took a bite. He’d had it before, he thought. Some kind of hot brown mustard. European.
Sarepta,
maybe?
Russian mustard. So sweet you want the whole jar, so fiery it’ll burn you inside out if you eat it. Figures. Just like her.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make himself stop watching Riana. He enjoyed the way she flowed around the big room, silent and graceful, seemingly focused on nothing but work. He had dated a lot of smart women, but the way she worked hinted at genius combined with resolve stronger than the lead bars forming his cell.
Riana spent time at several silver-barreled microscopes that looked powerful enough to examine strands of DNA, and he studied her, bemused, as she took notes on a thick white pad. All of this modern equipment, but these women seemed to prefer working out problems in longhand. What was with that? Was it like talking things out with Andy, that saying or writing the words sometimes made pieces fit together? Another question he stored for later, when Riana once more sat down to talk with him. He found himself looking forward to that almost as much as touching her. He usually didn’t look forward to talking to women other than Andy.
It wasn’t just the cock-grabbing sound of Riana’s voice, either. It was the sharpness in her eyes, the way she seemed to see everything, and notice and understand bits and pieces other people would blow off as insignificant. She could have been a cop, easy. She’d have made a great detective. Even without the training and experience he’d had, Riana stayed about a half step ahead of him and Andy.
Riana drifted over to a computer that appeared to be wired into a closed hood, probably monitoring some experiment or other. Several handheld devices lay nearby, on some of the half-dozen stainless steel countertops. Next to the PDA-looking machines were an assortment of burners, tiny hand-tools, boxes, beakers, and shelves. The names of about a dozen complicated pieces of equipment eluded Creed, but he thought he recognized a spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, and even a massive top-loading centrifuge. A few of the machines looked so futuristic and alien that he was almost certain most regular scientists—most
human
scientists—had never seen them, except maybe in whatever passed for genius-geek wet dreams.
One workstation definitely had genetic testing equipment, and in the opposite corner of the room from Creed, beside an industrial sink, a steel table with a morgue scale, saw, and tray of surgical tools looked frighteningly like a setup to perform autopsies. Creed’s neck prickled as he realized that the big silver “freezer” next to the table was actually a four-drawer morgue refrigerator.
Does she have bodies on those four-by-eight trays inside? What the hell have I gotten into here?
His gut told him she wasn’t a criminal. His gut also told him to leave the rest of his sandwich untouched and drink the other half of the pitcher of water before spontaneous combustion became a risk. His mouth burned. He put down the plate, guzzled a little water to calm the flames in his throat, then stood.
“Do we have company?” he asked as he tried to adjust his green blanket, noting the spice-pained rumble in his own voice. The blanket wouldn’t wrap right, and he was too distracted to keep fooling with it. He just held it like a gun belt, making sure it didn’t fall.
Riana startled at the sound of his voice, almost dropping a silvery two-sided telescope with something like a tiny spaceship in between the tubes.
He nodded toward the morgue refrigerator and autopsy setup. “I asked if we had company. Anything—er, anyone—in those morgue drawers?”
She glanced in the direction he indicated, then turned back. Even though she was at least thirty feet away from him, he felt a wave of heat from her gaze as she ran her eyes from his face to his bare chest, and lower, to where he still gripped the blanket wrapped around his waist.
“Not yet.”
The silk of her words slid against his cock like she was standing in front of him, ripping off his blanket, and breathing against the sensitive, pulsing skin. His jaw clenched from the need to kiss her.