Andy doused the captain with a cold blue wave she must have drawn from the nearest sprinkler head. The powerful sheet of water smacked the Brent brothers, too, surprising them enough to make them back off a step—though Dio’s sharp blast of wind might have been what made them move. The air in the room swirled, ringing chimes and making lamps jitter on tables as Dio strode forward to back up Andy.
Blackmore didn’t give any ground as Dio’s very targeted gusts settled back to stillness. He just stood there, open-mouthed, dripping on the carpet.
“I suggest you spend a lot more time with Creed, Nick, and the OCU learning about Sibyls before you come back to
this
house and act like an ass.” Bela let a little earth energy creep into her voice, until the air seemed to shake with her words. “We’re not ready to give up on Duncan Sharp, and we’re quite capable of doing our own examining and containing, if it comes to that.”
“Parent agency,” Andy grumbled at the captain. “Really? Seriously? Go fuck yourself.”
Blackmore eyed Andy, and Bela thought she saw something like amusement or respect warring with the frustration in his gaze. He shed some more water, then managed to make his mouth work enough to ask, “Does Duncan have John’s dinar?”
Bela gave him a single nod, wishing Camille would fire up and set the bastard’s pants on fire.
“Interesting.” Blackmore ran his hand through his hair, wringing out another bunch of drips and drops. “I wonder if that gives him some protection. It’s what kept John alive all these years, until DUMBO. But then, this is Duncan we’re talking about. He might be using sheer force of will to stay human.”
Camille was glaring at the man, but there was no sign of smoke or flames. Andy’s water energy was building, and if Blackmore set her off again, Bela had little doubt that she’d drown the jerk, or wash him out the front door and leave him flat on his ass on the sidewalk.
“You were ready to cart him off, cut him up, and kill him a minute ago.” Dio’s wind swirled around her shoulders. “Now you’re talking about him like he’s always been your best buddy.”
“I’ve known Duncan Sharp even longer than I knew John Cole.” Blackmore’s posture changed to more relaxed, maybe a little more human, and the asshole factor in his expression cranked down a few notches. “He was a Ranger in the Gulf War, and he’s been a dedicated civilian officer since he retired from active duty. If you think you can save his life, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Especially since I don’t seem to have another choice.”
“Amazing.” Andy released some of her water energy back to the universe, making all the sprinkler heads drizzle. “Fed version 2.0. It can walk, talk, show off, make an ass of itself,
and
suck up before it gets its dick ripped off.”
Blackmore’s eyebrows lifted, and his hands twitched like he was thinking about guarding his groin.
Nick took that opportunity to head for the brownstone’s front door, and Bela appreciated his good sense of timing.
“Run along now, boys.” She used her earth energy to gently move the captain and the Brent brothers in the direction Nick took.
As Dio added a hefty blast of wind to the encouragement, Creed opened the door for them and watched them stumble across the threshold. It was a wonder they didn’t tumble down the steps and go splat on the sidewalk.
“We’ll call you when Duncan starts to wake up,” Bela called after the men as Nick started to pull the door shut. “If you don’t piss me off again.”
(12)
Strada stood in human form with Griffen near a location Griffen had identified as Sixty-third and Central Park. Strada was wearing jeans and a T-shirt glorifying an oddly dressed traveling minstrel called a “rapper.” To match the ensemble, Strada had softened and smoothed his features to give a youthful appearance. It was good practice. He needed many faces and personas to succeed in this strange and fascinating time and place.
They were just inside a stone fence under cover of a few trees, far enough back to peer over the top of the large structure to the row of modern houses and buildings beyond. Rich scents of summer filled the air in the waning light of day, strawberries and leaves, grass and flowers. Strada had learned the common and proper scientific names for each new plant and animal he had encountered since his arrival in the city. Strada enjoyed the reds and greens, the yellows and browns, even the moist blue of a sky that didn’t stretch across miles of desert.
The stench of modern vehicles—that he could do without.
“Rush hour.” Griffen opened his arms toward the crush of automobiles and people and buses trying to press between yellow cabs. “Nothing like the Upper East Side. Sorry.”
“Activity provides cover,” Strada said, distracted by the ripe stench of a horse-drawn buggy passing nearby. The horse, sensing him, gave a high-pitched whicker and tried to shy down a side street. “You were right to bring me now.”
“I’ve been here before as a guest, but a different group of Sibyls lived here then.” Griffen’s fists flexed, and the hatred on his face was unmistakable. “Our
friends.
” He snorted. “They were supposed to protect us.”
Out on the street, the horse bucked against its harness, refusing to move its buggy forward.
Strada knew the full story of Griffen’s past, because he had taken it from the man’s mind the night he snatched the man out of a ritual he was performing with his Coven in a boarded-up, defiled modern-day temple. He had plied Griffen for cooperation, first by force and then with promises and rewards. “The loss of your priestess lover to the demon leader of the Legion still hurts you?”
Griffen let out a ragged laugh. “Charlotte Heart’s death set me free to find true power. Then the fall of the Legion freed my Coven from servitude to those high-handed bastards. As for the Sibyls, I’ll enjoy seeing them get their due. The universe always provides for those who serve it with faith and vigor.”
Griffen’s intense shifts from anger to sarcasm, joy, then religious fervor puzzled Strada. Strada’s eyes followed the route of the horse as it dragged its hansom toward the side street again, fighting its handler until it dashed by on the far sidewalk. Humans had such a trickster’s mix of emotions, it was hard to sort them all out no matter how long he spent walking inside human skin and watching the world through human eyes. With people and places in this modern world, nothing was ever quite what it seemed.
Take the brownstone directly across the road, for example. It looked plain. Even innocuous. It was clean enough, with three stories of rock walls, simple white curtains and no pots of flowers adoring its sills. Anyone in the city would feel comfortable climbing its few front steps and using its brass knocker to tap on its thick wooden door—anyone who wouldn’t be thrown into the onrushing traffic when they struck the powerful elemental barriers the Sibyls had constructed to protect their lair.
Strada didn’t even bother testing the strength of those protections. When he used the full power of his Rakshasa vision, the bright, shimmering light was enough to wound his sensitive eyes. He could taste the earth, the air, the fire, the water, even at this distance, and he detected no weakness in the coverage. From what Tarek and Aarif reported from their failed experiment with the Created in this park a week ago, the Sibyls could construct such a barrier quickly and hold it for some time, though it did cost them energy.
When Strada’s pride came in earnest to kill these women, they would have to come in force, and in tiger form. There would be no dividing the barriers or prying past them. They would have to shatter the energy, like he planned to shatter its makers.
“The police officer is still inside,” Griffen informed him. “I have sentries watching day and night. The minute he’s clear, I’ll notify you.”
Strada answered with a quick purr, then asked, “Is the NYPD truly so unfailing in the defense of its own?”
“Yes. Our former employer was correct.” Griffen leaned out of the trees, as if to get a better glimpse of the traffic. Strada appreciated the human’s tact in not mentioning how bits of that employer had been recently discovered in a local river. “If you kill a cop, the rest of his brothers and sisters will hunt you without stopping, and they’ll do it forever. Think of them like a pride, only with guns and connections to much, much bigger guns, if they think that’s what they need.”
Strada had no fear of guns, whatever the size, but vengeance for the sake of one’s pride—that he could understand. He had rejoiced in the taste of John Cole’s blood, retribution for the true brothers the heinous bastard had stolen from him. He would not challenge the NYPD, for now. The time would come for that, when he and his pride were more prepared, and when disrupting the NYPD’s operations would be of use to him.
Strada went back to studying the brownstone, and quickly understood that the protections extended to the other houses beside the Sibyl lair, though one of those dwellings had its own unusual barriers. Opposite, really, of the work the Sibyls had done. The blue house to the right of the brownstone had an undercurrent of quiet, whispering energy, seemingly designed to render it plain and utterly unnoticeable. That might have worked, were it not for the bold designs of the Sibyls.
Given the energy that such protections required, Strada doubted they could extend very far in any direction. The physical cost to the Sibyls would be too high.
“Come with me,” he told Griffen, and began walking away from the shield of the trees and the stone fence.
Griffen rushed after him to the sidewalk and then the nearest crosswalk. “Will they sense you?”
“Not in this human shape, if I do not cross the barriers they’ve established. Stay on my right, and I will spare us that difficulty.” Strada waited for the light to change, then crossed the traffic-laden street to the sidewalk at the corner of the block that contained the brownstone.
“We could enter through one of the other houses,” Griffen suggested, catching up and remaining at Strada’s right hand, as instructed.
“The other dwellings are equally defended.” Strada used his powerful sense of smell to track and follow the direction taken by the frightened horse that had tried to flee him. Animals had an unfailing sense of elemental energy, both its presence and its absence. Likely, the creature had attempted to take a path of least resistance.
They walked a short way down a side street, then arrived at a long alleyway that crossed behind the brownstone.
“Yes.” Strada nodded. “The protections are designed for their lair, and perhaps to make life easier and safer for their neighbors—but they do not cover the entire block. We can position here, and at the far end, there.” He pointed to the opposite entrance to the alley.
Griffen looked excited by this, and he lifted himself to his toes to peer over the metal trash receptacles at the alley mouth. “When Sibyls feel threatened, they call for help. More Sibyls and police officers with the Occult Crimes Unit will respond.”
Strada dismissed this concern with a soft snarl. “We will determine how much time it would take reinforcements to arrive, and be certain we finish our business quickly. We will test and study until we know our enemy as well as they know themselves, Griffen. We will plan until we feel certain there are no flaws in our strategy. When we move, we will crush theses females and be gone before their friends even begin to understand their fate.” He turned away from the alley and strode back toward Central Park, his mind already shifting back to the renovated warehouse office, and to Tarek and Aarif, who were setting up a meeting with a previous employer who had paid them well for a past service. “Our victory must be absolute and devastating. It will serve as a clear message to the remaining Sibyls and their allies not to interfere in the affairs of the Eldest.”
Griffen ran along behind Strada like a well-trained child, up the sidewalk and back across the teeming city street. His deference pleased Strada. The human had so quickly grasped the absolute power of a
culla
. One day he would make a fine Created.
“They’ll still interfere because it’s their job, their role in our world,” Griffen said.
“Yes, but with hesitance and dread, or the haste born of headlong fury. The advantage will always be ours.”
For a few moments, they moved in silence, but Griffen had more on his mind. “Sibyls are well trained and cautious. How will you get them into the alley?”
“The same way I would force any cattle to slaughter.” Strada swept back into Central Park, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his human skin. “Herd them.”
(13)
Over and over again, she was there when he opened his eyes.
Other people came and went, but she was the constant, and Duncan was glad. He couldn’t stay awake long enough to learn her real name, but he recognized the feel of his angel, the smell of her—even the sound of her breathing.
He drew a slow breath, drinking her soft almond scent like wine. “You’re perfect.”
“If you say so.” She was close. Smiling. Her fingers brushed across the back of his hand. The sensation warmed him.
“What are you?” he murmured as his vision blurred and his eyes closed.
“I’m a Sibyl.”
Duncan figured he hadn’t heard that last part right.
He slept again.
Woke.
She was there, pulling a soft sheet higher to cover his chest and ease his chills.
“You call yourself a Sibyl, whatever that is.” His voice was hoarse. A cool glass touched his lips, and he took a sip of water. The pressure of her palm on his chest felt like an anchor, binding him to reality and the world. “I think you’re an angel.”
She laughed. “You have so got the wrong girl, Duncan Sharp.”
Her eyes were so dark they drew him in and covered him as softly and surely as the sheet she adjusted. “I don’t think I’m that far off the mark. Angel.”
“Stop that,” she told him, then let her fingers trail across his forehead. A rich, relaxing energy swept across his body, and once more he drifted away.
The next time he woke, she was gently bathing his face, his forehead, now his cheeks and chin and mouth. The connection between them was a real thing, a bright thing, and he wondered if he could touch it if he tried.
“Rest,” she said, and her voice made him want to hear more. His body reacted to her nearness, getting warmer and warmer until he had to sit up and find a way to touch
her
.
“Rest,” she said again as he yanked against the cuffs on his wrists.
Her fingertips tingled along his jaw, and that wave of relaxing peace claimed him again.
Angel
, his mind whispered.
That had to be what she was.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was a witch.
Don’t stop. Can’t stop
.
Duncan tried to breathe, but he was hauling too much weight to inflate his lungs. The desert tore at him as he ran. Superheated gray rock dust stung his eyes. He tasted burning grit and salt, felt the fire in his chest, his face, his gut.
Don’t stop!
Two wounded men, one slung over either shoulder.
He staggered.
Bullets dug into flint on either side of him, sparking, spitting dirt and shrapnel into his thighs.
He had to keep moving—
“No matter how much healin’ we do, we can’t cure the infection, but we have slowed it to a crawl.”
Duncan’s Afghanistan flashback flickered into blackness. His muscles twitched from the sensation of running his injured buddies out of a firefight. He could still taste the desert—but that was an Irish voice. Old and crackly. Not hateful, but not friendly, either.
Who was it?
Where was he?
Still hot, like the desert—but the sensation was coming from inside him. From his neck and shoulder. Like his skin was on fire, and that fire was trying to spread, only something was holding it back. It was almost like an icy line had been drawn from his chin to his chest and straight through his back, containing the heat.
The old Irish voice spoke again. “He will die, and as he passes, he’ll become of them. But you already know that, don’t you, cop?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” a man said.
Shock made Duncan’s insides jump, and his teeth clamped together against the pain in his wounds. He realized he wasn’t back in the desert after all. He must have died and gone to hell, because the man who spoke—that was his old commander, Jack Blackmore. Blackjack.
“Duncan Sharp won’t give up,” Blackjack said. “He won’t stop. Not ever. You’ve never seen him in battle.”
“I think I have,” said the only voice Duncan really cared about, the one that was rich and smooth and feminine. “For almost two weeks now.”
He heard the admiration, and felt embarrassed by it. He didn’t deserve admiration for just staying alive.
Her warm fingers brushed against his neck and shoulder on the side that wasn’t bandaged, and something like electricity flowed all over his skin. The familiar sensation eased the fiery aches in his body and the sting of his latest round of war memories. Duncan forgot about admiration and embarrassment, and he started thinking about heaven instead of hell.
Then his mind went blank for a while. He didn’t know how long. Time had no meaning, if he was even still alive to worry about time.
Your angel is a looker
, John Cole told him, the words winding through a seemingly infinite darkness.
The redhead’s prettier, but she’s probably too delicate for your tastes, if you don’t count that sword she likes to carry
.
Duncan ignored John’s voice. John was dead. His best friend was gone forever, buried in some flag-covered coffin, in his best dress uniform, with all his ribbons. Somehow Duncan knew that, even if he couldn’t remember the details. He only hoped he hadn’t killed the bastard himself.
I’m here, Duncan
.
Shut up
, Duncan thought back to the ghost voice.
Then there was more emptiness, with some shocks and misery and pain, followed by more cool electricity, and the sweet, sweet scent of his angel.
Her name is Bela
, John told him.
“Bela,” Duncan tried to say, but his voice was just a bunch of croaking.
Hours later, maybe days, Blackjack spoke again. “John always wore that dinar, and it shocked anyone who touched it. Have you tried taking it off Duncan’s neck?”
“We’ll be doin’ no such thing,” said the old, crunchy Irish voice. “And neither will you. It dates from the time of the Kushan emperor Huvishka. Probably older’n anything you’ve ever dealt with—and it’s keyed its energy to him.” After a pause, she cackled and added, “Old things can have great power, Mr. Blackmore, but I suspect you know that, too.”
I’m wearing some zillion-year-old coin?
Duncan remembered John putting a chain over his head. He tried to hold on to that image, then faded away from the voices and pain again, farther away this time. Sleeping. Or maybe just not existing. He barely felt the shocks, the strange energies that flowed across his body, wherever he might be. Maybe he was gone for good this time.
Bela whispered to him across the miles. “Are you giving up, Duncan Sharp? Pity. I thought you were a warrior.”
Duncan ground his teeth. He thought about carrying two wounded men to safety through a firefight that should have killed them all. He thought about walking back from the IED explosion. Thirty miles. Maybe more.
Keep going
.
That was his mantra back then in the desert, when the bullets were flying.
Don’t stop. Just keep going
.
He imagined himself moving back toward that inviting sound, toward Bela. He wanted to see her face again. He wanted to touch her and see if she was as soft as he imagined.
John Cole laughed at him.
You’re out of your league
.
“Fuck you,” Duncan mumbled.
Then he opened his eyes.
The edges of his vision seemed cloudy. Indistinct.
But she wasn’t.
His angel was right there in front of him, bending down, her dark hair pulled against her head, showing off the intriguing lines of her lightly tanned face. She had high cheekbones, and he noticed that her dark eyes had the slightest tilt. And she was wearing black leather.
Shit
.
The scent of almonds and fresh berries filled Duncan’s nose, beating back the stink of antiseptic, bleach, and plaster as she leaned closer to his face. Her warm breath brushed his cheeks, his neck as her full lips curled into a smile.
“Fuck you, too,” she said, then unlocked a pair of cuffs holding his good hand against the rails of a hospital bed.
Duncan frowned and watched his angel withdraw. His thoughts swam in circles, and he tried to figure out who the hell had hammered spikes through his left arm. And why was his left cheek and shoulder on fire? He tried to sit up, to do something to make the angel come closer again, but a voice he would never forget snarled, “Be still before I bust the other side of your face, Sharp.”
Force of habit held Duncan in place as he managed to take in yellow walls and more people. He kept squinting until he made out the big outline of the man who had been his commanding officer in Afghanistan.
“Blackjack,” he croaked, then rubbed his throat with numb-feeling fingers.
Blackjack and a small army.
Saul and Calvin Brent were standing near his bed. And the long-haired blonde he had dreamed had tornadoes coming out of her ears in DUMBO—Dio, according to Cole’s voice. There was the redhead who looked too fragile to fight anything, except for the scimitar thing he had seen her swinging—and that was Camille, per John’s quiet commentary. Then there was the cop-like woman, who wasn’t wearing leather anymore, unlike her friends. She had on a wet sweatshirt and jeans, and her name was Andy.
Next to all of them stood a gray-haired old woman with a face like a red howler monkey’s, and this one was smoking. Like a human pipe.
Duncan blinked, trying to clear his vision.
When he opened his eyes again, he was face-to-face with Bela. “Angel” tried to come out of his throat.
It sounded like he was choking.
Duncan swore to himself and worked to sit up again, but too much shit was weighing him down. Plastic tubes. A cast on his arm. Handcuffs on that arm—and on both ankles, too. Were his neck and face bandaged on one side? His skin felt tight underneath the tape and gauze, like deep wounds were trying to scab and close.
“Stay down,” Blackjack commanded, but Duncan felt the cuffs on his other arm and ankles being unlocked.
He struggled into a sitting position, mostly because he wanted a better look at his angel in that unbelievable leather bodysuit.
“You were always mule-stubborn, Duncan,” Saul Brent said.
Cal added, “Dumb, too.”
“Jesus Christ, could somebody get a shovel for the male-bonding bullshit?” Andy squeezed the water out of one sweatshirt sleeve. “It’s getting a little high and deep in here.”
“That’s not bullshit you’re smelling,” said Duncan’s angel before she drifted out of his line of sight. “It’s testosterone.”
The howler monkey with smoke coming from the top of her head snickered. Duncan tried not to look at her, because he had no frame of reference for old women who smoked. Literally.
“You’re law enforcement,” he rasped in the direction of the wet chick, ignoring Blackjack and Saul and Cal as best he could.
“Yeah. Andy Myles. Nice to meet you.” Andy squeezed water out of her other sleeve and didn’t seem to care that it splattered all over the hospital room floor. “I used to be a lieutenant in the Occult Crimes Unit—the OCU. Now I’m a Sibyl. So are they.” She pointed to the blonde first, then the redhead, and finally his angel. “Her name’s Bela Argos, by the way, not Fuck You.”
Angel. That’s her name to me
.
Duncan flexed the fingers at the end of his cast. He had to turn his head to see her, and as he stared at his angel, her cheeks flushed. Not much. Just enough to let him know she noticed him.
Yeah. That was good.
How much morphine was he on, anyway? Because he was beginning to have one hell of a fantasy involving that leather jumpsuit and that zipper. In his teeth. Moving slowly down—
“Sibyls are members of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood,” Blackjack’s voice snapped Duncan back to reality. “They’re working with local law enforcement in New York City and other locations.”
“We’re an ancient order of female warriors with elemental powers,” Andy told him. “Trained in one of four Motherhouses across the globe.”
“Rii-iight,” Duncan managed to force out of his dry throat, hearing the skepticism in his own voice. Next Blackjack would start in about vampires and werewolves and devils and all that other shit he’d started obsessing over in Afghanistan.
Before he finished having that thought, disturbing images flickered across Duncan’s consciousness.
Big cat-men. With huge claws. John Cole, shredded to death—then walking beside him in one of his desert dreams. Had he seen those things? Had they really happened?
John was dead. That much Duncan knew for sure, but—
I’m here, Duncan. Here until we finish off the Rakshasa
.
Rakwhatthehell? He’d heard that word before but still couldn’t make sense of it. And John’s voice—that had been quiet but definite, and it seemed to be coming from the middle of Duncan’s brain.
Duncan shook his head, and his bandaged neck blazed with pain. “Dark goddess,” he said as he rubbed it again and finally focused on Blackjack’s way-too-serious face.
So his angel really was some kind of magic witch-warrior?
Duncan might have laughed if he hadn’t been sitting in a bright yellow hospital room with chicks in leather and an old lady with smoke coming off her skin, dealing with a John Cole hallucination bouncing around in his head, and remembering giant cat-creatures. Then there were Saul and Cal, flanking Blackjack like bodyguards, looking just as serious as Blackjack did. Saul and Cal were as down-to-earth as they came. They didn’t go for bullshit, and they weren’t saying anything to contradict Blackjack.
“Sworn to defend the weak and untrained from the supernaturally strong, like he said.” Andy caught Duncan’s attention by raising one hand. “Yada yada yada. It’s the same old serve-and-protect.” The sprinkler over her head drizzled a stream of water onto her fingertips. “With extra tricks.”
The water hit her skin … and disappeared.
No steam, no streaks, no drips. It was just gone.
Duncan wondered how badly his brain had been injured in DUMBO.
“Neat, huh?” Andy’s smile was wistful as she glanced at the sprinkler. “Too bad I can’t manage it with larger amounts.” Her gaze shifted to her feet and the small puddle spreading beneath her dirty white sneakers. “I can attract it to me from the ground, from pipes, from sinks and sprinklers and bodies of water. I can channel it, but I can’t destroy it or completely absorb it. Yet. Give me time.”