His words slowly worked through the pound and roar of Bela’s pulse and her growing ache for his embrace. Confused, she raised both hands, tempted to either give him a shove or grab him and hang on forever. “You—you can’t seriously be asking me to leave, with everything you’re facing.”
“I am asking.” He stared at the ceiling for a moment, his throat moving. Bela had a sense that he was searching for the right words to explain himself, but she didn’t want to give him the chance to find them.
“Duncan—”
“It’s obvious none of your quad wants to be in this townhouse.” His voice was a whisper when he looked at her again. “So y’all go back to the brownstone and do your thing. I’ll come straight there as soon as it’s over.”
Bela shook her head, not able to make any sense out of his request, not until she saw the growing unhappiness in his eyes. His expression was a strange mix of shame and caring, and she slowly realized that Duncan didn’t want her exposed to the agony he’d be facing.
He was, first and foremost, a man who defended and protected what he treasured.
Right now, it would seem, that was her.
She was flattered and pissed off, and this time she did give the unbandaged parts of his chest a tap with both palms. “You don’t have to shield me from anything. I’m not that fragile.”
“Well, maybe
I
am.” Duncan leaned toward her, angry now, at least by appearance, but what Bela saw underneath that was fear. “At least where you’re concerned.”
That caught her so off guard she didn’t have a response, except to want to reach for him, but the dampness of his shirt and the streaks of blood on her hands from where she just touched him reminded her that he was the one who needed understanding and support.
He backed off from her and studied the ceiling for another few seconds before he said, “I can handle my own pain, Bela.” His eyes found hers again, and the misery she saw broke her heart. “I can’t stand it when you hurt.”
Bela’s lips trembled, and her hands shook. She wanted to cry. She wanted to make love to this man, right here, right now, in the townhouse hallway—and she still wanted to run away. She was over the edge, and she had no idea how to claw her way back to steady again.
Andy was staring at her from across the hall, and the expression on her face almost crushed Bela on the spot.
I never got this kind of chance
, that look said.
Don’t you dare let it slip away from you
.
Something inside Bela crumbled into pieces. Maybe it was the panic, or the last bit of resistance to this new complication in her life. Her caution and self-control dropped away in its wake, and she grabbed Duncan and held him tight against her, bloody shirt, cast, and all.
“Don’t die,” she whispered into his damaged chest, welcoming the weight of his cast and other arm as he wrapped her up, then crushed her against him. “Don’t let me go, and don’t die.”
This can’t be it
.
But what if she never got the chance to touch him again?
This won’t be it
.
But what if this was the last time she even got to see him, or hear his voice, or look into those deep, delicious eyes?
He’d only been in her life about a month—and half that time, he’d barely been conscious. Even so, there was far too much not said, and
way
too much not done between the two of them. She needed weeks and months and years to really get to know him, and she wasn’t sure that would be enough.
His lips pressed into her hair, then he moved back and kissed her. Slow. Gentle. Moving his lips against hers like he was drinking in her flavor, her taste, her feel. She had every emotion in the book now. Fear and excitement and worry and joy and grief and pleasure—a kaleidoscope of sensations, and the picture wouldn’t stop turning and shifting until Duncan broke away from her, held her at arm’s length for a few seconds, then let her go.
“Please go back to the brownstone,” he said. “I’ll see you there in a little while.”
Bela was shaking all over as she watched Duncan stride away from her, then follow after Mother Keara, Mother Anemone, and Mother Yana, with that damned ancient wolf padding along behind him. Andy hung back with Camille and Dio, all three watching Bela with anxious expressions
“I’m fine,” she said, but nobody looked like they believed her. That was okay. Bela didn’t believe herself, either.
The officer across the room, at a signal from Mother Keara, got on his phone and radio and announced a lockdown on the townhouse until further notice. It was a protocol they had put in place during the war with the Legion, to secure headquarters when something dangerous invaded the building, or when the Sibyls needed to work elemental energy in some way that posed risks for humans.
The OCU and the Sibyls had constructed elementally locked safe rooms on every floor. The officer pressed some buttons and flipped some switches on the elementally shielded electronic control panel on his desk. Automatic door and window locks—traditional and elemental—engaged all through the building except for the back kitchen door. That door remained unlocked for exactly ten minutes, allowing for reinforcements to arrive, if reinforcements were needed. The switches also set red alarm lights to flashing in the pattern that warned humans to do the OCU equivalent of taking cover. Once the officer verified that the lights were flashing in the proper sequence, the officer picked up his jacket, pad, and pen, and jogged down the left-hand hallway to tuck himself into the main floor’s designated safe room.
Bela watched the officer go, but she couldn’t really get a grip on why he was running away. She couldn’t get a handle on herself, either, or what her body was doing. Earth energy drained out of her until she felt no connection to the rich ground, the fertile dirt, the steady rock, or the power of the planet’s movement as it turned on its axis. Tears dampened her cheeks as she started toward the front door to leave, as Duncan had asked her to do, then remembered it was bolted until Duncan’s healing was finished.
Maybe the library would be a good place to go, upstairs where Merilee lived with her husband, Jake. The open portion of the library was welcoming, and usually pretty empty during peak shift times.
Bela moved toward the stairs but stopped when she saw blood all over her blouse. Her slacks. Her hands. Her mind lurched back to the blood she’d had to scrub off in her shower before—Nori’s, and Devin’s, and Sal Freeman’s. Bela raised her hands and stared at her red-streaked fingers.
What was she doing?
Why was she even here?
Nori and Devin had talked in her head off and on since they were taken from her, so why were they quiet as two ghost mice now?
Because, Bela realized, she couldn’t preserve anybody or anything in her life, not really. Not even the precious memories of two sister Sibyls who meant the world to her before she failed them so completely. How could she be a proper mortar for a new fighting group? She couldn’t even hold herself together, much less three other women with hearts as damaged as her own.
If death was coming for Duncan, there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it. Bela had already learned that lesson three times over. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t mitigate it, couldn’t do
anything
except suffer the loss—and she didn’t think she could make it through something like that again. Not ever again.
Tears streaming so hard and fast she could barely see, Bela turned toward the front door. Locked. Wait, wait. The stairs. She was going to the library, wasn’t she?
Her tears turned into sobs.
Gentle hands took hold of her, blocking her frenetic, pointless moving. Bela slapped at her captors, wanting to get loose, but she didn’t know why, or where she’d go, or what she’d do when she got there.
Fire energy tingled along her skin, warming her until it stopped her shaking. The flames burned strength into her muscles and freed the words in her own mind, so she could talk to herself, even move her mouth and throat to take deeper breaths. Air energy brushed her face, then blew into her, lending her focus and purpose until she saw her own. The wind kept swirling through her mind, cleaning up the edges of her perception until the world made sense to her again. Water energy flowed through every part of her, binding all the elemental powers into Bela’s consciousness, washing her down, and down, until her awareness found the earth again.
Weak with relief, Bela drew deep on her core power, letting the earth’s ageless, timeless energy fill her up until her heartbeat slowed to a semblance of normal. Her breathing started to come more easily, and gradually the space around her started feeling solid and real and familiar.
The women standing in a circle with her, hands on her arms and shoulders, they were more than real, too.
Dio.
Camille.
Andy.
They were all with her, holding her at the brink of the townhouse entryway, crying with her and giving her everything they could to help her center herself again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, even before she noticed that all the blood was gone from her hands and arms and clothing. It had been cleaned away by a shower of elemental energy—the most powerful washing machine in the universe. Her mind felt much the same, cleaner and less burdened. She had a sense that she wouldn’t be hearing from Nori and Devin again, that her ghost voices just might have been put to rest.
Bela’s quad gave her nods and smiles, even Dio, though Dio was quick to say, “We still have issues, you and me, okay, Bela? Just … not as many. Today.”
Bela took that with a smile. It felt normal. Even welcome.
“I’d better go.” Andy let go of Bela’s arm and backed away from the group, into the main hallway. “It’s been a few minutes, and the other Mothers are probably ready for my help now.”
From the other end of the hall, the kitchen door banged open, and Jack Blackmore came storming into view. Behind him were Riana, Cynda, and Merilee in battle leathers, and their husbands Creed, Nick, and Jake, all wearing street clothes like they’d been yanked off patrol when the lockdown order was issued. They must have made it in just under the ten-minute margin. Bela didn’t see Riana’s son or Cynda’s daughter, and she assumed they must be in the nursery that had been added to the fourth-floor library, with one of the fire Sibyl adepts who usually watched them.
Blackmore still looked like a dark, brooding god from some Italian painting, but the first thing out of his mouth was way more asinine than divine. “What the hell were you people thinking, taking Sharp out to question Reese Patterson?” He was yelling, and his face was starting to turn red. “I didn’t hear about it, I didn’t approve it—Sharp’s not even officially transferred yet, and—”
“Oh, hell, no, we’re not doing this right now.” Andy cut off Blackmore’s bluster as she wheeled toward him with both arms raised.
Bela had time to jump back into the entryway with Dio and Camille and say, “Andy …”
But it was too late for anything else.
Sprinkler heads exploded off the ceiling like machinegun fire. Pipes groaned and burst in the walls and ceilings. The Lowell brothers grabbed their wives, and all three couples dived for the conference room door, getting out of harm’s way fast.
Jack Blackmore wasn’t so quick on the uptake.
Andy’s sudden, furious wave hit him from behind so hard it lifted him straight off his feet. The water swept him forward down the hallway, past the conference room and basement door, past the entryway where Bela and Dio and Camille were hanging on to each other’s hands, and into the next hallway.
Cal and Saul Brent had the bad fortune to step out of the safe room to see what was happening.
The wave smacked them with a sound like an old-fashioned principal’s paddle, and they disappeared into the same tidal surge.
“Kinda looked like bugs on a windshield, didn’t they?” Dio gave the wave some extra wind power, driving it down the far hall like a water-fueled bulldozer.
The wave didn’t stop until it exploded out the window at the end of the hallway; blasting through both the physical and the elemental locks and sending chairs, tables, pictures, books, glass, wood, plaster, two guys in Giants jackets, and one dickhead with a big mouth tumbling into the New York night.
When Bela dared to turn her head to check on Andy, Andy was already gone. The basement door banged shut behind her as she headed down to help with Duncan’s healing.
Jake Lowell reached Bela’s quad first, walking in that dominant yet ethereal way only full-blooded Astaroth demons could manage. He stopped at the entryway, gazed down the hall to the big hole in the wall where Blackmore and the Brent brothers had made their unplanned exit, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Man overboard. Well, men. Guess I better go get them.”
He didn’t sound like he really wanted to, but his short blond hair shimmered to a lighter, whiter shade, and a few seconds later, he had golden eyes, translucent skin, a decent set of fangs, some scary-looking claws, and a double set of huge leathery wings. He lifted off, careful to stay below the chandeliers in the hallway, and drifted toward the broken wall.
Bela had seen that transformation dozens of times, and it never failed to amaze her. Jake reminded her of some sort of avenging angel when he used his Astaroth skills, and Bela was willing to bet that Blackmore and his buddies might not feel “rescued” when Jake showed up to snatch them off the ground and drop them on a library balcony for his brothers to retrieve. The library was a designated safe room, and Creed and Nick could phase through elementally locked glass, wood, and metal while shifting in and out of their Curson forms. They’d take care of those idiots until the townhouse got off lockdown.
Creed and Nick were already jogging up the stairs and starting to shimmer with a bright golden light. Creed was saying, “You know they’ll be feeling that fall in the morning.”
“They’ll learn, or they’ll keep finding new and interesting ways out of the townhouse.” Nick didn’t seem too concerned about the men outside, just the structural damage. “I’ll call the cleaning crew. And a plumber. And a carpenter.”