(30)
Everything was too bright, even though it was dusk.
Duncan stared out the back window of Riana Lowell’s big black Jeep as Andy Myles inched them through the sluggish traffic. He wasn’t sure if he was seeing more light because of what the Mothers had done to make sure John couldn’t take him over again, or because the light was really there. Blackjack, riding up front in the shotgun seat, looked out the windows like he could see the strange brightness, too.
Behind them on the road, Saul and Calvin Brent were driving Mother Yana, Mother Keara, and Mother Anemone in Bela’s SUV. They had come along to explain their findings and thoughts, how they had forced a closer mental bond between Duncan and John—but something was wrong.
Off.
Duncan’s gut hurt from it.
John, still furious and flattened from all the Mothers’ prodding, stirred in Duncan’s brain, then seemed to come to attention.
I feel it
, he said.
The world seemed completely ass-backward and fucked up. Maybe it was the End of Days, and nobody had bothered to tell Duncan. He dug his fingers into his jeans, trying to get a fix on what he was sensing, but he had to grab the panic bar above his door as Andy changed lanes too fast. Christ. This woman was going to climb a cab’s ass or breed with a city bus and kill them all.
Everything in the streets seemed to get louder.
Too loud!
Duncan reached to cover his ears.
Flames shot out of the coin around his neck, burning the metal into his chest, branding him, melting toward bone until Duncan yelled from the pain and pried it off his skin.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t understand.
John screamed. Primal. Out of his mind, like a man shot to pieces. Duncan’s slash wounds blazed, tearing his skin as they extended.
“Damn!” Andy stomped the Jeep’s brakes so hard Duncan almost snapped his seat belt. His head bounced off the back of Blackjack’s headrest. The squeal of tires stabbed at his sensitive hearing as the Jeep bucked to a stop. Air bags burst into deployment as the SUV bashed into the Jeep’s back bumper.
No air bag ever touched Andy. She was already out of the vehicle, running like Satan was chasing her, past the stalled traffic, straight down Fifth Avenue.
Blackjack punched at the cloth, then used his pocketknife to slice his way free of the side air bags as Duncan ripped off his own jammed seat belt and got out, his brain swimming from pain and confusion. The moment his feet hit pavement, he glanced back at the SUV. Calvin Brent was crawling out of it. A couple of cars had jammed to a stop behind them. Horns honked. Fists waved out open windows as traffic tried to wedge itself around the fender-bender.
Duncan processed that the SUV’s other doors were open and that all the Mothers were gone. He swung his gaze back toward the direction Andy had taken. The old women were moving on, right behind her, flying down the sidewalk like racing teenagers. He doubted most civilians could even see them, they were moving so fast.
Cold dread gripped him.
“Bela.”
The stench of cat piss struck him in the face, distant but strong. His slash wounds ripped another inch in both directions.
“Bela!” Duncan wheeled, grabbed Blackjack by the collar, and shook him so hard his eyeballs must have rattled. “She’s in trouble. They’re in trouble. Call for backup. Do it now!”
Blackjack tore away from him, yanked out his cell, and started spitting commands.
Duncan was running before any of that registered, following after Andy and the Mothers. He was aware of Blackjack yelling from behind him, and the Brent brothers, too.
Something about his weapon.
His Glock.
Which he didn’t have.
The Mothers had taken it from him at the townhouse, and they hadn’t given it back.
Screw it
.
Bullets didn’t kill these demons anyway.
His chest hurt. The slash wounds felt alive.
Duncan’s feet hammered against the pavement as he dodged two taxis and a honking Cadillac to reach the sidewalk. It was dark outside, but he could see like it was daytime—and he remembered that John Cole had night vision. That talent was Duncan’s now, shared for as long as they stayed alive.
Still … here …
John groaned from the epicenter of Duncan’s awareness, and the agony in Duncan’s chest and arm and neck eased.
Won’t … let you down
.
Duncan focused on his legs, his feet, his hands, pumping as hard as he could. The muscles pulled tight across his cooling wounds, aching like a half dozen bayonets were slicing into his throat and pecs. Sidewalk seemed to crumble under his feet as he crushed pavement with each step. Pain made his vision blur, but it didn’t slow him down. He used it, fed off it, and ran faster. Andy and the Mothers were close now, half a block ahead, no more. Another few steps, and Duncan’s lungs seemed to collapse against his ribs.
Keep moving
.
Get to Bela
.
That’s what he had to do.
Andy and the Mothers turned a sharp right, down a side street next to the brownstone. Duncan followed. The dinar around his neck fried him all over again, but he didn’t waste time knocking it away.
Blood spurted through his T-shirt.
The blood was the wrong color, the wrong scent.
Ahead of him, metal clanged against stone. Women shouted. Water splattered into Duncan’s face. Fire and wind roared around him. The earth beneath New York City rumbled as his pulse jumped in his throat and the wrong-colored blood flowed stronger, too cool and sticky to be real.
Shit
, John muttered from somewhere inside his body.
On it. Just go
.
New fire broke out, this time inside Duncan’s neck and shoulder. Like John had taken a damned blowtorch to his veins and arteries. Like he was sealing off the bleed.
Duncan stumbled but kept running.
Andy and the Mothers wheeled into the alley behind the brownstone, and Duncan stayed right behind them.
Another few steps, and he saw them. Bela and Dio and Camille.
Sweet God.
He slowed to get his bearings, find his entry point, but the Mothers and Andy went weapons-hot and blasted into a mass of what had to be twenty Rakshasa closing on the Sibyls in a wide arc.
The cats blocked the path to both alley exits as they swiped with their deadly claws. Drool dripped from open tiger mouths. Feral roars broke beneath the howl of wind, the screeching hiss of fire, and the growl of moving water and earth. The air smelled wet and sulfurous at the same time, barely muting the stench of cat piss and sour animal.
Strada, the big white-furred bastard, towered above the rest of the demons.
Towered over Bela.
Duncan’s chest nearly broke apart when he saw her. Her dark hair swirled in the wind as she swung her blade, the jagged tip barely keeping the big white cat at bay as rocks and debris bashed into bricks and fire escapes and dumpsters on all sides.
He barreled toward her as Andy made it to Bela’s side. Water burst from pipes and drains, washing into Strada as Andy pumped darts into Strada’s chest. The little Russian Mother rose up between Andy and Bela, swinging long hunting daggers at anything not wearing Sibyl leathers. Behind them, at fighting distance, Mother Keara reached Camille, and both of them caught fire like minions escaped from hell. Mother Keara’s big Oriental blade took heads and arms and hands, and Camille’s
shamshir
opened throats as their primal battle screams rose over the chaos. Dio pulled in behind them with Mother Anemone, both of them drilling demons with deadly throwing knives.
The nearest cats fell back as Duncan slammed himself forward.
Fresh waves of elemental energy struck him and tried to bash him out of the alley.
Some sort of shield.
A wall the Sibyls hadn’t made.
Duncan leaned into it, digging his boots into the pavement.
Bad energy
. John was back. Surging forward in Duncan’s mind. Trying to help.
Like the night you got healed. Find the source and cut it off
.
A dozen men in black sweatshirts backed out of the mass of Rakshasa, their backs toward Duncan, their hands raised and letting off what looked like poisonous green clouds. With John’s night vision, Duncan could see the sick clouds of green forming the barrier he couldn’t break past.
“The source. Got it right here, John.” Duncan forced his way forward. He kept going. And kept going. When he reached the first asshole in a sweatshirt, he snatched hold of the bastard, using his hood to yank him backward.
Draining, miserable energy spiked all through Duncan’s body, paralyzing him—but it centered on the dinar, and John’s essence was right there, moving through the metal, throwing off the attack.
Duncan roared through his teeth, forcing his arm around Sweatshirt’s neck even as the bad energy tried to hammer him backward into the pavement. On the edges of his vision, wounded Rakshasa ripped knives and darts out of their chests. Some fell, looking dead, then regrew limbs, sprang up, and charged toward Bela and the Sibyls again. Wind funnels plowed forward, blasting into the demons, but they stood fast. The earth split at their feet, spitting chunks of asphalt in every direction, but they jumped over the rents and tears like they didn’t exist.
A woman screamed, and Duncan hurled everything he was made of against the energy holding him back. His arm moved forward just enough. Contact. Elbow lock. Leverage. He snapped Sweatshirt’s neck and threw him down. If the fucker got up, Duncan would tear his damned head right off.
The other men in sweatshirts never turned around, and didn’t seem to notice or give a shit that one of them was down. The barrier holding Duncan away from his angel faltered, but only for a second.
Duncan yanked the hood off the next bastard and jerked him backward.
He’d get to Bela, by God.
He’d get to her if he had to do it one inch and one snapped neck at a time.
(31)
Bela swung her sword and stepped back. Back again. Soon she’d hit the alley wall.
Trapped.
No room to fight.
She threw huge waves of earth energy at the demons, but they fended them off. Neutralized most of it. The same with air, with fire, with water.
“I feel like I’m fighting blind!” Andy’s scream lanced into Bela’s awareness. “They’re pulling my power out of me!”
From somewhere in the center of the teeming mass of demons, a man let out a roar louder than any demon.
Duncan!
Bela’s gaze went right to him.
He threw a man in a black sweatshirt away from him.
The man bounced off an alley wall like a broken doll, and Duncan slammed forward through the few remaining humans trying to fight.
He hit trapped walls of earth, wind, water, and fire, Sibyl power, blocked by the demons—and he kept coming. Rocks and dirt and God only knew what else chewed into his cheeks, and Duncan Sharp kept right on coming, toward her, for her, back to her.
Bela’s eyes teared against the air’s streaming, hot grit.
Strada charged her again.
Bela’s battle cry tore through her, earth energy driving her into the air as she jumped high and kicked the demon in the teeth so hard his head turned sideways and he crashed to the pavement.
Dio chunked a knife through the chest of a smaller cat who had flanked Bela. The Rakshasa fell on her, heavy and immobilized, and Bela shoved it to the ground.
Camille spun around and hacked off its head, fire lacing her shouts of rage as she whirled back to the line of advancing demons. At the same instant, Mother Keara drew back a gnarled hand and blasted the cat corpse with an unbelievable bomb of orange-red flames.
Dio and Mother Anemone blew the pile of ashes into two whistling gouts of wind headed in opposite directions, and a rush of water struck whatever bits of the destroyed cat might remain, washing them straight down the nearest gutter.
Bela screamed, giddy with triumph, and heard her quad and the Mothers screaming, too.
The line of demons pressed forward again, blocking Bela’s view of Duncan—and a Rakshasa bellow sliced through across all other sound.
The sound drove against Bela’s ears, making her heart stutter. Sweat poured down her neck as she turned to meet it, keeping herself between that sound and her quad.
Her arms throbbed from bashing her sword against flesh and bone over and over again. Her legs ached. Her gut was on fire, but her eyes worked well enough to see Strada back on his feet and coming hard, with nothing but violent death in his blazing golden stare.
Bela snarled at the bastard and hefted her blade. “Come on then, you lousy cat-fucker. We’ll see who comes out of this alive!”
(32)
Duncan drove himself through the remnant elemental energy slowing him down. He beat it sideways and shoved it out of his way. He grabbed cat-demons by the backs of their necks and threw them aside like kittens.
Now
, his mind told him.
Now
, John echoed.
Twenty feet. Fifteen. The muscles in his thighs burned and popped. Wind beat his skin against his bones. Fire singed his hair, his face, his mouth.
He kept his gaze fixed on Bela.
She swung her sword at the white tiger-demon, and the earth shook when it struck him and lodged in his shoulder.
Strada ripped the blade out of his body, then tore the sword’s hilt out of Bela’s hands and threw it so hard it lodged in a dumpster.
Lightning blasted all around Duncan, blowing holes in the asphalt and rendering another skewered cat to ashes that streamed straight into Duncan’s face. He clawed the soot out of his eyes just before a jet of water knocked him back a step.
The white tiger-demon drew back a meaty paw and struck Bela so hard Duncan felt the blow in his own jaw.
She spun and dropped to her knees.
A rage like Duncan had never known burned away every shred of his reason. He let out a roar that started in his mouth and throat but blasted through the dinar, so loud it seemed to stretch across deserts and oceans and time itself, leaving him deaf to the battle, deaf to everything but the ragged sound of Bela’s breathing.
For a split second, the Sibyls and the demons hesitated in the pitch of their battle, stunned by the weapons-grade noise.
Duncan tore through the weakened elemental energy gripping his arms and legs and thundered past Andy, Dio, Camille, and the Mothers. He let out another roar, and cat-demons dropped to their knees, covering their ears.
Duncan broke between Strada and Bela, who was still on her knees, struggling to stand.
Duncan pulled her up and swept her behind him.
Strada’s hateful golden eyes fixed on Duncan’s dinar, and the big demon went still where he stood. All around him, Rakshasa fighters seemed to get confused. Some fell back, breaking the solid line of advance.
“Time to die.” Duncan tried to reach for Strada’s neck, but John held his arms still.
You can’t kill him with your bare hands
.
Hot rage charged through Duncan. “The hell you say. I can take him, John.”
He’s not Created. He’s Eldest, and you’re wearing the coin. You can’t touch him any more than he can touch you—the energy repels
.
“Watch me.” Duncan struggled against John’s control of his arms. He heard the Sibyls forming new ranks beside him, boxing out the cats on his left and right, and giving Bela some cover. Her soft swearing sounded like music to Duncan. If she could curse, she could breathe, and if she could breathe, he could save her—and he would, no matter what John tried to say or do.
What’s the only way out of a blind firefight in a dead-end alley?
John’s tone was scarily calm.
Duncan stopped fighting John’s interference.
He remembered John’s riddle from the thousand cranked-up, mutilated versions of Capture the Flag they had played until they starting making war for real.
“Bluff,” Duncan said, and control of his arms came back to him.
John supplied the second part of the answer.
Throw your empty gun in the other bastard’s face
.
“And run like hell,” Duncan finished, his mind completely clear again.
He did a quick check of his hands, his arms, his legs, his feet. All still there. All ready for action.
“Okay, John.” He set his jaw and took a hard breath. “You take the point.”
Duncan had the sensation of John’s awareness moving forward again, not taking over, but as close as he’d get to that now.
Strada’s eyes blazed golden, then black as Duncan stepped forward and he had to give ground. All his smaller cats moved back a few steps with him, and Duncan could see, feel, even taste how the coin repelled them.
The effect’s never been that strong before
, John said.
It was strong, all right. The tigers didn’t want to be near it, didn’t seem to be able to challenge it, not at all.
“Can you enhance it even more, John? Pull our energy through the dinar like you did my voice?”
He got no answer, but heat blazed through the coin around his neck.
The tiger-demons howled and backed off another few steps.
Duncan’s wounds burned and oozed blood, but he shifted his position enough to get an estimate of the size of the shield he and John were creating. About eight feet in all directions.
“Get behind me,” he told the Sibyls, hearing a trace of John’s voice mingling with his own. The alley wall would protect against attack from the rear. The demons couldn’t approach him from the front, not with the coin around his neck. He figured the Sibyls’ elemental energy wouldn’t penetrate the shield the coin established, and the fact they weren’t trying to use any pretty much confirmed that assumption. “Stay close.”
Whispers of movement let him know his command had been obeyed. He heard the sound of Bela’s rapid breathing, felt the heat of her presence radiate against his back, so vibrant, so
alive
, and that doubled his determination to pull off the bluff John was laying out for him.
“You are no one,” Strada growled at Duncan. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. His gaze stayed locked on the coin hanging around Duncan’s neck, and he sniffed the air, tiger nostrils flaring. “I do not know you.”
“But you do,” Duncan said with John, hearing the echo of his friend’s voice even more clearly. “I killed your true brothers in London and St. Petersburg. I slaughtered your true brothers in San Francisco and Mexico City. And soon, very soon, Strada, I’m going to kill the rest of your psychotic family—and you, too.”
The white tiger-demon threw back his head and let out an ear-crushing howl of absolute madness. His smaller kitties backed up a few more steps, and a couple of them scattered, fleeing the alley—or Strada. Duncan didn’t know or care which.
He kept eye contact with the crazed tiger-demon as more of the bastard’s followers deserted him.
Duncan. Get ready to throw your gun
.
Duncan put one arm behind his back and gave quick signals, hoping like hell somebody back there, somebody like Andy Myles, had a clue about military hand signals.
Attention. Seven. Wedge formation. North
.
“On my mark,” he said, knowing that Strada probably heard, but banking on the bastard being too confused and stunned to make sense of it.
“This is a trick.” Strada leaned toward him, eyes wide and wild. He butted his big white head against the invisible barrier the coin created. Duncan couldn’t see the field of energy, but he knew it was there. “You speak with a dead man’s voice. I tore out John Cole’s throat myself.”
“Did you?” John made Duncan’s left eye wink. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty …”
A fresh howl of rage tore out of Strada.
The alley seemed to vibrate, and Duncan understood that the new vibrations weren’t coming from the cat’s shriek or the Sibyls.
Headlights sliced into the alley. A slightly damaged Jeep with a banged-up SUV right on its ass jumped the distant curb on the side street and barreled straight down the alley toward them, bashing and scattering Rakshasa in every direction.
Brakes squealed, and Duncan caught a glimpse of Blackjack’s stony battle face through the tinted windshield.
“Move out!” Duncan shouted, and lunged toward Strada before the cat-demon even finished shrieking.
The coin’s energy pounded Duncan with a weight worse than sitting in the hot seat in a G-force simulator. His skin tried to peel off his bones, but before he exploded, he fell backward.
So did Strada and his remaining cat-demons.
By the time Duncan got to his feet, the Sibyls were loaded and the SUV and Jeep were already screeching backward out of the alley. Duncan hauled ass after them. More Sibyls were trying to cram into the alley, but Duncan waved them off and shouted, “Fall back. Get out of here. Fall back!”
His dinar-enhanced voice seemed to carry for miles.
The Sibyls hesitated only a second, then bugged out like a swarm of leather-clad ants, all heading north.
The Jeep slowed as the SUV swerved into traffic behind it, sending dozens of cars spiraling left and right and three of them crashing into the wall at Central Park. The backseat passenger door popped open, and Duncan hurled himself inside, caught the handle, and slammed the Jeep’s door shut as Blackjack gunned the engine and tore off down the pavement.
Bela cried out and grabbed for Duncan.
He wrapped both arms around her, pulled her straight off the Jeep seat, and buried his face in her leather-covered chest. Her heart thumped against his cheek as she held him and kissed his head. She was shaking. Her fists were tight in his hair. And she was alive.
He felt weak with relief, and powerful enough to bash down mountains.
Alive, alive, alive.
Duncan rocked her against him, taking in the sweet scent of leather and almonds and sweat. He was vaguely aware of Blackjack driving the Jeep with Andy next to him. The only thing that truly existed in Duncan’s world was the woman in his arms.
For a long few seconds, he kept her all to himself, doing his talking with his mouth on the whisper-soft bare skin just above her zipper. Her lips pressed against his ear, and when she pulled back, she gazed into his eyes like she was reading every word written on his soul.
Her fingers traveled across his chest to the dinar hanging on its chain outside his bloodstained shirt. When she touched it, emotion and sensation jolted him so hard he had to suck air as if he’d taken a gut punch.
Damn. Damn!
He wanted to peel her clothes off and make love to her right there, and he didn’t give a damn who saw. The same passion flared in her dark eyes, and he almost came undone.
Bela’s hand fell away from the dinar, and she tucked his head under her chin.
“Just hold me,” she whispered, and he held her for block after block, listening to the pounding of his pulse in his ears. Duncan couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing.
“… headquarters,” Blackjack was saying as he drove. “The townhouse seems like the safest place.”
Andy went stiff in her seat. Bela sat up straighter in Duncan’s lap, and concern forced him to look up at her. It was then he realized that she had a massive bruise on her cheek, so bad her jaw might not work right for a month.
He thought about Strada, and about tearing the cat-demon’s head off his big white body. After he ripped off the bastard’s legs and arms. One at a time.
“That looks bad, Angel.” He touched her chin just below the bruise.
Bela put a hand to her face. “Sibyls heal quickly,” she said, but he caught the edge in her tone as her eyes stayed fixed on Andy.
“Hey.” Duncan gently turned her to face him. He inclined his head toward the front seat and lowered his voice so Blackjack couldn’t hear him. “I don’t know what you’re worried about, but don’t. Whatever might go down at the townhouse, I’ve got your back—and hers.”
Bela’s expression softened. She moved her fingers from her own cheek to his. “I’ve fought beside some of the best warriors in the world, but watching you face down a horde of Rakshasa demons with nothing but your bare hands and a dinar on a chain—that was worth seeing.”
Duncan smiled at her. “I’ve never seen anybody use a sword the way you did. Pretty mean kick you’ve got, too.”
Bela glanced at Andy. “I’d do anything to save them.”
Her voice caught, and her chest hitched.
Duncan took Bela’s chin in his hand and turned her face back to his so that she could see the truth in his eyes. “Then so would I.”
He kissed her then, and settled her head under his chin. As far as he was concerned, he could hold her forever, if he had forever left.