Bound by Shadow (15 page)

Riana retrieved a set of her daggers from the closet.

Cynda cursed some more and grabbed her sword. “You know they’re headed for the Bronx. For the trail. You know they are, Riana.”

“I know.” Riana wanted to slap Andy and kill Creed. And she had to agree with Merilee—what did they think they would accomplish? It was suicide, going after Asmodai with conventional weapons.

“They’ve got five minutes on us,” Cynda pointed out. “Maybe six or seven, and more each second we stand here and bitch.”

Merilee popped the door another good one, then turned back to Cynda and Riana. “Should I get the Jeep?”

Riana blew a long breath through the tiny opening in her face mask. “Yes. Get the damned Jeep. Let’s go.”

12

Andy laid tracks up the Major Deegan Expressway. Outside the Crown Vic, the lights of the Bronx flashed by at record speed. Creed clenched his fists against his knees and tried to focus on the darkness. Riana would probably think he’d lied to her when she found him gone. He hoped he’d get the chance to explain that Andy had come unglued, that he couldn’t let his partner plunge into weird shit with no backup. And Andy wouldn’t have called for backup. They were off their turf, out of their area of authority, and about to be friggin’ out of their league.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked again, keeping his voice as calm and quiet as he could.

“Shut up.” Andy squinted so much Creed wondered if she actually closed her eyes while she was driving. “You’ve seen one. Thing. Monster. Whatever I’m going to see. You don’t have to take a bunch of unbelievable bullshit on faith. And you didn’t just find out all your best friends are witches or wizards or voodoo queens.”

“Sibyls,” he supplied, then regretted it when she banged her hand on the steering wheel. The Crown Vic swerved.

Creed decided silence was the best option.

Andy drove without speaking for another few minutes, breathing heavily, then said, “And you. My partner. The man who knows
everything
about
me
. When were you going to tell me you just happen to be a—a—whatever you are? Next week? Next year? The twelfth of never?”

“Never, but not because I don’t trust you.” Creed grimaced as Andy swerved around an 18-wheeler and cut off an SUV. The driver blared the horn. “I don’t talk about my…uh, problem. Never have. Never intended to.”

“You told Riana and the girls, and you hadn’t even known them a day.”

“Chrissake, Andy, they had me naked and handcuffed to a ceiling beam—and they pulled off my ring. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

Andy hit the Crown Vic’s blinker and swerved toward the West 230th exit and Van Cortlandt Park South. He thought he saw her face slacken, and she wasn’t crying anymore. Either she was intrigued about what they were about to find on the John Muir Nature Trail, she was considering forgiving him, or she had finished leaping into a pit of total bat-shit craziness.

Clearly, Andy didn’t handle shock well.

Creed had to give her a break on that one. It was a lot to find out your best friends worked as leather-clad paranormal warriors by night and your partner was some kind of demon. All in less than a day.

“So,” Andy said a little too calmly as she made the turn onto Bailey Avenue. “Are you just going to fuck Riana, or do you plan to get serious?”

Creed felt the
other
stir as he thought about Riana against the bars of that jail cell, writhing with pleasure as he touched her. About the way she felt in his arms, the heat of her juices on his fingers. God, she tasted sweet. All woman. It took him a moment to calm his thoughts and the beast inside, and when he opened his mouth, he intended to take a turn telling Andy to shut up. He wanted to tell her he didn’t want to talk about a woman the
other
wouldn’t let him have.

Instead, he laughed.

At least Andy wasn’t losing her mind after everything she’d heard back at the brownstone. She was being a total bitch, yeah, but total bitch was one hundred percent the partner he knew.

“Because if you’re just planning to fuck her, you might be in trouble,” Andy went on, for once keeping her eyes fixed on the road. “I don’t think Ri and the girls do casual, past the random gym sex toy.”

Creed gave her what he knew was a blank look, because he was trying to keep all expression off his face. “Random gym sex toy?”

Andy shrugged, then jerked the Crown Vic’s wheel to the left, making the corner on two wheels, three tops. “You know. Muscle hunks from the gym. They’re good for one-night stands when the battery-operated boyfriend just won’t cut it. Good exercise, too. Extra cardio.”

“That’s, uh, probably too much information.” Creed watched signs for the Van Cortlandt Golf House flash by. He didn’t like the image of Riana cruising for muscle hunks at the gym. He resisted the urge to check the definition of his biceps.

Andy ended up getting turned around trying to find a good place to leave the car, exiting the park, and barely listening to Creed when he told her the best place to reenter. He knew the park better than she did, since he had run cross-country events in Van Cortlandt before. She swore a lot as Creed directed her onto the Henry Hudson, then back off at Broadway, so they could get to the Riverdale Equestrian Centre.

“It’s closer to the trail,” he said over her swearing.

She swore some more and griped about losing valuable time.

As she pulled into a parking space, Creed said, “Andy, if I hadn’t gotten knocked out in the alley, that Asmodai would have killed me. I know you need to see things for yourself, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt.” She threw the Crown Vic into park, jerked the keys from the ignition, and opened her door. “You’ll protect me. I have faith.”

Creed got out in a hurry as Andy circled around to her trunk.

Powerful scents of grass, water, and moist, fertile dirt washed over him, carried by the chilly breeze. The air smelled sharp, too, almost acrid, and Creed’s skin crawled with the sensation of unnatural energy rippling through the dark fall night. The big red buildings of the riding stables seemed too dark, too quiet, as if the horses knew to be absolutely silent.

Andy dug in the trunk, jerked out two NYPD standard vests, and handed Creed his body armor. He automatically shrugged into the padded straps and jerked the Velcro closings tight over his T-shirt at the sides.

While she fastened her own Velcro, Andy said, “We don’t have the right weapons, do we? Pistols probably won’t make a difference with these things.”

“Pistols won’t make a difference.” Creed grabbed two black flashlights out of the trunk, and tossed Andy one of them. Before he even got his flashlight switched on, she had started toward the stables. “Hold up a sec,” he called after her. “You’re going the wrong way.”

She stopped and looked back at him, obviously annoyed. “So which direction is the John Muir trail?”

“Stay back a step or two.” Creed got his flashlight on, and he jogged east toward the trail entrance, intending to keep Andy behind him so she would at least have a human shield. “The aqueduct’s about halfway down—a mile? Maybe not that much.”

As he made the slight left turn onto the John Muir trail, he couldn’t see the stone bridge abutments from the old Getty Square spur of the New York Central, but he knew they were there. His super-bright beam splashed against about three hundred feet of oak, tulip, and hickory trees crowding the white curb running at the edge of the pavement. In the few tree breaks, he could see city lights glowing against the sky like beacons, summoning them back to safety. Ahead of him, the trail seemed to stretch into oblivion. Definitely not safe. Van Cortlandt Park had over a thousand acres of ball fields and playgrounds and thick forest, with a golf course and streams and even the biggest freshwater lake in the Bronx. Tonight, it had Asmodai, too. Creed doubted they would do much for the ambience.

Andy’s sneakers ground against the pavement as she ran to keep up. Creed didn’t bother to slow down, to ask her the plan, or to come up with one himself. No way to plan for the unknown.

Just charge in and hope we kill what’s trying to kill us.
Before
it kills us.

He crossed a bridge, then headed past the spot where, in the daytime, trail walkers could look across the Henry Hudson and see the big Fordham Gneiss rock formation on their left—a piece of the ancient bedrock that held up New York City. Creed hoped that bedrock was as strong as it always looked to him. There was enough going on in the Big Apple to rock the city right down to that gray, flinty core.

The night felt wrong. The air smelled wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the
other
coiled in his gut, snarling insistently.

His ring started to vibrate.

Okay.

Bad shit. Dangerous shit. And really close, too.

He jogged forward, faster now, pushed by the
other,
forgetting more and more about caution and sanity. The flashlight beam danced off the trees, the pavement, and ultimately, the high metal mesh fence separating the trail from the Van Cortlandt Golf Course. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of place.

Yet
.

Was that a rustle in the leaves?

A scraping, a thump?

Something growled.

Then something up ahead, something in the endless darkness of the vines and plants and trees between him and the natural staircase, let out a feral roar.

A woman shouted, then screamed.

“Shit!” Creed doubled his speed and heard Andy pounding along behind him. The staircase had to be just ahead. Creed swept his light back and forth, searching for the stone steps. Hard to see. Made to look like part of the landscape. There. There!

Another scream tore the air, followed by a curse.

Those sounded familiar.

Had Riana’s triad reached Van Cortlandt and joined the battle while Andy was driving all over the Bronx?

The
other
made a charge inside Creed, turning his gut and making his ribs ache. His skin pulsed. He clamped his teeth tighter and gripped the flashlight. One of his eyes closed from the effort of keeping the thing contained.

Too much uncertainty.

Too much strange shit.

He never had this much trouble with the
other
when he was on his own turf, in his own element.

The reek of sulfur and burned flesh filled the air. Turned dirt. Burning leaves. A breeze bashed into Creed as he stumbled over the first of the natural stone steps leading upward toward a rough stone building that once belonged to the old Croton Aqueduct. Seconds later, Andy plowed into him from behind. Creed bounced a knee off the next rock ledge but didn’t slow down or turn around. If Andy fell backward and came up the steps more slowly, so much the better. What the hell was she planning to do?

What the hell am
I
planning to do?

But he went up, scrambling for each step, trying to keep the flashlight beam in front of him. He crested the hill and pelted down the path toward the melee he could hear near the aqueduct building. Grunts and curses rang out, along with the crack and spark of metal striking stone. Jets of fire blazed upward and sideways, too. An arrow whizzed by his head and buried itself in a tree with a sickening
chock
.

“Down!” Shouted a woman’s voice. “Left. Left, Bela!”

A wall of dirt slammed into Creed. Dirt and rock rained on his head as he lunged toward the aqueduct building and trained his flashlight forward. Something heavy crashed against his arm. Electric shocks traveled all over his skin. He shouted as his flashlight went spinning into the night. He tried to jump away from what hit him, but rough hands grabbed him by the sides of his vest and jerked him off the ground.

In the bouncing light of Andy’s fast-approaching beam, Creed found himself looking into the face of a big-boned man with drooping jowls and a thick, ridged brow. For some reason, he couldn’t get a fix on age or nationality, or any of the features beyond basic shape. He grabbed the bastard’s wrists—and shook from what had to be a serious electric shock. Cursing out loud and even louder in his mind, Creed let go. The man held on to the sides of his body armor, dangling him just off the ground like a toy.

Creed drew back his fist to punch the guy, then froze again when the man blinked. An eerie gray light came from the freak’s eyes, and Creed thought he saw swirls of black inside that light. Like tornados, getting closer and bigger. The man opened his mouth. A sound came out like the rush-roar of a hurricane, and wind stronger than a g-force simulation slammed into Creed. His hair and clothes swept backward. His body armor flapped and tugged against his waist. He thought the skin was going to peel right off his face.

The
other
flailed inside him, roaring right back at the freak. Creed felt his fist moving forward, then swinging forward, powered by his own rage and the rage of the creature inside him. The wind’s resistance shattered. Lightning crashed through every muscle in Creed’s body when his knuckles made contact with the thing’s nose, but the freak let him go.

Flying.

Back down the trail, away from the aqueduct building.

He crash-landed into something that fell heavily to the ground beneath him. His ears rang from the roar of the wind that thing had thrown at him, but he could hear well enough to make out Andy’s muffled threats and insults. As fast as he could manage, fighting to keep control of his senses and not let the
other
run away from him, he rolled off her, facedown in the dirt of the trail. He got a good mouthful before he pushed up on his hands and knees.

“Jesus H. Christ on two fucking crutches” came Andy’s voice from beside him. She sat up and snatched her flashlight off the ground. Creed winced as its beam blazed into his face.

“What are those things?” She swept the light up the path, toward the aqueduct building, at least fifteen yards ahead of them. “And are those the Sibyls? The chicks in the leather bodysuits?”