Bound by Flame (14 page)

Nick straightened and tensed as he listened to the informant’s nasal Irish brogue—which sounded more like a whine to Cynda than anything else. She was getting tense, too, over what Max was saying, but she couldn’t quite believe she was hearing him right.

“What’s he talking about?” Andy asked.

“I’ve got no choice, you understand,” Max told Nick. “It’s you or Delilah—and you didn’t spit me out.”

Nick raised one hand, keeping his Glock in the other. “Slow it down. One step at a time, Max.”

“Don’t have any time left. Sorry.” Max closed his eyes. Sweat creased every line and crevice on his ugly face.

Riana and Cynda moved at the same time. Before they could reach Max, he shouted, “Kill them all. Burn the house when you’re done.”

His cornflower eyes snapped open as Cynda grabbed for the chains around his neck to yank him toward her—and she understood.

Talismans.

“His jewelry!” She yelled, going colder than all the ice and snow in New York City. “It’s all talismans!”

“Trap,” Nick thundered.

“Trap!” SWAT echoed into the radios on their shoulders. Creed and Andy swung left, then right, firearms aiming at nothing.

Riana raised her hands, gathering earth energy. Cynda zipped her mask, yanked her goggles into place, and drew her sword.

The air…changed.

Turned electric.

Turned
wrong
.

The wall behind Cynda bulged inward.

Nick held his Glock to the side and tackled Cynda—crushed her facedown, arms out, against the wood floors. Her sword clattered across the wooden boards.

Pain fired through her arms and legs as the wall caved in and the Victorian exploded in roaring golden
others
.

8

Nick covered Cynda with his body and held her to the floor as Curson demons stormed straight over the top of them, through the outer wall and into the Victorian’s living room. Their heavy feet crushed into his spine and shoulders. Pain thumped across his whole body, but he held his spot, held on to Cynda, and kept them from smashing her.

Glowing monsters clogged the space, steaming in the rush of cold air, bashing barriers between rooms and turning the entire downstairs into a thousand-square-foot battlefield.

Killing ground.

Nick looked up as demon energy scorched into his back. The stench of burning ozone filled his nose. Blood pounded in his ears as he half shifted to fend off the heat and weight—and the things didn’t seem to notice him. He realized he had probably shifted enough that they took him for one of their own.

Gideon roared in his mind, digging at his insides. Nick wanted to turn his
other
loose so badly he could taste the tang of fire in his mouth.

Can’t.

If Creed and I shift, Sibyls and SWAT won’t know who to kill.

“Hit ’em in the brains or hearts!” Andy hollered to SWAT, firing her SIG.

She winged her target. The wounded Curson roared and charged her, but she rolled out of the way. Other demons squared off with human targets and trapped Creed and Riana between them.

Cynda struggled against Nick, trying to get up.

Shit!

More gunshots blasted against his senses.

He couldn’t protect Cynda and fight, too. He shifted back to full human. Smoke and gunpowder made his eyes water.

Demons bellowed, and the house seemed to rock.

It
was
rocking.

Riana, using earth energy.

Chunks of ceiling and broken wall and dirt pelted the floor in front of Nick’s head. Demons crashed to the floor, caught by surprise and knocked off balance. Nick kept Cynda beneath him for another long moment, shielding her as best he could, even though he could feel her fire sizzling through his raid jacket.

“I’m a Sibyl,” she yelled loud enough to be heard over the crashing and gunshots. “Let me up!”

It was the last thing he wanted to do.

But it was fight or die.

He rolled off Cynda, jumped toward her sword, and kicked it back to her. They’d do this together. He’d cover her as best he could.

Cynda snatched her sword by the hilt and leaped to her feet in a single motion, smoking all over. With her face mask and goggles in place, he couldn’t see the rage on her face, but he knew she was pissed.

Her blade burst into flames.

“Behind you!” he yelled as a demon charged her.

Cynda spun to meet it, sword raised.

Nick aimed his Glock at the thing’s face, but Cynda cut the demon’s knees out from under it, literally, before Nick could fire. The eight-foot golden monster bellowed and smashed to the wood floor.

Roaring almost as loud as the demon, Cynda swung her broadsword in a powerful downward arc and lopped off its head.

The world stopped.

Light blazed.

Nick saw nothing at all but searing, painful gold brightness. Something like a crate of dynamite blasted him so hard he felt the noise like fists against his ears. His sense of up, down, right, and left deserted him.

He staggered in a circle, then hit his knees and almost heaved.

Did some jackass throw a flashbang at a bunch of demons?

Spinning…

Everything spinning…

He took slow breaths, inhaling a dizzy combination of ozone, sulfur fire, and dirt. He let his head loll, and centered himself like he had taken a kick to the head in a sparring match. Gideon surged up in his consciousness, lending him strength, feeding him focus and energy.

Bit by bit, the room came back into focus.

Everything still seemed gray and wavy, but Nick saw all four SWAT members in the center of the room, down on their knees, puking.

Riana and Andy were down, too, near the back of the room—no puking.

Creed was on his feet by Riana but half-changed, his head glowing, his pulsing, golden hands sticking out of his raid jacket.

Thank God the demons were stunned, too. Frozen like big golden monuments all around the room.

What the hell?

Nick got to his feet and managed to turn back toward the destroyed outer wall.

Cynda lay flat on her face by a piece of that wall, next to her sword. Smoke belched through a gaping hole in the floor beside her, big enough to show the concrete basement below.

Cold rage and panic charged through Nick. Growling along with Gideon, he ran toward her, almost fell, found his balance, and reached her side as she rolled over. Her goggles had shattered. He stripped them away and knocked them aside. Her face mask and leathers were scorched nearly off in the front, leaving only strands of black covering bits of her bra and panties. Her face itself was strawberry red, and she had a bruise under her left eye.

“Sonofabitch.” Nick touched the bruise with his fingertip as her eyelids fluttered. Then he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her toward him, intending to pick her up and carry her straight out of that damned house.

Have to protect her this time. Have to get her out of here. And lead the demons to the air Sibyls and SWAT snipers.

“Curson energy,” she muttered, pushing back, shoving him away. She scrambled to sit up, already groping for her sword. “Cursons don’t break down into the elements when they die.”

Nick grabbed for her again, but she smacked him in the arm until he stopped trying to get hold of her. Bare shoulders smoking, she grabbed his face and stared into his eyes. “Don’t get killed. You’ll blow up.”

Nick slowly processed what she was saying. So did the
other
inside him.

All at once the frozen demons thawed, bellowing and moving again.

“Plug ears and cover eyes when you take one down!” Nick shouted over the chaos. “Bastards explode when you kill them. Let’s get outside. Now!”

He finally succeeded in looping his arm around Cynda and lifting her to her feet. Demons seemed to be everywhere at once. As he and Cynda moved, one of the beasts fixed on them and lumbered forward, golden arms outstretched.

“Down!” Riana yelled.

Nick ducked and forced Cynda to the floor with him as the earth Sibyl hurled a dagger past Nick’s ear.

At the same time, he felt earth energy drape him and Cynda like a cold, dark blanket.

A flash of light made him blink, and he heard a muted explosion.

Another hole opened in the floor, revealing more of the concrete basement.

Another demon gone.

Riana’s earth energy peeled away.

That left what, ten Cursons? Twelve? Frozen in place.

Two SWAT members were on their knees again heaving, but Andy, Creed, Riana, Nick, and Cynda had been protected by Riana’s elemental power.

“I’m a warrior. How many times do I have to tell you?” Cynda hit his shoulder with her free hand once, twice, three times. When he looked at her expecting rage, he saw only serious concentration and determination. “Fight with me or get out of my way.”

Cynda’s words punched deep inside Nick’s consciousness. He sucked in a breath and let her go.

“Everybody pick one,” Andy called.

All the functioning members of the assault team took position in front of a different immobilized demon.

Creatures like me,
Nick thought as he raised his Glock and sighted his target.
Men like me.

These poor bastards probably didn’t even know who they were fighting, or why. They had been commanded by the holder of their talisman—what choice did they have?

But he had to kill them or die. Let Cynda die. And Creed and Riana and Andy, and the SWAT members, too.

“Three,” Cynda called, holding her sword with a two-fisted grip. “Two, one!”

Nick shot the Curson in front of him right between its glowing eyes.

At the same instant, he saw Cynda ram her sword through her eight-foot demon at heart level. Riana used another dagger, also to the heart. Creed punched his glowing golden fist into a demon’s head, and Andy shot one in the brain just as Nick had.

Simultaneously, another blanket of earth energy coated them all, protecting them from the fallout.

Nick watched, gut-sick, as the dead Cursons blasted out of existence.

Gaping holes formed in the wood floor where their bodies had fallen. The house started to shudder. Too much damage. The structure wasn’t sound.

Riana’s earth cloak peeled back.

Winter cold slapped Nick in the face. He coughed at the stench of gunpowder. It cleared his mind—so he had a perfect view of the volley of elementally locked arrows that came screaming through the Victorian’s destroyed walls.

The other Sibyls and SWAT members had reached the house—but they didn’t know what would happen when the demons died.

Riana raised her hands. Not in time to form a full shield.

Nick didn’t even get to yell before the whole world detonated in one motherfucker of a flashbang.

Frigid water streamed across Nick’s face. He choked and jerked himself upright, feeling cold, wet concrete beneath his palms.

“Somebody find that friggin’ water main,” a man yelled.

Creed?

Ice water kept blasting against his chest, seeping in through rents in his raid jacket.

Nick scooted himself sideways. Calling to Gideon, he shifted the few areas of his body that felt damaged to
other
form and back again—both eardrums, a leg, an arm, his neck—and struggled to his feet. Afternoon sunlight felt like Sibyl daggers in both eyes, but he shook that off and squinted around him.

He was in the basement.

The Victorian had come apart in boards and plaster and chunks. The copper tang of blood mixed with the acrid smell of vomit and fire. Little blazes flickered from wires and wood. Geysers of water shot from the walls and through cracks in the basement floor, like half of Pelham Bay was leaking into the pit where the house used to be. Air Sibyls blew aside debris with gusts of wind, then knelt to tend to wounded members of the SWAT team.

One of the SWAT members had a board sticking out of her leg.

Nick lurched a few steps forward as he battled a wave of queasy frustration.

His brain wound back to full awareness, and his next thought was,
Cynda?

As he turned to search for her, Creed stepped in front of him and grabbed both of his upper arms. “You with me?”

“Yeah.” Nick coughed. “I’m here.”

Creed let him go. “We’ve got six SWAT down, the four from inside and two that got hit by debris outside. The Forty-fifth Precinct’s setting up a perimeter, keeping back the public. Ambulances rolled up for the wounded about three minutes ago.” He gestured to a prone form lying a few feet from Nick and raised his voice over a new hissing, spewing jet of water that shot up near them. “Grab Cynda. She’s unconscious, but Riana says she’s okay. We gotta roll.”

Nick went straight to Cynda, chest tight, barely sucking in enough air to keep himself on his feet. He dropped to his knees beside her and checked her for himself. Pulse steady. Color good. Respiration regular. Leathers torn to hell. Lots of little cuts.

He breathed a little deeper.

She’ll have a headache from those blasts and the fall.

But she was still alive, and in one piece. Nick wasn’t sure if he had protected her, but he’d damn sure done his best. He pulled off his battered, burned, and wet raid jacket, slipped her arms into it, and zipped it to give her a little cover.

When he scooped her off the wet concrete floor, she groaned and turned into him, draping an arm around his neck.

Nick didn’t waste time trying to wake her. Creed was right. They had to get the OCU and the Sibyls off-scene as fast as possible.

Keeping his head down and his face turned from King Avenue, where most of the crowd was gathering, Nick followed Riana, Merilee, and Creed, who was carrying a moaning Andy, up a rescue ramp. They headed out of the basement, through a line of local Bronx officers, away from the Victorian at an angle to a side street, so they would miss onrushing press vans and emergency vehicles.

A few seconds later, Cynda woke up.