Bound by Flame (20 page)

Numb, Cynda forced herself to nod.

Puppetlike, she walked Mother Keara back to the communications platform and helped her to mount it.

The old woman chatted about upcoming equinox festivals and the progress of a few initiates Cynda had known, but Cynda didn’t hear more than a few words.

Everything seemed dull and shattered.

By the time she placed Mother Keara in the platform’s center and started her dance around the old woman, she just wanted to be alone. Maybe forever.

Cynda raised her arms and concentrated on her steps and patterns, on the elemental fire-force needed to seek out the old channels and grind them open.

I am the pestle of my triad,
she thought as she spun in a wide circle around Mother Keara, faster and faster.
I am the connection between mortar and broom. I stand in the fire and speak when no one wants to hear my words. Let the flames burn as I speak when cowards would choose silence. I speak until no smoke obscures the truth.

Above them, Cynda’s image became a blur in the collection of projective mirrors on the wall. The sets of wind chimes in her room rang softly at first, then louder and louder, taking on the rhythm of her dance. Cynda turned loose her inner fire, for once secure in the knowledge that she would burn nothing, harm nothing, as the energy transformed into powerful, pulsing demands on the old channels that riddled the universe. Sparks skittered along the table’s lead-lined lip, and little flames shot upward, not too high, just high enough. Heat blazed inside Cynda as the air changed, the light changed. Electricity crackled through the room, and the carved bog-oak mirror leading to Motherhouse Ireland brightened.

Smoke swirled in the glass, then parted to reveal waiting adepts.

The women stepped forward and began their own dance.

Cynda poured her anguish into the chaotic abandon of the dance. She joined with her fire Sibyl sisters with a loud, gut-level cry, spending the full force of her elemental power reaching across time and space, opening the channels, opening the world before her.

Mother Keara’s presence and essence flowed past Cynda, into the channels, and the old woman was gone, gone, back across the sea, sweeping back to the secret little valley near Kylemore Abbey faster than any human eye could see.

When Cynda sensed the transfer was complete, she slowed her steps, then carefully completed and closed her patterns, moving her feet in ways she had known since her childhood.

She had been taught well. She had learned well.

In her most prized bog-oak mirror, Mother Keara now stood with the adepts on the communications platform inside Motherhouse Ireland. She blew Cynda a kiss and turned away.

Cynda drew air through her teeth, in and out, in and out, and watched until the mirror went completely dark.

Then she climbed off the platform. Her legs seemed too heavy to move, but she walked to her door.

When she opened it, Nick was standing in the hallway, right where he said he would be.

Cynda searched inside herself for words, explanations, something tangible to give him so he would understand what she had to do.

The look on his handsome face went from avid pleasure to confusion to concern, then to unhappy understanding.

Some things don’t require discussion.

Hadn’t he said that to her?

“Whatever it is, we can—” he started, but Cynda shook her head.

The hurt in his diamond-black eyes clawed at her insides.

Her throat closed off completely. She choked when she tried to breathe.

Before he could say anything else, she shut the door—but her fingers wouldn’t turn the lock. Her arms and legs mutinied, and she couldn’t even move.

Minutes dragged by.

Cynda stood there with her hand on the door handle, blood thumping in her temples, terrified Nick would say something she could hear through the thick wood.

Or knock.

Or kick the door down.

But he didn’t.

A cry tore its way out of Cynda’s locked throat. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the cool, hard wood. Her knees refused to hold her, and she sank slowly to the floor, crying so hard the sobs made her body ache.

Slowly, Cynda curled herself into a ball, her head still against the wood.

She stayed there for an hour. Then hours. Finally, all night. She had no idea what else to do.

12

Andy Myles left for a much-needed vacation before sunrise on Saturday morning. Nick put her on the redeye to Florida himself, way before first light. All through the airport, she’d seemed draggy, tired, almost out of it. Definitely broken, definitely needing time to herself to patch her insides together again. He hoped the sand and sun would restore her. He also wondered if someone would be putting him on a plane for the beach soon. He was so pissed he might fry his brain cells and end up like Andy—permanently.

He seethed as he crouched in a little stand of elms near Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

Whatever the Mothers had done to Cynda two nights ago, she was damn sure going to tell him about it
today
. He had tried to talk to her four different times on Friday, but he couldn’t get her away from her triad, and she didn’t sleep in her own room last night. He had slept in a chair outside Merilee’s library after he made sure that’s where Cynda was, just to be sure he was close enough to help if anything went down.

How was he supposed to guard a woman who was avoiding him?

The last thirty-six hours, he could swear they dragged on forever, even at times like this, when he left Cynda with the Sibyls to protect her and went out tracking leads on Max Moses. By God, they would discuss everything, even if he had to throw her over his shoulder, haul her down to the stone basement gym she couldn’t burn, and lock her inside.

Well…after everyone took care of business—the business he was about to haul back to the townhouse.

Nick flexed his fingers, ignoring the cold, the polished-steel scent of impending snow, ignoring the way the dawn light turned so gray it looked like sheet ice across the sunless sky. Wind whipped through the branches and undergrowth concealing him, sounding like bones rattling in a can. He had been waiting for this moment. He could almost taste the satisfaction of the next twenty minutes.

Max Moses had some explaining to do, if he lived long enough to speak.

He had managed to stay underground since the Sweetbriar house catastrophe, but Nick knew Max had needs that wouldn’t let him stay hidden forever. Delilah Moses had been right about a goat being a goat. Max was back on the bottle and the blunt and who knew what else. True to the scuttlebutt Nick had picked up on his travels yesterday, Max was less than ten yards from him, finishing an illicit buy.

Let the bastard have his drugs.

By the time Nick finished with Max, the scum would
need
something for his nerves.

Deep inside Nick’s mind, Gideon snarled like a hungry panther. Nick’s demon-half surged, rose, outlined his flesh with a golden line of energy. If he wasn’t careful, he’d singe his jeans.

Too much frustration.

Too much outright rage. He had to be careful.

Nick narrowed his eyes, waiting for the transaction to proceed.

It took a few seconds, but Max finally finished his purchase.

The mule took Max’s money and ran, literally, jogging onto one of Central Park’s paved paths. Dressed in his expensive sweats, jacket, and sneakers, the guy would have been hard to pick out as someone who moved drugs for a living.

Max, on the other hand, looked rougher than usual. He wore a pair of grimy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt full of holes and stains, and his face was more fading bruise than pocked skin. Most important, Max didn’t have a bit of jewelry Nick could see. Unless his grubby clothes were talismans, or he had some crap hidden in his pockets, he was toast.

As Max gazed into his bag in full view of dozens of joggers and walkers—a no-no for any junkie who hadn’t already lost his self-respect—Nick moved.

The hood on Max’s sweatshirt made for easy pickings. Nick had to exert all of his self-control not to yank the scum into the trees so fast and hard his neck snapped.

No one saw a thing.

No one seemed to hear a thing, either, not even when Max crashed to the ground in the underbrush at Nick’s feet.

His bag went flying.

Flailing, whimpering, Max tried to flip onto his belly to make a grab for his dope, but Nick moved too fast for any human to react. He dropped to one knee and held Max on his back with the force of one slightly glowing hand on the man’s throat.

Max coughed and sputtered. He grabbed Nick’s wrist with both hands, but the effort was futile.

“Thought you knew better than to cross me.” Nick let Gideon’s near-presence add an echoing resonance to his words.

Max’s eyes went wide. He didn’t bother whimpering about police brutality, or posturing about how Nick couldn’t hurt him. In the circles they traveled, such myths didn’t even exist.

“I had to.” Max’s voice came out in a choked whisper. “I told you—I
had
to.”

“Make me understand.” Nick increased the pressure of his grip. “Make me believe you.”

This turned Max’s expression from pathetic to miserable. His greenish bruises stretched as he grimaced. “Downy’s got me mum, like I said. If I don’t do what she says, the nut-bitch will kill her. Are you wantin’ Delilah dead?”

“Where’s Downy keeping her?”

“At the Bronx house I told you about, last I knew. She could’a moved her by now.”

Nick shifted his weight and managed not to kill Max in the process. Gideon’s closeness made the tang of Max’s fear almost palpable. Fear and something else. The sharp undertone of rage. “I need more details, Max.”

Max hesitated.

Nick ratcheted the pressure on the man’s throat one more notch. “If you want Delilah to live, if
you
want to live, you’ll tell me everything you know.
Now
.”

With a slow exhalation of breath, Nick allowed Gideon to step forward another fraction. He knew what would happen, that Max would see Nick’s outline shimmer and shift into something alien, something
other
. He bared his teeth to heighten the effect.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! You’re like them!” Max squirmed against the ground, then went still save for panting. Nick eased Gideon deeper, and reverted to his human form.

Max gaped at him, then said in a rush, “When I found out Mum had been grabbed, I went to the Bronx house. You know, just to see what I could find out.”

Nick nodded and eased up on the man’s neck.

“Place looked empty, only when I got close, I got jumped. And they kept me there until
she
came.” Max closed his eyes for a moment. “That Downy woman. Mean-faced. Mean-hearted. She had Delilah in cuffs on her wrists and arms. It was right pitiful.”

Max shuddered.

Convincing enough, except this was Max, and Max really
knew
how to lie.

“Go on,” Nick said. Not encouraging. Ordering.

“The ones holding Mum for Downy, they aren’t people, see? They aren’t even—well, whatever you are. Or those gold monsters I set on you at City Island. These are all something else. They’re…all demon. Mostly you can’t even see ’em, and they keep tabs on those Sibyl chicks, finding out their schedules and stuff, trying to figure out when they’ll be apart and all.”

Nick felt his eyebrows lift.

An organized group of Astaroths?

Snow started to fall.

Nick frowned at his captive. “You’re a sensitive. What do you sense about these demons?”

Even though Nick had once more eased the pressure on Max’s throat, the informant looked ashen and sick. He shivered. “They’re evil. Pure evil, like they’re made out of hate. They want the fire bitches to die. All of them. ’Cause it’s what
she
wants.”

“Why?” Nick asked himself more than Max.

“I don’t know,” the informant said. Then, as Nick once more let Gideon get close, “Jesus! I don’t know!”

Gideon eased back, and Nick felt his skin settle into itself. “How many demons are in the Bronx house?”

“A lot. Couple of dozen, maybe more—and that’s just the one house.” Max twitched. “They’ve got more houses, and not just in New York. Other cities, too. Downy’s collecting demons like crazy people collect cats.”

“Give me names, Max. Legion or demon—whatever you’ve got.”

This question drew a bunch of twitches, but Nick didn’t even have to up the pressure on the informant’s throat to make him say, “Just one. I think he’s the head creator, or maybe the boss of all the demons. Guy named Jacob.”

Nick turned Max loose so fast the informant didn’t realize he was free for a full five seconds. Then he scrambled to his feet, grabbed his bag of dope, and faced Nick, rubbing his throat. Nick’s heightened senses picked up the shift from acrid terror to sulfurous anger.

“All of this is boinked, you know that?” The informant glared at him.

“Yeah,” Nick replied, mind spinning.

Jake.
Leading
the Bronx house Astaroths?

Helping Downy keep an old woman prisoner?

They’re evil. All of them. Pure evil
. That was Max’s opinion.

Nick’s gut burned.

And what’s mine?

Downy could be forcing Jake. He could have gotten tired of the penalties for fighting her.

Or he could have been playing me for an idiot all along.

Max shoved his way into the nearby brush, but Nick lunged forward, grabbed him by the collar, pushed him to the ground, yanked his arms behind his back, and cuffed him.

“Max Moses, you’re under arrest.”

Max squirmed and kicked, then groaned as Nick hauled him to his feet. “For what?”

“Attempted murder of about fifteen cops and a bunch of other people on City Island. Property destruction. We could add conspiracy—I’ll keep thinking. Oh, and possession of whatever the hell’s in your little bag.”