Bound by Light (53 page)

Merilee and Delilah walked faster, staying at the fringes of all the banners and balloons and cheering people waving signs and placards. They skirted the left side of the bandshell until they drew even with the front columns and escaped into the green area behind. Most of that space had been cordoned off, and they slipped past a distracted guard.

"There," Delilah suggested, indicating a deserted spot on the red-brick terrace surrounding Bethesda Fountain. The tiered fountain wasn’t under guard or restricted by tape or barriers.

They came to a stop in front of the fountain, and Merilee’s dulled vision took in the way the lights played off the water sheeting down from the tiers. At the bottom, a pool. Short columns rose to support another bowl, this one crested by a group of four cherublike figures meant to represent the virtues of Temperance, Purity, Health, and Peace. Above that, the crowning piece, the Angel of the Waters, an eight-foot bronze winged woman holding a lily, blessing the water below her.

Merilee wished the statue could come to life and bless
her
.

Goddesses of Olympus, she needed it now.

Because she was shaking like an adept before her initiation into battle rites.

She moved her arm, letting the arrow inch down until its sharp tip pressed into her wrist.

One arrow against the largest, most powerful demon ever known.

Should I hit him in the throat? The eye? How do I begin to disable a Leviathan enough to take him to the Keres—and even if I do, how will I get him past the security here, and all the way to Greece?

Behind the big fountain, Central Park’s lake twinkled in the moonlight. To the left lay the route to Strawberry Fields, and to the right, the exit to Fifth Avenue.

"He’ll come this way," Delilah was saying. "I know, because he’s plannin’ to meet the limousine at Fifth when it’s over—and he’ll notice you, like you’re want-in’ him to. Here. Outside the car."

Three hours, twenty-three minutes.

Yeah.

Who the hell knew if Delilah was telling the truth, even now?

Merilee clenched her teeth.

It didn’t matter, really, because she was about to make damned sure the demon noticed her and came to her. Right now.

She cleared her mind again, then threw her entire focus into her suppressed air energy. She knew she couldn’t stir it much, but enough . . . maybe enough.

The sluggish wind inside her tried to rise to her call, but dropped back in sickening waves.

Merilee summoned images of her triad, healthy and happy and in full fighting form. She reached for the memory of combining her power with Cynda’s, with Riana’s—and pulled.

Hard.

Down deep.

Until her insides quivered.

The wind rose in her depths again, and this time, Merilee thought about Jake. As a human. As an Astaroth. Jake, alive and well, in any form he chose to take. Her mental picture of him heated her all over. Her wrists bucked and strained against the elementally locked cuffs. Her muscles burned with the effort, and her chest—every part of her—and she poured herself into the swell, giving it her smell, her character, her joys, her strengths—
this is me, it’s who I am, I’m air, I’m wind. No cuffs can hold me.

No . . . cuffs . . . can . . . hold . . . me—

A wild gust of everything that was Merilee escaped from her shoulders and shot toward the bandshell to find its target.

She sagged and would have fallen if Delilah hadn’t caught her and shoved her to her feet.

"You should go now," Merilee murmured as she fought to regain her balance. The jacket fell away from her cuffed hands, and her chest squeezed so fiercely she almost puked up enough bile to fill the fountain behind her. "You should hide, Delilah."

Her Sibyl vision, freed for the briefest of moments by her battle against the cuffs, flashed an image of a tall man striding around the bandshell, turning for the fountain and picking up speed.

"He’s coming."

Delilah didn’t have to be told a second time.

Merilee heard the old woman’s shoes flap against the bricks around the fountain, then whisper into the grass.

She was alone now.

Waiting to face her nightmare.

Her own breathing sounded like sandpaper rasping in her ears, and she bit her lip until the pain made her clamp her eyes shut.

Hold your ground.

Get ready.

She opened her eyes again.

Merilee expected August to show up with fifty or so of his security personnel, but he came alone, closing in on her with frightening speed.

Her blurry, elementally impeded vision saw him first as a man-shaped monster. Then a walking snake. Then an ibis. For a few seconds, he seemed like nothing but a shadow, endlessly long, endlessly tall, and wider than the entire park.

A sensation like a storm of iron bugs took off in her belly, stinging and banging and bashing until her knees wanted to buckle, but she kept standing.

You’re a broom. You
will
finish this.

For your triad. For every Sibyl. For every human being he’s hurt, or might hurt.

August reached the red bricks of the terrace, paused long enough to gaze at Merilee and turn what was left of her guts into Jell-O.

Then he came forward more slowly, keeping a more stable shape, until he stopped directly in front of her. Tonight he had chosen a black Armani suit, making his dark hair seem even darker. His black eyes were bright with fascination, and if Merilee hadn’t known exactly what he was, she could have taken him for a Kennedy-esque man of rhetoric, intelligent, maybe even possessed of some great destiny.

Three hours, fourteen minutes. That’s all the destiny he has.

Using every bit of will and strength left to her, Merilee forced herself to smile at the demon, just to keep him guessing.

August tilted his head, then smiled back at her. He raised his right hand and closed his fist, and from somewhere nearby came a choked strangle.

Something heavy, maybe something body-sized, splashed into the lake.

"She’s dead," he said, with no emotion in his voice, but for a moment, the Leviathan’s human face actually looked pained. "That was . . . easier than I imagined it would be. And necessary. Delilah will never betray either of us again, my dear."

Another smile.

It was all Merilee could do not to start screaming. She worked the arrow lower. She had the tip fully in her palm now. A little farther, and she could grip the shaft.

"Why kill the woman now, after all this time?" she asked, still not quite sure she believed Delilah was dead, but feeling the truth of it winking darkly at her center.

August shrugged. "Because I don’t need her anymore. And because I told her to keep you in the car." His next smile was enough to freeze the Great Lakes. "I should have counted on your cunning, I see. You sensed the elemental barriers I installed in the limousine?"

Merilee swallowed and nodded.

Almost . . . got . . . the shaft . . .

August shifted his weight and moved closer to her. He lifted his nose and turned his head, like he was scenting her, head to toe.

The gesture brought back her urge to puke, in full.

"The barriers are distasteful to me as well, but necessary." August grabbed her left forearm. "We can’t stand here forever getting to know each other without attracting attention. Come, my dear. It’s time to go."

Merilee recoiled from his cold, slimy touch, ripping her arm free even though she had to lift her cuffed hands to do it.

August’s eyes widened. Fuck. He was getting an erection.

This time, Merilee did wretch. Hot, bitter bile surged into her mouth, and she spit out a mouthful, letting it spatter at August’s feet.

"I like spirit," he murmured, and reached for her again.

Merilee choked back the acid taste on her tongue and planted her feet so firmly it would have taken a crane to lift her off the terrace.

A crane, or an ancient demon.

August grabbed the chain linking her cuffs and yanked her forward, rubbing himself against her body like she was no more than a plastic sex-toy doll.

Heart hammering, Merilee threw her weight backward, jerking August into her.

Shit, he’s so slimy and cold!

She twisted her wrists as hard as she could, trapping his fingers in the elementally locked chain.

He snarled at her—and snapped the chain as he freed his hand, as easily as if the lead links were made of paper.

The left cuff opened and clattered to the bricks, and the heady rush of wind through Merilee’s mind almost addled her. Not all of her power, but some of it—gods and goddesses, yes, some!

She stumbled back from him a few feet, then a yard, sucked a huge breath, let the air fill her, all her senses sharpening at the same time.

Seawater. Rotten. He smells like ocean dregs.

The arrow came free into her right hand and she held it just out of August’s view as he charged her again, this time frowning.

"That’s enough, my dear." He thrust out his hand to catch her, but Merilee snatched his wrist instead.

With as big a burst of wind as she could manage, she used the air and his body weight to launch herself forward, her face against his, her arms at the level of his neck.

With all her strength she drove her arrow directly into the demon’s ear.

"What’s that, my dear?" she growled as the arrow met resistance, then plunged into the soft nothingness at the center of August’s skull. "Your sick-fuck brain?"

August roared, grabbed her at the waist, and hurled her away from him.

Merilee’s shoulders crashed into the fountain cherubs.

Bone cracked.

White-hot agony blazed through her neck, her shoulders, her back. Like the worst electric shock. Like a lightning strike.

Had her fingers just blown off the ends of her hands?

Had she snapped in half?

Hecate, save me—
So much pain!

Fire claimed her back and shoulders as she fell limp into the basin, her head just out of the water—and her body went numb.

Just . . . numb.

Nothing ached.

No part of her felt anything at all. And absolutely no part of her, not even her lungs, moved.

Dimly, Merilee saw August grip the sides of his head with both hands.

She tried to get a breath.

Couldn’t.

Her chest was crushing in, crushing her, the weight of her own ribs killing her second by second.

The demon’s next bellow shook the fountain, sloshing water into Merilee’s paralyzed face.

From the direction of the bandshell came screaming and shouting. Male voices calling out orders.

When the demon reached up, yanked the gore-spattered arrow out of his head, and threw it at her so hard it lodged into the metal beside her cheek, Merilee was pretty sure she was dead.

But when August started to change, started to grow and writhe and roar so loud it sounded like he was pulling the heavens down around them, she was certain of it.

Jake.

Riana.

Cynda.

Merilee let herself have the happy images instead of the reality of the Leviathan swelling to the black, scaled proportions of a building in front of her. She tried to hear their voices instead of the ever-louder screaming and shouting closing in around the fountain.

Sorry.

I did my best . . .

I hope I was . . . I hope I am . . .

Your broom.

(40)

Jake yanked his body into solid form so hard and fast he felt like his brain would burst right out of his Astaroth head.

His perceptions swam.

Fuck, but something smelled like a barge full of rotten seawater and untreated sewage.

He gagged.

Bricks scraped his bare feet.

Behind him, people shouted and screamed, but the noises seemed to be moving away from him, not toward him.

Something massive and dark and slimy was writhing and expanding on his left. When Jake looked squarely at the thing, his skin crawled as the creature shifted and stretched and grew, adding scale, adding horns. Shit.

Air rushed in and out of Jake’s lungs. Blood pounded in his ears as his senses tightened, his mind focused.

It’s huge.

It’s too big
.

Was that a tail with big, ugly spikes?

Grass ripped beneath the thing as it twisted. Trees slammed to the ground as the creature’s body made contact.