Captive Heart (13 page)

Andy’s brain blasted along at a thousand miles per hour, her eyes searching each fraction of an inch. Dio herself sat on the edge of her bed gripping her covers, red-faced and wide-eyed. She looked like she was choking.

“Honey?” Andy made it to her in seconds, reaching for her with wet hands but stopping just shy of grabbing her shoulders. “What is it?”

“I—I—” Dio’s startling gray eyes stayed wide, like she could see things invisible to Andy’s senses. A haziness in the depths let Andy know Dio had been sleeping, might still be clinging to some dream or horrible nightmare. In that instant, she seemed so childlike Andy wanted to wrap her in her arms and rock her.

Instead, she tugged a throw from the foot of Dio’s bed and wrapped it around her own soap-covered body.

“Talk to me,” Andy said. “Tell me what you saw.”

Dio blinked, seemed to be trying to shake off her fear. But her teeth started to chatter and she shook so hard the bed trembled with her.

“Not good,” Andy muttered, pulling the covers around Dio’s bare shoulders. Dio had nothing but a silk shortie covering her to her knees, and the blue fabric seemed filmy and insubstantial even though it was summer.

“Dio?” Bela’s voice. She was coming hard up the stairs with Camille right behind her. When they charged into the bedroom, Bela had her scary serrated blade drawn, which didn’t jive with her
WORLD PEACE
T-shirt. Camille had on one of John’s button-downs, red with a Crimson Tide football logo on the pocket. It hung below her knees, but her ivory-handled scimitar, an Indian weapon made for beheading with one vicious stroke, took away from the cute factor.

“I think she was dreaming,” Andy said, aware of the fact that Camille didn’t give off smoke and sparks like most fire Sibyls did. That didn’t mean she wasn’t deadly. For all her gentle looks, Camille could be more lethal than a volcano at full blow when she used her projective abilities.

“Dreaming.” Bela didn’t lower her weapon. “And she’s still tranced out? Shit. It wasn’t a dream. It was a vision.”

Camille eased her grip on the scimitar and lowered it to her side. “Dio doesn’t have visions. She’s never talked about seeing the future.”

“Any air Sibyl can have prescient dreams,” Andy said, studying Dio more closely and easing some cooling water energy in Dio’s direction in case she wanted to accept it. Andy had learned about air Sibyls and their dreams from Elana. “So can any water Sibyl, or fire or earth Sibyl, too. It’s just that air Sibyls are more likely to see the future because of their shared genetic heritage with the Keres—the death spirits near Mount Olympus. In ancient times, some people called the Keres the Fates, because they seemed to know what was coming, at least in general terms.”

“Just a dream,” Dio muttered, coming back to herself a little more each second. The bed slowly stopped shaking from the force of her tremors.

Bela sheathed her sword but kept her distance, which was always prudent when dealing with Dio. “What did you see?”

For a moment Dio seemed about to argue, to insist she had just repeated some childhood nightmare and maybe they should all just get out and leave her the hell alone. Indecision flickered across her features, followed by guilt, then resignation.

“Rakshasa,” she said, more to Andy than anyone. “I saw the tiger-demon Eldest, or one of them. Tarek.” She pointed to one of the dozens of drawings tacked to her walls, and Andy found herself staring at the sketch she liked the least. The picture showed three Rakshasa demons in full battle gear, fanged mouths opened in threatening snarls. One had white fur, one had black fur, and Tarek had golden fur with dark stripes down his legs and arms.

Just looking at the damned picture gave Andy the creeps because Dio could draw with a skill and power that brought the essence of her subject right into the room. Rakshasa essence was nothing but evil. Heavily muscled chests and arms, big swords, armor like chain mail suffused with tiny metal spikes—and the eyes. Blazing and soulless, yet sharply intelligent. Tarek’s eyes seemed to be the brightest and most awful of all.

“He was here in the brownstone,” Dio said. “He came after us and this time he got us. Me. He got me. He tore me apart.”

She shivered and shook the bed again.

“How could that dream be prescient?” Andy asked Bela, confusion and concern mingling like cool streams in her chest. “The Rakshasa leader is dead. All the Eldest are toast. We saw what happened this winter down in the Croton Aqueduct offshoot. Camille called up molten ore from the earth’s core, and it coated the Eldest. We took them out. All of them.”

It had been a stroke of amazing fortune. To kill a Rakshasa Eldest, the heart had to be pierced with elemental metal, which immobilized the demon. Then it had to be beheaded, burned, and the ashes of head and body scattered in different directions. Otherwise, the Eldest could re-form and heal—literally pull themselves back together again. When Camille had summoned the ore from the earth’s core, elemental metal hadn’t just pierced the hearts of the Eldest. The metal had suffused through their hearts, then coated them externally as well, hardening them into statues so the Sibyls could work at leisure to dispose of them.

“We even destroyed the metal casings that held the Eldest,” Camille added, staring at Dio. “There’s nothing left.”

Bela didn’t ask any questions or make any challenges. Andy felt the flow of her earth power, wrapping them all like a soft, shielding cloak.

“In my dream Tarek came back from the dead,” Dio said. Andy had never heard her sound so tentative. “He seemed stronger and more powerful, like one of the demons from time before time. Like the—” Dio’s furtive glance at Andy told Andy she didn’t want to say the name of the most ancient demon the Sibyls had ever battled, the one who formed the Legion cult—the one who killed Sal and almost killed them all.

“The Leviathan,” Andy said so Dio wouldn’t have to. Her heart chilled and tried to crust with ice at the thought of that fucking murderer straight from hell, her own worst-ever monster that she still had nightmares about, but she kept herself focused on Dio and what Dio needed. “Are you saying that the body and some aspects were Tarek, but the essence, the power, were like the Leviathan?”

Dio nodded and looked everywhere but at Andy. If it had been anyone else, Andy would have touched her arm or knee to soothe her, to let her know she was up for hearing the name. Touching Dio uninvited could get a person’s skull split by lightning.

“Tarek becoming Bartholomew August.” Bela used the Leviathan’s human name, and Andy’s teeth clamped together on reflex. “Has to be some kind of symbolism since Tarek and August are both dead.”

“Tarek had help.” Dio seemed to pick up strength as she got everything out of her mind, out in the open for them all to see and evaluate. “A group of chanting people, all men except one, like the Coven. Samuel Griffen and his sister, Rebecca—I never saw them clearly, but I think it might have been them. They brought him back with—”

Again, Dio couldn’t keep going, and again she wouldn’t look at Andy.

“I can take it,” Andy murmured, making sure her voice sounded low and calm. She kept her gaze direct and tried to invite the answer. When Dio did catch her eye, Andy didn’t falter. “I mean it. You’re not hurting me. Just spit it out.”

“They used a blood sacrifice. A child. And you.” The words spilled out like a scream. “Tarek rose off this table thing, like an altar. He ate you and the little girl, then he came after the rest of us. He killed Bela and Camille, and when he started tearing me apart, I woke up.”

“The little girl.” Bela drew closer to Dio, letting her earth energy serve as a buffer to the air starting to move around Dio’s shoulders. “Do you know who she was?”

Dio closed her eyes and grimaced like she was forcing herself to look back, or maybe step back, into the bloody nightmare. “I couldn’t see the kid, either, but she had red hair like Neala.”

New chills of dread prickled across Andy’s neck. Since Sal’s death, her fighting group and her godchildren had been what sustained her. Even the hint that something might take them away, that something wanted to hurt one of them, made her so angry water started to leak from her knees and elbows even as the rest of her went completely dry.

“We’ll need to write it all down,” Bela was saying. “We’ve known the Coven is involved in all of this, but the Rakshasa connection’s been eluding us. Maybe this is some kind of hint. Make a record of it and let the Mothers evaluate it. They’ll have a better idea of what to make of symbols like that.”

Dio pushed herself off the bed and shed the blanket from her shoulders. “Maybe it wasn’t a vision. I haven’t had them before, not really, not like that.”

Bela responded with a look that made Dio say, “Okay, it probably
was
a vision, but fuck, it was weird. It can’t be literal. We know that.”

“Write it down,” Bela said again. “Every detail, every color and nuance. Anything might be important. We’ll all keep it in mind until the meaning gets clearer. If you have any more dreams that even might be visions, we need to know, Dio, okay?”

“Write it down,” Andy muttered, thinking about notebooks—then about sketches. Her heart stuttered as she remembered where she was supposed to be. “Shit. Sorry. I’ve gotta go.”

   “The proportions are good, but the face—the face doesn’t feel right.” Andy handed the sketch back to the artist she’d been working with for the last hour. “The too-big legs and arms, the disproportionately long midsection, all of that’s dead on. Don’t change any of that.”

Saul Brent sat in one of the townhouse’s interrogation rooms with Andy and the artist. He squinted at the picture, the tribal tattoos on his neck seeming to pulse with the effort of his concentration. “Bastard’s muscled up enough to be a ’roid freak.”

“His name is Frank, not bastard,” Andy shot back. It helped her to give the thing a name, especially one like Frankenstein, so it seemed cartoonish and less real.

“Let’s go over this part one feature at a time.” The artist rendered the face blank again. “Start with any identifying marks, scars, moles, lines—anything.”

“Christ, I only saw the image for a few seconds.” Andy put her face in her hands and tried to breathe through her sudden irritability before she accidentally tore off sprinkler heads by sucking water toward her. Her mind kept flipping back to Dio, scared and shaking on her bed, and what Dio had said about a little girl, maybe Neala, getting killed. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’m up for any more this evening.”

When she looked up, both Saul and the artist gave her smiles that communicated patience and understanding. Saul even looked worried about her, enough that she felt a flash of guilt. To the artist she said, “It looks … older in the face, somehow. Definitely male like you’ve got, and human-like—but not that close to human. More square. More ridged along the cheeks. Like some ancient movie star that had way too much plastic surgery. Or maybe Botox, you know? Where the features don’t move?”

Saul listened, then watched as the artist roughed in some basics. “Maybe it’s some sort of new human-demon hybrid? Maybe it used to be human?”

“No idea.” Andy thought about Neala again. Was she upstairs with Nick and his wife, Cynda? Cynda and her triad sisters Riana and Merilee had introduced Andy to the world of the Sibyls. She still considered them her friends, though her bonds of the heart had formed more closely with Bela and Camille and Dio.

“Listen, I just need a minute, okay?” Andy pushed back from the table and got to her feet. Before Saul or the sketch artist could say anything to her, she left the room. With each step she took toward the townhouse stairs, her heart beat faster. She strained her senses, listening for Neala’s giggle, searching for that hint of fire and smoke with Neala’s subtle flavor.

By the time she got to the floor where Neala lived with Cynda and Nick, Andy was running. Her sneakered feet brushed along expensive oriental rugs covering even more expensive hardwood floors. The house was so well built that the bookcases, chairs, tables, and reading lamps in the long hallway didn’t even jiggle as she shot past. Her breath caught in her throat, and her chest hurt and burned and ached until she turned the last corner and—

There she was.

Andy stopped running and forced herself to walk, slower, slower, until her pace seemed more normal.

Cynda Flynn Lowell stood outside her bedroom talking to her fighting group, Neala gripped firmly in her arms. The two looked like younger and older versions of the same person, with their green eyes, redder-than-red hair, and almost aristocratic features, and both of them seemed to be unharmed and in no immediate danger. Andy’s detail-oriented brain registered that the fighting group had on jeans and casual shirts—street clothes instead of battle leathers. Another hint that all was well, no matter what Dio had dreamed.

Riana Dumain Lowell had Ethan with her, but the boy seemed to be asleep against her shoulders. Riana’s black hair shielded his face like a curtain. Merilee Alexander Lowell smiled when she saw Andy coming, her pixie face brightening.

“Andy!” Neala squealed, wriggling to get away from Cynda and letting off a big puff of white smoke. “Let’s play battle. Please? Please, Andy!”

“Can I just take her for a few?” Andy made eye contact with Cynda, hoping she didn’t freak anybody out with her massive case of nerves. “I’ll bring her right back.”
As soon as I check every hair and freckle. As soon as I count her fingers and toes
.

Andy took a deep breath, taking in the familiar scents of pine cleanser, musty books, and old house, with the very welcome tang of fire Sibyl energy. It burned her nose and made her eyes tear, and she’d never been so glad.

“Sure.” Cynda didn’t even seem concerned. She grinned at Andy as she handed off Neala, who whooped with delight and grabbed Andy around the neck. “She only gives you second-degree burns. I think she likes you better.”

“Blisters heal,” Andy murmured as she carried the little girl past Cynda and her group, straight to Neala’s room. The space reminded Andy of a cotton candy explosion, with its pastel pinks and blues and purples. The furniture had to be made out of metal, and of course, all the stuffed animals were fire-retardant.