Captive Heart (16 page)

He shot at the retreating figures and Dio kept burying knives in them until they pelted out of the alley. Each blade and bullet hit its target, Andy knew, but the shooters spilled onto the sidewalk, scattering civilians. Nobody could take a safe shot now, not without risking friendlies.

Seconds later, two black leather blurs rocketed past the alley. Bela and Camille, charging after the shooters on foot. A few more leather-clad women hurtled by. Sibyls. Andy realized that all over the city, wind chimes would have jangled in Sibyl houses, and anyone with the tattoo of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood would have heard her instinctive, automatic call for help.

Emergency sirens got louder.

“You’re hit,” Jack muttered, his deep voice cutting underneath the growing chaos. He sounded as furious as he looked.

“So are you.” Andy tried to pull herself to sitting but couldn’t do it.

He didn’t answer that, and the expression on his face didn’t change.

New cold washed across Andy’s wet skin.

Jack wasn’t really with her, was he? New York City, the ruined Jeep, the acrid tang of Dio’s weather-making energy and the howl of her barely contained wind, the wet alley—none of that was getting through to him. The look on his face and the icy blue fire in his eyes told her he had gone somewhere else, somewhere
other
.

Before she could say anything to get him back to here and now, he scooped her off the ground. The pain from sudden movement nearly made Andy scream, and tears exploded from both of her eyes. She wanted to hit him, but then he’d drop her and everything would hurt that much worse. Instead, she grabbed his arms and dug her nails in as hard as she could.

Jack didn’t seem to notice. He turned like he intended to carry her out of the alley.

Dio blocked his path. “Hold on, Blackmore. Help’s almost here.”

“She’s hit. Got to find a medic.” Jack’s voice came out flat, robotlike. No inflection. Barely any volume.

Dio’s wind shifted and she looked at Andy, hands and eyebrows raised. The implication was clear:
Should I blast him on his ass?

Robo-Jack walked straight at her. “Get out of my way.”

Andy sensed on a soul-deep level that Jack wouldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t feel confident that he wouldn’t hurt other people. Not at all.

“It’s okay,” she told Dio. “I’ve got this.”

What a fucking lie.

Dio frowned at Andy, but she stepped aside and Jack kept walking, carrying Andy toward the streets, toward the crowds and sirens.

Her leg and arm hurt so badly her head swam, but she made herself lean into Jack. “Listen to me. We need to wait for the OCU.”

Nothing. He kept walking. His breathing sounded labored, and his blood flowed down his shoulder, soaking into Andy’s jeans. Her acute senses picked up his heart rate. Irregular. Way too fast. She sent energy through him on instinct, pacing the beat as best she could. Her thoughts moved to his wounds. Bullets. Two through-and-through at the neck and shoulder, two still lodged in his upper right forearm. More energy left her as everything Sibyl inside her took over, making her want to heal him,
need
to heal him.

Her vision flickered.

Jack stumbled.

“Sorry,” Dio said from behind them as marked cars, unmarked cars, and ambulances screeched to a halt on the street outside the alley. Andy felt the impact as Dio hit Jack hard enough to knock him down.

Jack grunted with pain, and Andy felt him falling. Felt herself falling. Sharp bolts of agony made her senses dim before she hit the pavement, but she was all too aware of Jack’s warm weight beside her.

Heal him
, her mind demanded, and her water energy flowed out of her, working, trying, pushing harder until somebody tore her away from him, crammed a needle into her arm, and turned out her lights.

Failure
.

It pounded Griffen like blows to the gut. It stabbed him like shattered bone in the lungs. It festered like rotting thorns in his heart.

He hated standing here in the quiet warehouse next to his second in command and his chained, smug sister. His jeans felt too tight. His black sweatshirt felt too heavy, and it only added to the heat of his rage. Rebecca gave him a smirk as she eyed the proof of his missteps, the six blood-covered fighters back from the failed ambush on Andy Myles, but she didn’t say anything. Neither did the twelve men in his coven—the ones handling the fighters and the ones standing quietly, as if showing support. That, at least, was a small miracle.

Rage flared through Griffen, and he punched the first fighter in the face. The big fuck went to his knees, unable to keep his balance because of his badly damaged ankles. The bone and flesh near the fighter’s feet had healed—but badly. No more blood, no more exposed tissue, but very little function, either. The other five fighters who had blown the ambush stood next to their handlers, quiet and subdued. Dried blood crusted their clothing, but at least they were whole. For the moment. Of course, two had been blinded, but eyes could be replaced.

“We should put this group down, adjust the formula, and make a new batch.” Donovan Craig had the black hood of his sweatshirt down like Griffen, and his reddish beard and hair made him look like an angry lion. The scars on his face, knuckle marks from years of scrumming, pulsed crimson like his temper. “They can’t heal if the flesh is torn completely away. You can see it’s a weakness.”

“Of course I can see.” Griffen didn’t even try to keep the snarl out of his voice. In all their sparring sessions getting ready for the ambush, these fighters had taken wounds. He realized only now that the wounds had been to their torsos, to the thicker portions of their bodies, where flesh could easily rejoin and knit. The fighters had healed without so much as scars to show for their damage, and he had assumed they were ready to face bullets and blades.

Failure
.

Griffen wanted to kill something. “Work on the formula if you want,” he told Craig, “but I don’t want to spend any more time in research. These will do. We can armor the weak points.”

Craig’s frustration bubbled straight to the surface, revealing itself in his next comment. “These fools let you down. Give it more time, Griffen. Give us more time, and we can produce stronger fighters.”

Griffen glanced at the lab door. They had an endless supply of demon essence, but a limited pool of “volunteers” unless they started snatching goons off the street. Always a possibility. They could keep refining the process, especially now that they understood the problem of detached flesh, and that the eye tissue was weak and lacking in the same restorative powers as the rest of the enhanced body. When that bitch of a Sibyl had used her SIG to nearly shear off one of the fighter’s feet, she had blown away so much tissue that the ankle couldn’t coalesce. Unlike the original Rakshasa, the Eldest, these fighters didn’t draw their own essence back to themselves. If it got lost, it was just gone. The fighter on his knees probably needed his feet amputated. What good was a superwarrior who couldn’t walk? Prosthetics might make a difference, but the time needed to learn to use them—not worth it.

Griffen let air out of his filled lungs. Slowly. Centering and focusing. What happened, happened. He needed a teaching case anyway. An example to solidify his absolute control over all the fighters.

“We’re in motion now,” he told Craig. “We’ll make do with what we have, and if you come up with something better, we’ll add fighters as we go.”

Really, though, he wanted to shoot these six for being imperfect. For failing. He wanted to watch their blood pool underneath their shattered heads, but too much time and money had been poured into their creation.

Rebecca pointed to the fighter on his knees. “Let the old man out of his cage. I want to watch.”

The joy in her voice made Griffen give her request a moment’s consideration, but he knew that would be a bad idea. “No. Leave the creature alone. We have much better uses for him.”

And our energy’s low right now. We can’t risk losing control of him
. That much, Griffen didn’t say, because it would only remind everyone of another one of his failures. To Craig, Griffen said, “Put the fighters up. Except this one on his knees. He’s finished.”

Rebecca grinned at the kneeling man, her blue eyes glittering as the Coven quickly moved to put five of the six fighters back into their cells.

The sixth remained on his knees beside his lone handler, eyes forward, expression dull. The elemental energy the handler used to contain the fighter felt like cotton in the air to Griffen, but it had little effect on him.

He drew the Glock he kept in an ankle holster. It had a full clip of hollow-point ammunition specially treated to be effective with his new creations. A man couldn’t be too careful.

Bloodlust rose like a blush to Rebecca’s pale face, highlighting the sharply tapered tips of her ears. She looked more otherworldly than ever, and Griffen sensed something about her. A readiness. A coming of age. He’d been feeling it for months, but right now in this moment, she seemed … completed, somehow. Like the next phase of her life was about to begin, whether or not he allowed it.

I have so much to live up to
, Griffen thought, wishing his father had survived the murderous assault of the Sibyls. Bartholomew August could have advised him, could have guided him, but now Griffen had to carry on without that assistance. He could do it, of course. And he would do it.

The Coven returned in full, ringing Griffen and Rebecca and the kneeling fighter. Griffen gestured for the fighter’s handler to rejoin the circle, and he did so, leaving the containing blanket of elemental energy in place to keep the fighter subdued.

As the circle expanded to receive its returning member, Griffen said, “The men in my Coven do their best not to look at you, Rebecca, but some of them can’t help themselves.” Griffen caught a few quick glances as he spoke, and he sensed pulses rising. A second or two later, the guilty men managed to look anywhere but at him or at her. Good for them. His men would control themselves because they knew their higher purpose lay with the work of the group, that the group would suffer if he had to execute some of them for going where they didn’t belong. His sorcerers knew better than to cross him—and besides, Griffen figured they didn’t want to die at Rebecca’s hand.

“Men look at me. So what?” Rebecca didn’t so much as glance at Griffen. She was too captured by his weapon and the kneeling fighter.

“So maybe you’re ready to branch out into more serious relationships. Not the juvenile dalliances you’ve enjoyed in the past, but liaisons with a purpose.”

“I’m not interested in marriage.”

Griffen held up the Glock, let her study it, let her desire to see it in action grow. He knew she could imagine the tang of the gunpowder, the shocking crack of the shot, and the aftermath. He handed her the gun.

Rebecca took it without difficulty despite the elemental cuffs around her wrists and the chain binding her to him. Her smile widened as she crammed the muzzle against the fighter’s head. With no preamble or warning, she pulled the trigger. The explosion kicked the man’s head away from her and he flopped to the floor like a useless bag of rags. Gore spattered the concrete beneath the fighter, and Griffen finally got the blood he had craved, the payback for the immense ineptitude the fighters had shown in the failed ambush.

Rebecca offered Griffen the Glock, handle first.

He appreciated her good safety awareness, though he knew the barrel had to be hot against her sensitive fingers. He never worried that she would shoot him, because she knew he had bound his essence to the elemental cuffs. If she decided to be treacherous, his death would send a killing pulse through the metal, and he and his sister would die together.

“You shouldn’t focus all your energy on one Sibyl,” Rebecca said. “Broaden the field. Sibyls grieve their losses like all sentimental humans. Death hurts them. If we do enough damage, we could rip the fabric of the fighting groups.”

“You have a point, but you know why I want Andy Myles dead.” Griffen holstered his weapon and faced his sister as she sighed. “You know why I want her to be first.”

“To disrupt and weaken her dangerous fighting group, the one that poses the most threat to us.” Rebecca sounded like she was reciting, but at least she didn’t imitate Griffen’s voice. “To make an example. To get revenge.” Her eyes still danced from the excitement of killing, but her tone grew serious, almost emphatic. “Our father never made vengeance his first priority.”

Griffen gave this a moment’s thought and had to concede that his sister was correct. “Bartholomew August focused on winning battles and winning wars, and carrying out his higher purpose.”

Rebecca’s nod came too quickly for her to sense the trap Griffen had laid.

“We have a higher purpose, too, Rebecca,” he said, and he knew she couldn’t argue.

Her gaze roved around the circle of the Coven, but the twelve men who worked for Griffen remained silent and impassive, the hoods of their black sweatshirts obscuring their expressions.

Rebecca seemed to debate with herself, then settle on the truth of Griffen’s words, as he had been hoping she would.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked, sounding as interested as she did frustrated.

“It’s time you think about destiny. About passing on your power and abilities to a new generation. It’s the charge our father left both of us, and we should both be thinking in that direction.”

“I’m not interested in marriage,” Rebecca repeated, anger and fear creeping into her tone.

“Marriage isn’t necessary,” Griffen told her, relief sliding through him as he spoke. He felt the rightness of what he said even as the words formed. “I’m happy to bring you males and let you do what you want with them after they’ve served their purpose. Not all of them will be disposable, of course, but some won’t be missed.”

Rebecca reacted to this with hesitation, then with increased interest. Griffen could feel the bond between them strengthening, feel her weigh and accept this option, and he felt pride in himself—and in her.

Yes.

This would be much better than what he had been planning, marrying her off to an elementally powerful male who could control her. It meant he would have to be the one to supervise her for a while longer. She wasn’t all that much trouble, not really, not when he considered the amusement she provided.

And with the men, those poor bastards.

She would be the consummate killer, slaughtering the spent mate before he even understood that he had bedded a black widow, a mantis—a predatory female who disposed of inconvenient lovers before moving on to the next.

Rebecca raised the elemental cuffs that kept her in check—to a point. “And these?”

Griffen knew he had to offer her something in return for her level-headed acceptance of reality. She really had grown these last months. She had changed, and perhaps it was time to see if those changes made her more stable.

He fished in his jeans pocket and brought out the key.

Moving as one entity, the Coven circle widened, giving ground to Rebecca even before Griffen set her free.

“Come here,” he said. “We’ll see how this goes.”