Captive Soul (37 page)

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 42 
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Camille stood in her favorite silk nightgown in the orchard, letting the cherry blossoms swirl around her like pink butterflies as the sun came up soft and warm and exactly right for the day. The flower kisses on her skin, especially the hand now branded with gold forever, helped her relax and feel real again, and she needed the sun like she needed her fire.

This place really was amazing. She couldn’t imagine how Ona and her quad had built these fantastic, ethereal gardens in a desert, but she supposed exiles had plenty of time to come up with miracles, like self-sustaining irrigation systems, elemental temperature controls, and rudimentary muting charms, so human eyes never saw the paradise they created.

When most people walked into the Valley of the Gods, they saw only ruins, desert sand, and the remnant metal sarcophagi from the first defeat of the Rakshasa. They never got to walk across the lush grass or wander in the virtual rain forest that had grown in the centuries since Ona and Elana were forced to leave their quad’s handiwork behind.

The Sibyls never put us out
, Ona had explained in one of her moments of lucidity.
Save for Motherhouse Antilla and Motherhouse Russia, the Dark Crescent Sisterhood wasn’t that organized yet. After Doya accidentally brought that mountain down outside that Russian village and Elana made it flood on the mainland in Greece while we were visiting, the Mothers just … suggested we take some time apart from all the others
.

So they had come here, far from any civilization, and built the beginnings of what could have become a Motherhouse in its own right, a different kind of Motherhouse for girls with elemental sentience.

Camille raised her arms and watched the petals dance along her skin.

Ona, Elana, and the rest of their quad might have formed a safe haven for women like Camille—but the Rakshasa knew enough to fear them above all other Sibyls. The demons brought their murderous attack to the Valley of the Gods, and everything was left in ruins. All that normal eyes could see, anyway.

Ona had been better since Camille brought her here. She’d even been up more days than not, cleaning and reorganizing the two little stone houses they had been able to salvage from the weeds and fallen trees and branches.

As for her, she was feeling rested and stronger, though she still had no essence-level sense of what she should do next. Soon enough that answer would be simple: go home.

This was Elana’s heaven. It was Ona’s heaven.

But it wasn’t Camille’s.

She missed her quad. She really missed John. How she’d face any of them, how she’d find words to discuss any of what had happened, how she’d go back to fighting and killing when those things felt abhorrent to her now—these were answers she didn’t have. Not yet.

Camille lowered her arms as more cherry blossoms brushed her cheeks. A light, spicy scent carried through the flowers, something familiar, but very much out of place in the secret gardens of the Valley of the Gods.

She wasn’t sure if her mind was playing tricks on her, but her gold-laced hand gave a whispery tingle. Her heart started to beat, not scared, no, never afraid, just hopeful when she didn’t have any right to hope.

Camille turned, and he was standing only a few feet from her, a vision in the cherry blossoms. A vision wearing jeans and a black NYPD T-shirt.

John looked pale and rattled, and Camille couldn’t quite believe he’d found her, much less been willing to stride into his own personal torture chamber to get to her. He had horrible nightmares about this place, and he probably had no idea where to fit the chaotic, overgrown gardens he’d never seen in those terrible dreams.

She wanted to go to him, wanted that more than anything, but she couldn’t read him past the distress lingering at his edges. His green eyes studied her, wide and dark, full of confusion and uncertainty.

“Your quad’s fine and they want you back real soon,” he said. “Nobody’s angry. Everybody understands.”

He didn’t say,
Everybody but me
, but she saw it in his face.

“I—” she started, but faltered.

What did she really want to say?

I’m sorry
.

I think I’m more sane now
.

I’m here
.

I love you
.

I want to put my arms around you
.

All of those things. So she said them, one at a time, watching him for any sign of reaction.

John let her finish, and he just kept looking at her. Another long few seconds crept by before he said. “You, standing in that rain of cherry blossoms, no question you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever seen.”

Camille’s throat got dry and tight. Petals landed on her shoulders, her face, and they were landing on John, too, dropping into his dark hair like otherworldly decorations. She lifted her gold-laced hand for him to see, in case he hadn’t noticed it in their few minutes back at the aqueduct before she … before she’d gone back on her word to him and run away to this place.

“Fancy jewelry.” John glanced at the hand from a couple of angles. “Better watch out or you’ll be starting trends. Is it dangerous?”

“It might be.”

He nodded. Let it go. She could tell her strange new filigree tattoo didn’t bother him at all, but whatever he was about to say, it was making him nervous.

“I couldn’t figure out what kind of universe would make me come back here, to the place where all my troubles began, but now I know that it’s a fair one. A merciful one.” John curled his fingers, then let them relax again, and he seemed to be letting go of the past with every word he spoke. “If having you in my life is the trade-off for everything I had to go through, then I’d say that’s a square deal.”

“John—”

He held up his hand, then lowered it, and lowered his head, too. When he spoke, each word was careful, and she knew he had opened his heart wide. “Do you really want me, Camille? Because I can’t stand to hold you again, then have to let you go.”

The ache in his voice nearly melted her heart, and it definitely melted away the last of her insecurities and worries. Camille ran the few steps to John, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as he picked her straight up off the ground and held her against him.

“Don’t ever let me go again,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that the first time you ever held me, and the next time, and the time after that.”

“If I’d gotten those instructions, I damned sure would have followed them.” He kissed her neck. “You need to quit holding back on me.”

“I want to kiss you. I want to make love to you. I want you to touch me until I can’t even breathe. How’s that?”

“Better.” He kissed her lips next, slow and deep and long, and she forgot about everything beyond his mouth, his tongue, and the cherry blossoms tickling their ears and necks and shoulders. His hands moved like he had a map of all the perfect places to touch and knew exactly how much pressure to apply. She couldn’t think straight. Didn’t care. All she wanted was to feel him, taste him, and be his again.

His lips pressed harder against hers as his tongue moved deeper, filling her up and promising hours of love-making, days of pleasure—and she knew this man could deliver. When he left her mouth, his lips touched her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, then her eyes. In that low, low voice, he said, “You’re even softer than I remembered.”

Camille kissed him again and nibbled at his mouth, drunk with him, absorbed by how he felt and how she felt now that she was finally in his arms again. “Are we starting over, John?”

“What, and go through all that waiting again? No way in hell. We’re starting from here.”

She stared at him, looking deep into his eyes, as far as she could see. “Do I still know your soul?”

“You helped make it what it is today.” He brushed her mouth with his. “Do I know yours?”

“I think so. I hope so. I’ll open it up and let you study every inch, if that’s what you want.”

He went very still in her embrace. “What I want is you, and not just here, right now. It’s
after
, Camille, and I want you forever.”

She brushed flower blossoms out of his hair. “You really do believe in happily ever after, don’t you?”

He kissed her again. “I believe it, and if you say yes to being mine, I’ve got it.”

“Yes.”

“That fast?” He eyed her, starting to tease a little. “No catches? No conditions?”

She gave it some thought. “Make love to me. Cover me up with cherry blossoms and stay inside me for hours.”

Camille felt the instant response of his body, the tightening of his muscles, the swell of hard warmth against her belly. When she looked up, she expected to see desire, maybe even happiness, but the man had his eyes closed and he was swearing under his breath.

“What? You don’t want?”

“It’s not that.” The look he gave her was full of physical suffering and resignation. “It’s just … well, I didn’t come alone.”

They found them in Ona’s little stone house, and the two old Sibyls weren’t talking.

Elana had her hands on Ona’s face, tracing every scar, inch by inch, learning her sister Sibyl as she was today. Ona’s good eye looked more focused than Camille had ever seen it, and she had her palms just above Elana’s, now and again brushing her fingertips against Elana’s knuckles. There was none of the awkwardness Camille would have expected, none of the hesitance. What she felt in the little stone house was joy, and relief, and life. A coming back, a reuniting, and a wholeness.

This was right in the universe. This was something that was supposed to happen.

She and John slipped out without saying a word, and together they walked back to the orchard, back to the cherry blossoms, which had formed a delightful soft carpet in the thick grass.

“Andy’s taking Elana to Motherhouse Kérkira,” John said. “What’s going to happen to Ona then?”

Camille glanced over her shoulder, back toward the stone house. “After seeing them together again, I think Ona will go with Elana.”

John’s eyebrows lifted. “To live with the water Sibyls? Ona? Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

“Andy has a fine sense of irony, and she’s not afraid of a little conflict and emotion.” Camille stopped walking in the middle of the blossoms and turned to face John. “Just look at whom she lives with. She’ll find a place for Ona, and something useful for her to do, if that’s what they all choose.”

John put his hands on Camille’s waist. “Think they’ll be busy for a while back at that stone house?”

Camille’s heart fluttered. “Probably.”

“How does the first day of summer sound?” John’s gaze was intense.

“For what?”

“For me marrying you.” He picked up a handful of cherry blossoms and sprinkled them over her fingers. “I don’t have the ring yet, but maybe these will do?”

She watched the petals trickle through her fingers and drift down to her bare feet. “They’re perfect.”

“Was that a yes?”

“I already said yes.”

“But I didn’t meet your conditions.” He swept her up in his arms, cradling her this time, and before Camille could sort out what conditions he was talking about, he had her down in the flower petals, and she was gazing up at him, loving the tenderness she saw in his green eyes, loving the soft way he touched her, so careful and slow, making sure she had exactly what she wanted.

“Conditions,” she whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers. “Conditions … oh, yeah. Make love to me. Cover me up with cherry blossoms and stay inside me for hours. Does that sound like a challenge to you?”

His grin came fast and warm, and he kissed her for a long, long time before his rumbling voice gave her fresh, sweet chills. “I don’t walk away from challenges, beautiful. Not ever.”

(
 acknowledgments 
)

I would very much like to thank my agent, Nancy Yost, for helping me get this series off the ground, then helping me stay on track. Additional and equal thanks to my understanding and patient editor, Kate Collins, for her thorough reads and excellent suggestions. It’s always a stronger book when she finishes reading it and giving me her ideas. Thanks, also, to Kate’s assistant, Kelli Fillingim, who keeps me from forgetting important things like when my book is due, where I’m supposed to send it, my last name, my birthday—well, you get the idea. Everyone at Random House/Ballantine works together to make the process smooth and sane for writers.

With each book I do, I find I focus more and more on my readers. I want each story to reward fans of the series and interest new readers, too. In the end, it’s all about you, and I’m honored to have the chance to offer you this installment of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood.

Read below for an excerpt from
CAPTIVE HEART
by Anna Windsor

Sibyls.

Jack Blackmore stood on a rickety Greek dock staring across the sunlit waves of the Ionian Sea. He had come to paradise. He should be enjoying himself, but instead he was thinking about Sibyls.

Saul Brent, one of the few men who called Jack a friend, yanked at a rusty pull chain on the boat they were supposed to take to the island of Kérkira, but the battered skiff’s engine wouldn’t catch. “Son of a bitch,” Saul muttered, giving the chain another jerk.

Shirtless, tattooed, and with his brown hair barely crammed into a ponytail, Saul looked more like a biker on spring break than a decorated soldier and career police officer. His years undercover for vice and narcotics seemed to be etched into his essence. Saul’s swearing did nothing to ease Jack’s mind, and neither did the warm air or the scents of wet sand and salt.

Sibyls were still a puzzle to him.

He didn’t like puzzles.

Every time he dealt with Sibyls, he seemed to do something wrong. He didn’t like wrong.

Jack frowned at paradise.

He’d fought demons easier to get along with than the Sibyl warriors of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood—especially the one he had come to Greece to see. What the hell was he doing, trying to make nice with the most unreasonable woman he’d ever met? A woman with elemental powers so vast they defied his understanding. She’d already tried to kill him twice. Maybe the third time, she’d get the job done.

The engine caught, but Jack didn’t make a move to get into the boat.

“Second thoughts?” Saul asked as he struggled with the last rope lashing their skiff to the dock.

Jack wondered if his features mirrored his career like Saul’s did, if his years in the Army and gray ops, both internationally and stateside, showed like subtle scars on his face.

“No second thoughts,” he said in answer to Saul’s question before considering whether he was telling the truth. Jack considered himself an honest man, but he never said much about what was really on his mind. Training—and reflex.

Saul snickered as he worked the rope’s last knot. “The thought of seeing her, it’s got you nervous, doesn’t it?”

Jack didn’t answer, but he got into the skiff. He wasn’t nervous. He didn’t do nervous. The reason his gut was tight—well. Just a lot riding on this little visit to Motherhouse Kérkira.

“She might finally drown you this time,” Saul said over the roar of the engine as he steered them into the deep blue waters of the channel.

The skiff lurched, and Jack had to catch himself on the splintery rail. Sea spray coated his face, cooling him enough to say, “She’ll hear me out. She thinks more like us than like the Dark Crescent Sisterhood.”

“Andy Myles stopped being a police officer the minute she snapped her pretty fingers and summoned her first tidal wave.” Saul gestured behind them, in the general direction of Mount Olympus and Motherhouse Greece, home base of the air Sibyls, where they had started this little late-afternoon odyssey. “She hasn’t been in training since birth like the rest of them, but she’s a Sibyl now, and you haven’t made many friends among the chicks in leather.”

Jack thought about the elementally protected bodysuits the Sibyls wore into battle, and about how the tight black leather hugged every enticing inch of Andy’s body. His fingers tightened on the skiff’s railing until his knuckles hurt.

Let it go
.

Yeah. Because he was good at letting things go. No distractions. Not on a mission.

Saul stayed quiet for a minute or two, then came back with, “You still haven’t told me what you want with her.”

“I want her back in New York City.” Jack made himself ease up on the boat’s railing before he broke the damned thing. “I want her mind on operations and planning. I’ve read her notes and reports—she’s one of the best analysts in the Occult Crimes Unit.”

“She’s a Sibyl now.” Saul cut to the left and pointed them toward the island they sought. “One of the few water Sibyls on the planet. Did it ever occur to you that Andy has other shit to do? That she might not be willing to come running just because the great Jack Blackmore gives her a summons?”

Jack considered various answers, but he kept coming back to one obvious fact and the thing he couldn’t stop believing about Andy Myles. “Once a cop, always a cop. If I ask her, she’ll come.”

Saul’s brown eyes narrowed. “When you took your little sabbatical at the Sibyl Motherhouses and came back all Zen, I thought you’d changed—but you’re still the same cold bastard. Everyone and everything exists just to get you what you want.”

“Not what I want.” Jack went back to strangling the boat’s railing. “What we need.”

“Who is
we
this week, Jack? The Army? The FBI? You and the little voices in your head?”

“The NYPD. The OCU.” Jack didn’t expect Saul to understand or even to believe him, which was a good thing, because Saul laughed his ass off as he whipped the skiff through the crystalline waters leading to the tip of Kérkira.

“You’re full of shit,” Saul called over the roar of the engine and the slap of the boat through the waves.

Meaning,
When you’re finished with whatever has your interest, you’ll leave New York City and the OCU in your rearview mirror just like you’ve left everywhere else
.

Probably true.

Thanks to some pretty bad shit in his childhood, Jack had no real ties, not to any person or any place. Once upon a time, the Army had saved his life. He’d become a soldier, a commander who knew who he was, where he was supposed to be, and what he was supposed to be doing. Then he watched a bunch of tiger-demons crawl out of the Valley of the Gods in Afghanistan, the blood of his unit dripping from their claws and fangs, and he lost track of life’s basics even though he always warned his men never to do that.

The tiger-demons, the Rakshasa, had been his reason for existing—or at least his reason for being a single-minded, single-purposed bastard—since the Gulf War, but they were dead now. The darkness he had tracked for years had been scrubbed from the planet.

But he could always find more darkness.

New York City was as good a place as any. For now.

As if he had heard Jack’s thoughts, Saul made a vicious cut with the rudder and the skiff scooted sideways. If Jack hadn’t had a good grip on the rail, he’d have busted his face on the rough floorboards.

“When Andy decides to kick your ass all over the island, don’t ask me for any help,” Saul said. “I’m gonna hoot until I piss myself. And I’m staying on the boat. You’re on your own with this one.”

Jack studied the sands of the fast-approaching island as he tried to clear his mind and get ready to engage the—what? Enemy? Friendly? Hydra monster in a gorgeous redhead suit?

Damn, but the skiff’s railing felt flimsy in his choke hold.

Even if Jack wasn’t too sure about his own character, he had no doubt that Saul was an honest man. If Andy decided to wash Jack back to New York City, he was on his own—and Saul might very well get his chance to keep laughing.

One day you’re a good cop with a decent career in New York City.

The next day you’re the world’s only water Sibyl, a warrior of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood sworn to protect the weak from the supernaturally strong.

And not too long after that, you’re standing at the bottom of the Ionian Sea in your underwear, nose to beak with a big-ass octopus.

“Normal people don’t have to deal with this shit.” Andy Myles didn’t dare take her eyes off the octopus to glare at her companion, a woman so ancient she looked more crusty than the debris in the shell midden under the octopus. Bubbles rose with each word, and Andy breathed in warm, salty breaths of her element, still amazed that she didn’t need gills to treat water like air.

Aquahabitus. That’s the fancy term for me being able to live underwater like a happy clam. See? I’m remembering more of this crap every day
.

The octopus blew a load of black ink in Andy’s face and scooted off across the seafloor, leaving tiny bursts of sand and rock in its wake.

Andy waved the stinky black cloud out of her face, but melanin coated her floating red curls. The effect was interesting. She had never given much thought to trying purple highlights. “Add this to the list of shit normal people don’t have to deal with—what color will a wart with legs stain my hair today?”

“You frightened the octopus,” Elana told Andy as her silver robes absorbed some of the coloring. “To approach water’s many creatures, you must keep a broad view, a strong sense of purpose, and peace in your own heart and mind.”

“Wonderful.” Andy glanced down at her purple-stained underwear. “Let’s not schedule any chats with sharks this week.”

Elana stared at Andy, her eerie white eyes conveying nothing but acceptance. Andy wondered how much Elana saw, even though theoretically she saw nothing at all. How the hell did she stay so calm about
everything
?

“Let’s finish for the day,” Elana suggested. “You had quite a bit of success with the fish earlier.”

“Sure. Three fin wounds and one tail in the face. I did great.” Andy raised her fingers to the iron crescent moon charm she wore around her neck and watched currents rinse her curls, but shades of purple remained. Camille, the fire Sibyl in her quad, had made the charm for Andy. The metal’s special properties increased Andy’s aquasentience—her ability to move water through her essence and sense or track whatever the water might have touched—but of course, it couldn’t do much to wash away octopus dye.

“The sea senses your unrest and it answers with its own.”

“The sea senses I have no idea why I’m playing with fish instead of working with adepts or sailing back to New York City to fight with my quad.” Andy let go of the necklace.

Elana sent bubbles of laughter swirling around her silver hair. “Water’s creatures can teach you acceptance, my dear. They can teach you about vast freedom within vast limitations. We’ll keep trying.”

She offered Andy her small, wrinkled hand, and together they drifted up the slope of the seafloor, closer and closer to the sparkling blue surface above. The day had been bright and warm when they walked into the depths, and heat kissed Andy’s freckled cheeks as waves gently helped the two women forward.

Her ears worked as well as her lungs when she was immersed in her element, but the world of water sounded so different from the world of air—richer, more nuanced, and unbelievably detailed. The slightest whistle carried for miles, like the swish of a tail or the crack of a tooth on a shell, and all the while, the ebb and flow of tides all over the world made a whispering
beat, beat, beat
she had come to know like her own thoughts. She had become fair at estimating how far sounds had traveled, and at judging their source and trajectory.

A slice-and-push noise caught her attention, and she glanced toward the Greek mainland. “Boat,” she told Elana, but of course Elana already knew that.

“Five minutes until it arrives,” Elana said.

Andy’s head broke the surface. Ahead of her lay the steeply sloped beaches of Kérkira, where her Motherhouse had been hastily constructed. Andy could see its single turret peeking over the rise of the nearest hill. Elana’s head didn’t break through to air for a few more strides.

As they got a little closer to the beach, the small Motherhouse, tucked into a small, heavily treed valley near the ruins of old Turkish fortifications, came into clear view.

The place … lacked a little something. Like, maybe, sanity?

Air Sibyls, earth Sibyls, and fire Sibyls had built it all together and in one huge hurry when Andy first manifested her talent for working with water. Water Sibyls had been extinct for a thousand years, and their training facility, Motherhouse Antilla, had been destroyed in the tidal wave that wiped them out. Once Andy had started working with water, younger water Sibyls began appearing and seeking training, and these girls couldn’t very well hang out in hotels, shelters, or anywhere else that couldn’t tolerate a hefty dose of moisture. So Motherhouse Kérkira had been born, near Motherhouse Greece because air Sibyls had the most to offer in training a clueless water Sibyl. Air, like water, could be vast and fast-moving, difficult to control and unpredictable. Air, more than any other element, could control water, blowing it this way and that—or setting up an impenetrable moving barrier of wind to hold back an accidental tidal surge.

The common areas of the north section had gone up first, with old-style Russian architecture and heavy wooden walls and floors. The barracks in the western section had been laid together with Motherhouse Ireland’s smooth Connemara marble and austere room design, while the kitchen and library in the eastern reaches had the open, airy look of carved crystal that marked Motherhouse Greece. In the middle, good old American brick and mortar formed an entry hall and a formal meeting chamber. Stone, crystal, wood, and brick—Motherhouse Kérkira had come out looking like a twisted fairy-tale castle, or something Picasso might have barfed after a particularly bad bender.

As Andy and Elana crested like tired waves on the beach, Elana moved her hands over her robes, absorbing all the moisture and dispersing its elemental components back to the universe.

“Aquaterminus.” Andy named the ability before Elana could ask her to say it. “Halting the motion of water or absorbing small amounts. This demands significant energy and can be fatal if done on too large a scale.”

“Excellent.” Elana’s small feet moved effortlessly over rocks and sand and branches as if she could see every hazard and shift in the terrain. “But I sense more unrest. Your tension increased the moment we walked out of the sea, my dear. What is it that troubles you so deeply—and so constantly?”

Andy grabbed her yellow Mother’s robes off the rock where she had draped them. “For starters, I hate yellow. I think it’s a stupid color for water Sibyls.” She pitched the robes back into the waves, feeling satisfaction as the annoying sun-colored cloth whipped under the surface and darkened as it moved out to sea. The nervousness inside her wound tighter even though she was gazing across an endless vista of water and ornate islands. Most people thought the Ionian Islands were perfection itself, but right now they just bugged the hell out of her.