Bound by Light (20 page)

With what little self-control Jake yet possessed, he raised his voice over the low roar of the wind and said, "You were dreaming about the Keres again, and dead Sibyls. About the Stone Man. Only tonight, he was a carnivorous statue that looked like an ibis."

Merilee’s fury and resistance changed to abject shock. The tornado stopped abruptly, and the air on the fourth floor went completely still. Chimes tinkled to a rapid halt, and the sudden silence pressed against Jake’s ears.

Merilee rocked back off her toes, arms hanging loose at her sides.

"Was it a prophecy?" Jake took her hands in his, worry mounting as he saw the truth in her face. "I know air Sibyls sometimes see the future in their dreams."

She didn’t pull away from him. "How do you know—you saw my dream?" Her voice came out quiet and low, like a child whispering a secret. "As in, dreamed it with me?"

Jake nodded, still battling a fierce urge to wrap his arms around this woman,
his woman
, touch her, check each joint and curve to make sure she was real and safe.

Merilee swallowed as people clattered up the stairs behind them. "Shit, Jake. That’s weird. We need to talk to the Mothers about that."

Jake lifted Merilee’s wrists toward his lips. He wanted to kiss her fingers and soothe her, but pain flickered across his consciousness.

He dropped Merilee’s hands and looked down.

The waist of his jeans was on fire.

He pressed out the flames with his palms and turned to find himself facing his brothers, Riana, Cynda, and Andy, along with Sal Freeman, who looked asleep on his feet. The men and Andy all had on boxer shorts or briefs. Andy’s boxers and T-shirt were wet. Everyone else was dry.

"You’re leaking, Andy," Merilee said, her voice still too quiet. She sent a burst of warm air toward her friend, drying the wood floor beneath Andy’s feet.

"Sorry." Andy scrubbed a hand through her long red curls, and kept dripping water from her elbows.

Freeman reacted to the sound of Andy’s voice, eyes coming open and his cheeks flushing. He moved closer to her and put his arm around her back, and Andy leaned into Freeman’s touch.

Jake shook his head.

Finally. Shit.

He was about to say that out loud when he realized Cynda had a sword raised in front of her large gown-covered belly. Flames danced off the menacing blade as Jake’s brother Nick said, "Steady, firebird."

Cynda’s green eyes narrowed, and smoke rose from holes in her gown. "Jake, I thought we had an understanding about you staying the fuck away from Merilee while she healed. Explanation, please?"

Jake didn’t respond. He glanced at his other brother, Creed.

Creed gave him a look like,
On your own, buddy,
and draped his arm around his very pregnant wife, Riana—who had on a gown, too. Silver, to match the daggers in both of her hands. Riana’s dark hair hung in glossy waves at her shoulders. Elegant, almost stately—for a woman who could sink a city with a burst of her elemental earth power.

They don’t trust me yet,
Jake realized. Merilee’s triad. Her fellow warriors of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood. Despite everything he did at Windermere and Fresh Kills to save her—or maybe
because
of that—they thought he was a threat to her.

Freeman’s apologetic look told Jake he had seen the problem, too, and that he regretted it.

After Jake’s behavior two years ago, he couldn’t blame the women for how they felt, but the realization still dug at Jake’s gut. All of that seemed so long ago to him, so far away.

Can’t they see what Freeman sees, what I’ve made of myself? That I’m—I’m almost human now?

"I had a bad dream—" Merilee began, but Jake raised a hand to silence her and took over, wanting to shoulder responsibility for his own actions.

"She had a bad dream," he repeated to the armed women and the dripping water Sibyl. "I’m the one who made all the noise, banging on the door to wake her."

Riana lowered her daggers, looking surprised.

Cynda lowered her sword, too, though her expression said she’d really rather behead Jake. The fire Sibyl’s green eyes traveled from Jake to Merilee. "How did he know?"

Merilee hugged herself and shivered. "I think he had the nightmare with me. At the same time, I mean. He dreamed the same dream."

Shock registered on Riana’s regal face. "What?"

"I need to speak to the Mothers about this," Merilee said as she came to stand in front of Jake. "All of them. Tonight."

As if to punctuate her statement, the still-intact chimes in the hall began to ring in a rhythmic pattern Jake recognized as an incoming message.

Cynda stared up at the dancing metal tubes. "Calling the Mothers will have to wait." Her expression turned tense to match Riana’s, and Jake guessed that both women were frustrated at their inability to respond to the emergency. "Asmodai spotted on Sixty-first, near Fordham University. They’re headed straight for the dorms."

Blood surged through Jake’s veins.

Demons menacing a college.

This he had trained for. At least in this situation, he knew exactly what to do.

Merilee groaned, and Jake heard the weight of her fatigue at having to pick up all the slack for the North Manhattan triad. "The Young Democrats are camped out at Fordham for a rally."

Andy wiped a stream of water off her forehead, put her hand on Freeman’s arm, and beckoned to Merilee. "Come on. You’re still low in the energy department, so we need to stick together on this one."

Riana and Cynda stood aside, still looking resentful and irritated at their own incapacity to fight. No doubt if they were in top form, they would have insisted Merilee stay behind and continue to rest for another couple of days, but as it was, they didn’t have that luxury.

Nick and Creed kissed their wives, then jogged toward the steps.

Despite his lack of invitation or orders, Jake waited the two minutes it took Merilee to pull on her leather bodysuit and grab her bow and quiver, then walked beside her down the hallway.

She didn’t object.

Neither did Cynda or Riana, though Jake was more than aware of their gazes burning into his back as he followed Merilee down the stairs.

(14)

Bow tight in her hand, polycarbonate goggles in place, Merilee jogged through the glowing New York night, across the stretch of grass in front of the Ford-ham University amphitheater. With her were Andy, Sal Freeman, and ten OCU officers in full riot gear who had disembarked from the tactical van left at the curb at the front of the college.

Merilee felt the absences of Riana and Cynda so acutely she kept shivering, even though it wasn’t cold.

Of course, she wasn’t wearing her leather face mask. She never did, if she could get by without it. And Riana wasn’t here to bitch about it, was she?

Wind whipped around Merilee’s shoulders, and she held to the element, drew it toward her, around her, taking the scant comfort it offered. Above her, the waning crescent moon hung like a baleful frown in the dark sky. She totally understood that her triad sisters couldn’t fight, not at this point in their pregnancies—but the world still seemed canted, completely wrong, without them.

Merilee squinted through the specially treated poly-carbonate lenses of her goggles, designed to pick up telltale sulfurous traces left by Asmodai, the dangerous foot-soldier demons used most often by the Legion. Asmodai had to be created from an element such as fire or air, with a liberal helping of dirt to give it shape. It took a long ritual and a lot of space, and they were only good for a few hours, with a range of a few miles at most—but the fuckers could do a ton of damage.

So far, nothing showed in the goggles even though the response team was already running down Amsterdam Avenue. Lights blazed from buildings and street-lamps, and from a slight distance came the ever-present whirr and thrum of traffic.

"You okay?" Andy murmured, adjusting her new weapon, an HKP-11 underwater dart pistol from the Special Boat Service frogmen. It was waterproof (since she drowned three standard firearms in the first month she manifested her talents with water), with five darts, good for short distances even on dry land—but a total bitch to reload. Andy’s shots had to count, big-time.

The night air seemed to shimmer with a breeze and the winking lights of nearby cars, buses, and cabs.

Merilee nodded in spite of her massive unease, and gripped her bow even tighter. "I’m fine."

She forced her focus back to the pounding of boots on grass as the OCU assault team rushed toward Fordham. Andy flanked her on her left, while Sal Freeman held a position on her right, Glock drawn, black NYPD raid jacket flapping in the air stirred by Merilee’s elemental energy. The police officers all wore Kevlar body armor, and sported a full complement of elementally locked bullets—specially treated metal that would take down any demon, no matter what substance had been used to create it.

Jake kept pace directly behind Merilee. She felt his presence deep inside, sensed him as a tangible force, like a solid, moving wall. After Fresh Kills, she knew he would be worth his weight in demon kills. Knowing he was there made her feel better, which in turn freaked her out another notch.

I hate this. I fucking hate not having my triad.

Not that anyone’s fighting with a whole group. Not anymore.

The remnants of the South Bronx triad—Bela Argos and her young air Sibyl, Devin Allard, would be forking down from their usual territory to meet them. Serlena and Tavis, the young earth and air Sibyls from the South Manhattan triad, had sounded the alarm.

Merilee tightened her jaw to control her trembling.

Those girls were out there somewhere in the dark, defending students and rally-goers. Facing Asmodai. Hoping help would come in time.

Her heart thumped, and her breath came shorter and shorter with each running step the team took. At least she wasn’t cooped up in the raid van. This close to target, they didn’t bother loading up—they just booked it on foot. Faster anyway, in Manhattan.

As they swept onto Fordham’s campus, abandoned political banners and signs hung from buildings and trees. No students or campaigners still out from the rally, though. The plaza seemed deserted. Thank the goddesses for small favors.

But Serlena and Tavis—so young! Little more than adepts. The seasoned fire Sibyl in their triad had been murdered two years back, and still no replacement was available.

We’ve been maimed. We’re holding this city by a thread.

Merilee tried to breathe normally.

Her senses told her that Astaroths—three of them—were flying above, invisible and deadly.

So they did have additional backup.

Assuming the surfer boys stayed on task and on target. Jake had only had a few days of working with them while she was recuperating. Would that little bit of combat training make a difference?

Merilee’s fingers curled tight around her bow.

They approached the brightly lit buildings of the campus, brushing past staked campaign signs hawking this candidate or the other. Bartholomew August and his Peace Warriors, Alvin Carter and the Strength Now group, Martin Jensen and his New Deal–New Day—it made no difference to Merilee. She just wished the damned election would come and go, and the crowds and rallies would stop, cutting off at least some of the opportunities for the Legion to kill or make chaos.

As she moved past a small grove of trees, spurts of dark crimson flared across her lenses. She pulled up short, gasping more from nerves than exertion.

"There." She pointed at the dormitory with her bow tip. "And there. And there!"

Andy and Freeman, also wearing goggles, saw the traces at the same time she did, and they were already gesturing, deploying OCU officers in different directions, fanning out between the residential buildings on the campus.

"Hearts or heads!" the officers yelled in unison as they split up and thundered forward.

Merilee’s muscles bunched.

Hearts or heads. Use the weak points and bring the demons down.

Her mind buzzed. Everything looked so strange from the front of the assault line. Air Sibyls usually fought from vantage points in trees and high places—rarely from the ground—and she desperately missed the comfort of Riana’s earthy energy and the searing power of Cynda’s fire.

"With me," Freeman barked to Jake as Merilee and Andy peeled left and away from him, hammering toward the side of the large dormitory literally covered with demon trace. The other Astaroths would shadow the rest of the OCU and help as much as possible. That was always the plan, yeah, but the minute Jake got some distance from her, Merilee’s gut spasmed. She wanted to call him back, keep him next to her.

I’m losing it.

But his energy—steady, like Riana’s, and forceful, like Cynda’s. And he had already saved her twice. She had a feeling he’d do it again, if she needed him.

But why the hell did he stay completely away these last few days?