Captive Heart (40 page)

She folded her arms and fixed her gaze on Bela. “And we will be putting it back together.”

Bela didn’t argue. Neither did Camille.

“Right now, and for the rest of your life, you’ll be one of a kind,” Bela said. “None of us except maybe Elana understands all of what you are, all of what you can do. Right now, we’re all children who trust you.”

Andy chewed at her bottom lip for a second, then raised her chin and faced Bela and Camille with Jack still standing silently by her side, hoping like hell he was doing the right thing, giving her what she needed from him.

“I’ll get Dio back,” Andy told her fighting group. “I don’t know how, but I will. I swear it.”

Both Bela and Camille looked away, and when they met Andy’s gaze again, they had tears in their eyes. They hugged her, then took John and Duncan out of the lab, following after Cynda, Nick, and Neala and their group, winding their way out of the infirmary ruins.

Despite the Mothers and the influx of Sibyls and OCU officers and technicians, Jack finally felt like he had a moment alone with Andy. He turned and put his arms on her shoulders. Water ran across his fingers and dripped to the floor as he got lost in her wet red hair, her pretty freckled face, and those bright, beautiful eyes.

Do this right, Blackmore. For God’s sake, don’t fuck it up again
.

Andy put her hand on Jack’s chest, and he felt a rush of emotion, a bonding just from that simple touch. Nothing had ever stirred him like this woman, and he cursed himself a thousand times for not having handled things better with her every step of the way.

How could she forgive him? How could he even ask for another chance?

He tried to find the words, the right words this time, but she spoke first. Her question came out low and quiet, echoing both pain and hope and etching itself right across Jack’s heart.

“Are you leaving?”

And then Jack knew the exact right word, and he said it with absolute conviction. “Never.”

Andy’s eyes drifted shut, and he covered her hand with his.

“There will be an us,” she murmured. “There will be time for us to be together and work this out, but right now I’m the one with messes to clean up.”

Jack gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “When you’re ready, I’ll be right here.”

Andy stepped onto the communications platform at Motherhouse Kérkira still wearing the stupid black robe. Ona, the really old, really crazy fire Sibyl Elana adored so much, was waiting for her, holding out her most comfortable pair of jeans, her favorite oversized red shirt, a new holster and shiny new dart pistol to replace the ones she lost in the battle with the Coven, and a pair of sunglasses.

Andy realized Elana might have a point about Ona having a lot to offer, nutty spells and accidental genocide aside.

She took the clothes, got out of the wet, nasty robe, dried herself and got dressed. Then she allowed herself one artichoke and bacon sandwich with hot mustard, a single glass of wine, and exactly four hours to nap before she had Ona wake her.

When she strapped on firepower for her little journey, she didn’t bother concealing the dart pistol under her jeans. She fastened it around her waist in plain view, enjoying its weight and feel. Shoving the sunglasses into place felt more like putting on armor than zipping up leathers ever had, and as Andy started out the door to head for Mount Olympus, Ona said, “Need any backup?”

“Thanks.” Andy smiled at Ona even though the ancient fire-breather was almost as blind as Elana. “But I need to do this one alone.”

The climb didn’t take as long as Andy thought it would, but by the time she reached Motherhouse Greece, she really knew she hadn’t eaten or slept enough, and her bruised bones and muscles bitched louder with each step she took.

The crystal palace shone like Oz’s Emerald City in the very early morning light. Andy didn’t announce herself, and the scrawny air adepts manning the entranceway got the hell out of her path when they saw her dart pistol and the back-the-fuck-off look on her face.

Andy never knocked on a door or asked permission from anybody about anything. She just kept moving, straight through the hallways to the infirmary and into the little waiting chamber where she’d wasted so much damned time doing all the wrong things. She didn’t even bother trying the door between the chamber and the rooms where Dio had been staying. She just lifted her foot and kicked them open, letting them bang against the wall.

A sun-drenched hallway stretched before her, and six or seven air Sibyl Mothers leaped up from chairs and tables to block Andy’s path.

“Move,” Andy told them.

When they didn’t get out of her way, she kept right on walking, drew her dart pistol, aimed it at the nearest giant window, and fired.

Glass shattered and wind instantly howled through the hallway as cool mountain air rushed into the closed space. Before the Mothers could tame the wind or do anything to stop her, Andy washed them out the opening, knowing that their air skills would keep them from falling thousands of feet to a rocky death at the foot of the mountain.

She stretched out her elemental senses and fixed on the right room in the little Sibyl-style hospital corridor, and kicked open that door, too.

Dio was sitting in her bed in a small room with solid crystalline walls and a floor-to-ceiling window looking down the mountainside. Her wispy blond hair spilled around her face like a child’s curls, and she had pulled her single white sheet all the way up under her nose.

“Get up,” Andy told her without holstering the dart pistol. She’d shot Dio before, and by God, she’d do it again if she had to—and Dio knew it. “You’re coming with me.”

Dio’s gray eyes flashed. Her fingers gripped the sheet tighter and a steady, menacing breeze filled the tiny space. “Go away, Andy.”

Andy blocked the breeze with a wall of water energy sans a ton of moisture—for now. “If I have to wash this crystal palace all the way back to New York City, I’ll do it.”

Dio blinked at Andy, clearly aware that she had crushed her air energy with the ease of a Mother who had years of experience. “Well, well. Somebody’s been practicing.”

“Somebody hasn’t had a choice.” Andy strode over to the bed, grabbed the sheet, and yanked it aside.

Dio had on jeans and a short-sleeved blue shirt with the left arm tacked shut. She wrapped her remaining arm around her knees and glared at Andy. “Touch me and I’ll blow you the fuck away.”

Andy cocked her head. “Okay, good. That’s better. But I have to touch you, Dio. It’s the best way for me to read emotions and restore flow.”

Dio hit her with a major blast of wind this time, almost hard enough to make her stumble before she countered it with a full shot of water energy.

Almost.

Water splashed across Andy’s arms, cool and familiar. A fair-sized wave doused Dio and her prissy white sheets, too.

Dio jumped up on the wet bed, slinging droplets in every direction. “Can you grow my arm back?” Thunder blasted across the mountain and lightning struck about a foot from the sickroom window. “Can you? Because that’s the only damned thing I want from you right now. It’s all I want from anybody!”

Andy stood fast in the sudden rush of air as the sharp tang of burning ozone clogged her nose. “You know nobody can give you that.”

“Then piss off!” Dio’s sharp, high scream barely punctured the next barrage of thunder.

Andy’s heart ached, but she didn’t move an inch. “No.”

She waited for a fresh round of lightning to cut her in two, but the weather never came. Dio threw herself down on the bed and the air in the room got scary-still as she sobbed.

“Are you upset because I’m wanting to meddle in your emotions, or are you upset because I’m refusing to give up on you?”

Dio raised her tear-streaked face, still furious, and Andy knew the answer to her own question. So did Dio. Andy could tell even if Dio didn’t grace her with an answer.

“I won’t give up. Not ever.” Andy dared to take a step closer. “So you might as well let me do what I have to do.”

Sunlight bathed Dio’s pale face in yellow and gold as she glared at Andy. “It’s not like I can fight you off with one damned arm—and my weak arm at that. Go ahead. Grab hold of me and read whatever you want.”

This time the pain in Andy’s chest and gut made her wince. “I won’t. Not unless you tell me I can. I want your permission, Dio.”

Silence.

More glaring. It wasn’t such a sharp glare, though. More like a nervous, worried stare. More like Dio trying to decide what she really wanted, what she really needed.

You need us
. Andy wished Dio could read her mind and hoped that reading the love and determination on her face would be enough.
You need yourself, your quad, your life
.

Dio’s glare softened another fraction. “If I let you touch me and read my emotions, what are you going to do with them?”

Andy had asked herself this a few times and she still didn’t have a solid answer. “I have no idea.”

“Oh.” Dio looked more scared than angry now. “So, what’ll happen?”

Andy pulled off her sunglasses and tossed them on the little table beside Dio’s bed. “I don’t know.”

“You’re a big goddamned comfort, you know that?” Dio sat on the bed and dripped, but at least the thunder and lightning didn’t start back.

“Trust me enough to let me try.” Andy heard the plea in her own voice, but she wasn’t sorry she sounded desperate. She
was
desperate. That was honest and right and true. She was desperate to do what she should have done when Dio first got hurt, desperate to help, desperate to start making things right, if that was even possible.

Dio tried to press her lips into a fierce frown, but her whole mouth trembled. A few seconds later she closed her gray eyes, and with a body-deep shiver, she nodded.

Andy saw Dio steel herself like she had done back at the brownstone what seemed like a decade ago, the first time she let Andy get a real sense of what she was feeling.

That was all the permission she’d ever get, so Andy knew she had to act. Trying to be definitive, trying to be confident, trying to trust herself as much as she’d asked Dio to trust her, she sat on the wet sheets beside her sister Sibyl. She let herself take one centering breath, then she wrapped both arms around Dio’s slight shoulders and opened those floodgates deep in her essence just like she’d done in the infirmary—only without calling water to fill the empty space inside.

Feelings rushed in, a torrent of rage and pain and misery—and wonder and curiosity—and hope. Heart-gripping hope. Soul-stirring hope.

Andy closed her eyes, and that’s when the images started.

Little Dio, running away screaming as older adepts chased her and pelted her with rocks and sticks …

Dio, older, in her older sister Devin’s arms, her hands blistered and bandaged from lightning burns, sobbing her guts out to the only person who gave one damn what happened to her …

Andy saw it all rapid-fire. How hard Dio had worked to gain acceptance at Motherhouse Greece. How brutally other adepts had treated her because of her fearsome weather skills. How much Devin had loved Dio, and how the two had been each other’s comfort and stability as the Mothers went about other business, leaving them to fight through the chaos on their own.

And finally, Andy saw the worst part.

Dio standing alone in the Motherhouse’s bright little chapel, crying over her dead sister with not a single soul there to comfort her.

Oh, God
. Andy let go of Dio and sobbed out loud, as much from fury as grief. At least when Sal died, Bela had stood beside her. Bela had given her a hug and a shoulder. Motherhouse Greece had given Dio exactly nothing. Fucking nothing at all.

Andy shoved herself off the bed.

Those Mothers she knocked out the window might have made it back up the mountain. If they had, she’d wash them every one straight to hell.

Dio caught her wrist and held tight, leaning back to offset Andy’s weight and momentum. “Not necessary. It’s old stuff—and no Mother and no Motherhouse is perfect. I get that, and you should, too, since you’re running your own little operation at Kérkira.”

Andy stopped pulling against Dio and sat on the bed again. When Dio let go of her wrist, she swallowed and took slow breaths until she stopped crying, until she could choke out what she needed to say. “I’m sorry. All that invasion—for what? What good did I do you?”

Dio’s voice sounded unusually light when she answered. “Somebody else knows. That’s good enough for now.”

“Sorry.” Andy wiped her face with her palms. “Not following.”

“Before she died, my sister knew everything about me, what we’d gone through together and apart, and that helped me feel sane.” Dio touched Andy’s wrist again, two fingers this time, the slightest of contact, but so unusual for her that it made Andy stare. “Devin sharing everything with me helped me feel strong, because she knew, and I knew, and we had that bond together. I don’t have Devin anymore, but I have you—and that matters. It doesn’t heal the pain, but it makes everything hurt less. I’m not alone.”

Andy shifted her stare from Dio’s fingers to Dio’s face.

Dio was … smiling.

Sort of.

Her gray eyes had a clarity Andy had rarely seen, and Andy realized Dio’s burdens had been lightened. Not removed, no—but definitely shared, like she said. Andy’s energy had flowed through the hollow spaces and made them less empty. The water had gone where it needed to go and done what it needed to do.

“You’ll never have to be alone again if you don’t want to be,” Andy said, making sure Dio understood she was giving a promise. “Motherhouse Kérkira isn’t much to look at, but I don’t plan for us to stay there long.”

Dio’s smile got a little wider. Kind of lopsided and cute, left mouth up and right mouth rebelling. “A crazy old fire Sibyl, an ancient water Sibyl, a bunch of water babies, and now me with all my thunder and lightning. It’ll be a party, right?”

They got up together.

“Need to pack?” Andy grabbed her sunglasses and put them on.

Dio wiped water streaks into her blue shirt and jeans. “Nah. There’s not a damned thing here I want.”

By the time Andy and Dio got to the hallway, all seven of the air Sibyl Mothers had indeed managed to get themselves back up Mount Olympus and into the hallway between Andy, Dio, and the exit from the little hospital. The Mothers stood silent, dripping and glowering as Andy once more drew her dart pistol and took aim, this time at the nearest Mother.

“When Mother Anemone gets back from the States and we’ve all had a little time to heal and cool off, we’ll be talking. Dio’s going to fight again, and you’re going to allow her to train to use her weather making in battle situations.”

“Andy—” Dio nudged her in the back, but Andy gave her a look.

“Don’t fucking argue with me. You been lying up here whining and worrying about how you’ll pitch knives with one hand when you can aim lightning like a spear and drop tornados on people’s heads. I’ve seen you do it.”

The tallest of the blue-robed Mothers, a woman who looked a little like Mother Anemone, only not as elegant, especially with her dripping hair and torn robes, cleared her throat. “It’s impossible to control that skill for combat.”

“Hey.” Andy got right up in the tall mother’s face, bringing down a rain of mountain water on both of them. “Nothing’s impossible. My life’s been proof enough of that.”