Bound by Light (42 page)

The front door slammed open and shattered into so many boards as she hurtled into the entry hall—and stopped, screaming.

Dead.

Ah, sweet goddesses, they were all dead!

She clawed at the sides of her face, scenting fire and blood and terror all at the same time.

The five OCU officers who stayed behind to watch the townhouse and help Riana and Cynda lay in broken heaps on the hardwood floors. Shot, stabbed, clawed—fuck! She couldn’t tell.

"Cynda!" Merilee ran forward through red, slippery puddles, her wet footfalls slapping in the otherwise quiet house.

Too quiet.

Too still.

Nobody else here—or nobody else alive.

No!

"Riana! Cynda!" Merilee hit the stairs and hammered up one flight, then two. "Riana!"

No one answered.

Shit!

The third floor looked like a war zone. Chairs busted. Bookshelves overturned. The plaster had been cracked, and one of the support beams sagged at the center as if an earthquake had almost torn the space apart.

Riana . . .

Merilee sucked a gulp of air and ran down the hallway to Riana’s open bedroom door.

One of Riana’s daggers protruded from the splintered doorframe.

Inside, more broken furniture. Torn draperies. The mattress lay half off the bed. A streak of blood marked the cream-colored sheets, and the dark red pattern burned itself into Merilee’s mind.

She wanted to vomit, needed to scream, but she didn’t have any air left, or any time.

With no real thought, no connection to reality at all, Merilee wheeled out of the bedroom, ran back down the stairs and through the hallway. The conference room door was open, but when she looked inside, the space was empty. Sal’s body—gone. But no Riana. No Cynda. The basement door also stood open.

"Cynda. Cynda!" Merilee ran forward, yelling the word over and over again.

The wood on the basement door had been scorched black.

The bulb in the stairwell had been shattered, but Merilee plunged into the darkness and down, down to the gym where Nick left Cynda. Where Cynda often stayed when she was too agitated to control her elemental fire power.

The pungent odor of melted plastic and charred flesh almost choked her as she stumbled into the big stone room and looked around, desperate to find Cynda there, alive, okay.

Hecate help me.

Merilee shoved her palms against her own chest to contain the ache as she looked around. Blood rushed in her head so fast, so loud it made her mind spin. In the dim light she could see there was nothing left of the gym but twisted lumps of metal, scorched and exploded exercise mats and balls, and bits of ash.

Two dead bodies lay at odd angles against the gym walls.

Males, burned to death. Probably part of August’s raid.

Merilee didn’t give a shit about the dead men.

Her mind registered the only important fact.

Not Cynda. Not Riana. Thank all the goddesses. Not one of mine!

Go
, she thought to Cynda, and sent a fierce hope into the universe that her triad sister would burn all of her kidnappers to crispy black shells, before or after Riana crushed them with molten boulders from the center of the earth.

Breath coming in jagged, painful gasps, Merilee peeled out of the basement, running harder than ever. She called wave after wave of her air energy to shove her up the steps even faster.

She had to go after Riana and Cynda. She had to find them. Save them. If she got back outside, maybe she could pick up a clue, a scent, some kind of trail. There had to be a way to follow them. She refused to consider any other possibility.

She made it to the stairwell and launched herself into the hallway, and slammed face-first into a steely, muscled chest. Hands grabbed her, steadied her. She hit whoever it was with enough wind to blow the fucker through the opposite wall—but whoever it was held on tight. Didn’t even move.

Part of Merilee registered the face. The familiar scent.

Jake?

He was talking.

Words were coming out of his mouth—but what was he saying?

Merilee’s mind buzzed. Agony and loss seemed to batter her whole body. She scratched at Jake’s face. Tried to punch him. "Let me go!"

"Are they here?" he demanded, his voice louder as he gave her a brief shake. "Focus. Focus, Merilee, and tell me. Now."

The sound of his voice, the shake, the pressure of his grip on her forearms, and his stormy gray-blue eyes brought her back to this world enough to process his question. She stopped moving and sagged, but he held her up.

Are . . . they . . . here . . .

Riana. All the goddesses and gods, too. Cynda. Help me now, Olympus.

Are they here—

"No!" The word tore from her depths in a loud wail, and she started fighting Jake’s grip all over again. Wanted away from him. Wanted away from everyone and everything except Riana and Cynda and whoever had snatched them away from her.

"Stop it," Jake said, his voice soft.

Merilee thrashed at him. Threw enough air at him to move every sand dune in the Sahara. Pictures blasted off the wall. Shelves rattled and smashed to the floor. She couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t make herself stop. "Let me go. I have to get out there and look for them. Goddamnit, Jake, take your hands off me!"

But he didn’t.

He pulled her to him, then forced her behind him, between his back and the wall. Using his weight and greater height, he crushed her into the plaster, ignoring her kicks, her punches—not even twitching when she sank her teeth into his neck.

Then, over Jake’s shoulder, Merilee saw the two hulking golden forms approaching.

Slowly.

Growling.

Fists doubled.

Eyes white with fury, the Curson forms of Jake’s twin brothers bore down on them like the wrath of Olympus itself.

The nearest and largest—Nick, Merilee knew—growled, the unearthly sound so low and loud the walls seemed to shake with it.

Then it spoke.

Just one word.

"Where?"

The sound crashed through Merilee, more painful than any punch. She tried to answer him, tell him she didn’t know, but a sob tore out of her throat instead. Damnit, she was crying now, and she’d never ever stop. How could she stop? Her triad had been stolen away, right under her nose. What kind of broom was she? How could she let this happen to her family of the heart?

Nick lunged forward, his blazing golden face only inches from Jake’s. He was still wearing his own talisman, so somewhere in all that bulk, there was still a hint of humanity—though Merilee couldn’t see a bit of it. He looked like seven feet of pure rage, out of control. When the demon opened his mouth and showed the huge, jagged teeth inside, Merilee caught her breath and tried to make herself be quiet.

Jake didn’t move even an inch.

After a second of facing down dangerous Curson-Nick, he answered his brothers for Merilee, his voice so calm she had an urge to bite him again. "Riana and Cynda aren’t here. August had them taken."

From behind Nick, Creed let out a roar that really did shake the walls.

The sound shook Merilee, too, letting out some of her rage and panic in a way she couldn’t manage without blowing the townhouse down to its stone foundation. Her tears kept flowing, but now more anger and determination mixed with her pain, sharpening her thoughts.

The huge Cursons turned away from Merilee and Jake and thundered past the bodies of the dead officers, out of the townhouse, straight into the streets of New York City.

Jake immediately stepped away from Merilee and released her from the wall. He turned and caught hold of her arms again, keeping her close, and she saw that his face was bruised and bleeding, probably because of her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"No. Yes." Damn it, she would
not
start sobbing again. This didn’t seem real. She was going totally numb, and maybe this wasn’t real at all. "But, no."

The OCU officers and Sibyls from their team poured through the front door, pulling up short and swearing when they saw their dead comrades.

Merilee jerked away from Jake.

Slow down. Just slow down. Think it through. You’re a broom. It’s your fucking job to think!

Her mind shifted into a more deliberate, determined gear. She called out to the fire Sibyl in the group. "Riana and Cynda have been kidnapped. We need the Mothers. Now. Get them and send them to the fourth-floor library."

The fire Sibyl’s eyes widened. She hesitated for a second, looking at all the blood in the hallway, then ran up the stairs toward Cynda’s communications room and the big platform she used. Merilee had no clue how one scrawny, marginally experienced fire Sibyl would manage to open the ancient channels and bring the Mothers to the townhouse, but she had to trust that it would happen.

Her stomach heaved, and she almost broke down all over again.

Hold it, hold it, keep it together
. She breathed through the sickening crush of emotions she couldn’t even sort out. Her hands were shaking, so she folded her arms to steady herself.

Behind her, Jake choked out instructions to secure the scene and call back the other teams. "I’ll tape it off. It’s a crime scene. Tell them to come in through the kitchen and—"

"The conference room." Merilee met his eyes, then turned her face away because she couldn’t stand the sorrow she saw. "It’s empty now."

Without looking at Jake again, she left him to manage the officers and the scene and ran out of the townhouse, air spinning around her shoulders in fast little gusts. She jerked it back with fierce effort, worried she’d blow away some thread or bit of dust that would tell her what she needed to know.

Which way.

Which fucking way?

Her eyes bored into the porch, then the steps, then the ground as she moved all the way to the sidewalk, searching every inch, every crack and pebble for anything that would tell her which direction the kidnappers took.

For long, painful minutes, Merilee circled the outside perimeter. Twice. Three times, then four, winding up back on the sidewalk again, just inside the fence’s gates.

No indication of her triad sisters. Not even a whisper of a trail, or a single clue.

Merilee knew that meant Riana and Cynda were unconscious by the time they got outside, or there would be a burn mark, a torn bit of earth—something. She would not allow the other alternative.

Dead . . .

No.

Absolutely not.

She started around the perimeter again, concentrating so hard that each step felt like an electric shock.

Riana and Cynda weren’t dead.

Merilee’s hands kept balling into fists so tight her nails cut into her palms.

They are not dead.

She moved to the side of the main walkway until she was standing on natural stone, a much better conductor for elemental energy, and faced away from the house and the road, too. Due north, toward the source of all wind. Then she clenched her fists and closed her eyes and let her consciousness seep into the breezes, into every bit of wind around the townhouse.

Sounds grew more intense.

Now smells.

Merilee willed her mind and essence outward, her ventsentience expanding, feeling the air,
knowing
it, touching it and following the currents to wherever they might lead. Heartache competed with burning, acidic regret at not being here when Riana and Cynda needed her most, at first clouding her awareness, then shoving it forward, forcing Merilee’s mind deeper into the familiar exercise. Her thoughts sharpened to fine points, and her archivist’s skills took over, sorting familiar sensations, logging them and identifying.

Strangers.

Traffic fumes.

Sewage.

Pizza from around the corner. Hot bread from up the street—and cooking sugar from a nearby bakery.

But Riana?

Cynda?

Damn
it.

Nothing.

Merilee let her mind go farther, but she still found nothing. Frustration coiled inside her, rising and rising until it threatened to burst from the top of her head in a bashing, bruising air funnel.

Then—there. A few miles away. Mingled sulfur and fire—but not Asmodai. No, this was too familiar. It was Creed and Nick, radiating malice and terrifying a crowd of onlookers as they stormed the Jensen headquarters to get at August.

They aren’t there, boys.

Neither is he.

Because she had already sensed August. South. Toward Wall Street, giving off a deeper, more malignant stench, a cross between the poisonous gas in the Carter basement and something wet and moldy, like stagnant seawater. He was on the move, seemingly calm and unconcerned, no trace of anxiety in the air or smells coming off him as he walked.