Bound by Light (48 page)

She was about to ask that question when they touched down inside the penthouse railing, and Jake said, "I don’t feel the bastard. He’s been here—but not now."

Delilah was already pushing through the glass doors. "Max? Boy, are you here? Max!"

Blood surging, Merilee readied her bow and an arrow, then tailed Delilah and Jake into the large apartment. The place was modern, pristine. Like, totally spotless and immaculate. Unnaturally so.

Wiped? she wondered, but couldn’t dwell on it. Breath catching roughly as she turned loose her ventsentience, she sucked in the aroma of cleanser and seawater.

Merilee’s fingers curled on her bow.

That can’t be all.

She pushed her mind harder, breathed deeper, combed through the air around her, seeking Riana’s signature, that earthy smell, or any sign of Cynda and her fire and smoke.

Please.

Her gut ached.

Please, please . . .

Damn
it.

Merilee almost sobbed.

They weren’t here. They just weren’t.

Instead of the scents she so wanted to find, Merilee’s ventsentience brought her whiffs of blood and rage, radiating from a room far in the back.

"Jake. There." She pointed with the tip of her bow. "The room in the back. The left, on the left!"

Delilah was opening all the doors in the place looking for her son, but Jake folded his wings and slipped past her, moving with an ethereal grace almost too beautiful to bear. Merilee’s gaze fixed on him and she followed him down the short hallway, hoping, praying, breath catching harder in her throat with each step.

Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe her senses were just off, and they were in this room, Riana and Cynda, right here waiting for her.

Her heart was beating so loudly she could barely concentrate, but she kept her bow raised.

Jake palmed the door handle and rattled it. Locked.

Merilee readied a blast of wind to knock it down, but Jake touched the handle again, closed his fist around it, claws lapping over to his knuckles as he seemed to will the metal to obey him.

Merilee felt a steady flow of elemental energy emanate from Jake, mixed in form, but very effective.

With a groaning creak, the handle wrenched sideways and Jake opened the door. He glanced inside, then stepped back into the hall, fangs bared. "Not them—but you better go first." His claws clicked as he curled his fingers into fists, then released them and pointed to her bow. "You won’t need that. I’ll call for an ambulance."

A muffled groaning met Merilee as she entered the room, sheathing her arrow and slinging her bow back over her shoulder. Her gut pitched at what she saw, but she ran to the bedside anyway.

The dark-skinned woman, naked and bound to the four posts with strips of sheets, thrashed and moaned against the gag in her mouth.

"Phila." Merilee reached out, but she didn’t dare touch the Vodoun priestess. She could tell from the woman’s wild, frantic gaze that she wasn’t seeing anything real, anything present. Phila was lost in her own mind from the horrors and violations she had endured.

Desperate to do something to ease Phila’s suffering, Merilee let her wind spread over the woman’s bruises and cuts, sending what healing she could to the wounds. As for Phila’s mind—another matter.

Merilee heard Jake speaking as he used the apartment’s landline to call for an ambulance and OCU backup. She could tell he was doing his best to keep the Astaroth resonance in his voice at a minimum, but it wasn’t working.

Phila.

Hecate, ease her.

But Hecate might not help the emergency personnel on their way to treat the priestess, so Merilee did what she had to do. With soft words and quick gestures, she placed elemental locks around Phila’s formidable powers. Not permanent. They’d wear off in a few days, but hopefully that would be long enough for Phila to get treatment and care, and regain her senses enough to know friend from foe.

With each binding, Merilee’s heart ached worse.

Her jaw throbbed as she ground her teeth. She
hated
what she was doing, trapping another living being’s power, and a woman as wounded as Phila—but there was no choice.

All our choices have been taken, haven’t they?

She wanted to quit. Maybe scream—but folding under pressure was not an option, so Merilee finished binding Phila’s powers, then went back to sending the priestess healing wind and soothing air.

It was all she knew to do. All she could do.

That, and worry like hell about Riana and Cynda, and what might have happened to them. What might be happening to them right this very second.

Just letting her thoughts drift in that direction scalded Merilee inside. She felt raw, like somebody had burned out everything that made her whole and real.

"We’re getting you out of here," she said aloud, hoping Phila could make sense of her words, and hoping she couldn’t hear the tension lacing every syllable.

"Nobody else here," Delilah said from the bedroom door in a flat, defeated tone. "Maybe the warehouse next. I know that place and a handful more. So long as he didn’t take them someplace new, we’ll find Max and your friends."

Merilee heard the bravado and knew the old woman didn’t really know, that she was frantic to find Max, grasping at any straw. When Merilee glanced at the woman who had been spying on her and her fellow members of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood for almost two years now, she saw the same desperation on Delilah’s face that she felt.

There was no spark in Delilah’s eyes. No hint of hope, despite what she had just said about finding Max and Cynda and Riana.
She thinks her son may be dead, or dying, or suffering at the hands of his father.

Despite Merilee’s anger over Delilah’s betrayals, she had to feel some sympathy, then revulsion as Delilah’s expression let her know that Delilah had seen Phila in this state already.

Merilee’s muscles tightened with disgust. "Did you help keep her captive?"

"All of them except your two friends, the most recent ones he took." Delilah sounded deeply ashamed and kept her eyes on the floor. "He would have beaten me. Killed me. And Max. He’s not like your demon. There’s no good in him, you understand? And I can’t best him." The old woman sniffed, then let out a quiet sob. "I understand that now. Would that I had seen it sooner—or found my courage before I did."

Merilee’s mind had snagged on the "not like your demon" part.

Merilee wanted to sob with Delilah, but she forced herself to keep her attention on Phila.

Sirens rose on the streets below, and Jake came to the bedroom doorway.

"We’ve got people on the scene already. I’ve warned the OCU officers accompanying them about what they’ll be dealing with and unlocked the door, and they’re coming up in the outer elevator now with some beat cops. We need to leave."

Merilee bent close to Phila, who was still staring into faraway nothingness. "Help’s here, honey." She ruffled the priestess’s hair with a soft gust. "Help’s right here. You’re going to be safe, and you’ll be able to use your powers again in just a few days."

She would have said more, but she could already hear footsteps thumping down the hallway toward the penthouse door.

"Six hours, fifteen minutes," Jake said as he moved back to the balcony with Delilah and spread his four wings against the moonlight.

Merilee ran to him and grabbed hold of his glowing, muscular arms. Wind rushed across her face as he flew them away from the penthouse just ahead of the onslaught of officers and medical personnel coming to rescue Phila.

The warehouse next.

Delilah was directing them.

Merilee couldn’t concentrate on the lights Jake blazed past, his whole body jerking with the force of his wing beats. She couldn’t process the traffic below, or even the flow of air around them. All she could think about was Riana and Cynda. Getting to them. Ensuring their safety so she and Jake would be free to launch at August with everything they had left.

The warehouse.

Her triad sisters had to be there.

Please, let them be there.

Cynda and Riana
are
at the warehouse
.

Merilee clutched that thought as tightly as she clutched Jake, and as they flew, she did what she could to pray to Olympus she was right.

"Energy—earth and fire," Jake said as they faced the metal door of the rundown waterfront space. A street-lamp flickered out from the rush of Merilee’s ventsentient power as Jake moved Delilah to his left, to keep her out of the way.

"Do you feel it, too?" he asked. "Contained. Probably with elementally locked cuffs."

"It’s not them." Merilee kicked at a concrete post beside the door, welcoming the flare of pain in her toes as she sucked back her air sensing. She focused on the ache in her foot so she wouldn’t start screaming. "Doesn’t smell the same, not right—and Cynda and Riana could never be contained by just cuffs for very long. Fuck!" She kicked the post again. "There’s air energy, too, but I don’t sense August. Let’s get inside."

Jake gripped the metal doors and Merilee wrapped him with wind, increasing his power as he bent the old steel enough to pry it loose. It gave with a loud
clank,
and a gust of terror and anger blazed up Merilee’s nose.
Sibyls. Definitely Sibyls, but damn, damn,
damn,
not mine.

She hurried inside behind Jake, and Delilah followed her, once more heading off to search side rooms and storage areas for Max.

It only took a few minutes to locate the small back storeroom where August had stashed the young ranger triad, the first Sibyls who had gone missing.

Beaten. Brutalized.

But alive.

Merilee’s mind buzzed as she released them from their elemental cuffs using one of her arrow tips, while Jake broke into an office next door to phone in the location.

These were barely more than adepts, just on their own, and sobbing so hard, already begging her to stay—shit, it was hard to leave them, but they were alive, and in one piece, and help was coming for them.

"I’m sorry." Merilee fought her own tears as she finished her work on the cuffs and pried the little air Sibyl’s fingers off her battle leathers. "I have to go. The OCU and ambulances will be here any second."

When the young woman tried to grab her again, Merilee grabbed her wrists instead. "Be a broom, honey. That’s what I’ve got to do."

Her words came out too fast, too harsh, and she regretted them immediately. Trying to be more gentle, she said, "I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through—but you’ve got to collect yourself and soothe your fire Sibyl. Help her call the Mothers."

The air Sibyl nodded and let her go.

As the young woman headed back to her wounded, crying triad, Merilee couldn’t help but wonder if any of the former captives were pregnant, if August could force a Sibyl to conceive. And Phila. And how many others?

Merilee actually wondered if her blood could boil. Felt like it.

Shit!

She tried to get hold of herself, and started walking away.

Damn, but these poor women will have to face so many brutal decisions on top of the trauma they’ve been through.

She needed to kill August twice. Three times. She needed to make him hurt.

When she reached Jake and Delilah at the warehouse door, Delilah wouldn’t meet Merilee’s eyes.

No sign of Max, Merilee presumed as Jake took hold of both of them.

"Five hours, fifty minutes," Jake said as he swept Merilee and Delilah out of the warehouse and above the scattering of glass where he had smashed into the office to use the telephone.

Merilee couldn’t answer him.

She was crying too hard.

Even as she gripped Jake’s neck, she clenched her teeth until her head hurt.

We rescued a triad. That’s something
.

But not enough. Dear goddesses, I’ve got to find them!

Her air energy ripped from her chest and she had to fight it, force it to aid Jake’s flying instead of spreading wild all over the sky.

Delilah was pointing west now, yelling about a storage facility.

This time, Merilee didn’t even spare the energy to pray.

Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into a long, exhausting blur.

The storage building.

Another apartment.

Another warehouse.

Sibyls, pagan witches, other elementally powerful female practitioners.

More victims of August—alive, rescued, but with each passing moment, Merilee’s heart darkened.

Where
were
they?

At the sixth site they visited, a remodeled apartment near the home Riana still owned at Sixty-third and Fifth Avenue, the smell of death knocked them all back at the door.