Captive Soul

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Authors: Anna Windsor

Tags: #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fiction

BOOK: Captive Soul
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H
e had her tight and controlled, like he’d done this hundreds of times. She couldn’t move except to blink.

“Don’t fight me, beautiful,” said the voice of the thing from Central Park—the thing that was probably Strada. The sound was nothing but a masculine rasp against her ear, and the hand against her mouth felt hot enough to thaw glaciers. “You won’t win.”

Camille drew hard on her elemental fire, using the already overheated dinar to expand her pyrogenesis. Flames broke out along her neck and hissed down her arms, sizzling holes in her battle leathers and sending a shock of alarm through her Sibyl tattoo. Smoke poured around her, blurring her vision—but the asshole holding her managed not to let go.

“Keep it up,” the man murmured, so quiet no one else in New York could have heard him. “I like it hot.”

How the hell was he still holding her?

Camille couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense any elemental essence that would help him absorb her fire, but—

She shifted her energy into pyrosentience, stabbing at his flesh with focused beams of blue flame. He didn’t react to her probing, but he didn’t stop it, either. This time she got off a good blast, enough energy to finally tell her what she needed to know.

He wasn’t demon. Wasn’t Rakshasa. Not Strada, but he didn’t feel completely human, did he? Well, the muscled arms, the way-ripped pecs pressing into her shoulders—those were definitely all man.

A
LSO BY
A
NNA
W
INDSOR

Captive Spirit

Bound by Shadow
Bound by Flame
Bound by Light

Captive Soul
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2010 by Anna Windsor
Excerpt from
Captive Heart
copyright © 2010 by Anna Windsor

All rights reserved.

Cover image © Barnaby Hall / Getty Images

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-51679-4

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

For my family, again, who did without me for weeks on end, again. You guys are the best!

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.

—H
ERACLITUS

(
 prologue 
)

On the day everything changed, Camille Fitzgerald was in trouble—as usual.

“Stop running, you little freak!”

She tore away from the taunting voice, her bare feet pounding over cold, smooth stone. She sensed the older girls gaining on her from behind. They could hear the
slap-slap-slap
of her steps or maybe the wheezing jerk of her breath. Her clenched fists moved up and down, up and down as she tore through the twisting corridors, one rock hallway looking just like the next, but Camille knew the castle better than her own reflection. The castle was her only friend, her only haven. Here the hallway smelled like potatoes and roast from the kitchens. And around the next corner she’d catch a whiff of bitter oils and leather from the weapons room and see golden wall sconces instead of silver, with only every other torch lit. After that, it got colder and blacker and the air started smelling like mushrooms and water and rot.

Down she went, deeper into the stone fortress, heading for the endless maze of tunnels and storage rooms and pits far beneath Motherhouse Ireland. Where all the unwanted things ended up. Where all the mad things lived. Some of those tunnels probably ran all the way to Connemara, or maybe to other secret places. Camille hadn’t yet opened all the doors or followed every carved hollow to its final destination. She figured she hadn’t even found them all yet—but she’d found enough. If she could make it into the darkness, the older girls would have more trouble hunting her. Fire made light, but it also made
scáth
—shadow. Shadow had always been much kinder to Camille.

Almost there
.

Another minute. Another few steps
.

One of the girls shouted, “You’re just making it worse on yourself, you pathetic coward.”

Póg me hón—
kiss my ass. It was the first thing that came to Camille’s mind. She almost said it, but she decided to run faster instead. She didn’t want a beating today. Older girls meant practice swords. Fists and feet she could handle, but wooden sticks hurt like hell, especially when it was Maggie and Carlyn and Lee. They were the best fighters in their training class.

She knew she had to cover more ground. Push harder. Stretch. She threw all her energy into her next stride—too long! She pitched off balance and stumbled forward through patches of light cast by the few sconces overhead. The corridor’s nearest wall stopped her when she hit it full-on, slamming into the cold rock. With a loud curse, she ricocheted back into the corridor and fell hard on her knees.

Camille yelped as pain knifed up both legs. Before she could scramble to her feet and take off again, the older girls whipped forward and surrounded her in the big, empty stone space. Maggie Cregan, the oldest and tallest, blocked Camille’s path to the lower reaches of the castle, and she stood in ready fighting position, teeth bared. Her short, thick red hair was damp from the class they had just finished, and from chasing Camille halfway through Motherhouse Ireland. Flame reflected in her pale green eyes, changing them from creepy to flat-out psychotic.

Camille kept her fists up and her eyes on Maggie, though she was just as aware of Carlyn and Lee closing in behind her. They weren’t as tall as Maggie and they had longer brownish red hair and brown eyes. Still, with their jeans and matching long-sleeved T-shirts all smeared with soot, the three of them looked like sisters. They sort of were. All three girls were boarders, and close friends the way boarders tended to be when there were more than one of them in a training class.

Camille’s pulse raced as she tried to control her breathing and keep her wits. Her skin ached as if her body knew the punches were coming, because the punches always came, didn’t they? She still had bruises that hadn’t healed from the last time somebody chased her.

“You were supposed to have my back when we were sparring.” Maggie’s dead-quiet voice made the stones feel colder. Nothing but Maggie’s mouth moved when she spoke, and a steady cloud of smoke rose from her shoulders, framing her like a
deamhan
who’d just walked out of hell.

Maybe the older girl had actual demon blood running through her veins. After all, Maggie’s ancestors were executioners—the meanest in history.

Camille’s muscles tightened. “I did have your back.”

Maggie laughed, and the sound wasn’t nice. She pointed at the side of her head. “You let Cynda Flynn smash my skull with a rock.”

Camille lowered her fists a fraction so she could see Maggie better. “There were too many girls from the other class jumping you. I couldn’t fight them all at once.”

“You could have if you’d used fire.” Carlyn gave off her own smoke as she worked to catch her breath. “That’s the point.”

Camille did her best to bluff, giving all three girls a defiant scowl. “Leave me alone. It’s over. What’s done can’t be undone.”

“You’re supposed to be a Sibyl.” Lee wasn’t smoking, but her sarcastic tone bit like fire. “A
fire
Sibyl.”

“I’m a fire Sibyl in training, just like you,” Camille shot back, not worrying about Lee or Carlyn as much as Maggie.

“You’re nine years old,” Maggie said. “I made flames before I ever took my first step as a baby. If you haven’t done it by now, you won’t. You don’t belong here.”

Camille met Maggie’s gaze and immediately wished she hadn’t done it. Those eyes—they were just freaky. “That’s up to the Mothers, not you.”

Maggie kept her scary eyes as flat and unchanging as the big practice sword belted at her waist. “Most of the Mothers say the same thing. You’re too little and too quiet. You’ll never make it.”

Camille’s jaw clenched against those stabs. Was Maggie telling her the truth? Most of the Mothers didn’t like Camille, that much was right—especially Mother Keara, who was always pissed because Camille’s fire making didn’t work right.

But did the Mothers want her out?

The thought made her insides curl into a tight, painful ball.

She was no boarder like these girls, here for the weekdays and home on nights and weekends. She’d been born at Motherhouse Ireland. If the Sibyls put her out, where would she go? It was enough to make her breath squeeze deep in her throat, and she started to sweat.

“Leave me alone,” she said again. Crap. Her voice was shaking. Anger and humiliation burned through her like the world’s hottest flames, and she wished she could make fire, fire, and more fire whenever she wanted and not just by accident every now and then. She wanted to burst into roaring heat and light more than anything. “You better go away. I’m warning you.”

Lee laughed at her this time, and her laugh didn’t sound any nicer than Maggie’s. “The Mothers told us to toughen you up or you’ll never turn into a real fire Sibyl.”

“I
am
a real fire Sibyl.” Camille spoke through her teeth, seeing the red heat she felt inside, seeing fire in the air all around her. “I was
born
here, remember?”

She grabbed at the ambient fire with all the energy in her body, touched it, willed it to do what she wanted, to cook Maggie and Carlyn and Lee right where they stood.

They hesitated like they were waiting for the attack, getting ready for it—but nothing happened. No smoke. No outside heat coming together in a furious orange arc.

Nothing.

Stupid, awful nothing.

Just like always.

“Stand in the fire and speak when no one wants to hear your words,” Camille yelled, hating herself and wishing she could turn into a dragon and breathe a gout of flames all over Maggie’s stuck-up, better-than-you smirk. “Let the flames burn as you speak when cowards would choose silence. Speak until no smoke obscures the truth.
That’s
our job in a fighting group, and I’ll be able to do it just fine.”

“Mortar, pestle, broom.” Maggie jabbed her index finger at the tattoo on her right forearm, the same tattoo they had all been given when they came to Motherhouse Ireland—or in Camille’s case, when she came into the world. It was a picture of a mortar, a pestle, and a broom in a triangle around a dark crescent moon. The sacred mark of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood. When Maggie touched the pestle, she ran her short fingernail across the outline of the stone grinder. “This is us. The strongest Sibyls in any fighting group. The toughest. The best fighters.”

“Some warrior of the Dark Goddess,” Lee said. “Look at her hands shaking.”

“Can you even make a spark?” Carlyn reached into the air, pulling at ambient bits of fire until flames jumped from each of her fingers.

“It’s a Sibyl’s job to protect the weak from the supernaturally strong,” Maggie said as she raised her own hand and lit her fingertips. “If some demon blasts fire right in your face, the best you’ll be able to do is spit on the flames and hope for the best.”

Camille focused her energy on drawing the fire off Maggie’s fingertips into her own body. A second later, the flames snuffed out, leaving trails of smoke reaching toward the stone ceiling. She had no problem with pyroterminus, which was absorbing or ending fire energy. She was fair at pyrokinesis, which was moving fire that had already been created, and good at pyrosentience, or sensing and tracking fire or impressions left in fire energy by stuff that touched the fire.

It was pyrogenesis—drawing building blocks of fire into her body and making new, whole flames—where she fell short. And that was the only thing most fire Sibyls cared about. Camille glared at the smoke rising off Maggie, Carlyn, and Lee, and part of her hated them. Pyrogenesis came so easily to them that they made fire when they didn’t mean to and burned up clothes and sheets and furniture. Camille hardly ever did that. She only made fire now and then—and not that much of it—because she was …

Weak.

Her gut ached as Maggie drew her wooden practice sword and took a single step forward. Two more, and she’d be close enough to smack Camille with the flat of the dull blade.

“Stop me,” Maggie demanded.

Camille raised her fists higher. “I’ll kick your ass. I mean it.”

Maggie’s next words came out in a growl. “Stop me with fire or you’ll regret it.”

Camille screamed. Fury. Frustration. Helplessness. She didn’t know why she yelled and she didn’t care. This wouldn’t help. Threats and fear just made everything worse. She had as much chance of making flames as an earth Sibyl, an air Sibyl, or the ancient water Sibyls that had been washed away in a tidal wave at Motherhouse Antilla and didn’t exist anymore—which was exactly zero.

Carlyn and Lee stood back as Maggie lunged at Camille and swung the practice sword.

Camille smashed her fist into the wood. Pain blasted across her knuckles and down her wrist, all the way to her elbow. Tears blurred her vision and she wanted to scream her guts out and fall down and hold her hand, but she didn’t. Maggie staggered, eyes huge from the shock of how hard Camille had hit the wood.

Before Maggie could recover, Camille kicked her in the ass just like she’d promised, and let out a crazy-sounding laugh as Maggie slammed into the corridor’s stone wall. She didn’t wait to watch her fall. Holding her throbbing hand, Camille whirled on Carlyn and Lee, who had their swords drawn.

“You’re nuts,” one of them muttered.

No way to beat two at once, so Camille went low, throwing herself at Carlyn’s legs and bashing into her knees. The two of them went down hard in a tangle of legs and arms as Lee swore, threw down her practice sword, and tried to snatch Camille off Carlyn.

Camille jerked out of Lee’s grip, rolled to the side, and grabbed the discarded sword. Seconds later she was on her feet, dull blade at the ready, and the fight felt more equal.

Maybe I am crazy
.

The thought didn’t bother Camille.

All she wanted was out—out of this situation, out of the main part of the castle, and down into one of the dark tunnels, where she could be alone and safe. She wanted to go where nobody thought she was stupid or worthless or broken. Where maybe she wouldn’t think that, either. If she ran far enough, maybe she’d get away from herself, too.

All three girls were in front of her now, standing between her and the route back up to the main castle. Carlyn and Maggie rubbed at cuts and bruises while Lee fumed and smoked and glared at the practice sword she’d lost to Camille.

“I’m so gonna make you pay for this.” Maggie mopped blood off her nose with her sleeve and raised her own practice sword, which was easily twice as long and twice as broad as the one Camille held. Her hair flickered, then the ends caught fire, along with the wooden blade. Smoke billowed into the long hallway as flames licked toward Camille, heating her fingers and arms.

Tears streamed down Camille’s cheeks even though she didn’t want to be crying. She could barely breathe and hold her sword, her fingers hurt so badly, but they were healing. Sibyls healed fast, which was a good thing, because she was about to get the shit kicked out of her.

Maggie’s eyes got big as she stared at Camille, and Camille figured she was picking the first place to bash Camille with that enormous wooden sword.

Before Maggie could move, Carlyn threw down her sword. The sudden clatter of wood on stone made Camille jump, but she held her position and kept her stance.

Carlyn and Lee backed away from her.

What the—?

Camille tried to look as pissed and mean as possible. Her tears slowed as Carlyn and Lee kept giving ground. Both girls spun away from her and fled back up the corridor, toward the castle. Maggie shook her head once, then twice, like she was trying to rattle her own brain back to reality. A moment later she uttered a squeak of uncertainty, then turned and shot away as fast as the other two, sword swiping up and down as she ran.

Camille stood there gasping for air, feeling weird and stupid, then looked at her hands and the practice sword to see if she was growing scales or hair or something that would have scared the older girls that badly.

It was right about then that she felt it.

A strange pulse of energy behind her, something she’d never even sensed before—and it was strong. And dark. And moving up from the earthen tunnels beneath Motherhouse Ireland.

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