Captive Soul (21 page)

“All the fire.” Ona said. “It was the fire under the earth’s surface that possessed what I needed, so that’s the fire that answered when I called. In small measure, you can learn to shield yourself from the exchange of energy so that it doesn’t leave you fighting for consciousness for days. In larger measure—” Ona hesitated. “Well, there are no shields large enough for some things.”

Camille absolutely couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But how could you possibly communicate with the fire like that?”

Ona frowned. “Ancient channels of communication cross this earth like termite tunnels. They’re everywhere. You use the mirrors upstairs, so you know that, Camille.”

“But—”

“Those communication channels aren’t just for objects and the stray live transport and to throw words back and forth.” Ona opened her hands and arms like she was beseeching Camille to understand. “Even if they were just for talking, though, anything with energy has a voice, doesn’t it? If you can just—”

“Learn its language,” Camille parroted back, the line so deeply ingrained from her training years that she couldn’t have stopped herself from saying it even if she’d wanted to.
Everything with energy has a voice, if you can just learn its language
. A sense of amazement traveled through her, warm and slow, as new meanings for that old axiom opened in her mind. “You
talked
to the fire.”

“We talk to fire all the time. Our existence is an endless conversation with everything that burns.” Ona’s hand lifted toward the charms she made, then lowered to her side again. “That’s the truth of us, Camille. The truth of fire Sibyls.”

Camille didn’t know what to say. The possibilities Ona had just opened for her were enough to cloud her awareness completely, and then Ona asked, “Have you heard it?”

The question sounded wistful, like Ona might be remembering a lover, or maybe a terrible, all-consuming addiction.

“Have I heard what?” Camille murmured.

“The fire.” A little impatience now. Ona’s words seemed rushed. “Has the fire spoken to you? When you use your pyrosentience, when you’re deeply connected to your element and drawing the flames into your essence, have you heard the roar?”

Camille stood dumbfounded and still for a thump of her own heart, because she
had
heard that before. She had thought she imagined it, or that it was an artifact of the power she was using, something like her own mind’s reaction to holding so much fire inside her. Even thinking about it gave her a fresh round of shivers. She had never heard a sound so deep, so endless. It took her away from the real world sometimes. It was … almost addictive.

How could it possibly be real?

Yet when Bela had used projective earth energy, and when Dio had used her ventsentience, and even when Andy had made her limited, fearful effort at aquasentience—hadn’t Camille heard them all speak with the voice of their element, with the force of their elemental talent blasting through every word?

It wasn’t just a metaphor or an altered perception. When I’ve heard that, it’s been real. The energy has really been there. Right there. Waiting for us to use it
.

“If you can hear it, it will come when you call,” Ona said. “It will give you all the energy you ask for, and anything else it possesses, like this liquid metal. You just have to ask.”

It
 … the fire?

The fire of the world. Camille slowly, slowly grasped that she didn’t have to create fire at all. There was plenty to be had, everywhere, all the time. A dizzy madness tried to seize her as she grappled with this idea. She could see herself swimming through great molten pools, plunging into endless rivers and seas of moving fire. Sweet Goddess. She had to shut her eyes to catch hold of her sanity, and when she did, she saw an image of Ona on her eyelids. Ona, small and bald, metal fused into one arm, and so terribly scarred.

Camille opened her eyes and focused on the old woman. Focused on the scars. All the damage—damage from heat and flames that shouldn’t have been possible, since Ona was a fire Sibyl.

“It will come when I call,” Camille repeated, inventorying all the pain Ona must have suffered when she got those scars. “How much fire are we talking about here?”

“All of it,” Ona whispered, her voice so quiet and tremulous Camille wasn’t sure she’d really heard that. “If you want.” She took a rattling, pained breath. “Or if you make a terrible mistake with consequences you can’t begin to imagine.”

Tears streamed from one of Ona’s eyes, and Camille realized the tear duct must have been burned from the other eye. She couldn’t stand to see anyone hurt like that, so she did the only thing she knew to do, which was reach out. If she could hold Ona, if she could truly understand, maybe she could share Ona’s pain and make it less.

For a moment, Ona seemed shocked that someone was trying to touch her. She allowed the embrace, tentatively reached up to return it, then pushed Camille away, shaking her head.

“No,” she rasped, looking at the floor and shaking her head. “That’s not something you want to do, I promise you.”

“Camille?” Andy’s voice rang down the hall. “I made some sandwiches if you guys want some. Pistachio paste and salami. And don’t say it’s gross until you taste it.”

Ona looked stricken at the thought of somebody else approaching, and her good eye widened and lost its focus.

Camille knew what Ona was getting ready to do next because she’d done it so many times herself. “Please, wait. Stay. Whatever’s hurting you so much, we can work it out.”

“Some pains have no balm.” Ona’s words seemed to flicker across the air, but she was already gone, leaving nothing behind but a ripple in the floor.

Camille just stood there, uncertain, everything inside her a mix and a jumble. An amazing door had been opened—yet slammed shut again before she could even step through it.

The fire.

The fire of the world.

How could her ancestors have walked away from such a connection, such a powerful tool and weapon as speaking fire’s language and calling it through them? The roar of it, the power … She couldn’t imagine how much she could accomplish if she truly used her abilities like Ona did.

But what had happened to her?

Camille’s mind roved over that question, and when she touched on it, she remembered when she herself had drawn fire at the level Ona described. Whenever she’d heard fire speak to her in its volcanic growl—those had to be the times, and each of those times she’d been afraid. Each of those times she’d paid a price, so weak afterward she couldn’t even function for a time.

It wasn’t just that, though. It was … something else.

A sense of enormousness from the energy. A sense of risk.

How much fire are we talking about here?

All of it
.

Camille’s pulse went fluttery.

Ona hadn’t been speaking in hyperbole or metaphor. She’d meant that literally, didn’t she? Camille had been too absorbed to realize it, but—
Oh, Goddess
.

Her hands started shaking, and that dry tightness she hated claimed her throat before she could swallow to stop it from happening.

All of it
, she mouthed, trying to grasp that, trying to imagine what that would be like, what could happen if she really did do something like that, tap into the world’s fire and just let it blast through her, intensified and magnified—

“You okay?”

Bela’s voice made Camille jump. She spun toward the sound, and there was Bela, standing beside the first table in her jeans and an NYPD sweatshirt. Her dark hair was pulled back, emphasizing the worry in her wide, dark eyes.

“I—I don’t know.” Camille immediately stared at the projective charm she had made Bela. Instinct overwhelmed her, and she wanted to snatch it off Bela’s neck. It felt unsafe now, just thinking about everything Ona had said.

Could Bela call all the earth energy in the world and break the planet in half? And what about Dio and the wind, Andy and the oceans and seas? Just the thought of so much contact with fire had made Camille half drunk and fuzzy, so much so that she hadn’t registered all of Ona’s words, or the meaning of them.

Camille’s chest got tight, then tighter.

What if the same thing happened to her quad?

Nobody should have charms to enhance their sentient talents. What had she been thinking when she made them? Camille wanted to go to Dio and Andy and demand theirs, and the dinar—shit. Would it melt if she had Bela tunnel to the earth’s core, and they dropped it into all the pools and rivers and seas of fire-rock that had been roaring to Camille whenever she had been stupid enough—no,
arrogant
enough—to listen?

Camille’s breath got faster and shallower. She couldn’t stop looking at Bela’s charm. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think you should use that anymore.” She pointed to the crescent pendant. “I don’t think any of us should use anything to magnify our projective abilities.”

Bela covered up her charm almost protectively, and Camille knew she wouldn’t be surrendering it anytime soon. “Why?”

“I’m not sure about that, either.” Camille chewed at her bottom lip, wanting to scream because her words were burning up in her mind before she could speak them clearly. “I just—feel it. That maybe … maybe the Mothers have been right, that the energy’s too unpredictable and dangerous.”

And maybe I’ve felt all the fire in the world, waiting to come at my call
.

God, what could have happened …

Bela was staring at her like she was coming unhinged, and maybe she was. “Did something frighten you, Camille?”

A strange laugh burst out of Camille, one she couldn’t quite control. “Fuck, yes. Ona did.”

Bela came through the lab toward her, and the two of them sat down in rolling chairs by the back table and sink. Camille explained as best she could what Ona had done with the metals, what she’d shown Camille, and what she’d said. When Camille was finished, Bela looked rattled.

“She couldn’t have been serious,” Bela said, but Camille heard the doubt in Bela’s voice. Maybe Bela had been hearing her own roaring, the voice of the earth, tempting her to do something beyond devastating.

“I think she was.” Camille tried to keep her voice steady, but she heard the tremor in her words.

Bela usually picked up on stuff like that, but not today. She was too tied up in trying to think it through and find a solution, like most mortars tended to do. “Dio’s been scouring the Motherhouse Greece archives about projective energy again, and there’s nothing much, and sure as hell nothing like this. Are you sure Ona’s not just shilling for the Mothers, trying to freak us out?”

Camille shook her head. “No way. I think she’d put out her one good eye before she did anything the Mothers wanted her to do. I think the problem is, the information is too old. The archives may not have anything about true and full uses of sentient talents, since the Sibyls have been breeding away from them since the Dark Crescent Sisterhood has existed as a formal organization.”

This made Bela swear for a few seconds, close her eyes, and press her hands against her cheeks like she was trying to keep her skull in one piece. “Can you get Ona to come back?”

“Not if she doesn’t want to.” Camille glanced at the spot where Ona had disappeared. “Whatever happened way back when, it scarred her insides as badly as her outsides, or maybe worse. Even showing me such a little bit and trying to discuss it made her run like hell. It may be a while before we see her again, if we do.”

Bela’s eyes roved over Camille’s periodic tables, lingering on each color like they had meditative properties. “Then how can we find out?”

Camille didn’t think she needed more information. She was sure of what her instincts were telling her, but before she could ask Bela and Dio and Andy to give up their charms, she knew she should offer them more proof.

But how could she? Who could—

Wait a minute
.

Camille put her hand on Bela’s wrist. “Maybe, if she’s willing, Dio could ask Jake Lowell and the Astaroth demons?”

Bela looked thoughtful. “That’s right. They have vestigial memories—and Merilee Lowell’s always talking about the archives her husband and his kind have in that place that’s not really in this plane of existence.”

“Dio might not be able to go there, but Jake or his friends could have a look for us.”

Bela patted Camille’s hand and seemed very, very relieved. “I’ll ask her. And the reason I came down here was to tell you tonight’s trip to the docks is off. Riana’s group is going to take our patrol so we can get some extra sleep.” Bela glanced over her shoulder in the general direction of Camille’s bedroom. “Thought you might appreciate some … um, spare time.”

(
 19 
)

John felt like the luckiest man in the universe, out on a real date with this more-than-real woman. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d put on dress clothes, even if he couldn’t quite do the suit. Camille had chosen a hot little winter-white number with killer cleavage. It hugged her just right, and she’d let all that auburn hair fall loose across her shoulders, chest, and back.

He’d hailed a cab for them, even though he really wanted to strut up and down Broadway with her on his arm, showing her off to anybody who’d look—and plenty would have. When they got out at 43 West Sixty-fifth, he felt almost underdressed in his black slacks and sport jacket, but then, that would always be an issue with Camille, wouldn’t it? She could make a pair of jeans and a sweater look like runway fashion, in his opinion.

As it was, they opted for Chinese and he went upscale, taking her to Shun Lee West at Lincoln Center. Nothing screamed
You’re worth it, baby
, like alabaster monkeys at the bar and giant golden dragons in the gold, white, and black dining area. The place was packed, but John paid heavy for a corner table, which afforded them a tiny bit of privacy.

“Ginger and lemon,” she said when he escorted her to the table, his arm linked through hers, just like he wanted to do. “Mmmmm. I
love
Chinese food.”

That alone was enough to convince John that they were basically compatible. He’d never gotten on with people who weren’t up for a midnight egg roll run.

After they were seated, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at her, and she stared right back at him. The table was small, but it seemed too large, holding them apart with its whiter-than-white linens.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date, beautiful.” He just couldn’t quit looking at her. “I can’t remember the last time.”

“All work and no play makes John a dull boy.” Camille played with the edge of her napkin.

John shook his head once, slowly. “Ah, that’s Jack. Makes Jack a dull boy, and yes, actually, he is. But you said we’re not talking about Jack Blackmore or demons or anything to do with work, right?”

“Right.” A smile. He never wanted it to go away.

“Good.”

“So,” she said, nervous tension adding tight lines to her pretty face.

John understood her hesitance. With work off the table, he had no idea what to talk about, either. Except maybe how much he wanted to make love to her, and how beautiful her eyes were, and the fact he really liked it when she left her hair down.

“You know, I really haven’t done much but work myself.” Camille finally broke eye contact and moved her napkin to her lap. “Not since the first time I left the Motherhouse and started fighting. I can carry on a mean conversation about oiling swords, making explosives, refining and casting metal—not, um, very feminine, is it?”

“It’s perfect.” John handled his own napkin, but he kept his eyes on her like she might vanish if he looked away. “Especially the explosives part. Nitroaromatics or plastics?”

Camille’s pretty smile took on a wicked edge John liked equally well. “Plastics are better for mission work, but myself, I go for lead azide. I can keep it stable with elemental containment long enough to blow something to Mars—just not very long. I can’t transport it very far.”

She likes to blow shit up. I really think I’m in love with this woman
.

The waiter came. John ordered spring rolls, dumplings, wontons, and baby littleneck clams with black bean sauce, and Camille said, “Hungry?”

He was about to explain that he hadn’t had really good Chinese in about as long as it had been since he had a date when she added, “Because if you are, you really should order something for yourself, too.”

At that point, John relaxed on a whole new level, ordered more appetizers, and told the waiter they would choose a main course after they finished.

When the waiter brought the appetizers, they dug in, and John couldn’t keep himself from feeding her a few bites of spring roll. She let him, her aquamarine eyes dazzling against the gold-and-white backdrop.

“It’s nice to go out with a woman who’s not afraid to eat,” he murmured, trying not to get overly caught up in the petal-soft touch of her lips on his fingers.

She polished off the last bite of spring roll without a blush or cough, then went searching for a sparerib. “It’s nice to go out with a guy who doesn’t look at me funny when I do.”

“Not that I wish you had, but … why is it that you haven’t been dating? Half the men in New York City would be showing up at your door with flowers if you’d let them.”

Camille gestured to the wasteland of devastated appetizers between them. “I’m expensive. They’re afraid I’ll eat myself short and fat and wrinkled like Mother Keara.”

He waited her out.

She realized what he was doing and rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. I haven’t been dating because I was afraid that would cause too many complications. My quad has been struggling to keep rhythm with each other, and New York City is still down a lot of Sibyls. We’ve got a lot on us, and I didn’t want to add more.”

John watched her carefully, searching for any sign he was missing part of her message, then decided just to ask her outright. “Am I some of that
more
? More stress? Be honest.”

“Yes and no.” She took a sip of her water, then let the glass slide slowly to the table as she held his gaze. “You’re an amazing fighter and a good man.” Then she realized what he might really be asking, and she answered that, too, reaching out to brush his hair across his forehead. “You’re not a burden on our unit, John, and I can’t imagine you ever would be. You’re … another change. A risk. But I think you’re a good one.”

That answer made him unreasonably happy, but he didn’t want to start grinning at everything like some stupid little boy. It was hard with her, though. She brought out the grins. “How do your girls feel about me as a risk?”

Camille fiddled with the last sparerib like she was counting. “One yes vote so far, and two maybes. And don’t ask me to name names.”

Better than three fuck-no’s, at least. “What can I do to make it easier?”

“You don’t have to do anything except be patient with me.” She smiled, but the look in her eyes suggested she was serious. John could figure that. What did Camille do that required patience? He hadn’t seen anything.

He realized that in the past, that kind of comment from a woman would have made him nervous. Coming from her, it just intrigued him.

“I’ll be patient,” he said, making it a promise.

She pointed her sparerib bone at his nose. “And don’t start acting like a macho asshole.”

John considered this, then conceded it with a shrug. “I’ll let Jack handle that job. He’s good at the whole asshole thing.”

Camille finally surrendered her sparerib bone, and the plate between them was completely empty except for the nonedibles. “I’m the one who has been adding more stress to the quad, not you. That fit I threw with Maggie—then bringing Ona into the mix.”

She looked troubled, then deeply worried, and John was about to ask her what was wrong when the waiter came back again. The guy stared at their plates like they were both animals, but he cleaned up the mess and took their order without so much as a crosswise look. John let him get about three steps from the table before he locked eyes with Camille and said, “Okay, talk. That look’s worrying me.”

She looked away from him, then down at her hands. “It’s about work.”

Thank God
. “Okay.”

After a long, long, long pause, Camille said, “I’m not a typical fire Sibyl.”

“Yeah, I got that much when I was living in Duncan’s head. So? You’ve found other ways to fight.” The restaurant seemed to be growing more distant now, the whites a little less bright, the tangy scents a little more dull. The universe was drilling down to Camille in John’s head, and he was just fine with that.

Camille pulled her napkin out of her lap and twisted one of the edges, keeping her focus on the cloth. “None of us has the normal, expected talents Sibyls are supposed to have, except maybe Andy, and she’s so new to everything, she doesn’t even know what she can do and neither do we.”

John thought about this, and offered what observation he could make. “You’re all getting better at that different sort of stuff you do. The dinar, the charms—you’re working it out.”

“That’s just it.” She put the napkin down and raised her eyes to his, and he figured they were getting to it now. “I’ve been thinking of the charms like plastics or dynamite. Things I do that normal fire Sibyls don’t. Things to make me stronger. Explosive, yeah, but pretty stable and safe if you know what you’re doing. But John, those charms I made for Bela and Dio and Andy, what if they’re not stable, even with careful use? What if they’re lead azide—or worse?”

The food came, and the waiter placed it in front of them with a broad smile, waiting until John nodded for him to leave. He wanted to shove the guy away, but he could tell from the look on Camille’s face that it was too late. The thread had been broken, at least for the moment, and her attention was captured completely by her food. She looked like a little kid sitting down to a Christmas feast, and he thought that was pretty cute.

John had gone for the Beijing duck, which was strong in a just-right way, even if it bugged him a little that the duck’s head came cooked along with everything else, bill and all. He’d gotten used to stuff like that overseas. Camille had steered Cantonese and ordered the Grand Marnier prawns with honey walnuts—which, thank God, didn’t get served with the little bobbling eye stalks or anything. Even John had his limits.

For a few minutes they chowed, and then she started picking at her broccoli and the rich, dark nuts, the rose on her plate brushing the light, soft skin of her hand. Whatever it was she was trying to say involving the atypical abilities and the lead azide metaphor, it was pretty important to her, he could tell.

“Imagine if you had some guys who were great soldiers,” she said, “maybe the strongest soldiers in the unit, except they couldn’t shoot as well as everybody else.”

John scooted his duck head out of his direct line of sight. “Okay, yeah, I’m following you.”

“You make them special guns that do the targeting for them, and the guns work. They really work.” She looked up at him and smiled, and he thought this part of the story was real, maybe exactly what had happened, only with energy charms instead of other hardware. “All of a sudden they’re not only just as good as everybody else, they’re better. They even get to try the guns out in a few battles, and they kick ass and take names and make a gigantic difference.”

She stopped. Waited. He didn’t look at the duck head, and he added up her meaning, summarizing an old commander’s words. “By giving them the special guns, you made them relevant.”

Her expression brightened. “Relevant. Yes. Good word.
Great
word.” She put down her fork. “Then in a practice session, one of the guns malfunctions, and you realize those weapons could go bad in a firefight and shoot everyone in a ten-mile radius, friend or foe. What do you do next?”

John felt the weight of the scenario, and he could imagine it in so many different ways: as a soldier himself, and as a commander, and as a man who had struggled for many years to find his own relevance. “It sucks, but you don’t have a lot of choices. You have to retire the guns and go back to the drawing board on the design.”

She winced, and her frown made his chest hurt. “What if the technology’s faulty at base? What if it’s lead azide and can’t be stabilized no matter what you do?”

John’s heart sank for Camille. “Then you have to take the guns away forever.”

“And make the men, make my quad, who they used to be. Who we all used to be. The less-thans. The ones who struggle, who can’t be as good as everybody else.” She hesitated, spreading her fingers out on either side of her plate. “When I do that, I make us irrelevant again.”

John’s training and experience kicked in, and he spoke to her like an officer. “That’s up to the squad. To its leader, its cohesion, and its initiative and ideas. Lack of skill in one area doesn’t make any group a failure—hell, look at how strong your group was even before you made those charms.”

Camille gazed at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “I hear that, and I’m sure you’re right. Maybe the truth of this is, I feel like a bitch because I opened a door and now I might have to slam it closed. Even though I know it’s the right thing, the safest thing, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go back to being … broken.”

John couldn’t quite believe he’d heard that. “There’s nothing about you that’s broken. Not a thing.”

She closed her eyes. “Please don’t tell me how everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. That’s just bullshit.”

“It’s not, but I won’t.” He waited for her to look at him again, and he made sure to think through the next words pretty carefully. “That thing you do with the fire—how you explore objects and track things with your energy, and how you can pull fire through you to do stuff like you did when you gave me this body—don’t you think that’s important? There’s got to be a reason you have that skill, and there’s got to be a way to use it safely.”

Camille finally went back to eating, a few little bites, and then she came up with, “If pyrosentience was so important, the fire Sibyl Mothers wouldn’t have bred for stronger pyrogenesis instead. They think it’s pretty useless and as unstable as any primary explosive.”

“Maybe they don’t think it’s useless.” John finally surrendered and put his napkin over the duck head. “Maybe it scares the hell out of them.”

“You’re an optimist.”

“Never thought anybody would say that to me.” He knew he was grinning now, and he was starting not to worry about it. “You have a strange effect on me, beautiful.”

“Yeah, well, that’s mutual.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

God, he loved her straightforward answers. If she’d been the kind of woman to play coy, he’d have worked through it, but he was glad he didn’t have to.