Captive Soul (32 page)

“Anything?” she called back to Bela as they once more approached the waiting, welcoming cover of trees.

“Same,” Bela called back. “Hints, but nothing solid.”

Camille had one hand on her dinar, the other on her sword. Andy muttered softly to herself, and John jogged up closer to Camille.

A boy stepped out of the woods directly in front of her. She barely had time to process his dark, nondescript features, his astonished expression—and the unnatural light burning in his dark, demon eyes—before the dinar around her neck went off like a grenade against her chest, blasting her backward, blasting the boy backward. As she fell, Camille saw John stagger away a few steps, gripping the sides of his head, snarling, coughing, and swearing as he tried to fight off the human-stripping projective energy that flowed off the coin, completely out of Camille’s control.

Camille hit the hard, cold ground and rolled back up, leaping between John, her quad, and the boy.

“Eldest!” she screamed—

And living hell on earth broke loose all around her.

Earth tore. Sulfur blasted into the air. The mindless roar of Asmodai rose into the night and the boy staggered to his feet, calling forward what looked like a solid wall of armed, armored Created.

From behind Camille came the sound of gunshots. She blasted warnings and distress calls through her tattoo, felt her quad’s terror shoot across her arm as they sent their own rudimentary messages.

The boy and his troops roared at Camille, but they couldn’t move forward against the power of the dinar.

The boy’s eyes blazed furiously. He was obviously surprised, not ready for the repellant power the dinar gave her. Camille yanked fire energy from every direction, extending the barrier, wrapping the elemental shield around the demons until she was pretty sure the Rakshasa couldn’t advance or retreat, either. Bela ran up beside her and her earth energy flowed into Camille, steadying her. Some of Andy’s cool water energy found her, and from farther away, Dio’s powerful wind trickled in to give her more strength.

“Aarif,” John said, and the boy’s head whipped toward him.

Aarif’s face showed a mix of rage and uncertainty.

He feels the demon inside me. He’s sensing that I’m holding on to some bit or piece of Strada
.

“Your trick does not impress me.” He pointed at John. “However you came to wear that skin, you’ll shed it when you die.”

John didn’t answer the kid because he was firing his Glock, not at the demon-boy, but behind Camille. She knew he was picking off hulking shadows as they charged toward them from seemingly every direction. The metallic reek of gunpowder drifted over Camille like a dark cloud.

“Stay close to me,” she shouted to Bela and Andy. “I don’t think the Rakshasa can touch us. Maybe not the Asmodai, either, but I don’t know how long I can hold this.”

Aarif roared again, drew a knife, and tried to throw it at Camille.

The protective barrier trapping him made his hand shake, made the blade fall useless on the ground. The Rakshasa Created were trying to raise what looked like Czech Vz. 58s, but they couldn’t get them into firing position.

Eight hundred rounds per minute on full auto. We’re so dead if I let them move
.

Camille had them for now, though, ringing Aarif and the Created with a solid wall of projective energy, magnified and fueled by the dinar. She couldn’t approach the demons any more than they could approach her, because the coin’s repelling properties worked both ways.

But maybe she didn’t have to get close.

The dinar felt so hot against Camille’s skin that she was sure it would catch her own fire. Her battle leathers smoked and seared away from it, and her barrier got even stronger.

Something stung her leg. Bad.

She hopped, reaching down toward her calf, but her wall of energy held. The protections she had learned from Elana cut the drain on her from so much focused pyrosentience, or she’d already be passed out on the ground, letting everybody die around her.

“Can’t do it forever.” She kept her gaze directly on Aarif. “But I can do it for now, asshole, and help’s coming.”

Sirens cut through the night, lots of sirens, and Camille had a sense of Sibyl energy closing in on them from north, south, east, and west.

John fired and fired. Andy was shooting, too. Rotten earth pummeled against Camille and the shield she was holding. She limped each time she tried to adjust her position. Green fire spilled across her vision, and sulfurous wind battered her eyes and nose as Asmodai got torn apart.

“There’s too many!” Andy shouted, but Sibyl battle cries echoed through Central Park, and from the corner of her eye Camille saw dark leather-clad shapes with flaming swords and shining blades and arrows and throwing knifes come blasting out of the trees around Heckscher Playground and the ball fields.

Fresh gunfire erupted. Camille felt a new sting, this time in her right arm, just above her elbow.

“What the hell?” John yelled. “Who’s shooting now?”

Then more gunfire, and more.

“Automatic weapons!” Andy called. “The men from the rink—we’re fucked.”

Camille’s throat went totally dry, but she couldn’t do anything other than what she was doing.

“OCU,” John shouted. “Flanking those assholes.”

Andy again as she shot more demons. “Cole, who the hell are they? There, coming over the ice. Shit! More Rakshasa!”

Camille’s heart stuttered, but John was yelling into his phone again. “Bengals. Bengals! Duncan, don’t let the OCU take down the good guys. The Bengals are here!”

Then the world behind Camille dissolved into more shouting and shooting and snarling and sulfur and fire.

“Let them have the Asmodai and the shooters,” Camille shouted to her quad. “We’ve got to deal with these demons, or nothing else will matter.”

She was remembering what Elana told her, about how the original Rakshasa had been defeated, caught in a projective energy trap. Camille had no frigging idea how to make one, but she wondered what would happen if—

“John, can you cover us? Keep the Asmodai off our asses?”

“Nobody’s touching your ass but me,” he called back, and she heard the metallic jamming sound of him loading a fresh clip.

She shifted her attention to Bela, who was still standing next to her, silent and determined, feeding earth energy into the shield Camille held.

“Can you call Dio in?” Camille asked her.

“Done.” Bela raised one arm and siphoned off a targeted blast of earth energy.

Less than a minute later, Camille heard Dio’s check-in shout of “Here!” through all the gunfire and roaring and the cries of Sibyls cutting down whatever was after them. Keeping her back to the battle felt insane, but if an Eldest and all these Created made it into the mix, it might turn into a slaughter—and not of the bad guys.

“They’re covered in armor,” Andy said as she and Dio pulled in behind Camille and Bela. “How can we pierce their hearts, behead them, and burn them to ashes if they’re made out of metal?”

“For now, we just need to surround them.” Camille kept her eyes and body very still as she spoke. She spread out her arms to hold her shield, which was getting harder to do. The energy was draining her after all, because there were so many demons and because this was taking time. “I’ve got them roped off, but I think if we take positions along all four axes and join the flow of our energy, we might be able to do more than hold them.”

Nobody questioned her.

Bela took off north. Andy went north, then west, and Dio ran south. John stayed at Camille’s back, coming closer, but not too close, because the energy coming off her would strip him to Rakshasa in a second if it flowed over him. He fired and fired again, seemingly oblivious to the threat or fighting past it because he wouldn’t leave her.

Camille tasted earth energy, then air, then water as her quad got into position, anchored themselves, and let loose with their sentient powers. Each of them had the charms Camille had made gripped tightly in their fists.

Camille didn’t dare touch the dinar. It would burn her fingers down to the knuckle. It was all she could do to soak up enough of its fire and heat to keep it from branding her and sizzling straight through her breastbone.

They don’t know barriers
, she reminded herself as she gathered their energy and added it to the wall of power she had wrapped around Aarif and the Created.
Be careful. Careful …

Aarif and his squad of armored monsters howled as Camille hooked in the last of the four elements. The boy didn’t look furious anymore. He looked scared. Camille knew that whatever his plan had been, this wasn’t the scenario he’d been aiming to achieve.

“Welcome to my world, asshole,” she muttered. “Nothing ever goes as planned, does it?”

And she imagined the shield pulling tighter. She squeezed it in. Brought the energy toward her.

The Rakshasa Eldest howled, shattering the night, and all the kitties with him elbowed against the energy, hitting it with fists, helmets, the tips of guns that still wouldn’t aim at Camille or her quad. They got a lot closer together, all the Rakshasa, and Camille kept the energy where it was and gave herself a moment to breathe.

She checked on her quad. All still standing. All still looking strong.

John blasted away with his Glock, and Camille was pretty sure that if she hadn’t been wrapped in an energy shield, she’d be deaf by now. She couldn’t hear the Sibyls anymore over the shouts and radios of the OCU as they got closer.

“Here we go,” Camille said, and she pulled the shield around the Rakshasa tighter. Her arms stretched even wider but her fingers curled in, matching her thoughts.
Tighter. A little tighter. Yes
.

The cats scrambled on top of one another. Aarif thrashed and howled where he stood, but he didn’t seem to be able to move. He was shifting, though. Black fur. Fangs. Claws. All the human was falling away from him, and that was good, because killing a giant psychotic tiger was easier than taking down a wide-eyed teenage boy, illusion or not.

Camille really felt the drain now. Her right arm throbbed and shook in the air like it didn’t want to stay stretched out, and her leg had stopped stinging and started aching. Her jaw clenched from the pain and effort, and her vision got a little wavy.

The next time she tightened her shield, the energy would make contact with the Rakshasa. She had no idea what would happen then, but she hoped it would be bad for them.

“John,” she said in as even a voice as she could muster. “Are the Asmodai handled?”

“Down and out.”

“And the shooters?”

“OCU’s got them.”

“Walk away from me. No, run.”

“Camille—”

“I have no idea how far this is going to reach,” she said, doing all she could to hold her focus. “Don’t be anywhere near it unless you want to answer to ‘Here, kitty kitty’ and eat Tender Vittles for the rest of your life.”

Her only answer was John’s footsteps as he hauled ass away from the trees, across the ball fields.

Good.

She felt better knowing he was out of range, or getting there fast.

Bela and Dio and Andy must have sensed that she was about to do something big, because they increased the flow of their energies into the shield around the Rakshasa.

Camille took a breath, imagining that shield as a big dome or partial bubble. No, wait. More like a cylinder. A metal can, wrapping around the demons and extending up over their heads.

She centered herself and balanced her own weight as best she could, then brought her arms together, slowly, slowly, to guide her thoughts. The shield got smaller.

The roars from the Rakshasa turned into screaming bellows. Camille squinted at them, because it looked like their fur was starting to … fall off. Metal armor was melting. Weapons clattered as the tiger-demons banged into one another.

Were the demons melting, too?

Camille felt her strength waver for the first time, and knew she had to act. This was it. Now or never. Goddess help them all.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wrapped her mind all around the energy shield, and crushed the can.

Smashed it. Into demon. Into the ground. Tigers burst into flames or melted or evaporated or just disappeared.

Bela, Dio, and Andy stumbled forward from the sudden downward suck of energy.

Camille felt an odd pressure all over her. She heard a sound actually a lot like stomping an aluminum can into concrete.

A second went by.

Earth, fire, air, and water exploded like a bomb, blowing Camille off her feet and slamming her hard into the casing-littered dirt. Hot demon ash rained on her face as pain jammed through her wounded shoulder and leg. She hit her head so hard her tongue went numb and her eyes seemed to shake in her skull. She couldn’t smell anything, taste anything, see anything, or hear anything. Then she couldn’t feel anything. Not even pain.

Numb.

Flat and numb.

I’m dead
, she thought.
I died
.

But … dead people didn’t have thoughts.

She went out. Came back in.

Night in Central Park. She was lying in a cold field of bullet casings and Asmodai leftovers. She couldn’t even get her face out of the stinking dirt.

Out again.

Bela. Dio. Andy …

And back.

Her senses were slowly, slowly coming back to her. She remembered Bela describing something like this last year, when the Rakshasa had caught them in a similar energy trap. Bela had, for a time, lost all five senses and thought she was the only one of their assault group left alive.

Camille knew how Bela must have felt. This deadening from projective energy blowback was brutal and disorienting.

She forced herself up on her elbows, then into a sitting position.

Hands grabbed her.

She turned in slow motion to see—

EMTs and OCU officers.

“That hurts.” Camille tried to take her aching arm back from the guy, but he was dressing a wound right above her elbow.

“Be still,” the medic said. “This one’s through and through. Not sure about the leg.”