Anna's triad sisters made it to the window before she did. Sam and Riego both spoke at once, so fast she could barely discern who did it.
"Goddess, he's delicious. Did you see those muscles."
"Was his cock huge?"
" I love a dark haired man in jeans and leather."
"I love a man with a gun."
"But who is he really?"
"What is he?"
"Not an Asmodai. He could talk and his features were were too stable."
"Hush." Anna put a hand on each of them and watched Crook Kingsman's departure through a tiny slit in the lace curtains. "We'll probably have to stick a dagger through his heart."
The man-or whatever he was- cut a figure, even limping with a bad case of bruised balls. Anna had meant to intimidate him, but her fingers still tingled from touching him so intimately.
Definitely not an Asmodai.
In all of her years of fighting the man-made demon servants created by members of the Legion, she had never encountered an Asmodai with normal male parts. The demons were solid enough, but without definition. More like lifesized clay models of humans, built from an element, a talisman, and energy generated in perverted rituals.
Crook was gutsy. She had to give him that. He had realised she spotted him, but he still entered her home, her most protected zone. He still let her put her hands on him- it, sh reminded herself. The creature. Something she'd likely have to kill without mercy when the time came.
But damn, did that creature have a hard body, never mind those gorgeous eyes. Onyx filled with dark fire, like the flame of a black candle burning in some hot, sweaty underground ritual. She especially liked the way the sun glimmered off his midnight hair. It was longer than cops usually wore it, just above his shoulders, but pulled back at his neck.
Like some Celtic warrior. Goddess help.
When Anna had tracked Andy to her health club, joined it, and intentionally struck up a friendship with the woman a year before, she had planned to gain the detective's trust enough to get a little information on OCU cases. Anna had hoped Andy's work led the upper East side triad to few real supernatural villains.
But Andy's partner?
Not in the plan.
In the months, Andy had been in Anna's life, she had become one of the best friends Anna had ever known. Anna put her hand over her crescent pendant, which had been a gift to her from one of the Russian Mothers- one of the ancient women, who trained her to be a warrior- on the day she was chosen to form her triad. Her group of fighters. The only people she truly cared about -other than her friend.
She would NOT let that creature harm Andy.
As always, Sam was the one to start putting dark thoughts into words. "Did you see that signet ring on his right hand? Was it really a coiled serpent?"
"It was," Anna confirmed as crook and Andy disappeared into their Crown Vic across busy Fifth Avenue. "Like the one I've seen on ancient coins. I'm sure of it."
Behind the car, the tree of Central park swayed gently in morning breezes. Riego's fingers dug into the windowsill. "Then he could be one of those bastard's who make the Asmodai. Finally, one of the Legion- and we let him walk away?"
"We can get him back," she said with more confidence than she felt. She had a sense that Crook, that the creature, had survived for many years among humans, and he hadn't done that by taking foolish chances. "Besides, we couldn't very well trap him, grill him, and execute him Infront of his police officer partner, could we?"
Riego's angry hiss put a question mark on that assertion.
For a graduate of Motherhouse Greece, the training facility most known for it's peaceful, academic approach to the powers of air, Riego could be surprisingly violent.
Wind is made from air. Anna reminded herself. And tornados.
Riego hissed again. Air gusted through the brownstone, randomly ringing the connection chimes.
"Hurricanes too." Anna said aloud.
"What?" Sam glanced up at her, bright fire in her green eyes. Real fire that threatened to break across her freckled skin. It had happened before. A lot, actually.
"Nothing," Anna sighed. "Enough spying. We have a lot of work to do."
The two younger members of the triad followed her back to the table without arguing. Riego spread out a detailed street map of Manhattan as she mumbled a repetitive prayer to the old gods of Olympus, something about patience and perseverance. Anna didn't know the words for sure.
Sam sang a folk tune about a cutty wren and John the Red Nose. No doubt she had learned the song in a pub in Connemara, the town nearest Motherhouse Ireland. In time with lilting tune, Sam retrieved the diagrams and maps she had shoved off the table so casually, to hide the papers from their guests. Soon, schematics of the Metropolitan museum were once more laid out on the tabletop, resting across the carved, leadlined indentation that marked the tables edge.
Anna chose an old Russian song to help her focus and relax. She had learnt the tune at the oldest and grandest of the three Motherhouses, the one near Volgograd in Russia. As she sat and spread the autopsy photos Infront of her on the table, she hummed the comforting melody, letting the words unfold in English in her mind.
Dark eyes, passionate eyes, burning and so beautiful eyes-
Riego snickered then laughed outright. "Isn't that one about grief in the soul and sacrificing everything for ardent eyes?" She moved her compass and used a blue pencil to trace a pattern on a piece of paper she had slipped over her map. 'Bad choice."
Sam let out a snort of agreement as she compared pamphlets, lists on ancient papers, and the museum's floor plan.
Riego pushed one of her papers forward. "The Met and senator's Latch's residence are too far apart to make it likely the same Asmodai was involved with both crimes."
Irritation surged through Anna, catching her off guard.
"I bet you do," she managed clumsily as Sam took off her shoes and climbed on the platform.
Anna's hand's shook as she picked up the folder from the floor and removed the bag of trace skin evidence. Her crescent pendant bounced against her sweater as she straightened herself again, and she thought of Mother Yana.
A waxing moon, she had told Anna in Russian the day she gave it to her. Small, yes, but growing stronger everyday. Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Leave behind your losses, your tragedies,and you,too, will grow to banish darkness.
It had been a long time since Anna almost lost control of her emotions, even for a moment. If an earth-loving Sibyl let her feelings get away from her, the results were invariably disastrous. Damage from wind and fire could be extreme, but only an earth Sibyl could break the foundations of the ground itself. Early in her training, Anna had been made to visit chasms and pits that once boasted cities, not to mention caves and faults that once we're and faults that once were solid mountains. Imagining that level of destruction drove home the need for rigid self-discipline.
"I am the mortar," she whispered to herself. "The stone bowl that holds us all."
Riego and Sam needed the stabilizing force of her earth energy. She couldn't fail them. She couldn't fail the Sibyls- her only family.
Motherhouse Russia graduates always worked with the earth, always chose and led the triads. She would not allow herself to be destracted by a strange creature with black flame eyes. Not now, with Asmodai activity coming into the open in her city, and the Legion changing tactics for the first time in the century they had been tracked and engaged by the Sibyls.
Sam apparently hadn't noticed Anna's consternation. The Irish communications expert had raised her arms and started her chant to reach the Motherhouses. She danced a circle slowly on the table, her image reflected in their collection of projective mirrors, as the wind chimes rang softly over her head. At first, her movements produced only little tinkels and a musical clattering. Then, slowly, slowly, drawing off the heat of Sam's inner fire, the noise became more rhythmic. Sparks danced around the table's carved and lead-lined lip, and little flames licked upward. Good pestle that she was, Sam let her fire glow until her strength ground open the ancient channels of sound, and she began to ring the chimes.
Like a conference call, anna thought, only this one can't be hijacked or overheard.
They all had skills to send basic messages through their tattoos and through objects that rang, but only Sibyls from Motherhouse Ireland could handle complex communications- and do so reliably, in such grand fashion.
Mist shrouded three of the projective mirrors. After a few more seconds, students from each Motherhouse stepped forward to receive Sam's messages. Anna saw Motherhouse Ireland's green robes first, followed by Motherhouse Greece's cerulean blue. The brown of Motherhouse Russia took longer to become distinct, because protections were much stronger and older along those lines.
As the chimes transporting Sam's messages to the mothers began to ring, Anna headed to the kitchen,then down the marble stairs into the waiting embrace of the earth. She felt instantly soothed by the dark, quiet pleasure peaceful earth tones of her own choosing. She stopped first at the right of the stairs and went into her bedroom to change into lab clothes, then headed to her small private kitchen for a bottle of water. After centering herself and managing to go five whole minutes without thinking about Crook Kingsman or his eyes, she left the bedroom, opened the door on the other side of the stairs, and stepped into the expansive reaches of her underground laboratory.
Sibyl Motherhouses soared no expense when it came to archiving, communication, or research, the three pillars of their main duty in the world: saving the untrained, the weak and the innocent from the supernaturally strong. Anna had access to the fastest and most modern equipment available. She even had access to machines and procedures not yet discovered or perfected by the untrained. Soft gleams of silver and glowing green-and-red displays gave the laboratory a secret light all it's own. She almost hated to ruin it by turning the over heads, but time was short. She had samples to analyze,and later, no matter what she thought about it, a dangerous creature to capture and interrogate.
.
.
.
.
The last work session after nightfall didn't start well. The Sibyls weren't on recon duty, but Anna knew they had more than enough to keep them busy.
She settled herself on the sofa, still a little full from dinner, armed with a sheaf of lab values and analyses. Sam had a stack of communication notebooks spread on both sides, and Riego was late coming down from upstairs. When the historian made her appearance, her olive skin looked distinctly pale.
"We've got problems."
"Me first." Anna handed copies of her salt analyses and skin sample analyses to her triad sisters, who dutifully glanced at them. As Riego scribbled an archive log, Anna summarised the first part.
"The salt was definitely fresh, purified for ritual. From what I can tell from the metal deposits left on the skin, the dagger was a double-S curved blade, made of treated silver and locked by all four elements, so regular police forensics won't be able to analyze it." She paused, took a breath, she added the rest of the uncomfortable information. "I estimate the blade was made in the fourth century or before, Proto-Slavic, and it was an object of power. I bet it was stolen from the Volgograd collection, maybe parts not on display. And according to printouts I got from Motherhouse Ireland, the cuts on the boy were made in a classic containment pattern. When he died, his blood would have flowed in a circle around him and stayed close. Worse, his essence, his life energy, wouldn't have been able to leave his body. Somebody could have..... collected it somehow. The energy and the blood."
"Shit," said Sam.
At the same time, Riego said,"So the Legion didn't just steal an object of power. They probably used it -and to collect the blood and life essence of an innocent."
"What the hell are they up to?Sam thrust her notebook forward. "The Mothers reported other child-murders in at least fifteen countries. Probably more we don't know about yet. They want us to double recon runs and take out as many Asmodai as we can, and pull out all the stops in trying to capture a member of the Legion. We've got to get more information. And they want us to get into the latch case, to find out every possible detail and report back as soon as we can. For some reason, this murder, our murder, troubles them the most."
Riego sat up straighter. "Did they say why?"
"Of course not." Sam snorted. "Do they ever."
Anna scratched her shorthand version of this latest instructions into her smaller, portable notebook, and numbered them for importance- Legion captured first, Latch case second, Asmodai recon and destruction third. She flipped a page, and she started notes on a plan to lure and trap Crook Kingsman when Riego said,"I think I know why they are so upset about this murder.