Free Captive Soul by Anna Windsor

were good guys, that they’d be no danger to Camille Fitzgerald, but that risk was hard to take.
    “I know she’s a fire Sibyl,” Elana added, as if to get him talking. Her white eyes flashed. “And I know her name is Camille.”
    John’s muscles tensed, and the nearest Bengal guard reacted immediately, drawing his sword and jabbing the tip against John’s chest. John figured he had Rakshasa resilience now, so if the guard didn’t spear him in the heart with specially treated metal, cut off his head, burn his body and head, and spread the ashes in different locations, he’d reconstitute. Just come back to life, like a cartoon character springing up after getting whacked with a grand piano.
    He wasn’t completely certain about that, though.
    “I’d die before I let anyone hurt her.” John kept his gaze level on Elana’s face, ignoring the sword drawing blood directly over his heart. “I’ll kill anyone who tries, no matter who, and no matter how long it takes me to find him. Are we clear on that?”
    Elana opened her arms and turned up both palms, as if she were sealing a solemn vow with a prayer. “Completely.” She carefully pushed her guard’s sword away from John, and after a stern look from her, the guard sheathed his blade.
    “Talk to me, John,” Elana said. “Tell your story so we can both understand what happened. If I have that information, I might know better how to assist you with controlling Strada’s essence—and how to help you keep Camille safe from all those who would harm her for what she did … or what she might do.”
    John thought things over for another minute or so. He did trust the old woman, though he couldn’t put into words why. A soldier’s instincts, or maybe a priest’s, or maybe just the hope of a desperate, tired man who needed allies. Whatever it was that drove him, it was John’s turn to close his eyes, shut out the world, and let his thoughts turn fully back to that moment in time when he stopped being a ghost in Duncan Sharp’s head. When he left Duncan and took the body he had now.
    When John spoke, the words carried him back, until he could feel and smell and taste the entire scene, and that’s how he related what happened, as best he could.

(  5  )
    Camille had never been afraid of dying—but as she had learned all too well, everything in life was subject to change.
    Tonight she was scared half out of her mind. The tattoo of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood felt dull and lifeless on her skin as the dark alley near East Harlem pressed against her senses, and her heart pounded harder with each step she took.
    Closer.
    She was moving closer to death.
    Camille could taste death’s coldness in the early fall air and feel its icy stillness biting into her chilled fingertips. Her Sibyl instincts screamed for her to break off, to get the hell out of the alley, but Camille made herself keep walking.
    The streets of New York City seemed quiet after a late-season rain. Her black leather boots splashed at the edges of puddles, and blood rushed in her ears. So loud. Too loud. Her breath came out in whispers, stirring against the freckles on her cheeks and her long auburn ponytail.
    Her scimitar swung in its leather scabbard and tapped against her calf as she walked. On a chain around her neck, tucked beneath the zippered leather of her bodysuit, the dinar burned against her bare chest like it usually did when she used it to magnify her weak skill at pyrogenesis, but that was the only heat Camille knew in the increasingly cool night air. Damnit, if she were better at making fire, she could at least warm herself up and keep hunting longer.
    She really hated giving up early. It felt like letting down Bela, Dio, and Andy all over again. If she didn’t find that cursed demon soon … well, she would. End of it. Her instincts gave a little shiver, and not for the first time in the last month, Camille had an eerie sense that she was running out of time.
    She swallowed a