Free Captive Soul by Anna Windsor Page A

fresh rush of dread and fear and knelt in the pitch-dark alley. Her leather-clad knee hit wet gravel as she eased her scimitar’s tip up and back, to give herself enough room to move. Some creature or energy had blown out all the safety lights before she got here. Her Sibyl vision allowed her to see well enough in the dark, but that kind of seeing wasn’t what Camille was after.
    She stretched out her right hand over the pavement in front of her. With her left hand, she tugged down the zipper of her battle leathers and slipped her fingers inside, to the chain and then the coin underneath.
    Drawing a breath of air so chilly that it stung her nose and burned deep in her chest, Camille summoned her fire energy. Tonight it came easily enough, flowing into her from the sparks she could see dancing at the edges of her vision. She pulled it into her essence, then released it again, sending it out through the dinar and her fingers until the ground beneath her outstretched hand seemed to change.
    Rippling rain eddies and water-soaked asphalt took on a translucent glow, silver, then pearl, then clear as a sheet of glass. Thin streams of blue flame crackled from Camille’s fingertips, touching the pavement below. As her fire made contact with the ground, dozens of colors blazed into her awareness. She picked up the dull brown energy of human footprints, and the gray nothingness of tires and oil and gasoline. Then pulsing reds and yellows and golds and silvers—different signatures from the city’s myriad of paranormal creatures and humans with elemental talent. And underneath those colors, or more like to the side of them—
    There.
    The trace she’d been following.
    The tracks formed a wide line, radiating a poisonous green and giving off perverted energy that made her stomach lurch.
    “Demon,” Camille said out loud, startling herself with the sound of her own voice.
    No question about it, and no question about which type of demon had made them. This time she had the bastard, and this time she was sure.
    The Rakshasa had definitely returned to New York City.
    Camille took in a breath, then blew it out, wishing she could spit fire like some of the fire Sibyls she knew. Instead, she studied the disgusting traces of energy, using her fingers and her fire much more than her eyes.
    Rakshasa came in two flavors, Eldest and Created. The Eldest were the original demons, larger and more intelligent, and definitely more powerful than the Created, demons they made by infecting human beings. The trace on the left, Camille couldn’t quite read. It seemed to alternate between natural and unnatural, strong and weak. Probably a Created, or something she hadn’t seen before.
    The other one, the trace on the right—judging by the sheer pulsing power of it—had to have been made by one of the Eldest.
    Camille used her fire to sample the energy again. Bile surged up her throat, and she had to let go of the dinar and jerk back her hand before she threw up the half pot of amaretto coffee she’d drunk before sneaking out of the brownstone.
    This trace was strong. Too strong. It had to have been made by Strada.
    The Sibyls and their law enforcement partners, New York’s semi-secret Occult Crimes Unit, had been searching everywhere for that bastard just like she had, and he’d been right here in this alley, maybe only minutes ago.
    Strada was probably still close by.
    Camille’s hands started to shake.
    He wouldn’t fool her again. No way. Nothing he said, nothing he did—she wouldn’t even listen to him.
    “Like it’s that simple,” she said, as if anyone could hear her. As if anyone outside of her own quad even cared. Half the Sibyls in the city still gave her weird looks because they knew part of what had happened that night a year ago—that Camille had prevented her quad from chasing after Strada and finishing him off.
    “Not that simple,” she mumbled again, but she wondered if she was lying to herself. Camille reached up and