Captive Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

around them to close the channel. The second she finished her whirling step, the young adept with strawberry curls and a lot of freckles hit Saul with a quick burst of fire, scorching the tip of his ponytail.
    That only got Saul going.
    Jack ignored their banter as he headed into the hallway. He barely glanced at the polished hardwood or heavy antiques as he blew down the stairs, gripping the carved banister despite the splinters left over from his boat trip.
    “We headed to the brownstone?” Saul asked as he caught up, referring to one of the Sibyl houses near Sixty-fourth and Central Park.
    “Yeah. I want to let Andy’s quad know how the visit went and go over this morning’s patrol reports.” Jack hit the main floor and gave a quick nod to the plainclothes OCU officers, leather-clad Sibyl fighters, and demons and half-demons of several varieties who often paired with the patrols. They were grouped near the conference room where they received shift briefings, and nobody looked happy.
    Cal Brent, Saul’s older brother, strode out of the conference room and flagged them down with what looked like a new case file.
    “Shit.” Jack stopped at the front door as Cal jogged toward them, his sleeves shoved up, his brown shirt wrinkled, and his serious face tight with frustration. “We’ve got more dead people.”
    Saul watched Cal approach. The two resembled each other, but with his slacks, close-cut thick brown hair, and recent shave, Cal looked like the Ivy League brother.
    “At least until now, it’s been dead criminals,” Saul said, wiping his hands on his faded jeans.
    Jack’s eyes fixed on Cal’s folder. “That luck won’t hold.”
    Cal reached them and thrust the jacket toward Jack. “This time it’s Kristo, Ioannis Foucci’s last surviving son. We found him an hour ago at one of Foucci’s warehouses in the Garment District, along with a few of his friends.”
    Saul’s whistle cut through the unusual silence in the townhouse. “If he’s dead, the Foucci clan is finished. That leaves one hell of a power vacuum.”
    Jack looked at the photo. Body parts. Just a pile of bones and flesh. “I wish I knew why the hell this was happening. There’s a bigger picture I’m not seeing yet.”
    Cal’s frown made him look furious and close to exploding. “I’d settle for knowing what can yank arms and legs off human bodies like it’s nothing.”
    “And who made it, or summoned it, or turned it loose.” Jack closed the folder. “We better find out before our patrols run into it in some alley.”
    “The scene’s secured.” Cal kept his hands on his hips, a gesture Jack recognized from his service days, before Jack had talked him into starting an occult crimes unit in New Orleans, then transferring up to New York City when Jack needed extra manpower and a friendly face or two. It meant Cal had no answers and felt like he was running out of options. “I’ve got our patrols on max alert all over the city. Everybody’s going slow and careful, checking even faint traces of paranormal energy and keeping backup close.”
    “We’ll pick up Bela, Camille, and Dio,” Jack said as Saul opened the townhouse’s front door. “Duncan Sharp and John Cole should be at the brownstone. We’ll meet you.”

They were coming.
    Samuel Griffen’s impressive bloodline gave him some prescience, and he knew without dispatching a single watcher that the unusual Sibyl fighting group that had destroyed the Rakshasa Eldest had reunited. They’d be on his trail soon.
    Around his neck hung a Rakshasa tiger-tooth necklace, enhanced by his own elemental workings. The charm blocked probes of his energy, and it would keep the Sibyls from finding him or anyone he gifted with a similar treasure. The serpent tattoo on his left forearm glittered with life, its elemental paints reacting to the power in the warehouse, and the blessed blood of his father surged in his body. The fingers of his left hand curled around the railing of the