Excerpt of Captive Spirit by Anna Windsor

Captive Spirit Excerpt © Anna Windsor All Rights Reserved, 2009

July, Three Years After the Fall of The Legion

Fire.

Bela Argos coughed against the sulfurous wind in her face before she even broke free of the transportation channel. I have to be crazy, coming here first.

The saner part of her mind urged her to turn around and run right back to the earthy, orderly comfort of Motherhouse Russia, but she was a Sibyl, a warrior of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood. The mark—a tattoo of a mortar, pestle, and broom in triangular points around a dark crescent moon—was tattooed on her right forearm. No way was she going to let a bunch of fire-spitting Irish bitches send her home with her tail between her legs.

Bela lunged through the final barrier of elemental power separating her from her destination. She barely managed to keep her balance as she stumbled out of the ancient channel of energy onto the large, round platform in the communications chamber deep within Motherhouse Ireland. Her right hand gripped the hilt of her sword before she could see or hear or get her bearings. Her battle leathers felt a size too tight as they reacted to the heat in the big stone chamber, and her heart thumped like ritual drums during a Solstice celebration. She jerked in a ragged breath as her chest expanded in opposition to the crushing pressure of moving through space and time so quickly. The ancient channels of transportation and communication that crisscrossed the earth were effective—but a real bitch for people without lungs the size of Rhode Island.

As Bela’s vision cleared, she caught a last glimpse of the place she had just departed—Motherhouse Russia, with its calm brown-robed adepts.

Home.

Or a great place to hide.

Screw it.

The familiar images of the Russian adepts lingered in the projective mirror, the special piece of elementally treated glass sealing the channel from which Bela had just emerged, but faded as the glass once more grew solid. Smoke swirled through the surface, gradually obscuring everything Bela associated with peace and safety.

She was all alone now.

Bela’s jaw clenched as fire billowed around her.

In hell.

The hot blast of energy singed her from all sides, flowing down from the huge castle above her. It took all of her elemental earth talents to keep the scalding power from sizzling her into ash and tooth enamel.

Did everything with fire Sibyls have to be so confrontational?