Anya Bast - Witch Heart

Adam kicked open door and after door on the top floor, finding nothing. Only more graffiti, a small amount of broken furniture, and equipment too messed up for even the homeless people to steal.

Walking into the hospital, the witches had immediately come up against the demon wards. It had been like entering Gribben, the Coven's prison, where a series of strong wardings built into the very foundation of the building stripped all magickals of their power. This was not quite that bad. Here Adam could still feel his magick, but it was only a shadow of its former self.

He put boot to heavy door once again and found something new. Adam walked within yet another abandoned hospital room. Blankets covered a bed, the first bed he'd found in his search. He went to the rumpled bedding and pulled the pillow to his nose, inhaling. The distinctive scent of Claire's hair filled him. It rocked him back a step, made his knees go weak.

He remained like that until Jack showed up at the door, then Adam dropped the pillow back to the bed and glanced around. Food had been spilled violently on the floor. By Claire, or by her captors? The window at the far end of the room was shattered. That, he remembered.

"This is where they were keeping her," Adam said in a dull voice. "I can still smell her on the blankets."

"Come on, let's keep looking, Adam," said Jack, turning from the doorway. "At least we're in the right part of the hospital."

Adam followed Jack out. Throughout the rest of the huge building, the yells and stomping feet of the witches echoed. They thought Claire wasn't here anymore. Jack thought so, too. Adam could tell by the glances of pity he kept earning from his fellow fire witch.

If Jack wasn't careful, those looks were going to get him in trouble. Adam felt volatile. The prospect that they'd come all this way just to find a dead end was pushing him over the edge in the worst way.

Jack and the others could think what they wanted. Adam's intuition told him Claire was still here somewhere. He wasn't giving up until he found her.

Adam stopped in the middle of the corridor, wan light filtering in through the rooms where he'd kicked open the doors. Heat flared in his palms, a reaction to his heightened emotion, and he viciously tamped it down. Adam closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the musty, rust-tinged air.

Jack's boots bit into the grit of the floor as he approached. "Adam?"

Adam ignored him, instead focusing on Claire, the way Mira had taught him. Only blankness and blackness met his efforts. Nothing. It could have been for a million reasons. Most likely it was the wardings in the hospital, which dulled everyone's magick to a mere tired yawn of power.

It could have been his own lack of air magick that made him find only blankness. It could have been because he needed to achieve that certain rhythm of brain wave activity that could only be reached through deep meditation or near sleep. It could have been because Claire was unconscious.

Adam couldn't bring him himself to consider the other possibility.

Then he thought of something. He opened his eyes. "The maintenance areas. I bet no one's checked those yet."

"Let's go," answered Jack.

They descended, past the main floor and into the darkness of the basement. Mold and damp air filled their lungs as they opened the door to the boiler room. Here Adam and Jack were forced to turn on the flashlights they'd brought with them, hanging on the belt that girded the swords sheathed to their backs.

Once this area had been filled with the low, steady hum of the boiler, furnace, and other heavy machinery needed to make a hospital run. Now it was as dead and silent as a morgue.

The hair on the back of Adam's neck rose. Here he could believe the hospital was haunted.

The heavy metal door squeaked when they opened it and shut with a final-sounding click when it closed behind them. They were plunged into darkness, save for the core of light emitted by their flashlights. Something to their left scampered past on small animal feet.

At least, Adam assumed they were small animal feet.

Soundlessly, he moved into the large room, ducking under bare pipes and rounding cold machinery. Here no graffiti marked the walls and no drug paraphernalia littered the floor. He could understand why trespassers had avoided this area.

Carefully, he and Jack paid attention to the path they took, so they could find their way back. With the sputtering, feeble amount of fire magick Adam possessed, he sooted the floor with flashes of heat. Otherwise Adam was sure they'd never find their way out and Thomas would return years from now to find their time-whitened, rat-gnawed upon bones in a corner somewhere.

Jack could only produce flickers when he called his power, but Adam's magick was more motivated and pushed through the warding better.

Something bellowed.

The sound was so inhuman, so low and filled with rage that it literally stopped Adam's heart for a moment. Both he and Jack came to a perfect, motionless standstill. Both of them switched off their flashlights at the same moment, the velvet darkness around them now more friend than foe.

Unless the ghost-hunting societies had been correct about major spectral activity in this hospital, that had been a demon.

Where there were demons, there was Claire.

Slowly, Jack pulled his sword — a bare whisper of copper against the leather sheath and the blade was free. Adam didn't touch his, instead sensing his seat. His will to rescue Claire made it pulse with a strength it should not have had.

A glow of red light caught Adam's eye, cutting through the damp fist of blackness that held them so tight. Adam moved toward it, but Jack caught his upper arm. Adam clenched his fists to keep from rounding on him and punching him square in the face.

"You don't know what's over there," Jack muttered near his ear.

"A fucking demon, that's what's over there. Maybe Claire, too." He paused, drew a careful breath. "Go back, get Thomas and the others. Bring them down here. I'm going to check that out and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Jack."

After a moment, Jack released his arm. "Don't do anything stupid."

A remnant of Adam's former self surfaced, made buoyant by the possibility of finding Claire. He flashed Jack a grin in the reddish light. "Stupid is my middle name."

"Yeah, no kidding." Jack took a step into the shadows. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Hopefully, that will be before you get yourself killed." He retreated into the inkiness and disappeared.

Adam turned and proceeded cautiously toward the red light. The scuffling of feet and low, rumbling male voices met his ears as he drew closer. No feminine lilt joined them. Panic speared through him, making him move faster.

He rounded a furnace and peered beyond the hunk of metal. Claire lay on her side, back to him, wearing a short white hospital gown. She was in a fetal position on a table, not moving.

The demons circled her, teeth gnashing and fists clenching. That body language alone told Adam they were in an agitated state, but beyond that their eyes glowed red and their mouths gaped open, probably to make room for their extended fangs. Apparently, things weren't going according to their plan.

That was either a very good thing for Claire… or a very bad thing.

Tevan bellowed again and brought his massive hands down on either side of Claire, shaking the table. The entire building rumbled under the force of his frustration and anger, demon magick spilling out of him and pushing at the concrete walls and ceiling. Dust and debris fell from above Adam, catching in his hair.

On the table, Claire didn't stir. She didn't even twitch. Not even when Tevan turned her to her back and raised his hands above his head, seemingly to bring them straight down onto her unprotected sternum — her seat — did Claire move.