Irena paused to let the demon spawn go ahead of her. “Why are you here?”
“Because I finally have enough boats in my cache.”
Boats? Irena eyed the back of Khavi’s braided hair. Two thousand years in Hell had driven the grigori insane.
Irena knocked, then used her Gift to unbolt the locks when the vampires didn’t answer. The scent of stale air and old blood filled her lungs. Destruction met her eyes.
The living room and a portion of the library had been torn apart. Beside an overturned sofa, a body-sized, irregular patch of dried blood discolored a cream rug. Deacon’s blood, Irena realized. She’d assumed he’d been challenged at one of the community’s gathering places, but Deacon had been beaten here in his home. Perhaps that explained why Eva and Petra weren’t at the apartment—and hadn’t been for some time. They might have felt too vulnerable to stay.
An hour later, she’d crossed the city four times, and had to face the terrible truth: It wasn’t just Eva and Petra; all of the community was gone. She hadn’t detected a single psychic whiff, let alone a living vampire.
She left the final, empty gathering spot, her hands in fists, ready to fight—but no one was here. Khavi tromped along next to her, ridiculous in her yellow slicker. Irena could not even sneer at the grigori; at that moment, her dislike of the demon spawn wasn’t half as sharp as the hate she directed at herself.
She should have come earlier. She should have come back when Deacon said he’d been beaten by a nosferatu-born vampire. She’d wondered then if it had been a demon masquerading as a vampire; she shouldn’t have assumed that Deacon’s impressions had been right. Maybe a demon could temporarily fake cold hands; maybe, in the midst of being pulverized by a demon’s fists, a vampire could mistake their temperature. Maybe it had been one of the nephilim.
But she couldn’t linger here and try to flush out the demon. She had other communities to visit and to warn.
Then she had to find Deacon and tell him what she feared.
She turned, looked out over the city, felt the cold bite of the night wind against her cheeks. Maybe, after the change in leadership, the community had just moved to another location. Maybe one of the other communities would have heard.
She could not even convince herself of it.
With a heavy heart, she glanced at Khavi. Teleporting to the other communities would be faster.
“You will ask,” Khavi said and held out her hand. “I will say yes.”
Rael waited before coming to SI, but no longer than Alejandro had anticipated. Just enough time had passed—the time it might take for a close-mouthed butler to give in and tell her employer why Bradshaw had asked her to come in for an additional interview. Of course Wren hadn’t, but Rael claimed she did. And in Rael’s place, Alejandro would have done the same thing.
Knowing that didn’t bother him; thinking like the demon would be an asset later. He escorted Rael into the conference room where Preston and Taylor waited and took the opportunity to study the demon’s walk, the way he nodded as he greeted the detectives. Alejandro knew Rael called his receptionist by her first name and his personal assistant by his surname. Later, he’d watch recordings from the floor of the Senate, interviews, and campaign speeches.
But the congressman wouldn’t be the same. He’d sell his house and take a modest apartment in the city. He wouldn’t be as outgoing, he wouldn’t smile much, and he wouldn’t attend as many functions. He’d be passionate about his work, focused— if somewhat solitary. The changes would be blamed on his recent personal loss. Grief would do that to a man.
Not a demon. Rael sat at the conference table with barely contained energy, like a child waiting for a gift.
He spread his hands as he addressed the detectives sitting at the end of the table. “I’ll get right to it. You are looking at my personal head of staff, Maggie Wren. You’re looking in the wrong direction.”
Alejandro rested his back against the wall directly across from the demon. “That is not what the evidence suggests,” he said.
Rael’s frown managed to be both earnest and irritated. “Then you aren’t looking hard enough, Guardian. I don’t expect you to take my word for this—but she’s a good woman.”
“She was an assassin. She made her living by murdering humans,” he said, laying it on thick.
Alejandro saw a distinct difference between government assassins and murderers, but he preferred Rael to think of him as a narrow-minded, sanctimonious Guardian. The demon would be less likely to expect what came later.
“You don’t believe a human deserves a second chance? That’s all I’ve wanted, to offer her—” He broke off. In a human, Alejandro might have believed the suppressed display of emotion. “You must see that this is the work of a demon—one of Lucifer’s followers—who is looking to hurt me, and to discredit me and mine. And the FBI are following the clues they’ve laid like dogs. You need to dig deeper—”
Khavi appeared at the end of the room, with Irena beside her, blinking through her disorientation. Rael’s shock hit Alejandro’s psychic shields.
“Khavi!” The demon’s greeting was surprised and welcoming.
And Alejandro believed that display of emotion. A leaden weight formed in his gut. “You know each other?”
Preston sat forward, as if uncertain whether he should be standing—either because the women had appeared or to get out of the way. Irena began to walk along the table on Rael’s side, toward the detectives.
“Yes,” Khavi said, making no effort to approach the demon. “He was a friend to Zakril, Anaria, Aaron, and me in the centuries after Michael ordered Anaria’s execution. We hid from the Doyen together, fought together.” Her smile was sharp. “It is lovely to see that he is a friend to the Guardians again.”
As if uneasy, Rael looked away from Khavi. He glanced to his side, as if just noticing Irena walking past him. For an instant, he seemed surprised again. He quickly recovered, flashed his smile at her, and turned away from her to look at Khavi again.
Idiot, Alejandro thought.
Irena smashed the demon’s face into the table. The impact cracked as loud as a gunshot. Taylor jumped up, her hand flying to her weapon. Preston rocked back in his chair, his face slack with surprise.
Her muscles visibly straining, Irena held the demon down, her fingers clamped over the back of his head. “I am not your friend. And when the time comes, I will kill you.”
Rael forced his head up. Blood dripped from his nose, his mouth. His teeth clenched, he gripped her arm, and tossed her over the table. Apparently finished, Irena went without resistance. She landed on her feet beside Alejandro.
Rael laughed as he stood, holding a white handkerchief over his nose. He glanced at Khavi. “You will tell her, I hope, that she has not a chance of defeating me.”
“Oh, you are safe from her. She does not slay you.” Khavi’s eyes softened. “Anaria will.”
Rael’s smile faltered. Khavi vanished.
Alejandro thought Rael appeared almost lost for moment. Then the demon recovered, and looked across the table.
“Please remember what I said about Maggie. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
He left. Alejandro followed him to the door, and watched until the demon reached the hub and turned for the exit. He looked over at Irena.
You don’t have your cell phone? he signed.
It’s in my cache.
Where the device was absolutely useless. But he let it go. Trouble darkened her eyes—he didn’t think Rael had been the cause. The demon had only been the recipient of her frustration.
What has happened?
The Prague community is gone.
Christ. The nephilim?
No. They have always left bodies, and I couldn’t find any sign of the vampires—dead or alive.
And Deacon is missing as well?
No one in the nearby communities has heard from him. Do you have any thoughts on what has happened to them? No.
Guilt weighed
heavily in her psychic scent. Alejandro signed, Ames-Beaumont and Savitri are scheduled to be here after sunset. We’ll use their contacts. Perhaps they will uncover something.
At the table, Preston cleared his throat. They both glanced his way.
“So . . . is anyone else sitting here wondering if maybe we are looking in the wrong direction?”
Irena frowned. Alejandro quickly summarized Rael’s visit.
“Oh.” Irena turned back to the detectives and sighed. “He is very good at what he does.”
“Maybe. So he sets Wren up in the most obvious way, then comes to argue against it. Why?”
“Because playing with us gives him pleasure,” Alejandro said.
Taylor’s gaze was steady. “There’s no doubt in your mind? Castleford couldn’t have misread the video or Wren?”
“No,” he and Irena said together. She continued, “Demons were made to create doubt. That is what they do. And so Rael has.”
Taylor and Preston exchanged a glance. Alejandro couldn’t read that look, but they seemed to settle something between them when Taylor shrugged.
Irena must have thought so, too. She turned back to him. “Rael was surprised to see Khavi. Did he not know she was alive?”
Alejandro didn’t think Rael had known. But he was more interested in the demon’s reaction to Irena’s appearance. “He was surprised to see Khavi and you.”
He watched her take that in. Alejandro had wondered that morning, during Rael’s conversation with Taylor, if the demon had known of the nephilim’s attack on Irena. He hadn’t been sure then, but seeing Rael’s surprise here had erased his uncertainty.
Irena’s brow creased as she asked the same question that plagued him. “How did he know?”
Taylor stood. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, and we’re going to leave you to figure it out. We’ve got some things back at the station to take care of.”
Sundown was in less than an hour. Taylor wouldn’t be leaving here without protection.
Alejandro met Irena’s eyes. She raised her brows, silently asking if he had other obligations. He shook his head. “Have you had an opportunity to speak with Jake?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I will accompany her,” Alejandro said.
Taylor sighed.
Irena laughed and started for the door. Her fingers trailed a warm path over his hand as she passed him. “You’ll meet me in Caelum afterward?”
“Yes.”
Until then, he’d work through the gnawing suspicion that Rael had been behind the nephilim’s attack on Irena, and decide whether the suspicion had teeth or if it was a distraction to be ignored.
That morning in the federal building plaza, the idea had bit and he’d dismissed it as impossible. Because the prophecy said Belial would only rise to the throne after the nephilim were destroyed, Belial’s demons—and therefore Rael, Belial’s lieutenant—were enemies of the nephilim. But after witnessing Rael’s reaction to Khavi and learning they’d once been friendly, his suspicion had taken hold again. Rael’s pleasure upon seeing Khavi was genuine.
It made Alejandro wonder if the demon’s best memories were several thousand years old.
Taylor and Preston spoke little as he rode with them across the city. With new eyes, he reexamined pieces that shouldn’t have fit, turned each one, and watched them fall into place.
Rael had loved a woman. Alejandro briefly considered Khavi, but Rael’s response to her had been wrong. Even a demon, seeing the woman he’d loved for the first time in more than two millennia, would have wanted to go to her. He’d want to touch her, to confirm she truly stood there. And even a demon’s pleasure would be tinged with pain when he held himself back.
Anaria, however . . . Anaria fit.
Anaria was Belial’s daughter. Even if fatherly love hadn’t been a reason to protect her after Michael ordered Anaria’s execution, her knowledge of the symbols and magic were. Anaria had power, and she wanted to challenge Lucifer for his throne. Even if she didn’t succeed, surely her attempt would weaken Lucifer, giving Belial an opportunity to take the throne for himself. Yes, Alejandro thought. He could easily see how Belial’s lieutenant had become an ally to Anaria and her husband, Zakril, while they’d hidden from Michael—and Khavi hadn’t yet given Belial the prophecy, on which his need to destroy the nephilim was based.
Zakril had been murdered before Khavi delivered the prophecy, too. Murdered, and his body left with a message for the nephilim, telling them where to find their mother. A demon couldn’t open Anaria’s prison—only the grigori, Lucifer, or the nephilim could.
But Khavi had been trapped Below, and Aaron, her husband, had been slain by Belial; they couldn’t have freed her. Michael and Lucifer would have killed Anaria if they’d been the ones to find her, and the nephilim hadn’t been released from Hell until two years ago, when the Gates to Hell closed.
Rael had waited more than two thousand years—and lived as a saint during that time. Trying to make himself worthy of Anaria when she returned? Or just giving the appearance of it—to a demon, they were the same.
Now, the husband Anaria had loved was long dead—and within months of her return, Rael rid himself of his wife, too.
Cold certainty settled over him, but Alejandro turned each piece over again. They settled in the same way. Parts were missing, but the shape was clear.
Rael had killed Zakril. He’d waited for Anaria. And when she appeared, he’d killed Julia Stafford. The demon had removed every obstacle he saw standing between them.
Every obstacle except the Guardians.
Had Rael already been in contact with Anaria? Had he approached her as a friend, offering his support and fealty?
Alejandro sighed, knowing that if Irena had been with him, she’d have given him a look. Obviously, Rael had—and he also had the ear of Anaria or the nephilim. They’d shown up at Irena’s forge within hours of her telling Rael that she’d slay Anaria.
That hadn’t been coincidence. That had been Rael.
And suddenly, slaying the demon and taking his position had become far more complicated than it had once been—and more imperative.
CHAPTER 17
Caelum’s silence wrapped around Irena the moment she stepped through the Gate. Earth could be quiet, but even on the tundra, background noises filtered through: the whisper of air currents across grasses or snow, the crack of ice and the drip of water, the settling of the soil as it warmed and cooled. Caelum’s silence wasn’t a deep quiet, but an absence of sound—and of life. It pressed on Irena’s chest until she pushed it back. Until she heard her heartbeat, her breath, her steps.
Caelum stood empty—but never abandoned.
And it was not completely empty, either. Somewhere in Caelum’s eastern quadrant, Khavi’s hellhound puppy roamed. Lyta hadn’t yet been on Earth; the puppy had only recently left Hell, where Khavi had been her only companion, and they were uncertain how Lyta would react to humans . . . and to Sir Pup. Like Sir Pup, Lyta was abnormally friendly for a hellhound, but that only meant they didn’t rip apart and eat every living thing they encountered.
Irena did not mind the hellhounds. She found their unwavering loyalty to their chosen companions admirable—even if their companions were Lilith and Khavi.
She formed her wings and took to the air. Her feathers ruffled, and each beat of her wings ended with a satisfying snap. Here was wind, and sound, though of her own creation. She flew toward the edge of the northern quadrant. The never-moving sun shone overhead; below her, the city rested in an endless, waveless sea, an enormous white disc on a smooth bed of brilliant blue.
The buildings surrounding Odin’s Courtyard were stockier, less graceful than the temples and spires in the rest of Caelum. Alice’s quarters only consisted of a single building, but every Guardian considered Odin’s Courtyard hers. Irena landed at the edge of the courtyard. She coughed loudly before vanishing her wings and walking toward the giant marble elm tree that sheltered the square.<
br />
She was thankful she’d given Alice the warning when the Guardian emerged from her building, her skin flushed and her hair unbound. Alice’s giant tarantula ran out after her, claws clicking on the white stone tiles.
At the sight of the spider, Irena wanted to climb into the tree—but she wasn’t certain if Nefertari couldn’t jump that high.
Alice had told her that bigger spiders crawled in Hell, creatures many times larger than the Coliseum in Rome. Irena had lived more than sixteen centuries without stepping foot in Hell, and was glad of it. The demons didn’t frighten her; she’d have liked to kill legions of them. But she feared she might run away screaming if she spotted a monstrous spider.
She held her ground as Nefertari skittered toward the tree, and hid her relief when, with a soft word and a touch of her Gift, Alice commanded the spider to remain at her knee.
A second later, Jake appeared beside her—just as flushed, and wearing a broad grin. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something.
Irena eyed him, then realized what was missing: the staff that served as his electrical ground. She hadn’t felt the now-familiar sizzle of his second Gift, either—only a faint push of his teleportation Gift.
She nodded. “Well done.”
“Hah! Wait until you see this.” Jake held his index fingers an inch apart. His electric Gift hummed, and a white current arced between his fingers. “I’m a Taser.”
“I now see what had you so excited when you came to get me.” Alice’s mouth quirked, and she began braiding her hair. “I wonder if this is what Khavi meant when she said you would be known as ‘the Weapon’ among the demons. How utterly terrified all of Hell will be when you whip out your Taser.”
He grinned at her. “Just wait until I figure out other applications.”
Alice pressed her lips together, flags of color on her cheeks. Nefertari purred and rubbed her hairy body against Alice’s skirts.
Jake turned back to Irena, who was fighting a shudder and the urge to swat at her own leg.
“So does that rock or does that flippin’ rock?”
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