Demon Forged

by Meljean Brook

  But Chaos wasn’t beneath Hell. The ceiling formed a barrier between the two realms, but not a physical one. Within Hell lay a territory of ice and silence, and frozen within the ground were the faces of the damned—demons and humans who’d failed to fulfill their bargains. After death, their faces were eternally frozen in Hell, but their bodies rotted in Chaos. And like vultures picking over a battlefield, the dragons devoured the bodies—which regenerated, eventually to be eaten again. In Hell, the tortured souls remained aware of every second of it; there was no relief for them.

  Irena didn’t know if Deacon had been forced into a bargain with the demon. Perhaps the demon hadn’t needed one—the lives of Deacon’s lovers and his community were probably worth more to him than his soul.

  But it was his life that Irena had to consider now. She and Alejandro would be heading to Prague soon.

  She smoothed her hand over his forearm, signaling that she was ready to talk—if he was. Behind her, he shifted his weight, and a light tension seeped through his body.

  “Have you decided what you will do?”

  Straight to the point, her Olek. Irena thought of Eva’s picture, her face a mask of fear. And she saw Dru’s red shoe. “I will slay him.”

  He didn’t reply, but she felt his response in the hardening of his psychic scent.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I cannot see that any of his decisions were made of his free will. Instead, I see a man who was broken and used by at least two demons.”

  Yes. They’d discovered that, as well. The origin and time of the messages hadn’t matched Rael’s movements. Another demon—probably one of Rael’s subordinates—had been pulling Deacon’s strings.

  But Deacon could have cut those strings. “He made a decision when he contacted SI. He made one with every message he sent—”

  “And attempted, in one, to refuse their orders. He did not stop fighting.”

  “But he gave in. He decided to do as they asked. He could have decided to come to me.” Her throat was tightening. Her insides felt as if they’d been flayed. “He could have told us. We’d never have refused to help him. He knew I would fight for him, yet he decided against it, every time.”

  “Perhaps he did not believe that we could.”

  Her heart twisted. “That is our purpose. He knows that’s what Guardians are for.”

  “But we don’t always win. He would know that, too.”

  He sighed when she didn’t respond. She didn’t know how to tell him that she remained silent not because her answer was obvious, but because she had no answers.

  “I do believe punishment is appropriate, Irena. But I do not think that death is.”

  What sort of punishment could possibly be appropriate—what was even an option? “Shall we beat him again? Shall we lock him away with only pig blood? Guardians have never been jailers.”

  “Perhaps we should start.” He paused. “Are you slaying Deacon to punish him, or to punish yourself for bringing him to SI?”

  She couldn’t answer that, either. “You see too many sides, Olek.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the insult is used to be.”

  “Because it is not.”

  He pulled her closer. She turned, wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his heart. His wings folded forward, the white feathers coming around her in a warm, weightless embrace. How had she ever thought she didn’t want comfort from him? This was comfort, and more. And she’d had no idea how much she’d needed it. Especially now.

  Her voice was thick, the words a physical ache. “When will the gathering for Dru be?”

  “Selah and Jake are sending word to the others. It will be in two or three days.”

  Her eyes burned, and she pressed her face harder into his chest, as if the pressure could hold back the tears. “She fought me. Every step of the way, she fought me.”

  Olek held her, his hands running up and down her back. Irena gulped in air. The pain threatened to rip her apart. And she felt it. By the gods, how she felt it. She turned again. His wings parted. Cool air swept her face.

  “You can never prepare for this,” she whispered, and her chest would not stop shuddering. “The hand, the leg. You can be ready when you lose them. Not this.”

  “As it should be,” he said softly.

  Her breath hitched. And when Olek said, “I am at your back,” she let go and screamed. She doubled over and he held her as she screamed and screamed. Her grief echoed through the city’s metal canyons, sent startled birds winging into the heavens.

  But it could never be loud enough.

  CHAPTER 19

  When Deacon awoke in his own bed, he knew he was dead.

  A demon wouldn’t care about his comfort—and if everything had gone right, Eva and Petra would be here with him. But, no. This wasn’t Heaven or Hell or a dream, but a demon’s way of twisting the blade in his gut before chopping off his head. Of making him hope before ripping hope away.

  But it didn’t matter. He didn’t need hope. He just needed to follow this through, so that tomorrow, Eva and Petra would be waking up in this bed.

  Even if he wasn’t here with them.

  He could hear Stafford and Caym talking in the living room or the library—he didn’t recognize the language they used. Someone else was out there with them, but not saying much. A human. His psychic shields were soft; Deacon slid inside them easily. He sensed anticipation and fear, and a coldness similar to what he’d felt from the congressman’s butler—but with a fragile edge, like ice that had been chipped into thin slivers.

  Probably not someone who was here to help him.

  Deacon sat up. Whoever had tucked him in had also stripped him down to his trousers, but they hadn’t taken his weapons. His swords and the gun that prince Alejandro had given him lay atop his bureau, clearly stating just how much an armed vampire concerned the demons: not at all. Just another little twist of that blade, he thought.

  They could twist it all they wanted. He was ready to finish this.

  Resolute, he dressed and strapped on the weapons. The demons didn’t know that he’d been drinking nosferatu blood. He couldn’t equal their speed, but he might take one by surprise. Once his community was safe, he had nothing to lose by trying.

  His resolve almost failed at the bedroom door. A shudder ripped through him. He stopped, panic and dread tearing through his blood. Nothing to lose. Jesus Christ. Just his life. And he was scared shitless.

  Silently, he pressed his shaking fist to his forehead, got the fear under control. He walked out of the bedroom like he’d been stone-cold from the moment he’d woken up. They might take everything from him, including his life—but he wouldn’t give them the pleasure of knowing how much he wanted to keep it. How much he wanted to wake up with his friends tomorrow.

  He passed the library. To enter the living room, he had to step around an upended chair—still there from when Caym had beaten him down. No one had been here to right it. He’d known the demon had taken Eva and Petra to another location, but seeing his empty apartment hammered home how much power the demon had over him. Not that he’d needed the reminder.

  To his right, Caym stood in his demon form, his skin crimson, his leathery wings folded. Obsidian horns curled back from his forehead. The demon rhythmically flipped a dagger in his hand, catching it by the blade in his taloned fingers. When those hands had been pulverizing him, they’d looked human; Deacon wasn’t certain whether this display was for the man who’d taken up the chair in the corner of the room or him.

  Cadaverously thin and strung tight as a wire, the man watched Deacon with a cold, flat stare that didn’t quite hide the hunger behind it. He was bald as a nosferatu, and around his eyes, his swarthy skin appeared delicate, irritated. Deacon couldn’t smell the sickness that was killing the man, or the chemicals that had been treating it, but his desperation stank with the eye-watering punch of undiluted bleach.

  Deacon might have felt pity if he hadn’t had the sinkin
g realization of what “final task” Stafford required of him.

  Unlike Caym, the congressman hadn’t shape-shifted. In a black suit and red tie, he took up the corner of Petra’s dainty, powder blue sofa, his legs crossed at the knees and his arm resting along the curved back. The demon regarded him in the same way Irena sometimes examined a sword, the same way Eva looked at a painting, and Deacon was suddenly certain he hadn’t fooled Stafford for one second. He’d bet the demon knew every thought that had passed through his mind since he’d woken up—not by looking into his head, but just by reading his face . . . or maybe just anticipating his every reaction, from strapping on his weapons, to his determination not to show them a hint of fear. Deacon thought he’d fooled Caym, though. And although Stafford had introduced himself only as Caym’s associate, he realized the demon with the power here wasn’t the one who’d beaten him. Caym was just the thug who got his hands bloody.

  He remained facing Stafford. “Where are my partners? I’ve done what you asked.”

  “Yes, you have.” Stafford gave a pleased smile. “The nephilim visited Special Investigations today, using your identification to get in. They’ll collect Ames-Beaumont’s blood, the others will try to stop them . . .” He waved his hand as if to say, And you can imagine the rest.

  Deacon could, all too well. His stomach threatened to heave. “Eva and Petra. Now.”

  “I need one more thing from you first, Mr. Deacon.”

  “Fuck you. I’ve finished my part of the deal.”

  “But I have not.” Stafford’s pleasant smile disappeared, replaced by a reptilian stare. “I have made a bargain with Mr. Lukacs—he takes a life, I help him gain immortality. He has completed his part. I do not like having my part unfulfilled.”

  Deacon glanced at the man. Lukacs’s hands shook against his bony knees. It didn’t take a giant leap to guess that a few days ago, those hands had been steady enough to hold a rifle. If Lukacs became a vampire, they’d be steady again—but he’d never look any healthier. “You don’t need me to turn him. Any vampire could do it.”

  “True. But if you insist on honesty, I can tell you that I haven’t needed you for any of this, Mr. Deacon. I never thought you and the Guardian that SI sent to Rome would survive the catacombs, and that the Guardians’ search for the nosferatu would provide a distraction while Mr. Lukacs carried out his task.”

  The demon might as well have slid a knife between his ribs. Stafford hadn’t thought he’d get out of the catacombs? That meant the demon had never intended to let Eva and Petra go, or to let his community live. The pain of that failure almost brought him to his knees.

  Don’t show it. Maybe the demon could read him, but Deacon would be damned if he’d give the fucker one visible sign of his misery. “What a shame, then, that Irena killed your nosferatu.”

  “A shame?” Stafford leaned forward, and every word was a twist of the knife. “Dead nosferatu or dead Guardian—both outcomes are equally enjoyable. As was the entertaining diversion you provided holding up your side of your agreement with Caym. But no, Mr. Deacon—I did not need you even then. You told us nothing that I didn’t already know about Ames-Beaumont, and the one piece of information I didn’t have—where to find Irena—resulted in failure. The only thing that you have ever been useful for is transforming Mr. Lukacs.”

  And then Deacon was dead. Yet Eva had been alive only a day ago, when he’d received her picture. Somewhere, she and Petra waited for him.

  But even if he discovered where “somewhere” was, he couldn’t let the demons leave here alive—Deacon would never win in a race against them. Once Stafford and Caym were dead, Deacon would have time to search for the women.

  He needed to buy some time here first, however, so that he could figure out how to do the impossible.

  “All right. I’ll do it.” He nodded toward Lukacs. “But you’ve got to bleed out first. I’m not drinking from you.”

  “My cancer won’t—”

  “No shit. But I don’t want to fuck you. So open your vein, and when you’re down to nothing, I’ll give you mine.”

  Lukacs nodded, his face tense. Caym passed him a dagger, and the human sliced it over his wrist.

  Deacon stopped breathing so that he wouldn’t inhale the rich fragrance. The bloodlust didn’t differentiate between the blood of a murderer and the blood of a newborn baby; it all smelled good to a vampire.

  Lukacs had cut deep, was bleeding fast, but a human body carried a lot of blood. Deacon had a few minutes now.

  As if bored, he leaned his shoulder against the wall and scanned the apartment, searching for inspiration. He couldn’t make a stand out here. This room was too open; Stafford and Caym could come at him from too many directions. The front door offered escape, but it wouldn’t lead to Eva and Petra. Deacon glanced toward the southeast corner of the apartment, where Eva had set up her studio. The screened partitions she’d used to divide the area from the living room offered no protection, but the exterior walls were stone; he could get his back against one and still have room to move, to fight.

  More room than he remembered. His eyes narrowed. The shadows seemed deeper behind the screens, as if the studio extended farther back than the building’s walls did. And even to his vision, the shadows looked dark, almost like . . .

  Oh, Jesus. His heart pumped faster. He fought a sick sense of unreality. Was Rosalia here? Or was it just wishful thinking? He hadn’t felt her Gift—but then, he hadn’t felt it outside the SI warehouse the first time, either. Not until she’d come out of the shadows.

  But if she was here, he didn’t want to alert the demons to her presence. He forced his gaze to move on.

  Stafford rose from the sofa. Deacon tried not to tense as the demon walked over to him. He failed.

  The demon managed to give a good impression of sympathy. “I understand what you’re feeling, Mr. Deacon. Truly, I do.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Stafford breathed a disappointed sigh. He turned and pressed his back against the wall in front of Deacon, and slipped his hands into his pockets.

  “I do know,” the demon insisted on continuing, so Deacon prepared himself for that blade to screw deep. “I know what it is to do anything for the one you love. You betray your friends and your brethren. Your liege. All so that you can lift her to the throne where she belongs and stand beside her. And I know what it is to pray that she thinks well of you.”

  Wherever Stafford had been trying to stick that knife, he’d missed. Deacon didn’t feel anything but sick that this demon thought they were similar in any way.

  “You don’t know shit.” And if Stafford could read him, the demon would know he meant that.

  Deacon left him standing there, and crossed the room. Lukacs lay half-dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Deacon considered leaving him to die. The world would be all the better minus one murdering asshole. Someone like that became a vampire, someone like Deacon would inevitably have to put him down.

  But the same reason he’d had for everything else pushed him forward. He used Caym’s dagger, still lying on Lukacs’s lap, and slashed the blade over his own wrist.

  The wound wouldn’t stay open long. He sealed his arm to Lukacs’s mouth. Quickly enough, the man began drinking. Lukacs wasn’t a vampire yet, so it didn’t feel good—didn’t feel bad, either, except for the self-disgust that clung like a slug’s slime trail at the back of Deacon’s tongue.

  When the man had taken enough, Deacon pushed him away. Lying on his back, Lukacs breathed slowly, his eyes wide with wonder. His teeth had already lengthened.

  Deacon turned to Stafford. “Eva. Petra. Now.” He bared his fangs. “Or is this when you kill me?”

  Stafford laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, Mr. Deacon. We aren’t going to kill you. The Guardians are—and it’ll probably be your friend Irena. After all, she’s the one you hurt the most. And although she might hate what she has to do . . . she’ll do it anyway.”

  The slime seemed to fill up Dea
con’s lungs, his stomach. Irena had warned him about demons like Stafford—the kind that loved to tear people apart without ever touching their flesh. Told him they were the worst ones. Yet here he was, sick because he’d run headlong into everything she’d told him to avoid.

  But Caym was the kind that got off on the physical pain. So what had been in this for him? Standing just a few feet to Deacon’s left now, the crimson demon wore a smile that exposed his fangs. He looked a little too pleased for a demon who’d only gotten one beating in.

  Another must be in Deacon’s near future. Not killing him, but not letting him go without a scratch, either.

  Deacon braced himself, nodded at Caym. “And him?”

  “He had his fun, too.”

  A clay urn appeared in the demon’s hand, its rounded bottom nestled in his palm. A small knob centered on the lid. Caym opened the lid with a flourish, and with his gaze on Deacon’s face, tipped the urn to the side. Gray sand poured onto the floor.

  Deacon’s stomach lurched. Not sand. Ash.

  “Eva, I believe,” Stafford said.

  The agony of grief staggered him. He stumbled to his knees beside the remains, knowing his pain howled from his chest, uncaring if the demon heard.

  Another urn appeared in Caym’s palm. Stafford added, “And there’s Petra. Returned to you, as promised. I’m afraid Caym wasn’t so good to package up the rest of your community the same way. They are in his cache if you want them.”

  Deacon looked up at the demon pouring his life onto the floor. His grief ripped away, left only rage and revenge. Nothing else remained of him.

  “I want them.” But he’d take his people back by cutting them out of the demon himself. He’d take them back, or he’d join them in death.

  Deacon reached for his swords and sprang, surprising the demon, buying an extra moment of time. With the nosferatu blood, a moment was all Deacon needed. He stabbed his right sword upward beneath the demon’s ribs. Flesh split, and he dug into the heart. Caym fell back, gaping soundlessly. Deacon pushed forward. Hot blood spurted over his hand. With the heart destroyed, the demon was dead, but Deacon wasn’t done. He whipped his left blade up, sliced open a smile beneath the demon’s chin.