Demon Marked

by Meljean Brook

  Taylor stared at her. Yes. That helplessness would hurt him more than any pain. But, of all people, Lilith knew that? Lilith, who never had a word for Michael that wasn’t dripping with sarcasm or disdain for the “golden boy.”

  “I thought you hated him,” she said.

  Lilith’s eyes narrowed on her. “Fuck you, Taylor.” Her focus shifted to Khavi. “And fuck you, too. Why didn’t you warn him?”

  “I did. Before he made his sacrifice, I told him exactly what it would mean.”

  “Then why the fuck can’t you see how we get him out?”

  “I cannot see what I do not already—”

  “Oh, fuck you again.”

  The grigori tilted her head. “No, I do not see fucking in our future.”

  Khavi vanished. Lilith shook her head, met Taylor’s eyes.

  “You, my office.” She looked around at the gathered Guardians. “All of you. Every spare moment, I want you at the archives in Caelum, in the libraries wherever you can find one, searching for any damn little thing that would help get Michael out of there. So move your asses now, or I’ll have Sir Pup come bite them off.”

  Taylor loved her a little bit right then. She followed Castleford and Lilith back to the office, grateful that Sir Pup stayed behind in the central hub to carry out Lilith’s threat. Once inside, Lilith ripped her hands through her hair and sat heavily in her chair.

  “Fuck.”

  Castleford smiled a little and sat on the edge of her desk, crossing his arms over his massive chest. Without the glasses he typically wore, he looked less like the scholar and more like the warrior—an eight-hundred-year-old warrior who, even though he was human again now, could still see the truth in a person’s answers as clearly as if he read them. Luckily, whenever Taylor lied in front of him, he usually didn’t call her on it.

  “‘Fuck’ again? Now you’re just teasing me, Lily.”

  Lilith glared at him, but even Taylor could see that he’d just pushed Lilith out of her temper. With a sigh, she picked up a file from her desk and tossed it to Taylor.

  “We found St. Croix’s demon.”

  Taylor opened the file to a picture from airport security in New York. Crap resolution, but clear enough to identify them both. “What name did she use?”

  “She went through as Rachel Boyle. Straight on through. She was flagged as missing, not dead—but she’s obviously not missing anymore, is she? She’s never been charged with anything, and she’s a citizen, so they basically just said, ‘Come on in.’ Idiots.”

  “Why would a demon use an airport at all?” Taylor wondered.

  “Maybe she’s trying to convince St. Croix that she’s human,” Lilith said. “But I don’t think so. He wouldn’t fall for that, and she’s got symbols all over her. So maybe he didn’t trust her not to drop him.”

  Castleford frowned. “Boyle. The same as the double murders Taylor was looking at?”

  “The same,” Taylor confirmed. “We saw her tonight. She wore the markings then, too, but St. Croix called her Ash.”

  “So St. Croix went to Duluth?” He exchanged a glance with Lilith. “With the demon who was pretending to be Rachel’s ghost?”

  Lilith shook her head. “That makes no sense. No sense at all.”

  They’d only heard the beginning of it. “Let me tell you the rest,” Taylor said.

  She relayed the meeting with St. Croix outside of the sheriff’s office, the burst of grief that had led them to the snow-covered field, Nicholas’s defense of the demon.

  “This is the crazy part, and I’m not really clear on it, because as soon as I saw her, Michael jumped in and began steering the boat,” Taylor told them. “And he was . . . angry. Not at the demon, but that kind of anger that comes from realizing that something is completely fucked up, and someone got hurt, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Then he told St. Croix that she was ours.”

  “As in, ‘ours to kill’?” Lilith asked.

  “No. As in, ‘she belongs to the Guardians.’” Taylor took in their confusion. “Rachel Boyle died saving St. Croix’s life, remember.”

  “Then she was supposed to be a Guardian,” Castleford said.

  “So how is she a demon, instead?”

  “No, that’s the wrong question,” Lilith said. “It’s not: How did she go from being a Guardian to a demon? There’d have to be more steps. And the first: Why isn’t she a Guardian?”

  Castleford nodded slowly, as if in dawning realization. “A bargain.”

  Taylor shook her head. “I’m not following either of you.”

  Lilith sat forward. “It’s like this: The only way Michael wouldn’t have been called to transform her into a Guardian is if there was a prior hold on her soul. She must have broken a bargain—probably a bargain with St. Croix’s mother.”

  “That would put her in the frozen field when she died,” Castleford picked up the rest. “Her soul, anyway. Just like Michael’s soul is in the frozen field, but his body is in your cache.”

  In Taylor’s cache, and marked up with symbols that completed the psychic connection between them . . . and allowed for an eventual rejoining of his body and soul after he was released from Hell.

  “St. Croix said that Rachel’s body vanished. You think his mother had it in her cache?”

  Lilith nodded. “And she would be in Hell, enduring her punishment for killing a human. So Rachel’s soul is in the frozen field, her body is in a demon’s cache . . . and Lucifer has access to both. So he makes a halfling out of her.”

  All right. Taylor could follow that far. Lucifer had pulled Rachel out of the frozen field, reunited body and soul, and then Rachel had completed the ritual that turned her into a demon. What she couldn’t understand was Why?

  Lilith didn’t have an answer for that. “I have no idea. Obviously for some purpose. But I don’t know what.”

  “Some kind of spell?” Taylor suggested. “The symbols on her face made Michael uneasy.”

  Lilith squinted at the airport photos, before shaking her head. “Even magnified, I wouldn’t be able to read these. They’re too pixelated. But symbols are part of the transformation ritual. I had them all over me. They defined my powers, my bargain with Lucifer, my name. They’re normal. I only wonder why she doesn’t hide them.”

  “The symbols I saw called for something to open.”

  “To open?” Lilith grimaced. “Not so normal. And Michael didn’t like them, either?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Okay. So let’s assume that whatever Lucifer wants, he’s going to get it through Rachel Boyle. The question is: Does Rachel share Lucifer’s purpose? Does St. Croix?”

  Castleford turned to Taylor. “Did you get a look inside her mind?”

  “Yes, actually. A clear one.” Which, thinking about it now, was strange. Beyond even “normal” strange. “And I do mean clear. I’ve never touched a mind like hers. She’s wide open. And there’s no conflict in her. Her emotions sang like pure notes.”

  Even children felt more of a push and pull—between love and resentment, between desire for an object versus a desire to please.

  “Demons aren’t conflicted,” Castleford said.

  “But they’re malevolent. She wasn’t. There was only grief, confusion, pain—and joy, when St. Croix came for her.”

  “And what does he feel?”

  “I couldn’t get into his head. But he’d have killed me for her.”

  “So if we want to get to her, we have to get around him . . . and he’s familiar with the Rules.” Lilith considered that. “All right. And you say he called her Ash?”

  “Yes.”

  “So Lucifer took her name and gave her a new one. If her emotions are that clear, too, he might have taken more than her name. Memories, associations—especially if they are connected to strong emotions—he might have taken all of that. If she’s only just been transformed—and that would also explain why she couldn’t fly into the U.S. by herself—she wouldn’t have had time to create
those new emotional connections yet. All those conflicting feelings that muddy everything up.” Lilith heaved a long breath. “Which means that now is a good time to recruit her.”

  Both Taylor and Castleford stared at her.

  “What? Halflings aren’t the same as demons.”

  “I know that better than anyone,” Castleford said. “But there’s the matter of her bargain. She’d have vowed to serve and obey Lucifer during the ritual. We wouldn’t be able to trust her.”

  Lilith shook her head. “Probably not sworn to obey Lucifer. Not with the Gates closed. He’d have bound her to someone else, someone who probably was charged to carry through whatever purpose he had in mind.”

  “St. Croix?”

  “No.” Castleford didn’t hesitate. “Not a human. A demon. And he probably bound that demon to him, to make certain whatever he wanted from them was followed through.”

  “So we just have to kill the demon she’s bound to,” Lilith said. “And she’s free.”

  “And Lucifer’s purpose thwarted,” Castleford added.

  “Always fun, the thwarting. So we should definitely bring her in.” Lilith pursed her lips. “Does anyone know where she is?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Nicholas thought he’d had enough of snow, but it wasn’t so damn bad when it meant traveling by snowmobile with a furnace of a demon sitting behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. The view wasn’t a kick in the face, either. Whitecapped mountains thrust into the western sky. White stretched around them, framed by the trees climbing the valley walls.

  Leslie often told him he ought to make an effort to study and enjoy the beauty around him. The land just east of Glacier National Park made it easy.

  Beauty wasn’t his reason for being here, though. This time of year, the only access to the cabin took two hours by snowmobile—unless a man could fly. Considering that most Guardians and demons could, the isolation wasn’t Nicholas’s primary reason for choosing his granddad’s place, either. The old man’s paranoia had been.

  The afternoon sun cast long shadows by the time they reached the log cabin. An A-frame situated in a tiny clearing at the edge of a valley floor, surrounded by a stand of tall firs, the place wasn’t an easy find unless a man already knew where it was. From high above, the snow piled on the steeply pitched roof would blend it into the surroundings. Inside, the main level housed two simple rooms: a living area, and a corner bedroom holding the toilet and a tub. A generator provided electricity if they wanted it. The cellar doubled as a nuclear fallout shelter, still stocked with weapons and supplies. Nicholas wouldn’t need them; he’d brought his own in the snowmobile’s sled. Still, he liked knowing they were there. A man couldn’t be overly prepared.

  The snow was almost level with the top step when he pulled up to the front porch, cut the engine. The sudden silence seemed almost heavy, until the quiet sounds of the forest around them began filtering in.

  He was almost sorry when Ash got off. God, she was warm. Even the best wet-and-cold weather gear money could buy didn’t compare to a demon at a man’s back.

  And her boots were as sexy as hell, but they weren’t doing her any favors. One step, and she sank knee-deep in the snow. She didn’t seem to notice. She only studied the cabin, looking as if she were freezing in that thin jacket and hoodie. A human would have been, but a demon didn’t need to hunch into her clothes.

  Why did she do that? She couldn’t be cold.

  “What is this place?”

  “My grandfather’s. This, and a hundred acres around it.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “Dead. Ten years. It’s mine now.”

  She pushed her hands into her pockets. “Won’t the Guardians find us, then?”

  “No.” Nicholas stripped off his thick outer gloves, began loosening the bungee cords holding the tarp over the sled. “There’s a record of the land, but not the house. He didn’t want the government touching him . . . and he was something of a survivalist. He didn’t leave much of a footprint in paper, and nothing electronically. Just a post office box in town.”

  Ash looked doubtful. “What kind of survivalist?”

  “He didn’t get to the point of mailing bombs, if that’s what you’re wondering. He lived through the stock market crash in the eighties. My grandmother took too many Valium and didn’t. He became convinced the world was out to fuck him over, so he gave it all up and came out here to live off the land.”

  Of course, being a St. Croix, he’d brought a hell of a lot of cash with him.

  “So no one knows it’s here?”

  Madelyn did, though she’d never been here. When Nicholas had been a boy, his mother, father, and he had frequently visited the old man, but Madelyn never had. The summer she’d refused to go gave Nicholas his best, first clue of when his mother had disappeared. He and his father had gone without her that year. By the next, his father was dead, and Madelyn hadn’t wanted to hear one word about visiting America.

  Granddad wouldn’t want a little boy underfoot who reminded him of his son. Nicky, love, why won’t you stop being selfish and think of that poor old man, instead? Let him grieve in peace, instead of bothering him about taking you fishing and running all over those woods.

  So Madelyn knew about the cabin, but it’d take her a while to figure out where he’d gone. She wouldn’t expect this of him. For years, he’d been hunting her. Now, he’d sit back and wait—and prepare. Eventually, she’d come looking for Ash. He’d be ready for her.

  “There’s one in town,” he said. “The son of the man who was Granddad’s only friend. He uses the cabin in the summer and fall for his fishing and hunting—and in exchange, he makes any necessary repairs.”

  “So that’s why it’s not falling apart.”

  That, and because his grandfather hadn’t skimped on the original construction. He’d had everything but the logs airlifted in by private contractors, and he’d built the place himself. For a man who’d spent most of his life on Wall Street, he’d ended up being damn good with his hands.

  “The front door is unlocked if you want to go in,” Nicholas said. After she took a step and sank to her knee again, he added, “There should be a pair of snowshoes hanging on the wall.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  He followed her in, the bag of weapons slung over his shoulder. Cold, a bit musty, but not bad. The windows were shuttered, but provided enough light to see by when he opened them. No sofa, no comfortable seating—just the small handmade table with two chairs, and one cane-back rocking chair by the window. Rustic and simple. Nicholas had forgotten how much he liked it.

  He hadn’t visited since the old man had died. Then, he’d come with the intention of selling it, but he’d made arrangements for its upkeep, instead. Before today, the place had never been useful to him, but he hadn’t been sorry for holding on to it—and he didn’t need Leslie to explain why. This cabin was a part of his childhood, one of the few parts Madelyn had never tainted.

  Would he hold on to it after she came? He didn’t know. Finally having his revenge would be sweet, but this place, this land, wouldn’t be the same afterward. He knew he’d never come here again.

  But if he did have to give it up afterward, it was a price he’d be willing to pay.

  A wood-burning stove provided heat for the rooms. It had been a while since Nicholas had started one, but it came back quickly enough.

  No, not quickly enough. With the dry kindling crackling, he turned to find that the sled had already been unloaded, the boxes and bags stacked on the floor and the table. No need to ask when she’d done it—with a demon’s speed and strength, she’d have had the task completed within seconds.

  But he didn’t like that she’d done all the work. “I’ll unload it next time.”

  And there’d have to be a next time within a few weeks. He didn’t mind roughing it, but he didn’t have time to trap or hunt, and he preferred not to test the longevity of the supplies in the fallout shelter.

 
; “You still have to put them away,” Ash said. Her gaze fell on the stove behind him. “And I’m not cooking for you. Especially on that thing.”

  Nicholas wasn’t looking forward to whatever he managed to produce on that stove, either. But as long as he could chew it, he didn’t care. “I’ll cook my own,” he agreed. “I can’t trust that you wouldn’t pile on the butter, anyway. You’d make it a slow death, demon.”

  She smiled, an expression that came more often now. “Are you speaking from experience? Did Madelyn?”

  Oh, hell. Nicholas hadn’t been thinking of that at all, but after his father died, there were always “comforting” foods in the house. Always. And Madelyn had encouraged him to comfort himself as often as possible.

  “She did. And I became big-boned very quickly.” Big-boned was her way of putting it, too.

  Ash frowned. “You really think she was trying to kill you?”

  “No. I think it was more about the short-term fun of seeing how other boys treated the fat kid.”

  “Oh.” Her gaze slipped over his body. “I see.”

  She probably did. Too much. And Nicholas probably shouldn’t have offered her such a clear view, but fuck it. She’d already gotten to him. He’d let his guard down, and giving her a little more ammunition at this point didn’t matter so much.

  What mattered was that he still knew what she was, what she might do with the info he gave to her. She hadn’t done it yet, but he had to believe she would, eventually.

  “I still want to see you naked,” she added.

  God, and he wanted to be naked. With her. But that was a step he didn’t dare take. Now, he could remember what she was: a demon. The second he believed that she could physically want him would be the second he started forgetting that.

  “Then I’ll make a point not to let you.” He reached for his gloves. “You don’t need to sleep or bathe. The bedroom is mine, and you’ll stay out.”

  Her brows lifted. “So I’m stuck in this one room?”

  “Not stuck.” He gestured to the windows. “There’s a lot of space out there.”

  God knew he’d be out as much as possible. Training, as they’d planned. And any other damn excuse he could think of.