In the antechamber, a female demon spoke. Another female answered her, then a male. Scarlet light gleamed across the floor before it was extinguished.
The female demon sang out a melodic stream of words.
Arabic. Jake didn’t know the language, but the insult was plain enough. He firmed his jaw, waited.
From the direction of the statue came the Guardian’s derisive snort. Then she was across the cavernous chamber, her steps echoing against the far wall.
The demon spoke again, in a lower tone. Her voice caught the Guardian mid-swing. The sparks illuminated her shocked expression; her head whipped around as she stared toward the antechamber. Dismay stabbed from her psyche before she blocked it.
The chamber went dark. Her whispered denial filled the silence. “No.”
A crimson glow moved through the antechamber, and the first demon stepped through. Wearing robes and—except for her eyes and the batlike wings folded at her back—in her human form.
Come on, Jake urged the others. There was movement behind her, but he didn’t have a shot yet.
In the wash of red light, he saw the Guardian standing in the center of the chamber, her arms slack at her sides, the tip of the naginata on the floor.
The demon smiled. Glowing eyes, leathery wings, and fangs. “And we’ve been charged to take something back to him as proof that you received his message. What shall it be—your hands? Your tongue?”
Just great. The demon had switched to English in response to the Guardian’s “no,” but Jake still had no idea what had stunned her. It wasn’t the threat; between demons and Guardians, bloodshed was pretty much a given.
But whatever it’d been, she was coming out of it. A slow smile crept up the sides of her mouth. She no longer held her weapon in a slack grip, but with the loose confidence of a seasoned warrior.
Who the hell was she?
“Come, then,” she challenged the demons. “Take them.”
The male emerged, his unclothed body covered in crimson scales, a sword in each taloned hand.
Jake fired.
The bolt flew faster than sound, embedding in the demon’s side before he could react to the snap of the bowstring. He fell to his knees, clawing at the shaft.
Jake reloaded as the second female burst from the antechamber. The first female dove forward; Jake’s next shot pierced her wing.
That was all he’d get. Her movements as fluid as a dancer’s, the Guardian slipped around the male. The blade of her naginata flashed. She leapt into the air in pursuit of the second female before his horned head hit the floor.
The first demon had vanished her injured wings, and a semiautomatic pistol appeared in her grip. She aimed it at the flying Guardian.
Not in this lifetime. Jake plummeted toward the demon, calling in his sword. She heard him coming, shifted her stance. He looked down the barrel of the gun, saw her finger tighten on the trigger.
And felt his Gift activate as terror ripped through him. A memory of pain and failure.
No, goddammit. Can’t leave her alone—
He jumped, opened his eyes to a giant statue bathed in scarlet light. Gunshots cracked.
Holy shit. A miracle.
Jake pivoted, scything his blade through the demon’s neck before she realized that he’d teleported behind her.
He glanced up, then threw himself to the side as a mass of scales and taloned wings hurtled toward him. The last demon smashed to the floor at his feet, the naginata buried in her heart.
The crimson glow in the cavern faded. In the darkness, Jake heard the Guardian land, and the wet sound of tearing flesh as she removed her weapon from the demon’s chest—then the thunk as the blade sliced through the neck.
His cell phone lit the scene. Blood pooled beneath the mound of demon bodies. The Guardian began cleaning off her blade with the hem of her robe.
Jake carelessly wiped his sword on his jeans and made himself look at the demon he’d slain.
To his surprise, his knees didn’t wobble, his stomach didn’t churn.
Hot damn. His first kill since becoming a Guardian, but he wasn’t staggering off to the side and blowing chunks. The miracles just kept on coming.
Grinning, he vanished his sword and shoved his hands into his pockets, told his feet to stay still. Slaying his first demon deserved a victory dance, but judging by the sharp glance she gave him, the Guardian probably wouldn’t appreciate his version of the twist.
Then her naginata disappeared, and he thought, What the hell.
He caught her beneath her arms, swept her around in a circle. She didn’t try to stop him, though her lips clamped together. Probably to stifle a shriek of delight or laughter, he guessed, because it was flippin’ impossible not to be thrilled at this moment. The demons were dead, he didn’t have a bullet in his head, and this chamber was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen—on Earth, anyway.
Her mouth didn’t relax when he put her down, and Jake suddenly found the tight line irresistible.
He closed his eyes and swooped in.
Her fists balled at his shoulders, but she didn’t push him away. Nor did her lips soften.
Her clothes did. The robes disappeared beneath his hands, and his palms slid from her underarms to a slim, silk-covered waist.
God, what made women feel so good?
Even the unreceptive ones. Damn, damn, damn. He broke the kiss, fighting his disappointment. The nice thing about female Guardians, though—and he knew from experience—was that they generally wouldn’t kill a man just for making a move.
Jake lifted his head, and his blood froze.
Her eyes were blue now, and icy with disapproval. A heavy brown braid snaked over her shoulder. Her dress wreathed her in black from her neck to her pointy witch-boots.
The Black Widow smiled, and Jake’s stomach lurched. Something moved inside her mouth. A hairy, segmented leg thrust between her parted lips—
Oh, Jesus—
A tarantula crawled out.
—Jesus, Jesus—
Jake stumbled back, tripped. Wood thudded beneath his ass. Sunlight speared his eyes.
“Jesus Christ in Heaven!” he shouted, then scrubbed at his lips, his tongue. He could almost feel that thing in his mouth. He’d kissed a flippin’ nut job.
A shadow fell across his face, and Jake looked up. A long way up. His mentor wasn’t a short man, by any measure.
“I reckon you yelling that name means you didn’t make it to the Archives,” Drifter said, his gaze running over the bloodstains on Jake’s jeans. “Though I’m doubting it was him who scared you back here.”
Seattle. Jake flopped back on the deck outside Drifter’s house, breathed in the clean scent of Lake Washington. “I ran into the Black Widow.”
“Alice?”
That was her name? If he’d ever learned it in his forty years as a Guardian, Jake had forgotten it.
“The Black Widow fits better,” he said. Alice was a soft, sweet name. It belonged on girls in pretty dresses chasing after white rabbits and attending tea parties.
The Guardian was more like the frightening side of Wonder-land. The Jabberwock, or the queen who ordered beheadings.
Scowling, Drifter shoved a flat-brimmed hat over his brown hair. “She ain’t as bad as you novices make out. You all oughta—”
“I kissed her.”
“Well, hell.” Drifter whistled low, shaking his head. “I never figured you as suicidal. Why do a fool thing like that?”
Ah, that sweet elation was washing over him again. Jake grinned, laced his fingers behind his head. “I killed a demon.”
“I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.” With a short nod, Drifter turned for the house. The wind from the lake kicked up the tails of his duster. “She do that spider-out-of-her-mouth trick?”
Jake jackknifed up to sitting. “That was a trick?”
Oh, dear God.
The light had vanished along with the novice. Surrounded by darkness, Alice stood absol
utely still, holding in the scream that swelled in her throat.
Teqon had sent the demons to tell her that his patience was at an end.
But she would not think of it yet—not until she mended the cracks in her composure and in her psychic shields. For a short time, she would allow herself to push thoughts of her bargain aside.
With shaking hands, Alice called her lantern and looked away from the spot where the novice had been standing. She’d heard he couldn’t yet control his Gift—that his fear took him over.
But he didn’t lack bravery, she thought as her gaze slipped over the demons’ bodies, lingering on the head of the one he’d slain. And his vivid imagination would serve him well. A creative mind was an asset to a warrior—but it was a hindrance so long as he let it run wild. If the novice had taken even a moment to rein it in, he’d have perceived the illusion she’d created.
Alice touched her lips. Yes. Much too impulsive, but also skilled for his age. Ethan had taught him well—and, even now, was likely teaching him how she’d accomplished the illusion.
It was one of her best tricks. That did not mean very much, however, when she had so few.
And to be truthful, there wasn’t much to it. Guardians couldn’t hear thoughts or read minds; their psychic abilities were primarily empathic. But they could receive images if their psychic shields were penetrable and if someone focused hard enough.
The novice’s shields hadn’t been until Alice shifted into her natural form. His shock had given her an opening, like a small rip in a seam. The suggestion of a spider leg had been the tug to tear it wide, and his overwhelming revulsion concealed Alice’s psychic scent as she shoved the larger, more horrific image past his defenses.
Simple, yet the illusion wouldn’t have succeeded if the novice hadn’t believed that Alice might ferry spiders about in such a way.
She wouldn’t, of course. There were few spiders on Earth with which she had more than a passing acquaintance, and no self-respecting woman let a strange spider crawl through her mouth.
And if Alice couldn’t remember the last time she’d respected herself . . . well, that was hardly the point.
A novice would expect it of her. She hadn’t listened to the stories they told about her, but she was aware of them.
Enough to know they’d gotten most of it wrong.
Her sigh echoed through the chamber, and when it returned it sounded like a breath from the statue. As always, the warrior woman wore her serenity like a mask, but her sculptors revealed a wealth of power and emotion in the tangle of her braids, the riot of her gown, the lift of her sword.
Alice had seen her before. But this statue, dating from the seventh century BC, was the most recent of the woman’s likenesses. It was also the only one with wings, and by far the largest.
It was, finally, something new: not the woman herself, but the wings and the kneeling figure. Alice didn’t know what the difference meant, however—if it meant anything at all.
And she didn’t know why the male companion who’d appeared with the woman in so many of the friezes no longer stood beside her. Had the missing statue been of the same man? Or had another knelt before her?
In the two weeks since Alice had discovered the temple and this room, she hadn’t found the answers. She’d photographed, measured, and sketched. There was no more to record now; there was only much to wonder about.
But she did not have time left for that. Her chest was heavy as she turned back to the demons. Two were nude, and there was nothing unique about the third’s robes to indicate her origin. They’d said the demon Teqon had sent them, but Alice had no idea where he’d sent them from. She’d preferred not knowing how to find him.
How had they located her? Not by following the novice. No demon could teleport.
Perhaps Teqon had been tracking her movements. She’d been using the Gate near Marrakech to travel between Caelum and Earth, then flying from Morocco to Tunisia. If she’d been identified and the location of the Gate revealed, she needed to warn the other Guardians; otherwise, anyone passing through the portal might be ambushed by demons.
And Teqon would send more if Alice didn’t inform him that she’d received his message.
Her gaze drifted to the male’s chest, and a knife appeared in her hand. It would not be the heart Teqon wanted.
But it would serve as an effective message in return.
CHAPTER 2
The Pontic Steppe was even less welcoming than the Sahara. Once, it had been home to the Scythians and the Sarmatians, the Goths and the Huns. In her mind, Alice could see the paths those ancient peoples had taken on foot and by horse, their trading routes, and maps blazed with violence and bloodshed.
These days, the people rode harvesting combines instead of horses, and the only paths they cut were through fields of wheat.
But they did not harvest now—and blood would be spilled again, very soon.
From the air, Alice searched the flat, snowy landscape. Though the cold did not affect her any more than the heat of the desert had, she shivered.
She rarely felt alone; here, she did. The early winter had killed off the spiders or driven them to shelter in homes and outbuildings. In the endless frozen stretch below, there were no minds to connect to, no whispers for her Gift to collect.
If she had been thinking clearly when she left, Alice would have brought a few of the cave weavers that had served her so well in the temple. Their ability to detect the slightest vibration—a footstep, the disturbance of air from a passing body or the flap of a wing—had allowed Alice to track the demons’ progress through the temple better than her hearing could have, and to navigate through the dark.
Without a spider’s senses enhancing her own, she was bereft.
She glanced down. A hare raced across the field below, then disappeared in a burrow beneath the snow. Its heartbeat fluttered in her ears.
Alice smiled into the night sky. What a wretched creature she was. A Guardian possessed of extraordinary powers, yet blind and deaf without eight-legged companions.
How very pitiable. Hardly fit to crawl through the sewers of Cairo, let alone the marble courtyards of Caelum. She ought to be eating rats . . . No, she ought to be feeding them her own contemptible entrails. That was, if they would not turn up their twitching noses at such an offering—
If she went any further, she would burst into laughter.
Satisfied that she’d trampled her melancholy mood, she reached out. Finally, a tendril from a familiar psychic scent flicked against her mind. Alice grabbed hold and followed it east.
She found Irena hunting roe deer sheltered within a copse of stunted trees.
There would be little contest. As fleet as the deer were, a Guardian could easily outrace them. Irena’s bow made it more sporting, perhaps—but she would be upon her target so quickly, ending its suffering immediately after the arrow struck, that Alice wondered why Irena didn’t just run the animal down with her kukri knives.
Irena crawled forward through the snow. A white mantle concealed her shoulders and auburn hair, chopped short by her own sword, its reds as varied as the hide of the deer she stalked. The wind carried the scent of dried blood and soot that stained her leather leggings, yet they were barely discernible beneath the musk of the herd.
Better to have come from upwind, Alice thought. Irena’s victory over her prey was certain, so she should have given them an opportunity to flee. Not picked them off while they slept.
Alice’s boots crunched the snow as she landed. Irena froze, and cast a killing look over her shoulder.
With a wave of her hand, Alice called, “A very good evening to you!”
Though Alice didn’t know the word Irena spat, it was blunt and unmistakably Slavic.
Alice didn’t have to yell over the thundering hooves for Irena to hear her, but once a task was begun, it was best to do it well. And besides, she needed to practice her Russian. “It is a cold night for hunting, yes?”
Irena was already strea
king through the trees. Alice followed at a leisurely pace. When she emerged from the opposite side of the copse, Irena was working over a steaming body.
The deer snorted and circled, watching them warily. Blood darkened Irena’s forearms, obscuring to her elbows the blue tattoos that decorated the length of her arms. She’d vanished her white mantle. Her smithy’s apron protected her chest, leaving her arms and back bare.
Alice ran her hands down her sleeves. She could never be comfortable with so much exposed.
“And now you are quiet.” Irena did not look up as she disemboweled the deer. The grisly task was not so different from the one Alice had performed on the demon, only hours before. “You creep up on me like Zorya Polunochnaya, swathed in darkness. You only lack the white hair and hunched back.”
Like the midnight aurora? Alice frowned, until she realized that she’d translated zorya polunochnaya to English instead of hearing it as a name. Oh, dear. When had she last read about the Zorya? To the best of her recollection, they were three mythical goddesses watching over a sky hound chained to a constellation. The hound would destroy the universe if he broke his bonds.
Alice considered that as Irena rolled the deer’s body onto its back. The heat of its blood and innards had melted the snow to pink slush.
Irena might have been the morning Zorya, Alice decided. The fierce young warrior. Neither of them would be the mother.
And Alice would rather the world not rely on her as their defense against annihilation by a godhound. Demons were quite enough. “If I must be a crone,” she said, “I would prefer to be Baba Yaga.”
“Would you aid the lost, or abduct children and eat them?”
“Both. It would lend more variety to my day. I should also like to have invisible servants.”
Irena snorted. “And a home built on dancing chicken legs? With no windows, no doors—”
“And you will not build a chimney through which I could leave.”
Demon Bound Page 3