Demon Bound

by Meljean Brook

  Perhaps she ought to tell him how nicely put together he was. Men so often mistook simple admiration for physical attraction. Surely, coming from her, a suggestion of interest would discomfit him so badly that he would finally go.

  He’d responded contrary to her expectations on each of her previous attempts, however. Rather than retreat, he might make an advance—then she would be forced to reject him.

  What an awkward scene that would be.

  With a resigned sigh, Alice left him poring over a photograph she’d taken in India. The temple had punched through the surrounding jungle like a bare stone fist but had vanished before the wilderness could cast a single vine over its knuckles.

  A print from its interior hung near the entrance to her quarters. Alice stopped to examine the temple’s statues, then moved along the wall—searching, she imagined, for the same thing Jake was: a clue as to who had sculpted them, a hint of why and how and who.

  “Mycenaean, right?” Jake suddenly spoke beside her, and her heart jumped.

  Alice barely kept the rest of her body from following it. She held herself still, and wondered if she was surprised more by his sudden appearance or his correct identification.

  She stole a glance at his profile, saw his concentration on the painting in front of them. “Yes. From a small island near Crete.”

  “The hair’s distinctive. The braids, the beads. The little beehive thing—” He made a gesture over his head, indicating the high-set roll of hair. “She’s sharper, though, than in any other Mycenaean art I’ve seen. More angular. Egyptian influence?”

  He’d recognized that, too? Excitement sparked in her chest. Passion, almost as old as she was, and rarely shared.

  Tread lightly, Alice.

  She laced her fingers together. “Perhaps,” Alice said. “But I wouldn’t rule out Akkadian, or Sumerian.”

  Jake scanned the walls and the pottery again, his expression hopeful. “Have any ziggurats appeared?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” Exploring one of the Sumerian stepped pyramids might have sent her into ecstasies. “This fresco is from the oldest temple I’ve yet found. Radiocarbon dating placed it—”

  “You used carbon dating?” His quick survey of her form suggested that he thought her dress—or Alice herself—also should have been put under a spectrometer.

  “What do you use, novice? Tree rings?”

  His unapologetic gaze was steady on hers. “I know a few Guardians who would.”

  That was true, she reflected. And other Guardians who didn’t use computers, guns, or even ballpoint pens.

  Very well. She’d made her own assumptions about him and been surprised; she would allow him this surprise in return. This one. If he did not learn from it, then she would allow herself to be irritated.

  She drew in a short breath. “As I was saying—”

  “I’m a dick.”

  And an observant one at that. But Jake had that internally amused look again, and Alice couldn’t decide whether he hoped she would return his smile or if he was laughing at her, so she only continued, “I sent the samples to a lab. This fresco is from 1250 BC.”

  His expression changed to confusion. “And that’s the oldest?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, that panel of Michael and the others . . .” Jake moved to the Egyptian piece from outside Abu Simbel. “Yeah. Check out the others—are they Guardians?”

  “I believe so,” Alice said quietly.

  “Hot damn.” He shook his head, then continued, “But the others, they’re lounging—the woman and those two men. Their arrangement, their poses all look more natural. All they need are some potbellies and skinny arms.” Jake turned and frowned at her. “Are the dates in my head screwy? I’m thinking: eighteenth dynasty, the Amarna period—and a hundred years earlier than your Mycenaean fresco.”

  She would lure him away from Ethan, Alice decided. Take over his mentoring, and have him teleport her to archeological sites around the world. She would not even care if each jump made her wobble.

  Oh, my. How very scandalous her fantasies had become in her old age!

  Jake’s eyes narrowed, and Alice realized she was smiling again.

  “You head isn’t screwy,” she said, joining him at the panel. “But when I tell you the date, you might begin to think mine is.”

  “I already—”

  “Your filter is leaking again, novice.”

  His self-disparaging grin was too appealing, she thought. Half-amiable, half-wiseacre. And, when he held out an American five-dollar bill, all cheek.

  “Give it to Drifter,” Jake explained. “He’ll know you’ve kept me in line.”

  “Then I shall keep it.” Alice took the money. “I’ve earned it—and he’ll only gamble it away.”

  And Ethan had fleeced her so many times when they’d been training together, she felt no compunction against getting the jump on his winnings now.

  Jake sighed when Alice vanished the bill into her cache. “I hoped he would. That’s how I planned to get it back.”

  “So when you say these things, your loss is only temporary?” Alice asked, frowning slightly. “Little wonder your behavior hasn’t changed. There are no consequences when you are disciplined.”

  Except that Jake had begun to recognize his more thoughtless responses—perhaps that was all Ethan intended.

  She met his eyes again, and saw that the good humor had deserted his smile. “Golly gee, Alice. I never thought of it that way. Maybe Drifter should make me shape-shift into a girl and crawl around on my hands and knees.” His brows lifted, and the texture of his psychic scent was tipped with sardonic barbs. “But what if I liked it too much?”

  Alice held his gaze, her own expression cool. No, Jake didn’t appreciate a lecture any more than she did. But she had no intention of letting him see that he’d managed to make her feel like a pedantic prig.

  And there was obviously only one topic they could discuss that wouldn’t result in a mutually annoying exchange.

  She turned back to the panel. “Ninth century BC,” she said, and as he mulled over the date, she waited, wondering if he’d reach the same conclusion she had.

  The distinctive naturalistic style had only flourished for a short period—beginning after Akhenaton had converted to monotheism, and ending when an heir restored the polytheistic religion of the earlier kingdoms. The formal art of the earlier kingdoms had been restored, as well—and rigidly enforced.

  And although it was possible that a secret sect of monotheists had carried on the Amarna tradition for five hundred years, another group was far more likely to have created these—particularly considering the subject of the frescoed panels.

  “So either you’ve got a bunch of rebels hiding out for centuries—and building big temples isn’t such a smart way to hide,” Jake said. “Or you’ve got someone—or someones—who saw this style in person. And liked it enough to use it five hundred years later.”

  She could forgive his thoughtlessness, Alice decided. “An immortal,” she agreed.

  “But obviously not a demon.” He gestured to another fresco from the Abu Simbel temple, that one depicting a scene from the Second Battle. A figure’s status could be determined by his size—and the demons were half as tall as the seraphim.

  And Lucifer, at the head of the dragon, was the smallest of all the demons.

  This time, Jake didn’t go on alert when she smiled. “Obviously not. And you’ll note the Guardians are equal to one another—even Michael. Only the angels are given divine rank.”

  “But no wings. Here, or on any of the other pieces.” Jake scanned the room again as if making certain, then glanced over at her. “In Tunisia, I assumed the female was a goddess figure. Nike or Nemesis, maybe. Until I saw the friezes.”

  Alice nodded. “I believe it’s the same woman who is one of Michael’s companions in the early transformation scenes—but if so, it is also the first time I have seen her winged.”

  Jake returned to the Mycen
aean figure. “Yeah. Her sword, her posture, her position. The hair and clothes change a little, but . . .” He trailed off, leaning in before slanting an assessing look at Alice. “Actually, she’s kind of like you.”

  “Pardon me?”

  He nodded to himself. “Yeah. All angular. Her—I know it’s the style. But you, you’re just kind of sharp and bony. And she’s softened by her clothing instead of being all buttoned up and choked by her—” Jake clasped his neck in both hands. He glanced at her, froze. His arms fell back to his sides, and he cleared his throat. “But, uh, you’re American, right? Not Greek.”

  “My father was American.” Alice held out her hand. Her self-control was truly remarkable, she thought. When the five-dollar bill appeared in her palm, she vanished the money without tearing it to pieces. “My mother was Egyptian. Like that panel.”

  Not so remarkable then; her irritation had slipped through. But he looked almost grateful for her pointed change of subject.

  “What about Michael?”

  She might have looked stiff to Jake before, but she felt stiff now—her braid pulling too hard on her scalp, her arms crossed too tight. “What of him?”

  “What does he say that all of this is?”

  “He says it is ‘something best left buried by history, and forgotten. ’ But he also tells me that I am, of course, free to excavate it.”

  Jake frowned, clearly disappointed. “But—”

  “Michael also cannot see it. Any of it, except for my sketches. He teleported to Abu Simbel with me, and couldn’t see or enter the temple—even when I took his hand and tried to lead him over the threshold.”

  That left Jake speechless. He ran his hand over his head and looked at Alice, then the artifacts, several times.

  Finally he asked, “What about the symbols over the antechamber entrance? Have they shown up before?”

  “No, this is the first time.” Something else that was new. But although she was eager to discover the symbols’ meaning, she did not look forward to taking the steps to learn it. “I will have to ask Michael for the translation—”

  “ ‘We go north,’ ” Jake interrupted. He met her surprise with a quick grin. “I asked Lilith. So, they left directions in this one, but not the others.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Then how’d you find them?”

  “My Gift.” She saw that response wouldn’t satisfy him, and added, “When these temples appear, it disturbs the spiders in the area.” There was no other word for it. “The disturbance spreads quickly, but the farther away it is, the weaker it feels. So I follow it to the strongest point.”

  He studied her for a long time, she thought. Turning it all over in his mind, looking for answers. “And you’ve been finding these since—When did you finish your training?”

  “Nineteen hundred and eighty-eight.”

  “Over twenty years ago? Then why doesn’t anyone know about this?”

  “Anyone? Or you?” Alice watched acknowledgment touch his expression, and continued, “There are some who know. Anyone who has cared to ask me, or who has come across the photographs in the Archives—”

  “These are in the library?” he said mournfully, as if already grieving over the two decades he’d not known of their existence.

  “Perhaps if you’d ventured into the corner I usually inhabit, you’d have come across them.”

  Unexpectedly, he grinned. “Well, now that you don’t freak me out, maybe I will. You’ve been working on them alone all this time?”

  She shook her head. “Only since the Ascension. Before that, I had a team of novices to assist me.”

  “Oh,” he said, and winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  If her spine had been rigid before, now it became a steel bar. She’d forgotten about the stories the novices told. One was that she’d helped a few of her students to “Ascend” with her blade, but vanished the bodies.

  What the novices said didn’t matter—much of it had probably arisen out of their boredom in the years after the Ascension and before they’d moved to San Francisco. It was the truth the stories were rooted in that had her turning away from him.

  Of all the mentors who remained in Caelum after the Ascension, only Alice had lost every student. She was the only one who hadn’t inspired a single novice to stay, to fight—to live.

  And she didn’t want to see his sympathy, or his pity.

  “Hey,” he called.

  Short of breaking into a run, Alice couldn’t prevent him from moving in front of her. She stopped, her lips set in a firm line.

  He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, but instead of appearing cowed when his shoulders hunched, he only seemed taller. “Look, I know you want me gone.”

  Her response was a lift of her brows.

  That must have amused him. His appealing smile returned. “I’ve just been waiting for you to sic Nefertari on me.”

  She should have. “Is that how you intended to leave? You wanted her to frighten you?”

  “Nope. Just to see if you’d do it. I hoped you would.”

  “I’m sorry I disappointed you, then.”

  “I’ll bet.” He laughed to himself again, closing his eyes as if to contain it. After a moment, he opened them. “I’ll be looking through the stuff you have in the library.”

  “I assumed as much, yes. You don’t need my permission—”

  “I’m going to bother you.” His gaze didn’t leave hers. “You’ve got twenty years on it already, and I’ll have questions.”

  He also had both knowledge and curiosity. If that continued, there might be someone to carry on the research when—if—she no longer could.

  Her fingers were clenched painfully tight, but she managed to perform a cool nod. “Very well. If, of course, it doesn’t interfere with your training.”

  “I’ll convince Drifter that it’ll be a good experience for me.”

  Considering that Jake was the youngest Guardian in the field—and that he’d been made active long before the typical century of training had been completed—Ethan was likely more concerned that Jake mastered his weapons and Gift.

  “I doubt that he’ll be so easy to convince.”

  “No, he will be.” Jake shrugged and looked over her head, his gaze moving keenly along her walls—already anticipating the opportunity to dig deeper into their mysteries, she supposed. “You’re pretty much the only female who doesn’t make me think about sex when I’m near you. So I’ll point out that you’ll be good practice for when I’m around real women.”

  Real women? Stunned, Alice could only stare at him. Her mouth was agape, she realized dumbly—and shut it at the same moment Jake’s mortified gaze snapped to hers.

  “Oh, shit—”

  Alice pushed past him, threw open her front doors. If he ignored the blatant message, she would toss him out.

  But she would not look at him yet; her control was too tenuous. She stared out into the empty courtyard and measured each icy word. “You may come to me, novice, if it teaches you how to behave around real women. But I suggest you return to Ethan’s training, where you might learn to behave like a real man.”

  His footsteps approached. She heard his deep breath as he halted next to her.

  “I’m sorry, Alice.”

  She closed her eyes. The sound of his heart beat against her ears. His remorse lay heavy over his psychic scent.

  And with three words, Jake had proved himself more of a man than some she’d known.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But please leave.”

  He did. Not by teleporting or flying, as she’d expected—but walking across her courtyard with a slow, even gait.

  CHAPTER 4

  A fifteen-minute hike took Jake to the city’s rounded edge. From high above, Caelum looked like a giant white plate in a waveless blue sea; the surrounding water sat level with the marble pavers, forming a smooth, unbroken plane.

  As a human, Jake hadn’t seen the ocean until he’d been on a foreign shore, preparing
to go into combat—and wearing the brave face and swagger that they’d all learned to put on. Everyone had been afraid then, but the fear hadn’t taken form yet.

  And piss-scared hadn’t come until later.

  But despite the memories the sight of the ocean could wash up, he preferred it to this eerie, endless stillness. There wasn’t anything out there. Not long after the Ascension, he and a few other novices had flown out over the sea, just to see if it ended. They’d given up after two weeks—at the same speed, they’d have circled the Earth eight times.

  It was just as empty below the surface. Jake didn’t know how far he’d followed the gigantic, submerged column that was Caelum’s base, but he hadn’t hit bottom. And though he must have swum dozens of miles underwater, Caelum’s sun had penetrated even to those depths, lighting his way.

  There were stories about Guardians who were still diving, still flying—spending their immortality looking for the end.

  If the stories were true, they must be flippin’ nutcases by now.

  Jake grimaced and looked over his shoulder at the city. He couldn’t see Alice’s home behind the taller buildings nearer the water, but he almost expected to find spiders creeping up, preparing to make him pay for the insult to their mommy.

  Yeah, he’d fucked that up but good.

  But damn if he knew why. Halfway across her courtyard, Jake had realized it hadn’t just been a stupid thing to say aloud—it’d been wrong to boot.

  He’d always assumed his hormones were partially to blame for the crap that came out of his mouth. But in the forty-five minutes he’d spent with her, his only sexual thought had been a passing curiosity about spider reproduction—and yet he’d still managed to set a new record in dickery.

  Unfortunately for them both, he couldn’t stop thinking about that temple, and everything in that badass museum she called her quarters. They’d just have to get used to each other.

  Something tickled the nape of his neck. Jake spun around, slapping at his shoulders, his hair. His fingers brushed a strand of . . . web? A spider leg?

  With a shudder, he yanked it away from his skin—and ripped a hole in the neck of his shirt.

  A cotton thread was pinched between his fingers. Jake stared at it, disbelieving. Jesus Christ in Heaven. He’d crawled through jungles without giving spiders a second thought. He’d taken bullets to his head. He’d tracked nosferatu, nephilim, and demons—and killed one.