Demon Bound

by Meljean Brook

Demon tongue, she told him. The Old Language.

  Teqon? Would he have found you again, sent more?

  Had she mistaken the temperature? She stared down the darkened corridor. Oh, bother. If it was a demon, she’d already revealed herself by using her Gift.

  She shot a psychic probe out, swift and pointed as a bolt from a crossbow. And quickly raised her shields again, her skin crawling.

  The voices fell silent.

  Demon? Jake asked, studying her.

  I don’t know, she signed. Dark. Strong. I haven’t felt it before.

  His face hardened. Though he aimed it away from her, she felt the blast of his own probe.

  I’ve felt it, he signed. Nephilim. Which means we get the hell out of here.

  She hesitated, and Jake shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. Don’t even think about it, oh goddess of mine. We’ve got vampire blood, so we could take one on, maybe two. Five, and we’re toast.

  He was right. And this time, he had the experience and knowledge. He’d faced the nephilim alongside Ethan and Alejandro on two separate occasions, whereas she’d never seen one.

  But she despised the thought of them coming into this chamber—these sites were hers, blast them!—and wanted desperately to know how they’d found it, what they planned to do here.

  “Alice,” he said.

  “Of course.” Her nod was stilted, and she held out her hand. “Of course. Let us go.”

  Immediately, his Gift kicked through her. The walls remained solid around them. His fingers tightened on hers, and he tried again. And again.

  A red glow appeared at the end of the corridor.

  “Shit.” Jake pulled her back, to the opposite side of the chamber. His Gift slammed again, with enough force to push her off balance. He caught her around the waist and dragged her up against him, pressing her cheek into his neck. “Hold on. I’ll get us out. I probably just need to see what’s coming at me.”

  Alice vanished her weapon. He would succeed, she thought. But if it was at the last second, an uncontrolled jump and landing, she didn’t want to accidentally take his head off with it.

  Jake’s arm tightened around her. The nephilim’s footsteps were approaching—fast, even to her quickened perception. Careful to keep her skin against his, she turned her head, tried to watch from the corner of her eye.

  The nephilim were almost at the entrance. Red skin, black feathered wings. The males wore only plated skirts; the two females had similar armor, topped by a filigreed breastplate. Their swords were stained with rust—or dried blood.

  Alice’s fingers clenched as she prepared to call in her weapon again.

  Jake lifted her, and the world spun.

  Her shoulder hit rock, and Jake swore. Then his body was hard beneath her. She scented blood, heard the scrape of a knife. She raised her head—tried to. Only three or four inches, and then she rapped it against stone.

  Disbelieving, she looked down into his face. He’d rolled them into the niche carved into the wall. And she could no longer hear the nephilim’s footsteps. Just her heartbeat, and Jake’s.

  He’d activated the shielding spell, she realized. He’d scraped the symbols into the stone, then used his blood to seal the opening of the niche.

  “Goddamn.” His embarrassment seared her psychic blocks.

  “We are alive, novice,” she said, and turned her head to watch the nephilim race across the chamber.

  She couldn’t stop her flinch when one stabbed his sword toward the niche’s opening, but the blade skidded across the invisible shield as if he’d tried to impale steel. Slowly, she loosened her hold on Jake, shifting her body to the rear of the niche. She only managed to lever herself onto her side, her thigh over his and still half-lying on him, but it wouldn’t be as distracting as straddling his hips.

  “I wouldn’t have thought of this,” she added as an arrow splintered against the shield. “I’ve never used the spell. I’d have been dead now if I was alone.”

  A female nephil hacked at the stone with an axe. Chips flew, but the shield would hold its shape around their small space even if the nephilim managed to chisel an opening in the rock above them.

  “Next time,” he said, “I’ll set the shield at the chamber entrance.”

  “That would have been ideal,” she agreed.

  “I avoided the situation.” His wry grin seemed to dare her to say I told you so.

  “Yes, well. Typically, I steer clear of being trapped in stone niches the size of a sarcophagus, with nephilim waiting to let their axes take bites of my skull. But we all eventually find ourselves in those situations we avoid, and must make the best of them—which you did. Can you teleport from inside the shield?”

  “Yes. Want me to try, or wait?”

  “And see what they do?” At his nod, she said, “That would also be ideal.”

  To her surprise, what the nephilim did was hold a short consultation—then vanish their clothing.

  Demons in their original form had no gender; they adopted genitalia after shape-shifting into human forms. But perhaps because these nephilim possessed human bodies and could only shape-shift between their human and current forms, they’d had to adopt the sex of their physical host, as well.

  “Nephilim orgy?”

  Alice would never admit that she’d been wondering the same thing. “If so, the males need encouragement. I have seen slugs with more vigor.”

  She felt his gaze on her, but continued watching the nephilim. They abandoned their assault on the niche, and arranged themselves in a circle around the dais. Their black wings were spread, their wing tips touching.

  Those black feathers sent unease rolling through her. Of the Guardians, only Michael had similar wings. The rest of them could mimic a demon’s leathery wings, the nosferatu’s more membranous ones, and create their own of white feathers. But no one could copy Michael’s, or the way in which his amber eyes could become wholly obsidian.

  The crimson glow had left the nephilim’s eyes, leaving only black.

  Their appearance had also apparently turned Jake’s thoughts to the Doyen, but in a different direction. “Does Michael know of your bargain?”

  “Yes,” she said flatly, but of course her tone did not dissuade him.

  “And?”

  “And I am to do as I must, with the understanding that if I choose to fulfill it, Michael will do as he must.”

  “Kill you.”

  “Defend himself.”

  “Kill you.”

  She shrugged as best she could in the cramped space, and felt the ice-tipped spear of his anger.

  “Would you try? Assuming you could beat him.”

  Little chance of that. Challenging Michael would be more difficult, she imagined, than taking on five nephilim. “I like to think I wouldn’t.”

  Once upon a time, however, she’d also thought she wouldn’t have made a bargain with a demon.

  “But if it came down to it? His life or your soul?”

  Her chest was in knots. In truth, she didn’t know if she’d stop herself because it was right, or because there was no point in following through. “If I did fulfill the bargain, I would no longer be frozen in Hell when I died, and no dragons would be devouring my body in the Chaos realm. But if I murdered him to save myself, wouldn’t I be bound for Hell, regardless? Unless I atoned for that—but how could it be forgiven, to cold-bloodedly plan his murder? And so the only difference would be the nature of my torture.”

  Jake shook his head. “You don’t know that. We don’t know how humans and Guardians are judged in the afterlife. That’s not our role.”

  So he could recite from the Scrolls when it suited him. “No. But I know how I would judge myself.” And that was all that mattered while she was living. Her opinion—and the opinion of the few who held small pieces of her heart. “So I would create another alternative.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like not dying, and trying to make immortality last as long as eternity,” she said, av
oiding his gaze. The nephilim’s mouths were moving in unison. “They are chanting now.”

  Jake was rigid beside her, but he did not pursue it further. Silence fell between them, as if they were listening to the chanting they could not hear. The tension slowly left his form—probably from boredom. With no room to prop her elbow, she allowed herself to relax against him, watching the nephilim with her cheek resting on his shoulder.

  They got along best, she mused, when neither of them spoke.

  After twenty minutes, however, with the nephilim not having so much as ruffled a feather, her thoughts began to wander. To his leg, most often, and the muscled thigh lodged between hers. It would be very easy to rub against him.

  Very, very easy. Her forehead creased as she contemplated it. If she went slow enough, he might not even notice—or just assume it was the restless movements that any woman made when she was stuck between an attractive man and a wall.

  An inch, she thought, over the course of an hour. She could entertain herself and relieve tension at the same time. And the rubbing would not ignite her senses half as much as the excitement of hiding her reaction, the anticipation of reaching her goal.

  By the end of the hour, she would be so focused on it, her arousal so high, she’d very likely attain orgasm. From an inch.

  Her lips pressed together to muffle her laugh as she pictured it—and then she bit back her gasp as Jake shifted slightly, against flesh sensitized by her imaginings.

  Needy flesh, aching now for another stroke, however small.

  She went utterly still, not daring to breathe. How foolish that had been, teasing herself, pretending that she could perform such a mental exercise without evoking a physical response. Now she was inflamed.

  Her eyes followed the movement of Jake’s hand as it rose to his mouth, then she looked away. Still, she heard the soft click of his toothpick against his teeth, the slide of his tongue against smooth wood.

  If only the nephilim would do something.

  Jake made a quiet, frustrated noise and moved once more. The breath she’d held hissed through her teeth. She felt him turn his head, and his gaze on her before he looked out at the nephilim again.

  “This is the most boring orgy ever,” he announced.

  And yet she was more aroused than she’d ever been upon witnessing one. “I will defer to your judgment, novice. You are likely more familiar with boring orgies than I am.”

  For a few seconds, she held out hope that her response had silenced him. Then he said, “And if I hadn’t already known nephilim were evil, I would now.”

  She bit, despite herself. “Why is that?”

  “Because they arrange themselves so all we get is an ass shot of that male. Then, between their angle and their wings, they cover up the chicks.”

  And that was the shape of things, she thought wryly. She was all but sprawled atop him, inflamed . . . and he was hoping for a glimpse of nephilim breasts. “Perhaps they aren’t so evil, novice. I have been enjoying the view.”

  He was quiet again. She heard the distinctive crinkle of paper money, then he turned his head toward her and said, “What really needs to happen is that one bends the other one over, and gives it to her so hard that the only thing coming out of her mouth is—”

  Her gasp cut him off as the nephil suddenly lifted his stained sword and buried it in the stomach of the male to his left.

  “Oh, dear God!” Alice dove across Jake’s chest.

  His hands clamped around her waist before she breached the shielding spell. “Hold on, goddess.”

  Her fingers clenched on his shoulders, and she suppressed her automatic response to defend the weaponless male. Given the opportunity, she’d have stabbed the nephil, too. “What are they doing?”

  The injured male wasn’t fighting, but kneeling on the dais. Still chanting, the nephilim moved in measured steps around him, their swords flashing. Between wings and arms, she saw the symbols they were carving on his crimson skin, the blood dripping to the floor.

  “A ritual?” she wondered aloud.

  “That, or a sacrifice.” His face hardened as he took in the macabre dance. “Sick.”

  “Yes.” And looking made her feel a part of it, unclean, but she forced herself to watch. “He’s not healing.”

  “Because of the symbols?”

  “I don’t know. Could vampire blood be on the swords?”

  Jake shook his head. “They get vamp blood in them, and they can’t stay that size. They start to shape-shift back to the form of their host. Their red skin looks human again for a second or two. But they still heal fast.”

  More symbols, more blood. Alice scooted down Jake’s legs, raised her body as high as she could, and called in her sketchbook. The only place to put it was on his chest.

  She had to twist her arm awkwardly between them. Her elbow dug into his stomach, and the already taut muscles hardened to steel. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said, and then the scratching of her pencil filled the niche. Within seconds, she had the outlines of the nephil’s front and back, and the position of the symbols visible to her. “I’ve got a creepy feeling about this, Alice. Bad creepy, not good creepy.”

  So did she. “I can’t see all of the symbols,” she said in quiet frustration.

  “Maybe they’ll leave the body when they’re done with it. Or maybe we should start shooting them now.”

  Though nothing could penetrate the shield from outside, anything could exit it. Yet bullets and crossbow bolts would barely affect the nephilim.

  But, she realized, Jake wasn’t proposing that they try to stop them from killing the nephil. He wanted to interrupt the ritual.

  “Yes.” She nodded, and vanished her sketch pad. He’d already called in a semiautomatic pistol. No silencer, she saw, and prepared for the pain in her ears, but he thrust the tip of the barrel through the shield. She heard the click of the firing mechanism, but the explosion was on the opposite side of the shielding spell.

  Jake hit the first female in the side. Not more than a flesh wound, and not so much as a flinch from the nephil. She healed almost instantly.

  “Perhaps it would—”

  “I’m going for blood splatter,” he said.

  How . . . brilliant, in truth. Blood was the key to rituals, to activating spells. Mixing it could potentially do more damage to the nephilim’s ritual than their weapons would.

  Alice smiled and called in her own gun. It was, she noted with satisfaction, larger than his. “You are quite adept at locating unusual holes.”

  A chink in armor, a weak spot in a plan, a course of action—obvious or unexpected, she had a feeling he could find it.

  A laugh shook his body. “I’m even better at stuffing—”

  “Your filter, novice.” She slid the gun barrel past the face of the niche, began to squeeze the trigger—and the pistol kicked in her hand. The nephilim stumbled before standing upright again; the one on the dais lay motionless. “What in heaven’s name . . . ?”

  Jake cursed and pulled his gun back inside the shield. She tried to do the same, but couldn’t until he took it from her. His blood had set the spell; only Jake—and any inanimate object he held—could return through the shield from outside.

  “Something hit us,” he said. “Look at the ceiling.”

  A crack ran through the spiraling pattern of red ochre. Chunks of limestone rained down. “An earthquake?”

  “We’d have felt that in here. I’m thinking whatever they were trying to do, they did.”

  That kick she’d felt had been a surge of power, then. In the center of the room, the nephilim vanished the body and blood. Like the ceiling, the dais had cracked. Two nephilim took hold of each end and tossed the stone slab to the side.

  Not so remarkable. She could have moved it.

  Would have moved it, if she’d known there was an opening beneath. The nephilim stepped over it, fell out of sight. Into another chamber?

  “Blast,” she whispered, shaking wi
th anger, with disappointment. “Blast.”

  “Hey.” His hands firmed on her waist. “There’s a good chance they opened it with the ritual, and there was nothing to find before they did. Now we’ve got something to look at when they leave.”

  “I know it.” She closed her eyes. How long would the wait be this time?

  “Alice.”

  Only seconds. One by one, the nephilim leapt out of the lower chamber. The last carried . . .

  Alice caught her breath. “Is that a Scroll?”

  The rolled parchment was identical to those in Caelum’s archives—and the nephil held it in his hand, though it would have been safer vanishing it into his cache. But only Michael could vanish the Scrolls.

  “Looks like. What are the odds that I could snatch it from him and get back in here without getting killed?”

  “Very low, novice.”

  “Yeah.” As the nephilim passed out of the main chamber into the shaft leading outside, Jake slammed his foot against the end of the niche, his psychic scent boiling with frustration. “Damn it all to flippin’ hell.”

  They dropped into the chamber together. Jake fell to his knee, swept his pistol in a semicircle. His side was clear. Round room, completely empty. Behind him, he heard Alice’s quick pull of breath, his name in a shocked whisper.

  He pivoted. She was all right, he saw instantly. Standing with the naginata slack in her hand, and staring at—

  Holy hot hell.

  A skeleton was pinned to the wall, held up by a sword through its ribs—and two iron stakes at the apex of each outstretched wing. Three demonic symbols were carved into the stone above the skull.

  He glanced at Alice; her eyes were wide as they met his. Wordlessly, she shook her head.

  Yeah. He was that lost, too—could barely organize the questions streaming through his mind.

  A skeleton wasn’t so unexpected. It was a flippin’ burial chamber, after all. But those wings . . .

  He forced himself to focus. “Those wing bones aren’t demon or nosferatu,” Jake said.

  “Unless a demon shape-shifted.” Alice moved closer to the skeleton, bending to examine its right hand. “And look how the fingers are curled. They must have been set like that after death. Holding the Scroll?”