Demon Bound

by Meljean Brook

  At the mention of the prophecy, Alice became absolutely still.

  Jake watched her, considering the implications of it. What little they knew of the prophecy said that Belial’s rise to power depended upon the destruction of the nephilim—who would be equally invested in seeing that the prophecy wasn’t fulfilled. And although their goals were different, what interested the nephilim might also interest Teqon. “So this particular message—‘She waits below’—was for the nephilim?”

  And if so, hopefully Michael would reveal at the gathering how these Guardians and nephilim had become allies.

  Michael nodded. “I believe it must be. Let us see if we can find them, and retrieve the Scroll. Irena, Alejandro—choose your teams, and make certain you each have vampire blood available. We will go in three groups.”

  One to each teleporting Guardian. Flippin’ fantastic. And it wasn’t a surprise when Alejandro gave Jake a nod, including him on his team, but Jake was almost knocked off his feet by the hearty clap Irena landed on his back.

  “Now you are in all the way, yes?” She grinned at him, and then strode past Alejandro, giving the tall swordsman the same Death Stare she’d given the women at Cole’s.

  What the hell? He briefly met Alice’s gaze again before she turned to speak with Hugh. Jake watched her sign a greeting, and their short embrace. They hadn’t met, he realized, since Hugh had Fallen in the early 1990s and began living as a human again.

  Jake began to look away, giving them privacy, until Hugh signed to her, If I hadn’t known it was you, I would have thought it was someone wearing your face.

  Surprised, Jake glanced at Alice. Because Guardians could shape-shift, they learned to identify one another by mannerism as well as physical features. For Hugh to make such a statement suggested that, in less than twenty years, Alice’s had completely changed.

  I have been told it is not so noticeable when I move quickly, Alice replied. And if I make a conscious effort, I can still move as humans do.

  When Hugh only looked at her, she lifted her chin and pursed her lips. “Everything that we touch, everything that touches us—it all leaves its mark,” she said, mimicking Hugh’s voice, then smiled as he laughed.

  I connect with them often, she continued. I am always pushing myself into them; I suppose it is only fair that they leave something in me. And I do not care that it appears odd—truly, I don’t.

  No. You wouldn’t. Hugh studied her for another moment. And they no longer frighten you?

  She swept her hand at the floor, indicating the bones. I found that their usefulness and my gratitude eventually trumped my terror.

  Jake did look away then, his jaw clenching, his chest tight. The Scrolls stated that a Guardian’s Gift reflected some part of their human life. His was easy; Jake had spent most of his wanting to be anywhere but where he was.

  But Alice had been saddled with spiders? And it was a leap—he knew it was one hell of a leap—but now he had that attic in his head again, that molding bed . . . and those cobwebs.

  Somebody restrained there wouldn’t have been able to move, no matter what was crawling on her.

  “And I see that I will not have to ask if you are prepared, Jake. You look as if you might tear apart the nephilim with your teeth.” Alejandro’s glove disappeared when he held out his hand. “I suggest a sword; leave the chewing to Irena.”

  “Yeah,” Jake muttered, and took one last glance at Alice as she joined Michael’s group.

  And it was, he realized, getting much, much easier to follow her.

  After six hours with no sign of the nephilim, Alice’s hope—then frustration—had distilled into resignation. When dawn began brightening the sky, Michael sent out word that they were to return to their duties while he continued to search the area.

  Though Alice had walked through the hypogeum again after they’d teleported to its location, looking for anything she’d missed the first time and making certain the nephilim hadn’t returned, she broke formation and flew in that direction—and then was saved an hour’s trip when Ethan and Selah appeared in the air beside her and they teleported to the site together.

  Birdsong filled the olive grove; a light wind rustled the leaves. Jake was kneeling in the grass next to the open shaft that led to the hypogeum, muttering to himself. When Ethan cleared his throat, Jake stood and held his hand out to Alice, palm up.

  “A little help?” he asked, and she saw the wolf spider hatchling clinging to his thumb. “I’m afraid I’ll squish him if I push him off.”

  “They are more resilient than that.” Alice held his hand still with her right, and aligned her left palm with his. A nudge of her Gift forced the hatchling to move—and revealed that there were no longer any spiders in the corridor beneath their feet. Startled, she looked at the ground. The shaft opening was still there. “Did it close up while we were away?”

  “No.” Jake met her eyes. “I found them all, brought them out. Just in case.”

  “I see.” She let go of his hand, walked to the nearest tree, and took a long time settling the hatchling at the base of the trunk. Behind her, Ethan and Selah told Jake about their group’s search, and when Alice’s heart was not pounding so hard, she returned and relayed the same about Michael’s group.

  “We struck out, too,” Jake said when she finished. “Not even a demon or vampire, let alone a nephil.”

  “Well, we ain’t going to be sensing them once they get into human form and start blocking.” Ethan’s hat cast a shadow over his face, deepening his frown. “My feeling is, if there’s no vampires around—not in all the area any of us searched, including the cities—that it’s a sign the nephilim are staying in this region. Or have been visiting often, knowing where this site was going to be, and waiting for it to show.”

  A line of worry etched between Selah’s brows—and little wonder, Alice thought. They’d known large communities of vampires had been killed by the nephilim, but there’d been no indication that the smaller, more rural communities were in danger. But if the nephilim were quietly slaying those vampires as well, Lucas and the vampires in Ashland would be under the same threat as Seattle.

  “The first vampire massacre was in Rome,” Alice said. This grove was a few hundred kilometers southeast. “And the next in Berlin.”

  “Have you found any sites in Germany?” Selah asked.

  Alice shook her head. “Nor in the western United States. But I find most by luck—traveling to the right region at the right time.”

  “You won’t be limited by the Gates or travel time now,” Jake pointed out. “We can pop around as many places you need to, hit them once a week. Or once a day.”

  “That will be more convenient.” Noticing the subtle shift in Ethan’s expression, in Selah’s psychic scent, she added, “It must be nearing sundown now in Ashland and Seattle. If you wish to go, I will ask Jake to return with me to San Francisco. I’d like to finish with Zakril tonight. Michael has requested that we give the remains to him after we’ve gathered what we need for the tests, and I see no reason to delay.”

  Ethan looked to Jake. “That work for you?”

  “Yep. We might take a detour, but we’ll get there.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I’m meaning, does it work for you to give back the skeleton? You figure Michael’s hiding anything—and if that skeleton disappears, maybe something important goes along with it?”

  “Hiding something? Yes. Something we need to know, and that isn’t any different than the secrets we all keep? Dunno.” Jake rubbed at the back of his neck. Uncertain, Alice thought. And uncomfortable at being reminded how he’d questioned Michael before.

  Yet it had been right to do so. He’d raised doubt, but in doing so had forced Michael to clear it.

  His hand dropped to his side. “Yeah, it works for me.” He met Alice’s eyes. “And you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will go then,” Selah said, and stepped closer to Jake, her blond hair fluttering around her shoulders. She ros
e up, kissed his cheek. “And congratulations. It came sooner than we expected, but we all knew it would come—and you are the first since the Ascension.”

  Jake’s brow furrowed. If it hadn’t amused Alice so much, she would have pretended it was the pink light in the sky that put the color on his face. “Uh, yeah. Thanks. But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s because you were gallivanting around when Michael first showed up at SI, and missed him correcting Alice when she referred to you as ‘novice,’ ” Ethan said. “Seems you did something that makes him consider you a full-fledged Guardian now.”

  “I did?” Jake ran his hand over his short hair, his eyebrows drawing together. Then his gaze settled on Alice, his irises like rings of polished blue stone. “Hot damn. So that was the ‘Well done, Jacob Hawkins’ thing.”

  Jacob. Behind her back, Alice tried it out over her fingers, liked the feel of it.

  “That sounds about right.” Ethan nodded. “I ain’t kissing you, though. We’ll probably have a little shindig for you at the gathering—”

  “Drifter!”

  “—so pretend you’re real surprised.” He grinned and held out his hand to Selah, who was scowling at him. “You going to drop me in a volcano now?”

  Alice didn’t hear her reply. They disappeared, and Ethan was either falling into burning lava or safe on his deck in Seattle by the time she dragged her gaze back to Jake’s, found it leveled on her face.

  Had he been watching her during that entire exchange? And if so, he’d been thinking . . . what?

  She did not like being in this uncertain, self-conscious state, yet he’d taken her there again. “What is it?”

  “I’m just wondering—if ‘novice’ is out now—what you’ll call me when you want to remind me of my place.”

  He thought she’d intended to put him lower than her? Her fingers curled, but she stopped herself from denying it. Using his rank as often as possible was about distance, not status. First names felt intimate. Yet revealing that would bring him closer—by however small an increment—simply through understanding.

  “Hawkins, I think,” she replied.

  “Hawkins.” A muscle in his jaw worked. “And my place, I’m guessing, is over here.”

  So he did understand—or had just realized. “Not necessarily,” she said. “I’m quite capable of adjusting my own position if I do not like where I am.”

  His eyes narrowed speculatively. “So if I came over there, took a victory dance like I did in Tunisia, you’d just stand still and let me? That is, you would if you liked it.”

  Alice’s back stiffened. What a wretch he was to tease her about this. When he irritated her, when he shoved images of gruesome clowns into her mind, she could at least respond in kind. But at some point in that niche, she’d revealed her attraction to him—and when he threw it at her, she had no ammunition to volley in return.

  She could only pretend that, although he’d hit his target, it had little effect. “In these circumstances, I suppose I would stay still. I should hate, after all, to be the damp rag on your celebration.”

  “Would you?” He crossed the distance between them quickly. Alice drew in a short breath, but he didn’t touch her, didn’t swing her up, didn’t kiss her. In a tight, low voice, he asked, “So you’ll let me?”

  To say no, to deny him whatever satisfaction he gained in using this against her, was also to retreat. If she backed away, he won this.

  How strange that she had no idea what would be won. Maybe it was only her pride. But if there was only a tattered scrap left, it was well worth fighting for.

  And if she managed to convince him that she was impervious, perhaps he would no longer use this part of his arsenal.

  “I will if I must,” she finally said, and closed her eyes. “I shall bear it by thinking of England.”

  He was not breathing. Birds twittered, the breeze brushed her skirts against her legs, and the pale morning sun warmed her face. But Jake was not moving.

  Perhaps this had been a joke. If so, she hoped that she had ruined his punch line.

  And indeed, when she opened her eyes, there was nothing in his expression that suggested he was laughing—or even that the battle she imagined earlier was between them. As he stared at her mouth, the battle seemed firmly lodged within him instead.

  “Jake?”

  His gaze snapped up to hers, and held it. Then he shook his head. “Forget it,” he muttered. His shoulders rigid, he turned and walked away. “Just forget I asked.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Had she thought they got along best when they didn’t speak? She’d been wrong. And the companionable hours they spent in the hypogeum had apparently been a fluke.

  As they finished with the skeleton—and then teleported to the Archives in Caelum to search through her files for any clue to what the Scroll might have said—she and Jake were silent but for the occasional question or comment about the work.

  And it was irritating. How polite they were! He sat at the opposite end of one of the Archive tables, surrounded by pictures and reference books, his music playing in his ears and his laptop computer open in front of him. He tapped constantly at the keyboard. Tapping tapping tapping. Remapping the sites, recording their dates, trying to determine the route of the Guardians who’d built them.

  As if she hadn’t already done that. Not on a computer, perhaps—but it lay in her notes, somewhere.

  Yes. Absolutely irritating. And maddening, to find nothing useful here. To be always aware of him. To glance up and see that even if he was looking at her, his gaze was unfocused and his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

  And when her laptop began to blink its familiar warning, she was doubly annoyed by the realization that his battery lasted longer than hers.

  Well, she would rather feed her entrails to pigs than change it in front of him. She snapped the lid closed, began arranging her notes. If she did not pay attention to what she put in her cache, she would never find it again.

  “You’re taking off?”

  “I must attend to a few chores,” she lied. But perhaps she would go to her quarters, set the shielding spell, and scream and scream. “And it is time for you to leave for your session with Alejandro, isn’t it?”

  “Tonight, yeah, in a little while. Tomorrow? Nope.”

  Alice frowned and looked up from her notes. “Surely you are not stopping your sessions now that you’ve been given full status.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Jake had tipped back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head. His T-shirt was mocking her again; when she finally deciphered the stylized letters, she realized that they spelled “kiss.” “I’ll still be getting an intensive session a couple of times a month from Alejandro. But everyday practice, I’ll get with you.”

  “Alejandro will teach you more about fencing than I can.”

  “Yeah, but if we’re going to be working together, shaking down Belial’s demons, it makes more sense for us to get a good feel for each other first. Find out where you’re strong, where I am. And where we need to compensate.”

  She could not argue that. “Very well, then.”

  He let his chair rock forward. A second computer appeared beside his first, and he began tapping again. Alice drew in a long, calming breath, and vanished everything from her end of the table.

  She did not get up, however, but let her gaze run over the cases of books and Scrolls. When she was amid the long rows of marble shelves, the scent of bindings and paper and parchment, her bargain usually felt very far from her.

  It didn’t now. Not when the prophecy and her work had become so unexpectedly entwined. And yet, after twenty years and seventeen sites, she still knew so very little.

  Too little. It was the same lament and frustration that everyone she’d ever known who had studied an ancient site felt, and she’d always laughed at them for asking too much. Awe and discovery should have been enough. She could have laughed at herself for succumbing to the same.

&nbs
p; Would have laughed, if her life and soul hadn’t depended on finding the answers.

  Maybe a cackle would do, however. She narrowed her eyes at Jake. My, wasn’t he so very comfortable down there, with his music and his computers. Here she sat, prickly and despondent, contemplating the terrible fate that awaited her, and he was . . . no longer tapping, but using a controller of some kind.

  “Are you playing a game?”

  “Yep. DemonSlayer. I’m almost—” He made a dismayed grunting noise. “Dead.”

  Alice stared at him, and he flashed a grin at her over the top of his computer screen.

  “Hey, it’s personal time. It’s either this or porn. And this takes my mind off . . . other things.”

  “I see,” she said. She didn’t, though—and now she was trying to fit this into what she knew of him. “So you are a geek.”

  His controller clattered to the table, then disappeared. So did his computers, giving her a clear view of his dumbfounded expression. “A what?”

  “A geek. It means—”

  “I know what it means. How do you know?”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m not completely ignorant of contemporary culture.”

  The most convenient locations to charge her computer batteries were human libraries—and even she found herself tempted by magazines and the Internet.

  “Just mostly ignorant,” he countered, and she decided it wasn’t worth arguing. She’d lose. And it gave her some pleasure that he was looking disgruntled now. “Anyway, I’m not one. I’m not dedicated enough.”

  She hadn’t known there was an element of commitment to it. “What are you dedicated to, then?”

  He looked at her longer than the question warranted, but it wasn’t until his voice lowered that she realized he’d taken it more seriously than she’d intended. “Being a Guardian. A good one. This.” He tapped his fingers against the photographs on the table. “And helping you.”

  It was as if he rolled her wretchedness over, like a pitted dark stone—and revealed something sparkling beneath. His eyes were the most striking blue, her heart was pounding, but still she managed to ask, “And what if being a good Guardian means that you cannot help me?”