Demon Bound

by Meljean Brook

  “They’re splitting along the same lines as they did when Michael told us Lilith would be in charge of SI,” he finally said. “There’s some who don’t question him. There’s others who are uneasy and looking to see why and how, but are willing to accept his decision if it all works out to the good. There’s some who just don’t see beyond the ‘demon’ part. And there’s others I can’t read at all and who aren’t saying much. But the worrisome thing is: they’re splitting.”

  Hugh smiled slightly. “It is to be expected. But it does not necessarily follow that the division will be permanent; dissent and self-examination can make the corps stronger.”

  “Eventually,” Jake said. “Now’s a bad time for it.”

  “I wonder if there is a good time.” Lilith set her plate on the floor. Sir Pup hopped over, cleaned it with single swipe of his tongue, and headed back to Jake’s pants. “But I agree that our balance has been more precarious of late. Tell me, puppy, what do you make of the nephilim in Turkey?”

  “I think I have no clue.”

  “Well, shit. That’s because my head’s been filled with bargains and spiders since I saw you and Alice.”

  Drifter held up a folder, and Jake vanished it. Immediately, he pulled the file out of his hammerspace and flipped it open to a map. On either side of a strait of water—the Dardanelles—seven points had been circled in red.

  “Those are seven small vampire communities,” Drifter said.

  A rock seemed to settle in his gut. “Wiped out?”

  Drifter didn’t need to answer that. “We got word three days ago. Michael’s got a team patrolling, but those last two took place pretty much under their noses.”

  “Actually, behind their backs,” Lilith said. “The nephilim broke pattern. They had been moving southwest along the strait. The next two were northeast, above the first community.”

  Doubling back might have thrown Michael’s team off the scent for a short time. But if the nephilim were avoiding the Guardians, it would have made more sense to leave the region entirely.

  Which meant they had a particular interest in the area.

  He looked at the movements. They’d started over, but in another direction. Backtracking wasted time and energy. That wasn’t what he’d have expected of beings who were so efficient they could kill—in a single night—every vampire in a large city.

  “What are they searching for?”

  Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “More vampires to kill?”

  “Nuh-uh. If they were just moving through the region, they wouldn’t start in the middle.” He’d bet anything that wasting the vampires was just something they did on the side. Out of frustration, for fun—or just because it was convenient. Like picking up a piece of litter not because you were cleaning, but because the trash can was right there.

  Yeah. Searching, and although they didn’t know exactly where to look they had a general idea of where to find it, because—

  “Oh, fucking hell. The Scroll.” The nephilim had taken it from the burial chamber—a message, left for them. “Telling them where to find her. Or her sarcophagus.”

  Hugh and Lilith exchanged a look.

  “Anaria?” Hugh asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You reckon she’s in that last temple Zakril built?”

  “I dunno.” Jake vanished the file again, linked his hands behind his head, and paced the room. Sir Pup followed him, sniffing. “Because that concealment spell doesn’t work if someone’s alive in it—and even locked in a coffin, she’s still alive. And that’s twenty-four hundred years of no one stumbling across the temple . . . or the ruins.” He stopped. “Unless it’s underground. Another hypogeum.”

  “ ‘She waits below’?” Lilith quoted.

  “Yeah. Once Alice heals up, I’ll jump over there with her, and we’ll start looking.”

  “And what do you do if you find her?” Lilith mused. “Is more than two thousand years in a box enough of a punishment? Should you free her? Or should you just carry out the execution?”

  Just the thought of working through those questions made him uneasy. “I dunno. Chances are, I wouldn’t know how to open the sarcophagus. And Michael . . . shit, he doesn’t even know yet that Zakril lied to him.”

  “I’d wager he does by now,” Drifter said. “He wouldn’t be leaving Alice alone, not until he was sure everything was healing like it should.”

  “Yeah.” Jake would rather have been with her, too. But instead of jumping to Caelum, he called in Khavi’s scroll. “I need a favor, Lilith.”

  “Are you certain you want to phrase it like that?”

  Considering it was for Alice, he didn’t mind being indebted. But Lilith had a point—and the anticipation gleaming in her dark eyes told him which way to go.

  “I’ll let you translate this prophecy . . . if you call your puppy off my leg.”

  “Done.” She held out her hand for the scroll as Hugh laughed and gathered their dishes. Sir Pup flopped onto the floor with an unhappy whine. “And tell me about this bargain.”

  Jake only hesitated for a second. Alice hadn’t asked him to tell anyone but Drifter—but if anyone knew their way around a bargain, might find a loophole, it was Lilith. By the time he finished, Hugh had returned from the kitchen, a frown etched on his forehead. Lilith met Hugh’s eyes and sighed.

  “Teqon’s got her,” she said, turning back to Jake. “The bargain is so straightforward, there just isn’t any room to move.”

  “So finding something to exchange is our best bet.”

  “Yes. Or a threat that forces him to release her—but unless he has a compelling reason to release her without gaining anything in return . . .” Lilith spread her hands. “It’s difficult to find something a demon cares about more than himself. He doesn’t have a throne to lose—and you can’t threaten his life, because slaying him doesn’t free Alice.”

  No, killing Teqon made it impossible for her to ever free herself. Jake scrubbed his hand over his hair, his mind racing. His chest ached; his gut was a lump of hot lead.

  “Do you think she could, I don’t know . . . go to Teqon, and bring Michael with her. She’s technically brought his heart to Teqon then. She just hasn’t taken it out of his body.”

  He’d never seen sympathy on Lilith’s face before. It made the ache worse.

  “No. There was an understanding between them when the bargain was made, of what it meant to bring Michael’s heart. If meaning could be changed so easily, she could ask Michael to cut paper in the shape of a heart, and give that to Teqon.”

  “Well now, hold on a second.” Drifter shook his head. “Charlie changed the meaning of Sammael’s bargain. We both knew when that bargain was struck, ‘preventing any hurt from coming to her’ meant physical injury. She made it about emotional pain.”

  “Yes.” Lilith nodded. “Another meaning can be layered over the original—but the change has to be agreed upon by both parties. Sammael accepted her interpretation because it benefited him. If he hadn’t, how long would it have been before a Guardian killed him?”

  “About five days,” Drifter said easily, but frustration heated his psychic scent. “Four, if Irena had come visiting early. So there’s no other option for Alice?”

  “She could wait until Michael falls in combat, then remove his heart and deliver it to Teqon. But that might be thousands of years—and runs the risk that Teqon or she might die before Michael.”

  “Dammit,” Jake said softly. His fists curled. But there was nothing here to hit, to rage against. “Dammit. Then it depends on that prophecy. And finding something in there that he wants more than Michael’s heart.”

  Lilith unrolled the parchment. Her gaze quickly skimmed over the symbols. “This will take a little while.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Not here. Not unless you shower,” she said without looking up. “The apartment over the garage isn’t being used; Hugh can find you some soap. A box of soap. And change your clothes.”

  “And
should I leave my flippin’ pants on the floor for Sir Pup?”

  The hellhound lifted his heads with a chorus of hopeful whines.

  Lilith eyed the puppy. “Not one of the carpeted floors,” she told him.

  Jake opened his mouth, thought better of it, and just followed Hugh out of the room, with Sir Pup prancing along behind him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Alice sat beneath the tree in her courtyard, watching Remus and Romulus weave a new web between her portico columns, and willing the faint ache in her shoulder to subside. The pain was not so terrible now. And once the gaping wound had sealed over, she had erased the stench of burned flesh with a short bath and her first shampoo in years.

  Perhaps it had been wasteful to lather the pink liquid over her skin as well as her hair, and absurd to sit in a cloud of strawberry-perfumed air, but the fragrance had been too heavenly to resist.

  She wasn’t certain why Michael hadn’t left yet, but it wasn’t due to that lovely smell. He sat quietly beside her without breathing—he never breathed unless he was talking. He’d already determined that she could be teleported without landing in Hell. Now she was all but healed, yet hoping that her torment would soon end.

  In one hundred and twenty years, she had not passed this much time alone with the Doyen. If she had a choice, she never would again.

  He was, she supposed, very pleasant to look upon. And his company was agreeable enough, but she’d have welcomed amusement—or even irritation—instead of being left almost wholly to her own thoughts.

  Particularly when those thoughts so often drifted to her fate—and Jake’s—if she didn’t kill Michael.

  How could one man be so very serious? And did anything discomfit Michael? Feeding her widows and rousing Nefertari from her mice-induced slumber had not. Boredom apparently wouldn’t send him fleeing, either.

  Very well, then. It was probably best not to lecture a man like Michael, so she would take another route. “Khavi told us that you were once very wicked.”

  “I was also once very young.”

  She opened her mouth, but could not voice the salacious question that sprang to her tongue. Not to Michael. In all probability, she would end up more uncomfortable than he.

  Sighing, she tugged at her skirts, rearranging them over her lap. An ethnography describing urban vampiric cults—formed by humans who only knew of vampires through literature and films—waited in her cache; her time might be best spent reading.

  Michael spoke before she could turn to the first page. “I find that I am uneasy with you.”

  How strange. Alice pursed her lips, searching for any pain in her emotional response, and discovering none. “I find that I am accustomed to producing unease.”

  “You must understand—” He hesitated briefly. “It is because I have been in love with you the past one hundred and twenty years.”

  Oh, dear. Alice gazed at the sky through the lattice of thin marble leaves, wondering how one gently rejected the Doyen.

  “And I would have opened my heart to you before,” he continued softly, “but I live in fear that you will steal it.”

  Her book dropped to her lap. “Oh!” she exclaimed through her laughter. “You are wicked!”

  His smile didn’t sit as awkwardly on his mouth as she’d imagined it would. “Or I have observed that you are more at ease with people who have made you laugh. Particularly if they have made you laugh at yourself.”

  Was it so simple? “And what puts you at ease?”

  “I have yet to find it. But one of us must be, or we will not be able to speak as we need to.”

  Alice sighed. “Of the bargain?”

  “Yes. We have avoided it for too long.”

  Michael stood abruptly, and she realized that while he might never be completely at ease, he typically wasn’t uneasy. Yet he was now; that part of his confession hadn’t been in jest. She rose to her feet, crossed her arms beneath her breasts.

  “If you need assistance,” he said, “I will help you.”

  Had that been so difficult? “Yes. I know you would.”

  “But you do not feel comfortable asking for it. That, I feel, is unacceptable—and a situation that is of my creation. I know that you have struggled with your decision . . . as I have with mine. And that struggle is the reason for my avoidance, and for my . . .”

  How very odd this conversation was. “Unease,” she supplied.

  “Yes. For although I would stand and fight with you, side by side, and die to save you—I find I cannot stand and allow you to kill me, so that you could save yourself.”

  Her knees went weak. “I would never expect you to.”

  “I know.” His grave expression could have been sculpted from stone. “I expected it of myself. I cannot decide if it is a failing that I will not do it.”

  And so she reminded him of that struggle, made him feel that failure. Yes, she could see why he had avoided it—and her. “I do not think it is a failing,” she said. “But I suppose that my opinion does not make your struggle easier. If you told me that I should not feel wretched when I imagine myself cutting out your heart, I would still feel it.”

  A twitch of his lips cracked the stone set of his face. “And do you imagine that often?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite often. And so we will agree: you shall not feel a failure for wishing to live, and I’ll not feel wretched when I imagine killing you. The only thing for which we will feel guilty is regularly breaking our agreement with each other.”

  “That is acceptable.” He looked toward her quarters. “I believe you have been awaiting this.”

  Jake. She heard him opening the mice cage, the shuffling of tiny feet across wooden shavings. His shields were up. Did that mean he was hiding bad news, or hoping to surprise her with good?

  Lacing her fingers together, she pressed them against her heart.

  It leapt when Jake suddenly appeared in front of her. And it constricted painfully when she saw his face.

  “Alice,” he whispered.

  He didn’t need to say it. He’d found nothing in the prophecy.

  Her body was rigid. She would not fall. There must still be something. “May I see?”

  The sheet of paper appeared in her hand. It fluttered, and she had to force her fingers to cease their shaking. The words blurred in front of her. Dragons and blood. Caelum’s voice. They meant nothing, there was nothing here—

  “Oh, dear God.”

  Upon the destruction of Michael’s heart, Belial will ascend to the Morningstar’s throne.

  She read the line again. Jake’s hands circled her waist, steadying her. And she knew his tormented expression was not because the prophecy contained nothing to use as an exchange.

  It was because Teqon would never accept any replacement.

  “Jacob.”

  Jake pulled her against his chest as he turned to face Michael. Her arms trapped between them, Alice crushed the paper in her hand, vanished it. She would study the rest of the prophecy later. She could not read another word without screaming.

  And she could not let herself give up.

  But at this moment, she needed to push it away. She closed her eyes, and listened to the rumble of Jake’s deep voice.

  The nephilim were searching for Anaria. Earlier, Michael had not even blinked when she’d told him about Zakril’s lie. His reaction to Jake’s news, and the announcement that he and Alice would look for the temple, was just as flat.

  “Very well. I will continue hunting the nephilim.”

  She felt Jake’s nod. “And what about Khavi?”

  “We must wait. If Belial is still with her and we appear, he will kill her rather than let her leave.”

  Sensing Michael’s hesitation, Alice looked up. Reluctance cast a shadow over his features.

  “The symbols were to keep you there, Alice. Belial cannot lie. He would have used Jacob to teleport, and formed a bargain to keep you both in service.”

  Alice frowned. Both in service? What could she do�
�direct spiders to devour Lucifer’s armies?

  The muscles against her forearms hardened. Jake’s arms tightened around her, and fury heated his reply. “What—he hasn’t had a Guardian to try it on? Would all of them get in on the action? What’s the fucking deal with demons thinking they should have kids?”

  Oh, dear heavens. Alice touched her stomach, felt sick.

  Bitter humor twisted Michael’s mouth. “It is an act of creation. They believe it will bring them closer to Glory.”

  But it was not all terrible. Not when it had been willing. It had created Michael. And yet Belial also looked forward to Michael’s destruction, because he believed it would gain him a throne.

  Jake shook his head, anger still sharpening his voice. “All I know is, if that’s the path to Glory, I’m hopping off. And leaving a few land mines behind.”

  “If you give me notice, I will help you bury them.” Michael smiled slightly, then gave a short nod. “Find me if you need anything.”

  A soft sound filled the air when he disappeared, like the pop of a champagne cork.

  Jake’s arms were still around her. She didn’t want to pull out of that strong embrace. Didn’t want to return yet to the prophecy, and her bargain.

  “ ‘Jacob,’ ” she echoed, smoothing her fingers from his collar to his shoulders. Her eyes were level with his clenching jaw. How cowardly she was. “Is he the only one who calls you by that name?”

  “Yeah. Unless my grandma is in the Guinness Book for ‘oldest woman.’ ” The shadows on his face deepened when he tilted his head forward. “Listen, Alice—”

  “Please!” Her fingertips covered his lips. “Don’t say anything. Let’s not either of us speak.”

  He dropped his brow to hers. His eyes were closed, and she shut hers, as well. “No talking at all?”

  “None.”

  “For how long?”

  “I will tell you.”

  His breath moved over her mouth in a silent laugh, and he nodded. Content, it seemed, to hold her and wait.

  That would not do at all. In the silence, her mind was already leaping where she didn’t want it to go.