Demon Marked tg-7

by Meljean Brook

  “So we just have to kill the demon she’s bound to,” Lilith said. “And she’s free.”

  “And Lucifer’s purpose thwarted,” Castleford added.

  “Always fun, the thwarting. So we should definitely bring her in.” Lilith pursed her lips. “Does anyone know where she is?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Nicholas thought he’d had enough of snow, but it wasn’t so damn bad when it meant traveling by snowmobile with a furnace of a demon sitting behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. The view wasn’t a kick in the face, either. Whitecapped mountains thrust into the western sky. White stretched around them, framed by the trees climbing the valley walls.

  Leslie often told him he ought to make an effort to study and enjoy the beauty around him. The land just east of Glacier National Park made it easy.

  Beauty wasn’t his reason for being here, though. This time of year, the only access to the cabin took two hours by snowmobile—unless a man could fly. Considering that most Guardians and demons could, the isolation wasn’t Nicholas’s primary reason for choosing his granddad’s place, either. The old man’s paranoia had been.

  The afternoon sun cast long shadows by the time they reached the log cabin. An A-frame situated in a tiny clearing at the edge of a valley floor, surrounded by a stand of tall firs, the place wasn’t an easy find unless a man already knew where it was. From high above, the snow piled on the steeply pitched roof would blend it into the surroundings. Inside, the main level housed two simple rooms: a living area, and a corner bedroom holding the toilet and a tub. A generator provided electricity if they wanted it. The cellar doubled as a nuclear fallout shelter, still stocked with weapons and supplies. Nicholas wouldn’t need them; he’d brought his own in the snowmobile’s sled. Still, he liked knowing they were there. A man couldn’t be overly prepared.

  The snow was almost level with the top step when he pulled up to the front porch, cut the engine. The sudden silence seemed almost heavy, until the quiet sounds of the forest around them began filtering in.

  He was almost sorry when Ash got off. God, she was warm. Even the best wet-and-cold weather gear money could buy didn’t compare to a demon at a man’s back.

  And her boots were as sexy as hell, but they weren’t doing her any favors. One step, and she sank knee-deep in the snow. She didn’t seem to notice. She only studied the cabin, looking as if she were freezing in that thin jacket and hoodie. A human would have been, but a demon didn’t need to hunch into her clothes.

  Why did she do that? She couldn’t be cold.

  “What is this place?”

  “My grandfather’s. This, and a hundred acres around it.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “Dead. Ten years. It’s mine now.”

  She pushed her hands into her pockets. “Won’t the Guardians find us, then?”

  “No.” Nicholas stripped off his thick outer gloves, began loosening the bungee cords holding the tarp over the sled. “There’s a record of the land, but not the house. He didn’t want the government touching him . . . and he was something of a survivalist. He didn’t leave much of a footprint in paper, and nothing electronically. Just a post office box in town.”

  Ash looked doubtful. “What kind of survivalist?”

  “He didn’t get to the point of mailing bombs, if that’s what you’re wondering. He lived through the stock market crash in the eighties. My grandmother took too many Valium and didn’t. He became convinced the world was out to fuck him over, so he gave it all up and came out here to live off the land.”

  Of course, being a St. Croix, he’d brought a hell of a lot of cash with him.

  “So no one knows it’s here?”

  Madelyn did, though she’d never been here. When Nicholas had been a boy, his mother, father, and he had frequently visited the old man, but Madelyn never had. The summer she’d refused to go gave Nicholas his best, first clue of when his mother had disappeared. He and his father had gone without her that year. By the next, his father was dead, and Madelyn hadn’t wanted to hear one word about visiting America.

  Granddad wouldn’t want a little boy underfoot who reminded him of his son. Nicky, love, why won’t you stop being selfish and think of that poor old man, instead? Let him grieve in peace, instead of bothering him about taking you fishing and running all over those woods.

  So Madelyn knew about the cabin, but it’d take her a while to figure out where he’d gone. She wouldn’t expect this of him. For years, he’d been hunting her. Now, he’d sit back and wait—and prepare. Eventually, she’d come looking for Ash. He’d be ready for her.

  “There’s one in town,” he said. “The son of the man who was Granddad’s only friend. He uses the cabin in the summer and fall for his fishing and hunting—and in exchange, he makes any necessary repairs.”

  “So that’s why it’s not falling apart.”

  That, and because his grandfather hadn’t skimped on the original construction. He’d had everything but the logs airlifted in by private contractors, and he’d built the place himself. For a man who’d spent most of his life on Wall Street, he’d ended up being damn good with his hands.

  “The front door is unlocked if you want to go in,” Nicholas said. After she took a step and sank to her knee again, he added, “There should be a pair of snowshoes hanging on the wall.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  He followed her in, the bag of weapons slung over his shoulder. Cold, a bit musty, but not bad. The windows were shuttered, but provided enough light to see by when he opened them. No sofa, no comfortable seating—just the small handmade table with two chairs, and one cane-back rocking chair by the window. Rustic and simple. Nicholas had forgotten how much he liked it.

  He hadn’t visited since the old man had died. Then, he’d come with the intention of selling it, but he’d made arrangements for its upkeep, instead. Before today, the place had never been useful to him, but he hadn’t been sorry for holding on to it—and he didn’t need Leslie to explain why. This cabin was a part of his childhood, one of the few parts Madelyn had never tainted.

  Would he hold on to it after she came? He didn’t know. Finally having his revenge would be sweet, but this place, this land, wouldn’t be the same afterward. He knew he’d never come here again.

  But if he did have to give it up afterward, it was a price he’d be willing to pay.

  A wood-burning stove provided heat for the rooms. It had been a while since Nicholas had started one, but it came back quickly enough.

  No, not quickly enough. With the dry kindling crackling, he turned to find that the sled had already been unloaded, the boxes and bags stacked on the floor and the table. No need to ask when she’d done it—with a demon’s speed and strength, she’d have had the task completed within seconds.

  But he didn’t like that she’d done all the work. “I’ll unload it next time.”

  And there’d have to be a next time within a few weeks. He didn’t mind roughing it, but he didn’t have time to trap or hunt, and he preferred not to test the longevity of the supplies in the fallout shelter.

  “You still have to put them away,” Ash said. Her gaze fell on the stove behind him. “And I’m not cooking for you. Especially on that thing.”

  Nicholas wasn’t looking forward to whatever he managed to produce on that stove, either. But as long as he could chew it, he didn’t care. “I’ll cook my own,” he agreed. “I can’t trust that you wouldn’t pile on the butter, anyway. You’d make it a slow death, demon.”

  She smiled, an expression that came more often now. “Are you speaking from experience? Did Madelyn?”

  Oh, hell. Nicholas hadn’t been thinking of that at all, but after his father died, there were always “comforting” foods in the house. Always. And Madelyn had encouraged him to comfort himself as often as possible.

  “She did. And I became big-boned very quickly.” Big-boned was her way of putting it, too.

  Ash frowned. “You really think she was trying
to kill you?”

  “No. I think it was more about the short-term fun of seeing how other boys treated the fat kid.”

  “Oh.” Her gaze slipped over his body. “I see.”

  She probably did. Too much. And Nicholas probably shouldn’t have offered her such a clear view, but fuck it. She’d already gotten to him. He’d let his guard down, and giving her a little more ammunition at this point didn’t matter so much.

  What mattered was that he still knew what she was, what she might do with the info he gave to her. She hadn’t done it yet, but he had to believe she would, eventually.

  “I still want to see you naked,” she added.

  God, and he wanted to be naked. With her. But that was a step he didn’t dare take. Now, he could remember what she was: a demon. The second he believed that she could physically want him would be the second he started forgetting that.

  “Then I’ll make a point not to let you.” He reached for his gloves. “You don’t need to sleep or bathe. The bedroom is mine, and you’ll stay out.”

  Her brows lifted. “So I’m stuck in this one room?”

  “Not stuck.” He gestured to the windows. “There’s a lot of space out there.”

  God knew he’d be out as much as possible. Training, as they’d planned. And any other damn excuse he could think of.

  “And a lot of cold.”

  “Oh, that matters to a demon?” Jesus Christ. He shook his head, and found a damn excuse. “I’m going to put the snowmobile in the shed. There are books and other shit in the storage upstairs if you want to look through them. Just knock yourself out.”

  Her expression remained impassive through his tirade, but now another little smile curved her gorgeous mouth. “All right. I will.”

  Uneasy, Nicholas waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. So why did he have the feeling that he’d just exposed another bit of himself to her?

  Fuck it. He pulled on his gloves, headed for the door. He’d go crazy trying to figure her out.

  If he didn’t go crazy with wanting her first.

  Nicholas obviously didn’t handle sexual frustration well.

  Sitting opposite from him at the small table, Ash watched him sort through boxes of ammunition by the light of a kerosene lamp. In jeans and black cable-knit sweater, he didn’t bother with the tailored perfection from the city. Out here, there was no point—and it would have been ridiculous. A man couldn’t trot around snowdrifts in handmade Italian shoes, and he’d been working steadily since they’d arrived. All but ignoring her, but she didn’t mind. She liked watching him, studying him—and she already knew that retreat was his favored way of dealing with his attraction to her.

  Had he never been frustrated before, had no experience with it? She thought it was possible. With his money and looks, and as long as that need wasn’t directed at a specific person, he could easily scratch a sexual itch with anyone. And if there’d been anyone he did want, but for some reason couldn’t have, he’d probably have quickly moved on if the emotion—or the woman—didn’t prove useful.

  Ash didn’t have any experience with it, either—not that she remembered—but she also wouldn’t have called the desire she felt frustration. She wanted him so much that she ached, but there was no conflict. She liked him, she wanted him, but she didn’t feel impatience. It was simple. On the other hand, although Nicholas desired her, he didn’t want to. And although they had both begun treating her plots and any discussion of her demonic nature in a lighthearted manner, Nicholas became much more serious about it when sex entered the picture. It had become a recognizable pattern: He reminded himself that she was a demon and put physical space between them. Or he put a table between them.

  But he was apparently finished with ignoring her. He glanced up, saw her watching him, but didn’t look away. Instead, he reached into his weapons bag and set a sawed-off shotgun between them.

  “All right. You can’t fight yet, but you can pull a trigger—and for now, this will work best for you. Your aim won’t have to be as good, and you can aim fast enough that it’ll shoot in the right direction.” He opened one of the ammunition shells, showed her the pellets inside. “And the birdshot will scatter, do the most damage.”

  Ash wasn’t so sure. “I healed from a broken neck. Are those little bits of metal going to slow them down?”

  “No. The hellhound venom is.” He set a vial of golden liquid next to the shotgun barrel. “A trace amount of this will slow a demon down. A little more will paralyze one. I’ve got darts, and I’ve dipped my handgun bullets in this stuff—but for you, we’ll make sure the birdshot is covered in it. So those pellets don’t have to do much damage. They just have to pierce the skin.”

  “So it’ll stop them before they get in close.”

  “Yes. The sawed-off barrel will make close-range shooting easier. But if they’re already in that close—”

  “Then I’m screwed.”

  “Yes.” He pulled the box of shotgun shells toward him. “I’ll fix these up for you now. We’ll begin practicing tomorrow with regular ammunition so that we don’t waste the venom, but when we aren’t practicing, I want you to keep the gun with you and loaded with the poisoned shells. You keep it with you at all times, either right next to your hand or in your cache, when you figure out how to use that. All right?”

  “Yes.” Her very own boomstick. She liked it. “Thank you.”

  His gaze locked with hers. “Don’t let a demon close to you again.”

  Her chest tightened, like a strange little coil straight through her heart. She didn’t know what Nicholas had felt when the demon had been dragging her around like a rag doll. Afterward, he’d never asked if she was all right.

  But she knew now that he never wanted to see it happen to her again.

  “Thank you,” she said again, even though “I won’t” might have been a more appropriate response.

  He nodded, stood. Her chest still caught in that sweet ache, she watched him cross to the bedroom. He’d left, but not because of sexual frustration this time. Would he hate for her to know that he cared? She thought he would.

  He returned a moment later with a set of scales and a small, dusty machine. Except for the empty bottles on the top that fed into a steel tube, it resembled a standing car jack. A lever handle jutted from one side.

  “What is that?”

  “A reloading press. To seal the shells after I poison the shot.”

  “You didn’t bring that with you?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve used it before.”

  “Yes.” He glanced up from the press. “Why?”

  “You’ve been here before, then—after you were old enough to handle guns, ammunition.”

  “A few times, in the summer after I came to America.”

  “So your grandfather wasn’t a complete hermit.”

  “No.”

  He set out a line of empty cartridges—a perfectly straight line, she noted, that he gave his full concentration. But that wasn’t just focusing; he was focusing on not looking at her.

  Was he lying? Hiding something? She couldn’t be certain, but she thought so.

  She had no idea what he could be lying about, though. Perhaps he was just trying to conceal that he cared about someone again—but this time, that he cared about his grandfather.

  “It took a while to hear back from him,” Nicholas surprised her by offering. “He only checked his mail twice a year: at Christmas and tax time, in April. I finally heard back in May, and spent my sixteenth summer here. Chopping wood, mostly. Dropping about forty pounds.”

  “But you didn’t stay?”

  “Revenge isn’t easily served while hiding at a cabin in the woods.”

  So he’d left to destroy Madelyn. “Wouldn’t revenge also have been staying here, and completely forgetting about her? By proving that she hadn’t destroyed you?”

  His brows snapped together. He looked up from his line of cartridges. “She didn’t. But she did fuck me up p
retty well. Pretending she didn’t wouldn’t be proof of anything—it would just be denial. And sticking my head in the sand sure as hell wouldn’t make her pay for any of it.”

  He had a point. And the demon had killed his mother, his father, and his girlfriend. Maybe forgetting about her wasn’t enough. Ash wouldn’t soon be forgetting about Steve Johnson; that was for damn certain.

  The heat left his voice. “Anyway, whether I live or die, she doesn’t care. Before I left England, I was kicked out of school, arrested for heroin possession, all kinds of shit. Whether I was first in my class or expelled, none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered to Madelyn was Wells-Down, and so the only way to get back at her was by taking it.”

  “And you did.”

  “I did. And then I found out she was worse, that the business wasn’t enough. She has to be destroyed.”

  “And that’s all you’ve done, all these years. What will you do when she’s dead?”

  Nicholas blinked, then stared across the table at her with an expression she’d never seen on him . . . but she recognized what it was. He was at a loss. A complete loss, as if he’d never even considered the question before.

  “I don’t know.” His lips twitched, as if in sudden humor. “Eat a slice of pizza, probably.”

  Ash laughed, and his smile widened into a grin.

  “Maybe two pieces,” he said. “And I’d run for thirty minutes instead of the full hour, do half as many sets.”

  He could do zero, for all that Ash cared. “I’d still want to see you naked.”

  “If you end up helping me slay Madelyn, I’ll shake my ass for you.”

  “Naked ass.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You drive a hard bargain, demon.”

  “I do.” And she was relieved that despite the naked talk, Nicholas was still amused, still playing along, instead of putting distance between them. “Though I didn’t ask for Reticle yet. Will you begin working again afterward?”

  “Probably. I enjoy it. Though with Madelyn gone, I’d probably focus on more speculation, less takeover.”