But the force of Jacob’s cold stare made her still midaction.
“Our most sacred law is to harm no human who does not harm us, Councillor Ruth. Would you transgress right before the eyes of the Demon who would punish you?” he asked, the calm of his voice speaking deep levels of threat. In contrast to this steely warning, Jacob’s hand slipped beneath Isabella’s heavy hair and circled her neck protectively. Noah did not think the Enforcer was even aware he had made the possessive gesture.
“She has no right here,” Ruth argued, the force of the statement well diminished by her shock as she watched the most ruthless man of their kind take the human female under his tender auspices.
“She has information vital to the very questions you have been asking,” Jacob countered smoothly, having touched on this knowledge briefly in her mind.
“Jacob, I don’t think this is a good time,” Bella whispered.
“Nonsense, human. Speak, if you have knowledge,” Simon demanded.
Isabella’s eyes narrowed on the Councillor.
“My name is Isabella,” she snapped.
Simon blinked, clearly not comprehending for a very long minute that a human had just slapped him down. When it came to him, color rushed up his neck.
Noah’s chair being pushed back caught everyone’s attention.
“You will all leave. I will hear Isabella out in private and we will reconvene tomorrow night.”
Isabella instinctively reached up and pressed her fingers to the back of the hand circling her neck. She saw the roomful of Demons stirring in discontent, casting Jacob distrusting looks. She didn’t like the way it felt. Even as they all rose to obey their monarch, Isabella could feel their displeasure.
That was when the first push slammed into her brain.
It began like cold, invading fingers crawling along the back of her scalp. Shards of ice pierced her skull, embedding themselves into her mind like dozens of needles, each strategically placed in her long- and short-term memory in order to suck the knowledge from the synapses that held it.
Isabella jerked in shock, alerting Jacob to the fact that she was in some kind of distress. As the Demons continued to rise, a second push slapped her back in her chair, causing her work to fall helter-skelter to the floor as she threw her hands up to her head. When this invasion failed, there was immediately a third. Bella became aware of the source in a frightening instant. They were trying to force from her the information that Noah would not share. It was causing her head to blossom in pain, and she keened softly in agony. Her thoughts became Jacob’s, and he knew the moment she did what was causing her distress.
“You will stop!” he roared, his voice ricocheting off every surface in the chamber, forcing everyone to fall very still under his outraged threat. “You will obey Noah and wait for your information. You will cease trying to scan Isabella this instant or you will answer to me!”
There were three Mind Demons in the Elder Council, including Ruth, who could be responsible for the attack. All three of them looked utterly shocked, along with the rest of the Elders in the room. Jacob couldn’t tell if it was from his awareness of their actions or merely the threats themselves. He was Enforcer, and there was nothing more frightening in their world than his sense of injustice. His threat was not an idle one, and everyone knew it. Feared it. Even the intractable Ruth. Isabella visibly relaxed as her pain receded and the Demons exited soundlessly.
Noah closed the door after them and instantly moved to Isabella’s side, kneeling beside her chair and taking her chin in his hand so he could turn her head and meet her eyes. It was only then that she realized how angry the silent King had become for her sake. Though there was no outward facial sign, she could see it in the stormy clouds of gray concealing the green of his eyes.
“Bella, are you well?” he asked gently.
Isabella appreciated his concern, especially after facing so much hostility from the strangers who had just left, but there was something disturbing her brain again. This was not painful, but it was familiar. Her violet gaze shifted away from Noah’s, turning to focus on the male standing on the other side of her chair just as his long fingers began to curl into a fist. Her heart began to pound in double-time as she watched Jacob close his eyes, his jaw clenching so tightly she could hear the creak of his teeth. She understood he was trying to force himself to behave with rational care, to not take such violent offense to Noah’s hands being on her, to the King’s zealous concern for her.
“I am fine,” she said softly, forcing as amiable a smile as she could manage over her lips. In truth, she was confused and exhausted. Jacob’s behaviors seemed to vacillate so strongly, so intensely in one direction and then another. She decided to simply focus on his needs of the moment.
Isabella gently extracted her chin from Noah’s grasp under the guise of gathering her discarded work from the floor. The King reached to help her, taking on some of her burden before rising to his feet. He was a good man, Isabella thought, kind and intelligent, thinking of others before himself. Marks of a man meant to be a leader. When Noah was not crossing Bella’s personal space, she could feel how very much Jacob respected him, how devoted he would always be to Noah’s every cause. All he need do was ask, and Jacob would serve him without question and without regard for his own life or safety.
It upset her greatly that she had become a point of discord within that melodic relationship. She thought of the revelations she held cradled against her chest, of how they could potentially serve up more discord, more upset and controversy. Would she be doing this society any good by revealing her new knowledge?
“I…” She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Really, it’s nothing that can’t wait. Actually”—she stood up and extracted the scrolls from Noah’s hold—“all I wanted was, uh…help with some interpretation. But you are busy…” She rounded the peculiar triangular table as casually as she could while she spoke, even turning to back out of the room while giving them a bright smile that she hoped did not look as fake as it felt. “You know, there are lots of books down there, and I bet there’s a translation.” She reached up to smack her palm into her forehead, chiding herself for not thinking properly.
Isabella reached for the door and closed it even faster than she had originally opened it.
Noah looked over at Jacob, one dark brow lifting toward his thick hairline.
“Does…?” He raised a hand to point to the door, looking utterly perplexed. “Does she have any idea what a lousy liar she is?”
“Apparently not,” Jacob said with a long, low sigh. “I think that was my fault,” he speculated wryly.
“Your fault?”
“Yeah…it is…a long story. We better get her.”
“Relax,” Noah chuckled. “She’s leaning against the other side of the door, trying to catch her breath.”
“I know. I just thought it would be funny if we opened it behind her.”
“I never knew you actually enjoyed being cruel,” the King remarked, humor sparkling in his eyes as they both stepped up to the exit.
Noah opened the door, and Jacob reached out to catch her, scrolls and all.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was her first trip—that she actually remembered—traveling the way Demons did. It had begun with Jacob turning her into dust and guiding her through that little window. Once they were truly airborne, Jacob altered them both back into their normal forms, only he was holding her cradled to his chest protectively.
“It is not far. Let me know if you become too cold.”
Cold? She was trying to find the courage to unbury her face from the concealing column of his neck; she did not have the presence of mind it would take to feel cold. She was also clutching him so tightly that she was sure she was tearing the expensive silk of his shirt. After a while, though, the steady feel of his firm shoulders beneath her fingertips allowed for her heartbeat to slow enough to stop choking her, and the indomitable strength of his arms holding her b
egan to make her understand that she was safe with him.
This did not give her the courage to look around herself, but she did lift her head and focus with all of her concentration on his face. His dark brown and black eyes shifted to hers when he felt her looking at him.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him shakily. Right up until I hit the ground.
Jacob pulled her head back down to the security of his shoulder, burying his grin in her thick hair when her humorous sarcasm flitted through his mind. She tended to forget that he could read her mind, just as she forgot she could just as easily read his if she tried more often. But she had that quirky human penchant called privacy, a custom that was not all that prevalent in the Demon culture.
“Tell me where we’re going,” she murmured next to his ear.
Her soft lips moved against his neck with her speech, her breath hot against his skin, bathing him in sensitivity. Awareness instantly shuddered through him, his body clenching with instant need. He had already realized that his good intentions wouldn’t matter before long. If he stayed near her, he would tear her apart with his harsh desire for her. It was this knowledge that had forced him to pace before Noah endlessly until the Council interrupted his self-obsessions.
The Enforcer knew, though, that he could not maintain his close connection to Noah’s home so long as Isabella was residing there. She tempted him far too deeply. So, he had paced before Noah’s desk, trying to find a way to tell the Demon King that he had to drag himself as far away from the center of Demon culture as he could. He also needed to do this without blaming it on this innocent woman. The problem was not hers. He was the one lacking in control. It had brought him very low, doing the very thing he had lectured Kane on. It had brought Jacob to the other side of the sidewalk. He now knew what it felt like to be driven to those depths of immoral action even though principles cried out to do the right thing.
“Jacob?”
His name on her lips made him realize he had not answered her question.
“To my home,” he told her, using the response as a reason to lean his face closer to her, to bury himself in her hair. She was, he realized, taking on more of his scent every day. Though she had showered and gotten herself dusty all over again since their last clash of passion, she still oozed his essence from her skin and hair. He had known she was a mimic when it came to scents, but he had never encountered a chameleon that could keep a scent that had already been washed away. It filled him with a rush of possessive joy. It reminded him that, right beneath his chin, under the soft fabric of her shirt, lay the mark he had left upon her shoulder.
They came to rest on a wide cliff, and when Isabella lifted her head at Jacob’s encouragement, the vista took her breath away. They were on the very rim of what looked to be the English coastline. The house he had taken her to originally was settled behind them grandly, with the exception of the boarded-up wall that was in need of repair. As Noah coalesced into his usual form beside them, they walked toward the house. They entered through a conventional door.
“One would think that with all you can do, you could snap your fingers and fix that wall,” she said breathlessly.
“If it were that easy to do everything, we would be able to protect ourselves from those who insist on dabbling in dark arts,” Jacob pointed out gently.
“Well, not that it is any excuse, but humans don’t realize that your kind are an actual race of people with intelligence, families, customs, and culture.” She frowned and sighed, realizing exactly how poor an excuse that was. “But that’s been our excuse over history far too many times. I’m sorry.”
Jacob reached to rest her chin on the tip of his fingers, her sweet compassion for his people, especially after the way the so-called best of them had just treated her, touching him deeply. Noah’s presence in the room completely faded from his awareness and he reached to kiss her supple lips with aching tenderness, ignoring any pain it caused him to do so.
“I am sorry, little flower. The Elders should never have treated you so poorly when you have been laboring so hard to help us.”
“They didn’t know,” she whispered forgivingly, causing his heart to tighten at her benevolence. “They are afraid, and rightly so.” She reached up and slid a strand of his hair between two of her fingers, caringly tucking it behind his ear in a slow, silky movement. “Fear makes the best of us behave terribly.”
Noah cleared his throat, an effort to remind the couple that he was in the room. They jumped apart, and he watched in amazement as the electricity only he could see sparking between them crackled in petulant blue arcs before thinning out and breaking the connection. Noah had never seen such a thing between a Demon and a human before, and rarely between Demons. It fascinated while it disturbed him. The lightning was the fire of complementary souls joining. A female Fire Demon like his sister Hannah would know more about this aspect of such elemental connection, for she understood the fire between two beings and saw it far more clearly than he could. But he knew enough to know it was significant, and exceedingly unusual.
“Isabella, you have something to tell us?” he reminded everyone.
“Yes.”
Noah once again took note of her hesitation, her struggle so very clear in her tattletale face. It was refreshing to the King to see that such guilelessness could still exist in the world.
She grabbed Jacob’s hand and hustled him over to the nearest table, dropping her bagful of scrolls onto it. Noah followed, watching closely as she slid the first out of its protective container and unwound it, using objects from the table to hold it open. She treated the scroll gingerly, with great care and respect, and Noah was once more impressed. This woman was a true scholar, perhaps more so than he would ever be.
Both men realized after a moment that the text she was displaying was in their ancient language. They exchanged perplexed looks over her dark head as she bent to her task of situating the scroll. This was the very type of writing Noah had been having difficulty translating on the night Jacob had first encountered Isabella.
“Okay, look here,” she said, warming to her impending lecture as she indicated the middle body of writing. “This is the original Scroll of Destruction. Great name, by the way. Anyway, it was written centuries before the book I found with the same name. That book was a translation of this scroll. Look, see, ‘Whosoever wishes to know the fate of Demonkind must consult these prophecies…’ Yadda, yadda, yadda, right? It’s kind of like your version of Revelation. Correct?”
Noah nodded slowly. It was one of their most sacred documents. It was the list of Special Destinies and the Original Laws. He watched as she gently peeled back the first pages of the scroll.
“You are familiar with these passages, no doubt. The ones that refer to the way the birth of Christianity among humans would affect the destiny of Demons for all time. See? This tells how Christianity will become a majority religion amongst humans, how magic will be shunned as a result, lessening the threat of the ‘evil intenders,’ which I assume means necromancers. It isn’t all that specific, so I took an educated guess.”
“Good guess, little flower,” Jacob praised. “You are exactly right.”
She seemed to accept this with a nod as she reached to peel back more pages. “Well, then follows pages of various prophecies. Now, in the modern book version of this scroll, the translation is only slightly flawed up to this point. But then you come to here…” She indicated a passage far into the scroll. “Here is where it goes completely haywire. Now, at first I couldn’t understand why the translation would be so in error. I thought perhaps a change in translators. But then I remembered that with many great religious doctrines, the influences of those who ordered translations often dictated what was considered acceptable and uniform to general belief. Significant works, to this day, are not accepted in their true translated states because it would make too many waves in the foundations of those belief systems. When this is translated pro
perly, I can see why they were reluctant to remain true to the form of the scroll. Here, I will read the passage:
‘And so it will come to pass that in this great age things will return to the focus of purity that Demonkind must always strive for. Here will come the meaning and purpose of our strictest laws, that no uncorrupted human shall be harmed, that peaceful coexistence between races shall become paramount…’”
“There is nothing different about that than what is commonly known,” Noah remarked, struggling to follow her swift translation.
“Wait, I am getting to that.” She turned the page. “Listen:
‘We must enforce ourselves more strictly as the time approaches. In the age of the rebellion of the Earth and Sky, when Fire and Water break like havoc upon all the lands, the Eldest of the old will return, will take his mate, and the first child of the element of Space will be born, playmate to the first child of Time, born to the Enforcers. The Demon. The Druid. And all will be returned to the state in which it all began. Purity restored.’
“Now,” Isabella went on, unaware of the men who were so still beside her, “I couldn’t figure out why this would be left out. It seems pretty simple a prophecy. Why would it be so frightening? That was when I read through all of your laws and realized—”
“All of them?” Noah spoke up suddenly, his astonishment ringing clear. “You were only down there a few days.”
“I read fast,” she shrugged.
Noah gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles turned white, seeking solace in the Enforcer’s dark eyes, only to find them equally troubled. He had no choice but to watch as the little woman plowed through her information like a freight train.
“Anyway,” she continued, “this is where your laws of crossbreeding come into play. Now, all along I thought maybe it was chemical incompatibility or because of your more animalistic natures that you would cause harm to a partner not of your race. You even have books supporting those theories. Purity. That word is key. It’s used very often in this scroll and I can’t tell you how many laws. Okay, listen, further in the Scroll of Destruction. It says right here:
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