Demon Bound (15 page)

She swallowed it down, and sat gingerly on the edge of a stone bench. Jasmine spilled over the giant urns at each end. Behind her, a date tree bent under the weight of the fruit on its branches.

Alice smoothed her fingers over her skirts. In the hollow of her knee, she felt Lucy anchor a dragline and begin to descend along her calf.

At the fountain, Teqon turned to face her, a frown marring his handsome features. “I do not remember you being so rigid, Mrs. Grey. I chose you because you chafed against structure—against authority. It made you more likely to carry out your task.”

“After one hundred and twenty years, perhaps I have been chafed smooth.”

“I doubt it.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “You must have received my message.”

He did not, she noted, ask about the demons who had delivered it. “I did.”

“And you intend to follow through.”

It wasn't a question. Because she hadn't attempted to slay him, he must have been certain of her answer.

“Is there nothing else you want? There must be something that would make you reconsider.”

“And release you from your bargain?” Teqon laughed, a short and hard sound. “No.”

“What of the prophecy?”

His dark eyes began to glow crimson, but his hard smile remained. “That prophecy is all the more reason to fulfill your part.”

Lucy reached the ground, and Alice felt the widow's indecision. Alice hesitated, too, for just a moment. But she had nothing that might sway Teqon now, and she doubted he would deal on speculation. Their interview here was at an end.

Alice stood and lightly opened her Gift, urging the spider toward the date tree.
Be safe, little one.

Teqon's hand was around her throat an instant later. Her boots left the ground as he lifted her.

“You used your Gift.” His fingers shape-shifted, became talons. “What
is
your Gift, Mrs. Grey? What have you done?”

She pushed Lucy faster.
Climb. Climb and hide.

The demon tried to dig his claws in. His eyes widened with surprise and anger as they scraped across her collar without tearing through.

He settled for crushing her throat. Pain screamed, left her dizzy.

“Is it impervious to everything?” Teqon studied her dress, then casually slipped a dagger between her ribs. Something inside tore, collapsed.

Alice beat back her panic, and the black wave that threatened consciousness. He hadn't aimed for her heart. Just her lungs. He wasn't going to kill her. He couldn't risk killing her.

He smiled. “It's not.”

She only needed to break his hold. Needed to focus through the agony, and call for her weapon so that she could cut through his arm.

“Let her go, demon.”

Oh, dear heavens. Jake. He'd teleported behind Teqon, his sword against the demon's neck.

Teqon tightened his grip on her throat, gave her a shake. He spoke in English, just as Jake had. “Do you think slaying me would save her, Guardian?”

Alice recognized the victorious glint in Jake's eyes. It was an easy kill. Jake had the advantage of surprise, of Teqon's neck already on the edge of his sword, of Alice being in a position that—though she was injured—wasn't mortally dangerous.

And any other time, she would have told him to take it. Alice lifted her hand and signed,
Don't kill him.
When Jake frowned and the edge of his blade drew blood, she frantically added,
I beg you, please.

His jaw tightened, but he moved toward her, keeping his sword at Teqon's throat. His arm circled her waist. “Let her go.”

Teqon unclenched his hand, and Alice's head fell back against Jake's shoulder—her muscles too damaged to hold it up.

“Only because she cannot serve our purpose if she is dead. We are fated to take the throne in Hell and return to Glory—”

“Yeah, yeah. Save it,” Jake said, backing up. “I've heard it before from your buddy Sammael, and thought it was bullshit then, too.”

“I wonder if you'll say that when I take your heart, fledgling.” Teqon's gaze shifted to her face. “You will pay your debt, Mrs. Grey.”

With a shudder, she called in the demon's heart from her cache. It was still as warm as when she'd cut it from his chest in the temple.

She tossed the organ, and it landed with a plop at Teqon's feet.

Its blood dripped from her fingers as she signed,
I will include one hundred twenty years of interest, and I'll collect it from all of your associates. There will be no one left to return to Glory. Reconsider, demon.

He shook his head. “Never.”

“Are you done?” Jake's voice was cold and flat in her ear.

Yes.
She gripped the hand at her waist. His Gift punched through her, and sent her spinning again.

 

She was bound.

Around them, sunlight filtered through a jungle canopy. The air was thick as sweat. Jake didn't know where the fuck they were. Didn't care.

He didn't wait until Alice steadied, could barely contain his anger. She didn't flinch when he leaned over, his face an inch from hers.

“You went in there, knowing that if he killed you, you'd be trapped in Hell for
eternity
.” Trapped, because she'd made a bargain, and obviously hadn't fulfilled her side of it. But hadn't said a thing, though Jake had been outside, ready to charge in if things got too fucking hot. “Knowing that if
I
had killed him, I'd be the one sealing your goddamn fate. That as soon as you died, you'd be down Below with your fucking head frozen into the ground. Because you didn't say a fucking word to warn me.”

Her blank expression didn't change. And she couldn't talk, because the demon bastard had crushed her goddamn throat.

I told you he wouldn't kill me,
she signed with bloody fingers.
And you heard; I still serve a purpose.

“What fucking purpose?”

His shout echoed through the trees. Birds startled, took wing. A monkey screeched in the distance.

Alice's lips pinched together.
A Guardian who loses his temper risks losing all.

He about lost it then. Jake spun away from her, his jaw aching with the force of his clenching teeth. Yelling at her didn't help. And, Jesus—he could smell the blood that had poured down her side. The wound was sealed and healing, but it must still hurt.

He'd been thinking of getting to a Healer. Instead he'd teleported here, ended up in bumfuck—

He registered the trees, the river. Recognized them.

Oh, shit. Of all the goddamn bad luck. He'd gone for a healer, all right. A dead one.

Bobby Wolk. The medic had carried a picture of his girl in his jacket over his heart—wrapped in plastic so it wouldn't get wet. Out here in the boonies, everything had gotten wet, started to rot.

And not two yards from where Jake was standing, a land mine had once been hidden beneath rotting leaves. Shrapnel had ripped off half of the medic's chest, his face, shredded the picture of his girl.

It had been quicker than what the rest of them had faced.

Jesus. Jake rubbed his eyes, said quietly, “Whose heart are you bound to deliver?”

It had to be a heart. That much had been clear when she'd thrown the demon's at Teqon's feet.

She didn't answer. Couldn't, since he wasn't looking at her. It didn't matter, though. Despite Teqon's threat to Jake, there was only one heart that any demon would care about having.

“Michael's?”

He turned as he said the name, and caught the way her eyes closed, as if she was trying to block out the truth. Even expecting it, the confirmation stunned him.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “‘Loyalty is the utmost virtue'? How the hell could you make such a bargain?”

She looked at him. Just stared at him, her eyes huge. Her mouth, her fingers didn't move. Bruises mottled her throat.

Jake shook his head. Wanted to be sick. Or to kill something. He faced the river instead, and began walking. He wouldn't look back.

“There's a Gate twenty-eight miles south,” he said. “Try to make it there without betraying the rest of us.”

CHAPTER 7

Two hours into the weekly poker game at the Special Investigations warehouse, Jake was out three thousand dollars—and having a difficult time giving a shit.

Just as he'd hardly noticed when, thirty minutes after leaving the Black Widow behind in Vietnam, Alejandro had stabbed a sword through his thigh. Throw in Drifter's fist and a cracked cheekbone, and a sick tension in his gut that wouldn't go away—and Jake had one creepy Guardian as the reason behind his clusterfuck of a day.

He just couldn't get her face out of his head, the vision of her haunted eyes.

And her goddamn bargain.

“Jake, sweetie.” He glanced up; Pim was smiling at him across the table. If her legs had been long enough, she'd probably have kicked his shin beneath it. “Get your head out of your ass and ante up.”

“And don't even think about leaving this table,” Mackenzie added, glancing up at Jake through bangs that reached his black-lined eyes. Since he'd been added to a team that traveled to various vampire communities, warning them about nephilim and demons, Mackenzie had been playing up his Goth look. “You haven't had a streak of luck this bad since . . . well, ever. Not since I've been working here, anyway.”

“Oh, like you'd ever win without a hammerspace and speed, vampire.” Becca stuck her tongue out at Mackenzie, but a second later the gesture changed from a childish taunt to a suggestive wag.

“Jesus, Becca. Put that back in.” Jake tossed his chips in, cursing the day he'd become the flippin' den mother. After Drifter had moved in with Charlie and stopped coming to San Francisco as often, the job had somehow fallen to Jake. Now he was the one who oversaw the other novices as they played, giving them pointers—on using sleight of hand to pull in a card from their hammerspace, on noticing when someone else did, and honing their psychic abilities to sense someone cheating or bluffing.

Pim could've done it. She was almost as good a player as Jake was. Older, too—even if she hadn't been a Guardian as long.

Jake checked his watch. Another hour, and then he was on his own time.

“In a hurry to get somewhere, Jake?”

Ah, crap. Pim's cute face had taken on an innocent expression. Jake usually ended up paying someone a fiver after she got that look.

At least he usually got a laugh out of it, too. Pim loved gossip almost as much as she loved the testicle-withering teenybop music she was playing on the rec room's stereo, and when they'd been stuck in Caelum after the Ascension—two of only seven novices left—shooting the shit with her had been part of the reason he'd managed to stay sane. Though her sole goal in life seemed to be busting his balls, she was, as his granddad might have said, good people.

“Nope,” Jake said easily. “Just wondering why it's twenty hundred hours, and no one is heading down to the corridor to relieve Jeeves.”

Becca began dealing out cards, and she said, “Because—thanks to you and Pim—our security shifts are eight hours now.”

Jake leaned back in his chair, staring at Pim. That must mean that they were putting her on active duty, just like he was with Drifter. “No shit? They're sending you out?”

“You're supposed to say ‘Congratulations,' dipshit.”

He frowned at Becca, then glanced back at Pim. Her smile did look a little smaller. “Well, yeah. Who are you heading out with?”

“Dru. That way I can learn my Gift faster, get practical healing experience.”

Jake clenched his jaw, looked down at his cards. Dru had been on full status, what—fifteen years? And as a Healer, she didn't see as much combat as other Guardians who'd been out as long. “That makes sense.”

Pim flashed him her
don't be an asshole
look. “I won't be out there the same way you are, because I can't get out of trouble as fast. So if a demon shows up, I'm supposed to let her handle it. I'm just there to observe for now.”

“Okay, yeah.” Still bad, but not
as
bad. “So you'll still be training here?”

“And with Dru. When you took us to Caelum the other day, that was her seeing how we'd mesh. Then we came back here to talk to Hugh and Lilith, and made it all official with Michael this morning.”

“Right on.”

“Yeah, it's all good.” Pim's innocent look returned, and she looked over at Becca. “Jake went into the Black Widow's lair. Dru and I left before he came out.”

“Damn.” Becca pulled a face. “If we'd known you were that desperate, Jake, we could've paid someone to give you a pity screw.”

“You had sex in the library with the Black Widow?” Mackenzie looked up from his cards. Jake thought the only reason the vampire didn't give him a high-five was because of Becca's sudden glare.

“It was at her place,” Pim said.

“She has a place?” Becca's expression was blank. “I thought she just lived in the Archives.”

Jake stared at his cards. Not even a pair. He threw in more chips, anyway. “It's in Odin's Courtyard.”

Mackenzie looked up. “Odin's?”

“There's a big ash tree, like what Odin hung himself from—to gain wisdom,” Jake said. And it sounded like a hell of a painful way of getting smarter. He preferred the easy method: opening a book or turning on a computer—or fucking up and paying for it. “But it's marble. Like everything else.”

Mackenzie wouldn't ever see it. Vampires could be teleported to Caelum, but—because the sun never set—only into closed rooms.