Demon Bound (33 page)

Alice didn't respond. She could see the bats that made up the dark cloud now, their fangs and sharp talons. The hellhound whimpered and growled, nudging the woman's hip with one of its heads.

She looked down at the hellhound, startled. “Oh, yes. Thank you,
meiraks
. We go inside. You will follow me.”

Turning, she strode away from the statue, the hellhound at her side. Alice glanced up at Jake.

“Do not dawdle,” the woman called. “I have already seen you discuss it. You decide to come with me. There is no reason to do it twice.”

Jake's gaze held hers.
Waiting around for those bats isn't such a hot idea. But we don't have to go with her. We can jump.

Alice looked back at the statue, then at the woman. With a sigh, she said,
You know I cannot leave now.

His mouth tilted into a smile.
I can't, either. But I thought I'd give you a choice.
Still holding her hand, he began to walk after the strange duo—toward, Alice realized, one of the enormous stones scattered over the sand.
I think she learned English from you—by listening to your future. Then she picked up more from me, so that she could translate the slang.

Her fingers went slack against his, transmitting her surprise and disbelief. Finally, she recovered enough to say,
I hope that means I have enough of a future to learn from.

Alice bit back her nervous laugh. The hellhound turned one of her heads to look back at them.

What is M-E-H-I-R-A-X?
Jake approximated the spelling.

Damn. I guess I should have learned a few more ancient languages—because all of ten people speak them.
He was grinning when she met his eyes, quickly, before looking away and pursing her lips to stop her own grin.

Was he trying to ease her anxiety, or his? Either way, she was grateful for it.

The woman paused in front of the stone, her figure an insignificant relief against the enormous wall of marble. Her fingers traced a vertical line over its surface. A tiny crack appeared; she pushed, and it widened before swinging open. She stepped into the darkness beyond.

“Ye-e-e-ah,” Jake said slowly.
We're going in there?

Alice glanced at the dark cloud scudding across the sky.
Yes.

I thought we would push her in, instead.
She could barely hear his quiet chuckle over the pounding of her heart.
At any rate, this entire realm is an oven. I'm not certain it is any better out here.

That's true enough. And what's one crazy Guardian? But, Alice, listen—
He stopped, and she looked at him; all trace of humor had fled his expression.
Stay close.

She nodded, and they stepped over the threshold together.

CHAPTER 15

Whatever he'd been expecting, a dinner party wasn't it. Yet that was the only description Jake had for the four sculpted figures seated around a table in the center of the large chamber. Three males, one female. Jake recognized the faces of three—they matched the statue of Zakril in Hell, the female statue in Tunisia, and Michael. The woman dressed their nude bodies in tunics, speaking to each one in a soft, lilting language. They were as white as department-store mannequins.

Everything was white, with the appearance of stone. Not marble, though. Jake narrowed his focus on the table, then the statues, and his stomach lurched.

It was bone. Shaped and molded into faces, furniture, and overlaying the walls, ceiling, and flooring.

Threads of orange light, as thin as fiber-optic strands, were embedded in the walls. In the soft glow, he met Alice's eyes.

There are degrees of creepy,
Jake said.
You're sexy creepy. Nephilim rituals are sick creepy. And this is
creepy
creepy.

Yes.
She averted her gaze.
How long has she been here, do you think?

She must not have intended for him to respond; she let go of his hand and moved toward the wall. Apparently, something more than the bone bothered her, and he watched as she traced her fingers down the luminescent threads. She stood sideways to the wall, wary, but distracted, her naginata between her body and the woman fussing at the table. Jake angled himself between them.

Two more chambers led away from the room; the hellhound lay in the left doorway. From his position, Jake could see enough to guess that the interiors had also been surfaced with bone. All that white . . . was she trying to re-create the look of Caelum?

Pity rose up, and he squashed it. No Guardian he'd known would've appreciated it.

And he didn't know if this one deserved it.

“Spider threads,” Alice murmured behind him. Jake felt the light touch of her Gift—and through it, her sudden confusion—before she shielded.

“Yes.” The woman faced them, smiling brightly. “I have just seen your deaths, but now I see you alive. How lovely.”

Yep, that would eventually make him crazy, too. “Are those deaths going to be anytime soon? Say, the next five minutes?”

If she said yes, he was taking Alice and jumping. Of course, he'd feel pretty stupid if he jumped them right into Lucifer's throne room—and died there, instead.

Her careless shrug didn't help. “Who can tell? The only ones I am certain of are those I intend to kill.”

“I suppose it is very rare that someone shouts out the date in their death throes.” Alice came to stand by his shoulder—close enough to defend him, far enough that her movements wouldn't be hampered. “How often do you turn to find someone alive in here with you?”

The furrowing of her brow underlined one of the few demonic symbols Jake knew: lock. It was intertwined with another, directly in the middle of her forehead, and surrounded by hundreds more that had been inscribed over her face. “How many years has it been since Lysander took Lampsakos?”

At the end of the Peloponnesian War. Jake hoped he didn't look as thunderstruck as he felt.

Alice's face was pale as she responded, “Two thousand, four hundred.”

She slowly blinked, revealing more symbols on her eyelids. “Only that many? It felt much longer,” she said, and Jake wondered if she'd accurately picked up the concept of “thousand” while rifling through Alice's future. “In that time, I have only turned my back on visitors once.”

Them, Jake thought. “How many visitors have you
not
turned your back on?”

“One.” She studied him with eyes that were rapidly becoming obsidian again. “You are accustomed to those who tell the truth, but not all of it.”

“Occupational hazard. Was the other person Michael?” If the Doyen had deliberately left her in Hell—or brought her here—that'd be another reason to jump.

“No. He does not know I am here—yet.” She turned, trailing her fingers over the shoulders of the male statue Jake didn't recognize. “When I saw him come, I did not think he would take so long. Or that you would.”

Jake glanced at Alice, tried to gauge her response. The wariness had almost gone. With her eyebrows drawn, she stared at the woman, as if trying to work something out.

But they weren't going to get anywhere unless they asked.

“Ah,” the woman said before Jake could speak. “I know this moment. This is when you wonder who I am, and I tell you that I am Khavi, of the grigori, sister to Zakril—and sister in spirit, if not flesh, to Michael and Anaria.” She looked over her shoulder with a brittle smile. “Much less so to Anaria.”

Whoa boy.
Jake didn't even know where to start.

Khavi's eyes narrowed into ebony slivers. “You did not know.” She pivoted, paced to the wall and back. Her fingers shoved into her tangled hair, yanked. “How can you not know? No, no—”

She came to a stop and pointed at Jake. “No. You spoke his name. I heard through the sand. You saw him, and you spoke his name.”

“Zakril?” Alice walked to the table, her sketchbook in hand. “We only know of him from—”

“Why do you move like that?”

Jake's jaw clenched. Khavi's expression reminded him of a kid studying an insect through a magnifying glass. But he swallowed his angry response when Alice's lips thinned, her irritation plain.

Yeah, it was pretty much a given that anything not relating to Zakril, Michael, and whoever Khavi was, Alice would consider an annoying distraction.

“My Gift has left its mark.” Alice moved between the statues of Michael and Zakril, opening her sketchbook. “Now, do you—”

“You can change your form, is that not still true?”

Alice breathed out sharply through her nose before she said, “Yes.”

Jake wondered if he mistook the meanness in Khavi's smile, until she said, “Then why do you wear that face instead of a beautiful one?”

Fuck hellhounds, fuck nut jobs, fuck this whole fucking realm. Jake stepped forward, but Alice's calm reply stopped him.

“Because I already am.” She met Khavi's eyes across the table. “And you
are
half-demon.”

Khavi's dark gaze landed on Jake. “Yes.”

He stared back, his poker face on. He should have known Alice wouldn't feel insulted by that. But Khavi hadn't known Alice wouldn't be hurt, so there was no doubt she'd
meant
to inflict pain.

So what was it about—was Khavi looking for their weaknesses? Probably. He'd been doing the same since he'd come in. Problem was, if Khavi's only emotional link was to the hellhound, there wasn't much Jake could threaten.

Luckily, Alice hadn't given anything away in her response. Not so luckily, he had.

But if Khavi thought that loving Alice was a weakness, Jake would be happy to show her how wrong she was.

With fury still flooding his veins, he began a wide circuit of the chamber, keeping watch on the table. His gaze swept over Alice's sharp features as she flipped through the book and turned it toward Khavi. Goddamn. Even a crazy demon should be able to see how flippin' gorgeous Alice was. Sure, not in the Hollywood sense, all sultry eyes and pouty lips—but for fuck's sake, all anyone had to do was look at her more than once or twice, and they'd realize it.

As if aware of his gaze, Alice glanced at him from under her lashes, a question in her pale blue eyes.

Jake shook his head. He'd sit out for now. Would just listen, and absorb. At least until cutting off Khavi's head didn't seem so tempting.

Not beautiful.
Yeah. His hot ass.

“This is what we know,” Alice said, smoothing her hand over a drawing of winged figures warring against the heavens. “There was the First Battle, waged between angels.”

Khavi nodded, examining the sketch. “Lucifer's rebellion.”

“We know that he and his followers were transformed to demons, and those who abstained became nosferatu—and the angels came to Earth to guard humans.”

“Yes.”

No big surprises here, then. His lethal mood fading, Jake glanced into the right chamber. The terraced recesses in the floor were a smaller version of the baths in Tunisia. They were dry, with traces of red sand at the bottom.

He turned, found Khavi staring at him. “Both water and fire purify,” she said softly. “But when we bathe, the water becomes muddied. Fire burns clean.”

Was this a riddle—or something straightforward, in a flaky kind of way? “Fire leaves ash,” he pointed out.

“The
flames
are clean. Regardless, there is no water in Hell.” She studied the next drawing, of Lucifer riding at the head of the dragon, and Michael plunging his sword into its heart. “What do you call this?”

“The Second Battle.”

Khavi sighed. Jake had seen the look she gave Michael's statue hundreds of times on Pim's face, on Charlie's face. It somehow combined familiarity, affection, and exasperation—and reminded a guy that females were the superior species, with more going on in their heads than between their legs.

“His strengths never included his imagination,” she said. “What is the story of this battle?”

“Lucifer became envious of the angels, and brought a dragon with him to Earth. The angels faltered until mankind sided with them, and Michael—one of the men in the
human
army—slew the dragon. The angels gave Caelum to him, and the power to create the Guardian corps.”

Khavi sat motionless, as if waiting for Alice to continue. Alice was just as still, waiting for a reaction.

Slowly, Khavi unrolled her fists. Jake hadn't seen her clench them. “Is that all?”

“In essence—yes.”

She exploded into motion, backhanding the female statue. Its head shot toward Jake. He snatched it out of the air before the face smashed against the wall, his fingers stinging from the catch.

Alice straightened, her eyes guarded as Khavi stalked back and forth across the chamber.

Jake's gut twisted, a sick, heavy knot. “Is it a lie?”

Her fingers pushed into her tangles. She tilted her head back and screamed, the sound a hoarse rip from her harmonious voice. Frustration poured from a dark psychic scent that was as rich and powerful as Michael's—as the nephilim's.

Jake was beside Alice before the scream ended. But the anger left Khavi as quickly as it had come; she crouched in front of her hellhound, spoke in soothing tones.

I have often wanted to scream like that,
Alice signed.

Tension no longer whitened her knuckles.
Maybe you should,
Jake signed, and held up the bone head. Unlike the statues outside and in Tunisia, no emotion or personality had been captured in the blank, staring eyes.
Clean break in the neck. She's beheaded it with a blade before. And there are dents and chips all over—this isn't the first time she's hit it.