Demon Bound (35 page)

Alice smiled. “I want to think well of Michael, but I do not feel a blind loyalty that extends to everything—or everyone—related to him.” How odd, though, that she had begun to assume—blindly, perhaps—that Jake would always attempt to do what was right. With regard to his actions, she was certain that she would always jump to the best conclusion.

If not always the expected one.

Jake's gaze held hers before dropping to her mouth. “Keep your eyes open, goddess. You watch the hellhound, I'll watch the door. And it'll help if you tilt your head. But if you don't, I'll compensate for it. You'll be able to see past me.”

While kissing him.
Alice's heart seemed to slide into her belly, and lifted again when she rose up on her toes. She would not waste this opportunity. “I—”

“Don't talk,” he said softly. But his head stopped its descent, and he waited, listening.

“I only intended to say that I wish you'd thought of this earlier.”

“Okay. Now, quiet.” Would he still be smiling when he touched his mouth to hers? She held her breath, watching, until he reminded her, “The hellhound, Alice.”

The puppy stared back at her with three pairs of eyes, and Alice was wishing that she'd had a door to watch instead, when she felt a light brush against the corner of her lips. Perhaps he'd missed while looking the other way. She adjusted the angle of her head, searching for his mouth, but he'd already found hers again, a warm press full against her lips.

What heaven this was. Dear God, but she felt
so
very much for him—she could not even name all of the emotions tumbling within her.

How was it, she wondered, that the pounding of her heart didn't shake her entire body? Or that this gentleness didn't leave her frustrated, but filled her with the sweetest content?

Content, though they stood in Hell. How could that possibly be?

His hand skimmed over her hair from her crown to her waist, a tender exploration that felt more intimate than the kiss. He lifted the strands, letting them fall slowly through his fingers, sweeping softly against her back.

Alice rested her palm against his chest, then sighed her disappointment as Jake drew away, his shoulder blocking her view.

It was, she realized, the same view she would have if ever she lay beneath him.

Desire whipped through her, lashing at her nerves with heated flicks, and she closed her eyes. Oh, dear. Perhaps there was frustration in this, after all.

“Hey.” His breath traipsed lightly over her cheek. “You okay?”

Her nod, she knew, probably seemed very short, and her spine very rigid. “Yes. I am simply attempting to understand how that did not open a portal.”

Dear heavens, how she'd come to love the deep sound of his laugh. Like the rumble of an engine, caught by fits and starts. And the way it took over his face, lit his eyes the most brilliant blue.

She would kiss him again, she decided. Perhaps even drag him into the bathing chamber, put up the shielding spell, and push him against the wall. If they went quickly, two Guardians at full speed, surely it would take no more time than the kiss had.

But she wasted precious seconds imagining it. His laughter died; shrieks pierced the chamber. And as Alice called in her naginata and spun around, she consoled herself with the knowledge that her fantasies had improved of late, even if her timing had not.

The door opened and an arrow-riddled bat streaked inside. As tall as Jake, it scrambled awkwardly across the floor on knuckles and clawed feet. It turned red eyes on them.

The hellhound pounced. Bone crunched as she tore off the creature's head. The stink of the bat's blood made Alice's eyes water, her stomach churn.

The earsplitting sounds at the door were joined by scratching, the ring of metal. Khavi burst inside, her skin coated in the same putrid blood.

She looked at the hellhound, and spoke in the Attic Greek. “Create a mess, Lyta. The scent must mask theirs.”

Alice signed the translation to Jake; Khavi turned to them and continued in English, “We have not much time. Belial is visible on the horizon.” Her armor vanishing, she strode toward the second chamber. “I have erased your footprints and—What is that?”

Dread tightened in Alice's chest when she looked at the table, her open sketchbook. Khavi was already standing next to it, her eyes a deep black.

Jake's hand clasped hers. Ready, she knew, for any reaction. “A week ago, we found this beneath a burial chamber,” Alice said quietly. “The nephilim opened it. This is Zakril.”

Alice didn't protest when Khavi leaned forward, ripped out the page and vanished it. She didn't flinch when the other woman placed her hand over Anaria's face, and crushed the bone with a flex of her fingers.

Behind her, Lyta tore into the nychipteran, shaking the ravaged corpse and swinging ribbons of crimson over the white floor, the walls.

“Come,” Khavi said. “And tell me how it is that the nephilim are on Earth. I knew they would be, but not how or when it would happen.”

Knew they would be . . .
Alice's steps slowed. Here, she realized, was the source of the prophecy. Dear heavens.

Dimly, she heard Jake explain that the Gates to Hell had been closed, but that hundreds of demons were still left on Earth.

Khavi nodded. “I see. Lucifer would not be able to go through the Gates. But the Rules must be enforced, and so he released the nephilim. Tell me, do they bring the demon back to Hell for Punishment, or do they slay him?”

Death or Punishment—the two consequences a demon faced after killing a human or preventing free will. A Guardian was given the choice of Falling or Ascending.

“They slay the demon,” Jake said. “It's the nephilim's only option. They can't return to Hell.”

An ironic smile twisted Khavi's mouth. “No. Lucifer would not dare risk it, would he? Better that they pose a risk to Guardians and demons than to his throne.”

“Yep. But enforcing the Rules isn't all the nephilim are doing—” Jake crossed the threshold of the chamber and stopped. “Whoa damn. Alice?”

She briefly met his eyes before letting her gaze search the chamber. She knew the glowing strands in their odd formations had surprised him, but she only gave them a cursory glance. In one of the upper corners, she found the familiar mind she'd sensed earlier: a cave weaver from Tunisia, weak—dying. The others lay upside-down on the bone floor, their thin legs curled, their bodies dry.

“When I repair the concealment spell, the threads pull them in,” Khavi said. “They cannot bring the higher forms of life, but they do animals and insects.” She stopped in front of a waist-high black marble cylinder. Symbols had been carved into the surface; the luminescent silk strands were embedded in each symbol, so that they glowed with soft orange light. At the top of the cylinder, hundreds of rigid threads rose from a point to form an open, inverted cone. “The burial chamber must be this one. I knew it was one of these two,” she said, nodding toward another cylinder, “for they are the last Zakril made. I did not help construct either of them, but this is the one I most recently mended—and it is during that time you must have entered it and found his remains.”

More cylinders were placed irregularly around the room. Each one, Alice realized, hid a temple. “And which did you mend before that?”

Khavi pointed. “It is the one that held the statue of Zakril. These threads”—she gestured to the cone—“are the anchors. When we constructed the temples, we put the threads within the stone. Upon its completion, the ends of each thread were gathered together”—she made a fist, like a child holding balloons—“and teleported here. They stretch between the realms, and feed the spell from the cylinders to the temples.”

“And the spell was supposed to hide you from Michael?” Jake sounded as if shock had a stranglehold on his throat, but Alice was amazed that he was even capable of speech. She wasn't.

“Yes, it does that—but it was humans who concerned Zakril and me. Except to Michael's eyes, the concealment spell does not function when someone is alive within the temple. Yet when they were eventually abandoned, they might have stood for anyone to discover. And so the spell mimics the appearance of the sites before the temples were built, and the temples themselves are pulled into the in-between.”

“The what?” Jake's confusion echoed hers.

“Into the reflection. In Caelum, in Hell, there is nothing of those realms that reflects—yet we see it, walk on it. It is the in-between.”

No reflection . . . and no pictures. Alice shook her head. She knew what Khavi was referring to, yet didn't understand it. But she imagined that even if they had more time for explanations, it would still not make sense. “If they are in-between, how is it that they appear on Earth?”

“The threads that power the symbols fade. I am sometimes very quick to repair them.” She shrugged. “Other times, I am not.”

Jake crouched next to a cylinder. “How'd you prevent just Michael from seeing it?”

“We used his blood.” Khavi frowned. “I suppose I could remove that part of the spell now. The threads might not fade as quickly.”

“That'd help. Especially if the nephilim plan to do their rituals again; maybe he could go in and kick some ass.” Jake looked over his shoulder. “Why hide from Michael in the first place?”

Khavi moved toward the rear wall of the chamber. “We have not much time.” A dagger appeared in her hand, and she sliced her opposite forefinger, began writing symbols on the bone surface.

The disappointment in Jake's eyes sharpened into calculation. “Alice has hot water.”

How very clever. Khavi's hand stilled, and Alice sweetened his offer. “Enough to fill your upper
and
lower baths.”

No blood dripped to the floor when Khavi turned; her finger had already healed. “You are bribing me.”

“Yep.”

“And so it seems that Michael has taught you something after all.” Pleasure and anticipation danced in her brown eyes. She gestured to the ceiling. “We will make the exchange there—and quickly, so that Belial will not detect the moisture.”

It was almost instantaneous; Alice dropped the water out of her cache into the air, and Khavi vanished it.

“Now, do not interrupt. There is much to tell you, for I cannot explain
why
we hid without explaining what it meant to know someone like Anaria.” She cut her finger again, and spoke while drawing more symbols. “She was the light. Zakril was, too, and so were others—but none were quite like Anaria. She looked at the world without cynicism, and you wished you could see it as she did. She would speak, and you wanted to believe her. Unlike many humans we knew, she did not wear her goodness as a false face—that would have been impossible to hide from us. It went through to her heart; her thoughts were all kindness, even to those who did not deserve it. Her humor and her manner were as sweet as Michael's were wicked.”

Alice opened her mouth at the same time Jake did. They caught each other's gaze. Instead of speaking, he grinned and signed,
Michael, wicked?

She pursed her lips. No, she could not imagine it, either.

But she could also not imagine a woman like Khavi was describing.

Khavi pierced her finger again, watched the crimson drop form on her decorated skin. “Anaria balanced him. We all measured our kindness against hers, used her example as a guide when we felt called to walk the darker paths. Michael was always our head, and the strongest of us in spirit—but she was the heart. We loved her unreservedly. Zakril, more so than all of us, and Anaria him in return. Their bond formed when they were children; in the spring before Lucifer brought the dragon up from Chaos, they were married.” Her gaze unfocused. “I have not thought of spring in years. What season is it now?”

The wistful query made Alice's throat thicken. “In the north, it is late autumn.”

“I would go south, then.” She licked the blood from her fingertip. “I do not know when Anaria began to visit Lucifer. A hundred years after we went to Caelum, or a thousand—it had become difficult for me to measure time. But the reason for her visits was clear, and when we eventually learned of them, I do not know why we were surprised.”

“Let me take a wild guess,” Jake said, his voice flat. “She wanted kids and she thought Lucifer would know how to make some. What'd they get instead—the nephilim?”

“I . . .” Khavi blinked, her eyes hardening to obsidian. “Yes. But they were not
Lucifer's
.”

“Zakril's?” Alice wasn't certain if it was sadness or horror weighing so heavily in her belly. “How?”

“Lucifer had—still has—the body of the dragon Michael had slain. I do not know the method or spells Anaria and he used, only that her body rejected their attempts. So the women in the Pit carried the children to term.”

It was horror. Silently, Alice moved closer to Jake, until she could feel the warmth of his arm against hers. The skin over his jaw had paled.

“Let me guess. They ripped their way out.”

Alice closed her eyes. Dear God. Only a man would voice that.

Or a half demon. “
Ate
,” Khavi corrected. “But you must see that it was for the best.”

“No, not exactly.”

“The women were willing. I am certain that Anaria arranged the bargains. They traded the service for a fast burn rather than prolonged torment, and were released from Hell shortly after giving birth.”

“They were released?” The questions lined up in Alice's throat like soldiers, eager to fire. “The punishment in the Pit isn't eternal?”