Demon Forged (47 page)

Taylor braced herself, realizing what was coming, but she didn’t see him reach out. His hand touched her shoulder and the world dove into a flat spin.

God. Even before she opened her eyes, she smelled the blood. Michael held her against him, his arm like a rock across her stomach. Metal flashed in front of her eyes; he had a sword in his opposite hand.

Wren weaved dizzily on her knees next to them. She’d gone for the gun in her shoulder holster, but hadn’t pulled it out yet. Her eyes were wide, her face white.

“I can stand,” Taylor forced out.

Michael let her go. She stumbled a few steps, but thank God, remained upright. Their surroundings came into focus: the hub at the Special Investigations warehouse. A novice sat on the stairs, sobbing. Standing at the head of a hallway, Cordoba turned their way, lowering his phone. He started toward them, his hands flying in the Guardians’ sign language.

Taylor’s quick scan screeched to a halt. To her right, Savi sat with her back against a wall, Colin in her arms, her hands clamped tightly together over his chest. Blood covered them both.

“Oh, Jesus.” Taylor rushed forward. “My God, Savi—what happened?”

“She got in.” A bubble of hysterical laughter burst from the vampire. “Anaria was in our base, killing our dudes.”

Colin made a soothing sound, though his eyes were closed and he was in some obvious pain. Savi gathered him somehow closer, burying her face in his hair. Tears slid over her cheeks.

“Where is he injured?”

Taylor glanced to the side. Wren knelt beside them, stripping out of her jacket. She folded it, obviously planning to make a compress, and Taylor thought now was probably not the time to tell her that, if Colin wasn’t already dead, he’d be fine within an hour or two. Less, once Michael got his ass over here.

She looked at Savi. “This is Wren. Let her help you, okay? Whatever she does might make it easier for him.”

Not really, but it gave them all something to do.

The vampire pulled in a sobbing breath, nodded. She unclamped her hands, and Taylor had a second to see the deep gash in his chest before Wren covered the wound with the jacket.

“Just hold that tight,” the butler said, her lips thinned into a pale line. She touched his arm, apparently searching for the source of the blood there.

“It looks worse than it is,” Taylor told her before rising to her feet. At the end of the gymnasium hallway, she saw Michael crouching beside a still form.

Her stomach rolled over. Oh, damn. She knew that one. Dru.

The body vanished. Michael stood again as Irena came out of the gymnasium doors, her hands fisted. The tattoos on her arms seemed to constrict, like rattlesnakes coiling before they struck. They stared at each other for a long second, until Irena’s breath hissed through her clenched teeth.

“We could do
nothing
.”

Her accusation didn’t appear to touch him. He said simply, “You kept the others alive.”

Irena turned her face away. Her chest rose as she took a deep breath. “It is not enough.”

“No. It never is.” He sounded as if the weight of the world pushed out his reply. “But it is what you have.”

Irena nodded. She touched his arm as she passed him, continuing down the hall. Michael looked after her. Taylor thought the expression on his face might have been surprise, but it shuttered when he met her gaze. He strode into the gym.

When he emerged a second later, his face had set like stone. “Any others?”

“No.” Though Cordoba spoke to the Doyen, he watched Irena, who was walking toward him. “We’d sent the team out to Buenos Aires. No other vampires were here.”

Michael disappeared. She heard his voice a second later—behind her.

A young woman, her black hair in a bowl cut framing her tear-streaked face, kneeled beside Lilith. SI’s director sat holding Castleford’s hand. The hellhound lay on his belly next to her, licking blood from her cheek.

Michael touched the young Guardian’s shoulder. “Well done.”

He left the corridor, stopped next to Colin and Savi. Taylor felt
something
, like a compression of air through her chest. His healing Gift, apparently. Colin’s grimace of pain vanished on a sigh. With a murmured thank-you, he pushed away the compress Wren held against his wound.

Wren stared at the now-healed skin showing through the tear in his shirt. The poor woman. Taylor wouldn’t have blamed her for running out of here, screaming mad. Maybe Wren had been planning to before she glanced up at Colin. She reached forward, caught herself, and sat completely still. Her gaze didn’t move from his face.

Taylor had felt like that the first couple of times she’d seen him up close, too.

“Did she take your blood?” Michael asked.

Colin nodded. “Two or three pints.”

Michael glanced at Wren, then over to where Irena stood beside Cordoba. “Deacon is with Rael. The vampire completed a job for him.”

Irena’s face whitened. The serpents on her arms seemed to shrivel, drawing out into long, fragile lines. Cordoba closed his eyes, as if struck by a sudden, deep pain.

“That is all we know,” Michael continued. He looked to Taylor. “You will stay here.”

She didn’t consider arguing. “Maybe Savi can—”

“Dig up Deacon?” The vampire’s normally friendly smile was cold and sharp. “His computer is upstairs. We have his cell number. He’s mine.”

“No. He’s mine.” Irena pushed forward. Her knives appeared in her grip. Obviously, she meant
right now
. “Michael, can you teleport to him?”

“No. He is shielded.”

Wren shook herself and glanced away from Colin. “They should be at the airport.”

Irena frowned. “Why would Rael need an airport? He can fly.”

The butler seemed to take that information in stride. “Then they are flying to Prague. That’s where Deacon will finish the job.”

Irena turned to Michael. “You will take us to Prague.”

“Deacon would not be there yet, Irena,” Cordoba said. “Whether by airplane or if Rael carries him, it will be several hours.”

“Wait,” Michael agreed. “We will see what Savitri can find.” He glanced down at Colin—who, Taylor thought, seemed perfectly content to continue sitting on the floor with Savi’s arms around him. “If Anaria took your blood, she is looking for access to Chaos. You will need to monitor the realm.”

Colin clenched his jaw, but nodded. He stroked his hand over Savi’s arm. “Go with Taylor, sweet. I’ll watch the mirrors in the chamber upstairs.”

“But—” Savi stopped herself. She sighed. “Okay. I’ll be up soon to help you. Take this first.”

A glass appeared in her hand. She gave it to Colin, held her arm above the rim, and sliced her wrist open with a dagger.

Taylor looked over at Wren, whose expressionless features still managed to convey horror and shock—and the curiosity Michael had mentioned earlier. Taylor realized that she was likely going to be the one stuck with the explanations.

She hoped Wren was ready for them.

Dawn had just begun to lighten the eastern sky when Olek found her standing on the building’s edge. She heard him land behind her. When he slipped his arms around her waist, she leaned back against him, grateful that he could be a quiet man, and that he could leave her to her thoughts without leaving her alone.

Savi had been brilliant. Within an hour, the vampire had found within Deacon’s computer an e-mail about Ames-Beaumont’s oddities, and another describing the location of Irena’s forge. She’d recovered his phone records, too—including a text that had requested Irena’s info, Deacon’s terse reply, and a photograph of Eva.

By then, discovering that Anaria had used Deacon’s keycard to enter the warehouse hadn’t mattered. She could have broken in, anyway.

Irena hadn’t let herself think after Savi had laid out everything she’d found. The pain had been too sharp; she’d been too angry. She’d walked up to the second floor of the warehouse, and watched from a darkened observation room as Ames-Beaumont fought his terror in a chamber of mirrors.

The images of Chaos he’d projected still festered behind her eyes. Rivers of molten rock twisted across a bleak landscape of black stone. Wyrmwolves raced in packs, tearing pieces from one another as they ran, and swarming like a plague of rats when carrion fell from above.

Ames-Beaumont hadn’t looked up often. When he had, he’d flinched as if the enormous dragons darting through the air passed within feet of him. He’d projected iridescent scales, gaping jaws with shreds of putrid flesh caught between serrated teeth, but couldn’t project the scent that made him gag and retch. And although she couldn’t hear the screams of the damned, she saw them clearly—their bodies dangling from a frozen ceiling, as if Chaos was a cavern beneath the bowels of Hell.

But Chaos wasn’t
beneath
Hell. The ceiling formed a barrier between the two realms, but not a physical one. Within Hell lay a territory of ice and silence, and frozen within the ground were the faces of the damned—demons and humans who’d failed to fulfill their bargains. After death, their faces were eternally frozen in Hell, but their bodies rotted in Chaos. And like vultures picking over a battlefield, the dragons devoured the bodies—which regenerated, eventually to be eaten again. In Hell, the tortured souls remained aware of every second of it; there was no relief for them.

Irena didn’t know if Deacon had been forced into a bargain with the demon. Perhaps the demon hadn’t needed one—the lives of Deacon’s lovers and his community were probably worth more to him than his soul.

But it was his life that Irena had to consider now. She and Alejandro would be heading to Prague soon.

She smoothed her hand over his forearm, signaling that she was ready to talk—if he was. Behind her, he shifted his weight, and a light tension seeped through his body.

“Have you decided what you will do?”

Straight to the point, her Olek. Irena thought of Eva’s picture, her face a mask of fear. And she saw Dru’s red shoe. “I will slay him.”

He didn’t reply, but she felt his response in the hardening of his psychic scent.

“You don’t agree?”

“I cannot see that any of his decisions were made of his free will. Instead, I see a man who was broken and used by at least two demons.”

Yes. They’d discovered that, as well. The origin and time of the messages hadn’t matched Rael’s movements. Another demon—probably one of Rael’s subordinates—had been pulling Deacon’s strings.

But Deacon could have cut those strings. “He made a decision when he contacted SI. He made one with every message he sent—”

“And attempted, in one, to refuse their orders. He did not stop fighting.”

“But he gave in. He decided to do as they asked. He could have decided to come to me.” Her throat was tightening. Her insides felt as if they’d been flayed. “He could have told us. We’d never have refused to help him. He
knew
I would fight for him, yet he decided against it, every time.”

“Perhaps he did not believe that we could.”

Her heart twisted. “That is our purpose. He knows that’s what Guardians are for.”

“But we don’t always win. He would know that, too.”

He sighed when she didn’t respond. She didn’t know how to tell him that she remained silent
not
because her answer was obvious, but because she had no answers.

“I do believe punishment is appropriate, Irena. But I do not think that death is.”

What sort of punishment could possibly be appropriate—what was even an option? “Shall we beat him again? Shall we lock him away with only pig blood? Guardians have never been jailers.”

“Perhaps we should start.” He paused. “Are you slaying Deacon to punish him, or to punish yourself for bringing him to SI?”

She couldn’t answer that, either. “You see too many sides, Olek.”

“That doesn’t sound like the insult is used to be.”

“Because it is not.”

He pulled her closer. She turned, wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his heart. His wings folded forward, the white feathers coming around her in a warm, weightless embrace. How had she ever thought she didn’t want comfort from him? This was comfort, and more. And she’d had no idea how much she’d needed it. Especially now.

Her voice was thick, the words a physical ache. “When will the gathering for Dru be?”

“Selah and Jake are sending word to the others. It will be in two or three days.”

Her eyes burned, and she pressed her face harder into his chest, as if the pressure could hold back the tears. “She fought me. Every step of the way, she fought me.”

Olek held her, his hands running up and down her back. Irena gulped in air. The pain threatened to rip her apart. And she felt it. By the gods, how she felt it. She turned again. His wings parted. Cool air swept her face.

“You can never prepare for this,” she whispered, and her chest would not stop shuddering. “The hand, the leg. You can be ready when you lose them. Not this.”