Demon Forged (54 page)

Irena pushed it away, refusing to glance at Khavi standing next to Michael. Their life would not be determined by prophecy.

“What is our primary objective?” Alejandro asked.

“To close the portal is the most important task. We cannot allow a dragon into Earth. Alejandro, Irena, and Alice will search the caves. Khavi and I will clear the entrance for you first, then Khavi will prevent any nephilim from coming in behind you.”

A cave that might be full of nephilim. Irena swallowed the hot lump of terror, of denial. She
would
allow Khavi at her back—and Alice, with her razored spiderwebs and quick blade, was the perfect choice to accompany them inside.

Jake’s mouth tightened. He shifted on his feet, his gaze repeatedly scanning the small diagram Michael had drawn, but he remained silent.

“The symbols Anaria will have used to make the portal won’t be in Chaos; you’ll have to destroy the portal from this side on Earth.”

Alejandro exchanged a glance with Irena. “How will you know if we’ve been successful?”

“I will know,” Khavi said. “Roads that have been open will close. Certain possibilities will cease to exist.”

Possibilities, such as a dragon passing through a portal? Why did Khavi never speak clearly?

Irena clenched her teeth and held in her response.

Drifter asked, “And the rest of us?”

“Anaria has focused her nephilim at the ceiling. They have almost killed all of the nosferatu—and we will not make an effort to stop them.”

He paused. Irena said, “You will not find an argument here.”

Michael smiled briefly, before continuing, “Our second task is simply to stop the nephilim from completing
their
task at the barrier. They are writing symbols between the bodies. We have to interrupt that.”

“How?” Jake asked.

“Whatever manner that you can, according to your Gifts and your strengths. We are also a distraction until Irena’s team closes the portal, but none of you will take unnecessary risks or make sacrifices,” Michael said. “You will be in teams of three—each team will have one teleporter. Drifter, Mariko—you are with Selah. Radha and Luther, with Jake. If the nephilim converge on your teams, or you find yourselves losing ground, run. The nephilim have a task, and they will go back to it rather than give chase. If choices must be made, you
must
choose to leave Chaos, taking your team with you. I will have no argument in that.”

No one offered one—yet. Irena eyed Jake, waiting.

“Do not approach Anaria; I will take her. Avoid the dragons. I cannot heal a dragon’s bite, but I will watch for any other wounds, and heal them as quickly as I can.” Michael glanced at Jake. “You are the Weapon, so you will be in the lead. Try to kill all of them—dragons, nosferatu, nephilim—before we fly in and engage.”

“I thought I’d have a little more time to practice with it.”

“You don’t.”

“Right, then.” Jake nodded, once. A long metal tube appeared in his hands, carrying the scent of gunpowder and oil. He hoisted it over his shoulder. “You mind if I use a couple of these first?”

Khavi frowned. “What is it?”

“Rocket launcher,” Jake said, never taking his eyes from Michael. “And I’ve got a few other ideas, too.”

Michael gestured at the table, inviting Jake to lay them out.

Jake vanished the missile launcher, called in a pen. “All right. So we’ve essentially got a whole mess swarming around beneath those bodies. The dragons, because that’s where they’re feeding, and the nephilim writing their symbols. And we’re looking to scatter the nephilim, confuse them, just keep them from doing what they’re doing. So we should be doing that over here.” He made an
X
beyond the edge of the dangling bodies, a small distance from the mountain’s cave entrance. “If we come out our portal, circle around behind the mountain and use it for cover as long as we can, then set up shop here, we can start blowing shit up from a distance, aiming right into those bodies—and we can keep an eye on that cave entrance, so that Khavi can be freer to move around like Michael, keeping Anaria and the dragons off our ass.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Michael studied the lines Jake had drawn. “Go on.”

“Irena, Alejandro, and Alice are still our best bet in the caves—they’re our strongest on the ground and in tight quarters, and Irena’s and Alejandro’s Gifts play both offense and defense. But the rest of us, we need to form a line here.” He tapped his finger on the
X
. “Luther, Drifter, Selah—their Gifts don’t have long-range capabilities, so I say we stick them with these missiles and let them go to town. I’ll try to get my lightning working, but if I can’t, I’ll pull out my own. So we’ll be the offense. Mariko and Radha, they’ve got good short-range defensive Gifts that can weaken the nephilim before going hand-to-hand. A nephil or two breaks off, comes after us, Radha and Mariko intercept it as a team, try to take it out.”

Mariko nodded. “We can do that.”

“Right on. Now, if the nephil gets closer than that, or if there’s more than one or two, we’ve got these.” Jake replaced his pen with an automatic rifle, and tilted the gun as if he were displaying a trophy. “These AK-47s will fire six hundred rounds per minute. We aren’t going to get minutes, and shooting their bodies isn’t going to hurt them enough—so we’ll aim for the wings. We’re all stuck flying—unless we want to go swimming in lava—but so far, I’ve only seen the nephilim carrying swords. So until they’re right up on us, we’ll just rip the hell out of their feathers. Maybe their eyes, if you can get an angle on them. After that, I’ve got tranquilizer darts filled with vampire blood. We’ll send them crying back to Mama.”

Irena snorted. Jake grinned, vanished his gun, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Michael’s expression didn’t change. “You have ten minutes to train them.”

“Hot damn.” Jake seemed to bounce a little, like an energetic puppy.

“But the stipulations I made before still hold: no sacrifices. If the nephilim come at you en masse, and your weapons cannot hold them back, teleport out of the realm. Alive, we can regroup and return. Dead, we cannot.” Michael waited for Selah’s and Jake’s nods. “As soon as we have gone into Chaos through the portal, the novices here will erase the symbols, and kill any wyrmwolves who make it through before the bridge closes.”

At the end of the table, Becca gave a thumbs-up. Pim nodded.

“Khavi and I will bring Irena’s team out if they can’t find Anaria’s portal. If anyone is left behind, return to our portal site—or run. Ames-Beaumont and Savitri will find you through the mirrors, and we’ll return for you.” He swept his amber gaze over each of them, his face hard. “We will not fail.”

“No,” Khavi said softly, and when her Gift dragged across Irena’s psyche, it revealed a heavy sorrow behind Khavi’s quiet expression. “We won’t.”

Flying into Chaos, Irena hit a solid wall of screams. She thought she’d prepared for them, but they ripped at her ears, her heart. Tortured, terrified, pleading—the noise filled her, combined with the hot fetid air, squeezed into her lungs as if trying to force her own scream.

She slowed, waiting for the others. Michael and Khavi had already gone through; now they flew with incredible speed around the mountainside, where they would clear a path to the caves. Below, wyrmwolves writhed and squirmed. The stench of their blood and exposed flesh rose on heated currents. To her left, the bleak landscape stretched, ribboned by the rivers of molten rock. Far above, she saw the whip of a tail and a flash of scales against the frozen black ceiling. Her heart clamored, the racing of her pulse in her ears adding to the crushing weight of sound.

Not just her heart. The others’ raced, too, as they gathered beside her. She glanced back as, finally, Alejandro came through, bringing up the rear. She met his eyes, and the pressure of the noise receded. As soon as he was in position, she led them forward.

As they rounded the side of the mountain, Jake’s group broke off, angling upward. Irena skimmed close to the rocks, aware of the bright target her white wings made against the dark granite. They came in above the cave—Michael and Khavi had already completed their task. Three nephilim lay dead beside the entrance, their black feathers the same color as the rock beneath them.

Irena landed and vanished her wings. Michael stood, bloodied sword in hand, looking out over the swarm of nephilim and dragons. A flash of white briefly lighted his face. Lightning forked across the sky. A nephil fell; a dragon dived after it.

Michael glanced at Alice. “You will tell him it was well done.”

“
You
will,” Alice countered. Her face pale, she swiftly unwound steel-strong spider silk from a coil the size of Irena’s fist. The strands were gossamer thin and difficult to see unless Irena looked for them. “I will tie one end near the mouth of the cave. If you come for us, this will lead you to our location—but mind your step. I intend to set traps, should any nephilim try to follow us inside. I will mark them with a drop of blood.”

The first explosion tore through the bodies. A dragon shrieked, drawing up as a ball of fire roared toward it. With a flick of its wings, the dragon rolled into a sinuous back somersault, changing direction. A second, then a third explosion came quickly after.

A smile touched Michael’s hard mouth, and he lifted into the air. “Be safe.”

Irena turned as Alejandro slipped into the cave, his blades gleaming in the dark. She followed.

The mouth of the cave narrowed into a single tunnel that sloped sharply down into the mountain. Ames-Beaumont and Selah had hidden in these caves before, and had given them a description as far as they could recall: After five hundred yards, this tunnel opened up into a large chamber, which split into three directions. The tunnel on the right, they’d warned, was eventually a dead end, but with enough chambers to hide the nephilim. They’d taken the left tunnel, which in turn broke off into other directions, tiny crawlspaces, abrupt chasms.

Beside her, Alejandro inhaled, and looked to her with a question in his eyes. “Human?”

His nose was better than hers. Irena could barely detect the scent of human blood and bodies beneath the reek of rot and the wyrmwolves’ stale musk. But it wouldn’t be human—it was the nephilim. The scent would give them a clearer trail to follow. Irena motioned for Alejandro to take the lead.

The noise from outside slowly faded, the screams, thunder, and explosions faint in the background. The corridor narrowed until Alejandro was forced to walk at an angle to make his shoulders fit.

Remembering Khavi’s prediction, Irena frowned. “How would a dragon fit through this space and find the portal?”

“Perhaps there is another entrance,” Alejandro said. “Or a very small dragon.”

Alice sighed. “Never would I have imagined myself saying this, but I miss the friendship you shared, when you only spoke to each other in French. How absurd I feel, following a conversation in which one half is Russian and the other Spanish.”

Alejandro spared a brief glance back. “And now more than half. You choose Russian?”

“I feel absurd, not foolish. I know better than to poke a bear with a fox’s blade.”

Irena grinned. The tunnel widened, and she felt Alejandro’s relief as he once again had more room to maneuver. Ahead, the first chamber arched overhead like a cathedral, and stood empty. The scent led them to the far tunnel.

Of course, it had to be the one tunnel they knew nothing about, Irena thought.

With his swords, Alejandro gestured to the right and left. “Shall we close them?”

Yes. Even if any nephilim hid in chambers or chasms, Irena could seal off the mouths of the corridors and prevent the nephilim from coming around behind them. She called in several tons of steel from her cache and set it at the entrance of the right tunnel. When she pushed her Gift through it, the steel flowed upward, outward, radiating into a thick door. She slammed the edges into the stone, setting the door into place. She repeated it at the left tunnel while Alice set an elaborate trap with her webs at the end of the corridor that had brought them to the chamber.

They made enough noise, Irena thought, to bring an army of nephilim down on them . . . but none came to investigate the sounds or the use of her Gift. Dense stone
could
muffle psychic senses—but if the nephilim hadn’t heard her ramming steel into stone, they’d have to be much deeper into the mountain.

Or in human form.

When the nephilim used their demon forms, their psychic scent didn’t match the humans’—and the body rejected their presence, as it might fight off a sickness. The longer the sickness, the longer the nephilim needed to heal once they reverted to human form.

Perhaps the nephilim had not been in and out of these caves using the portal. It might simply be the safest location to recuperate.

Alejandro must have been thinking the same. “I had expected them to seek us out.”

Irena nodded. “They had guards at the mouth of the cave; I cannot imagine they would not have more inside, particularly if their brethren are vulnerable.” It was what Irena would do, if she had to watch over weakened or injured comrades. “If they are in an easily defensible position, they’ll wait for us to come to them rather than leave their brethren alone.”

And unable to hide their approach, she, Olek, and Alice would walk into an ambush. Alejandro stared down the darkened corridor, his thumbs rubbing against his sword handles. It was, Irena knew, a gesture that meant the same as a stroke of his finger down his beard: He considered alternatives. He weighed priorities.

Irena slipped into the corridor, listened. Nothing. The darkness deepened at the end of the tunnel; soon, the dark would be absolute, and they’d have to use a light source to see—making them a brighter target than their movements would.

She already felt completely blind. The narrowness of the first tunnel had convinced her that the portal could not be this way—no dragon could squeeze through. Yet her certainty came from Khavi foreseeing the dragon passing through the portal; a future which, itself, was uncertain.