Demon Forged Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  EPILOGUE

  “An action-packed series full of creatures of dark and light.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  DEMON BOUND

  “An excellent entry in a great series . . . Another winner as the multifaceted Guardian saga continues to expand in complexity while remaining entertaining . . . Complex and beautifully done as always.”

  —Book Binge

  “Be prepared for more surprises and more revelations . . . Brook continues to deliver surprising characters, relationships, paranormal elements, and plot twists—the only thing that won’t surprise you is your total inability to put this book down.”

  —Alpha Heroes

  “Readers will be blown away by the fascinating and unique heroine.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Raises the bar on paranormal romance for sheer thrills, drama, and world-building, and hands-down cements Brook’s place at the top of her field.”

  —Romance Junkies

  DEMON NIGHT

  “Meljean is now officially one of my favorite authors. And this book’s hero? . . . I just went weak at the knees. And the love scenes—wow, just wow.”

  —Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author of Slave to Sensation and Visions of Heat

  “This is the book for paranormal lovers. It is a phenomenal book by an author who knows how to give her readers exactly what they want. What Brook’s readers want is a story that is dangerous, sexy, scary, and smart. Demon Night delivers all that and more! . . . [It] is the epitome of what a paranormal romance should be! I didn’t want to put it down.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  “Poignant and compelling with lots of action, and it’s very sensual. You’ll fall in love with Charlie, and Ethan will cause your thermometer to blow its top. An excellent plot, wonderful dialogue . . . Don’t miss reading it or any of Meljean Brook’s other novels in this series.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “An intense romance that will leave you breathless . . . I was drawn in from the first page.”

  —Romance Junkies

  DEMON MOON

  “The fourth book in Meljean Brook’s Guardian series turns up the heat without losing any of the danger.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A read that goes down hot and sweet—utterly unique—and one hell of a ride.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu

  “Sensual and intriguing, Demon Moon is a simply wonderful book. I was enthralled from the first page!”

  —Nalini Singh

  “Action-packed, with a fascinating, one-of-a-kind vampire hero and a heroine with some very unique qualities.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Brings a unique freshness to the romantic fantasy realm . . . Action-packed from the onset.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “I loved every moment of it.”

  —All About Romance

  “Fantastically drawn characters . . . and their passion for each other is palpable in each scene they share. It stews beneath the surface, and when it finally reaches a boiling point, . . . OH WOW!”

  —Vampire Romance Books

  DEMON ANGEL

  “I’ve never read anything like this book. Demon Angel is brilliant, heartbreaking, genre-bending—even, I dare say, epic. Simply put, I love it.”

  —Marjorie M. Liu

  “Brook has crafted a complex, interesting world that goes far beyond your usual . . . paranormal romance. Demon Angel truly soars.”

  —Jennifer Estep, author of Jinx

  “I can honestly say I haven’t read many books lately that have kept me guessing and wondering ‘what’s next,’ but this is one of them. [Brook has] created a unique and different world . . . Gritty and realistic . . . Incredibly inventive . . . This is a book which makes me think and think about it even days after finishing it.”

  —Dear Author

  “Enthralling . . . [A] delightful saga.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Extremely engaging . . . A fiendishly good book. Demon Angel is outstanding.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “A surefire winner. This book will captivate you and leave you yearning for more. Don’t miss Demon Angel.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “A fascinating romantic fantasy with . . . a delightful pairing of star-crossed lovers.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Complex and compelling . . . A fabulous story.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  FURTHER PRAISE FOR MEL JEAN BROOK AND FOR “ FALLING FOR ANTHONY” FROM HOT SPELL

  “An emotional roller coaster for both the characters and the reader. Brook has penned a story I am sure readers won’t soon forget . . . Extraordinary work.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “In-depth and intriguing. I loved the obvious thought and ideas put into writing this tale. The characters are deep, as is the world that is set up.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Brook . . . creates fantastic death-defying love . . . Extremely erotic . . . With a paranormal twist.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Intriguing . . . The sex is piping hot.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “I look forward to many more tales from Ms. Brook.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  Titles by Meljean Brook

  DEMON ANGEL

  DEMON MOON

  DEMON NIGHT

  DEMON BOUND

  DEMON FORGED

  Anthologies

  HOT SPELL

  (with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Shiloh Walker)

  WILD THING

  (with Maggie Shayne, Marjorie Liu, and Alyssa Day)

  FIRST BLOOD

  (with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Chris Marie Green)

  MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

  (with Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, and Ilona Andrews)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEMON FORGED

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / October 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Melissa Khan.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14526-5

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing is solitary work, but a book can’t be produced alone. Thank you to my editor, Cindy Hwang, who is patient and brilliant, and I thank God every day that she’s mine. To her assistant, Leis Pederson, who gets me everything I need. To the art department at Berkley, and the cover artist, Cliff Nielsen, who blew my socks off with this spectacular design, and an image that is everything I write my heroines to be: strong, strong, strong . . . and sexy. And to everyone else at Berkley whose work has touched the books in this series—I can’t thank you enough.

  Also, my undying gratitude goes to Nathalie Nguyen, who helped me out with the French that my Spanish classes in high school and college never covered. To Michelle Dominguez, who checked my Italian. Everything correct is theirs, every error is, of course, mine. To Ilona Andrews, Jill Myles, Jennifer Lampe, Holly Mercer, and Kate Garrabrant, who always manage to send me e-mails at exactly the right time, whether they know it or not. And to all of the readers who stop by my blog, drive to a signing, or send me e-mails and cookies to share with my daughter, and whose lives touch my strange little one—thank you.

  To the city of San Francisco: I’m sorry. I couldn’t pick up City Hall and move it, so I took liberties.

  Excerpts from an unprepared speech by Rep. Thomas Stafford, delivered during a closed-door meeting in Washington, D.C., to five members of the Senate, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, May 2009:

  Two years ago, the senators and I met in this room to discuss the formation of Special Investigations, which now operates under the Homeland Security umbrella. Madam Secretary, Mr. Secretary, in that meeting, your counterparts in the former administration heard the story of the First Battle, during which rebel angels, led by Lucifer, were defeated and transformed into demons. These demons were tossed into Hell, but were able to travel to Earth through the Gates until the events two years ago that brought the Guardians to the attention of your government.

  In addition to the demons, nosferatu—angels who refused to take a side in the First Battle, and who were cursed with bloodlust—were banished here to Earth. Although the nosferatu have been hunted almost to extinction, those who come out of hiding still pose a terrible danger to humans.

  Initially, warrior angels loyal to Heaven protected humans from both demons and nosferatu. When humans began worshipping them as gods, however, Lucifer became jealous. He summoned a dragon from the Chaos realm, and used it to wage another war upon the angels—but this battle took place on Earth, instead of Heaven.

  Mankind joined the side of the angels, and one man, Michael, struck down the dragon by severing its heart. With Lucifer’s most dangerous weapon slain, the angels prevailed.

  After the Second Battle, the angels bestowed upon Michael the powers of a Guardian, and gave to him the power to change any other men or women who sacrificed themselves to save another with the same power. The Guardians’ only duty is to protect human free will and life from the threat of the nosferatu and demons. . . .

  In the past two years, however, new threats have arisen. The nephilim, created by an alliance between Lucifer and one of the grigori—a half-demon, half-human offspring born before the Second Battle—now intend to take the throne in Hell, and suppress human free will. That grigori, Anaria, was imprisoned by the Guardians more than two thousand years ago; she has recently escaped, and now leads the nephilim. . . .

  Despite our recent losses, the Guardian corps is strong, and Special Investigations remains committed to protecting mankind against those who threaten human lives and free will. Defending human life and liberty is our purpose, our duty. We will persevere with or without your support, with the utmost faith and confidence that we will prevail against our enemies. I trust, however, that we have your support and that recent events have clearly demonstrated the necessity of our continued operation.

  We are all that stands between you and Hell, gentlemen.

  CHAPTER 1

  Three months earlier . . .

  Once upon a time, all roads had led to Rome. As a human girl, Irena had been marched into Rome on the Via Salaria, as frightened by the imposing city walls as she had been of the shackles binding her mother’s wrists. Frightened—and forbidden the comfort of remembering the home that had lain at the beginning of their journey. They hadn’t been allowed to look back; all that lay ahead of a conquered people was service to the Empire.

  Twelve years later, the Visigoths had sacked the city, and Irena had escaped by the same road. She’d looked back then, but only because she’d hoped to see Rome burning behind her.

  It hadn’t. To Irena’s bitter disappointment, the barbarians had shown restraint. Although fires had lit the nighttime sky, the city hadn’t been consumed by flames.

  Time consumed it, instead. Over sixteen hundred years, all that Irena had known of Rome slowly crumbled. In another sixteen centuries, the celebrated remnants of the empire might collapse into nothing. Humans labored to preserve and restore the ruins, but Irena wouldn’t be sorry when they were gone. She preferred what had risen in their place.

  Now, as she jogged across the Via Salaria, she relished the feel of smooth concrete beneath her leather soles rather than paving stones under bare feet. Automobiles with their blinding headlights and blaring horns swerved to avoid her. One driver shouted obscenities, and Irena grinned at him through the windshield. One of the few things she’d liked about Rome had survived—and Italians were still inventive.

  Irena suspected she’d soon be coming up with a few curses of her own.

  The vampire she was scheduled to meet at the nearby Piazza Fiume shouldn’t have been here. Not in Rome. Less than a year ago, the nephilim had slaughtered every vampire within the city. The demons might still be here, hidden within the bodies of their human hosts and shielding their psychic scents.

  The nephilim still might be here . . . but they weren’t just demons, Irena reminded herself, and her amusement leached from her thoughts, leaving them sour and dark. The nephilim had come from Hell, but they hadn’t been created when Lucifer and his angel comrades had rebelled against Heaven and been transformed into demons. No, the nephilim were the offspring of Anaria and Zakril, two demon-spawned grigori who’d once called themselves Guardians.

  There were still other grigori who called themselves Guardians. Until a few weeks ago, Irena would have fought to the death for one of them: Michael—the first Guardian, and their leader.

  She would not die for him now.

  Michael hadn’t explained why he’d lied about his parentage for millennia, or why he’d written in the Scrolls that he’d been human before slaying the Chaos dragon. Not that an explana
tion was necessary. As the son of Belial and a human woman, Michael was half demon—and lies were as natural to demons as their scales and horns.

  Since she’d learned the truth, Irena couldn’t make herself trust or believe in him. Not while Belial’s blood ran through his veins.

  But although she’d lost faith in the Doyen, she was still a Guardian. Still believed that every demon and nosferatu needed killing, that humans—and some vampires—needed protecting. And she would have met with Deacon even if the vampire hadn’t been a friend.

  A friend, but not close enough to know what this part of Rome had meant to her. She’d never told Deacon that she remembered the walls when they hadn’t been ruins, and the gate that had opened Rome to the Via Salaria. This meeting and location had nothing to do with her past. And she could have avoided this road and the memories associated with it by flying directly to the piazza, but she’d wanted to be reminded of the changes in the city. She wanted the stink of exhaust burning her nostrils, rather than the stink of bodies, animals, and waste.

  And she’d wanted to see the metal. So much metal.

  Yes, she liked what had risen—and who had risen. Whether they lived here or were tourists fascinated by the past, humans experienced the same emotions they always had, but they governed those emotions differently. There were still too few with too much power, but despite the corruption at its foundation, the civilization that humanity had built was impressive.