Demon Forged Read online

  He could not do it any more. He vowed not to fight with her again—and hoped his will would be stronger than his need.

  He’d made that vow before; he’d never honored it. He broke his promises, even to himself. When he fought with her, he left nothing of himself to be proud of.

  Headlights swept across the square. Khavi lifted her hand against the glare, watched the car disappear down the street.

  She looked back at him. “For more than two thousand years, I waited to leave Hell. Yet sometimes, when I see all that has changed, I want to return and hide.”

  Rain slid down the back of his neck. Alejandro vanished the drop. “Why not remain in Caelum, then?”

  “It is too quiet there. And there is too much to do here.” The whites of her eyes turned completely black. “I need to find Irena.”

  So she’d come to him? “Why?”

  “A woman needs protection.”

  “A human?” At her nod, he said, “I can—”

  “No.” Khavi shook her head. “No, I have seen. It cannot be that way.”

  Not seen, but foreseen, Alejandro realized uneasily. What had she seen that involved Irena?

  Irena . . . and a human who needed protection.

  He pushed away his unease and focused on duty. Irena had argued with him. Where would she go afterward?

  “You’ve tried her quarters in Caelum?”

  “Yes.”

  “She is probably at her forge in Siberia, then.”

  “Give me a picture of where that is.”

  “I’ll go with you. If you show up alone, she will—”

  “All right.” Khavi took his hand. Her Gift drew in a sharp draft, and she nodded. “Yes, this is much better. Your presence there will convince her to come.”

  Alejandro pictured Irena’s forge and projected the image. The world spun in a dizzying whirl. But there was sunlight, when the frozen Nenetsia region in northern Russia still lay under cover of night.

  He looked up, forcing himself to focus past the disorientation. He stood in the shadow of a brick building, partially hidden by the wall. Ahead of him, a crowd of humans gathered at the foot of a columned courthouse. On the wide steps in front of them stood a demon.

  Alejandro turned and searched for Khavi—but the grigori had already gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  Irena didn’t need to spar with Olek to take his measure. She didn’t even need to see him fight to know how his strength and speed had increased over the past four hundred years. It was in every graceful movement he made.

  And she didn’t need the furnace or the hammer to shape his swords. Her Gift could have created the blades in seconds. But she needed the work of it, the heat and the precision of each hammer strike. She didn’t ask herself why she wanted to linger over them. They would not be better for her effort, and she would finish them with her Gift, removing every imperfection, refolding and strengthening the metal.

  Her Gift gave her pleasure, but so did working the metal in this way. Perhaps that was reason enough.

  The steel glowed orange when she removed it from the furnace, radiating heat that she could feel through her leather apron and gloves. His blades had always been long and thin, but now she made them longer, heavier.

  Sparks flew as her hammer struck the blade. Her Guardian strength was no help here; if she used any more than a human’s, the sword would be ruined.

  Olek had learned that quickly. He’d had a delicate artist’s touch when he worked with metal. Just firm enough. And so it hadn’t surprised her that his mouth had been just as—

  That hadn’t been Olek.

  Her hand slipped. The hammer struck on the edge of its face. Too hard. Much too hard.

  Steam boiled up as she plunged the sword into a vat of water, but the damage was done. The blade was a hair’s-breadth thick where she’d smashed it flat. A touch would shatter it.

  She could repair the blade with her Gift. She wouldn’t. This sword was ruined. Perhaps she would reuse the metal, but it would never be a worthy weapon.

  Irena tossed the sword onto the pile of damaged weapons heaped near the wall—and frowned as another sound intruded over the clatter. She tilted her head, listened. Someone outside the forge sang her name. A psychic probe met with nothing. She called in her knives.

  Outside, swirling white snow filled the air. Khavi knelt in a drift, brushing the fine powder from side to side. She looked up, her black eyelashes dusted with flakes.

  Her gaze rested on Irena’s weapons. “I do not need foresight to know that jumping into your forge, unannounced, would not end well.”

  “For you.”

  “For either of us.” Khavi stood, held out her hand. “You will come with me.”

  “Where?”

  Exasperation crossed her face. “You will come with me. I have seen it. Do not make me explain. There isn’t enough time.”

  “Until what?”

  The image that exploded past Irena’s shields stayed a brief second, but she saw enough: Alejandro with blood on his hands, crouching beside a still body. A woman with pale hair kneeled next to him, her white shirt soaked with crimson.

  “He is already there,” Khavi said. “And so is a demon. He will need help.”

  Irena extended her hand. This time, Khavi’s foresight had tested true. Irena did go with her.

  Khavi teleported her next to a brick wall. The grigori immediately disappeared again, while Irena fought the spinning effect of teleporting.

  The wall belonged to a building. The distant noise and psyches were human. Their English sounded American. Straightening, Irena vanished her knives and traded her apron for her rabbit fur mantle.

  She quickly found Alejandro at the edge of the crowd. The protesters were mostly young, she thought, but with a good mix of middle-aged and older humans. Some were holding signs. Others stood, blowing into their cupped hands to warm their fingers.

  Alejandro didn’t look at her when she stepped up next to him, but kept his gaze fixed on the speaker, a tall, handsome man with blond hair sprinkled by gray.

  Irena’s lip curled. Rael—the demon who supported SI. He spoke into a microphone about rights and love and marriage. What would a demon know or care of them? Yet the psyches of the humans around her said they cared very much. Rael deceived them with every word.

  “What game does Khavi play?” Irena asked. Alejandro understood these sorts of games better than she did.

  “I don’t know.” He paused briefly as shouts and applause broke over the crowd. “Did she tell you who we need to protect?”

  Protect? Anger ripped through her. They were to protect a human, and Khavi hadn’t told them who?

  Irena scanned the crowd. “She showed me a woman. Pale blond hair.”

  She projected the image—not tight enough. Though Rael’s mind was blocked and he probably hadn’t seen the image, he’d felt her. His speech faltered.

  He met her eyes, smiled, and continued.

  Would it be such a terrible thing if this crowd of humans witnessed her ripping his heart out?

  “Did she show you whose blood it was?”

  Irena shook her head. There were many women here, but none were familiar, none but—

  She met a pair of cool blue eyes. The flat expression in them wasn’t dislike, but there was nothing warm in them, either. A human, who shielded her mind as well as a Guardian did.

  “Detective Taylor is here,” Irena said. She hadn’t seen the woman since the night Lucifer had lost his wager with Michael, when Taylor and her partner had stood with the Guardians against Lucifer and the nest of nosferatu.

  What she remembered of the woman had been sleek and collected. There was little of that on display now. She looked fragile, her skin drawn tightly over her bones. Her hair color wasn’t much different from Irena’s, but appeared dull and brittle. Her clothes were creased.

  It happened like that, sometimes. Discovering that demons, vampires, and Guardians walked the Earth didn’t always sit easy.
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  “Her partner, Preston, is at a post on the other side of the crowd,” Alejandro said. “He has not yet spotted us.”

  Their presence here meant she and Alejandro were back in San Francisco. Irena looked at the courthouse steps again. “Who is up there with Rael?”

  “The mayor of the city stands on his left. Behind and to the right is Rael’s wife, Julia Stafford.”

  It didn’t matter what era or country—a woman like Rael’s wife was unmistakable. Her highlighted hair swept back into an elegant chignon. Pearls circled her neck. Perhaps they didn’t have titles in America, but the woman was undoubtedly an aristocrat.

  “Does she know what he is?”

  “We don’t think so.”

  By we, Irena assumed he meant those at SI. Which meant Rael had been a topic of discussion, along with the consequences of slaying him.

  There was that, at least.

  “Perhaps it wouldn’t matter to her. Stafford is being groomed by his party, and she’s ambitious,” Alejandro continued.

  Irena frowned. Why not pursue a position of power for herself, then? Women could in this era, and Julia Stafford would have the necessary education and connections.

  The crowd cheered again. Rael smiled and nodded.

  Perhaps that was why. He had charisma. So many demons did. But still, Irena could not imagine being satisfied by the position her partner attained. What kind of ambition was it to have a powerful husband? It said nothing of Julia Stafford except that she’d married well.

  Irena eyed the pearls again. Rael had married well, too. And groomed by his party? Did that mean he would rise higher than congressman? She frowned. Aside from the presidency, what was higher than a congressman in America? Irena had no idea.

  “How do you know he’s being groomed? Do you follow American politics?”

  He glanced at her, amusement in his eyes. “You don’t?”

  Her laugh was lost in the cheering of the crowd. Her question had been as idiotic as his, though for exactly the opposite reasons. Of course Olek followed politics—probably in this country and elsewhere. And of course she didn’t.

  Rael staggered. Blood spattered over his wife’s pearls. She jerked, her smile freezing. Rael fell.

  The gunshot cracked over the shocked, silent crowd—the sound delayed by distance, Irena realized. Julia Stafford collapsed, out of Irena’s sight. She began to turn, but Olek was at her back. He wrapped his arms around her and waited, waited, his body shielding hers.

  Only a second or two. The screams started, the panic. People crouched, covering their heads. Others were running, bumping into one another. No more shots rang out.

  “The wife was hit, Olek. Help her.”

  Alejandro would be safe up there with the demon. Rael couldn’t touch him in front of all these people, the cameras.

  She felt his nod against her hair. “And you?”

  “I’ll go hunting. Be safe, Olek.”

  His heat left her back. He slipped through the panicking crowd, shape-shifting and altering his clothing as he ran.

  “Guardian!”

  Irena turned. Detective Taylor bore down on her, gun drawn. Though her badge was visible on her trousers’ waistband, humans were veering away from her.

  Irena pointed. “Your shooter is in that direction. Are you coming with me?”

  Alejandro ran up the stairs, flashing his federal badge at the officers who tried to stop him. The scent of blood was sharp here. Demon blood, human blood.

  He immediately saw that nothing could be done for Rael’s wife. The bullet that passed through the side of the demon’s throat had hit hers square on. Beneath the roar of voices and screams, he heard her heartbeat cease.

  A woman knelt over Julia Stafford’s body, trying to staunch the wound with a folded cloth. Blood covered her hands. Pale hair, Alejandro saw. Her black suit, vest, and starched white shirt were too precise to be anything but a uniform.

  Alejandro crouched beside her. “She’s gone,” he said quietly.

  The woman’s eyes were flat and gray. “Yes.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Cameramen moved closer to the stage. Detective Preston climbed up the stairs, huffing and flushed. Alejandro glanced back once; Irena and Preston’s partner were gone.

  Rael rolled over, holding his neck as he crawled toward his wife. He still bled; crimson dripped in a long trail beneath him. “Julia?”

  Alejandro didn’t suppress his disgust. “You must remain still, congressman.”

  The demon looked up at him. And quickly—a human couldn’t have detected it—used a talon to dig another furrow in his neck.

  God damn him. Alejandro had to help. The demon’s life wasn’t in danger, but if his quick healing was discovered, too much could be revealed. Alejandro created a length of cloth, pretended to pull it from inside his jacket, and gave it to the demon.

  Rael pressed the cloth against his neck, gathered up his wife, and began to sob.

  Taylor ran flat-out to keep up with the Guardian’s trot. What was this one’s name? She couldn’t remember, only that she carried two wicked huge knives and dressed like a blacksmith stripper with a fur fetish and a deep appreciation for Daniel Day-Lewis’s leather stockings in The Last of the Mohicans.

  Her sprint had just begun to rake at her lungs when the Guardian stopped to study the buildings rising around them. Her head tilted back, the white hood falling away from auburn hair that looked as if she’d hacked at it with a dull ax.

  “That building,” she said, her voice thick with some eastern European accent. Russian, Czech. Taylor didn’t know. “The roof.”

  Jesus. Taylor turned and eyed the distance back to the courthouse. Six or seven hundred yards. That meant a sniper with a long-range rifle.

  “Come with me,” the Guardian said. “We will have to do this quickly to avoid being seen.”

  Do what quickly? Taylor ran after her into a recessed loading ramp at the side of the building. When they were out of easy view of the street, the Guardian stopped and held out her hand.

  When Taylor looked at it blankly, the Guardian sighed. “Unless you wish to stay on the ground, I need to hold you against my chest.”

  Oh. Oh, God. They were going to fly up to the roof. Taylor’s stomach dropped to her knees. She could almost see the nail in the coffin that held her career. She was going to have a great time explaining this in her report to Captain Jorgenson. Yes, sir, after failing to recognize the threat to a demon congressman, I flew up the side of the building. Yeah. Bye-bye, badge. But what the hell. She moved in closer to the Guardian, and once Taylor realized they were almost exactly the same height, her debate between facing the woman or turning around became a quick one. She backed up, let the Guardian wrap an arm around her waist.

  “The speed will affect you. You might pass out.”

  Great. “Just get on with it.”

  Taylor thought the Guardian might have laughed, but in the next second white flashed in her peripheral vision—holy shit those were wings—and then her head dragged down to her chest and enormous pressure squeezed her lungs. Bright spots burst behind her eyes, and darker spots swam through her vision. Her stomach ached and roiled.

  Oh, God. She was going to puke.

  She stumbled, and the Guardian steadied her. Solid concrete lay beneath her feet. Taylor looked up. The Guardian had vanished her wings.

  “We’re here?” Already? And, what—a second had passed?

  “Yes. I smell burnt gunpowder.”

  Taylor couldn’t. She could hear pigeons, the rattle and blow of air ducts—and didn’t see anyone. Just the flat, gray expanse of the roof, broken by vents and a stairwell block. From the street, police sirens wailed past the building.

  The Guardian took off across the roof. Taylor swore, then went after her toward the south end of the building, where a low wall provided a minimal safety barrier.

  A rifle lay in front of it. Semiautomatic, some serious hardware. The scope alone probably cost more than all of
Taylor’s weapons combined.

  “I’ve got to call this in.” Get a forensics team here, call the building management and have security shut the place down. “And for God’s sake, don’t touch anything,” Taylor protested when the Guardian fell to her knees beside the rifle and sniffed. “I . . . you’re going to track him?”

  “Yes.”

  Wasn’t that handy? “Let’s go, then.”

  She radioed dispatch as she followed the Guardian toward the stairwell block. Jesus, maybe it would be this easy. Only a couple of minutes had passed since the shooting; the guy couldn’t have gotten too far.

  The Guardian reached for the stairwell door. Oh, shit.

  “Wait!” Taylor caught her wrist. “Fingerprints. Maybe.” Okay, probably not a chance in hell that the guy had left prints, but they couldn’t take even that small risk.

  The Guardian looked at the metal fire door as if sizing it up. She turned and gave Taylor the same once-over. “Will you let me take you through?”

  “How?”

  Her stomach wobbled as the Guardian stepped through the door as if the steel were water. The metal warped around her body and solidified again into a flat surface. Taylor’s mouth dropped open. The Guardian’s forearm poked back through, and her fingers curled in a beckoning gesture. Taylor took her hand, a deep breath, and hurtled through the door. Being sucked through a vat of dark JELL-O might have felt weirder, but not by much.

  Taylor half-expected to be in some other realm when she opened her eyes. But on the opposite side of the door, the beige walls of the stairwell were refreshingly normal—and quiet.

  The Guardian cocked her head, listening. “I hear no one on the stairs.”

  “He got off on one of the floors, maybe.” Good. They could search the building room by room. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Irena.” She skipped down the stairs, stopped to sniff at the door, then skipped down another flight. She paused on the landing. “Here.”

  Instead of a knob, the door opened with a press-down bar. Taylor drew her weapon and pushed her hip against the end of the bar, sweeping into an empty hall. Tall plants flanked a bank of elevators. The directory at the end of the hall pointed to a suite of law offices on the right, accountants on the left.