Demon Bound (5 page)

Alice's boots crunched the snow as she landed. Irena froze, and cast a killing look over her shoulder.

With a wave of her hand, Alice called, “A very good evening to you!”

Though Alice didn't know the word Irena spat, it was blunt and unmistakably Slavic.

Alice didn't
have
to yell over the thundering hooves for Irena to hear her, but once a task was begun, it was best to do it well. And besides, she needed to practice her Russian. “It is a cold night for hunting, yes?”

Irena was already streaking through the trees. Alice followed at a leisurely pace. When she emerged from the opposite side of the copse, Irena was working over a steaming body.

The deer snorted and circled, watching them warily. Blood darkened Irena's forearms, obscuring to her elbows the blue tattoos that decorated the length of her arms. She'd vanished her white mantle. Her smithy's apron protected her chest, leaving her arms and back bare.

Alice ran her hands down her sleeves. She could never be comfortable with so much exposed.

“And now you are quiet.” Irena did not look up as she disemboweled the deer. The grisly task was not so different from the one Alice had performed on the demon, only hours before. “You creep up on me like Zorya Polunochnaya, swathed in darkness. You only lack the white hair and hunched back.”

Like the midnight aurora?
Alice frowned, until she realized that she'd translated
zorya polunochnaya
to English instead of hearing it as a name. Oh, dear. When had she last read about the Zorya? To the best of her recollection, they were three mythical goddesses watching over a sky hound chained to a constellation. The hound would destroy the universe if he broke his bonds.

Alice considered that as Irena rolled the deer's body onto its back. The heat of its blood and innards had melted the snow to pink slush.

Irena might have been the morning Zorya, Alice decided. The fierce young warrior. Neither of them would be the mother.

And Alice would rather the world not rely on her as their defense against annihilation by a godhound. Demons were quite enough. “If I must be a crone,” she said, “I would prefer to be Baba Yaga.”

“Would you aid the lost, or abduct children and eat them?”

“Both. It would lend more variety to my day. I should also like to have invisible servants.”

Irena snorted. “And a home built on dancing chicken legs? With no windows, no doors—”

“And you will not build a chimney through which I could leave.”

The angled knife in Irena's hand hesitated. Then she finished the cut, jaggedly slicing through the breastbone.

Alice's voice did not tremble. She could take pride in that, she supposed. At this point, it was the small things that counted. “A room of metal I cannot escape. Twenty years ago, Irena, you promised me this. If you hadn't, I never would have returned to Earth after I completed my training.”

“We also promised never to speak of it again until necessary. Is it?”

“Teqon contacted me. I'm to fulfill my bargain, or be killed.”

Irena's knife regained its former precision. “You are still trying to find an alternative?”

Trying, but not succeeding very well. “Yes. There must be something he wants more than Michael's heart. Something that would release me.”

“Something tied to this prophecy Drifter told us about?”

Alice laced her fingers together, as if protecting the spark of hope that had burned in the months since she'd heard of the prophecy. “Perhaps.”

Irena sat back on her heels, brushed her hair from her forehead with a bloody hand. “Teqon follows Belial in his war against Lucifer.”

“Yes.” Belial claimed that he fought for redemption, to return to the glory of Heaven. Alice didn't believe him—didn't think any Guardian believed him.

“And according to the prophecy, Belial will be victorious.”

“Perhaps,” Alice said again. What Ethan had told them was vague, at best. Belial's demons would defeat Lucifer, but first they had to win other battles.

What those battles were and how they would be won was still unknown, to Guardians and demons both.

Irena reached into the chest cavity, tore out the heart. Alice waited quietly as the other woman said a few reverent words over it. When Irena tore off a chunk with her teeth, Alice said, “It is Michael's opinion that the prophecy has no validity—that nothing can be foretold. He dismisses it entirely.”

Irena swallowed, then vanished the remaining heart and the body of the deer into her cache. “I am of the same mind as the Doyen. And Michael is rarely incorrect about such things.” She cocked a brow and stood. “But it does not matter as long as Teqon believes it, yes?”

“That is what I hope.”

“Have you found evidence of the prophecy? Any mention that did not originate from a demon?”

“Not yet.” Nothing in the temples, nothing in the Scrolls.

“Keep trying,” Irena said, as if Alice might have considered anything else. “The options you've chosen—there is no victory, Alice. Eternal torment or eternal prison. If you become mad enough, they will be the same.”

Yet it would be fitting. She'd been thought insane when she'd made the bargain. How elegant that she would be reduced to insanity by it. “I shall spend eternity creeping around the room.”

Smiling, Irena knelt and began washing the blood from her arms with the snow. “You are an odd woman, Alice.”

“Given enough time, I will be odder still. But even if my mind is gone, my soul would be safe.”

Irena's mouth reshaped into a hard line. “Our souls are never safe. Not so long as there are demons who know the prices for which we will sell them.” She scooped up more snow, roughly scrubbed her face and hair. Her ivory skin glowed when she finished. “I will help you as much as I can, Alice. But if you cannot face imprisonment, and choose to fulfill your bargain, I will kill you myself.”

Irena had said the same twenty years ago, and so Alice was prepared for the sadness and dread the words stirred inside her.

She concealed it remarkably well, she thought. “You may not have the opportunity. Very likely, a queue of Guardians will be waiting to take my head.”

“Then I will push to the front.” Irena stood and looked to the east. Her wings sprouted from her naked back, the feathers a deeper, purer white than the snow around them. “I must deliver the meat to the village before dawn. Will you come to Seattle tonight? Charlie completed her training in Ashland, and Drifter wants to make an evening of it. I was to invite you if we met.”

“I'll come,” Alice said without hesitation, amazing herself. How simple that decision had been. Several months ago, only Irena's nagging and her own curiosity had propelled her to meet the woman Ethan had chosen for a partner. But to Alice's surprise, she'd been comfortable in Charlie's company. The woman had a gift of putting anyone she spoke with at ease—a gift that Ethan shared.

A gift Alice had never possessed.

In any case, she needed to talk with Ethan. Not only would he know how to find Teqon, Ethan was also the Guardian most familiar with the prophecy—and he would ask few questions in return.

Not that there were answers she could give. Or that she
would
give. Only Irena and Michael knew of her bargain. Her debt to Teqon made her a traitor at worst and a coward at best—and she'd never had the spine to tell Ethan or any of the other Guardians with whom she'd become close.

Irena turned, her wings arching, and for a moment Alice was reminded of the statue in the temple. Then the Guardian lifted into the sky, signing a farewell.

No, Alice thought. She had no answers. But if she were lucky, perhaps the photographs in her cache would finally offer a clue.

 

Alice firmed her lips before the curse escaped. It was shameful to lose her temper—even more so to lose it over a piece of godforsaken technology.

She'd known trying to maintain a computer in Caelum would be more of a hassle than it was worth, but she'd been seduced by the cleverness of the machine.

The photographs of the temple interior had transferred from camera to hard drive with amazing speed. No film to develop, no negatives to store. And the resolution on her screen was incredible. Much more detailed than her best drawings could be, and it was easier to enlarge sections of each picture for printing.

But she'd almost drained her tenth—her
last
—battery. Caelum lacked electricity; she'd have no opportunity to recharge them until she visited Earth.

The warning light blinked again.

Worthless, wretched machine. But there was no reasoning with it. She selected photos to print and wrote them to a flash drive. For now, she would have to rely on her memory and her sketches.

Her senses hummed, and she glanced up, reaching out with her Gift. Beyond the entrance to her apartment, Remus and Romulus buzzed with excitement over some disturbance.

Alice heard laughter a moment later. Her mouth slackened in what must have been an idiotic expression of incomprehension.

Silly, softheaded cow.
What was there not to comprehend? With a few exceptions, only Guardians had stepped foot in Caelum since the angels had transferred the realm over to Michael.

Therefore, Guardians must be in her courtyard.

Straightening, she moved to the marble doors that led from her quarters. On her portico, a web stretching between two columns trembled as Remus scurried upward to hide in the scrollwork. Romulus remained behind, repairing a limp thread like a nervous old woman tidying a room for unexpected guests.

Alice resisted the urge to smooth her hand over her hair. An ache took up residence in her chest, but she repressed that as well.

Though many Guardians had once lived in this part of Caelum, it had been empty since the Ascension. Since, more than a decade earlier, silence had abruptly fallen over the city as thousands of heartbeats and voices were extinguished. Alice hadn't comprehended then, either—until she'd walked into the courtyard, and none of her students had been there to greet her.

They'd spoken of Ascending before. Unconvinced that Guardians were needed in a modern world, they'd all chosen to move on to their afterlife.

So had thousands of other Guardians; less than forty remained after the Ascension. Since then, only a few bored novices had wandered in this direction.

And two years ago, when the novices had begun training in San Francisco instead of Caelum, “few” had dwindled to “none.”

Now there was laughter in the courtyard again. The ivory buildings surrounding the tiled square were not as tall as they were in other parts of the city, or as graceful. There were more straight edges here, fewer domes and spires. But the marble ivy climbing their walls seemed to seek the touch of the sun, and was found nowhere else in Caelum. In the center of the courtyard, a sculpted ash tree spread its translucent stone leaves over an un-moving shadow. The pavers at the base of the trunk buckled, as if a root system fought for space below the ground.

She could have sketched every detail in the courtyard with her eyes closed, yet with that sound warming the air, the familiar scene suddenly looked foreign to her.

Oh, dear.
Alice pressed her lips together. Foreign was a bit of an overstatement, wasn't it? Next she would be decrying that the appearance of true life had stripped the courtyard of its illusions, leaving only coldness and death, woe and fie!

If she let herself, the depths of histrionics she might plumb were dizzying.

This was not something foreign, but something forgotten. And the courtyard was just as lovely and unique as it had ever been.

Folding her arms over her chest, Alice watched the novice from the temple—Jake, she reminded herself—perform an odd, hip-and knee-twisting dance beneath the tree. Drusilla had doubled over, holding her sides and begging him to stop. Next to her, Pim had bent as well; but instead of laughing, the novice had her hands braced on her knees. Her sleek bowl of black hair slanted forward across her cheeks, and her psychic scent billowed with nausea.

Nausea? Guardians didn't need to eat and were never sickened by it. So Jake's queer dance probably celebrated a successful teleportation, Alice decided. Drusilla, older and more accustomed to the disorientation that accompanied the jump, wasn't as affected as the novice she mentored.

Only Michael, Selah, and Jake could teleport, so Alice rarely used that method to travel between realms. But although the Gates were not as convenient—they were spaced great distances apart on Earth—she enjoyed flying. It was far better, she mused, than wobbling.

Pim lifted her head, met Alice's eyes, and the sallow color that had been ebbing from the novice's face oozed back in.

How easily unsettled these novices were. A cackle would have been just the thing—but now that Drusilla's laughter had faded into a smile of greeting, much too heavy-handed.

Drusilla vanished her physician's coat, called in a sword, and used it to wave. “Good afternoon, Alice darling!”

Alice's lips curved. The salutation was as light and bubbly as soda water—and so was Drusilla.

She stepped from beneath the portico roof, brushing her hand across the web and scooping up Romulus. “You must be coming from San Francisco if it was afternoon.”

Several Guardians and all of the novices were connected to a law enforcement facility headquartered in that city, where they received their assignments and training. Alice hadn't bothered to see it yet. Aside from the occasional task that Michael gave her when he was in Caelum, Alice was still largely self-directed.