Demon Forged (22 page)

“You okay?”

Taylor’s hand folded over the vampire’s. They were friends, Irena realized. Whatever had been semi-official about this visit dropped away.

And, she thought, their friendship also explained how Taylor knew so much.

The lights didn’t blink when Michael teleported in. Irena usually didn’t notice that he
had
teleported until she heard his heartbeat. But this time, she sensed him immediately—and almost suffocated under the weight of his psychic scent.

She usually couldn’t even
feel
his psychic scent.

“Yes. I just—” Taylor glanced to the right. “Never mind. Later.”

Irena was not sure if Savi had even heard. The vampires moved uncomfortably, though they didn’t look as blanketed with the dark weight as she did.

Then it lightened, though his eyes were fully obsidian. To Irena’s surprise, he sat next to Taylor. The detective stiffened, but didn’t scoot closer to Savi.

His harmonious voice had a deep, hard edge that she rarely heard. “Who are you?”

Without color in his eyes, it was impossible to know where his gaze was focused—but as there was only one person at the table Michael didn’t know, Irena said, “Deacon.”

“You found Rosalia.”

The vampire looked uncomfortable at taking the credit. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Beneath the table, Irena’s hands began shaking. Michael had not done anything, but something about him terrified her.

Something the vampires obviously didn’t feel the same way.

Michael drew in a breath. The goblet in front of Deacon vanished and reappeared in Michael’s grip. “Nosferatu blood.”

Deacon glanced at her. “To see if I’ll end up stronger.”

The Doyen nodded. “You might. And I should not be surprised that it is Irena who has thought of it. She is the one who made the first of you.”

“What? The first vampire?” A wave of curiosity washed away Savi’s discomfort. “How?”

“It is a tale for a darker night.” Irena’s gaze held Michael’s. “The story does not end well.”

Irena, only a century old, had come upon a young woman trying to fight a nosferatu. Though she hadn’t killed the creature—Irena had—the woman had fought with honor. So Irena had cut the heart from the nosferatu’s body and given it to her.

Irena hadn’t known that the woman would heal with each bite, or that when she’d ingested enough, she’d transform. But they’d both been delighted and amazed when she had. Irena had helped the young woman explore her abilities throughout the night . . . but had not anticipated the agony that the sun brought.

She’d died, screaming.

“It did not end well for that one. But many lives have been saved since.” Michael looked at her and spoke in the language of the Mongol Horde. Irena had not heard the dialect in centuries—and, very likely, no one else at the table could understand his words. “It was not a failure. You could not know daylight would kill her.”

But she should have guessed. She’d known a nosferatu’s weakness. Beneath the table, she laced her trembling fingers together. Why had he used a different language—one that only she would know? “Did Khavi tell you who the woman was?”

“Yes.” He angled his head slightly, toward the corner of the booth where Taylor and Savi were speaking with each other. “The human beside me.”

Irena’s heart thumped a painful beat. “What will happen?”

“A vampire. Khavi does not see how or when it comes about. Only that it does.”

And that explained why Michael was here. He would not let it happen. Neither would Irena. “Can it be changed?”

She knew he would say yes. Michael believed that free will dictated the future, not prophecy.

“Yes.”

Then why was he so upset? Unless . . . “Was there more? Did she tell you more?”

“Yes.” The dark psychic weight pushed her down again—despair. Terror. Then it lifted, as if he’d made an effort to conceal it. “But I will not let it come to pass.”

And the demons could have used tutoring themselves, Alejandro thought, lifting his pen from his report. His desk chair creaked as he leaned back and looked through the open window of his study. Winter birds chirped and fluttered in the garden. Across the bay, the city of Cádiz was nestled like a pearl between the satiny blue water and the clear skies.

Many Guardians returned to Caelum for moments of quiet and to complete the busy work of their assignments. Alejandro preferred the warmth of his house. It wasn’t quiet, but it wasn’t
silent
, either—whereas Caelum’s silence was so enormous that Alejandro had difficulty focusing on anything else. He’d have found himself thinking of all those Guardians lost during the Ascension, instead of what he should have been contemplating: a demon’s incompetence with a sword.

Palacio’s and Verón’s skills weren’t near the level that qualified a Guardian to teach others. Either the demons weren’t invested in properly training the vampires, or there were so few skilled warriors among Belial’s demons that they made do with what they had.

The second possibility intrigued him—but Alejandro knew the first was far more likely. The demons wanted a supply of vampire blood, and their offer to train the vampires—to prepare them to fight the nephilim—appeared to be a fair trade. The vampires wouldn’t know until it was too late that the protection the demons provided was substandard.

And an illusion. A vampire couldn’t beat a nephil in hand-to-hand combat. Their only real protection started with a phone call to Special Investigations and the Guardians.

Tomorrow, Alejandro would use the demons’ blood to open that line of communication.

He put his pen back to paper to continue the report. One day, he knew, he would succumb to modern computers. But he enjoyed the scratch of the pen’s steel nib against the paper, the coppery scent of the ink—and he could write his reports in triplicate at the same speed a computer saved a file to its hard drive. He glanced over at the waist-high stack of newspapers and journals delivered to his home every week. And he had yet to see a computer that had a data connection fast enough to deliver him the same amount of news in the five minutes he would need to read through that stack—and deliver it in as many languages. Yes, he was quite satisfied with ink and paper.

 

 

Thunder cracked above the house, rattling the windows. Alejandro called in his swords and leapt atop his desk, listening. Not thunder. The skies were cloudless.

A shout shattered the silence. An ear-splitting crash followed. Alejandro raced through his house toward the solarium. The glass roof had collapsed. The scent of blood, burnt flesh, and ozone filled the room. In the corner, Jake bent over a still form.

Alejandro pushed in front of Jake. Electrical burns scorched her forearm and hand, shallow slices and deep gashes bloodied her face and side. Her leather apron had protected her stomach and breasts—not so her arms. “Find a healer, Jake. Now.”

“No.” Irena clenched her teeth as she propped herself on her unburned elbow. “I will heal.”

Jake crouched and picked a jagged shard out of her blistered forearm, wincing at its size. “I’m sorry, Irena. So sorry.” He glanced over at Alejandro. “We meant to jump in a few hundred yards up in case Emilia was here. I wouldn’t just pop in on you again—”

“You can. She no longer lives here.” He watched Irena’s expression, but it didn’t change, and she didn’t look up at him. With the edge of her thumbnail, she pried up a spur of glass embedded in her biceps.

Jake nodded. “Okay. Good to know. So we jumped in, but my new Gift just—
Zzzzt!
Got us. Okay, actually, it got
her
.”

Irena vanished the spur, started pulling out another. “You need to learn control, or it will be Alice next.”

“Gee, Irena, thanks. I hadn’t figured that out yet.”

Her head snapped back. Her glare eviscerated the young Guardian.

Apology rushed through Jake’s psychic scent. “Sorry. I know.” His throat worked. “It’s just that the thought of accidentally doing this to her freaks me out.”

Irena’s mouth softened, and she sighed. Alejandro fought the urge to flay Jake for his thoughtlessness—and ignored the tug of envy in his chest. Irena
never
let go of her anger so easily with him.

“Try this, Jake.” A steel pole appeared in Irena’s hand. She looked the metal staff up and down, then glanced at Jake. Her Gift pulsed; a foot-long blade formed at each end. “Use it as an electrical ground every time you teleport, so that the spark will go through it instead of us.”

Jake took the weapon, his mouth twisting ruefully. “It’s not just a spark anymore.”

“No.” Irena shifted her weight, lines of strain around her mouth. “Go now. Find me at seven tomorrow morning, San Francisco time.”

“Find you here?” Jake asked.

“I’ll be here but a few minutes. My shields will be down, so you can jump directly to me.” She paused. “But before you do, practice with the staff and without it.”

Jake nodded and closed his eyes—getting ready to teleport.

“Jake!” Alejandro gestured toward the garden visible through the solarium’s remaining windows. “Do it out there.”

A blush stained the Guardian’s cheeks. “Right.”

As soon as Jake jogged outside, Alejandro turned back to Irena. He called in a jar of aloe from his cache.

She began to protest. “I’ll heal—”

“Yes, you will. But it hurts more than is necessary now. This will cool the burns.”

She smiled faintly. “You know.”

“Yes.” He knew burns very well.

Jake’s Gift pushed against his psychic blocks. From the corner of his eye, Alejandro saw the young Guardian vanish.

Beside him, Irena seemed to collapse on herself. “This first, Olek.”

She rolled over onto her stomach, and Alejandro swore. A six-inch glass shard was embedded parallel to her spine. Blood pooled around the edges. The skin surrounding it had already begun to heal. Gently, Alejandro pinched the slippery glass and pulled. The healing skin tore, and fresh blood ran down the small of her back. Irena bit the side of her hand, muffling her cry.

Alejandro clenched his teeth and continued to pull. Finally, the glass slid free of her flesh. He stared down at the bloodied, triangular shard. The point had stabbed as deep as a dagger.

Holy Mother of God. “You should have asked me to remove it while Jake was here. He should have seen the consequences.”

“He felt bad enough.”

The tears in her eyes put Alejandro in vehement disagreement. But he held his tongue and formed a clean cloth, pressing it over the wound.

She sat up again, bending her arm behind her back. Her fingers slid against his as she took over holding the compress. Though her breath came in shudders, the wry smile she gave him didn’t tremble.

“Pain hurts so much more when I’m not fighting.”

Yes. The injuries didn’t hurt less—but without an opponent to fight, there was only the pain to focus on.

He retrieved the aloe jar and scooped out the gel. God, he needed to touch her.
Again.
He’d touched her more today than in hundreds of years.

Damn his heart, he wasn’t satisfied by it.

Gently, he slid the gel over the back of her hand, onto her wrist. Did he imagine that her eyes tracked the movement of his fingers? He scooped out more aloe.

His gaze followed the winding body of her tattoo. “Have you come to fight?”

“No, I—not to fight.” She shook her head. “Michael spoke with Khavi. We are to protect Detective Taylor.”

Damn. It shouldn’t be worse that Taylor was someone he knew and liked—yet it was. “Protect her from what?”

“A vampire.” The softness of her response told him how much she feared being unable to stop it. “Khavi told Michael more—his own future, I suspect—but he would not share it.”

“But you think it’s important?” Important enough to mention.

“He was . . . not himself.” Her tattoos seemed to retreat beneath Alejandro’s fingers, as if seeking protection. “He watches over Taylor now. I don’t know if I should have watched
him
.”

She didn’t conceal the tremor in her voice, and Alejandro’s chest tightened. He wasn’t certain what to think of Michael’s parentage, but he was inclined to trust the Doyen. Irena, however—she had known Michael longer. Had been mentored by him. And she’d always plainly worn her admiration, respect, and loyalty toward him.

Discovering that Michael had hidden the truth from them hadn’t only angered her. She’d been disillusioned. And after more than sixteen hundred years, she hadn’t just lost faith in the Doyen—faith had been torn away from her.

Yes, he could understand why she felt betrayed and wary around Michael. “Yet you didn’t watch him. You came here, instead.”

Had come here, though she never had before. He wanted to show his home to her, to watch her face as she looked at each room. He would tear it down and start over if he sensed even a hint of displeasure.

Her gaze remained on his hands. “I want you to pull strings.”

“Whose?”

“Whoever we need to have Taylor assigned to SI and this investigation into Rael.”

Ah. This was Irena’s method of preventing conflict—she removed herself from the equation. Amusement eased the tightness that had been squeezing at his chest. “And so you want me to ask Lilith to pull the strings.”