Demon Forged (6 page)

She and Alejandro would have to watch their heads. The nosferatu could cling to the ceiling like bats.
The nosferatu?

Irena exhaled slowly through her teeth, nodding. Most likely, the nosferatu were in the same positions as she and Alejandro: against the entrance wall, waiting for her to rush through. As soon as she did, the nosferatu would attack from behind.

You find the human,
he signed.
I’ll cover your back.

Irena flicked a small mirror past the door. The spinning disk caught the reflection of a nosferatu clinging above the entrance; she had a glimpse of one against the wall to the right. She didn’t see the other one.

She signed their locations to Alejandro and charged through.

The nosferatu waiting above the door dropped. She heard the thud of flesh as Alejandro intercepted it. Irena spun to the right. The nosferatu against the wall lifted his arms, preparing to strike.

She struck faster. Her knife impaled the creature’s exposed chest, the tip of her blade digging into the wall behind him.

Too low.
She’d missed the heart. Stupid, stupid.

Already triumphant, the nosferatu’s thin lips pulled back over his deadly fangs, sword raised high.

Irena let him swing it.

She flared her Gift the instant the blade touched her skin, forcing the metal to soften. Steel flowed like mercury over her neck. She hardened it again, grabbed his ruined blade, and yanked.

Unbalanced, the nosferatu staggered. Irena scythed her second knife toward his thickly muscled throat, cutting through the spine. She didn’t wait for his head to topple from his shoulders before yanking her first knife from his chest and turning.

The third nosferatu skittered across the ceiling like an enormous white spider.

From behind her, she felt the drawing in of Alejandro’s Gift as if he pulled in a psychic breath. Orange light burst through the chamber, followed by the sizzle of flesh and a terrible shriek. A burning body rocketed over her head, toward the nosferatu scrabbling across the ceiling.

Startled, the creature lost his grip, came tumbling down. Instantly, he was up on his feet and sprinting for the rear corner of the chamber—after the human? To kill, or take a hostage.

Irena went after him.

Catching up was impossible, but by the gods, she
would not fail
. She pushed her speed to the limit, her teeth clenched with effort. Still not fast enough. Without missing a step, she whipped her arms forward and released her knives.

They pierced the back of his knees like arrows. The nosferatu stumbled—and that was enough time.

Irena called in her saber and swung as she sped past him. The blade sliced through his torso, ripping bone and flesh and tearing free in a spray of cold blood. She pivoted, and separated his head from his shoulders.

And it was done. Alejandro pulled his sword from the chest of the still-burning nosferatu. The flames cast a flickering light against the stacks of bones.

Her gaze fell to Alejandro’s hands. The flesh of his palms and fingers had split open, his skin blistered and charred. His blood trickled over the hilts of his swords, mingled with the nosferatu’s.

Alejandro’s Gift did not come without a price.

Irena met his eyes. His lips had flattened, his nostrils flaring as he breathed through the pain. Nosferatu blood streaked his jaw, splattered his neck. His own ran the length of his arm, soaked his sleeve. She wanted to lick it off. Wanted to take him now, with the heat of battle pounding through their veins.

A long breath steadied her. From near the chamber entrance she heard the tinkle of glass—the mirror she’d tossed shattering as it finally landed on the stone floor.

She looked away from Alejandro, her gaze searching for the human. The faint heartbeat was closer now, and the fetid scent of decaying blood hung heavily in the air.

Irena retrieved her kukri knives, and stepped around a column. Horror froze her lungs.

Dried blood crusted the woman’s face, her nude torso, her legs. Her long brown hair was clumped with it.

A woman, but not a human as they’d assumed. No human would still be alive, not with a spike through her forehead, pinning her upright against the stone column.

A Guardian.

A Guardian—and an endless font of blood for the nosferatu. They could drain the body to the point of death, and because a Guardian healed quickly, drink their fill again the next evening. With that much brain damage, she couldn’t have projected her emotions, called for help. Even if another Guardian had looked for her, they couldn’t have detected her psychic scent. The woman’s mind was as empty as her ruined face.

How long had she been here?

“Help me, Olek.” Irena’s throat was raw. Her final steps to the Guardian’s side were a blur. She rose up on her toes, cupped the flat end of the spike in her palm.

She felt the heat from Alejandro’s body, heard his sharply indrawn breath as he came up beside her. He slipped his gloved hands under the woman’s slack, blood-encrusted arms.

“We have you, Rosalia,” he murmured in Italian. “You are with friends.”

“You know her?”

Slowly, Irena used her Gift to draw out the metal. She pulled her hand back; the iron followed. Rosalia’s brain would immediately begin healing, but unless they brought her to a Guardian with a healing Gift, it might be hours before she regained consciousness.

“She specialized with me,” Alejandro said.

So he’d honed her fencing skills. Irena vanished the spike, produced a thin blanket. “When? Who are her friends?”

Rosalia would need them when she realized what had been done to her.

“Two centuries ago. Who her friends are, I could not say.”

“Who was her primary mentor?”

His gaze never left Irena’s face as she tucked the covering around Rosalia’s motionless form. “Her early studies were with Hugh.”

Irena gritted her teeth. Hugh Castleford, after eight hundred years as one of Caelum’s best warriors, had voluntarily Fallen and become human again . . . and had since taken up with the hellspawn, Lilith.

But despite his choice of bed-partner, Hugh was still a brilliant mentor to the novice Guardians. And he was still, Irena hated to admit, a man that she would trust with her life.

More importantly, she would trust him with anyone else’s life.

“Then we will take her to Special Investigations,” Irena said, lifting Rosalia and cradling the woman against her chest. “Call Selah, have her teleport us there.”

Selah’s Gift would take them to San Francisco faster than using the Gates—the portals that were scattered around the world, linking Earth to Caelum.

Alejandro called in his phone from his cache and glanced at its face. “No signal.”

Irena sighed and strode toward the corridor, vanishing the nosferatu’s bodies and their blood into her cache. Humans would find little evidence of the battle—only a few dings in the walls, and the lingering reek of roasted nosferatu.

Irena stopped in front of Deacon. “Take her.”

The vampire did, gently, his breath skimming between his teeth. The puncture in Rosalia’s forehead gaped open, exposing brain tissue shredded by shards of her skull.

“Will you be coming with us?” Irena asked, calling in her knives again. To phone Selah they had to get aboveground, and might encounter any nosferatu who were returning late.

Deacon stared at Rosalia, his face paler than usual. “With you, where?” he finally asked.

“San Francisco. But if you stay, you will have to fight with us.”

Pained indecision contorted Deacon’s features before determination smoothed and hardened them. “I’ll come.”

She glanced at Alejandro. His lean hands were bare again, his skin healed. “Will you take the front or the rear?”

Asking was unnecessary. Irena’s greater speed and skill made her the obvious choice for the lead position, and Olek would know she wanted it . . . but she also wanted him to offer it to her.

He took his time. His thumb and forefinger stroked from the corners of his mouth to the point of his goatee. His dark gaze ran her length, settled on her hips.

“Rear,” he decided.

Pig. Irena threw her knife at his head, and didn’t wait to see him catch the blade before it split his skull. She struck out for the stairs, smiling.

It had been a good fight.

Her fine temper lasted until Olek said, “Special Investigations has no use for a weak man, Irena.”

As if she would befriend a milksop. Irena snarled at Alejandro over Deacon’s body before hauling the sleeping vampire off the floor and tossing him onto a narrow bunk. The sun shone over San Francisco, and he’d dropped into his daysleep—and onto the wooden floor of the windowless dormitory room that Selah had teleported them into—the moment they’d arrived.

Anticipating Deacon’s collapse, Selah had held Rosalia when she’d teleported them. Then she’d jumped again, taking Rosalia to a Guardian healer and leaving Irena and Alejandro alone with Deacon.

And, most likely, Deacon would be alone when he woke at sunset.

“You are blind, Olek,” Irena said as she turned to search the small desk for a pencil and paper. If she didn’t leave a message for the vampire, he might venture out into the city, seeking blood. “He is not weak. He is broken.”

“You believe losing his community destroyed his confidence?”

“Yes. Never have I seen him like this.”

Irena painstakingly composed a short note in English, instructing Deacon to wait for her return. She slipped the folded paper into the vampire’s mouth and stabbed the note onto his right fang. If she’d made the effort to write the message, then she wouldn’t risk him overlooking it—or mistaking her penmanship for a six-year-old’s.

Alejandro stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes shadowed as he looked over the vampire. “And so you brought him to SI for repairs?”

She strode into the narrow hallway that led to the warehouse’s common room. “Yes.”

Irena felt his surprise. No, she’d made no secret of her hatred for Lilith and Special Investigations. Irena could barely tolerate knowing a halfling demon was SI’s director, giving Guardians their assignments; more than that, Irena despised the idea that Congressman Thomas Stafford—a demon known as Rael—had been instrumental in SI’s creation. Now, SI depended on Rael’s support in Washington for its continued operation. Despite the demon’s involvement, however, Irena couldn’t deny that the novices and vampires received the best possible training from Hugh and the Guardians who worked for SI. It was the best place for Deacon.

“He only needs to be given a task. To be made useful. Perhaps”—she tossed over her shoulder—“he will kill Lilith for me.”

Irena couldn’t slay the halfling demon without breaking the Rules—not since Lilith had become human again.

“If you believed she was evil, you would kill her yourself. Even if it meant you had to Fall.”

“You know nothing, Olek. She continues to live not because I think she is good, but because she poses no threat to anyone.”

“Lilith, no threat? You either lie or have become a spitting fool.”

Irena swung around, and found him closer than she’d expected. Too close. She planted her feet. It would not be she who backed away. “
I
am a fool and a liar? If
you
truly believed her a threat, you’d have finished her.”

“No threat to us.” Alejandro stared down at her over his aristocratic nose. He’d vanished the nosferatu’s blood from his skin and clothes; hers were still streaked and splattered with crimson.

She bared her teeth in a smile. “Us? Perhaps not to me.”

“Us, the Guardians.” He lowered his mouth to her ear, and added softly, “There has been no
us
for four hundred years. You know that, yet observe how easily you twisted my meaning. You say in one moment that Lilith is no threat, then say she is a threat to me. Your tongue might as well be a demon’s.”

Irena stood motionless when he straightened. Her blood pounded in her ears; fury blurred her vision.

But never would she strike in anger. Instead, she audibly inhaled as he moved past her, and let the pleasure she took in his subtly smoky scent slip through her psychic shields.

Pleasure
and
arousal—but this time, shame did not accompany them. Olek’s scent was one of the few things the demon hadn’t been able to replicate.

She saw the hesitation in his step, the slight turn of his head before he tightened his jaw and continued on.

He took her fury with him.

Her sigh was silent. She turned to watch him, the fluid sword fighter’s stride that only hinted at the explosive power coiled within. By the loose set of his shoulders, she judged that the anger driving him to compare her to a demon had faded.

But their argument hadn’t gone unnoticed. Beyond the mouth of the hallway, Becca sat curled on one of the common room sofas, pretending to read. Though the novice’s nose was buried in the book, her eyes were too wide and her body too still. Listening, then. And if she’d understood their French—which was likely—perhaps she was wondering if Irena intended to kill Lilith.

But Irena doubted Becca would ask. Although the novice possessed a bold mouth with anyone aged less than one or two centuries, she became a mouse around the older Guardians.

At the end of the hall, Alejandro paused in front of one of the closed doors, turning his head as if he’d caught a scent. Irena caught up to him just as the door opened.

Dru’s brows rose when she saw them. Her body blocked Irena’s view of the room.

How is she?
Alejandro signed.

The healer sighed. She squeezed out of the room, followed by her novice apprentice, Pim. They carried the odors of a human and dried blood with them—Hugh, Irena recognized, and Rosalia.