Demon Forged (9 page)

“Irena knows Deacon. I do not.”

“All right, I’ll ask her. And she’ll tell me to fuck myself, I’ll tell her the same, and at the end of it I still won’t know anything. So I’m asking you.”

No, she wasn’t. Not asking about Deacon, at any rate. The vampire had been the leader of a large community for decades; even if Lilith had never met Deacon, she’d have heard enough to take his measure. This was about Irena.

Stiffly, Alejandro said, “She’s never made a secret of her dislike for you, or the way in which SI was created. But she would never bring in anyone she thought might endanger the novices and vampires training here.”

“Just one who will endanger me?”

His hands were heating. “No. If she comes for you, she’ll come from the front.” But Irena wouldn’t go for Lilith, because she knew how much those same Guardians and vampires depended on SI. Despite her anger, Irena wasn’t blind to SI’s value. Alejandro wouldn’t tell Lilith that, however. “She doesn’t think like you.”

“Or like you?”

“No.” He had to admit that truth. He preferred subtlety. Preferred to undermine his target, discover their weaknesses, so that their fall came as an almost gentle collapse . . . but by that time, an inevitable one.

It’d been centuries since he’d worked that way. The battles a Guardian fought were better suited to Irena’s methods. Irena smashed and hit her enemies until they toppled.

Did Lilith think he was one of those enemies? Was her concern not because of Irena’s hatred toward her, but because Lilith hadn’t expected antagonism between Guardians?

Lilith knew demons well; she wasn’t as familiar with Guardians.

He pushed the heat back and said evenly, “Despite my . . . friendship with her, I wouldn’t hesitate to put my life in Irena’s hands. There’s no one I’d rather have at my back, no one I trust more.”

“No one?” A wry smile curved her mouth. “Was that true before you learned that Michael is the son of a demon?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze thoughtful, Lilith continued to swivel back and forth in a short arc, tapping her fingers on the arms of her chair. Finally, she looked up at him. “I had to be sure. Finding out that Michael is Belial’s son has created enough tension, even among the novices. We can’t afford to lose anyone.”

She didn’t need to tell Alejandro that. “What have you heard of Deacon?”

“That he’s a scary motherfucker.”

She looked amused by the description. But then, “scary” had a different meaning for Guardians than it did for vampires—and for Lilith.

“That was not my impression. Irena, however, thinks Deacon only needs to regain confidence, and then he’ll be an asset to our cause. I trust her judgment.”

Apparently, so did Lilith. She nodded. “All right. And Rosalia? Dru gave me an account of her injuries. I want your take on the situation she was in.”

He thought of the ossuary, the spike. The memory of Rosalia’s condition hardened in his stomach . . . but that wasn’t what Lilith was asking.

“I can’t make sense of it,” he said. “The church was being restored, but inside, the smell of paint was faint.” And if the painting had been completed months ago, the pews and altar had been sitting, covered, for at least that long. “But it hadn’t been abandoned. There was no dust. And the water in the stoup was fresh.”

“A caretaker?”

Alejandro had his doubts. “One who, in more than a year, did not come across Rosalia or the nosferatu in the catacombs?”

“That is a question. I’ll ask Jake and Alice to dig around the church. And the nest?”

“The nosferatu weren’t the ones who caught her. The last she recalls is fighting demons.”

Lilith stopped swiveling. “Lucifer’s or Belial’s?”

“She doesn’t know. But if they were the same demons Michael and Selah killed in Rome last year . . .”

“They didn’t take the time to find out.” She stared at him. Though her psyche was tightly shielded, he could almost feel her mind racing behind that flat gaze.

Trying to figure out how alliances might be shifting, he thought. Just as he had been since he’d realized there was a nest beneath the church.

Lucifer had once allied with the nosferatu, but only because he’d promised the cursed creatures a new home: Caelum. Each of those nosferatu was now in the Chaos realm, from which there was no escape.

It was possible that, before he’d closed the Gates, Lucifer had formed another alliance with the nosferatu—or instructed demons loyal to him to carry out his instructions after they’d left Hell. He’d done that once before, ordering a demon to sacrifice vampires in an attempt to change the resonance of one of Caelum’s Gates to create another Gate to Hell.

That had been around the same time that Selah and Michael had slain the demons in Rome.

But if the demons Michael and Selah had slain were loyal to Belial, that was something new. What would it mean if Belial’s demons had been courting the nosferatu, with a Guardian food source as an incentive?

Unlike Lucifer’s demons, Belial’s worked together—many of them under the cover of Legion, a multinational corporation. Until the past spring, their only common goal had seemed to be replacing Lucifer on Hell’s throne with Belial, who had promised to return them to Grace. Only recently had the Guardians learned of a prophecy that predicted Belial taking the throne after the nephilim had been destroyed. Legion had begun courting vampire communities and trying to replicate vampire blood—which had been proven to weaken the powerful nephilim.

In that, Belial’s demons and the Guardians shared a common goal: destroying the nephilim. Their reasons, however, couldn’t have been more different.

If the nephilim only carried out the task for which they’d been created—executing those demons who broke the Rules—the Guardians wouldn’t have fought them. But once they’d begun eradicating the vampire communities, the Guardians had to stand against them.

And the nephilim had their own leader to put on Hell’s throne: Anaria, their mother—and Michael’s sister.

Alejandro had thought Anaria—a former Guardian—would be a better choice to take Hell’s throne than Belial or Lucifer, until he’d learned that Anaria had once led other Guardians to slaughter a human army. She’d believed that without the terror of war, humans wouldn’t be driven to the hatred and murder that landed their souls in Hell, and the slaughter had been the first step of a comprehensive plan to save mankind from themselves and to weaken Lucifer.

No matter how good her intentions, she’d broken the Rules when she’d killed humans and had to Fall, her Guardian abilities stripped. Yet as one of the ten grigori who’d been born after demons consumed the flesh of a dragon and mated with humans, she was still too powerful—and, after Falling, she no longer had to follow the Rules.

Michael had ordered her execution, but Anaria’s husband, Zakril, had hidden her away in a sarcophagus, instead. But when Zakril had been killed, she’d been trapped—for more than two thousand years. The nephilim had only recently freed her from that prison.

The Guardians hadn’t encountered Anaria since her escape, but Alejandro knew they all dreaded the inevitable meeting. Though Anaria might harbor no ill will toward the Guardians, they
had
to fight the nephilim—and Anaria, as their leader, was a powerful, deadly opponent.

Through the prophecy, had Belial’s demons anticipated Anaria’s return and allied with the nosferatu to strengthen their numbers against the nephilim? Or had there been another purpose?

With a low sound of frustration, Lilith shook her head. “I don’t know what the fuck it means. When Michael gets in again, and Jake reports back on the church, we’ll work out how we’ll go forward with this info. Until then—” She lifted two folders from her desk, and Alejandro vanished them into his cache. “Rumors of human sacrifice outside London, and a bloodsucker community in Buenos Aires that we need to talk to, because their heads have just been killed.”

Which might be just the usual vampire politics, similar to what had ousted Deacon. Or it might be a sign that the nephilim were planning another massacre—and might lead the Guardians to Anaria.

Alejandro looked up as the lights in the room flickered, which meant that Jake had just teleported into the warehouse. Good. After Lilith gave the young Guardian his assignment in Rome, Jake could take Alejandro to his. It was still midday in Argentina, so Alejandro wouldn’t find any vampires awake for several more hours. He’d go to London first.

Lilith frowned, picked up her cell phone, and sighed. When she began typing a message on the keypad, Alejandro took that as a dismissal.

She caught him at the door. “Alejandro, hold on.” When he turned, she said, “We’ve got a potential problem: Jake’s here with Alice, and Khavi’s following them.”

Khavi was a Guardian and one of the grigori. She was also Zakril’s sister and had hidden with her brother after Michael had sentenced Anaria to death. With her Gift of foresight, she’d been the source of the prophecy, but even that powerful Gift hadn’t helped her avoid being trapped in Hell by Belial, or prevented her husband, Aaron, from being killed by the demon. She’d lived a solitary existence in Hell for almost as long as Anaria had been in her sarcophagus. Though Alejandro would never make the mistake of thinking Khavi was harmless, she’d returned to Caelum with a gratitude that was genuine after Michael had brought her back from Hell.

Khavi had visited SI a few times without incident, so Alejandro didn’t see the problem. “And?”

“Can you run interference?”

Interference . . . between Khavi and Irena? Christ. Had nothing he said made a difference? Irena hated demons, and everything they’d created—and had openly declared her distrust of the grigori. But that didn’t mean she’d kill Khavi without a good reason.

Lilith held up her hand, as if to head off his anger. “Honestly, I’m with Irena on this one—I’m not sure we can trust that Khavi’s on our side. But like I said: We can’t lose anyone, and I’d rather have Irena’s temper directed at you. Michael can take it without hitting back. We don’t know enough about Khavi yet.”

He couldn’t argue that. “You must be thankful that neither one is often here.”

She looked surprised. “You’re wrong. I prefer it when people are as direct as Irena is. You know where you stand. And in her place, I’d question Michael’s decision to put me in charge, too.” Lilith shrugged. “But Michael’s an idiot, so what can you do?”

“You could, perhaps, refrain from calling the Doyen an idiot,” he pointed out. And with a slight bow, he left.

Irena knew she was making the others nervous. Alice’s mouth had taken on a thin, pinched look; her eyes were sharp and wary. Drifter had aimed for casual by hooking his thumbs into his suspenders, but the only reason he’d ever strive to look at ease was when he needed to cover up his tension. Jake chewed on a toothpick and held onto a smile, but he’d edged closer to Alice—to teleport her away, if he needed to.

And Khavi knew it, too. The grigori sometimes appeared confused, but her eyes were always clear. She pushed, just to see reactions, to find weaknesses. Irena knew this. Knew she was being tested.

It didn’t matter if she failed. Demons played games; Irena did not.

But she should have realized that when Jake and Alice teleported into the warehouse’s central hub, it meant that Alice’s language lesson with Khavi was over and that the grigori, her time free, might also teleport to SI. And while Jake and Alice had remained in the middle of the hub, Jake holding Alice against him until the disorientation of teleporting faded, Irena should have stayed in the gymnasium hallway—where she had a solid wall at her back—instead of walking out with Drifter to meet them in that wide, open space.

But she’d been distracted by the flickering lights, and Drifter’s explanation that the electrical fluctuation was an effect of Jake’s new Gift.

Then Khavi had arrived—and although Drifter continued to talk, Irena hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything he said. The demon spawn slowly circled their small group, her head tilted back as she examined each sign of the zodiac painted on the ceiling. She’d made it to the Gemini, behind Alice. Only the top of Khavi’s braided black hair was visible over the taller woman’s shoulder. Irena stepped to the side, trying to keep the grigori in full view between Alice and Drifter.

Alice met her eyes, then moved toward Jake, allowing Irena a better angle. The long, black, silk column of Alice’s dress and her braid were just as severe as ever, and she still moved with the disjointed strangeness that she’d picked up from her spiders. But she’d softened, Irena thought, when instead of crossing her arms over her narrow chest, Alice slipped her hand into the crook of Jake’s elbow.

Alice caught her gaze again. “Do you want to go to the Archives now?”

Alice had been teaching Irena the demonic symbols she’d been learning from Khavi. Each week, they met in the Archive building in Caelum. They weren’t scheduled for another session until tomorrow.