Demon Forged

by Meljean Brook

  An icy crust lay over the snow. Her feet broke through with every step, sinking two or three inches to the compact snow beneath. Now and then, she sank farther—up to her knee, or thigh.

  They were doing the same, she saw. Stupid of them, and a sign of their inexperience in this terrain. If they’d walked in single file, the one in the lead could break the trail, and the others could follow in his steps. They’d be exhausted by the time they reached her. As far as they’d come, they probably already were exhausted.

  But they should have been breathing harder than they were.

  Irena watched their mouths, the frozen puffs of air. Each was as even as hers. Impossible.

  Dread dragged over her skin like icy fingernails. Her psychic probe had encountered an unshielded human mind. A demon couldn’t mask that. Which meant they had to be nephilim.

  Three nephilim.

  Terror bulged in her chest, rose thick and acrid in her throat. She swallowed it down. She strengthened her psychic shields, refusing to let her fear leak through. The nephilim hadn’t tried to reach out to her mind yet—doing so would reveal the demon inside theirs. So they were hiding. Probably waiting until she came closer.

  In their human forms, nephilim were weaker than vampires—but they could shape-shift almost instantly.

  Fifty meters separated them now.

  Her heart pounded. Irena hoped they couldn’t hear it yet. She pinned on a smile and prayed they’d be fooled by the welcome. Prayed they’d let her come closer. Prayed she’d have time to slay just one before they shifted to their demonic forms.

  According to Drifter—one of two Guardians who’d fought the nephilim—in their demonic form they were many times stronger and faster than he was, a century-old Guardian. Irena was much faster than Drifter, too. But was she fast enough to survive against three nephilim?

  Despair cried out beneath the fear. She silenced it and forced herself to think. Tried to grab onto something amidst the slippery slope of hopelessness.

  Olek.

  Olek had once slain a nephil by using explosives. Irena didn’t have any. But she had her Gift. She knew how to fight on this snow-packed plain. In her cache, she carried the vampire blood that weakened and slowed them.

  Hot determination suddenly burned away every other emotion.

  Ten meters. The male in the center had pretty blue eyes and thick brown eyelashes. His frosted breath covered his upper lip. He smiled and called out a greeting in Russian.

  They all smiled, the boar-fucking bastards.

  Irena grinned back at them. Look well, hellspawn. I might die, but these teeth will be in your throat.

  The male on the left took a step and broke through the ice-crusted snow to his hip. It was an advantage Irena hadn’t expected. She didn’t waste it.

  Irena leapt, shooting toward him with her knees close to her chest, making herself as small a target as possible. Before she’d covered half the distance, he shape-shifted. His clothes vanished. His frame lengthened, muscles bulging beneath pale skin that deepened to crimson as it stretched. The whites of his eyes hardened to obsidian stones. Huge black feathered wings whipped open, flinging snow. A sword glinted in his right hand, and he swung the blade into the path of Irena’s leap.

  She called in an iron block, let it fall heavily in front of her and followed it down. Snow crunched. She flattened herself against the side, using the block as a shield. The nephil’s sword struck a ringing blow on the opposite side.

  He hadn’t expected the block. She pictured him on the other side, his arm extended, his sword shivering from the impact.

  She shoved her Gift through the iron. She didn’t have to see the deadly blades that razored out from the block and sliced toward his neck and chest. She heard the rending of his flesh, felt the resistance of bone.

  To her right, the female shrieked with rage. She plowed toward Irena with terrifying speed, a stone battle-ax over her head.

  Irena couldn’t outrace her. She’d barely have time to start running before the female was on her. Heart in her throat, Irena formed handholds in the block and flung herself up and outward. The female veered in the same direction, throwing her ax.

  The ax struck Irena midair, a glancing blow to her arm. It knocked her aside, forced her to spin, but she managed to create a smooth disk beneath her as she hit the snow. The aluminum disk raced over the icy crust, carrying her away from the female, who’d set her feet in anticipation of Irena’s landing.

  Part of Irena’s arm lay on the snow next to her. A trail of blood followed the path of Irena’s sled.

  With a burst of laughter, Irena looked down at the stump below her elbow. Not a glancing blow. And a good thing she’d prepared for this. Her lips drew back from her teeth, and she leapt off the disk. The female was almost on her again, ax in hand.

  Focusing her Gift, Irena shaped a new forearm and hand of steel and clamped it around the stump. She called in her shield over it, just in time to block the nephil’s ax.

  The blow staggered her. The impact tore through her body. Feeling as if she’d been ripped apart, Irena dug her feet into the snow, and barely recovered in time to intercept the next swing.

  The nephil was fast. Too fast for Irena to mark the male nephil’s position. She needed every instant to track the female’s movements, to defend against the stone weapon. Looking away for a moment meant death.

  Not looking away to find him meant the same.

  She couldn’t hear his steps or wings over the crash of the ax and shield. He wasn’t in her field of vision. Behind her, then. And so this would be the end.

  Despair screamed a dire warning beneath her racing heartbeat. Irena barely avoided a pummeling blow that would have shattered her head, and searched desperately for an opening for her blade. She pulsed her Gift constantly, forcing the heavy steel arm into natural motion, waiting for the strike of a sword against her neck from behind.

  She felt an electric charge sizzle through the air, instead. A familiar Gift hummed against her psyche.

  Jake. Oh, sweet Jake. She had never loved the young Guardian more.

  The nephil felt the psychic hum. As she brought down the ax, her eyes darted to the side, as if to check her back.

  Irena lunged. She vanished her shield and caught the edge of the stone ax in her steel palm. Pain shot through her shoulder, bearing the force of the blow. She clenched her teeth and swiftly unraveled her metal forearm. Within the space of a blink, thin steel wires spun out, wrapped around the ax handle, and pierced the nephil’s wrist. Irena forced the wires into the nephil’s arm like hungry worms. They coiled around bone, stabbed through the muscles in her shoulder to her neck.

  The female’s eyes widened with shock and terror. The veins in her throat bulged and exploded through her crimson skin with gouts of blood.

  Irena yanked her arm back. The wires ripped free in a scarlet spray. With her right hand, she followed through with her blade, slashing through the shredded flesh and spine that remained.

  Spinning around, she remade her forearm and prepared for another attack. The nephil wasn’t behind her. Alice raced toward her instead, her black skirt flapping like crow’s wings. Fifty meters beyond Alice, beside the iron block, Alejandro battled the last nephil. Their swords rang in a flashing frenzy of steel, Alejandro falling back before the nephil’s speed.

  Irena’s heart climbed into her throat. She’d barely taken a step toward them when Alice’s shout reached her.

  “Get down!”

  Irena automatically looked up at the sky, searching for a winged threat. Nothing. She started for Alejandro again.

  Jake teleported in behind the nephil. Irena had an instant to realize that the young Guardian was slinging a belt of plastique and wires around the nephil’s waist before Jake teleported and reappeared behind Alejandro. They both vanished—and reappeared beside Alice.

  Irena met Alejandro’s eyes. He dived, catching her legs, and tumbling her into the snow. His body shielded hers, his hands covered her ea
rs.

  The explosion rocked him against her. Pressure swelled in her head. Hot air whipped past them. Irena’s exposed skin tightened, felt like it would split. Alejandro swore and his Gift sucked in the heat like a sharp inhalation. The air cooled.

  After a long second, pieces of charred flesh rained down in heavy splatters.

  Irena lay stunned. She was alive. Alive, with snow melting against her back, Alejandro’s taut body pressing down on hers, his ragged breath in her hair. He murmured her name.

  Then his mouth found hers and invaded in fierce possession. Irena welcomed it. He tasted of fire and blood, and she drew him deeper, chasing away the dread and despair that had threatened to devour her whole.

  The moment was too brief. The shattering pain of battle engulfed her body. Taken by surprise, Irena made a sound deep in her throat. She turned her head and clamped her lips to prevent it from escaping as a whimper.

  Alejandro’s mouth touched her jaw, and then he was standing, holding his hand out for hers.

  Jake’s voice rumbled distantly through the ringing in her ears. “See? Just friends. That was exactly what friends do.”

  Irena sent him a killing look as Alejandro pulled her up by her real hand. Beside Jake, Alice’s prim expression lost its fight against a smile.

  “Then you and I must be quite good friends,” Alice told him. Her brown hair had come loose of its braid. She held Irena’s bloodied forearm at her side, caught in the shifting folds of her skirt. Her pale gaze met Irena’s across the snow, and she lifted the severed arm. “How ridiculous you are!” she called out. “If you had wanted practice, you know there is a queue of former students waiting to chop off a piece of you. You did not have to call on the nephilim.”

  Irena couldn’t manage a smile—couldn’t even manage a breath. She could, however, use her Gift to lift her steel middle finger in a gesture that expressed her feelings perfectly. Despite the amused tsking sound Alice made, concern filled her psychic scent.

  Jake frowned. He called in his electrical ground and vanished.

  When Alice reached them, Alejandro took the arm. He turned to Irena. “Are you ready?”

  Irena nodded. She closed her eyes and vanished the steel arm. Agony shrieked up from the stump and through her shoulder.

  They worked quickly. Within seconds, Alice had wrapped her arm in black silk bandages, and created a sling to support its dead weight. Irena opened her eyes as Alice knotted the straps of the sling together.

  “It is crude,” Alice said as she vanished the blood from her hands. “But it will hold your arm together until Jake returns with Drusilla.”

  Irena’s nod set off a series of stabbing pains through her chest and stomach. Warm liquid heaved into her mouth, and she spat blood. Slowly, she sank to her knees. She just had to remain still. Very, very still.

  Alejandro crouched beside her. He reached for her, but stopped himself, clenching his hands into fists by his thighs. They remained that way, silent, until Jake’s Gift crackled through the air.

  A second later, Dru dropped to her knees in front of her. Her blue eyes widened as they ran over Irena’s face. “Oh, Lord, you’re a mess.” She reached for Irena’s hand. Her healing Gift probed gently, testing the injuries. Dru sucked in a breath. “Jesus. Did they pulverize you?”

  “They didn’t have to.” The bitter cold froze Olek’s words into thin icy clouds. “She blocked the nephil’s ax. Even Irena can’t absorb those blows without damage.”

  Dru nodded. Her Gift slid deeper, and warmth spread through Irena’s muscles. Sensation returned to her arm, first as a tingle over her skin; then feeling returned in a sweet rush. Her shoulder slid painlessly back into place.

  The constriction around her lungs eased, and Irena breathed out a thank-you.

  Dru smiled tightly. She eased back on the heels of her red tennis shoes. She turned her head, as if taking in the churned, bloodied snow, the shallow crater, the overturned iron block.

  She looked back at Irena. “It was close?”

  The constriction was suddenly there again, around Irena’s throat, squeezing her heart. She clenched her teeth and nodded, then dropped her chin against her chest.

  Dru turned to Alejandro. “I can leave her with you?”

  “Yes.” He bit out the word, as if he couldn’t believe she’d had to ask.

  “Good.” Unfazed by his anger, Dru rose to her feet. “Jake, Alice—we’re out of here. Now.”

  She used the tone that only a fool would argue with. Neither Jake nor Alice protested, and a moment later, they vanished.

  Alejandro only had to touch her. His fingers brushed her cheek, and the raw despair Irena had fought to keep in check welled up.

  Curling forward, she buried her face against his chest, holding in a scream of desolation. Death had been so close. If Jake had been a second later. If the nephil hadn’t looked to the side. She’d felt death at her back before, but never, never had it been so pointless and empty. Never had she stood to lose so much for nothing.

  Alejandro’s arms tightened around her. Her fingers bunched in his shirt.

  She had almost lost so much.

  Alejandro lifted her up against his chest. His wings formed. Silently, he turned toward the forge, and carried her into the air.

  CHAPTER 15

  The moment Alejandro stepped over the threshold, he felt every second of the four hundred years he’d been gone.

  Everything was the same. The furnaces along the back wall. The central hearth that Irena kept lighted for no reason that he’d ever seen. The pantry and table that she’d used for guests, the hip bath. Centuries of footsteps had trampled the earthen floor into a surface as hard as stone.

  Everything was the same but them. The two Guardians who had left here together four hundred years ago were not the Guardians who returned.

  And when they left again, he vowed that something would be changed between them. They would not leave with everything unsettled.

  He paused a few steps inside. He turned away from the bed, though part of him wanted to settle that first—but not while she still shuddered with fear and relief. He moved toward the bath just as Irena lifted her head.

  “I need to wash,” she said.

  He nodded and set her down. Dru had vanished the blood. Irena probably didn’t know how she’d looked before that. Her face had been as crimson as the demon’s, painted with their blood and hers.

  But Irena wasn’t washing for that reason, he thought, pushing the tub closer to the wall and turning on the taps. A system of pipes ran from the cistern outside—one pipe heated by the furnaces so that hot water filled the tub. Four hundred years ago, he’d thought her bath was the most amazing luxury. They’d both used it often.

  Now, she climbed into the tub fully clothed and submerged herself completely. Taking solitude, Alejandro realized. Walking away and hiding her vulnerability, but this time without leaving.

  The quiet of the forge was only disturbed by the crackling of the fires, the steam in the pipes, the drip from the taps. He heard the indistinct beat of her heart, muffled by the water.

  He was glad of the moment to himself.

  As soon as Alejandro sank onto the sofa, shaking overtook him. A delayed reaction, he knew. He’d felt it before. When his youngest son had been eight, the boy had darted into the path of a galloping horse. Alejandro had seen him knocked beneath the pounding hooves. But when he’d pulled Eduardo from the ground, the boy hadn’t suffered more than muddied knees and a skinned elbow.

  It had been one of the few times in his life that Alejandro had raised his voice. He was not a man of violence, although he would use violence when duty demanded it. But that day, without demand or prompt, Alejandro had shaken and shouted at the boy until Eduardo had been in tears and trembling.

  Only afterward, when he’d been alone, had he fallen to his knees and thanked God.

  The sheer force of his will had prevented him from doing the same to Irena today. After the explosion, after he�
�d kissed her—it had taken all of his strength not to shake her. And as they’d waited for Dru to arrive, it’d taken all of his strength not to hold her to him and weep his thanks to God.

  He knew that modern science had given names to it. Adrenaline. Endorphins. Those chemicals might work the same in Guardians as in humans, when struck with the sheer terror of realizing how close his world had come to shattering.

  Irena, he thought, had realized it, too. She knew how close it had been.

  When his shakes eased, he rose to his feet to study the sculpture she’d left near the center of the forge. He’d wager that she’d made it after she’d left him at SI. He wished it gave him some insight into what her feelings had been. Had she begun to accept his decision? Or was her rejection still as strong?

  He fed the hearth fire, burning low in the shallow iron bowl set within a waist-high ring of stones, then wandered the room and examined the few changes she’d made. On a shelf sat a plastic winged monkey that was a recent gift from Drifter’s partner Charlie—Alejandro had heard about the gift, even if he hadn’t seen it before.

  From beside the monkey, he lifted a framed icon and quietly regarded the Virgin’s mournful eyes and adoring face. Irena had never owned—or sculpted—many religious objects. The small icon might have been a gift from one of the villagers Irena helped support during the long winter months, as was the rag doll propped on the shelf. He remembered her receiving another doll four centuries earlier. Perhaps it had rotted by now—or at some point, she had offered it to a different girl.

  He replaced the icon and continued on. New weapons topped the discard pile next to the wall. Though she always said she’d find another use for the metal, she never had. At the bottom of the pile were rusted swords almost a thousand years old. Alejandro knew some of his would be in there.

  He’d lied to himself. All these years, he had lied to himself. Two hundred years ago, when she’d returned from her self-imposed exile, he’d told himself that he’d accepted they wouldn’t be together. That there was no future. But until Alejandro walked back into the forge, he’d been lost.