Demon Forged

by Meljean Brook

  Fear speared through her, hot and thick. She reached for Olek, pulled in steel for a shield—

  The dragon vanished.

  Irena blinked.

  “The portal,” Olek murmured. “Holy Mother of God.”

  Michael flung Anaria away, ran toward them.

  Give me Alice. I will inform the others, and we will be right behind you, he signed, even as he roared a single word that drowned out the screams.

  “GO!”

  Alejandro dove through the portal into cold water. The still-healing gash in his stomach burned. He tasted salt, and vanished his wings when the weight dragged at his speed. Stone ruins lay half-submerged in the sand around him. Somewhere among the ruins, Anaria must have written the symbols to open the portal. He would not stop to find them now.

  Above, he spotted the dragon, swimming with the undulating grace of a serpent toward the moonlight piercing the surface of the water.

  Fewer people would be on the sea, but the ruins suggest they probably weren’t far from land. He glanced over at Irena. Though she’d come through the portal after Alejandro, her powerful arm strokes had already caught her up to him. He couldn’t see her feet through the churning of the water she kicked.

  Her knife was clamped in her teeth. Her eyes glowed a brilliant green.

  A hunt, like they’d never had before—one they could not lose.

  The dragon skimmed along the surface of the sea before lifting into the air. Distance blurred its shape into a dark smear.

  Irena’s scream of rage boiled from between her teeth.

  Michael appeared in front of them. He reached for Irena’s hand, grabbed Alejandro’s. They teleported out of the water into the sky.

  Alejandro fought the disorientation, formed his wings again. The dragon flew below.

  Irena dropped without wings. Michael circled around beneath the creature as Irena landed on its massive back. Calling in her saber, she lifted the weapon high and drove the blade straight down into the dragon’s shoulder.

  The steel snapped against the scales. The dragon twisted its body, rolling in the air. The pale green scales of its belly and chest were exposed for a brief second. Alejandro dove. The dragon changed direction mid-twist and he rocketed past it. From beneath the dragon, he saw Irena lose her seat, scramble for a grip on its glossy blue hide, and slip. The dragon back-flipped and snapped enormous teeth at her as she fell.

  The dragon missed. Alejandro’s wings beat several times before his heart did again.

  Michael teleported beneath the dragon. His sword stabbed deep, but must have missed the heart; roaring, the dragon raked his hind claw at the Doyen, catching Michael’s leg, sending him spinning toward the water. Before the dragon could dive for the falling Guardian, an iron block dropped on its head. The dragon shook it off.

  Hovering, Irena shouted, “Here, you sheep-fucking snake!”

  The dragon circled around toward her, seemed to gather itself. Alejandro streaked between them, began pulling his Gift before the dragon opened its mouth. Fire belched forth.

  The flames billowed toward Alejandro on a wave of heat, licked at his skin, ruffled his feathers. It surrounded him, a bright orange, dancing light. His power slid through the fire, grabbed hold, but it slipped through the fingers of his Gift; he could not control it. The best he could do was turn the flames back toward the dragon.

  The creature shrieked and drew up, flashing its pale underbelly. Rolling to its side to avoid the flames, the dragon snapped its wings, whipped its tail. It darted west, far faster than either Irena or Alejandro could fly.

  They needed Michael—or any other teleporter.

  “Olek!”

  Irena reached him. Her eyes were frantic, her hands moving over his body as if searching for burns. Her expression froze, and she brushed her thumb over his lip. Crimson streaked her skin.

  “Don’t do that again,” she whispered.

  He wiped the blood from his nose and ears. “Only if you do not taunt it again.” He still wanted to shake her for that.

  To his surprise, she nodded before glancing around them. “Where is Michael?”

  Alejandro didn’t see the Doyen, either. But though they could not catch up, neither could they wait. They started out after the dragon. They flew at Alejandro’s fastest speed, and for the first time, he had a moment to look for something that might reveal their location. Water stretched north and south, but to the east and west the faint lines of low-lying land masses darkened the horizon.

  “We are between Sardinia and Italy!” Irena shouted to him over the rush of the wind. “And—”

  She broke off, a look of horror coming over her face. He only saw her mouth move. By the gods.

  The dragon surged upward. Alejandro’s gaze searched higher, and his stomach rolled into a ball of ice. Moonlight reflected off the silver sides of a west-bound commuter jet slicing through the night sky, leaving a vapor trail like blood welling behind a blade. The dragon chased after it, closing in fast.

  He and Irena were both flying faster than the jet, but they could not make up the time the dragon had. They could only watch. The dragon dipped into the vapor trail, darted closer—from nose to tail, its body was longer than the jet’s, its wing-span double the length.

  “We will try to catch them!” he shouted to Irena.

  Perhaps her Gift could hold the fuselage together, even if the dragon ripped the aircraft apart. How many humans could he carry at once? Ten, perhaps, if they clung to him. If the jet was full, it likely carried forty or fifty. Perhaps they could stretch a metal sheet between them like a lifeboat . . . and leave themselves and the humans defenseless against the dragon’s attack.

  He prayed.

  Michael appeared between them, Khavi and Alice ahead of them. Jake and Selah dropped into formation behind, flanked by Drifter and Luther, Mariko and Radha. Michael took a single glance, and gave the signal to teleport again.

  Too late. They appeared beside the dragon as it snatched at the jet like pulling a fish from the water. Metal shrieked as claws scored the aluminum fuselage. The jet seemed to bump across the air.

  Hysterical screams sounded from inside.

  Alejandro searched for Jake, saw the young Guardian had already teleported beneath the jet and flattened his palms to the metal skin. His electric Gift sizzled across Alejandro’s mind, filled the air with static. Through the small oval windows, Alejandro saw the lights inside the cabin flicker and burst in showers of sparks. The dragon jolted and screamed, releasing the fuselage and diving toward the sea.

  The engines sputtered and died. With sickening inevitability, the nose sloped downward. Michael teleported, braced his hands behind the hatch for the forward landing gear. His black wings quadrupled in size, their span as wide as the jet’s.

  Michael shouted, “Khavi, Mariko, Radha, Alice—with me!” He looked to Irena. “You must stop it.”

  Her face pale, she nodded. Irena flew over the fuselage, dragged her hand over its surface, sealing the claw marks with her Gift.

  She glanced at Alejandro, and they dove after the dragon.

  Either strike for the heart, or run as quickly as you can.

  Running was no longer an option—and Irena found that getting to its underbelly proved almost impossible, even for the teleporters. The dragon seemed to sense Jake and Selah coming, and raked with its hind claws before they could do enough damage with their blades. Bullets bounced off the scales. It moved too quickly to target with a missile or explosive. They’d been able to do little more than fly alongside it, teleporting when the dragon flew ahead, trying to herd it north without success.

  The west bank of Italy approached with terrifying speed. The images Michael had once projected flashed through her mind. People would burn if they didn’t stop the dragon. Until they stopped it, everything would burn.

  Both armed with machine guns, Jake teleported with Drifter in above the dragon’s head, aiming for the eyes. The dragon snapped its jaws back, almost quicker than Ire
na could track, and caught Drifter by the left leg.

  The Guardian set his jaw, shoved the muzzle of the rifle between the dragon’s teeth alongside his thigh. The burst of gunfire down the dragon’s throat didn’t slow it. Jake teleported behind Drifter, disappeared with the big man, and teleported in beside Selah. Drifter’s leg had been severed mid-thigh.

  His face white, Jake disappeared with Drifter again, and came back without him. Lightning snaked out. The dragon screamed and twisted around, but didn’t slow.

  Lightning and fire—the only two things that frightened it. Twice, she’d seen dragons, when faced with fire, pull upright. Twice, they’d left their bellies exposed for a brief second.

  Maybe they burned, too.

  Irena called in a steel spear. With her Gift, she textured the smooth shaft so that, if bloodied, it would not slip in her hands. Forcing away the memory of blood on his lips, leaking from his ears, she signaled to Alejandro, flying alongside her.

  I am not going to taunt the dragon—yet I need you to break your vow, and use its fire against it again.

  He waited.

  As soon as you draw its fire, Selah and Jake will teleport in above to distract it, while I come in below.

  If you are in the path of the fire, you will burn. I cannot control its flames.

  I might burn. But I will not die.

  His lips thinned as if he prepared to argue, but he nodded. She signaled to Jake, to Selah.

  Jake took her arm, Selah took Alejandro’s. They teleported west, and flew back to meet the dragon head-on—the two teleporters and Alejandro flying slightly ahead and above Irena. They drew closer. Its blue scales gleaming in the moonlight, the dragon roared as if recognizing the challenge.

  Alejandro snapped upright, hovering. He spread his arms. A spiraling inferno roared between them, and he threw it toward the dragon, a funnel of flames that lit the dark sky.

  His own fire. Horror lurched through her stomach. Irena only had an instant to feel it before winging forward beneath the tunnel of flames. Hidden by the fire—and protected from it. The inferno should have singed her feathers, her hair. She only felt the cool night air.

  The dragon shrieked, drew up. Irena slammed into its chest, shoving her spear into the pale green scales.

  It was like lying against a stove; the scales burned with the dragon’s inner heat. Her skin seared. Screaming, the dragon raked at her. Irena shoved her hand into the wound beside the shaft of her spear, called in her kukri knife. She tore open a three-foot gash in its chest. Her head filled with the heavy beat of an enormous heart.

  The dragon’s claws caught her left wing, tore it away. White-hot pain ripped across her back. Irena held in her scream, channeled it into rage. She hacked deeper, into a chest as hot as a furnace. Steaming blood poured over her face, her arms. Her knife hit a rib; she punched her fist between two bones, then ripped them apart—and hung with one hand as the dragon dove. She gripped her spear again, drove it toward the heart. Still not there. She rammed her shoulders against ribs until the crack of bone joined the dragon’s roar. She cut deeper, digging her way in.

  The heart glowed like an ember, so large she couldn’t have circled it with her arms.

  Irena didn’t want to hug it, anyway. She stabbed her spear into the throbbing organ, shoving it deep. The dragon screamed, twisting. Clinging to a rib, she brought her legs up, pounded the heart with her feet. The chambered muscle split, spewing dark blood. Panicked, the dragon’s claws raked its own belly. She lunged up into the chest cavity, hacked to pieces the quivering muscle.

  When the dragon quieted, she dove out of its body, clinging to her knife and spear.

  She couldn’t see. The dragon’s blood ran into her eyes. Agony dug razored claws into her back when she tried to fly. She couldn’t vanish the wing she had left.

  “Irena!” Selah’s shout. “I have you!”

  The beat of powerful wings drew close. Hands slid over her shoulders, then around her waist, gently pulling Irena out of her dive.

  Irena almost forgot to wipe the dragon’s blood from her mouth before parting her lips to speak. “Olek?”

  “Burned, but alive and arguing. He won’t let Jake take him away until he’s seen you. Michael can’t heal him.”

  Burned, but alive. The stupid ox. She didn’t try to hold back her tears. They slipped beneath her closed lids, over her cheeks. “Michael is already here? What of the airplane?”

  “Apparently, there was a miracle—and, apparently, Khavi thinks its fun to carry around a fleet of lifeboats in her cache.”

  Irena laughed, and felt Selah rub a cloth against her face, cleaning away the blood. When she opened her eyes, she saw her wing sticking out at an odd angle, mangled and the feathers coated with red. Gore covered her clothes and skin.

  A hundred yards away, hovering above the water, a group of Guardians waited for them.

  “You’re still holding your weapons,” Selah pointed out.

  Weapons still heated from the furnace of the dragon’s chest. “I can’t vanish them.” Or her wing.

  “And I can’t vanish this towel I just used on your face.” Selah made a soft humming sound. “I also can’t seem to ’port with you.”

  Irena nodded. She hadn’t ingested the dragon’s blood, but she was covered with it. If Michael, Selah or Jake could have teleported with a dragon as easily as they did another Guardian, this fight would have been much easier.

  They approached the hovering Guardians. Irena’s heart pitched to her stomach and heaved up into her throat when she saw Olek, held up by Jake. His skin charred, his clothes burned away—as was much of his flesh. She cried into the towel and didn’t touch him, knowing that every movement must be agony.

  But she felt the relief in his psychic scent, not his pain. And his eyes smiled at her before Jake teleported him away.

  She searched the waters before glancing up at Michael. “Where is the dragon?”

  “In my cache.”

  Irena frowned. “Could you have teleported with it?”

  Michael gave her a look. “No. But a grigori can hold the pieces.” His gaze slid over her body. The sticky heat of the dragon’s blood disappeared.

  With a grateful sigh, Irena vanished her wing. The sharp ripping pain in her back vanished with it. Though clean, her weapons retained their heat.

  She reached out with her Gift and touched them.

  CHAPTER 23

  Taylor eyed the clock. Even before this prediction of Khavi’s, even before the task force, she’d rarely ever left at the end of her shift. Tonight, she’d leave on the dot. Technically, she might still be working, since she and Preston were meeting with Wren to go over the security at the Stafford funeral—but Taylor wasn’t ready to call the development of a plan to slay a demon congressman a cog in the wheel of justice.

  Jorgenson wouldn’t approve the overtime for it, anyway.

  She glanced at the time again. The sun had set five minutes ago. She hadn’t heard from Michael or anyone at SI—but even if their gathering had run late, he’d still be out there, waiting. If not, someone would have called her. Lilith . . . or someone. No news meant good news.

  Of course, in her line of work, no news usually just meant the body hadn’t been found yet.

  She looked up at the ceiling, said quietly, “Michael, if you’re here, Joe and I are ready to go.”

  But Joe wasn’t, actually. He was staring wide-eyed at his computer screen, leaning forward in his desk chair like the Giants were one pitch away from winning the World Series. “Andy, you’ve got to look at this.”

  She came around the desk. A live newsfeed ran in a small window; she couldn’t hear the blond anchorwoman, but the inset showed a spotlight shining down on a cluster of boats tied together with gossamer strings. Taylor tilted her head, looked at the rings the boats made and the shimmering threads connecting them—the whole effect was almost like a spiderweb.

  The headline stated that it had been an airline crash with no fatalities�
��and a freak electrical storm reported in the area was the probable cause. Great, that everyone survived, but she couldn’t quite see what Joe was so worked up about. “Are we surprised it’s not a goose this time?”

  Joe shook his head, turned up the volume. “—witnesses on a ferry are calling it a miracle. ‘It just floated down into the water,’ said one witness. Others are more skeptical, however.”

  They switched to video of a lanky, twenty-something kid with a backpack and an American accent, laughing and shaking his head. “I saw a splash, that’s what I saw. We saw it start to come down, but then the moon went behind a cloud or something. You couldn’t see anything after that. Here—” He held up a digital video camera, showed a dark screen. “My dad paid fifteen hundred bucks for this before I came here, and I’ve got nothing. I should have been taking pictures of the naked blue lady who was strutting around the boat, instead.”

  At the mention of a naked lady, heads turned at the other desks. Joe turned the volume back down.

  The anchorwoman appeared again. “Reports indicate that fifty percent of the cameras on board recorded the same images.” She tried to appear coyly amused. “The other fifty show a nude blue woman—who, at this time, has not yet been identified.”

  “You see, Andy—our guys did that,” Joe said.

  She let the our guys slide without comment. A strange giddiness wouldn’t stop shaking in her belly. Could they really have saved an airplane?

  The camera panned over the crowd again. Taylor found her finger shooting out, pressing against the screen below the face of a woman wearing a black cloak, the hood thrown back to show her dark hair.

  “That one! I saw her at Polidori’s a couple of nights ago.”

  “I saw her at SI, but she had on this red dress . . .” He trailed off with a whistle and leaned even closer, his tongue almost hanging out. “God, it’s a crime for a woman built like that to cover up her—”