by Harley James
Chapter 35
It was getting bloody dark, and he still hadn’t found her. Nate pounded his fist on the steering wheel. What the hell good was having a connection with your mate if you couldn’t use it?
Soul mates are equals in all ways and resistant to manipulation, Katherine had said in her cool, imperious way the first time he’d told her about his missing scar.
He had often wondered at her ability to remain so reserved. Was it naturally her personality, or the result of some trauma? That aloofness was why her agitation over Stark’s near-death was so disturbing. He’d never seen her so distraught. She’d probably never forgive him for attempting to kill Stark.
He was fairly certain he’d never forgive himself either.
If he had spared one moment to think, one moment to contemplate the outcome of what he was about to do, he would have realized the demon would quit Stark’s body before Nate had a chance to kill the archdemon inside. But he hadn’t taken the time to think. He did what he’d always done—act, react, and ignore the consequences of his actions. All these decades, he’d gotten away with it with just a few wounds.
Tonight, however, karma seemed to be catching up to him.
The only good news was that Katherine’s water element had been faster than his sword, and Stark yet lived.
Nate had been streaming around town for an hour, trying to forget the accusation in Katherine’s eyes and the betrayal in Jessie’s, going every possible place where Jessie might be. He’d found nothing but residual impressions of her.
Where are you, angel? He’d reached out telepathically dozens of times to no avail. If he had forced her to bond with him, he’d be able to find her anywhere. Blast.
When he’d finally made contact a half hour ago, he’d been able to see a gravel road and light posts. He’d sensed her rapid heartbeat. Felt the tension in her fingers on the steering wheel. Then she’d severed contact so forcefully it was like a knife jab to his frontal lobe.
Where had he seen light posts like those before? She’d obviously taken matters into her own hands, thinking to trade the Veil for her grandparents. He found a truck with keys in the ignition to conserve his energy and drove toward an older suburb that had funky vintage fixtures similar to the light posts he’d seen when he’d touched Jessie’s mind.
Why would she do this? Face demons on her own, knowing what they were capable of? He couldn’t understand loving that much, could he?
As a human, all he’d ever known was selfishness, betrayal, and fighting for survival. Even his time as a Guardian had shown him the value of staying in control. He slayed demons that people didn’t even know existed, as they sat next to the innocents on the bus, in their work cubicles, in their beds. Life as he’d known it was all about struggle. Fighting. Jockeying for the best angle. Always looking over his shoulder at who or what might want to use or kill him.
Sure, he’d met some grand folks over the decades—humans like Jawahar and Stark. But from the first moment he’d met Jessie, he’d sensed something extraordinary in her. Her passions derived from the desire to help others, not to elevate herself.
Her warmth drew him, her goodness inspired, and her optimism exhilarated. Being near her made him happy in the most basic way. She wrung feelings from him that no amount of money in the world could replicate.
He blinked down at the screen when his phone rang, then sighed to see who it was. “Katherine, I—”
“Shut up.” Her thready voice twisted a knife in his chest. Clearly, she was using the cell phone instead of telepathy because she was too weak, though she’d never admit that to him. “My calling doesn’t mean I forgive you, because I don’t. Your impetuosity has caused so much pain. Spencer keeps telling me to give you time, but it’s been a hundred years.”
“I would go back and change my actions against Stark if I could. Truly.”
“Sorry means nothing if you keep making the same selfish choices. This is it, Nate. Your last chance to make good of something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jessica. You’re looking for her, aren’t you?”
He didn’t bother answering.
“What do you intend to do when you find her? Force her to return here without even listening to her?”
He sighed. He hadn’t thought it out beyond whatever he needed to do to keep her safe. Completing the ritual bonding was high on his list of to dos when he found her.
Not that forcing Jessie to do anything made him feel good.
But would he anyway?
She would hate it. Hate him.
“Spencer thinks you love her. Looks more like obsession to me. Love can’t be forced. If you want to love and be loved in return, it has to be free. Not out of fear or manipulation. Same with doing good for others. The best gift is loving and expecting nothing in return,” Katherine said.
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
A pause, and then, “Once upon a time, I thought so.”
Of course—Ari, the Viking.
Now there was a story he’d pay money to hear, but he had a feeling it would be a secret both Katherine and Ari would take into eternity.
“Of course, I later wised up.” There was a complex texture to her voice that made Nate downshift, pull the truck into a deserted parking lot, and close his eyes. Her words held a subtle shade of enduring pain. Between this unusual, feelings-oriented dressing down she was giving him, and her emotive reaction to Stark’s near-death earlier, here was a facet of Katherine’s personality that was more human, more vulnerable and sensitive than he’d ever seen.
He was quite speechless.
After another pause she continued. “It’s Jessie’s life. You need to let her make her own decisions, Nate. That includes whether or not she even wants to be with you. And she might not. As you know, Guardians have a lot of baggage.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” he finally replied.
“Then you’ve already lost her.” On that disturbing note, Katherine hung up.
What if Jessie didn’t want to be with him? Why should he even consider this stroppy bullshit? Even if she was cross with him right now, surely she’d come around in time. They were meant to be together, else she wouldn’t have healed his scar.
He would win her love. No, he’d earn it.
But he bloody well couldn’t do it dossing around like this. He stepped out of the truck and let his senses flare out across the barren parking lot and the boarded up, broken windows of the warehouse. He’d already been to her grandparents’ place as well as her uncle Mason’s, and had ended up in this industrial part of the city. Quite frankly, he didn’t know where else to look.
“Jess, please t—"
Light posts. Ornate scroll work with an aged, green patina to them.
In an instant, he remembered where he’d seen them before.
Nate left the keys in the truck’s ignition and flashed to the wooded edge of a cemetery twelve miles away. His heart thumped in his throat to see his Jessie alive and well, sprinkling something in the grass near the large sculpture. Salt.
He should go to her, grab her, and get her the hell away from here. The urge to do so was a buzzing in his blood.
But…
His hands fisted at his sides. If he was to have any chance at winning her affections, he would do well to consider her feelings on this matter.
But she was ill-equipped—as all humans were—to deal with demons. Especially high order demons like Asmodeus. Wasn’t life and death a deal breaker when it came to respecting her independence?
She’d surely tell him it was thoughts like those that made him sound like an arrogant ass.
By God, this evaluation of potential fallout was going to go hard for him.
Play it moment by moment. That sounded like a good plan.
He dispersed his senses, trying to pinpoint malevolent sources in the rapidly darkening graveyard. A faint figure peeked from behind the enormous statue. She appeared young, maybe se
venteen or eighteen years old. She didn’t emanate a threat, but he wasn’t ready to trust anything around Jessie. He kept his gaze between his mate and the figure while Jessie opened the duffel bag to stash away the salt.
She’d obviously paid attention when he and the others had continually refortified the club and taught others in the city how to protect themselves by using holy water and salt. That gave him a small measure of comfort, but if she gave the Veil—which had to be in that bag—to Asmodeus, she’d not only be jeopardizing her own life, but that of every single human on earth. He couldn’t let her do that.
Yet he couldn’t watch her die either.
For God’s sake, couldn’t she sense him by now? He’d never felt so out of control of a situation or his emotions. Not a great way to prepare for battle. He’d likely lack backup, too, since Katherine was not in any shape to fight, Spencer and Jinx had dispatched back to their own clubs to deal with their own Hell Princes, and Alexios was off the grid. The strangest part was that Jaws, Alexios’s head of security at Rapture, hadn’t heard from the Spartan Guardian either.
Hopefully it was because he’d located Sophia.
This soul mate stuff could really be a pain in the ass.
Jessie wiped at her eyes. She was crying? Bugger all. A bead of sweat collected at the base of his neck. Go to her. He took the first step from behind the shelter of the trees when everything went dark.
Then the wind stopped.
Nate’s demon sensors went into overdrive.
The Hell Prince was here.
Jessie had never felt her heart beat so palpably in her chest. An almost out-of-body sensation wove around her as the area began to glow a soft red. Asmodeus in his earlier GQ manifestation stepped out from behind one of the over-sized headstones in a three-piece suit, urbane and composed from head to toe.
“Hello, sweet, Jessica. I, for one, appreciate sensible women. Women who know what they want and ask for it.”
How could someone so evil look so good? Sound so pleasant? He was on the other side of the narrow gravel road, but he was moving toward her. The temperature in the vicinity dropped significantly the closer he came. Her duffel bag began to radiate a white light. What did that mean? Please, please let me do this right. “Stop! Don’t come any closer. I want to see my grandparents. Right now.”
Asmodeus’s lips curled. “So impatient. Just like your boyfriend. Speaking of whom, why don’t you tell him to come out and act like an adult. We both know he’s here.”
Jessie tried to swallow, but her mouth and throat were parched. “You’re wrong. Nate doesn’t…know where I am.” It came out a whisper.
She got the feeling he understood anyway, even though he was still more than twenty feet away. The demon narrowed his eyes assessingly. Then a smile slowly spread across his features. It made the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. And not in a good way.
“You refused to bond with him. Isn’t that interesting? Good. That’s good, Jessica.”
What was he talking about? Why would the demon care if she bonded with Nate? And he was wrong. There was no way Nate could possibly track her. She was certain she’d been able to keep him out of her mind after that brief shock when he’d first made contact.
Asmodeus took another step toward her, and she thrust her hands out instinctively. He jerked backwards as though jolted. As his gaze shot to the duffel bag, a terrifying image of a lizard-like hunchback with pointed ears, a needle-like, barbed tongue, and studded, leathery skin seared through her brain. She gasped at the sudden dearth of hatred engulfing the area. Could feel the malice—cold and sharp like falling into a sea of glass. The malevolence pressed in, searching for a way inside the safe circular perimeter she’d established with the chrism oil. Maybe the monster she’d glimpsed was what Asmodeus looked like in his true, unglamoured form.
That shit was scaaary.
“Stay in your circle, Jess.”
She gasped. “Nate?”
He didn’t respond. She faced Asmodeus, her eyes searching left and right for any sign of the Guardian she’d come to love. Was he actually here? She wanted to cry—half in relief, half in shame that she was causing so much trouble. “Nate? Please talk to me.”
“You have what I want,” Asmodeus hissed. Rain began to fall outside her circle, freezing into ice crystals mid-air. They twinkled exquisitely before bursting like tiny, glass grenades on the headstones beyond her circle.
She stamped her feet to bring feeling back to her extremities even though she sensed the circle was shielding her from the brunt of the cold. “Bring my grandparents to me, right now—or I’m gone. L-l-last chance, demon.”
Asmodeus’s eyes glowed red for a moment before Tilly and Walt appeared, bound together on the steps of the small mausoleum to the left of the Hell Prince. They were alive! Jessie lunged toward them, but crashed into Nate.
“No! Let me get to them!” she cried.
Nate grabbed her arms. “Get back in your circle, and for God’s sake, don’t let go of the Veil!”
“Please, you have to trust me.”
“I do, Jessie, but I won’t let you do this alone.”
She saw movement behind him. “Nate!”
He spun away from her to meet Asmodeus’s furious leap. Their snarls and sounds of fighting were worse than before at the Basilica. The demon howled as Nate held him down against the line of chrism oil, the Hell Prince’s skin going up in flames, the ghastly smell suffusing the area so profusely she gagged.
Asmodeus bellowed, then solidified in his true savage form which Jessie had glimpsed moments before, his long claws gouging deep wounds in Nate’s chest. Dear Heaven, please save us from such a monster. Jessie dropped to her knees, hands shaking so bad she had trouble grabbing onto the chrism oil bottle. There was a scream inside her waiting for release, but she needed to keep herself together. Help Nate. Get to her grandparents.
Nate fell backwards on the grass, disoriented from blood loss. Asmodeus pounced on top of him, tearing into his chest, arms, legs, and face until there was blood everywhere.
She uncorked the chrism oil and splashed what remained in the bottle on the archdemon’s back. He burst into flames, the concussion of the ignition knocking Jessie back ten feet. It gave Nate enough time to knit back together. The two adversaries grappled across the grass, rolling into headstones. Blood poured off both of them, but Nate had clearly diverted some of his Earth energy to free her grandparents. They were suddenly limping across the grass, Grandpa heavily supporting Gramma as they tried to make their way toward her.
Jessie moaned, trying to hold back her shout to get them to move faster—faster!—but she didn’t want to alert Asmodeus to their movement. The archdemon roared. Six winged devils with talons, long black vertical slashes down their eyes, and massive yellow horns curling from their temples began to circle around Gramma and Grandpa. Tilly stumbled, beginning to cry.
“Leave them alone, you evil bastards!” Jessie screamed.
Strains of the Lord’s Prayer drifted to her, her grandparents’ voices trembling, but loud. Could she throw the holy water bottle to them without smashing it to bits? She had to try something without leaving the circle because she realized Nate was right. If she left the circle, the relic would no longer be safe, and she wouldn’t have time to re-fortify it. She had to find a way to get Walt and Tilly into the circle, and then get Nate here so he could do that poof thing with all four of them.
She grabbed the salt container, opened the dispenser, and looked to where the winged demons had surrounded her grandparents as though scavengers waiting for Tilly to run out of breath.
Or run out of prayers.
“Well sorry, assholes, Gramma can probably recite prayers for a week without repeating a single one, so here’s to good ol’ Catholic schools!” She chucked the canister with all she had toward her grandparents, salt spraying out every which way as it arced through the air. She heard the sizzle and saw the smoke as the tiny granules pelted the demons. They screeched
and retreated, giving her grandfather enough time to snatch the canister.
“Sprinkle it on the ground around you, Grandpa! And keep praying, both of you!”
He nodded, and it seemed to work. On the lesser demons anyway.
She turned back to where Nate had Asmodeus flat on his back. Large, gnarled roots protruded from the ground, wrapping around Asmodeus’s arms, legs, chest and neck, but he still had his claw-like hands wrapped around Nate’s biceps. When Nate drew another root from the ground to wrap around Asmodeus’ neck, the demon’s eyes bulged from the pressure.
Suddenly a long barbed tongue stabbed out from Asmodeus’ mouth, piercing Nate in the chest.
As he screamed, Jessie collapsed. The pain—sudden, breath-stealing, unimaginably hot like a bright red iron rod fresh from the coals. She rolled to her side, gasping as Nate tried pulling away from the demon tongue. Had it pierced his heart? If he ripped the tongue out, might he pull his heart from his body, too? Even a Guardian couldn’t recover from a wound like that.
Her whole body started to shake.
Nate’s essence was dimming.
How did she know that? How?
Why hadn’t she noticed how much she’d begun to depend on him? In all her life, she’d never had someone with whom she could share everything. Do anything. Be anyone.
Even when he disagreed with her, she felt respected.
“Please don’t leave me now.” Her fingers flexed on the grass. It was beginning to gather dew. She glanced around in the gauzy red light for a sharp object. Something to cleave Asmodeus’s barbed tongue to release Nate. She made it to her knees. Grandpa was still holding off the winged devils, so she could focus her attention on helping N—
“Stay…back!” Nate’s hoarse command drew her attention to his position on top of Asmodeus in the grass. The demon snapped through most of the roots Nate had twined around his body and neck, his throat moving distinctively, swallowing, as though a rat was passing through a snake’s body.
