Demon Marked
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
Teaser chapter
Titles by Meljean Brook
DEMON BLOOD
“Brook brings together two broken heroes in the high-stakes sixth Guardian paranormal romance . . . Fiery attraction and steamy love scenes . . . Fans won’t be disappointed.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An excellent Guardian thriller that stars two delightful heroes . . . Set aside time to read this wonderful tale in one sitting, because Meljean Brook has her fans hooked from the Bedtime Story summary of the past to the powerful finish.”
—The Best Reviews
“Brook’s characters leap from the page. Deacon is the perfect hero, tortured but worthy, and Rosalia is just the woman to save him.”
—RT Book Reviews (★★★★★)
DEMON FORGED
“Dark, rich, and sexy, every page makes me beg for more!”
—Gena Showalter,
New York Times bestselling author
“Another fantastic book in a beautifully written series. [It] has all the elements I love in Meljean’s books—strong, gorgeously drawn characters, a world so real I totally believe it, and the punch of powerful emotion.”
—Nalini Singh,
New York Times bestselling author
DEMON BOUND
“An excellent entry in a great series . . . Another winner as the multifaceted Guardian saga continues to expand in complexity while remaining entertaining . . . As complex and beautifully done as always.”
—Book Binge
“Be prepared for more surprises and more revelations . . . Brook continues to deliver surprising characters, relationships, paranormal elements, and plot twists—the only thing that won’t surprise you is your total inability to put this book down.”
—Alpha Heroes
“Raises the bar on paranormal romance for sheer thrills, drama, and world-building, and hands down cements Brook’s place at the top of her field.”
—Romance Junkies
DEMON NIGHT
“Meljean is now officially one of my favorite authors. And this book’s hero? . . . I just went weak at the knees. And the love scenes—wow, just wow.”
—Nalini Singh
“This is the book for paranormal lovers. It is a phenomenal book by an author who knows how to give her readers exactly what they want. What Brook’s readers want is a story that is dangerous, sexy, scary, and smart. Demon Night delivers all that and more! . . . [It] is the epitome of what a paranormal romance should be! I didn’t want to put it down.”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“Poignant and compelling with lots of action, and it’s very sensual. You’ll fall in love with Charlie, and Ethan will cause your thermometer to blow its top. An excellent plot, wonderful dialogue . . . Don’t miss reading it or any of Meljean Brook’s other novels in this series.”
—Fresh Fiction
“An intense romance that will leave you breathless . . . I was drawn in from the first page.”
—Romance Junkies
DEMON MOON
“The fourth book in Meljean Brook’s Guardian series turns up the heat without losing any of the danger.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A read that goes down hot and sweet—utterly unique—and one hell of a ride.”
—Marjorie M. Liu, New York Times bestselling author
“Sensual and intriguing, Demon Moon is a simply wonderful book. I was enthralled from the first page!”
—Nalini Singh
“Fantastically drawn characters . . . and their passion for each other is palpable in each scene they share. It stews beneath the surface and when it finally reaches boiling point . . . OH WOW!”
—Vampire Romance Books
DEMON ANGEL
“I’ve never read anything like this book. Demon Angel is brilliant, heartbreaking, genre-bending—even, I dare say, epic. Simply put, I love it.”
—Marjorie M. Liu
“Brook has crafted a complex, interesting world that goes far beyond your usual . . . paranormal romance. Demon Angel truly soars.”
—Jennifer Estep, author of Tangled Threads
“I can honestly say I haven’t read many books lately that have kept me guessing and wondering ‘what’s next,’ but this is one of them. [Brook has] created a unique and different world . . . Gritty and realistic . . . Incredibly inventive . . . This is a book which makes me think and think about it even days after finishing it.”
—Dear Author
“Enthralling . . . [A] delightful saga.”
—The Best Reviews
“Extremely engaging.... A fiendishly good book. Demon Angel is outstanding.”
—The Romance Reader
“A surefire winner. This book will captivate you and leave you yearning for more. Don’t miss Demon Angel.”
—Romance Reviews Today
Titles by Meljean Brook
DEMON ANGEL
DEMON MOON
DEMON NIGHT
DEMON BOUND
DEMON FORGED
DEMON BLOOD
DEMON MARKED
THE IRON DUKE
Anthologies
HOT SPELL
(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Shiloh Walker)
WILD THING
(with Maggie Shayne, Marjorie M. Liu, and Alyssa Day)
FIRST BLOOD
(with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Chris Marie Green)
MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS
(with Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, and Ilona Andrews)
BURNING UP
(with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Virginia Kantra)
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DEMON MARKED
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the a
uthor
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / September 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Melissa Khan.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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ISBN : 978-1-101-54379-5
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CHAPTER 1
Ash hadn’t meant to frighten the girl. She hadn’t even noticed the little blonde until after the subway train pulled away. The disembarking crowd quickly dispersed, leaving the underground platform empty but for Ash and a few other waiting passengers. In a blue princess’s costume and a plastic tiara, the girl stood next to her mother, clutching a bag of party favors to her small chest. Though her face was turned away and Ash couldn’t see the girl’s smile, she could taste the happiness emanating from her, unsurprisingly sweet.
Had Ash ever felt that much joy as a girl? She couldn’t remember. Emotions must have touched her deeply at some point in her life, because she recognized how little they touched her now—as if her ruined memory hid enough data to compare an After to a Before that she couldn’t recall. And though she knew those emotions were missing, Ash didn’t feel their loss like a hacked-off limb. Even her sense of emptiness remained on the surface, no different from noticing a bruise on her knee and idly wondering when she’d gotten it.
With the same idle interest, Ash observed the girl, who lifted the side of her hem and twirled around her mother as if circling a ballroom. The tiara’s paste jewels flashed beneath the fluorescent lights, and a name leapt into Ash’s mind— Cinderella—but there was something else, an impression just beyond it, like lightning seen from the corner of her eye, like a word at the tip of her tongue.
Her name? No longer idly curious, Ash stared at the girl, mentally replaying that twirl and the flash of light, willing the impression to strengthen into a solid connection, so that she could trace the memory to its source. Was Ash’s full name at the end of it?
Cinderella wasn’t right. Reminded by the girl’s dance, Ash could suddenly recall images from the animated movie, the gliding waltz around the ballroom with the prince, but the connection she sought wasn’t there. Ash was looking for something a step aside from Cinderella. The girl in the cinders and ashes . . . ?
That wasn’t right, either. Not quite.
Why couldn’t she remember? Frustration skimmed over the surface of her mind like a blade over ice, leaving little evidence of its passing. What had happened to separate Before from an After that contained memories, but was still so empty?
Dimly, she became aware that the girl had dropped her bag of party favors to the train platform. Treats and noisemakers forgotten, she tugged insistently on her mother’s hand, her widened eyes never leaving Ash’s. Happiness had changed to sour fear, far stronger than the unease children usually projected when they glimpsed the vermillion symbols tattooed over the left side of Ash’s face. The girl’s distress intruded on Ash’s focus, and the impression of the name she’d been seeking faded.
It disappeared altogether when the mother’s gaze followed her daughter’s. Unlike the girl’s sour fear, the mother’s tasted of bitter cold, like icy sweat against Ash’s tongue.
Dread and terror.
From the tunnel came the clatter of an approaching train. The woman gathered up the girl and set off for the far end of the platform at a stiff-legged trot. The look she threw over her shoulder included bared teeth—the mother protecting her young.
Fear wasn’t just an emotion. Sometimes, it was a survival instinct.
But why consider Ash a threat? Not just the tattoos, obviously. In this part of London, heavy ink sometimes provoked fascination or disgust, but was common enough that it didn’t incite terror.
Ash glanced down, where more symbols marked her hands. Around the tattoos, the skin was tan, not the crimson it sometimes became. Her jeans and leather jacket hadn’t disappeared—and when her clothes vanished, she knew very well that titters and gasps followed. Not fear.
Brakes screeched as the train stopped. Ash’s image reflected faintly in the car windows. Beneath the sweep of blond hair across her forehead, Ash’s eyes shone as brilliantly red as two small stoplights.
Ah. So that was the cause of their fear. Ash wasn’t surprised; when she’d lived at Nightingale House, the same glow had come a few times, and she’d only noticed when the lights in her room were out—and because she’d once terrified a ward nurse making the night rounds.
The hysterical nurse had returned less than a minute later with an orderly in tow, but Ash’s eyes had looked like any other person’s eyes by then.
Glowing eyes, red skin—the changes always faded within moments of Ash noticing them. In the train window’s reflection, her irises had already returned to a more human blue, her pupils were black, the whites white. She glanced toward the girl again, but the mother had hustled past the disembarking passengers and taken a seat. The woman held her daughter, staring at Ash through the window—likely praying that she wouldn’t board the train with them. The girl huddled on her lap, her blue dress twisted around her legs, and Ash’s earlier impression suddenly solidified into a word: Aschenputtel.
Ash’s disappointment was a soft weight, barely felt. Though the first syllable of Ash’s name sounded similar, Aschenputtel was Cinderella’s name, not hers. So she would have to keep searching.
The train began to move. Not so frightened now, the little blonde peeked beneath her mother’s arm and met Ash’s gaze. Brave girl. Ash smiled faintly and lifted her hand in acknowledgment.
Hello, little princess. You’ve escaped a monster who can’t remember her name, or even what sort of monster she is. But don’t worry that I’ll crawl under your bed . . . unless, of course, you have answers there.
The train clattered down the tunnel, taking the girl with it. To avoid further notice, Ash drew up the hood of the sweatshirt layered beneath her jacket, then settled in to wait for another ten minutes. That had been her train, but she didn’t feel impatience any more than she did frustration or disappointment.
Curiosity wasn’t an emotion, however, but a state of being—and so Ash did wonder why she hadn’t boarded despite their fear. After all, frightening a little girl was the least of her sins. She’d also jumped the high gates at the subway entrance instead of paying her fare. Later that evening, she planned on breaking into a dead woman’s home.
Disregarding the girl’s terror hadn’t felt right, however—and Ash spent the next ten minutes trying to decide whether “feeling right” was an emotion, or something else.
A month ago, shortly before had Ash escaped from Nightingale House, she’d slipped into Dr. Cawthorne’s office after midnight and read through every file and notebook that referred to her. Cawthorne knew nothing of Before, not even her name. She’d been committed as a Jane Doe, and in the computers and on the file labels she was called “Mary Bloggs,” a placeholder designation often followed by the date of her admission. That day, during one of Ash’s therapy sessions, he’d written into his notebook: Schizoid personality disorder?
He’d underlined the question mark twice.
After almost three years in the care of his private mental hospital, the psychiatrist still hadn’t known how to classify her. Not that Ash had helped him along. Two years had passed before she’d spoken aloud
, and nine more months had gone by before she’d cared enough to wonder who she was and what had happened to her.
Though he’d speculated, Dr. Cawthorne hadn’t figured that out, either.
In his earliest notes, he’d attributed her lack of verbal response to brain damage caused by her persistent febrile temperature—a fever hot enough that Ash should have been hospitalized. Cawthorne’s records didn’t indicate why she hadn’t been given emergency care; he only indicated that her fever didn’t respond to medications or external remedies. Finally, when it became apparent that neither weakness nor delirium accompanied the fever, Dr. Cawthorne had stopped trying to lower it.
Ash had clear memories from those days. She remembered nothing from before Nightingale House, and everything after. She could recall how she hadn’t spoken, but had automatically obeyed every instruction given to her: to get up in the morning, to shower, to dress, to eat breakfast, to sit and watch television, to eat dinner, and then to lie in bed until she was told to get up again. At the end of the first year, Cawthorne had noted in his spidery scrawl: