He’d be a Guardian.
She flattened her palm over his chest, waited for the beat of his heart. Oh, it was already there . . . so faint, almost undetectable. The light was growing dimmer, still so bright but no longer shining outward—it was being sucked into the blackness of Taylor’s eyes.
Taylor’s lips formed another word, unmistakable: Michael. Then, Help.
Nicholas’s body jerked. His eyes flew open, staring sightlessly into the sky, his mouth shaping into a soundless scream.
And he vanished from her arms.
CHAPTER 18
After two weeks, he could finally walk.
The pain still ate through to his bones, but Nicholas could stand without crumpling, move one foot in front of the other. Slowly, he made his way to the enormous marble slabs that served as the temple doors. He just had to pull them open, and he’d be in Caelum. Then there would be a Gate—somewhere—that would take him to Earth. A Gate that would take him to Ash.
He just had to pull them open . . . but Nicholas didn’t yet know if he could do it.
Strength wasn’t the problem. Earlier that day, he’d lifted with a single finger the red sofa on which he’d spent the past two weeks. But two weeks ago, he hadn’t even had two hands.
The left had regrown into the shape of a hand, but was still fragile. His guts and ribs, shredded by shrapnel, had almost completely pieced together—by the second day, his lungs had mended enough that he could take a breath. Tendons and muscle worked as they should, but the shattered bones beneath were still laced with cracks. Pim, a novice Guardian with a healing Gift, had predicted a full recovery within one or two more days. Of course, she’d said that four days ago, too.
Not completely healed, but he didn’t look like a horror show any longer. He could close his eyes without being bombarded by the screams inside his head, the torturous bite of ice. So it was time to go.
He braced his feet and hauled back against the door. For a moment, a pain lancing through his ankle gave him visions of his leg snapping and folding over on itself inside his pajama pants. He was able to slowly open the door. Light poured into the temple, blinding him.
Nicholas stepped out into a ruin. As far as he could see, columns lay like tossed matchsticks, domes had collapsed into piles of rubble. No single building stood intact, and the towers that were still upright appeared sheared apart, pointed like jagged teeth. Beyond them lay a brilliant blue sky that stung tears from Nicholas’s eyes.
“Not much left, is there?”
Because they never left him completely alone, helpless in a crumbling realm, Taylor sat on the temple’s marble steps. The sun glinted against the gold and copper in her hair, and sparked like fire. It was almost a relief to look away from her, to the soothing white of the broken city again.
“No,” he said.
“You’ll get used to color in a little while. Too much at once is like a kaleidoscope jabbed into your brain. And then later comes the Enthrallment, where one color is so beautiful, you just want to stare at it for hours. Of course, sometimes it just takes a smell, or a sound. Sometimes it’s just a combination of everything.”
“So that’s why I’m still here? To give me time to adjust?”
“That, and your freak hand.” She said it like a joke that didn’t come out right, and finished with a grimace. “Sorry. It doesn’t look bad now anyway. Almost normal. Just—”
“Weaker,” Nicholas said.
“That’s all on me. When Michael transforms someone, he usually can’t heal them with his Gift—just like Pim couldn’t heal you—because most of the time, those wounds are somehow self-inflicted. But during the transformation, he’s altering those people anyway, so he alters the body so that it’s healed. I didn’t know how to do that. It never occurred to me to study anatomy or how to rebuild someone. I thought he’d always be there to give it to me.”
“But instead, he’s like that.” Nicholas nodded toward the city. “Broken down.”
“Yes,” she said, and when Nicholas turned to look at the temple behind them—still strong, still standing—Taylor added, “I think that one is me.”
“I’m glad you didn’t crack while I was in there, then.” And because another pain shot through his ankle and up to his knee, he eased down on the step next to her. “Is she all right?”
“You ask that every day.”
“I wonder every second.”
“Ah, well. She’s still not sure that we aren’t all just lying to her. After Khavi . . .” Taylor shook her head. “It could be argued that she left you alone to die. Or that she single-handedly arranged events so that every decision you, Ash, Lilith, and I made led to your becoming a Guardian. We don’t even know if the stuff about Ash being able to get Michael out of the field was true, or if that was just designed to put everything in motion. And I don’t know what we’re going to do when she comes waltzing back in, but you’re one of us now, and your input will have weight.”
He didn’t care about that. Group decision making wasn’t his style. They could what they liked. He’d do as he liked . . . when he could.
“Why am I not healing right?”
“We’ve got theories. You want to hear them?”
“Yes.”
“One is that I fucked up the transformation.”
“Did you?” If so, he could live with it. Some of it had obviously worked. He had strength. He could hear her heart beating. He could see a tiny fleck of quartz in a toppled marble column lying one hundred yards away. If he healed a little more slowly than most Guardians, then he’d just train hard enough, get so damn good with his weapons that he’d be hurt less, too. Hell, he’d do that even if he healed normally from this point forward.
Either way, problem solved.
“I think it went okay. Things only went bad when I tried to heal you. That’s when Michael came in, and that didn’t exactly go so well. So, that’s the second theory—that the trauma of his mind slipping into yours was a shock to your whole system, and on top of the transformation . . .” She sighed. “Most Guardians are up and aware the second they are transformed. Me, I was in a coma for three months after he first got into my brain. You were only unconscious for about six hours, which might have just been the time your brain needed to heal, anyway. So you came through better than I did.”
“Or maybe I came through better because you shielded my mind from his.”
“I—” She looked at him in surprise. “That is kind of you, St. Croix.”
“I’m healing and vulnerable. It probably won’t happen often.”
Taylor laughed, and Nicholas bore the pang against his heart, the longing for the laugh he most wanted to hear. God, he missed Ash.
“Any third theories?” Anything to get him back to Earth more quickly.
“Two more, and both of them a bit more mental than physical.” When he frowned at her, she said, “It matters, you know—the way a person perceives himself. Like, I’ve heard there were some novices who literally fell apart when they tried to shape-shift, because they couldn’t hold an image of themselves in their mind. Then there’s someone like Drifter, who can barely hold any shape other than his own, because his image of himself is so fixed. The funny thing about Drifter, though, is that last year, he had his leg bitten off by a dragon. Gulp! and everything from the thigh down was gone. That should have taken him a month to regenerate. He was walking around in two weeks.”
Nicholas had to laugh. “So you think I’m not sure of myself? That I don’t know myself? I should introduce you to my therapist.” A thought occurred to him. “Where, by the way, you might find Khavi.”
“But she’d know we were coming and skip her appointment that day.”
“That’s . . .” Nicholas trailed off, frowning. He didn’t know what to call it. Difficult didn’t seem to cover it.
Taylor nodded, as if reading his expression. “Now try a year of that.”
“I will be, apparently.”
“Yeah.” Taylor abruptly sob
ered, and looked out over the city. “Which brings me to the fourth and final theory: You don’t give a shit about being a Guardian.”
“I don’t give a shit about a lot of things.”
“I know. You don’t let anything get in your way when you want something. Death almost put a big fucking obstacle in there, but it just so happened that the one thing in the world you care about needed saving, and so you got another chance. You lucked out.”
Nicholas had nothing to say. He couldn’t argue that.
“I know you have Ash. That’s a pretty damn good reason to want to come back, to want to live. But it has nothing to do with being a Guardian. And I know what it’s like not to want the transformation, but taking it anyway, because someone’s counting on you, or you just don’t want to die. Those are all good reasons for saying yes to the transformation. But to keep going? It’s not enough. Take it from someone who has a Godknows-how-many-thousand-year-old guy hanging out in her head—it’s simply not enough to serve as a Guardian just so that you can do something else, so that you can keep hanging in there until the world falls into the sun. You have to make being a Guardian serve you.”
Like his money had always served him, giving him the ability to keep pursuing his revenge. He didn’t have that now. The money, yes, but no Madelyn to keep hunting down—and no amount of money in the world would make him heal faster.
But he’d never been afraid to ask for help when he needed it. “How? What do I have to find?”
“We all have something. We all have some reason that being a Guardian matters. The woman who’s leading us right now, Irena, she pretty much lives to smash demon heads in. Rosalia cares about everyone, so as a Guardian, she can help everyone in ways they can’t help themselves. Jake likes to fly around and blow shit up, but he’s also making certain that nothing like a demon can ever touch his family, or anyone else’s family.”
Nicholas had that. He had his parents, and Rachel, and the Boyles. Newer, and different than his need for revenge—the determination to see it never happen again. To anyone.
“I have something,” he said.
“Good. Then cultivate the hell out of it. Make it matter.”
Strange. For two weeks, he’d only been thinking about Ash. About getting back to her. But now, realizing what he’d be able to do, the demons he’d be able to stop . . . God. And his eyes were stinging again.
“St. Croix?”
Make it matter. “I think it already does,” he said.
Taylor had been right about the colors, but she hadn’t mentioned the sounds. Within a few seconds after she teleported him to his grandfather’s cabin, Nicholas was on his knees with his eyes closed, covering his ears, certain that he was on the verge of vomiting a rainbow. He could hear the snow melting beneath his knees. He’d begged for her to leave him alone, and she had.
Jesus. So certain that he’d be able to go straight from Caelum to Ash, to a warehouse in the middle of a city. Now he was glad Taylor had suggested a test run at the isolated cabin, instead.
At the end of the week, when he could walk outside without flinching when a twig snapped under the weight of an icicle, he thought taking that trip might be possible. All of his lingering scars and new pink skin looked like his own; his left hand was strong and finally the same size as his right.
But rather than using the satellite phone Taylor had left for him and telling her to come, he began chopping wood, instead. Later, she brought in a load of books for him to read, but didn’t mention going to San Francisco. He let her leave without mentioning it, too.
He didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. But despite the ache that was a constant companion, the desperate desire to see Ash, he wasn’t ready yet.
And he didn’t even know what he was getting ready for.
Another week passed, and Nicholas felt he was finally getting there—wherever there was. He’d read through all of the books on birds and flight, and started on his grandfather’s collection—the collection that Ash had read through in her week here, though he preferred to read reclining on the bed rather than the stiff rocking chair. He wished she’d left notes in the margins. What had she felt and thought, reading these? Probably nothing like she’d feel and think now. She’d changed so quickly that week, but so had he, and—
The forest had quieted.
Nicholas sat up in the bed. The twittering and chirping of the returning springtime birds had become easily ignored background noise in the past few weeks, but the sudden hush seemed as loud as an alarm. He grabbed his shotgun—he still hadn’t figured out his cache yet—and waited at the door, listening.
Nothing unusual.
Except . . . he tilted his head, focused on the odd, rhythmic sound coming from above him. Almost a gallop, but muffled. Almost like his own heartbeat.
Someone was on the roof.
His heart pounding now, too, he edged backward out of the door, backed away from the porch. The height and pitch of the A-frame made it difficult to get an immediate look at the top. When he did, his heart stopped.
Ash.
Leathery wings spread wide, she perched on the ridge, crouching like a gargoyle. Horns curled away from her forehead; crimson scales covered her body. She gripped the forward projecting edge of the roof with a taloned claw.
Her eyes began to glow. “Hello, Nicholas. You look well.”
He hadn’t been well. Not until this moment. “You look beautiful.”
Fangs glinted in her smile, and his heart tightened, a painfully sweet ache. God, how he’d missed her.
“I thought I’d try to scare you,” she said. “The birds gave me away. It makes me wish that I liked to eat chicken.”
“You probably scared them.”
“But not you.” She rose and stepped off the roof. Her wings caught the air, and she glided to Nicholas, landing easily just in front of him. The glowing crimson faded to human blue. Scales slid back into tattoos and a tan; her horns vanished. Jeans and her hoodie formed over naked skin. “I’ve missed you. But is it too early yet?”
He knew exactly what she meant, but still didn’t know how to answer it. So he gave her what he had to give. “I missed you, too. So damn much.”
The joy in her smile slipped into him, through him. “It took me two years just to remember part of my name, Nicholas. If you need me to go, I can—”
“No.” He’d missed her, he’d wanted her in his arms and to see her smile, but he hadn’t known how much he needed to see her. And now that she was here—“I need you to stay.”
Holding his gaze, she lifted her hands to cup his face, to slide her fingers through his hair. “You feel the same. And so familiar. I’ve touched you more in my imaginings than I ever have for real. I’d begun to fear that I’d forgotten, or that I remembered wrong.”
“And you are just as . . . just as . . . everything.” It hit him like a punch to the chest. “Everything.”
“So.” She grinned. “Even you can’t manage eloquence when you’ve just spent six weeks living like a hermit.”
“No.” He shook his head, and her smile faded. “Don’t you see? It’s—”
Too much to say. Too big.
So he kissed her.
This wasn’t familiar. The urge to cry and to laugh, and the painful effort to hold it in, to keep her emotions from overwhelming him. She rarely took such care. Only once had she fought so hard to contain them, but that was when she’d been full of desperation and fear, but trying to prevent Madelyn from using those emotions in any way, trying to keep from giving herself away with every lie, every evasion.
And now, his mouth on hers, she felt the same thing from Nicholas—an explosion of emotion, somehow contained, but that couldn’t be any longer. Oh, God. She lifted to him, welcomed the possessive surge of his tongue, touching his shoulders, his arms, the broad sweep of his back and the delicious tautness of his ass, claiming all of him for her own.
He lifted his head, breathing r
aggedly. “Everything, Ash. This is what I want to be. I thought you needed to be separate from what mattered, but it’s not. You’re the reason for it all. You’re the reason I can feel that anything else matters at all.”
“Nicholas.” Smiling, she trailed her fingers from his temple to his jaw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I feel the same way. How is that, do you think?”
He grinned. “I have no idea. Hold on. And vanish your wings.”
She did, then laughed aloud as he bent and swept her up against his chest. Her arms circled his neck. “They are a pain in the ass through doorways. Are you taking me to have sex? Because if your answer is no, I want you to put me down—so that I can pick you up, and take you to have sex.”
“You’ll have to come up with a better plot than that.”
She could, easily. “Oh, Nicholas! My clothes just fell off.”
The fabric between them vanished. With a single glance, his eyes flared with pale blue light. Ash caught her breath.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh. You are . . .”
His arms tensed. “Different?”
“Beautiful, I think.” Her chest filled with it. “It is sometimes hard to decide whether something is known or felt. I have always known how handsome you are. But you have never been so beautiful to me as you are now, naked like this.”
“I’m not naked yet.”
“You wear clothes, Nicholas. But I see you. Better than I have ever seen you before, with some of you that is new to see. Not just the glowing eyes; it was not just a transformation. You are a Guardian now.”
His throat worked, and his answer was rough. “Yes.”
“Just as I’m a demon—though I am, of course, the best kind. The only kind of demon worth being. So we’re perfect together, I think.”
Demon Marked Page 29
