Demon Marked

by Meljean Brook

  “I can’t watch you die,” he said hoarsely.

  Of course he couldn’t. Even though he was a Guardian, even though it would free so many, her life was still his limit.

  “I’ll come back. Believe me, Nicholas. I’ve been creating too many naked plots involving you to even think about dying now. But if you hold on to me through it, I’ll have reason to come back even faster.”

  “God.” He buried his face in her hair. Breathed deep, as if drawing her in. “You need me. I’ll be damned if I ever let you go. Believe that, Ash.”

  She did. If there were only two things that would never change, would never crumble or fade, she knew what they were.

  “I love you.” She kissed him. “And I do believe.”

  Taylor’s voice came from beside her, full of disbelief and something else. Hope? “So you’re actually doing this?”

  “Yes,” Ash said. “As soon as possible, before I feel differently.”

  “We’ll have to prepare,” Khavi said. “I’ll need to cut the proper symbols into your skin to cast the spell—and to draw you back to your body when it is done. And you’ll need to break a bargain first.”

  Simple enough. “Nicholas,” she said, and when he looked at her his eyes glowed so fiercely, Ash’s own eyes burned. “I need to make a new bargain with you.”

  “How can I?” he said hoarsely.

  “Because you love me. Because you’re strong. Because you’re a Guardian now. And because of all that, I’m not afraid to do this.”

  “You will rip my heart out.” He closed his eyes. “And I would tear it out myself for you. What will the bargain be?”

  Not his death sentence, as his tone suggested. Ash smiled up at him. “You will tell me that you love me, and I will not kiss you. Agreed?”

  “If it were true, I’d never say that I loved you again.”

  “I know. And since I need to hear it and to kiss you, I will gladly break this one. Are we agreed?”

  His lips parted. His throat worked. It was still another moment before he said, “We are agreed.”

  Bound in another bargain. She stared up at him, waiting for the fear, the delayed terror, the regret. She could change her mind, and he would instantly release her. He probably hoped she would now.

  But she couldn’t. “Nicholas?”

  His eyes blazed. He caught her face, stared into her eyes—and though he hadn’t said it yet, she felt the love blasting through his shields, filling her mind, wrapping around her as if to hold and protect.

  “I love you,” he said. “I will always love you.”

  Little wonder there was no fear in her. There couldn’t be, not in the face of this. Smiling, she pulled him down to her lips.

  And gladly damned herself with a familiar, perfect kiss.

  CHAPTER 21

  When she’d been a girl, Taylor had believed that, one day, someone would hold her like Nicholas St. Croix held his halfling demon at the edge of the frozen field. Someone would look at her with the same fierce love, that he would hold her through anything, even if it killed him. She’d wanted that for herself.

  She didn’t want that now. She just wanted to be free of Michael. Wanted to be free of the man who would prevent her from helping two people desperately in need. Wanted to be free of the screaming, the shattering, the darkness that never left.

  She wanted it more than anything. He’d pushed her past her limits.

  It was the only explanation she had, for how she ever lifted a knife, and plunged it through the symbols marking a good woman’s back.

  The woman and her man cried out together, and his tears ran as hot as her blood. Taylor staggered away from them, sank to her knees in red sand. They’d trusted her to do it. They’d asked her to be the one. Killing a demon—even a good one—wouldn’t break the Rules.

  But until now, Taylor would have said that it broke her rules.

  She’d had a choice. She could have said no. But she wanted freedom too much.

  The first crack appeared when the first drop of blood hit the sand. Taylor heard the drop, she heard the crack—though she’d never heard any sound from that frozen field. Louder than the rain of blood falling, louder than Nicholas chanting Ash’s name, begging her to come back now.

  Another crack, then more, thin lines spidering between the faces. Frozen lashes blinked. Screams began, loud now, from thawing throats.

  Far away, a large crowd of demons were scattering across the ice. She thought that if Nicholas had looked with his Gift, those demons would be trailing black ribbons of fear.

  But he wasn’t looking. He was staring into Ash’s eyes, searching desperately for new signs of life in a body that Taylor had killed.

  A fist punched through the ice from below, a fist that had never been frozen, only devoured again and again. And suddenly, that was the only sound—of the damned, breaking through, climbing out of their eternity of torture. Some wandered, dazed. Some grabbed the hands of others, helped lift them out. Others screamed and screamed, as if it were too late to feel anything different.

  Taylor wondered if she should tell them now that they weren’t free, not truly. Unless they went to the Pit, they were never leaving Hell. Unlike Ash, they didn’t have a body with symbols inscribed on it to bring her spirit back to the right place—they only possessed their spirit, and that could only take physical form in Hell. Unlike Michael, they didn’t have someone waiting at the edge of the frozen field, waiting to take his body out of her cache.

  So that she’d be free.

  Why weren’t any demons coming out of the field yet? Where were their faces? Despite the thousands, hundreds of thousands in the field, the only demons were those who’d been torturing Michael.

  All the demons gone. What would that mean for a demon halfling?

  Oh, God. Had Khavi lied? Had Ash agreed, not knowing that Khavi meant a twisted version of ‘free’?

  “Ash? Oh, God, you’re amazing. I love you.” Joy filled Nicholas’s voice, and quelled Taylor’s sudden panic. “Jake, get her to a healer, now!”

  Then the sound of his hard kiss against soft lips before they disappeared.

  Michael had kissed Taylor, too. That was how all of this had started. The strange insanity of it.

  Soon, she’d go back to normal.

  At the back of her mind, the darkness suddenly eased. Not so much hidden pain. A deep, feral joy. Michael, climbing free.

  Finally.

  From behind her, she heard the sharpness of Khavi’s indrawn breath. It must have been nice, watching everything that she’d worked for become true. No matter who it hurt, no matter who paid in blood and pain and the horrifying sacrifices they ended up making—

  “I did not see this coming,” Khavi said.

  An enormous, terrifying figure rose in the distance, amber scales glistening. Fire roared. Taylor heard the screams begin again, flying toward her, almost with wings of their own. Demons took to the sky, desperately trying to flee. A rush of fire caught them, sent them spinning, burning to the ground.

  “A dragon?” Instinctively, she drew back. No need to run, not yet. “Did it break through from Chaos?”

  “No.” Khavi’s gaze followed the dragon up, up. “That’s Michael.”

  Michael?

  The dragon dove, began banking toward them.

  “Taylor, teleport now.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me.”

  Taylor didn’t. She wouldn’t ever trust Khavi again, but as another roar of fire roasted a swath of fleeing demons in a path toward them, she saw Khavi’s point.

  She called upon the power of Michael’s Gift . . . and got nothing. It was there, in the back of her mind. She could feel it. She couldn’t use it. A tumble of emotions rioted through the space he used to occupy, but there was only one rising above all the others.

  Hunger.

  Oh, Jesus. Taylor stumbled back, searched for the Gift again and again. “He won’t let me go!”

  And was it just her, or
was that dragon coming really fucking close?

  Khavi’s Gift rolled out. The dragon shrieked. Enormous wings folded against its back, and he dove.

  Straight toward her.

  “Khavi!”

  The woman grabbed Taylor’s hand—and they were standing in Caelum, watching Michael’s temple fall. Columns cracked. Marble walls buckled and collapsed, crashing together in a billowing plume of pale dust.

  Taylor pushed her hands into her hair, tried to push her brains back in. That had not just happened. Had it?

  And what now?

  One person would know the answer to that question. Taylor spun around to face Khavi. “You used your Gift. What did you see?”

  Mouth open in shock, Khavi shook her head. “I didn’t see anything in its future at all.”

  Oh, God. So, the oldest and most powerful Guardian, the man stuck in her brain, had become a hungry dragon . . . and they had no idea what was coming next.

  Was that strange or normal? Taylor couldn’t decide if it even mattered. She only knew that she wasn’t free.

  Not yet.

  Either the meeting in Caelum had run longer than the Guardians had anticipated or Nicholas was Enthralled again.

  Last week, only a few hours after they’d returned from Hell and Pim had healed the stab wound in Ash’s back, the sparkle of broken glass against asphalt had kept him in the Special Investigations’ parking lot for almost forty-five minutes. There hadn’t been another Enthrallment since—and even if there had been, Ash trained during the same twelve hours that he did, so she’d always been there to make certain the infrequent Enthrallments didn’t leave him vulnerable as they traveled between the warehouse and their apartment downtown.

  Not today. She couldn’t travel to Caelum with him, and the warehouse was empty of Guardians, so she’d remained at the penthouse and worked, instead.

  Now she worried—an emotion still new to Ash, and one that, rationally, she knew shouldn’t be affecting her. He’d make it home. Of that she had no doubt. The Guardians took care of their own . . . and the halflings that they called their own.

  Standing in her private rooftop garden, Ash searched the cloud-darkened sky one last time. She loved the height of the building—at night, she could easily fly off the edge without attracting notice, and soon Nicholas would be able to come and go as he pleased, too. Now, she hoped to see the approach of a Guardian bringing him in, but aside from the distant planes and nearer birds, the sky was empty.

  With a sigh, she forced herself to return inside. Sparsely furnished, simplistic, and a little rustic, the penthouse wasn’t as slickly decorated and no longer looked as contemporary as the day she’d moved in, but Ash liked it. All that she and Nicholas needed was an office and a bed—and the bed was usually optional.

  So was the floor, the bath—and once, the ceiling. If there was one thing to be said for her demon form, her talons could cling.

  The ding of the elevator made her pause in the middle of the living room. Nicholas. Her heart began pounding, anticipation building a slow burn through her veins. Would she always feel this with him?

  God, she hoped so.

  But for now, a quick plot: She would keep her distance from him until he couldn’t stand the separation any longer. How long would it take?

  Not long, she thought. Not long at all.

  She vanished her clothes as he came through the door—mussed. What the hell? They hadn’t been training today. He’d left looking like Stone Cold St. Croix, and now his tie was askew, his hair slightly disheveled.

  “Is everything all right?” Forgetting her plot, she went to him, instead. “Did you run into a demon? Did the Guardians have a brawl in Caelum?”

  Shaking his head, he grinned and closed the door, leaned back against it with his hands in his pockets. Playing hard to get? She could win this. Ash pressed up against him, lifted her mouth to his neck and began to nibble.

  “No, that went well,” he said, and his voice was a delicious reverberation against her lips. “The whole place is still rubble, and we’ve started a revolution among the novices. Now that they have nowhere to go in Caelum, they all want their own apartments instead of being stuck at the warehouse twenty-four /seven.”

  Good for them. “Most of them are older than us, anyway. And Michael?”

  “Still a dragon, as far as anyone knows. Khavi mentioned using Taylor as bait. Taylor wasn’t thrilled.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Ash breathed in—stopped short. “Why do you smell like dog?”

  His laugh shot out, echoing in the room. “Would you believe that I was Enthralled by one?”

  “No, not really.” She pulled back to look at him. Beneath the laughter lay something else. The love, she recognized. Not the shame. “What happened?”

  “I went to a shelter.” He closed his eyes, tipped his head back against the door. “I planned to bring home a puppy for you. And I found one, a little Jack Russell. God, it was almost like Enthrallment. He licked my face and I fell half in love with him right there in the kennel. But then I realized—I couldn’t.”

  Something inside her froze. But he wouldn’t think that she’d hurt it—he didn’t believe that any more. Did he?

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  Something in her voice must have betrayed her. His eyes flew open, suddenly blazing blue. He caught her face in his hands, shook his head. “No. Not that. Never that.”

  Her throat felt thick. “Then why?”

  “Ash . . . I swore I’d never hurt you again. Ever. But a dog won’t live forever. In fifteen, twenty years, you’re going to be hurting like hell, just because I brought a puppy home today. I can’t do that to you.”

  “Oh.” Now the ache moved from her throat to her chest, so sweet, so perfect. “It’ll hurt. But I think I’d rather have fifteen or twenty years with him. I think he’d prefer that, too.”

  Nicholas slipped her hair behind her ear, studying her face. “Are you certain? I’ll call them now, and we’ll go back tomorrow morning. You can see him first before you decide.”

  “I’m certain,” she said. “Wouldn’t you prefer it, too? Any amount of pain is worth feeling like this, no matter how short of a time we have.”

  “It’s worth it.” He drew her in, kissed her hard. “I’d have gone to Hell and picked you out a hellhound puppy, but I think Sir Pup would eat it, defending his territory.”

  God. “He won’t eat a terrier puppy?”

  “I asked Lilith. She said we should bring the puppy in during training, that it would do Sir Pup good to learn restraint, and that he could teach the puppy how to be a halfling’s companion.”

  An evil puppy at Ash’s heels? She could get used to that.

  “She’s grooming me,” Ash said. “I’m going to be just like her in two thousand years.”

  Nicholas’s face darkened slightly. “I hope not.”

  Oh. She looked up at him, and knew he was remembering the cabin, Lilith’s manipulation. “I think she lied, you know.”

  “Which time?”

  Ash had to smile at that. Yes, that fit Lilith very well. “When she said that she’d sacrifice one for the good of all.”

  “You don’t think she would?”

  “Maybe.” If pushed to her limits. “But she’s not stupid—and the smartest thing she could have done in that cabin would be to let Sir Pup kill me, then and there. To not take any chances that Madelyn might find me, that the Gate might be opened. She didn’t do that. I believed she would, though.”

  “So did I,” Nicholas said.

  “And why wouldn’t we? Two thousand years, that’s a lot of people who must have died around her. So what’s one more person? It wouldn’t mean anything, right? But I think that’s where we went wrong. Because when you see all of those people die—or just a few like the Boyles, like Rachel or your parents—then one more person isn’t nothing.”

  “It’s everything,” he said. “One more person means everything.”

  “Yes.” She r
ose up, kissed him. “So I wouldn’t mind being her in two thousand years.”

  “I think you’ll be better.”

  “Because you love me.”

  “I do.” Palms sliding to her ass, he lifted her against him. “So what’s your plot today?”

  She ran her fingers down his stomach, closed over his thick length. Hard, ready for her. “I plan to see whether I can reach your limit with just my hands.”

  His grin offered the sweetest challenge. “That’s it? That’s what a demon would do?”

  Not at all. That plan was much, much simpler—she would love him forever, stay with him until the end of time. Maybe it wasn’t what any old demon would do.

  But it was exactly what this demon would do.

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  HEART OF STEEL

  Coming November 2011 from Berkley Sensation!

  CHAPTER 1

  Yasmeen hadn’t had any reason to fly her airship into the small Danish township of Fladstrand before, but her reputation had obviously preceded her. All along the Scandinavian coast, rum dives served as a town’s only line of defense against mercenaries and pirates—and as soon as the sky paled and Lady Corsair became visible on the eastern horizon, lights began appearing in the windows of the public houses alongside the docks. The taverns were opening early, hoping to make a few extra deniers before midday . . . and the good citizens of Fladstrand were probably praying that her crew wouldn’t venture beyond the docks and into the town itself.

  Unfortunately for them, Lady Corsair’s crew wasn’t in Fladstrand to drink. Nor were they here to cause trouble, but Yasmeen wasn’t inclined to let the town know that. Letting them tremble for a while did her reputation good.

  Dawn had completely faded from the sky by the time Lady Corsair breached the mouth of the harbor. Yasmeen stood behind the windbreak on the quarterdeck, her spyglass aimed at the skyrunners tethered over the docks. She recognized each airship—all of them served as passenger ferries between the Danish islands to the east and Sweden to the north. Several heavy-bottomed cargo ships floated in the middle of the icy harbor, their canvas sails furled and their wooden hulls rocking with each swell. Though she knew the skyrunners, Yasmeen couldn’t identify every ship in the water. Most of Fladstrand fished or farmed—two activities unrelated to the sort of business Yasmeen conducted. Whatever cargo the ships carried probably fermented or flopped, and she had no interest in either until they reached her mug or her plate.