He slammed on the brakes. She heard his shouted curse—though she supposed even a human might have heard that. Rushing to his door, she pulled it open.
Nicholas was still yelling. “Jesus, Ash! What? Are you being chased?”
“No,” she said, but he must not have believed her.
Grabbing a crossbow already in the passenger seat, Nicholas jumped out of the car. He turned, searching the empty field, then looked up at the sky. As if satisfied that no one was after her, he finally looked to Ash again.
“What the hell?”
He couldn’t guess?
“I need to know,” Ash said. His expression changed suddenly—and she knew. She’d been right. Oh, God. Pain hit her gut again, ripping, tearing. “What happened?”
“One of Rachel’s old boyfriends did it.”
“What did he do?” She didn’t really need to ask. The blood had said it all. And a boyfriend had done that? “My God, did she just attract the psychos?”
Surprise and pained humor flashed across Nicholas’s features. “Apparently.”
No. No, not him. He wouldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t have torn them apart. Maybe a demon, but not a human. What kind of person did that?
Not the kind that deserved to live.
The stabbing pain hardened into something else. Ash didn’t know what. But she knew what she had to do. “Where is the boyfriend at now?”
“They caught him. He’s in the county lockup.”
“All right. Move aside, and give me the keys.”
Nicholas frowned at her. “Why?”
“Because I’m going there to kill him.”
“What?” His confusion changed to disbelief as he looked at her face. “You’re serious.”
Completely. And since he wasn’t getting out of her way, she went around him, reached for the driver side door. He caught her wrist.
“You can’t. He’s human. It’ll break the Rules, and the Guardians will have you. You’ll be the next one dead.”
“I don’t care.” She didn’t.
“Then care about this: You’ll be breaking your bargain. Getting killed isn’t helping me find Madelyn.”
“Fuck that.” The response sprang so easily to her mouth. “Release me from the bargain.”
“Fuck that.” His hold tightened and he whipped her around, shoving her back against the side of the SUV. “You break away, you break our bargain, you’ll end up in that frozen field. You want that, Ash? Tortured for eternity, all for a little piece of shit?”
Not for the piece-of-shit boyfriend. For the parents. Not even her parents. Ah, God—and the pain was coming back now. She could feel it welling up, closing her throat and stinging her eyes.
A wail of grief poured out.
Nicholas’s eyes widened. He clapped a palm over her mouth, cutting it off. “Stop that.”
She couldn’t. She stared at him over the top of his hand. Heat itched over her cheeks. Crying. Crying. Why?
Nicholas jerked his hand away as if her tears burned. He stared at her in shock.
“Let me go,” she whispered hoarsely. If he didn’t, something was going to break. Maybe his hold on her. Maybe the Rules. Maybe just something inside her.
“Shut up.”
He set his crossbow on the hood and shoved her face against his neck. Hard warmth wrapped around her shoulders. Was he holding her? Nicholas? The kindness hurt almost as much as the rest. She let it come up, the inexplicable rage, the grief, sobbing it out against his throat.
And when it was over, she was exhausted again. Her body strong, but something inside her just . . . tired.
She tried to pull away, but Nicholas wouldn’t let her. Still afraid she’d take off for the county jail? That had passed. Now she just felt the cold coming in all around her.
“You have to be freezing,” she said.
“Actually, no. You kept me warm.” He drew back just enough to look down at her. “You don’t remember the Boyles. Why do you care so much?”
“I don’t know.”
His thumb swept the lingering wetness from her cheek before he met her gaze again. “I won’t believe these are real. Not from a demon.”
Was he reminding himself or her? “Right now, I wish that you were right. I’d rather feel nothing than this.”
A strange expression passed over his face—humor and sadness, all at once. “I’ve thought that before. Revenge is better.”
“Then let me have it.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “Johnson isn’t going anywhere. You can come back after our bargain is finished and do it.”
She could do that. “Or maybe a quick death is too good for him. Maybe I could spend the rest of my life making his a living hell.”
Nicholas grinned. “Now that’s a demon talking—and it wouldn’t break the Rules. Though I’m disappointed that your first good plot isn’t designed to ruin me.”
“Oh, me too.” Ash laughed. Oh, that felt better. So much better. “I’ll have to come up with something that—”
His fingers tightened and his expression changed so quickly that Ash was left reeling. Abruptly, he let her go, grabbed his crossbow from the hood.
“Get behind me, Ash.”
Why? She turned, scanning the field. Nicholas had frozen beside her, his gaze fixed on a point at the edge of the driveway. In the dark, she easily made out the shape of the man standing on the wrought-iron fence, his feet balanced on two points.
Ash blinked. Dark haired, handsome, and slickly dressed, he could have been Nicholas’s brother. Except Nicholas’s blue eyes didn’t turn crimson like that. Fascinating.
Her heart leapt as she realized: This was a demon. He might have answers. He might know who she was. Unless . . .
She edged back behind Nicholas. “Is it Madelyn?”
No, Nicholas didn’t think so. Demons were creatures of habit, and that included the genders they preferred to adopt in their human forms. This was someone different . . . and he didn’t want to wait around and find out who.
“Get in the car, Ash.”
“In the car?” The demon hopped down from the fence. “Oh, she won’t be safe there.”
Fuck. Nicholas swung the crossbow up, the explosive bolts ready. He couldn’t control the pacing of his heart, but as long as the pounding didn’t shake his aim, he didn’t care if the demon heard it.
Heedless of the weapon pointed at him, the demon walked forward. “I’ll admit, when I felt your grief from across the city, I wondered what had struck one of my brethren so. A demon, pained by loss? I thought it might be a trap. But now I see it is worse. It’s pathetic.”
Oh, Jesus. Ash had brought this thing here? “You didn’t shield your emotions?”
Her back pressed to the side of the rig, Ash shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Shit. Shit. That meant the Guardians probably felt it, too. Though right now, that might be a good thing.
“And look at you.” The demon’s eyes narrowed to glowing crimson slits. “Why, you’re not brethren at all, but a little halfling? I thought you all dead or frozen.”
Ash drew a sharp breath. “What do you mean?”
“No, no. No questions. There’s one that’s so much more important.” Five yards away, the demon stopped. “Lucifer must have let you out. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
God. Nicholas clenched his teeth. Why wasn’t she lying to this demon? She needed to be. Did she not recognize the danger he posed to her?
“What use could you have been? And he must have bound you to someone. Not to himself, because he can’t control you from Hell. Not now.”
“I’m bound to him.” She indicated Nicholas with a tip of her chin.
The demon’s gaze raked over Nicholas and paused on the crossbow. With a laugh, he asked, “Do you truly think you can aim that fast enough, human?”
“We’ll see.”
“Keep up, then.”
Nicholas blinked. The demon appeared beside him, breath ho
t on his cheek. Jesus. And gone before he could react, thirty feet away and laughing. Footprints in the snow marked every step that Nicholas hadn’t been able to track.
They had to get out of here.
“Ash, get in the backseat, now. Grab a weapon. Any one.”
He reached behind for the door handle. Ash turned to do the same. A hot wind rushed past him.
She was gone.
Nicholas spun around. “Ash!”
There, by the fence. The demon had her by the throat, was looking at her face, pulling back the collar of her jacket. She shrieked, rammed up her knee. The demon blocked it.
Nicholas ran to them, slowed by the heavy snow. “Let her go!”
The demon didn’t even look at him, just angled his body to keep Ash between his and the crossbow. “The symbols, this spell. Is this for a Gate? Does Lucifer think he can return early? No, no, ha! No. Not if you’re dead, halfling.”
Gone again. Nicholas slid to a stop, chest heaving. Fuck. Where?
Up. Ash’s scream pierced the air—abruptly cut off. Silhouetted against the dark sky, her limp body dropped to the ground. Lungs aching with effort and cold, Nicholas raced to catch her. Not fast enough. God. The snow billowed around her when she landed. She didn’t move.
Rage gripped him, gave him speed. Almost to her—and no, not dead. Thank God. No blood on her chest, her head still attached. Her eyes open and staring. Her neck, twisted.
The demon had broken her neck.
“I like to play with them.”
Leathery wings spread wide, the demon glided to a stop beside Ash’s motionless body. His feet sank into the snow as he landed, facing Nicholas. The malevolent glee on his face churned bile through Nicholas’s stomach.
Stay in place for one second, fucker. I’ll give you something to play with.
He fired the crossbow. Too late. The bolt passed through air, and detonated thirty yards beyond the target in a muffled geyser of snow. Ash’s body was gone, too—but a trail through the snow showed where the demon had dragged her. Nicholas turned, aimed again at the demon’s grin.
And realized the demon wasn’t just playing with Ash. It was playing with him.
“Aw. Is the human going to quit now? You were doing so well.” The demon bent over Ash’s body. “How about this: I’ll give her back to you a piece at a time. You just have to ask nicely—”
The ground beneath the demon suddenly erupted, tossing him off balance. He recovered, just as the snow in front of Nicholas seemed to explode in a frenzy of metal and white feathers. The Guardians. Thank God.
Swords clashed. Demon and Guardian moved too fast—Nicholas couldn’t see what was happening, only the blur of feathers and shapes. The dark-haired Guardian male was fighting the demon, he realized. And Taylor was . . . bending over Ash.
“No!” Nicholas plowed forward through the snow, finger tightening on the crossbow trigger. He’d kill the Guardian first. “Don’t—fucking—touch her!”
Taylor looked up. Eyes of pure black stared back at him, like a glistening abyss. No . . . that wasn’t Taylor. That was Michael. Nicholas had seen this before in Rome. He knew how Michael protected the woman . . . and Nicholas held an explosive bolt pointed at her head. Shock and dread rammed through Nicholas’s chest, but he didn’t stop.
“Let her go!”
The voice that came from Taylor’s mouth wasn’t hers, either, but a terrifying harmony of many voices, man and woman. “She’s ours.”
“She’s bound to me!”
“She’s bound to a demon. With you, she’s a danger to all.”
Fuck that. Nicholas dropped to his knee beside Ash, blindly searching for her wrist, holding the crossbow aimed at the Guardian. “Let Ash go, Michael, or by God I will shoot Taylor with this.”
A grunt of pain came from behind them. Taylor turned her head.
Nicholas didn’t look, but he could guess. “Your friend needs a little help, Michael.”
Those obsidian eyes looked into Nicholas’s for a long second. Then Taylor was gone, swinging her sword into the fray.
Not daring to put the crossbow down, Nicholas got his arm around Ash as best he could, began dragging her back to the car. Through the snow, it was like pulling a sack of lead. Two hours in a gym every day hadn’t prepared him for this battle. His chest ached. His muscles felt ready to rip in half.
Behind him, the sounds of fighting stopped. He turned to look. The demon lay on the ground in two pieces. Taylor—herself again—was holding up an injured Revoire, who wore a bashful grin and was saying something about how goddamned slippery blood made the snow. Her eyes met Nicholas’s.
He raised the crossbow again. “Explosive broadheads. You take your friend somewhere to be healed, and don’t come back until we’re gone. Or I’ll blow you both to Hell.”
Taylor began, “You don’t even know—”
“GO!”
Firming her lips, Taylor stared at him for another second. Finally, she nodded. They both disappeared. Teleported.
Not wasting a second, Nicholas slung the crossbow over his shoulder and bent to pick up Ash. Her eyes were still open. He couldn’t see any pain in them, just frustration and confusion. She blinked as he looked at her. He couldn’t even try for a smile.
He trudged to the SUV, Michael’s voice echoing in his head. She’s ours.
Bullshit. Ash wasn’t theirs to slay. She wasn’t theirs for any reason.
She was his.
CHAPTER 10
A broken neck wasn’t quite what Ash had in mind when she’d told Nicholas that she’d rather not feel anything.
Nicholas had laid her on the backseat, but she couldn’t even feel the pressure of the cushion against her body. Terror began to set in then, but she couldn’t make a sound. Trapped in her mind, she’d waited for him to stop at a hospital, to tell her that he knew how to help her. He didn’t.
Then her toes began tingling, and Ash realized this was another of those times when he must have assumed she knew something that she didn’t. In this instance, the something was that her body could heal a broken neck.
So she waited in silence for it to happen, her panic fading . . . just like it should. Her grief and dread had receded, too, though she could still feel them pressing against the corner of her heart, heavy and sodden.
And she had more to think about now. Not the memory of those obsidian eyes boring into hers, the powerful mind that had seemed to squeeze her brain in its grip, wringing out every one of her thoughts, or that terrifying voice echoing in her ears. She’s ours. She’d skip that memory for now. It reminded her too much of that other dark figure—it reminded her too much of Lucifer.
But she liked to remember Nicholas fighting for her, even though he’d been outclassed. Far outclassed. Ash had been, too. She hadn’t realized how fast, how powerful demons and Guardians were. Nicholas had warned her, so many times. She still hadn’t understood, not really.
Was she that powerful? Maybe not. The demon had called her a halfling. It wasn’t a stretch to think that meant she had half of whatever powers they did.
Still, even half as strong should have put up a better showing that the pathetic kicks she’d gotten in before he’d snapped her neck.
She had to do better. She had to be better. Stronger. Smarter.
Starting now.
Carefully, Ash tested the movement of her fingers. All good. She drew a breath. That worked, too. She sat up. A two-lane highway lined with snow-covered pines stretched out in front of them. How long had they been driving?
Not long. The dashboard computer showed that they were only about thirty miles west of Duluth.
As if he heard her movement, Nicholas glanced back at her. “You’re up already?”
“Seems so.”
He returned his gaze to the road. “We’ve got to ditch this rig. They’ve seen what we’re driving, so they can track us through that GPS.”
Ash climbed into the front seat, found the owner’s manual in the glove box. She locat
ed the necessary page, studied the wiring diagram. There was no easy access to the GPS connection. Well, that’s why she was a demon.
“You’ve got insurance against damages on this thing?”
“Yes.” He sounded amused. “Not that it matters.”
“I guess it doesn’t.” She ran her hand down the front of the dash, curled her fingers under, and found the edge of the molded plastic console. She pulled.
A thick chunk of the facing snapped off in her hand. Perfect. Ash bent her head to look at the exposed wires, almost resting her cheek on Nicholas’s thigh. Her hair spilled into his lap.
Since no Guardians came for her, she assumed her hair wasn’t breaking the Rules.
He cleared his throat. “Do you need a light?”
“No.” She could see perfectly. “I’m a demon.”
His short laugh drew out her own smile. She consulted the wiring diagram again, reached into the dash, and yanked.
“Is the GPS offline?”
“It is. And you managed not to kill the rest of the computer system.”
“Good.” She sat up.
Nicholas glanced over at her again. Making certain she was all right? If so, he didn’t ask whether she was, so she must have looked fine.
“Where are we headed?”
“West. I know a place that will suit our needs.”
“Any more specific than that?”
“Not until I’m certain that no one’s following or listening.”
Ah. His paranoia at work again. Fine by her. “So what are our needs that are being suited?”
“Isolation until you learn to shield your emotions,” he said. “And training. A lot of training. We were both too slow. Unprepared. I’m sure as hell not ready for Madelyn.”
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