Demon Marked tg-7

by Meljean Brook

  Behind him, the woman continued speaking. “You might not remember all of that, because it was Rachel who’d have made the decision. She’s the one who’d have agreed to the transformation, the bargain. But you . . . you’re the one who is stuck with it. The one with the spell on your face and the fate of the world on your shoulders.”

  Ash began to shake. Almost convulsing, her teeth rattling. Tears stood in her eyes. “I remember. I remember him tearing me apart.”

  Jesus. Nicholas wanted to rip the woman’s tongue out. Couldn’t she see what this was doing to Ash? Was this what the Guardians did? Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  “What the fuck are you doing? What kind of Guardians are you? Just get out. Get the hell out.”

  “We’re not Guardians. Or rather, Hugh isn’t anymore. He used to be. But me, I used to be a halfling like her.”

  Ash’s breath caught. “A halfling.”

  “We start out human, but are given the powers of a demon. Lucifer didn’t take as much from me. Just my name. Now I’m Lilith. Even though I’m human again now, I’m still Lilith.”

  “Human again,” Nicholas repeated, looking into Ash’s eyes. “How?”

  “Lucifer did that, too.”

  Her footsteps indicated her approach. Nicholas half turned, trying to shield Ash with his body, trying to make certain he could watch for any attack.

  “So you see why we sent Sir Pup in here first to determine exactly what sort of demon she was and to take your weapons. It would have been a shame if Ash had shot either one of us. That would be breaking the Rules.”

  And that meant Nicholas couldn’t use the Rules to his advantage, either. Fuck.

  “I heard wings,” Ash said.

  “We needed a ride.” Lilith looked up, as if through the roof. “Now they’re up there, a full phalanx. Waiting. Because that spell on your face means that you are a danger to everyone. Ideally, we’d hide you in Caelum, but a demon—even a halfling—can’t be teleported to that realm. So we’ll take you to Special Investigations, where we can protect you until we hunt down the demon who holds your leash. Your choice is simple: Either you leave with us, or you don’t leave this cabin alive.”

  Fury slammed through him. “Fuck you. You aren’t touching her.”

  “I prefer not to slay her. But understand this, Nicholas St. Croix: I’m willing to sacrifice one to save the lives of many. That sacrifice won’t be necessary, though, if she agrees to protection, so that the spell can’t be cast.”

  “I’ll protect her.”

  “You?” Lilith laughed. “I have a report that says a demon in Duluth almost ripped her apart while you waved a crossbow around. You didn’t even know who or what she was. A woman died for you, and yet when she returns from the dead as a demon, you don’t even question where she came from?”

  “He did.” Ash’s fingernails dug into his biceps, her eyes glowing. Suddenly fierce, defensive. “He was trying to help me find out who I am.”

  “Was he? It’s strange, though. That doesn’t fit what I know of him at all. Raised by a demon, bent on revenge.” Her head tilted as she studied him. “When you first met her, what did you think? That she was Madelyn, come to taunt you in Rachel’s form? Or maybe a demon who’d been plotting with Madelyn.”

  Jesus. Whoever her sources were, they’d informed her well. But that was no secret. Even Ash knew that. “Yes.”

  “And then you intended to kill her.”

  His heart thudded. He felt Ash’s fingers tighten, then her soft laugh. “No, he didn’t. I was too useful to him.”

  Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “Is that true, Nicholas? Say it.”

  God. What did it matter? “That was then,” he said.

  “So you did intend to.”

  Fuck. “Yes.”

  “Truth,” Hugh said.

  Ash’s breath stopped. Obviously shaken, she looked up at him.

  Nicholas shook his head. “I wouldn’t now. I’d die before hurting you now.”

  No pronouncement of truth came. Somehow, the silence seemed damning. He touched Ash’s face, her hair.

  “Not anymore,” he said, and didn’t look away until she nodded. He turned fierce eyes on Lilith. “What the fuck?”

  Her brows lifted. “I’m just trying to make sense of this. You didn’t know she was Rachel, but you offered to help her. But Ash says that it’s because she was useful. Useful for what? She doesn’t know anything, either.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Lilith looked at Ash. “You lied to him? There’s hope for you, then.”

  “She didn’t lie,” Nicholas said. “And I was using her to find Madelyn.”

  “Truth.”

  “Madelyn,” Lilith repeated. “Funny. You want to protect her, but you put her in the path of the demon who’s most likely the one she’s bound to obey. The demon who most likely intends to kill her in order to complete that spell.”

  Ash began shaking again. “Bound to her?”

  “Yes.” Lilith stepped closer, her voice softening. “I think you remember this, too—because Lucifer would need you to. Or Madelyn would have told you after the transformation. Did she bring you out of Hell? Was she the first person you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re terrified of her now.”

  “Yes.” She pushed her face against Nicholas’s shoulder. Chest aching, he slid his hand into her hair, held her to him. “Yes.”

  “Because a part of you knows that if she speaks, you must obey. Any order she gives, you must carry through, or you’ll break your bargain with her . . . and return to the frozen field.”

  Ash cried out, and he felt tears against his skin. Hot, burning, but he remembered her fear of the cold, her terror of the memory that was lost to it. Now he knew. She’d been down there, suffering. Tormented in ice, eaten by dragons. And even though she couldn’t remember it, she carried that frozen field within her.

  “Stop,” he said hoarsely. “Stop what you’re doing to her.”

  Lilith’s gaze hardened when she looked at him. “That was Rachel, you realize. She and Madelyn probably had some kind of bargain. Don’t interfere between me and my son, something simple like that. Something she probably agreed to, not understanding exactly what it meant. Then she saved your life, and paid for it—with death, and then with torture.”

  And that was enough. He didn’t know what this woman was doing, but she wasn’t helping Ash or protecting her in any way. And trying to use Rachel to guilt him into giving Ash over to Guardians who’d promised to kill her if her existence proved too dangerous wouldn’t work. He wasn’t a Guardian. And he’d see the whole fucking world burn before he sacrificed her life for anyone else’s.

  “Lucifer took your powers,” he said. “But you’re still a demon.”

  “Truth,” Hugh said, this time with a hint of a smile.

  Lilith’s brows shot up. “And you’ve never been transformed, but you might as well be one, too. You brought Ash here, knowing that Madelyn would find you.”

  “You’re throwing shit out there. You don’t know that.”

  “But I think I do. Because there are a few other things that simply don’t make sense. One is Cawthorne’s suicide only a week after Ash left Nightingale House. Strange, don’t you think, that someone entered Madelyn’s code into her town house security system that same night?”

  Ash lifted her head. “Cawthorne killed himself?”

  “Nicholas didn’t tell you? He knew. His private investigator told him the same day you arrived in America.” Lilith caught his look and grinned. “You’d be amazed at how good some vampires are at hacking computer and phone systems. And you knew that Madelyn was probably looking for her, didn’t you?”

  “I knew it was possible.”

  “You counted on it. That’s what made her so useful. And then there’s the matter of the two demons running around with Rachel’s face—one of them a ghost. That didn’t make any sense, either, not at first. Not until I thought about Ma
delyn, and what I know of demons, and how she’d tried to get her hands on Ash.”

  “A ghost?” Ash’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What ghost? Rachel’s a ghost, too?”

  “Oh, Nicholas. You didn’t tell her that, either? Considering that they’re her parents, don’t you think she deserved to know?”

  God. And he suddenly knew: Lilith had said that she didn’t want to kill Ash, but that she’d sacrifice one to save many. And she was. But she didn’t plan to sacrifice Ash.

  In order to persuade Ash to come with her, she was sacrificing Nicholas.

  “Nicholas?” Ash looked up at him, her expression a mixture of wariness and confusion. “What do I deserve to know?”

  He couldn’t answer, not yet. Tightening his arms around her, he desperately tried to think of some way to put it that wasn’t damning.

  There wasn’t one. It was damning. And it was true.

  “A demon took Rachel’s face and goaded Steve Johnson into killing her parents.”

  Horror climbed into her expression. Not anger at him. Not yet. “A demon? The one who attacked us in Duluth?”

  He picked his words carefully. “I don’t know—”

  “Lie.”

  Nicholas ground his teeth, faced the man. “I don’t know for certain!”

  “Who?” Ash’s voice brought him back to her. “Who?”

  He’d never wanted to lie so badly. He couldn’t. Not now—and not because Hugh was listening. He simply couldn’t look into her eyes and pretend he didn’t know. “Madelyn. Madelyn killed them.”

  Everything in her face stilled. The hold of her fingers slackened. “You knew this and didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t know they were your parents.”

  “But you knew they mattered. That they were important to me.”

  He wanted to plead ignorance. To say he didn’t know, that he hadn’t believed it, that he’d thought she was a demon who couldn’t truly feel, that it was all a trick.

  But he’d known. He’d held her while she sobbed for parents she couldn’t remember, and he’d known that emotion was real.

  “Yes,” he said. “I knew.”

  “So you brought her out here,” Lilith said. “And you waited for Madelyn to come to you.”

  He looked into Ash’s face. He couldn’t read all of the emotions there, but he recognized pain, horror, disbelief. God. She had to know everything had changed.

  “Yes—”

  “Truth.”

  “But not now! Goddammit, I wouldn’t have used you as bait now! I can only think of protecting you.”

  And silence. Awful silence.

  Ash’s hands dropped away from his waist. And though the wall prevented her from backing away, he could feel her withdrawing.

  “Ash,” he pled softly. “Please. Believe me. Believe me.”

  Her voice was wooden, her face stone. “I don’t know what to believe, Nicholas.”

  “I swear my only thought was protecting you,” he said, but there was only more damning silence from Hugh. Did Ash see what they were doing? “They want you to leave with them, or he would say that is the truth, too.”

  “We can train her to protect herself far better than you can, Nicholas,” Lilith said. “You’re only a man who needs to eat, to sleep. You can’t protect her all the time. Can you? Because all it would take is a word from her, a letter sent, a shout from down the street, and Ash is lost to you.”

  Would it be that easy? Suddenly stricken, Nicholas looked down at her. Completely naked, she stood with her face set and her eyes averted from his, and though he knew Ash didn’t care that the others saw her nude, though he knew her strength, she suddenly seemed so exposed, so vulnerable. God. Could he be so certain, when it meant risking her life?

  “And Ash—if Madelyn finds you together with Nicholas, she’ll order you to kill him. Because that would cause you the most pain, and because that is what a demon would do.”

  Ash shook her head. “But I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t obey.”

  “Then you’d be back in that frozen field as soon as she sacrifices you to the spell. And she wins either way.”

  Back in the frozen field. Ash continued to shake her head, but he saw the terror fill her eyes, the fear that would be her choice: to kill him, or to suffer an eternity of torment—a torture that she already knew too well.

  No doubt, Madelyn would order Ash to do it. Nicholas wouldn’t care if he died for her. But if Ash refused to carry it out, he couldn’t bear the thought of her in that field, tortured for eternity for saving him.

  He couldn’t bear it. And if Lilith had been searching for his limit, she’d just found it. So what now?

  It would be Ash’s decision. It had to be hers alone.

  Without taking his eyes from her, Nicholas said, “Will you two give us a minute? Let her take a breath, get dressed.”

  “So she doesn’t run around like that all the time? That’ll disappoint the novices,” Lilith said. “But go ahead.”

  With a quick, grateful glance at Nicholas, Ash turned toward the bedroom. Nicholas’s throat tightened. This wouldn’t be the last time he was with her there. He’d follow—

  “Ashmodei.”

  As if struck, Ash stumbled. She caught herself against the wall and slowly faced Lilith, her eyes wide. “What?”

  “Your name. I finally saw it when you moved—it’s written here.” Lilith touched her own chest, and Ash mirrored the movement, flattening her palm over the large symbol between her breasts. “Lucifer named you after a demon who betrayed him. It would be considered an insult to Ashmodei, giving the name to a halfling. I take it a good sign.”

  “Ashmodei,” she repeated softly. When she looked at Nicholas, a smile had transformed her face. “So you helped me discover it, after all.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You’re the one who stripped me naked.”

  God, and she made him laugh. He followed her into the bedroom, memorizing the sway of her blond hair against her back, the square of her shoulders, the dimples above her perfect ass. Then she looked down at herself and her clothes formed, with boots matching the one that still lay with a broken heel near the bed.

  The Guardians could probably tell her how and why she did that. Nicholas hadn’t even been able to tell Ash her name. They could train her, better than he ever could.

  She faced him, and her smile had already gone, her eyes glowing crimson. He knew what her choice would be. What it had to be.

  And he knew what his had to be, too. “I’ll go with you.”

  “They’ll lock me up, you realize. Not in a cell, but the effect is the same. They’ll lock me up tight—and you’d be locked up with me, too, because Madelyn might find me through you.”

  “Then I’ll stay locked up with you.”

  Her tearful smile gave him hope. Until she spoke. “You can’t come.”

  Feeling sucker-punched, he shook his head. “What?”

  “You can’t.” Her breath hitched. “The Guardians aren’t perfect. They can be defeated. They have their limits. You forced one to leave us in Duluth by pointing a crossbow at her friend’s head. They’ll work harder than that to protect me, but there’s always a chance Madelyn will get through and I’ll have to choose whether or not to kill you.”

  And he’d make that choice as easy for her as he could. “You died for me once. I’d return the favor.”

  “That was Rachel.”

  No. He hadn’t meant—“I know you aren’t Rachel.”

  He’d never been this fucked up over her. Rachel had deserved better than she’d gotten, but he hadn’t been able to give it to her.

  “Yes, but that’s my point. That was Rachel. She loved you.”

  His chest turned to lead. “And you don’t.”

  But it didn’t matter. He’d still protect her. He’d still die for her.

  “Today I think I do,” she said, but held up her hands, stopped him when he’d have gone to her. “Tomorrow, I might not.”
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br />   “Ash—”

  “It’ll probably change. It’ll fade.” She drew her hands in, wrapping them around her stomach as if keeping herself warm, holding herself in. “Nothing I feel stays the same. My emotions are up, and down, and all over. Today, I know that if Madelyn told me to kill you, I wouldn’t—even though there’s nothing that terrifies me more than the frozen field. But tomorrow, I might kill you rather than be trapped there again. Tomorrow, I might hate you for keeping the truth about Madelyn killing my parents from me. Tomorrow, your life might not be my limit.”

  “I’d give it to you,” he said hoarsely. “Whether you love me or not, and not in exchange for Rachel. Just for you.”

  “You might give it. But if I don’t love you, I’d be taking it to save myself—and I’d become everything you finally believe I’m not.”

  If Ash was capable of becoming that, she wouldn’t give a shit about whether she did. And Nicholas didn’t believe she could be that, no matter how she felt about him. “No—”

  “And you have to rescind the permission you gave me, so that you’re protected by the Rules again.”

  What? She wouldn’t be able to touch him as she wanted. She hated the restrictions the Rules put on her. If there was only one human in the world she didn’t have to check herself with, it would be him.

  Nicholas shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes. Not having to follow the Rules makes it too easy for me; there would be no consequences if I kill you. If Madelyn orders me to do it and my emotions aren’t strong enough to stop me, maybe fear for my own life will.”

  And if her emotions did stop her, she’d end in the frozen field. So they were back to that again. If she loved him, if she was with him, then her soul was in danger.

  Until Madelyn was dead.

  So he had a purpose again—the same purpose he’d always had: destroying Madelyn. But this time, not for revenge. This time, it was for Ash.

  “I’ll find Madelyn,” he vowed. “I’ll kill her, just to release you. Then I’ll find you again.”

  “But—”

  “And I release you from our bargain. I won’t take back the Rules’ protection, but I’ll stay away until she’s dead.”

  “Nicholas,” she whispered brokenly—and finally, she reached for him. He held her close, her body so strong, so warm. “I hope this fades. Because I never want to feel like this again.”