“He’s a cold bastard—no offense, Ash.” Taylor threw her a quick look before focusing on Lilith again. “But like Joe, he’d be one hell of a useful human here at SI. You should think about recruiting him after we settle this thing with Madelyn.”
“I already plan to. Especially if we can get more out of him than his muscle—and in particular, his money. Which reminds me . . .” Lilith turned to Ash. “Jake tells me that you set up some kind of college investment fund for his granddaughter.”
“Great-granddaughter,” Jake corrected, grinning. “Because she’s pretty flippin’ great.”
“I did,” Ash said. “He brought in her piggy bank. I’ll make sure she can go to Harvard, if that’s what she wants—and her children, too.”
“So you’re good with money? I know Rachel was, but are you?”
“Yes. Probably better. Looking at her personal portfolio, it’s obvious that she had a few pet causes, and that she often invested for nostalgic reasons. I think she really liked Barbies and Disney, especially the fairy tale movies. And she invested in an abnormally high number of companies that had unicorns in their name or logo. I won’t have any of that baggage.”
Taylor pressed her fingers to her lips, shoulders shaking. After a moment, she looked up and wiped her eyes. “Maybe we can get Khavi to help out, too.”
Ash had heard that name before: a Guardian who could see into the future. She frowned. “What would be the fun in that?”
“With Khavi’s help, you’d be surprised. Really, you would,” Taylor said. “Not always in a good way.”
“With Khavi’s help, the quickest way to make a small fortune would be to start with a large one,” Lilith said, and looked at Ash. “Which is what I want from you. You’ll still be training, so it’d have to be during your off-hours, but I want Special Investigations monetarily self-sufficient within ten years. Right now, we’re operating on government cash, and so far, they’ve only asked for stupid little things, like telling us to ship a nosferatu to one of their research facilities rather than slaying it. Or asking us to register the names and addresses of vampires we know. I’ve been able to put them off or ignore them—and if the requests stem from concerns about public safety, I give them what I can. But at some point, there’s going to be something that we can’t put off and can’t ignore, and that won’t necessarily be about safety, but about forwarding some other agenda. When that day comes, we need to be able to disappear off their radar, but still be functional.”
Excitement had already begun sparking through Ash’s veins. Now that was one hell of a challenge. “All right. I need your current budget, so that I know what I’m aiming for.”
“You’ll have it,” Lilith said. “A few Guardians have pulled antiquities out of their collections, and those are going up for auction soon. We expect that you’ll be starting with four to five hundred million dollars.”
Ash suppressed her shudder of ecstasy. God. She was pretty sure she hadn’t had a shiver like that since Nicholas had licked her fangs. “I can work with that.”
“And spread it out. Don’t become some visible megalith. We just want to quietly turn an asston of money into a fuckload.”
She would. “Any limits? Anything I shouldn’t invest in?”
Lilith pursed her lips. After a few moments, she came up with, “Sex trafficking.”
Ash nodded. Yes, that would be bad.
“And I’ll have a few more to add to that list,” Taylor said dryly. Her focus shifted beyond Ash’s shoulder, and her gaze flattened. “Hey, there are you are now. Nice of you to finally show up.”
“Yes. Well, the sign said ‘all-you-can-eat,’ but they still kicked me out. So where else did I have to go?” The harmonious voice froze Ash’s heart for two beats—so much like Lucifer’s, like a Michael-possessed Taylor’s—but the fear slowly let her go as the woman continued, “Plus I need to show the markings on this vase to Alice, so I hoped she’d be here. So now I ask Jake: Where’s your wife?”
“Where’s my wife?” Jake’s jaw clenched. “Well, Khavi. Last week, she asked me to teleport all of her spiders back to Earth. You’ve seen some of these things, haven’t you? How big they are? And you know I have to touch something to teleport it, right? I had my shirt off and those things all over me, so that she could focus on the Archives.”
Taylor shuddered. “You really do love her.”
“You think?” Though Jake snapped the reply at her, he still focused on Khavi. “So if you’re looking for Alice, you’ll find her and about six novices in the library, cataloguing all of the Scrolls, and putting them into indestructible, floating containers, just in case the goddamn building falls around their heads and the whole place sinks.”
“Why is she doing that?”
Khavi sounded baffled. Not an emotion Ash expected to hear from someone who could see the future.
“Because we can’t carry the Scrolls through the Gates, and because no one but Michael can vanish them into their cache.”
“Taylor can.”
Taylor’s brows shot up. “I can?”
“Of course you can. They are written in his blood—and part of you is written in his blood, too. You can vanish the Scrolls or carry them through the Gates.”
Jake wasn’t mollified by that new info. “Oh, so now we know. Would have been nice earlier. Where the hell have you been the past two months?”
“Eating. Like I said.” The woman was frowning. With her black hair in neat rows of braids that marched back into an uncontrolled tangle and an air of leashed ferocity, Khavi was as slightly built as Taylor but possessed none of the other woman’s fragility. Her gaze touched Ash for a brief moment, before she asked, “So Caelum’s already falling apart? Where’s Lyta?”
“With Alice,” Jake told her. “Apparently chasing her own tail with one head, and slobbering all over the Scrolls with the others.”
“I’ll get her, then, and return shortly.”
“Oh, no. Nononono.” Suddenly tense, Lilith looked down at Sir Pup, who stood at attention, ears pricked. “You can’t bring her here. You can’t bring her to Earth. He’ll run around the world, sniffing her out.”
The hellhound’s big body quivered, and he emitted a chorus of pleading whines.
“You can’t,” Lilith told him. “You’ll kill her. You ate your way out of your mother, remember? So if it results in babies, you can’t do it.”
Sir Pup’s heads drooped. With a sympathetic sigh, Lilith crouched and began scratching his ears.
“I’ll find a place for her first, then—” Khavi broke off, glanced at Ash again. Her eyes widened. “You.”
“Whoa.” Jake sat forward, as if ready to teleport between them. “Oh, yeah. Khavi, here’s Ash. She’s a good demon.”
“And she can bring Michael out of the field,” Khavi said.
The warehouse seemed to fall silent. Then deafening again, as hearts began to pound—with Taylor the most silent and the loudest of them all.
Ash touched the tattoo on her face. “With this spell?”
That seemed rather careless of Lucifer, didn’t it?
“No.” Khavi began to circle her. “That is to open the Gate. The key to the frozen field is hidden somewhere else.”
Ash looked to Lilith. “Did you see it?”
“I might have. But reading the symbols and knowing how Lucifer makes spells of them are two completely different things. Sometimes it’s clear, like the spell on your face, where open and Gate overlap—yet even that spell is crowded with many more symbols that I can read, but I have no idea why they are arranged as they are.”
“It is all arrangement and intention,” Khavi said. “And I need to see the symbols to know what he has done. Take off your clothes.”
Ash vanished them.
Jake choked. His face fiery, he edged toward the door. “Ah, okay. Alice probably wouldn’t care that you’re here, all naked like that. But I do. So I’ll see you.”
He disappeared. Nobody left in the room se
emed to notice.
Khavi stopped circling, touched a series of symbols along Ash’s ribs. “Here. This is how he unlocked the field, brought you out of it in exchange for another.”
“He brought Rachel out,” Ash said. She had never gotten out. Not all of the way. A part of her memory still lay frozen there, tortured, and leaving her sick with fear at the mere mention of the field. “What kind of exchange?”
“Probably a traitor. Someone who’d broken his vow to follow Lucifer. There are many tortured in the Pit or in his throne tower. It would have been nothing to sacrifice one.” In a long, sweeping motion, Khavi’s cool fingers traced one of the vermillion tattoos. “But it is not just the symbols—the power of that spell is still in you, your release from the field written into your blood, embedded as deeply as your name. That is why we can take him out.”
Lips compressed, Taylor paced away from the desk, making a tight circle around Lilith and Sir Pup before turning back. “All right. You know, I want him out more than anyone, but we can’t forget that he’s down there for a reason: to strengthen the frozen field, so that Lucifer can’t just can’t slip through the barrier to the Chaos realm, and then open up a passage to Earth. Oh, and bring a few dragons with him. If we do this, we might as well just cast that spell on Ash’s face now. At least Lucifer won’t be bringing in dragons from Hell through a Gate.”
“That’s Michael talking through you,” Khavi said.
“No, it’s not.” With a wild laugh, she shook her head. “He’s not here right now.”
“Of course he is, somewhere, so he’ll hear me when I say that this halfling has opened doors that were closed to me before. And do not forget, Taylor, that there was another reason for his sacrifice: to prevent his sister from entering Hell through Chaos.”
“And fat lot of good that did. She’s down there, anyway. He took her down there. That was my body, but I wasn’t jumping it.”
“Exactly,” Khavi said. “He did. Because a door opened there, too, and instead of wresting control over all of humanity, she only wants revenge on her father. Taking his sister to Hell allowed us more time here . . . and now Ash will give us more time, too. Her presence changes everything. With the proper symbols and spell, the barrier can remain as strong without Michael in it.”
Okay. Ash didn’t know half of what they were talking about, but the gist of it seemed to be: Michael got out of Hell, while Lucifer and Michael’s evil sister remained trapped in the realm. That sounded good to her.
“So what needs to happen?” she asked. “What do I need to do?”
Khavi looked at Taylor. The other woman suddenly stilled, before turning stricken eyes on Ash. “She told me that I’d sacrifice you.”
“Fuck that,” Lilith said. “There’s another way.”
“No.” Khavi shook her head. “There has to be an exchange.”
An exchange—as in, Michael for Ash? Dread filled her chest. “No. I won’t do that. Rachel’s agreement with Lucifer released me from the frozen field. Forever. Even if I die now, I won’t go back unless I break another bargain. Right?”
“Yes,” Khavi said.
“Then I’m never going back there. The only bargain I have now is with Madelyn—and I won’t break it.”
She’d given up Nicholas so that she wouldn’t have to break it. Nothing they said about Michael would persuade her to return to that icy hell now.
“Damn right.” Lilith turned on Khavi. “Does it have to be a willing sacrifice? Shit like this usually has to be, because there are rules. Opening a Gate to Hell, you don’t need Ash to agree to her sacrifice, because Gates can open on their own with enough pain and misery to fuel it. Rare, yet it happens—we had one beneath the fucking Golden Gate. But no one can get into the frozen field without willingly entering into a bargain first. By the time they’re tortured down there, they’re regretting that decision, but at some point they did make a choice of their own free will.”
With a sigh, Khavi nodded. “Yes. It must be willing.”
Ash’s heart thudded with sick relief. “I’m sorry. But I won’t.”
“Are you so certain?”
In a blink, the seer’s eyes filled with black from edge to edge. A surge of psychic power crashed through Ash like a wave. Khavi’s Gift. Ash staggered. Already the surge was retreating, but felt as if it tossed little bits of her about in its wake, overturning stones along the path to her future as easily as churning through sand.
Ash didn’t know what the woman saw. She didn’t care. “The frozen field isn’t part of my plan.” It emerged as a hiss. “Only seeing Madelyn dead. Being with Nicholas. And making a fuckload of money.”
Khavi tilted her head, looked at Ash through those blank obsidian eyes. “But Nicholas will soon be dead.”
“What?” Oh, God. The room spun. Someone caught her arm, steadied her. Taylor, Ash recognized. “How? When?”
“Soon, as I said. I have seen it, and he is still young.”
Ash pushed away, headed for the door. “Then I have to—”
“He will call,” Khavi said. “He will need help.”
No. No, he wouldn’t. The ground seemed to steady. Ash shook her head. “He won’t risk me like that.”
“But I see him call. It is very clear to me. And that call must be answered.”
“No,” Ash repeated. “He wouldn’t.”
“Yes.” Khavi paused, and another short, powerful wave swept through Ash’s mind. “He will die . . . and yet your feelings will never fade. You will love him for the rest of your life. Are you sure that’s what you want to live for?”
A horror of a future. Still better than losing Nicholas and an eternity in the frozen field. Both were unimaginable—and never could she choose them both. Unable to speak, Ash only shook her head, continued to the door.
“Ash,” Lilith said softly behind her. “Save the naked traipse through the warehouse for a special occasion. I don’t think this qualifies.”
No. It didn’t. Feeling suddenly old, broken, Ash formed her clothes and slipped out of the room, straight into a hallway filled with Guardians and their stares. Sympathy, horror, and resentment seemed to fill each one.
Ash kept her mental blocks strong, and kept on going.
CHAPTER 16
Jesus. Taylor waited for the door to close before swinging around. “What the fuck was that? ‘You’ll love him for the rest of your life’?”
“What?” Khavi frowned at her. “I did not say her life would be very long. I hope it is not.”
“God. We don’t do this.” Taylor looked at Lilith. When Ash had left, her eyes had been glowing red, but the flat stare Lilith leveled at Khavi looked twice as demonic. “Do we? Is this what we are now, that we sacrifice one life to save another?”
“That’s what Guardians have always been,” Khavi said. “Sacrificing our lives to save another’s is how we become Guardians.”
That wasn’t the same at all. But Khavi had a way of twisting things about that made Taylor wonder, “Are you saying Ash will become one if she sacrifices herself like this?”
“No,” Lilith said, and Taylor couldn’t remember hearing such cold anger from the woman before. Usually, the former demon hid it behind a razor-sharp smile and a tongue that could slice to the bone. “It would be the same situation as Rachel’s: She should become a Guardian, but the field would claim her first.”
“She never becomes a Guardian,” Khavi confirmed. “There is no door leading in that direction.”
Fuck. Taylor pushed her hands into her hair, tried to search her mind for any sign of Michael. Was he hearing this? What would he think of this?
No, screw that. She didn’t need to feel his reaction. She knew what it would be.
“He wouldn’t want this,” she said. “He wouldn’t want us to guilt or coerce someone into sacrificing herself for him, especially a woman who should have been a Guardian, and who’s literally been through Hell and torture, just because she sacrificed herself to save someone’s life.
And he sure as hell wouldn’t want us to give that woman nothing at all to live for, to tear her heart out and then say, ‘But hey, now that your life is total shit, you can save someone else and make your pathetic soul worth something.’ That’s what a demon would do.”
“Yes,” Khavi agreed. “He believes that free will should always be respected, and life protected. But he also knows that there are times when we must be more demon than man, and do what is necessary. Is that not what you did, Lilith, when you brought her here? Did you not tear her apart, so that she would willingly agree to come . . . and all because there were more lives at stake than hers?”
“Now there is only Michael’s,” Lilith said.
“Only Michael’s?” Khavi laughed. “Oh, you lie. You know you do. You do not even see the darkness coming as I do, but you know that having Michael here would save many, many more lives than a halfling who can’t even fly.”
Jesus Christ. And who would be first? “Is St. Croix really going to die?”
“Yes,” Khavi answered her, before looking to Lilith again. “If you want to help her, let her speak to him. Let the call go through to her. And maybe everything will change.”
Change. A new door opening. Taylor latched on to that, tried to hope. “How would it change?”
“I cannot see what I—”
“What you don’t fucking know. Yeah, I know.” Taylor gritted her teeth and glanced at Lilith, who seemed to be making up her mind about something. Her mouth had firmed, and her gaze had slid toward the door, as if considering an object that lay beyond it. “What do you think about all this?”
“I think that certain people have a way of twisting things—and that to save St. Croix, Ash might willingly break her bargain with Madelyn and end up in the frozen field.” She started for the door, Sir Pup at her heels. “So I think I’m going to tell her everything I know about how to get around breaking one.”
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