“Now Rachel has returned, and your desire for revenge has shifted into a need to protect her.”
“To protect Ash,” he said. “Not Rachel.”
“Also, your mythology has deepened considerably,” she said. “Once, there were only vampires, demons, and eventually Guardians. But in the time since Rachel has returned, there are now halflings, spells, symbols, and sacrifices that open Gates to Hell. Do you not think it at all possible that this layering of your mythology has simply been a way for you to incorporate Rachel’s return into a form that you can accept?”
“I’m sure that’s not what happened,” he said, smiling. “And I know you hate it when I say that.”
“Refusing to consider a possibility does cut off avenues of exploration.” But though he recognized the faint exasperation at the corners of her eyes and mouth, she only said, “Let’s continue then. You let her go two months ago. What have you been doing in the time between—when you were not canceling our weekly appointments, that is?”
Nicholas had to laugh. “I wondered when that would come in.”
“I was very gentle,” she said. “I did worry, though, especially when I saw the news about Rachel. You’ve never missed so many appointments in a row, and I assumed it wasn’t a coincidence. Perhaps you can fill me in now.”
“I was hunting demons. Madelyn, primarily, but there have been others, too.”
“Other demons?” When he nodded, she asked, “You said that you had been wrong about Ash. How do you know these demons aren’t like her?”
“Because there are no others like her. Rosalia never mentioned halflings because Lilith had been the last—and they didn’t know about Ash.” When he’d met with her, Rosalia had apologized to him in her soft, motherly way. It hadn’t been necessary. She couldn’t have anticipated the events that led to Rachel becoming Ash. Neither could Nicholas, and that was why he wouldn’t take the risk of being wrong now. “But I won’t take the chance again. So I make certain they aren’t halflings.”
“How?”
“The hellhound venom. Halflings aren’t affected by it, just like Guardians and humans aren’t.” And Nicholas had verified that, too, by injecting himself with the venom. “But demons are, so I shoot them with the dart, and while they are paralyzed, I check their temperature. Then I call in Rosalia.”
“And she takes them?”
“Slays them, then gets rid of the bodies. All but the last one.” He looked down at his hands. “I had him down, paralyzed, but then I couldn’t reach her on the phone. The venom would eventually wear off, so I had to make a choice.”
“To slay him or let him go?”
“Yes. It was harder than I thought it would be. Maybe it’d have been easier if the demon had been fighting me, or threatening Ash like the one in Duluth had. It’s for her protection, so I was going to slay it anyway . . . but her protection wasn’t the only reason. I thought about Ash crying over her parents, I thought about my parents and Rachel. It’s too many people, and if it’s in my power, I’m not going to let any demon hurt even one more.”
Leslie’s brow had furrowed. “What did you do, Nicholas?”
“I chopped his head off with a sword.” And that had been more difficult than he’d realized, too. Not just mentally, but physically. “Then after a while, Rosalia came and cleaned up.”
He saw the slight tremble of her mouth. Maybe a man who hadn’t known her for twenty years couldn’t have recognized the alarm, the disbelief, the horror in her expression. Nicholas could. And he knew what she thought now, too—that despite his delusional paranoia, at least he’d always been functional. But now his delusions had either become a full-blown psychosis, or he’d become a serial killer.
She gathered herself. “Nicholas, I know that you’ve always rejected the idea of medication, but—”
“No.” And because he’d always vowed to be brutally honest with himself in this office—and honest with her—he sat forward, took her hands between his. “Leslie, that’s not what I need.”
She squeezed his hand. “What do you need, then?”
Ash. But that wasn’t possible yet.
“I need you to know that I can’t express how valuable you’ve been to me. I know that I’ve not been the easiest man. You’ve probably saved my life more times than we both know.” He took a long breath. “But what I also need now is someone who believes me.”
She held his gaze, and he watched her struggle, the compassion and the acceptance. Closing her eyes, she nodded. “I don’t know if I can find someone who will believe, Nicholas, but I know a few people who might be better able to help you. I can make some calls, give you a referral.”
“Thank you.”
“And Nicholas, you know that I will always—Oh, dear God!” She lurched back in her chair, her hand flying to her heart. Mouth open, she stared across the room.
Nicholas fought to cover his own shock. Wearing enormous black wings that arched up to the ceiling, a possessed Taylor stood . . . No, he realized. Not Taylor. Unless she’d shape-shifted, this woman with braided black hair and obsidian eyes wasn’t Taylor, but someone more like Michael.
In a low, harmonious voice, she said, “Madelyn has Ashmodei.”
God. Nicholas surged to his feet. “And you stopped to get me first?”
“Of course.”
“You should have just gone after her, saved her.” But since the Guardian was here, he wouldn’t argue. “Where is she?”
“In some Roman ruins near old Fordham Castle in County Essex. There used to be a portal to Hell there—the weak spot makes it easier to open a new one.”
By sacrificing Ash. Not if Nicholas had anything to say about it. “I have no weapons with me.”
“Hold out your hand.”
When he did, an egg-shaped grenade appeared in his palm. “You’re only giving me this?”
“Why would you need anything else?”
He wouldn’t, Nicholas realized. If this woman had half the power that Michael did, he wouldn’t need anything. He probably wouldn’t even be able to track the fight with Madelyn. “All right. Let’s go. No, hold on.”
He had just enough presence of mind to turn around. “Leslie, are you okay?”
Though obviously still astonished, she nodded.
“Oh,” the Guardian said, peering around Nicholas’s shoulder. “You are a psychotherapist? Are you taking new patients?”
Heart pounding, Nicholas stared at her in disbelief. “Ash is waiting—”
“And she won’t be bleeding yet when we arrive, so whenever we decide to teleport, we’ll still be in time.” She looked back to Leslie. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy, just because I spent over two thousand years alone in Hell and I can also see the future. Do you suppose I could come and talk with you at some time?”
Leslie blinked. Her mouth opened, but no answer emerged.
“It’s all right,” the Guardian said. “I already know that you will say yes. Thank you. You will be very helpful to me, especially what you will have to say about coping mechanisms.”
With a shaky nod, Leslie blinked again. “Yes. I—Yes. And Nicholas . . . I think I might qualify for your new belief requirement. So, next week?”
“No, he won’t be there. Shall I take his appointment, instead?”
Jesus. Whatever got them out of here, now. “Say yes, Leslie.”
“Yes,” Leslie said.
The Guardian smiled brightly, and took Nicholas’s arm. Then the world dived, spun, and spit him out the other side.
CHAPTER 17
Even with his feet planted into the sodden ground, the world still spun. Only steadied by the Guardian’s hand, Nicholas fought not to heave up his lunch, fought the darkness swirling around the edges of his vision, tried to focus. He stood in a large, flat field, with short grass that squelched with the swaying shift of his weight. The ruins near his feet were only distinguishable from any other weathered rock by the straight line of their formation and the ninety-degree angle of an
ancient corner. He stood just outside the old building, the walls broken down to his shins.
Still dizzy, Nicholas lifted his head. Though he could focus more clearly now, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust. Twilight was leaching the light from a leaden sky.
Where was Ash?
“Nicky?”
Madelyn’s name for him, but his voice? Nicholas gave his head a sharp shake. There, only ten feet away, in the center of what would have been a room of some sort, stood . . . Nicholas. He held two long, curving swords, and if the shadows playing over his double’s face weren’t misleading him, the demon was regarding the Guardian with abject terror.
The black wings, those obsidian eyes. Madelyn must know she didn’t have a chance, no matter whom she looked like. But where was Ash? He had to make certain Madelyn couldn’t hurt her before this Guardian got a chance to tear the demon apart.
A crimson glow began to shine near Madelyn’s feet, casting red light across the ground. Oh, Jesus. Ash lay on her back behind Madelyn, her face turned away from Nicholas. He couldn’t see her expression or whether she was hurt, but those glowing eyes meant she was still alive.
Thank God.
“If you take a step toward me, grigori”—Madelyn shifted in an instant as she spoke, taking the form of his mother’s dark-haired, elegant beauty—“I will kill her.”
The Guardian’s grip on his arm loosened. “Can you stand now without falling?”
“Yes.” His fingers clenched around the grenade. When Madelyn was dead, he was going to shove it down her throat and pull the pin. “When you’ve finished with her, save me the head.”
“What? Oh, no. I need to go feed my puppy. I’ll be back when you’re done.”
She vanished.
Madelyn whipped around, as if expecting the Guardian to teleport in behind her. So did Nicholas. They waited with only the harsh sound of his breathing to disturb the silence.
Then Madelyn tossed back her head and laughed, cutting through the shock that held him frozen and threw him back to twelve years old again, humiliated and horrified after she’d walked into his room and caught him with his pants down. Oh, Nicky, you don’t even have enough there to play with. God. It had taken him years to keep that mocking, nails-scrapingacross-his-brain noise from echoing in his head. Now he feared it would never go.
Her laughter faded, but her amusement didn’t. “Oh, Nicky—your expression almost makes up for all of the pain you’ve caused me. It almost makes up for that stupid girl throwing herself between us, even after she agreed not to. It almost makes up for three years in the Pit, with my skin flayed, and my flesh stripped from my bones and fed to hellhounds. Do you know what that is like, Nicky? Oh, but I would love every human to know.”
Not just evil, Nicholas recognized. That torture had broken her. “You’re mad.”
“Mad?” Madelyn’s laugh rang out again, wild, unchecked. “No, not anymore. Not after three years of searching for the right Gate, through every ruin in England. Do you know how many ruins there are on this cursed island? And when I finally found it, I learned that you’ve taken my little Ashmodei and have tried to hide her away.”
Not well enough. “I’ll destroy you, any way that I can. If it means you fail to sacrifice her and break your bargain with Lucifer, all the better.”
“We’ll see if someone will break their bargain—but it won’t be me. Oh, Ashmodei,” she sang out, and vanished her swords. “You can stand up now, love. You can also speak again. I think it’s time to play a little game with Nicky.”
Ash rose, naked and lean and strong, with her eyes shining fiercely red. Mud tangled in her hair and concealed half her tattoos. Leathery wings folded at her back.
She was absolutely beautiful . . . and she’d been going to let Madelyn sacrifice her. She’d been willing to die, just to keep from returning to that frozen field.
Nicholas would give everything he could to make certain she didn’t have to do either.
He smiled, his arrogant son-of-a-bitch smile that had led to Madelyn trying to shoot him once before. “What game will we play? ‘Make Ash kill Nicky?’ There’s only one problem with that, Madelyn.” He showed her the grenade in his left hand. “You let her get close enough, and I’ll blow her to Hell. That means you wouldn’t be able to fulfill your bargain with Lucifer, and you’d end up screaming in the frozen field.”
Madelyn’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me. You’re going to kill her, anyway. I’ll take a lot of fucking pleasure knowing that you’ll pay for it.”
“And that close to the explosion, you’ll die, too.” Madelyn tilted her head. “But let’s see what happens, make a little test. Ash, take that grenade from him and bring it to me.”
“That will break the Rules,” Ash said softly. “It’ll bring the Guardians. By ‘take,’ do you mean that I should persuade him to give it to me?”
“Are you disobeying me, halfling?”
“I’m simply verifying exactly what you want, so that I can obey to your satisfaction.”
No, Nicholas thought. Ash was lying. She could do anything she wanted to him. But if Ash could do anything she wanted to Madelyn, she’d probably have already done it. He had to assume she was bound not to hurt the demon.
So that would be up to him.
He slipped his finger through the pin. “She can take the grenade straight back to you. You better hope that she holds down the safety lever.”
“Ash, bring me his finger, too.”
“Of course. Which one?”
Madelyn frowned at her. “The left forefinger, the one in the pin. And that way, his hand will be a match to yours.”
“What?” Cold fury spiked through him. “Show me.”
Ash didn’t. Laughing, Madelyn grabbed her wrist, lifted Ash’s hand into view, and flicked a long fingernail against the stub of a knuckle. Jesus.
“Nicky, love. You always give yourself away. You shake with rage because of a finger and yet threaten to kill her? I don’t think so.”
Ash closed her eyes. “If you let me go, I’ll bring the grenade to you now.”
“No, no. Just kill him. And we’ll finish the sacrifice before the Guardians come.”
“Of course, Madelyn.” Her voice was flat. “How should I do it?”
The demon pursed her lips, her gaze running the length of Nicholas’s body. “So many possible ways. But I can’t ask anything complicated of a halfling and expect it to be done right. So let’s keep it simple: Break his neck. Then come back here and lie down again, so that we can finish this ritual.”
Without hesitation, Ash stepped forward. Over the sick beating of his heart, he held her gaze, tried to let her know that this decision was right. Anything to keep her from the frozen field. Anything to bring her a few steps away from Madelyn, where maybe, maybe, he could think of some way to give her time, to help her escape.
“Just make sure you kiss me first,” he said.
A sad little smile curved her lips, the first real expression he’d seen. She paused, midstep. “Madelyn, when I’m breaking his neck, should I twist to the left or to the right?”
“What does it matter? To the left.”
“My left or his left?”
“His. You idiot.”
“I am just trying to be precise as I carry out your orders,” Ash said, and this time her eyes narrowed slightly, in the same way she had when they’d trained together and she was considering her next strike. “There are several vertebrae in the neck. Which one should I aim to snap? I’ve never killed a man in this way before.”
“I don’t care. The third.”
“Oh.” Ash’s smile turned slightly apologetic. “I’m sorry, Nicholas. I have to ask you to face away from me before I can break your neck, because I first have to feel along your spine and count your vertebrae. I must find the location of the third, you see. I cannot disobey her.”
What was she doing? Simply delaying?
“Are you delaying, halfling?”
Madelyn’s voice filled with threat.
“Obeying,” Ash corrected. The crimson glow of her eyes faded, and through the dusk, her gaze sought Nicholas’s. “I know that as long as I am in the process of carrying out your orders, I am obeying—and that in this sort of bond, it is not the completion of the task that matters. All that matters is that I am acting to fulfill it. So even if one of us dies before I finish, I am not reneging on our bargain.”
No, not simply delaying. Trying to tell him—
“Are you trying to tell Nicholas to kill you?” Madelyn’s laugh rang out over the field again. “Answer me truthfully.”
“I’m not,” Ash said. “I know he would not, even though it would stop the ritual.”
He wouldn’t have hurt her for any reason. She had to know that. What did she need from him, then?
“Are you telling him to kill me? Answer me truthfully.”
“No such words have passed my lips. That would be disobeying. I only obey, as I walk to him now with the intention of finding his third vertebrae.” Her gaze fell to the grenade in his hand, lifting to meet his eyes again. “I would never disobey.”
Oh, Ash. He realized now that she wanted him to throw it toward Madelyn as soon as she reached him, and hope that the distance—and a small, ruined wall—would be enough to shield them both. A desperate, last-ditch attempt . . . that didn’t have a chance. Madelyn was too quick. She could be halfway across the field before the toss he aimed landed at her feet.
When the explosion failed to destroy Madelyn, Ash would refuse to kill him, and she would be lost to the frozen field. Only the miracle of the Guardians’ arrival might stop any of it.
Nicholas wouldn’t count on a miracle to save her.
“Stop,” he said. His throat had thickened, his lungs filled with burning lead. He pushed the grenade into his pocket, held up his empty hands. “Stop, Ash. I’ll come to you. I’ll let you kill me of my free will.”
“What?” Horror filled Ash’s face. “Nicholas, no.”
“I can’t bear knowing what will happen if you do this.” Hoarse truth. He stepped over the low wall. “I just want to kiss you. Just let me kiss you, one last time. It won’t break the Rules. It won’t bring the Guardians to kill you. Madelyn, please.”
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