Demon Marked

“The dog. I’ll be one second.”

Or two, depending on how long it took the dog to slip out of the door. She left Nicholas on the bed, still aroused and his heart pounding. Hers pounding, too, so hot and thick that it seemed to echo in her ears. The dog sat in front of the door, tail wagging. She opened it and he merely looked up at her, giving her a doggy grin.

Cute, but she was standing there naked and the cold was seeping into her skin. “Out,” she said. “Do your business. I’ll let you back in. I promise.”

He shook his head, flapping his ears wildly. Hope lifted when he rose to all fours, but he only snuffled at the edge of the doorway before padding back around to the middle of the room. The bed creaked, and she heard Nicholas coming to the door of the bedroom.

She looked at the dog. “I’m only going to have it open for a second longer. Then you have to hold it.”

He chuffed at her.

Shaking her head, she turned back to close it—and stopped. Her boomstick should have been on that rack next to the door. It wasn’t.

Neither was Nicholas’s rifle, and the holsters that hung there were empty. Sudden dread filled her stomach, her heart began beating sickly thuds. And the rhythm of Nicholas’s had changed, too . . . and there were still the echoes, but they were beating at a different time.

“Ash.” Behind her, Nicholas’s voice filled with a cold that she’d never heard before—the ice of fear. “Don’t look around. Just run. Go. As fast as you can.”

And leave him? She couldn’t. She looked around, and her blood turned to ice water.

It wasn’t a dog anymore. Standing as tall as the ceiling, it had three massive heads, jaws filled with gleaming dagger-teeth. Its eyes glowed, not steady crimson like hers, but flickering as if lit by the fires of Hell. Short fur as stiff as needles poked between crimson and black scales. She couldn’t see Nicholas beyond its enormous body, but the monstrous creature was watching them, each of them to one set of eyes, and the third . . . was watching the door.

Pressing her back to the wall, she kept her eyes on the monster, let her fingers search for a weapon. A chair, a curtain rod, anything.

The head watching her growled, a long deep rumble. She froze.

“Nicholas?”

She heard the low noise he made, despair in the back of his throat. “Go. I’ll distract it, keep it here. You have to go now or you won’t have a chance. It’s a hellhound. One bite can paralyze you.”

It had already bitten her once. Apparently, she’d been lucky. Damn lucky. Ash eyed the size of its jaws. “One bite could kill either of us.”

The hellhound chuffed, but this time it was a deep bellow, from a chest as wide as a truck. She could almost taste the amusement behind it—

No. She could taste it. A little odd, but in the same way she sensed emotions in people.

“It’s laughing,” she realized.

“Ash. Go.”

Not without him—but it was too late anyway. She heard a light thud from outside, followed by a second. A flutter, a flap. The sound of wings.

Feathered wings.

Her chest tightened. “Nicholas. The Guardians are here.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then a footstep from the porch seemed to break it, and Nicholas roared her name. The hellhound’s heads swung around. Ash’s heart stopped.

Nicholas was attacking the thing. Trying to get to her. Oh, God.

She sprinted forward, and though Nicholas’s heart was between beats, she saw that the hellhound reacted just as quickly, that he’d already noticed her coming around and so she shouted, “I’m just protecting him!” before sliding beneath those enormous gaping jaws, across the floorboards and up. Nicholas seemed frozen, his expression contorted by fury and determination, and he’d found the only stabbing weapon the hellhound hadn’t taken: the heel of her boot. Clenched in his raised fist, he was trying to protect her, but this would only hurt him, and if she didn’t slow down, she’d hit him while going too fast and hurt him, too. She slowed, and caught his wrist as he stabbed down. She hadn’t slowed enough. As her body hit his and they went flying, Ash managed to react, to twist, and take the impact.

She slammed back into the wall next to the bedroom door, holding on to him. It took him only a blink to realize what had happened, and then his arms were around her, shoving her behind him and putting himself between the hellhound and her.

Between the Guardians and her.

Ash slipped her hands around Nicholas’s waist, ready to carry him away. She looked over his shoulder as the footsteps came nearer, as the resonance of their steps against the wood changed when they crossed from the porch into the cabin. “I hear two,” she whispered. “One with heels.”

The hellhound gave a happy chuff, an unmistakable sound of greeting. His giant, slithering tail wagged. A woman answered him.

“Such a good boy. I love it when you look so mean. But you’re taking up all of the room. Hugh can’t even fit in here with me.”

With a noise like a sigh, the hellhound suddenly diminished—looking almost like a Labrador again, but twice as big, and still with three heads—and revealing the man and woman standing near the door.

Tall, with a long black wool coat that buttoned to her throat, and a tangle of long dark hair, the woman regarded them with arched brows and a sharp amusement. The man gave less away, but Ash couldn’t miss the calluses on his hands, the bulk of his shoulders. A man who had his own obsessions, was driven by some deep purpose.

That purpose was to kill her, Ash supposed.

“Just turn around,” Nicholas said. His arms came back and his palms flattened against the wall on either side of her, as if to protect her from every side. “She’s not like most demons. She’s not evil.”

The woman smiled and came farther inside. The man—Hugh, she’d called him—shut the cabin door.

“Different, yes. I know better than anyone,” she said, her gaze narrowing on Ash’s face. “You are new.”

Easier to kill, Ash thought.

“And those symbols . . . Taylor was right. Those aren’t for the transformation. They’re a spell to create a new Gate. Fuck.”

Ash trembled. A spell. The demon who’d attacked her in Duluth had said something similar, and there was a memory there, something she needed to know, but she couldn’t trace it now.

The woman turned to look at Hugh, who seemed to shake his head without moving at all. She focused on Ash again. “I see you’re all naked and cozy here, shacked up in the middle of nowhere, but unless the demon you’re bound to is dead, you’re not safe. Nobody will be safe if Lucifer opens that Gate. So you need to come with us.”

Okay, that was easy. “We’re safe then,” Ash said, and since she didn’t have a bargain with these Guardians, had no problem telling them, “The demon is dead.”

Hugh spoke. “Lie.”

She felt Nicholas’s tension increase. The woman looked to him and grinned.

“You know what he is, don’t you? He had a Gift to see the truth for eight hundred years, and he can still see it. So don’t even try to lie.” She glanced at Ash. “Or try, if you want. It’s a lot more fun that way.”

“Or maybe he’ll lie even when he hears the truth,” Nicholas said. “How can we know?”

“That’s your first thought? Your mother really fucked you up, didn’t she?” The woman studied him for a long moment. “He won’t lie, not when he’s here to see the truth. And not when I depend on him to tell me when you’re lying.”

“If he sees it, then he knows I told the truth when I said she wasn’t like other demons,” Nicholas said.

“Well, I don’t need Hugh to tell me that. It’s written all over her face . . . and from the little I can see, it’s