Demon Marked

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 Madelyn, 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.