Demon Marked

Internet and news feeds, other demons had come after Radha, all trying to prevent that spell from being cast and Lucifer’s early return. The Guardian had slain them all—and Ash had no doubt she’d be able to slay Madelyn, too.

Until then, Ash remained a brunette who couldn’t shape-shift, and who still couldn’t fly. But she was working hard on that, doing the one thing that had never occurred to her while she’d been jumping out of a tree: reading.

Flying, she discovered, truly was for the birds. Humansturned-Guardians—or halflings—didn’t have an instinctive ability, and they had to make up for that lack in knowledge and understanding. In two months, she’d read her way through books and scrolls detailing bat and Guardian wing anatomy, piloting manuals for small planes and fighter jets, and texts loaded with information about the effects of wind currents and altitude—all in the hopes that when she was finally in the air, some of that knowledge had soaked deep enough into her brain that she understood the adjustments that needed to be made, and why she might need to change the angle of her wing in order to stop herself from crashing into the ground.

But the rest was simply familiarity. Inside the Special Investigations warehouse, Ash wore her wings constantly, and now she could maneuver them as easily as arm or a leg. She could flap them, hard and fast enough that she hovered—wobbling but upright—a few feet above the floor. In the next week or two, she’d be teleported to a desert for her first trial flights, with a Guardian standing by to catch her if something went wrong.

Much better than falling out of trees . . . but she wished Nicholas could be with her.

And her feelings for him hadn’t faded.

She’d thought they would—or that they’d be replaced by some newer, fresher emotion. She liked several of the Guardians and vampires she’d met, but she hadn’t stopped loving Nicholas, wishing he were there, trying not to laugh. Several other people she’d met were undeniably attractive. Ash didn’t want them. When her body ached, her thoughts were only of Nicholas.

And she missed him. That was new, a longing that cut deeper with each passing day, instead of fading as it should have. Even her resentment had subsided, though it had burned hot when she’d first read through the reports Taylor had compiled on her parents’ murder. For days, she’d been glad to be rid of him, glad to be surrounded by Guardians who gave her any information she needed, especially when it mattered. But her resentment hadn’t been able to stand up against her understanding of him.

He’d been wrong to conceal Madelyn’s involvement. He’d sacrificed her need for revenge on the altar of his own. But she also understood that he hadn’t let himself believe in her need, or the grief that had driven it. He might have known it was real; he wouldn’t let himself believe it.

That had changed. Given the same choice now, he’d have told her. Ash believed that to the root of her soul . . . and that belief didn’t fade.

So she lived with a bone-deep ache that deepened with his absence, the hope that Madelyn would soon be slain—and the pleasure that the tiny contact she managed to have with him provided.

As promised, he hadn’t attempted to reach her since she’d left the cabin. Though reporters had tried to find him after Rachel’s reappearance had cleared him of suspicion in her murder, Nicholas hadn’t made any public statements. But with Rachel alive and her accounts unfrozen, the Guardians had managed to liquidate and launder most of her assets, spread them across five different identities, and transfer them to Ash. With the substantial amount in hand, she’d begun buying up shares and taking over two of Reticle’s outlying holdings—Ash’s way of saying Hello.

Even distracted by his search for Madelyn, he’d eventually see her activity or be alerted by his staff, and look hard at her. And though he might not recognize who lay at the other end, she looked forward to his countermove.

No, that wasn’t right. She looked forward to everything.

She loved the fighting practice, the unending fencing forms, and the continuous study of things she hadn’t forgotten but had simply never known before. On the night she’d met Nicholas and he’d aimed his crossbow at her chest, Ash hadn’t been certain whether she didn’t want to die because of some deep survival instinct or a true desire to be alive. Not now. She loved life—as much as she still loved him. Preferably, that life would eventually include him again. But if it couldn’t, she could at least be certain that she’d made the right choice by coming with the Guardians . . . because it meant she’d never have to choose between life or Nicholas.

A beep from her cell phone alarm warned that her time outside was up; if she didn’t return soon, the Guardians would come looking for her. With a great huff, Sir Pup climbed to his feet. Ash collected her books and tossed her uneaten sandwich to the grateful hellhound—who’d already enjoyed two under the table.

“Pig,” she said, and he grinned his doggy grin at her.

Her resentment against him had faded, too. And after she’d realized how smoothly Lilith and Hugh had manipulated her and Nicholas, it had taken longer to forgive them, but eventually that sense of anger and stupidity had gone, too.

Intentions mattered, and she understood why they’d pushed Nicholas away and brought her here: They simply couldn’t allow a Gate to open and for Lucifer and his demons to spill out into the world. Ash couldn’t feel the same urgency about the whole matter that they did, but she recognized the danger of thousands of demons, each pushing humans like Steve Johnson to their limits, and not enough Guardians to hold them in check.

The whole world would go mad. Ash preferred the world as it was.

Well, maybe it could be a little better—especially if Madelyn were dead. Especially if Ash or Nicholas were the ones to slay her. But she’d settle for dead, and be happy no matter who did it.

A block away from the cafe, she vanished the books into her cache. Easy now, just as forming her clothes or her wings were. Her eyes rarely glowed unless she wanted them to, and her fangs appeared with a thought. The only difficulty she had wasn’t looking demonic, it was looking too much like herself—if she wasn’t careful, her hair reverted to blond and grew to the middle of her back again. The Guardians had stopped buying the brown dye by the box and ordered it by the carton, instead.

Another two blocks of run-down warehouses and apartments brought her to Special Investigations’ large fenced lot. The building didn’t look any different than the others in the neighborhood—deliberately, she was told. Demons preferred to be surrounded by money and luxury, so they wouldn’t come into this area unless necessary.

Ash didn’t care about luxury, though it was nice. She did like money, however, so she’d gotten the demon thing half right.

A four-inch-thick steel door provided the first line of defense for the warehouse. Rigged with enough electricity to fry anyone with an elevated temperature on the spot, she avoided electrocution by swiping her keycard. As soon as she and the hellhound passed through the entrance, Sir Pup doubled in size and his two other heads appeared, tongues lolling from each massive jaw. Though her psyche and emotions were already shielded from detection, now she blocked all emotions coming from others. The Guardians had been surprised that she’d walked through London absorbing all of those human feelings, but even though they’d taught her to block them, she liked to open herself during the visits to the cafe. People were too fascinating to shut them out.

But although the Guardians and vampires at SI were fascinating, she couldn’t bear to allow them to bombard her. Not anymore. It was all too painful.

From the first day, she’d sensed a tension hanging over the warehouse, related to the Guardians’ missing leader, Michael. They’d been focused, determined. Fear and anxiety lay beneath that determination, but it hadn’t been overwhelming.

Then, three weeks after Ash had arrived at the warehouse, she’d been training with the novices in the gymnasium when a thin, spidery woman had stumbled through the Gate in the hallway—the portal that led to Caelum, but that Ash couldn’t cross through or even sense. Bleeding from her head, the woman had fallen to the floor, her black dress billowing around her.

She’d looked at them, clearly dazed. “The whole of the Boreas shore has just crumbled into the sea. How very odd.”

Her words had sent the novices swarming through the Gate to see. Ash had been left to help the Guardian —Alice—to her feet, and to make certain that she made her way to the main offices without tumbling over.

Since then, reports of falling spires and collapsing arches had been delivered to SI with increasing regularity,