Demon Marked

“One is that I fucked up the transformation.”

“Did you?” If so, he could live with it. Some of it had obviously worked. He had strength. He could hear her heart beating. He could see a tiny fleck of quartz in a toppled marble column lying one hundred yards away. If he healed a little more slowly than most Guardians, then he’d just train hard enough, get so damn good with his weapons that he’d be hurt less, too. Hell, he’d do that even if he healed normally from this point forward.

Either way, problem solved.

“I think it went okay. Things only went bad when I tried to heal you. That’s when Michael came in, and that didn’t exactly go so well. So, that’s the second theory—that the trauma of his mind slipping into yours was a shock to your whole system, and on top of the transformation . . .” She sighed. “Most Guardians are up and aware the second they are transformed. Me, I was in a coma for three months after he first got into my brain. You were only unconscious for about six hours, which might have just been the time your brain needed to heal, anyway. So you came through better than I did.”

“Or maybe I came through better because you shielded my mind from his.”

“I—” She looked at him in surprise. “That is kind of you, St. Croix.”

“I’m healing and vulnerable. It probably won’t happen often.”

Taylor laughed, and Nicholas bore the pang against his heart, the longing for the laugh he most wanted to hear. God, he missed Ash.

“Any third theories?” Anything to get him back to Earth more quickly.

“Two more, and both of them a bit more mental than physical.” When he frowned at her, she said, “It matters, you know—the way a person perceives himself. Like, I’ve heard there were some novices who literally fell apart when they tried to shape-shift, because they couldn’t hold an image of themselves in their mind. Then there’s someone like Drifter, who can barely hold any shape other than his own, because his image of himself is so fixed. The funny thing about Drifter, though, is that last year, he had his leg bitten off by a dragon. Gulp! and everything from the thigh down was gone. That should have taken him a month to regenerate. He was walking around in two weeks.”

Nicholas had to laugh. “So you think I’m not sure of myself? That I don’t know myself? I should introduce you to my therapist.” A thought occurred to him. “Where, by the way, you might find Khavi.”

“But she’d know we were coming and skip her appointment that day.”

“That’s . . .” Nicholas trailed off, frowning. He didn’t know what to call it. Difficult didn’t seem to cover it.

Taylor nodded, as if reading his expression. “Now try a year of that.”

“I will be, apparently.”

“Yeah.” Taylor abruptly sobered, and looked out over the city. “Which brings me to the fourth and final theory: You don’t give a shit about being a Guardian.”

“I don’t give a shit about a lot of things.”

“I know. You don’t let anything get in your way when you want something. Death almost put a big fucking obstacle in there, but it just so happened that the one thing in the world you care about needed saving, and so you got another chance. You lucked out.”

Nicholas had nothing to say. He couldn’t argue that.

“I know you have Ash. That’s a pretty damn good reason to want to come back, to want to live. But it has nothing to do with being a Guardian. And I know what it’s like not to want the transformation, but taking it anyway, because someone’s counting on you, or you just don’t want to die. Those are all good reasons for saying yes to the transformation. But to keep going? It’s not enough. Take it from someone who has a Godknows-how-many- thousand-year-old guy hanging out in her head—it’s simply not enough to serve as a Guardian just so that you can do something else, so that you can keep hanging in there until the world falls into the sun. You have to make being a Guardian serve you.”

Like his money had always served him, giving him the ability to keep pursuing his revenge. He didn’t have that now. The money, yes, but no Madelyn to keep hunting down—and no amount of money in the world would make him heal faster.

But he’d never been afraid to ask for help when he needed it. “How? What do I have to find?”

“We all have something. We all have some reason that being a Guardian matters. The woman who’s leading us right now, Irena, she pretty much lives to smash demon heads in. Rosalia cares about everyone, so as a Guardian, she can help everyone in ways they can’t help themselves. Jake likes to fly around and blow shit up, but he’s also making certain that nothing like a demon can ever touch his family, or anyone else’s family.”

Nicholas had that. He had his parents, and Rachel, and the Boyles. Newer, and different than his need for revenge—the determination to see it never happen again. To anyone.

“I have something,” he said.

“Good. Then cultivate the hell out of it. Make it matter.”

Strange. For two weeks, he’d only been thinking about Ash. About getting back to her. But now, realizing what he’d be able to do, the demons he’d be able to stop . . . God. And his eyes were stinging again.

“St. Croix?”

Make it matter. “I think it already does,” he said.

Taylor had been right about the colors, but she hadn’t mentioned the sounds. Within a few seconds after she teleported him to his grandfather’s cabin, Nicholas was on his knees with his eyes closed, covering his ears, certain that he was on the verge of vomiting a rainbow. He could hear the snow melting beneath his knees. He’d begged for her to leave him alone, and she had.

Jesus. So certain that he’d be able to go straight from Caelum to Ash, to a warehouse in the middle of a city. Now he was glad Taylor had suggested a test run at the isolated cabin, instead.

At the end of the week, when he could walk outside without flinching when a twig snapped under the weight of an icicle, he thought taking that trip might be possible. All of his lingering scars and new pink skin looked like his own; his left hand was strong and finally the same size as his right.

But rather than using the satellite phone Taylor had left for him and telling her to come, he began chopping wood, instead. Later, she brought in a load of books for him to read, but didn’t mention going to San Francisco. He let her leave without mentioning it, too.

He didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. But despite the ache that was a constant companion, the desperate desire to see Ash, he wasn’t ready yet.

And he didn’t even know what he was getting ready for.

Another week passed, and Nicholas felt he was finally getting there—wherever there was. He’d read through all of the books on birds and flight, and started on his grandfather’s collection—the collection that Ash had read through in her week here, though he preferred to read reclining on the bed rather than the stiff rocking chair. He wished she’d left notes in the margins. What had she felt and thought, reading these? Probably nothing like she’d feel and think now. She’d changed so quickly that week, but so had he, and—

The forest had quieted.

Nicholas sat up in the bed. The twittering and chirping of the returning springtime birds had become easily ignored background noise in the past few weeks, but the sudden hush seemed as loud as an alarm. He grabbed his shotgun—he still hadn’t figured out his cache yet—and waited at the door, listening.

Nothing unusual.

Except . . . he tilted his head, focused on the odd, rhythmic sound coming from above him. Almost a gallop, but muffled. Almost like his own heartbeat.

Someone was on the roof.

His heart pounding now, too, he edged backward out of the door, backed away from the porch. The height and pitch of the A-frame made it difficult to get an immediate look at the top. When he did, his heart stopped.

Ash.

Leathery wings spread wide, she perched on the ridge, crouching like a gargoyle. Horns curled away from her forehead; crimson scales covered her body. She gripped the forward projecting edge of the roof with a taloned