Demon Marked

Ash staggered, fell to her knees in the hot red sand. The world tilted wildly. God. Her stomach heaved, and she heard Nicholas fighting the same dizzying effects of the teleportation. She drew in a deep breath, almost retched again. The stink. Rotten, burning flesh.

No more breathing. Not here. Just listening, making certain . . .

They were alone for the moment. No heartbeats nearby. Only his.

Nicholas’s arm slid around her. Though still not steady, he lifted her, waited until she planted her feet. “Are you okay?”

No. But there was no other choice to nod. “Next time, we’ll know better than to try fighting a crazy teleporter who can see the future. Are you hurt?”

“She never even touched me, except to bring us here. And—” He broke off. “Ash, look.”

She heard the bleakness in his voice, and didn’t want to turn. In the direction she faced, there was only an endless stretch of red sand, a bruised crimson sky. But she couldn’t pretend. Bracing herself, she turned.

Oh, God. Terror caught her throat, her heart in an icy, clawed grip. They stood at the edge of the frozen field. A few steps away, red sand bled into open mouths and eyes, a frozen carpet of faces locked in ice. So many locked together, with no space between. So many. She couldn’t see the borders on the sides, only Lucifer’s tower rising in the center like an enormous black spear. How long had she stared at that, screaming, screaming? Forever. And they were all there now, screaming, and she knew that there was no other sound, only silence, and just the tortured, endless screaming of the millions trapped—

Her knees collapsed. Nicholas caught her, drew her against him, and she muffled her scream against his chest, trying to hold it in, don’t let anyone know we’re here, but it had to come out before it ripped her apart inside.

She cried, hot tears. For herself, for Rachel, for all of them. All the same.

“I didn’t know.” His throat sounded as rough and broken as hers. “I didn’t know there were so many.”

Ash wiped her face, made herself look again. So many. “All like Rachel, just because of a choice. Maybe not even a bad choice, or an evil one.”

“Yes.” Khavi’s voice came from behind them. “It’s not like the Pit, where the judged go to be punished. And the majority of those in the field are demons—Madelyn is there, somewhere—and some humans who probably deserve it. But most of the humans, most of the halflings . . . They made the wrong agreement with a demon, and it doesn’t matter at all how good their intentions might have been.”

Ash shook her head. Through the ache in her throat, she still managed, “I’m not going back in there.”

Khavi pursed her lips, looked at Nicholas. “I made the call to Taylor using your voice. It was important. You should have done it.”

“Does your doing it change anything?”

“No.” Giving her hellhound a pat on its enormous head, she looked out over the field and said, “There’s Michael, by the way.”

Khavi pointed. Unable to help herself, Ash looked. When she didn’t see anything, she looked farther out . . . farther. Just visible on the icy horizon, a crowd of demons stood.

“Michael’s the entertainment,” Khavi said, and a rough note entered the smooth harmony of her voice. “Michael, and those from the Pit who are tortured with him. You cannot see, so I will help you see.”

Ash cried out as a sharp crack opened in her psychic shields, saw Nicholas’s suddenly white face. The image pressed against the backs of her eyes, every detail in clear focus: Michael’s shattered face with his eyes open, seeing, aware—and the human, stretched between two poles, stretched more than a human could, the razor wire, the hellhound’s thrusting haunches and bloodied jaws—

“Stop!” Her tears burned, and Nicholas pulled her back against his chest. She felt his own shuddering horror. “And you want me to be there? How can you do this? How can you say this?”

“That is not what I want now. I just wanted you to see. You have a different role—” Khavi stopped suddenly, her head cocked. “I know this moment.”

She ducked.

Taylor appeared in front of her, fist jabbing the air over Khavi’s head. Faster than Ash could see, Khavi was up again. Her arm swung, a backhand that caught Taylor full on the side of the head. A resounding crack—Taylor vanished.

She reappeared directly in front of Ash and Nicholas, blood spilling from her mouth. She reached for them.

Khavi teleported between, smashed her foot into Taylor’s chest, knocked Nicholas’s arm aside. Ash leapt at her—leapt into nothing. Unprepared for Khavi’s disappearance, she sprawled on the sand. A growl froze her in place. Khavi’s hellhound. A clear warning not to attack again. Ash looked for Nicholas.

God. He’d been knocked back into the frozen field. Already making his way out, his bare feet on those icy faces, and not even the flat determination in his expression could hide the pain of those screams that echoed in his mind, that awful silence.

He crossed over onto the sand, ran to her. Ignoring the hellhound, he crouched beside her, half shielding her body with his. “Just keep out of their way, or we’ll be smashed. We’ll try to get to Taylor if we can—and hope that someone else is coming, too.”

A shriek pierced the air. Khavi’s. Ash looked around the hellhound as an impact shook the ground. Taylor lay on her side, her head bleeding, her eyes dazed, but quickly regaining focus. Only ten feet away. At the same time Ash reached for him, Nicholas grabbed her hand, began to rise. They just had to—

Black wings extended, Khavi landed beside Taylor, stroked a lock of bloodied red hair from the woman’s forehead. “Michael,” she said softly. “You have to make her go now. Lucifer’s coming. And if he finds her . . .”

“Michael, no!” Rage filled Taylor’s voice. Her eyes opened wide, filled with black. She began to shake. “No! You fucking liar! You promised you’d never force—”

She vanished.

Forced away by Michael. And now Ash could feel Lucifer approaching, too, like a dark pressure on the edge of her mind, a stain scudding across the sky.

In horror, she turned to Nicholas. “Taylor will tell someone else. They’ll come.”

Holding her tight, he nodded. Kissed her once, hard. Looked into her eyes. “Do everything you can to survive. Promise me, now.”

“I will. Promise me, too.”

He kissed her hard again, and she took that as his vow.

Lucifer came alone, which told Nicholas everything he needed to know about their chances of escaping without help. It could have been that the demon was just too arrogant to bring backup against a Guardian like Khavi, but Nicholas didn’t think so. Given that Khavi’s elephant-sized hellhound began to shudder in silent terror as Lucifer approached through the frozen field, he thought that arrogance might be well deserved.

At his side, Ash shook, too. Waiting with him behind Khavi and her hellhound, Ash stood tall, her eyes dry, and her fingers all but crushing Nicholas’s hand. The dark figure, she’d called Lucifer. Though big, much bigger than any other demon Nicholas had seen, Lucifer’s scales weren’t any darker than the crimson of Ash’s scales. His eyes glowed the same red, his wings the same leathery span. The same obsidian horns wrapped back from his forehead. But he was darker, as if even the light avoided him, and instead of Ash’s beauty, Lucifer’s appearance only suggested that a great, horrible power lay beneath his scales.

More darkness seethed in the power pressing against Nicholas’s psyche. This demon could crush his mind with barely a thought, he realized. Not just tear apart his body, but tear apart the rest of him, too.

And Nicholas should have been terrified. He knew that. The fear lurked within him, he could feel it—but he didn’t feel it. Just as he’d always done when something stood in his way, he’d discarded it. This time, he’d frozen his fear into a hard, immobile chunk, and tossed it into the back of his mind.

He couldn’t let anything get in the way of his protecting Ash, helping her. He’d withstand