Meljean Brook: Demon Marked

Did it even matter? Lucifer feared it. That was good enough for Ash.

“It will free everyone in the frozen field?” she asked. “Everyone? Even someone sacrificed at the same time the spell is cast?”

“Yes,” Khavi said.

Hugh spoke. “Truth.”

Ash looked at Nicholas, who was shaking his head.

“No, Ash. We can’t risk—”

“You saw them,” she said. “You saw all of them. Tell me again that I shouldn’t risk this.”

He couldn’t. So he tried something else. “It would free a lot of demons, too.”

“Who are trapped behind a Gate.” Ash’s gaze searched his, saw the denial there. “In five hundred years, you can kill Madelyn again.”

He didn’t even smile. “That’s not—”

“I know.” She caught his face between her hands. “I know that doesn’t matter. But the others trapped there do matter—those who are like Rachel. And it will hurt Lucifer. There is such high return on this risk . . . and we know Khavi speaks the truth. I’ll be freed again, too.”

“But you’ll return to the field first. Only for a moment, perhaps—but that is an eternity too long. You tell me that it is worth the risk. You wouldn’t do it before.”

“Maybe,” she said, and ran her fingers over his newly healed skin. “But I have another reason now. Revenge. You got Madelyn. Let me have Lucifer. It won’t kill him, but if it hurts him, I need to do it.”

“I can’t watch you die,” he said hoarsely.

Of course he couldn’t. Even though he was a Guardian, even though it would free so many, her life was still his limit.

“I’ll come back. Believe me, Nicholas. I’ve been creating too many naked plots involving you to even think about dying now. But if you hold on to me through it, I’ll have reason to come back even faster.”

“God.” He buried his face in her hair. Breathed deep, as if drawing her in. “You need me. I’ll be damned if I ever let you go. Believe that, Ash.”

She did. If there were only two things that would never change, would never crumble or fade, she knew what they were.

“I love you.” She kissed him. “And I do believe.”

Taylor’s voice came from beside her, full of disbelief and something else. Hope? “So you’re actually doing this?”

“Yes,” Ash said. “As soon as possible, before I feel differently.”

“We’ll have to prepare,” Khavi said. “I’ll need to cut the proper symbols into your skin to cast the spell—and to draw you back to your body when it is done. And you’ll need to break a bargain first.”

Simple enough. “Nicholas,” she said, and when he looked at her his eyes glowed so fiercely, Ash’s own eyes burned. “I need to make a new bargain with you.”

“How can I?” he said hoarsely.

“Because you love me. Because you’re strong. Because you’re a Guardian now. And because of all that, I’m not afraid to do this.”

“You will rip my heart out.” He closed his eyes. “And I would tear it out myself for you. What will the bargain be?”

Not his death sentence, as his tone suggested. Ash smiled up at him. “You will tell me that you love me, and I will not kiss you. Agreed?”

“If it were true, I’d never say that I loved you again.”

“I know. And since I need to hear it and to kiss you, I will gladly break this one. Are we agreed?”

His lips parted. His throat worked. It was still another moment before he said, “We are agreed.”

Bound in another bargain. She stared up at him, waiting for the fear, the delayed terror, the regret. She could change her mind, and he would instantly release her. He probably hoped she would now.

But she couldn’t. “Nicholas?”

His eyes blazed. He caught her face, stared into her eyes—and though he hadn’t said it yet, she felt the love blasting through his shields, filling her mind, wrapping around her as if to hold and protect.

“I love you,” he said. “I will always love you.”

Little wonder there was no fear in her. There couldn’t be, not in the face of this. Smiling, she pulled him down to her lips.

And gladly damned herself with a familiar, perfect kiss.

When she’d been a girl, Taylor had believed that, one day, someone would hold her like Nicholas St. Croix held his halfling demon at the edge of the frozen field. Someone would look at her with the same fierce love, that he would hold her through anything, even if it killed him. She’d wanted that for herself.

She didn’t want that now. She just wanted to be free of Michael. Wanted to be free of the man who would prevent her from helping two people desperately in need. Wanted to be free of the screaming, the shattering, the darkness that never left.

She wanted it more than anything. He’d pushed her past her limits.

It was the only explanation she had, for how she ever lifted a knife, and plunged it through the symbols marking a good woman’s back.

The woman and her man cried out together, and his tears ran as hot as her blood. Taylor staggered away from them, sank to her knees in red sand. They’d trusted her to do it. They’d asked her to be the one. Killing a demon—even a good one—wouldn’t break the Rules.

But until now, Taylor would have said that it broke her rules.

She’d had a choice. She could have said no. But she wanted freedom too much.

The first crack appeared when the first drop of blood hit the sand. Taylor heard the drop, she heard the crack—though she’d never heard any sound from that frozen field. Louder than the rain of blood falling, louder than Nicholas chanting Ash’s name, begging her to come back now.

Another crack, then more, thin lines spidering between the faces. Frozen lashes blinked. Screams began, loud now, from thawing throats.

Far away, a large crowd of demons were scattering across the ice. She thought that if Nicholas had looked with his Gift, those demons would be trailing black ribbons of fear.

But he wasn’t looking. He was staring into Ash’s eyes, searching desperately for new signs of life in a body that Taylor had killed.

A fist punched through the ice from below, a fist that had never been frozen, only devoured again and again. And suddenly, that was the only sound—of the damned, breaking through, climbing out of their eternity of torture. Some wandered, dazed. Some grabbed the hands of others, helped lift them out. Others screamed and screamed, as if it were too late to feel anything different.

Taylor wondered if she should tell them now that they weren’t free, not truly. Unless they went to the Pit, they were never leaving Hell. Unlike Ash, they didn’t have a body with symbols inscribed on it to bring her spirit back to the right place—they only possessed their spirit, and that could only take physical form in Hell. Unlike Michael, they didn’t have someone waiting at the edge of the frozen field, waiting to take his body out of her cache.

So that she’d be free.

Why weren’t any demons coming out of the field yet? Where were their faces ? Despite the thousands, hundreds of thousands in the field, the only demons were those who’d been torturing Michael.

All the demons gone. What would that mean for a demon halfling?

Oh, God. Had Khavi lied? Had Ash agreed, not knowing that Khavi meant a twisted version of ‘free’?

“Ash? Oh, God, you’re amazing. I love you.” Joy filled Nicholas’s voice, and quelled Taylor’s sudden panic. “Jake, get her to a healer, now!”

Then the sound of his hard kiss against soft lips before they disappeared.

Michael had kissed Taylor, too. That was how all of this had started. The strange insanity of it.