Demon Forged (5 page)

Irena narrowed her eyes, but a smile curved her lips as she clambered over the fence. They traversed it more quickly than humans would—but lingering would risk exposure, too, and the authorities being notified. Although Alejandro had developed connections within the Roman police force when he’d led the Guardian team that had covered up the vampire massacre, they’d be smarter to avoid police involvement from the outset.

Deacon produced a set of lock picks and made quick work of the front doors. Alejandro dipped his fingers into the stoup of holy water as he entered.

Irena’s mouth flattened when he made the sign of the cross, and she followed Deacon down the nave’s bare aisle. Carpets had been rolled up and tucked beneath benches; paint-dotted plastic draped the altar and the pews. “You will give Deacon the wrong impression of Guardians by performing such an empty ritual.”

His eyebrows drawn, Deacon glanced over his shoulder at Irena. “Don’t drag me into this.”

Ah, it hadn’t taken much time for the vampire to catch on. Alejandro allowed himself a smile. At least his Latin invocation had not invited comment. The first time Irena had heard him recite a prayer, she’d laughed tears into her eyes. Then she’d taught him the language as she’d once known it, bringing life to a tongue that had grown stale over the centuries.

Her laughter would have been a welcome interruption to many a boyhood mass.

“It has meaning to me, and therefore it is not an empty ritual,” he countered, walking beside the altar rails surrounding the sanctuary. “When you hunt, Irena, you eat a piece of the animal’s heart—
that
is meaningless. It does not sustain you. You receive no strength from it.”

“It is respect. I honor the life that was given.”

“So do I. Self-sacrifice is the one thing all Guardians can appreciate.” Every Guardian had sacrificed his life to save another, earning him the right to transformation.

Irena looked to the plastic-wrapped figure hanging behind the altar. Her brief smile kicked at his stomach. “As you like,” she said. “I’ll be grateful my sacrifice didn’t take that form—or yours—and leave it at that.”

On the left side of the sanctuary, Deacon pushed aside a heavy curtain, revealing a hallway. He turned to frown at Alejandro. “I know Irena jumped over a cliff with a nosferatu. What happened to you?”

She hadn’t just jumped over a cliff—she’d saved the tribe of slaves she’d led after escaping Rome. And he . . .

“I was named a heretic and burned at the stake.” He could not suppress the irony in his tone.

Alejandro’s mother had been a Moor and a convert. With the words whispered into the right ears, that had been enough to cast suspicion on him and his family.

Alejandro had seen the inquiry coming, though he hadn’t known the man behind the whispers was a demon. He’d secreted his family away, but remained behind, believing—arrogantly, perhaps—that he would be acquitted. Despite the torture, he hadn’t confessed, and he hadn’t revealed his family’s location. If the demon hadn’t been so greedy, had just gone after Alejandro, he’d never have become a Guardian. But he’d saved them by refusing to give them up—and upon his death, Michael had come to offer him the transformation.

But he’d burned first.

Deacon shook his head before stepping behind the curtain. “And that is why—except for when I’m hiding—I stay clear of churches.”

But he hadn’t always, Alejandro wagered. A man did not come by a name like Deacon while avoiding the church.

“It was not the religion,” Irena said, “but the politicians in Rome and in Spain.”

“There were also priests.” Alejandro followed them into the hall. “And, of course, the demon.”

Irena snorted. “In those years, there was no difference between any of them.”

Irena had once told him that she’d been in Russia while the Inquisition had spread its deadly fingers through Spain, but she hadn’t been unaware of events in the rest of the world. The Guardians had done what they could to curb demonic influence in the courts and the church—but, aside from Alejandro’s trial, the accusations had been brought by humans vying for power and position, not demons.

Guardians could do little to help humans when humans were the cause of their own misery.

Deacon led them to a small chamber. A wooden door had been set into the center of the slate floor. On the walls, signs forbidding flash photography and souvenir collection hung over velvet upholstered benches. Alejandro eyed the stick figure clutching its head beneath a warning about low ceilings, and debated the merits of shape-shifting to Irena’s petite height versus stooping his way through the corridors.

“I was transformed by a beautiful vampire on a bed of silk,” Deacon said as Irena circled the chamber, peering out the small, barred window and testing the lock on a closed door. “All things considered, it makes me glad I’m not a Guardian.”

Without a word, Irena formed her wings. White feathers arched over her head and swept down to elegant wingtips.

Seeing her wear them always stole Alejandro’s breath.

The awe faded from Deacon’s expression, and he sighed. “And now you’ve made me a liar.”

“I’m sure I am not the first to do so,” she said, kneeling on the floor and pressing her ear to the wooden door. Suede pulled tight across a bottom framed by the straps of her leather stockings and arcs of white feathers.

“We are none of us saints,” Alejandro murmured, grateful that they had long since passed the altar. His thoughts were far too impure to cross himself now.

With both relief and regret, he watched Irena stand and vanish her wings.

“I hear nothing,” she said, calling in her kukri knives from her cache. The angled blades were sharp and sturdy, but at only sixteen inches, their length forced her into closer proximity with an enemy than a sword would.

Alejandro tightened his jaw against his protest. Using the knives demanded that she was nearer to the kill—and, for that reason, it was also more satisfying to her.

He understood her; how could he not, when he took so much pleasure in his own weapons? When he anticipated the feel of their grips against his palms and treasured the memory of their creation?

Irena stilled when his swords appeared in his hands, and he immediately wanted to vanish them again.

She didn’t lift her gaze from the swords. “Did you repair the blade yourself?”

He gave a short nod. She studied the fracture, her expression impenetrable. He’d mended the break with his Gift by heating the steel and hammering it back into shape—and no one but Irena would have noticed the faint discoloration of the blade, the slightly uneven balance.

Oh, he was a fool. He wished he’d brought out any blades but these—the last of the weapons they’d made together in her forge. But he hadn’t considered it; he used no other swords.

“Why did you not come to me? We could have—” She caught herself with an indrawn breath. Her gaze hardened and snapped up to his. “You thick-brained ass. I should let you be killed when it shatters.”

“Yes,” he agreed, to punish her for saying it so casually now. When it had mattered, she had not let him die.

The punishment became his when pain slashed across her features, and she looked away. But he could not unspeak his response.

Her voice was flat. “Rid yourself of them, Olek. Then open your hands.”

As soon as he did, a pair of swords appeared in his palms. He examined the intricate hand guards, hefted the deceptive delicacy of the blades, and fought the ache building in his chest. They had perfect length and balance—had been created specifically for him.

Had she made them recently, or carried them in her cache for the past four hundred years? He didn’t know which he hoped it was.

“These are satisfactory,” he finally said.

Deacon cleared his throat, and reached back for his short swords. “So, Irena—do you have anything nosferatu-sized in there for me?”

Irena tossed him a semiautomatic pistol before swinging the door open. Deacon caught the gun and raised his brows in query.

Alejandro explained as Irena dropped into the catacombs. “The bullets have been coated with hellhound venom. A shot will slow the nosferatu down.”

“Good to hear. Thank—”

“
Barely
slows it. If the nosferatu comes close enough for you to use your swords,” Alejandro said, moving to the hole in the floor, “then you are already dead.”

Two steps beyond the narrow, spiraling stairwell that brought them to the third level beneath the church, Irena froze.

Not just one nosferatu. A
nest
of them.

Her heart pounded. She stared down the gray stone corridor, praying that she’d been mistaken. An unlit string of electric lights ran along the ceiling, but she had no difficulty seeing through the darkness. None of the pale, hairless creatures lurked in the corridor, but she detected three distinct heartbeats in a chamber ahead and to the left.

The nosferatu were lying in wait for them.

She clamped her lips, swallowing the invectives that leapt to her tongue. They had no time for that.

Turning, she signed,
Three. Is that your count?

Alejandro nodded, his gaze never leaving the corridor ahead of them. She bit back another curse when she realized how cramped he was in this space. His shoulders were hunched, his knees bent.

Nosferatu, however, usually neared seven feet tall—and they couldn’t shift their shape. She and Alejandro would have the advantage under the low ceilings.

We flank the chamber entrance and wait,
she decided. If the creatures remained inside the chamber, she and Alejandro would slay them at dawn, after the creatures fell into their daysleep—but the nosferatu were not that stupid.
They will abandon their position before sunrise. We’ll take them in the corridor as they leave.

Deacon looked around Alejandro’s shoulder. “Why did we stop?”

“It is a nest,” Irena told him.

“A nest? But I was—” Uncertainty flashed through his psychic scent. He shook his head. “I only saw one. And they are usually solitary.”

“Usually.” Irena turned away from the vampire before he saw her revulsion. Never had she seen him so disgustingly timid. Dread clutched her stomach at the thought of facing three nosferatu, but she’d never let fear prevent her from doing what needed to be done. “Yet it isn’t unheard of to find two or more together.”

Not unheard of, but incredibly rare. The only other nest Irena could recall was a group of nosferatu who’d made a bargain with Lucifer two years before.

She moved silently down the corridor, stopping a few feet from the entrance to the chamber. Had these nosferatu made a bargain with another demon? Or had they been here for years, waiting to carry out one of Lucifer’s plans? Or did they nest together for a different reason?

Alejandro took the other side of the doorway.
We will slay two,
he signed.
The last, we shall bring back to SI and question him—
His hand fisted. Irena’s lips parted. She could hear it now: another heartbeat, rapid and weak. The heartbeat of someone who’d lost too much blood.

Deacon scented the air and grimaced. “Too much rot. Is it human?”

Human, vampire—it wouldn’t matter. She and Alejandro couldn’t wait now. The nosferatu would kill whoever it was before they abandoned the chamber.

She turned to Deacon. “Stay at the door. There may be more nosferatu that haven’t yet returned. Give a shout the moment you see one.” An important task, but it wouldn’t require him to fight. A vampire couldn’t stand his ground against a nosferatu.

“Christ, Irena.” Deacon smoothly chambered a bullet. Not as nervous now, she noted. “Can two Guardians handle three nosferatu?”

What a stupid question. She’d just told him nests were rare—how would she know what chance Alejandro and she had?

But someone needed rescuing, and so she would soon find out. Her blades would taste nosferatu flesh; their blood would run.

She let her anticipation rise, washing away the fear, the dread, and turned to grin at Alejandro. He returned her gaze beneath half-lowered lids.

Ah, yes. His furious expression.

He wasn’t like her. She loved killing the nosferatu. For Alejandro, it was a duty he willingly performed—until moments such as these, when a life was at stake. When the nosferatu’s inherent evil was clear to see, and not just words.

In moments such as these, he was as impatient as she was to rend them limb by limb and burn the remains.

What did you see?
she asked. Alejandro had passed the chamber entrance in a fraction of a second—more than enough time to memorize the layout and the location of any nosferatu.

An ossuary,
he signed. At the touch of his psyche against hers, she lowered her shields, and he projected the image into her mind. Crude block columns, wide enough to conceal a nosferatu, stood at regular intervals throughout the large room. Bones were piled against the walls, skulls arranged in pyramids.
Square, twenty meters deep. The ceiling is twice the height of the corridor.