Jacob (14 page)

“It is not far. Let me know if you become too cold.”

Cold? She was trying to find the courage to unbury her face from the concealing column of his neck; she did not have the presence of mind it would take to feel cold. She was also clutching him so tightly that she was sure she was tearing the expensive silk of his shirt. After a while, though, the steady feel of his firm shoulders beneath her fingertips allowed for her heartbeat to slow enough to stop choking her, and the indomitable strength of his arms holding her began to make her understand that she was safe with him.

This did not give her the courage to look around herself, but she did lift her head and focus with all of her concentration on his face. His dark brown and black eyes shifted to hers when he felt her looking at him.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him shakily.
Right up until I hit the ground.

Jacob pulled her head back down to the security of his shoulder, burying his grin in her thick hair when her humorous sarcasm flitted through his mind. She tended to forget that he could read her mind, just as she forgot she could just as easily read his if she tried more often. But she had that quirky human penchant called privacy, a custom that was not all that prevalent in the Demon culture.

“Tell me where we’re going,” she murmured next to his ear.

Her soft lips moved against his neck with her speech, her breath hot against his skin, bathing him in sensitivity. Awareness instantly shuddered through him, his body clenching with instant need. He had already realized that his good intentions wouldn’t matter before long. If he stayed near her, he would tear her apart with his harsh desire for her. It was this knowledge that had forced him to pace before Noah endlessly until the Council interrupted his self-obsessions.

The Enforcer knew, though, that he could not maintain his close connection to Noah’s home so long as Isabella was residing there. She tempted him far too deeply. So, he had paced before Noah’s desk, trying to find a way to tell the Demon King that he had to drag himself as far away from the center of Demon culture as he could. He also needed to do this without blaming it on this innocent woman. The problem was not hers. He was the one lacking in control. It had brought him very low, doing the very thing he had lectured Kane on. It had brought Jacob to the other side of the sidewalk. He now knew what it felt like to be driven to those depths of immoral action even though principles cried out to do the right thing.

“Jacob?”

His name on her lips made him realize he had not answered her question.

“To my home,” he told her, using the response as a reason to lean his face closer to her, to bury himself in her hair. She was, he realized, taking on more of his scent every day. Though she had showered and gotten herself dusty all over again since their last clash of passion, she still oozed his essence from her skin and hair. He had known she was a mimic when it came to scents, but he had never encountered a chameleon that could keep a scent that had already been washed away. It filled him with a rush of possessive joy. It reminded him that, right beneath his chin, under the soft fabric of her shirt, lay the mark he had left upon her shoulder.

They came to rest on a wide cliff, and when Isabella lifted her head at Jacob’s encouragement, the vista took her breath away. They were on the very rim of what looked to be the English coastline. The house he had taken her to originally was settled behind them grandly, with the exception of the boarded-up wall that was in need of repair. As Noah coalesced into his usual form beside them, they walked toward the house. They entered through a conventional door.

“One would think that with all you can do, you could snap your fingers and fix that wall,” she said breathlessly.

“If it were that easy to do everything, we would be able to protect ourselves from those who insist on dabbling in dark arts,” Jacob pointed out gently.

“Well, not that it is any excuse, but humans don’t realize that your kind are an actual race of people with intelligence, families, customs, and culture.” She frowned and sighed, realizing exactly how poor an excuse that was. “But that’s been our excuse over history far too many times. I’m sorry.”

Jacob reached to rest her chin on the tip of his fingers, her sweet compassion for his people, especially after the way the so-called best of them had just treated her, touching him deeply. Noah’s presence in the room completely faded from his awareness and he reached to kiss her supple lips with aching tenderness, ignoring any pain it caused him to do so.

“I am sorry, little flower. The Elders should never have treated you so poorly when you have been laboring so hard to help us.”

“They didn’t know,” she whispered forgivingly, causing his heart to tighten at her benevolence. “They are afraid, and rightly so.” She reached up and slid a strand of his hair between two of her fingers, caringly tucking it behind his ear in a slow, silky movement. “Fear makes the best of us behave terribly.”

Noah cleared his throat, an effort to remind the couple that he was in the room. They jumped apart, and he watched in amazement as the electricity only he could see sparking between them crackled in petulant blue arcs before thinning out and breaking the connection. Noah had never seen such a thing between a Demon and a human before, and rarely between Demons. It fascinated while it disturbed him. The lightning was the fire of complementary souls joining. A female Fire Demon like his sister Hannah would know more about this aspect of such elemental connection, for she understood the fire between two beings and saw it far more clearly than he could. But he knew enough to know it was significant, and exceedingly unusual.

“Isabella, you have something to tell us?” he reminded everyone.

“Yes.”

Noah once again took note of her hesitation, her struggle so very clear in her tattletale face. It was refreshing to the King to see that such guilelessness could still exist in the world.

She grabbed Jacob’s hand and hustled him over to the nearest table, dropping her bagful of scrolls onto it. Noah followed, watching closely as she slid the first out of its protective container and unwound it, using objects from the table to hold it open. She treated the scroll gingerly, with great care and respect, and Noah was once more impressed. This woman was a true scholar, perhaps more so than he would ever be.

Both men realized after a moment that the text she was displaying was in
their
ancient language. They exchanged perplexed looks over her dark head as she bent to her task of situating the scroll. This was the very type of writing Noah had been having difficulty translating on the night Jacob had first encountered Isabella.

“Okay, look here,” she said, warming to her impending lecture as she indicated the middle body of writing. “This is the original
Scroll of Destruction
. Great name, by the way. Anyway, it was written centuries before the book I found with the same name. That book was a translation of this scroll. Look, see, ‘Whosoever wishes to know the fate of Demonkind must consult these prophecies... ’ Yadda, yadda, yadda, right? It’s kind of like your version of Revelation. Correct?”

Noah nodded slowly. It was one of their most sacred documents. It was the list of Special Destinies and the Original Laws. He watched as she gently peeled back the first pages of the scroll.

“You are familiar with these passages, no doubt. The ones that refer to the way the birth of Christianity among humans would affect the destiny of Demons for all time. See? This tells how Christianity will become a majority religion amongst humans, how magic will be shunned as a result, lessening the threat of the ‘evil intenders,’ which I assume means necromancers. It isn’t all that specific, so I took an educated guess.”

“Good guess, little flower,” Jacob praised. “You are exactly right.”

She seemed to accept this with a nod as she reached to peel back more pages. “Well, then follows pages of various prophecies. Now, in the modern book version of this scroll, the translation is only slightly flawed up to this point. But then you come to here... ” She indicated a passage far into the scroll. “Here is where it goes completely haywire. Now, at first I couldn’t understand why the translation would be so in error. I thought perhaps a change in translators. But then I remembered that with many great religious doctrines, the influences of those who ordered translations often dictated what was considered acceptable and uniform to general belief. Significant works, to this day, are not accepted in their true translated states because it would make too many waves in the foundations of those belief systems. When this is translated properly, I can see why they were reluctant to remain true to the form of the scroll. Here, I will read the passage:

“Wait, I am getting to that.” She turned the page. “Listen:

“All of them?” Noah spoke up suddenly, his astonishment ringing clear. “You were only down there a few days.”

“I read fast,” she shrugged.

Noah gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles turned white, seeking solace in the Enforcer’s dark eyes, only to find them equally troubled. He had no choice but to watch as the little woman plowed through her information like a freight train.

“Anyway,” she continued, “this is where your laws of crossbreeding come into play. Now, all along I thought maybe it was chemical incompatibility or because of your more animalistic natures that you would cause harm to a partner not of your race. You even have books supporting those theories.
Purity
. That word is key. It’s used very often in this scroll and I can’t tell you how many laws. Okay, listen, further in the
Scroll of Destruction
. It says right here:

“Then our race is doomed,” Noah said softly.

Isabella raised startled eyes to the King. Her heart jumped when she saw his drawn, whitened features and his eerie stillness.

“Why do you say that?” she protested. “I mean, you just have to find... but you said there were other Nightwalker species in the world. I have read about so many of them in your archives. I admit I only started to find out about Druids when I went into the east vault... ”

“Because the east vault is the Druid archive, Bella,” Jacob said roughly.

Isabella blinked in confusion, turning to look over her shoulder at Jacob.

“I don’t understand.”

“Isabella, almost a millennium ago, the ruler of the Druid race went mad and murdered the ruler of the Demon race,” Noah explained grimly. “We went to war. There aren’t any more Druids, Bella. The Demons destroyed them all. All that is left of them is in that vault. We destroyed an entire culture, murdered every last breath that could ever speak on Druidic behalf, save those ancient recorded scraps.”

“If what you say is true, then we destroyed ourselves in the process.” Jacob ran a weary hand over his face and through his hair, meeting Noah’s eyes. “All these centuries, we have been told only that the Druids were our enemies once upon a time because of the deed of their King. We were never told that we once walked together, lived together... made a common history together.”

“Revisionist history,” Noah interjected. “A history that the leaders of the time obviously rewrote for their own ends during and after the war. How arrogant I was to think our dedicated historians were above such things.”

“No... no, I think you’re wrong,” Bella burst out, fear filling her voice as she struggled with the implications her innocent findings could mean for their kind. “What about the prophecy? How can a doomed race suddenly give birth to new elements? Children with power over Space and Time will change the world forever! Surely when you see this happening right under your nose you won’t be able to deny that!”

“You assume that the time prophesied is now,” Noah remarked.

“Well, of course it is. I mean, look at what is happening all around you! ‘
The age of the rebellion of the Earth and Sky, when Fire and Water break like havoc upon all the lands.’
Your people are the elements, you said so yourself. Fire, Earth and the rest. ‘
Rebellion... breaking like havoc on all the lands
.’ You see, in many historical texts, ‘lands’ does not mean ‘land’ as continents. It means
cultures.
This is saying that Demons will cause havoc in other cultures. The Enforcer mentioned above is to exist as ‘
peace yaws toward insanity
.’ It’s a marker linking the two prophesies to the same time. You told me yourselves that every year the madness becomes worse for your people. And with the necromancer’s sudden appearance, wouldn’t you say magic has returned?

“That’s it!” she exclaimed suddenly. “You didn’t kill all the Druids! Just, maybe, forced them into dormancy. Maybe some escaped. Maybe, over time, under the sweep of science and civilization, their heritage and knowledge was lost to their descendents just as some of yours was lost to you. And maybe, sometime in the future, when you start to accept other races into the circle of your culture, it will allow for the arrival of a Druid that, in the near future... when Jacob is succeeded... ” She paused, thinking as quickly as she could while twisting her hands together in her abrupt despair.

Noah understood. If she was right, and the time prophesied was near, it would mean Jacob’s death and replacement was an imminent event. She had to explain away her own logic now in order to prevent that inevitability from happening too soon for her to bear. “Those are very extreme maybes,” Noah consoled.

“Sweet, merciful Destiny.”

Isabella and Noah both snapped their attention to Jacob, who wore an expression of total shock.

“What? What is it?” Noah asked.

“She said it, and I almost missed it. Noah, in the prophecy, just after the lead-in, she said: ‘
... the first child of the element of Space will be born, playmate to the first child of Time, born to the Enforcers
.’”

“So?” Bella asked.

“Are you sure it said Enforcers? Are you certain it is plural?” he demanded.

“Of course I am sure. See, right there.” She pointed to the passage.

“Bella, there has never been two Enforcers at once. There has only been one. Never two. It is not me this is talking about, nor some unknown Druid of the distant future, it is... ” He blinked, shock washing over him. “It is
you
. Noah, it is her!”

“Can it be?” Noah whispered, looking over the tiny human woman with awe, following Jacob’s thinking rapidly. “A human Enforcer?”

“Whoa! Hang on there, guys. Let’s not go off the deep end,” Isabella cried hastily, raising her hands defensively and backing up several steps out of their reach as if they were trying to attack her. Not that she would ever beat them in a foot race, but it gave her a minor comfort just the same. “I am not an Enforcer. I’m too tiny, too... I’m a bookworm! I’m weak! I’m
human
. Stop looking at me like that! You’re out of your freaking skulls!”

“‘
The Enforcer will be born to hunt the Transformed, will have the power to destroy.’
Saul, little flower. Remember? ‘
... to track, to see the unseen, to fight with courage and instinct the most powerful and most corrupted
.’ You killed him.”

“That was an accident!”

“‘
... to walk unscented...
’ The Elders did not even know she was in my home,” Noah added, clearly astonished. “They could not smell her, could not sense her. ‘
This Enforcer’s thoughts will be sealed except to Kin...
’”

“That’s ridiculous! Jacob is constantly nosing around inside my head, and I assure you I am in no way related to him!”

“‘
... and Mate...
’”

Isabella heard the fateful words fall from Jacob’s lips as if they echoed.

She had known, on some level, that this connection to Jacob was beyond something so simple as a passing crush. Jacob had known it. He had taken her into his arms in spite of everything he stood for, because on some level he had known this was no mere Hallowed madness.

Only a few days ago she would never have been capable of imagining any of this, no matter how creative she might have tried to be. Facts and fantasies blurred in her mind, hazing her vision over like a suffocating fog. All the blood rushed away from the top of her body, racing to fulfill the sudden demands of her organs as she ran both hot and cold with chills, dread, and, most of all, excitement at all of the dangerous possibilities.

She dropped to the floor like a stone.