Demon Bound

constellation. The hound would destroy the universe if he broke his bonds.
    Alice considered that as Irena rolled the deer’s body onto its back. The heat of its blood and innards had melted the snow to pink slush.
    Irena might have been the morning Zorya, Alice decided. The fierce young warrior. Neither of them would be the mother.
    And Alice would rather the world not rely on her as their defense against annihilation by a godhound. Demons were quite enough. “If I must be a crone,” she said, “I would prefer to be Baba Yaga.”
    “Would you aid the lost, or abduct children and eat them?”
    “Both. It would lend more variety to my day. I should also like to have invisible servants.”
    Irena snorted. “And a home built on dancing chicken legs? With no windows, no doors—”
    “And you will not build a chimney through which I could leave.”
    The angled knife in Irena’s hand hesitated. Then she finished the cut, jaggedly slicing through the breastbone.
    Alice’s voice did not tremble. She could take pride in that, she supposed. At this point, it was the small things that counted. “A room of metal I cannot escape. Twenty years ago, Irena, you promised me this. If you hadn’t, I never would have returned to Earth after I completed my training.”
    “We also promised never to speak of it again until necessary. Is it?”
    “Teqon contacted me. I’m to fulfill my bargain, or be killed.”
    Irena’s knife regained its former precision. “You are still trying to find an alternative?”
    Trying, but not succeeding very well. “Yes. There must be something he wants more than Michael’s heart. Something that would release me.”
    “Something tied to this prophecy Drifter told us about?”
    Alice laced her fingers together, as if protecting the spark of hope that had burned in the months since she’d heard of the prophecy. “Perhaps.”
    Irena sat back on her heels, brushed her hair from her forehead with a bloody hand. “Teqon follows Belial in his war against Lucifer.”
    “Yes.” Belial claimed that he fought for redemption, to return to the glory of Heaven. Alice didn’t believe him—didn’t think any Guardian believed him.
    “And according to the prophecy, Belial will be victorious.”
    “Perhaps,” Alice said again. What Ethan had told them was vague, at best. Belial’s demons would defeat Lucifer, but first they had to win other battles.
    What those battles were and how they would be won was still unknown, to Guardians and demons both.
    Irena reached into the chest cavity, tore out the heart. Alice waited quietly as the other woman said a few reverent words over it. When Irena tore off a chunk with her teeth, Alice said, “It is Michael’s opinion that the prophecy has no validity—that nothing can be foretold. He dismisses it entirely.”
    Irena swallowed, then vanished the remaining heart and the body of the deer into her cache. “I am of the same mind as the Doyen. And Michael is rarely incorrect about such things.” She cocked a brow and stood. “But it does not matter as long as Teqon believes it, yes?”
    “That is what I hope.”
    “Have you found evidence of the prophecy? Any mention that did not originate from a demon?”
    “Not yet.” Nothing in the temples, nothing in the Scrolls.
    “Keep trying,” Irena said, as if Alice might have considered anything else. “The options you’ve chosen—there is no victory, Alice. Eternal torment or eternal prison. If you become mad enough, they will be the same.”
    Yet it would be fitting. She’d been thought insane when she’d made the bargain. How elegant that she would be reduced to insanity by it. “I shall spend eternity creeping around the room.”
    Smiling, Irena knelt and began washing the blood from her arms with the snow. “You are an odd woman, Alice.”
    “Given enough time, I will be odder still. But even if my mind is gone, my soul would be safe.”
    Irena’s mouth reshaped into a hard line. “Our souls are never safe. Not so long as there are demons who know the prices for which we will sell them.” She scooped up more snow, roughly scrubbed her face and hair. Her ivory skin glowed when she finished. “I will help you as much as I can, Alice. But if you cannot face imprisonment, and choose to fulfill your bargain, I will kill you myself.”
    Irena had said the same twenty years ago, and so Alice was prepared for the sadness and dread the words stirred inside her.
    She concealed it remarkably well,