Demon Bound

realized I wasn’t accounting for the Earth’s curvature. So I adjusted, and they lined right up.”
    Her heart pounded. There were several points that had no temple marked. The Indonesian islands, Siberia, South America. She either hadn’t felt the disturbance, or the spell hadn’t needed to be repaired—and so she’d never found them.
    And one pinpoint lay directly over the Dardanelles.
    Over the water , she realized, and her excitement faded. They hadn’t had time to sketch or measure Khavi’s chamber, so the placement couldn’t have been exact. “This is still an estimate—the approximate location of Anaria’s temple.”
    Which they’d already had, thanks to the nephilim.
    “Ye-e-e-ah,” Jake said, and rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. “About that.”
    Alice’s blood froze. “You went to Hell without me?”
    “What, you wanted to go again?” He held his hands up when she rose to her feet in a swift movement. “Look, it was just popping in and out of the chamber. A few minutes to measure. Khavi wasn’t even there.”
    “You went alone ?” She shrieked the word.
    “No.” His brows snapped together. “Hell, no. You think I’m stupid? Maybe there’ll be times I have to go alone. But if I’ve got a choice, you bet your ass I’m bringing backup. So I took Drifter.”
    “Took—Oh.” She stared at him, her body still vibrating with anger, fear.
    He crossed his arms over his chest. A toothpick appeared in his mouth, and slowly, a smirk formed around it. “So. I guess I don’t feel like such a dick for going off on you earlier.”
    Shocked by her response, Alice averted her face, smoothed her hair. “Perhaps. But you are to blame for my screaming.”
    “It’s music to me, goddess.”
    “I don’t know why you make me want to—” She stopped, met his eyes. “That was a lovely thing to say. And I . . . Do you know, I have something for you. Two things, actually.”
    “I am trying so hard not to ruin my one-hit lovely streak by letting something out of my filter.”
    Her laugh felt full instead of thin and nervous, and when she pulled his swords from her cache, her hands did not shake. “Irena had these ready for you.”
    He made a sound of pure male pleasure when his hands closed over the grips. “Oh, damn. Feel that. A guy doesn’t even need a dick if he’s got these.” The air whistled around the blades as he gave them a spin. “Want to practice before we head to Turkey?”
    “We will soon.” She called in her gift, closed her fingers over it. “I also have this, but I must first explain it. And you must realize how very brave I was to get them for you. Irena had just frightened me a little, yet I remained, and asked her to make them.”
    His brow creased, as if he could see that she wasn’t completely joking. “What did she—?”
    “Nothing. It is nothing; I am just delaying.”
    He vanished his swords, glanced down at her closed hand. “Then go on.”
    Oh, dear. Now she was not quite steady. “I find,” she said, “that I have been very foolish. It has been some time now that I have been looking at many things upside-down. The box, for one. And when I thought of the novices who Ascended, I blamed myself for not inspiring them—for not being able to make them understand why Guardians are so very important. I have thought that perhaps they sensed my cowardice and my fear, and that with me as a model and mentor, they could find nothing honorable in being a Guardian.”
    Jake touched her cheek. “Alice. That is such bullshit.”
    “Yes.” She smiled weakly. “But you have done the same. You wonder if we are nothing but pawns, unimportant and replaceable, manipulated by the demons, the grigori—perhaps even the angels. You wonder if their only purpose is to grab power or to rule, that we have been lied to about our reasons for fighting, that it taints our purpose. And you feel it here.” She rested the back of her hand against his stomach. “I know you do.”
    “Yes,” he said softly.
    “But we don’t fight for them . We fight for your daughter, and her family. We fight for young wives tormented by demons and young men hunted by nosferatu. That is what I told my novices, and if they could not grasp the importance of that, it is not my failing.”
    “Damn right it’s not.”
    “But you do know what is important, and you still doubt. Yet no matter what the purpose of those stronger than us is, so long as your reasons for fighting and your