Demon Bound

at Jake, who’d tilted his head back to frown at the domed ceiling. “How did you find it? Why were we idiots?”
    “Because I was thinking like me instead of like Zakril. He could teleport, and his Gift was working with stone. And he didn’t want Anaria to escape once he’d let her out of the sarcophagus. She’d Fallen, so she didn’t have an ability to teleport . . . so, I realized, why wouldn’t he just make a hole beneath the seafloor? And I can’t jump into anything solid; if I try, I just don’t go. So I kept trying until I hit the pocket of air.”
    Incredible. He was simply incredible. “How deep was it?”
    “Not deep enough. Look.” He pointed up, and Alice saw the water seeping through tiny cracks in the dome. “Maybe two thousand years ago it was, but the current has worn the seafloor above it down to about six feet of basalt. I’m guessing the dome butts right up against the bedrock, and that’s not going to be enough to support the water above it. Not for much longer. One little earthquake, and it’s probably coming down—if this chamber doesn’t fill up with seepage first.”
    Yes. She could hear it now, when she listened closely. A drip here and there. Could see it in the faint paths trickling down the walls.
    She looked toward the dais. “Will you think me heartless if we do not immediately return to tell Michael we have found his sister, and—”
    “Record the site first?” Jake grinned, and his camera appeared in his hand. “Honestly, goddess—I’d call you heartless if we didn’t.”

    Once she’d taken a closer look at the friezes, Alice wished she’d been heartless. She held her sketchbook, but couldn’t bring herself to draw them.
    These were not scenes of Guardian history, but Anaria’s and Zakril’s history. As children, happily laughing as they shared a bowl of dates. Two young lovers in a field of exquisitely carved wildflowers. A wedding, and a bed. Zakril, holding Anaria as she wept over Michael’s broken body, the dragon limp behind them. Anaria, smiling up at Zakril in front of Michael’s temple in Caelum. And there were more—dozens more, of them fighting side-by-side, making love, or simply looking at each other, sharing a private joke, a moment of pain, a moment of comfort.
    Jake came up beside her. No longer with his camera, she saw.
    Her throat felt raw when she said, “He must have loved her very much. And how very hard he must have prayed that being here would remind her of what they had.”
    “Yes. What now, goddess?”
    She closed her eyes, saw Zakril’s skeleton pinned behind her lids. “I want to leave her here to let this place fall down on top of her. But that cannot be my decision to make.”
    “Yeah, it can. No one knows we’re here.”
    She smiled faintly, shook her head. “No.”
    “All right, then. How about this—we leave it for now, and while we’re still both pumped full of this righteous anger on Zakril’s behalf, go and beat the shit out of Teqon.”
    “Yes,” Alice murmured. “Why not?”

    Alice had always loved predawn in the Egyptian desert. The cool air, the quiet.
    With her Guardian hearing, it was not as silent as it had once been—but the sight of the full moon setting behind the pyramids affected her exactly as it had more than a century ago, and her heart still skipped into her throat as the moon seemed to slide down Khafre’s steep side before falling into bed at Khufu’s base.
    She sighed with pleasure and turned to Jake.
    “This expression you’re seeing on my face,” he said without looking at her, “is called ‘Whoa, damn.’ ”
    “Yes.” She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. “We should have chosen another location to prepare for our attack on Teqon. It is difficult to maintain righteous anger here.”
    “Yeah. I suppose it is a good place to soften me up, though. Where you might say something like, ‘Just in case Khavi was right, and your heart is going to be chopped in two, why don’t you let me face Teqon alone?’ ”
    Alice flattened her lips, tugged her hand back. “Blast you.”
    “Oh, come on. You don’t even sound angry.”
    No, she could not be. But she could be irritated that it was so. “What a stubborn donkey you are.”
    “Because I won’t let you do what you think is best for me?”
    “It is best for me that you live.” She crossed her arms, frowning at the pyramids across the stretch of desert. “With Lucy and all of her children in his home, I will