Demon Bound

chest; his slow grin pulled them tight.
    “I went too fast,” he said. “It was sloppy.”
    “Yes, well. First times usually are.” Oh, dear—how breathless that sounded. And her heartbeat had not quickened, but it was pounding unusually hard. She firmed her lips and replied, “ Decapitations usually are. With more experience, you will know to expect some messiness.”
    He turned his head to the side, his jaw clenching. Then he stood and moved away again.
    She watched him, absurdly grateful that he was no longer close. What a ninny she was. She shouldn’t let him have this effect on her. Nothing would come of it—and unreciprocated sexual attraction was a distraction she didn’t need.
    Perhaps she’d been in this room for too long. When he’d finished with this, she’d ask him to take her to Caelum. A hot bath, time to settle her nerves—then she’d be ready to return to work here.
    For now, it helped to recall how easily he’d dismissed her as a real woman. That memory did not loosen the threads in her chest, but bound them. Still, the purpose was served—her voice was neither breathless nor prudish when she asked him to continue.
    He looked at her over his shoulder, nodded. “So one night, we were assigned a simple extraction from a village, just escorting an officer out—but it all got fucked up. And next thing, we’re on our knees, and they’re deciding whether to shoot us or to use us for leverage.”
    “They must have chosen the second option.”
    “Yep. They took my communications equipment, stuck us in a cage. Bamboo, but strong. And the second night was when all the really bad shit went down.” He paused to examine an empty, horizontal niche that had been cut deep into the wall, then turned to face her. “We heard the first screams coming from the perimeter of the village. Women, men. Machine gun fire, but it never lasted long. Then there were just more screams, kids and people running everywhere. Every now and then we’d see something going past the cage—but so damn fast we didn’t know what the hell it was. Then it came right up, splintered the bars just by squeezing them.”
    Oh, dear heaven. “A nosferatu?”
    As strong as a demon, but bloodthirsty—and without the Rules to govern them. Both demons and Guardians would hunt nosferatu down, kill them on sight. Fortunately, they were easy to identify—the hairless, pale behemoths couldn’t shift their shape. The monsters usually stayed hidden away in caves, but when one did venture out, it could easily massacre hundreds of humans in a single night.
    “Got it in one,” Jake said. “Of course, we didn’t know what it was. And it came into the cage . . . just ripped our lieutenant to pieces. But it left the rest of us alive.”
    Her brow furrowed. She’d been certain he was telling her how he’d been killed: the sacrifice he’d made of his own life to save another’s—the sacrifice that allowed him to be transformed into a Guardian. They’d all done the same; it was the one act that linked them. “And you escaped the cage?”
    “Got out of there as fast as we could. It was nearing dawn by then, too, so we could see what had happened. Everyone, torn apart.” He swallowed hard, shook his head. “Everyone but the kids.”
    Alice squeezed her eyes shut, tried not to imagine. “Don’t tell me what it had done to them.”
    Jake was silent for a second; then he gave a short laugh. “No. I mean, it left them alive, too. It didn’t do anything different to them. But it also destroyed all of the communication equipment, anything I might have used to call in help. The nearest village was ten clicks south. We, uh, ended up deciding to take the kids there.”
    She studied his face, thought about what he probably wasn’t revealing. A team of soldiers could have traveled the ten kilometers in a relatively short time. But if they had—and even if they’d made contact and a helicopter had come in to retrieve them—she knew there was very little chance help would have been sent to those children. “How long did it take to decide?”
    “I prefer to think the guys who wanted to leave the kids behind just went temporarily crazy.” His smile was grim. “So it took us half the day to get that settled, to round up the kids and as much ammo and munitions as we could carry, and get out of there. And with most of the kids holding toddlers or babies . . . we didn’t get there by nightfall.”
    Alice breathed a small sound of