Demon Bound

her before he looked out at the nephilim again.
    “This is the most boring orgy ever,” he announced.
    And yet she was more aroused than she’d ever been upon witnessing one. “I will defer to your judgment, novice. You are likely more familiar with boring orgies than I am.”
    For a few seconds, she held out hope that her response had silenced him. Then he said, “And if I hadn’t already known nephilim were evil, I would now.”
    She bit, despite herself. “Why is that?”
    “Because they arrange themselves so all we get is an ass shot of that male. Then, between their angle and their wings, they cover up the chicks.”
    And that was the shape of things, she thought wryly. She was all but sprawled atop him, inflamed . . . and he was hoping for a glimpse of nephilim breasts. “Perhaps they aren’t so evil, novice. I have been enjoying the view.”
    He was quiet again. She heard the distinctive crinkle of paper money, then he turned his head toward her and said, “What really needs to happen is that one bends the other one over, and gives it to her so hard that the only thing coming out of her mouth is—”
    Her gasp cut him off as the nephil suddenly lifted his stained sword and buried it in the stomach of the male to his left.
    “Oh, dear God!” Alice dove across Jake’s chest.
    His hands clamped around her waist before she breached the shielding spell. “Hold on, goddess.”
    Her fingers clenched on his shoulders, and she suppressed her automatic response to defend the weaponless male. Given the opportunity, she’d have stabbed the nephil, too. “What are they doing?”
    The injured male wasn’t fighting, but kneeling on the dais. Still chanting, the nephilim moved in measured steps around him, their swords flashing. Between wings and arms, she saw the symbols they were carving on his crimson skin, the blood dripping to the floor.
    “A ritual?” she wondered aloud.
    “That, or a sacrifice.” His face hardened as he took in the macabre dance. “Sick.”
    “Yes.” And looking made her feel a part of it, unclean, but she forced herself to watch. “He’s not healing.”
    “Because of the symbols?”
    “I don’t know. Could vampire blood be on the swords?”
    Jake shook his head. “They get vamp blood in them, and they can’t stay that size. They start to shape-shift back to the form of their host. Their red skin looks human again for a second or two. But they still heal fast.”
    More symbols, more blood. Alice scooted down Jake’s legs, raised her body as high as she could, and called in her sketchbook. The only place to put it was on his chest.
    She had to twist her arm awkwardly between them. Her elbow dug into his stomach, and the already taut muscles hardened to steel. “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be,” he said, and then the scratching of her pencil filled the niche. Within seconds, she had the outlines of the nephil’s front and back, and the position of the symbols visible to her. “I’ve got a creepy feeling about this, Alice. Bad creepy, not good creepy.”
    So did she. “I can’t see all of the symbols,” she said in quiet frustration.
    “Maybe they’ll leave the body when they’re done with it. Or maybe we should start shooting them now.”
    Though nothing could penetrate the shield from outside, anything could exit it. Yet bullets and crossbow bolts would barely affect the nephilim.
    But, she realized, Jake wasn’t proposing that they try to stop them from killing the nephil. He wanted to interrupt the ritual.
    “Yes.” She nodded, and vanished her sketch pad. He’d already called in a semiautomatic pistol. No silencer, she saw, and prepared for the pain in her ears, but he thrust the tip of the barrel through the shield. She heard the click of the firing mechanism, but the explosion was on the opposite side of the shielding spell.
    Jake hit the first female in the side. Not more than a flesh wound, and not so much as a flinch from the nephil. She healed almost instantly.
    “Perhaps it would—”
    “I’m going for blood splatter,” he said.
    How . . . brilliant, in truth. Blood was the key to rituals, to activating spells. Mixing it could potentially do more damage to the nephilim’s ritual than their weapons would.
    Alice smiled and called in her own gun. It was, she noted with satisfaction, larger than his. “You are quite adept at locating unusual holes.”
    A chink in armor, a weak spot in a plan, a course of action—obvious or unexpected, she had a