Demon Bound

opened his eyes, waited for it to sink in, but it didn’t sink. It shot through him. When in the holy flippin’ hell had he begun falling...

    ... ass-over-head for the Black Widow?
    The lights were gone. Feathers brushed his face as Alice staggered to the side, her psychic scent spinning. The stink hit him. The godawful rot stink. And somewhere in the distance, the screams.
    Closer, though, were the heartbeats. A dozen, maybe. And crimson eyes, flaring bright.
    Oh, shit. In Hell—surrounded by demons. He and Alice were toast.
    But being realistic never did anybody any good.
    Jake called in his swords.

CHAPTER 11
    Alice didn’t know how much time she’d lost. Seconds? A full minute?
    Long enough for Jake’s arms to be sleeved in demon blood. Long enough that he’d beheaded at least seven or eight. Long enough that he’d driven the remaining demons to the far end of the enormous room of black marble. The clash of the weapons didn’t echo.
    Two demons left—hadn’t there been three a moment ago?—and Jake had them well in hand, like a centuries-old Guardian against two newly transformed novices. Alice told herself to focus, to search for the third. Her fingers rose to her forehead, as if she could press her brains into service. This couldn’t be the effect of teleporting; the disorientation would have faded by now. Nor was it the stench.
    Yet a bloated, putrid sickness invaded her limbs, her thoughts—as if her muscles and her mind had been fouled. Had it been her Gift? As soon as they’d teleported into the dark, she’d automatically reached out, but now she couldn’t untangle whether this sickness had struck her before or after she’d pulsed it.
    She reached out again, was immediately swamped by nausea. Yes—it must have been her Gift. And she never wanted to know what her psyche had touched that could have produced this effect.
    Blast it, Alice! Where is the third demon?
    Not behind her. She was near a wall, her back protected. The light from the demon’s eyes was not so unsteady now, did not flicker so much. The strange pattern on the floor began to take shape—waist-high rectangular stone blocks, laid out in nine long rows.
    Not blocks, she realized. Sarcophagi. Symbols covered the black marble. Each stone lid was shattered.
    She forced her gaze to move on, searching the walls, looking now for the source of the light. The quality of it had changed—rather than crimson, it was a faint orange red. Originating from outside? If so, that meant a door had been opened, for when they’d jumped here the room had been completely dark. And that the demon, instead of hiding, had escaped.
    That would do just as well. They would likely be gone before he could alert anyone.
    She looked at Jake again just as he cut through the final demon’s neck. Headless corpses littered the rows of sarcophagi from the center of the room to where he stood now, almost fifty meters distant.
    He turned, began walking toward her. Not cockily, though the bodies around him would have excused it, but with wary stealth, as if he was prepared for a demon to leap from behind a sarcophagus at any moment.
    His eyes met hers for an instant. “Are you okay?”
    Under any other circumstances, when their lives might not depend upon knowing each other’s capabilities—and weaknesses—she would have lied. “I am not completely myself. You, however, did the work of five Guardians.”
    “Yeah.” He kicked a head out of his path, turning as he spoke, checking the high ceiling. “Only because they were the equivalent of civilians, I’m guessing. I bet not one of them had picked up their sword in a millennium. Didn’t stop ’em from trying to spill my hot Guardian guts, though. You have any clue what this place is?”
    “The nephilim’s prison.”
    He nodded. “Yeah. We both had the image of it in our head somewhere, didn’t we? We’ll have to thank Drifter in a second, when we teleport the hell out of here.”
    Alice’s response was choked by surprise, fear. Around them, the light whitened, brightened. Jake vanished his swords, streaking down the rows of sarcophagi toward her.
    She sprinted to meet him. The light was blinding now, painful. Too slow, she thought. Against Belial, they would be too slow. Still, the command that boomed through the prison was not enough to make her stop.
    The threat that followed it was. “I WILL KILL HIM UPON YOUR NEXT STEP!”
    Alice skidded to a halt, her ears still ringing with it. Ten