Demon Forged

mattress piled high with furs.
    When she was done, her forge looked like the home of an eccentric sculptor who lived very simply. She’d learned years ago that calling herself an artist provided unspoken answers to many questions about her lifestyle.
    She returned to the door and looked out. They were making good time. Her unease began to crawl down her spine.
    Inhospitable or not, she didn’t want these people in her home.
    Without giving herself a chance to reconsider, Irena formed her rabbit-fur mantle over her shoulders, and walked out to meet them. If she had to, she would carry them back to civilization.
    An icy crust lay over the snow. Her feet broke through with every step, sinking two or three inches to the compact snow beneath. Now and then, she sank farther—up to her knee, or thigh.
    They were doing the same, she saw. Stupid of them, and a sign of their inexperience in this terrain. If they’d walked in single file, the one in the lead could break the trail, and the others could follow in his steps. They’d be exhausted by the time they reached her. As far as they’d come, they probably already were exhausted.
    But they should have been breathing harder than they were.
    Irena watched their mouths, the frozen puffs of air. Each was as even as hers. Impossible.
    Dread dragged over her skin like icy fingernails. Her psychic probe had encountered an unshielded human mind. A demon couldn’t mask that. Which meant they had to be nephilim.
    Three nephilim.
    Terror bulged in her chest, rose thick and acrid in her throat. She swallowed it down. She strengthened her psychic shields, refusing to let her fear leak through. The nephilim hadn’t tried to reach out to her mind yet—doing so would reveal the demon inside theirs. So they were hiding. Probably waiting until she came closer.
    In their human forms, nephilim were weaker than vampires—but they could shape-shift almost instantly.
    Fifty meters separated them now.
    Her heart pounded. Irena hoped they couldn’t hear it yet. She pinned on a smile and prayed they’d be fooled by the welcome. Prayed they’d let her come closer. Prayed she’d have time to slay just one before they shifted to their demonic forms.
    According to Drifter—one of two Guardians who’d fought the nephilim—in their demonic form they were many times stronger and faster than he was, a century-old Guardian. Irena was much faster than Drifter, too. But was she fast enough to survive against three nephilim?
    Despair cried out beneath the fear. She silenced it and forced herself to think. Tried to grab onto something amidst the slippery slope of hopelessness.
    Olek.
    Olek had once slain a nephil by using explosives. Irena didn’t have any. But she had her Gift. She knew how to fight on this snow-packed plain. In her cache, she carried the vampire blood that weakened and slowed them.
    Hot determination suddenly burned away every other emotion.
    Ten meters. The male in the center had pretty blue eyes and thick brown eyelashes. His frosted breath covered his upper lip. He smiled and called out a greeting in Russian.
    They all smiled, the boar-fucking bastards.
    Irena grinned back at them. Look well, hellspawn. I might die, but these teeth will be in your throat.
    The male on the left took a step and broke through the ice-crusted snow to his hip. It was an advantage Irena hadn’t expected. She didn’t waste it.
    Irena leapt, shooting toward him with her knees close to her chest, making herself as small a target as possible. Before she’d covered half the distance, he shape-shifted. His clothes vanished. His frame lengthened, muscles bulging beneath pale skin that deepened to crimson as it stretched. The whites of his eyes hardened to obsidian stones. Huge black feathered wings whipped open, flinging snow. A sword glinted in his right hand, and he swung the blade into the path of Irena’s leap.
    She called in an iron block, let it fall heavily in front of her and followed it down. Snow crunched. She flattened herself against the side, using the block as a shield. The nephil’s sword struck a ringing blow on the opposite side.
    He hadn’t expected the block. She pictured him on the other side, his arm extended, his sword shivering from the impact.
    She shoved her Gift through the iron. She didn’t have to see the deadly blades that razored out from the block and sliced toward his neck and chest. She heard the rending of his flesh, felt the resistance of bone.
    To her right,