Demon Forged

You and your children would prevent all sin by crushing human free will.”
    Anaria turned to look at her, a sad smile curving her lips. Ames-Beaumont’s hands wrapped around the handle of the sword through his chest. She stopped him from pulling it out with a single finger against the pommel.
    “You sound like my brother,” Anaria said, her gaze following Irena. “The angels exercised free will, rebelled, and became demons. Humans make demons of themselves, and they, too, suffer Hell. But we will show them the way. They will have free will, and they will be free to choose only kindness. Only love.”
    Was she insane? “As if humans are children.”
    Anaria nodded. “And I will be the mother who guides them.”
    Cold horror crawled up the back of Irena’s neck. Anaria wasn’t insane, she realized. Just utterly certain that she was right.
    That was far more frightening. Irena reached Olek’s side. She touched his hand. His fingers squeezed hers before letting go. Irena called in her knife again. Alejandro held a sword in his right hand—and what she thought was a detonator appeared in his left.
    “So will you join us?” Anaria’s question included them both.
    Irena shook her head. “No.”
    The grigori sighed and turned back to Ames-Beaumont. “If you have any regrets, vampire, perhaps you will think on them now.”
    A terrible keening filled the room. Savi struggled beneath the hellhound, scratching wildly at the floor. No, that young vampire would not stop fighting.
    Neither would Irena. She adjusted her grip on her knives.
    “I have no regrets,” Ames-Beaumont said hoarsely, his gaze on Savi. “I loved you well, my sweet Savitri. Even in death, I will love you.”
    The warmth projecting from his psychic scent echoed his words. Irena’s heart constricted into a tight knot.
    Anaria hesitated. She stared up at the vampire’s painfully beautiful face, then looked over at Savi. “Perhaps we will not be too hasty,” she said softly. “I may have need of your blood again.”
    She yanked her sword from his chest, and he crumpled to the floor. Without another glance at any of them, Anaria strode to the corridor leading to the warehouse entrance.
    The nephilim filed after her like ducklings.
    Sir Pup let Savi go. She scrambled forward, gathering Ames-Beaumont into her arms. The hellhound turned toward Lilith.
    Irena entered the corridor after the nephilim, Olek at her side. The last nephil did not even turn to watch his back.
    The sliding door at the security station had been ripped away. Inside the station, a novice lay bleeding and unconscious, but still alive. Irena didn’t stop.
    The four-inch thick steel door leading outside hadn’t been smashed in, as Irena had expected. Anaria had a keycard. She slid it through the lock and stepped outside. The nephilim followed her, one by one.
    Beside the door, Alejandro wiped away the blood from the carved symbols that had created the shielding spell around the warehouse. Noise from outside the building rushed in.
    Irena stood in the entrance, her palm flat against the steel door, watching the nephilim disappear into the night sky.
    “Do we go after them?” Alejandro asked quietly.
    And be killed? She shook her head. “We can’t.”
    She walked back into the warehouse, but had to stop a few feet inside. She couldn’t breathe. The corridor shrank around her.
    Alejandro touched her back. There. Always there.
    And, by the gods, she was a Guardian. She didn’t need to breathe. She whipped around, punched her fist through the wall.
    Again, and again—until the walls stopped closing in on her.

    Taylor worked to clear everything off her desk that might give Jorgenson a reason to chew her ass out once she got back to regular duty. Almost an hour after she was ready to go home, and forty-five minutes after Joe took off and she had nothing but his empty chair to look at, Michael—in his SI agent form—appeared beside her. Or maybe he hadn’t just appeared. Maybe he’d walked into the bullpen and she hadn’t noticed. God knew, he’d sneaked up on her before.
    “About time.” She grabbed her jacket, knowing she sounded irritated and ungrateful—but, goddammit, she was irritated, and not feeling so grateful. She’d been on edge since sunset. She’d thought Khavi’s prediction would feel less real as time passed; instead, it weighed a little heavier with each tick of the clock. “This isn’t going to work if I’m stuck waiting for you to show up