Demon Forged

where Deacon will finish the job.”
    Irena turned to Michael. “You will take us to Prague.”
    “Deacon would not be there yet, Irena,” Cordoba said. “Whether by airplane or if Rael carries him, it will be several hours.”
    “Wait,” Michael agreed. “We will see what Savitri can find.” He glanced down at Colin—who, Taylor thought, seemed perfectly content to continue sitting on the floor with Savi’s arms around him. “If Anaria took your blood, she is looking for access to Chaos. You will need to monitor the realm.”
    Colin clenched his jaw, but nodded. He stroked his hand over Savi’s arm. “Go with Taylor, sweet. I’ll watch the mirrors in the chamber upstairs.”
    “But—” Savi stopped herself. She sighed. “Okay. I’ll be up soon to help you. Take this first.”
    A glass appeared in her hand. She gave it to Colin, held her arm above the rim, and sliced her wrist open with a dagger.
    Taylor looked over at Wren, whose expressionless features still managed to convey horror and shock—and the curiosity Michael had mentioned earlier. Taylor realized that she was likely going to be the one stuck with the explanations.
    She hoped Wren was ready for them.

    Dawn had just begun to lighten the eastern sky when Olek found her standing on the building’s edge. She heard him land behind her. When he slipped his arms around her waist, she leaned back against him, grateful that he could be a quiet man, and that he could leave her to her thoughts without leaving her alone.
    Savi had been brilliant. Within an hour, the vampire had found within Deacon’s computer an e-mail about Ames-Beaumont’s oddities, and another describing the location of Irena’s forge. She’d recovered his phone records, too—including a text that had requested Irena’s info, Deacon’s terse reply, and a photograph of Eva.
    By then, discovering that Anaria had used Deacon’s keycard to enter the warehouse hadn’t mattered. She could have broken in, anyway.
    Irena hadn’t let herself think after Savi had laid out everything she’d found. The pain had been too sharp; she’d been too angry. She’d walked up to the second floor of the warehouse, and watched from a darkened observation room as Ames-Beaumont fought his terror in a chamber of mirrors.
    The images of Chaos he’d projected still festered behind her eyes. Rivers of molten rock twisted across a bleak landscape of black stone. Wyrmwolves raced in packs, tearing pieces from one another as they ran, and swarming like a plague of rats when carrion fell from above.
    Ames-Beaumont hadn’t looked up often. When he had, he’d flinched as if the enormous dragons darting through the air passed within feet of him. He’d projected iridescent scales, gaping jaws with shreds of putrid flesh caught between serrated teeth, but couldn’t project the scent that made him gag and retch. And although she couldn’t hear the screams of the damned, she saw them clearly—their bodies dangling from a frozen ceiling, as if Chaos was a cavern beneath the bowels of Hell.
    But Chaos wasn’t beneath Hell. The ceiling formed a barrier between the two realms, but not a physical one. Within Hell lay a territory of ice and silence, and frozen within the ground were the faces of the damned—demons and humans who’d failed to fulfill their bargains. After death, their faces were eternally frozen in Hell, but their bodies rotted in Chaos. And like vultures picking over a battlefield, the dragons devoured the bodies—which regenerated, eventually to be eaten again. In Hell, the tortured souls remained aware of every second of it; there was no relief for them.
    Irena didn’t know if Deacon had been forced into a bargain with the demon. Perhaps the demon hadn’t needed one—the lives of Deacon’s lovers and his community were probably worth more to him than his soul.
    But it was his life that Irena had to consider now. She and Alejandro would be heading to Prague soon.
    She smoothed her hand over his forearm, signaling that she was ready to talk—if he was. Behind her, he shifted his weight, and a light tension seeped through his body.
    “Have you decided what you will do?”
    Straight to the point, her Olek. Irena thought of Eva’s picture, her face a mask of fear. And she saw Dru’s red shoe. “I will slay him.”
    He didn’t reply, but she felt his response in the hardening of his psychic scent.
    “You don’t agree?”
    “I cannot see that any of his decisions were made