Demon Forged

response was to open her mouth for his kiss.

    Three hours later and four thousand miles south, Irena sat beside Alejandro at another table, trying to remember that strangling a man was not the rational way to win an argument. Sensible, perhaps, but she didn’t think she could declare a real victory.
    She’d accompanied him on his assignment to determine whether a drug lord who had rapidly been gaining power in Colombia was a demon—and if so, to slay him. On the flight from a Gate outside Caracas, she’d told Alejandro about her conversation with Michael, and Khavi’s predication that a dragon would escape Chaos. She’d watched his expression tighten when she showed him the images Michael had projected into her mind, of the demons riding the dragon as it torched the Earth.
    After that, she’d been looking forward to killing a demon—more than she usually did. But the drug lord and everyone else at his jungle compound had been human. Upon seeing her disappointment, Alejandro hadn’t hidden his amusement, and asked whether she’d have killed the man if he’d been a vampire.
    She’d answered with an unequivocal yes. Alejandro disagreed, stating that his decision to slay even a vampire drug lord would depend upon the circumstances, and the consequences of power changing hands in the region. She’d given him a look. He’d laughed and winged his way toward electric lights that clustered at the edge of the jungle. The village seemed half-tourist destination and half-trading post, with Mission-style hotels, thrown-together shops, and a marketplace set up with stalls that had only begun to close for the night.
    At the north end of the village, an open restaurant had drawn her in with the music of a steel drum and a guitar, and the rich scent of grilling meat.
    The kitchen was housed in a long shack that consisted of a stove, a worktable, and a bar, surrounded by three reed-thin walls supporting a tin roof, with a circle cut out for the stove-pipe. The open-fronted kitchen overlooked a patio that was nothing more than a cleared rectangle of swept dirt, its dimensions marked off by discarded tires. A string of flickering electric lights connected the broad-leafed trees that, during the day, would provide shade for the patrons. Most of the tables were filled—primarily by the hotel clients, Irena guessed by their new clothes, pale and sunburned skin, and the variety of languages they spoke. Her longstockings and brief shirt had raised a few brows among both tourists and locals, but they were quickly forgotten when Alejandro chose a table in the corner farthest from the kitchen to continue their argument.
    With a surface made of rough-hewn planks cobbled together to form a circle and held up by toothpick-narrow legs, the small table didn’t seem sturdy enough to rest her elbows on, let alone the platter heaped with chorizo and fried steak, rice soaked in coconut milk, sweet corn bread, avocado and fried bananas—flanked by two bottles of tequila—but Irena did her best to lighten its burden. Over the next hour, she fed herself and Alejandro, offering him bites from her fingers, and while his mouth was occupied, used the opportunity to tell him all the ways he was wrong.
    And while she steadily sipped her way through the tequila, relishing the fiery slide from her tongue to her stomach, Alejandro held her hand, kissed her fingertips, her wrist, trying to weaken her by adding seduction to his arguments.
    She appreciated his technique very much. So much that she decided not to strangle him.
    The night wore on. Her senses were intoxicated—by the burn of peppers and alcohol, the quiet heat of their argument, the lazy strum of the guitar, the lush fragrance of the jungle. By Olek, the darkness of his eyes and the music of his voice. By his liquid grace that made him appear at once completely relaxed and yet poised to strike, though seated in a spindly chair with uneven legs and a rigid back. She wanted to crawl into his lap, tell him to run his lips beneath her jaw, to feel the soft brush of his goatee over her skin.
    The argument waned, and they both let it. Claiming that Irena’s earlier mention of Khavi’s Gift reminded him of an essay he’d read during the two centuries she’d been gone, Alejandro produced a pamphlet from his cache. A red ribbon marked the page he wanted; he’d written her name in the margin. He read to her in Arabic drawn long by his accent, and she sat listening with her heart full to