Demon Forged

of battle pounding through their veins.
    A long breath steadied her. From near the chamber entrance she heard the tinkle of glass—the mirror she’d tossed shattering as it finally landed on the stone floor.
    She looked away from Alejandro, her gaze searching for the human. The faint heartbeat was closer now, and the fetid scent of decaying blood hung heavily in the air.
    Irena retrieved her kukri knives, and stepped around a column. Horror froze her lungs.
    Dried blood crusted the woman’s face, her nude torso, her legs. Her long brown hair was clumped with it.
    A woman, but not a human as they’d assumed. No human would still be alive, not with a spike through her forehead, pinning her upright against the stone column.
    A Guardian.
    A Guardian—and an endless font of blood for the nosferatu. They could drain the body to the point of death, and because a Guardian healed quickly, drink their fill again the next evening. With that much brain damage, she couldn’t have projected her emotions, called for help. Even if another Guardian had looked for her, they couldn’t have detected her psychic scent. The woman’s mind was as empty as her ruined face.
    How long had she been here?
    “Help me, Olek.” Irena’s throat was raw. Her final steps to the Guardian’s side were a blur. She rose up on her toes, cupped the flat end of the spike in her palm.
    She felt the heat from Alejandro’s body, heard his sharply indrawn breath as he came up beside her. He slipped his gloved hands under the woman’s slack, blood-encrusted arms.
    “We have you, Rosalia,” he murmured in Italian. “You are with friends.”
    “You know her?”
    Slowly, Irena used her Gift to draw out the metal. She pulled her hand back; the iron followed. Rosalia’s brain would immediately begin healing, but unless they brought her to a Guardian with a healing Gift, it might be hours before she regained consciousness.
    “She specialized with me,” Alejandro said.
    So he’d honed her fencing skills. Irena vanished the spike, produced a thin blanket. “When? Who are her friends?”
    Rosalia would need them when she realized what had been done to her.
    “Two centuries ago. Who her friends are, I could not say.”
    “Who was her primary mentor?”
    His gaze never left Irena’s face as she tucked the covering around Rosalia’s motionless form. “Her early studies were with Hugh.”
    Irena gritted her teeth. Hugh Castleford, after eight hundred years as one of Caelum’s best warriors, had voluntarily Fallen and become human again . . . and had since taken up with the hellspawn, Lilith.
    But despite his choice of bed-partner, Hugh was still a brilliant mentor to the novice Guardians. And he was still, Irena hated to admit, a man that she would trust with her life.
    More importantly, she would trust him with anyone else’s life.
    “Then we will take her to Special Investigations,” Irena said, lifting Rosalia and cradling the woman against her chest. “Call Selah, have her teleport us there.”
    Selah’s Gift would take them to San Francisco faster than using the Gates—the portals that were scattered around the world, linking Earth to Caelum.
    Alejandro called in his phone from his cache and glanced at its face. “No signal.”
    Irena sighed and strode toward the corridor, vanishing the nosferatu’s bodies and their blood into her cache. Humans would find little evidence of the battle—only a few dings in the walls, and the lingering reek of roasted nosferatu.
    Irena stopped in front of Deacon. “Take her.”
    The vampire did, gently, his breath skimming between his teeth. The puncture in Rosalia’s forehead gaped open, exposing brain tissue shredded by shards of her skull.
    “Will you be coming with us?” Irena asked, calling in her knives again. To phone Selah they had to get aboveground, and might encounter any nosferatu who were returning late.
    Deacon stared at Rosalia, his face paler than usual. “With you, where?” he finally asked.
    “San Francisco. But if you stay, you will have to fight with us.”
    Pained indecision contorted Deacon’s features before determination smoothed and hardened them. “I’ll come.”
    She glanced at Alejandro. His lean hands were bare again, his skin healed. “Will you take the front or the rear?”
    Asking was unnecessary. Irena’s greater speed and skill made her the obvious choice for the lead position, and Olek would know she wanted it . . . but she also wanted him to offer it to