Demon Forged

to pieces the quivering muscle.
    When the dragon quieted, she dove out of its body, clinging to her knife and spear.
    She couldn’t see. The dragon’s blood ran into her eyes. Agony dug razored claws into her back when she tried to fly. She couldn’t vanish the wing she had left.
    “Irena!” Selah’s shout. “I have you!”
    The beat of powerful wings drew close. Hands slid over her shoulders, then around her waist, gently pulling Irena out of her dive.
    Irena almost forgot to wipe the dragon’s blood from her mouth before parting her lips to speak. “Olek?”
    “Burned, but alive and arguing. He won’t let Jake take him away until he’s seen you. Michael can’t heal him.”
    Burned, but alive. The stupid ox. She didn’t try to hold back her tears. They slipped beneath her closed lids, over her cheeks. “Michael is already here? What of the airplane?”
    “Apparently, there was a miracle—and, apparently, Khavi thinks its fun to carry around a fleet of lifeboats in her cache.”
    Irena laughed, and felt Selah rub a cloth against her face, cleaning away the blood. When she opened her eyes, she saw her wing sticking out at an odd angle, mangled and the feathers coated with red. Gore covered her clothes and skin.
    A hundred yards away, hovering above the water, a group of Guardians waited for them.
    “You’re still holding your weapons,” Selah pointed out.
    Weapons still heated from the furnace of the dragon’s chest. “I can’t vanish them.” Or her wing.
    “And I can’t vanish this towel I just used on your face.” Selah made a soft humming sound. “I also can’t seem to ’port with you.”
    Irena nodded. She hadn’t ingested the dragon’s blood, but she was covered with it. If Michael, Selah or Jake could have teleported with a dragon as easily as they did another Guardian, this fight would have been much easier.
    They approached the hovering Guardians. Irena’s heart pitched to her stomach and heaved up into her throat when she saw Olek, held up by Jake. His skin charred, his clothes burned away—as was much of his flesh. She cried into the towel and didn’t touch him, knowing that every movement must be agony.
    But she felt the relief in his psychic scent, not his pain. And his eyes smiled at her before Jake teleported him away.
    She searched the waters before glancing up at Michael. “Where is the dragon?”
    “In my cache.”
    Irena frowned. “Could you have teleported with it?”
    Michael gave her a look. “No. But a grigori can hold the pieces.” His gaze slid over her body. The sticky heat of the dragon’s blood disappeared.
    With a grateful sigh, Irena vanished her wing. The sharp ripping pain in her back vanished with it. Though clean, her weapons retained their heat.
    She reached out with her Gift and touched them.

CHAPTER 23
    Taylor eyed the clock. Even before this prediction of Khavi’s, even before the task force, she’d rarely ever left at the end of her shift. Tonight, she’d leave on the dot. Technically, she might still be working, since she and Preston were meeting with Wren to go over the security at the Stafford funeral—but Taylor wasn’t ready to call the development of a plan to slay a demon congressman a cog in the wheel of justice.
    Jorgenson wouldn’t approve the overtime for it, anyway.
    She glanced at the time again. The sun had set five minutes ago. She hadn’t heard from Michael or anyone at SI—but even if their gathering had run late, he’d still be out there, waiting. If not, someone would have called her. Lilith . . . or someone. No news meant good news.
    Of course, in her line of work, no news usually just meant the body hadn’t been found yet.
    She looked up at the ceiling, said quietly, “Michael, if you’re here, Joe and I are ready to go.”
    But Joe wasn’t, actually. He was staring wide-eyed at his computer screen, leaning forward in his desk chair like the Giants were one pitch away from winning the World Series. “Andy, you’ve got to look at this.”
    She came around the desk. A live newsfeed ran in a small window; she couldn’t hear the blond anchorwoman, but the inset showed a spotlight shining down on a cluster of boats tied together with gossamer strings. Taylor tilted her head, looked at the rings the boats made and the shimmering threads connecting them—the whole effect was almost like a spiderweb.
    The headline stated that it had been an airline crash with no fatalities—and a freak electrical storm