Demon Forged

her mouth, ran the tip over her lips like a paintbrush. Her eyes met Irena’s. “The demon will say that he loves your—”
    “ Nyet! ” The denial burst from her. Her knives were in her hands, and she was already springing forward.
    She would silence the demon spawn herself.
    Alejandro brought her up short. His arms wrapped around her waist, a steel band that she couldn’t bend to her will and wouldn’t break. He yanked her back against him.
    “I suggest you leave, madam.” His voice and his psychic scent were sharp with icy disdain, but Irena felt the blasting heat of anger through his clothes.
    “It was your past, then. And Michael has already slain that particular demon.” The grigori’s eyes flooded with black from edge to edge. Her Gift pushed out and swept back, scraping across Irena’s psyche like crushed shells caught in a tide. “Your future holds just as much death. You should be pleased; a demon’s spawn will fall beneath your spear. And soon, I think. I must see—”
    She vanished silently. Irena stood, her chest a heaving bellows. Alejandro’s hands tightened, and she ripped out of his grasp, whirled on him.
    “ Never again. ” She held her knife out, pointed at his throat. “I will tear your arms off.”
    His skin stretched over his cheekbones so that they stood out like blades. He pushed her knife aside. His hands trapped her face, held her tight.
    “What did he love?” he demanded.
    “Nothing. A demon cannot lo—”
    “They can.” His gaze searched hers. Looking, always looking. As if he never had before, as if he never would again. “It was your braids. I thought he’d—”
    He broke off. Was that relief in his expression?
    She hated him in that instant. Wanted to hurt him. “Tied me with them? Whipped me? Strung me up? No, he did none of those things,” she said bitterly.
    Alejandro’s eyes told her that he’d thought all of that and more, and each imagining had been agony for him. That the truth relieved him tortured her more than a demon could have.
    And not even the whole truth. Would that be a relief, too? It choked her to think so—and infuriated her.
    If she told him what had happened in that iron room, Alejandro would understand her shame. He was not a fool, and he knew her well. But if relief accompanied that understanding, Irena feared her response. Her fury now was pale in comparison to what it could be—to what it had been with the demon when he’d finished with her.
    She would not risk losing her head to anger with Olek.
    “What did he say, Irena?”
    “That they were like ropes of fire.” And like flames, the demon made them lick and dance. A brush across her lips, a flick against her skin. And she’d burned. “Let me go, Olek, or I will break each of your fingers.”
    “They will heal.” His thumbs stroked her temples in heated streaks.
    There was nowhere she didn’t feel that hot touch. She hadn’t felt it in four centuries, but her body remembered. Need carried it over her skin, pooled like heavy liquid fire in her core. She wanted that touch. Needed that touch. And resented that it made her so weak.
    But she didn’t need to break his bones to make him let her go. “You hold me against my will?”
    Instantly, his hands dropped away. He took a step back, his face pale. “Forgive me.”
    She wanted to turn, to go, but she’d already run once today with a crushing weight in her chest. “Do you still wish to spar?”
    Stupid to ask. Stupid to try to recapture what they had for a few seconds here, for a few months centuries ago. It could not be done, and nothing good would come from digging up the ruins of what they’d shared.
    “No.” He bowed slightly. “I have assignments to complete—and I do not want to fight with you anymore.”
    Not fight? She watched him walk away, her stomach in a knot. Then what would they do?
    The answer was too obvious: nothing.

CHAPTER 5
    Jake teleported him to London. Thanks to Special Investigations and a plethora of falsified documentation in his cache, Alejandro had credentials that would stand up under scrutiny, but it was too late in the evening to pretend a police interview. Instead, he followed one of the men who’d reported the human sacrifices to a pub.
    He’d planned to buy the man—Walters—a pint, but didn’t have to make even that small effort. As soon as Walters entered the pub, a group of men hailed him. They set ale in front of him and began their questions. Alejandro sat in a