Demon Marked

fucking person. Now she’s being asked to kill herself? Is this the next step for me, too?”
    “No. If you killed yourself, it would not free him from the frozen field. It would mean that even if he did get out, he couldn’t leave Hell. Not without his body.”
    “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”
    “Why do you even ask? If it were possible to free him, would you exchange your life for his?”
    It wouldn’t be possible. “He wouldn’t let me. He’d do everything he could to stop me—even if it meant preventing my free will.”
    “That is not what I meant, and you know it.” Khavi’s smile was thin and sharp. “But since it is not even possible, the question of whether you’d sacrifice your life for his hardly matters. Does it?”
    God. Taylor didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore. Except for one thing:
    “None of this matters, because Ash isn’t willing to do it.”
    “No, she isn’t.” Khavi’s eyes deepened to black. “But only because she hasn’t been pushed to her limit yet.”
     
    A halfling demon who could make her own clothes and carry everything she owned in a cache didn’t need to pack, so Ash simply waited in her room, plotting, contemplating the best time to go.
    The knock at her door told her she’d be waiting a little longer.
    She opened it to find Lilith, who swept into the room with Sir Pup. No bigger than a dorm room, Ash had never bothered to decorate or add anything to the place, and only one chair had been placed next to a small desk.
    Apparently, Lilith wasn’t there to sit, anyway. She stopped in the middle of the room. “So?”
    “So, what?” Ash settled back into her chair, the seat still warm from her waiting-to-go vigil.
    “Don’t fuck with me,” Lilith warned.
    All right. It probably wasn’t hard to guess what Ash had been plotting. “Where is he?”
    “I don’t know, precisely. Last I knew, he was headed to New York. I don’t know if he’s there.”
    “I’m going to him.”
    “I can’t let you.”
    “But will you stop me?”
    Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “Clever. That was the right question. So there’s hope for you.”
    All Ash cared about was whether there was hope for Nicholas. “I want to take that call. Do you think he will place one?”
    Her gut still said he wouldn’t. But if he were hurt, dying—would he be in his right mind? Would he reach out to her? How could she not answer?
    “He probably will,” Lilith said. “Khavi’s not always precise, but she’s usually right. But she also has an agenda.”
    “Getting me into the frozen field.”
    “Yes.”
    Fuck her. And Ash couldn’t sit any longer. She paced to the end of the empty room, back. “Do you know what I hate? What I really, really hate ?”
    Lilith’s brows rose. “Short brown hair?”
    God. Blond again. And Ash didn’t care. “This.” She gestured to the tattoos on her face. “And that shit downstairs. I’m so fucking tired of being the sacrifice to a fucking Gate, a goddamn frozen field. That there’s barely any use in doing anything. No, it’s what will be done to me. Oh, Ash, let’s carve some symbols into you. Oh, Ash, you’ll help us if you die .”
    Lilith didn’t answer, only watched her with unreadable eyes. Ash stopped pacing, tried to get her temper under control.
    With a deep breath, she said, “And it’s not even death. It’s torture, forever. And I will not go through it again. I’d prefer to let Madelyn have me. At least then, I really do just die.”
    “Actually, the preferable choice would be to live. At least, it would be preferable to me.”
    Yes. Yes, to her, too. Ash nodded. “That, too.”
    “Then listen. The Guardians are proof that the universe likes to reward those who sacrifice themselves for others—but I’ve never been interested in that martyr bullshit. I don’t think you are, either.”
    “No.”
    “So the rest of us, we have to get that reward some other way. Me, I lied, cheated, and killed my way into it. I had the same fucking impossible choice to make: the frozen field, or Hugh’s life. And instead of choosing either of those, I fucked up Lucifer’s agreement with a horde of nosferatu, cut off his lieutenant’s head, and lied so well that Lucifer lost a wager to Michael and released me from my bargain. I paid for it in blood, and so did Hugh—and I’d have paid more if I had to. But I’d be damned before I let that price be our lives or my soul in that field.”
    “So that’s what