Demon Marked

one—wouldn’t break the Rules.
    But until now, Taylor would have said that it broke her rules.
    She’d had a choice. She could have said no. But she wanted freedom too much.
    The first crack appeared when the first drop of blood hit the sand. Taylor heard the drop, she heard the crack—though she’d never heard any sound from that frozen field. Louder than the rain of blood falling, louder than Nicholas chanting Ash’s name, begging her to come back now.
    Another crack, then more, thin lines spidering between the faces. Frozen lashes blinked. Screams began, loud now, from thawing throats.
    Far away, a large crowd of demons were scattering across the ice. She thought that if Nicholas had looked with his Gift, those demons would be trailing black ribbons of fear.
    But he wasn’t looking. He was staring into Ash’s eyes, searching desperately for new signs of life in a body that Taylor had killed.
    A fist punched through the ice from below, a fist that had never been frozen, only devoured again and again. And suddenly, that was the only sound—of the damned, breaking through, climbing out of their eternity of torture. Some wandered, dazed. Some grabbed the hands of others, helped lift them out. Others screamed and screamed, as if it were too late to feel anything different.
    Taylor wondered if she should tell them now that they weren’t free, not truly. Unless they went to the Pit, they were never leaving Hell. Unlike Ash, they didn’t have a body with symbols inscribed on it to bring her spirit back to the right place—they only possessed their spirit, and that could only take physical form in Hell. Unlike Michael, they didn’t have someone waiting at the edge of the frozen field, waiting to take his body out of her cache.
    So that she’d be free.
    Why weren’t any demons coming out of the field yet? Where were their faces ? Despite the thousands, hundreds of thousands in the field, the only demons were those who’d been torturing Michael.
    All the demons gone. What would that mean for a demon halfling?
    Oh, God. Had Khavi lied? Had Ash agreed, not knowing that Khavi meant a twisted version of ‘free’?
    “Ash? Oh, God, you’re amazing. I love you.” Joy filled Nicholas’s voice, and quelled Taylor’s sudden panic. “Jake, get her to a healer, now!”
    Then the sound of his hard kiss against soft lips before they disappeared.
    Michael had kissed Taylor, too. That was how all of this had started. The strange insanity of it.
    Soon, she’d go back to normal.
    At the back of her mind, the darkness suddenly eased. Not so much hidden pain. A deep, feral joy. Michael, climbing free.
    Finally.
    From behind her, she heard the sharpness of Khavi’s indrawn breath. It must have been nice, watching everything that she’d worked for become true. No matter who it hurt, no matter who paid in blood and pain and the horrifying sacrifices they ended up making—
    “I did not see this coming,” Khavi said.
    An enormous, terrifying figure rose in the distance, amber scales glistening. Fire roared. Taylor heard the screams begin again, flying toward her, almost with wings of their own. Demons took to the sky, desperately trying to flee. A rush of fire caught them, sent them spinning, burning to the ground.
    “A dragon?” Instinctively, she drew back. No need to run, not yet. “Did it break through from Chaos?”
    “No.” Khavi’s gaze followed the dragon up, up. “That’s Michael.”
    Michael?
    The dragon dove, began banking toward them.
    “Taylor, teleport now.”
    “But—”
    “Trust me.”
    Taylor didn’t. She wouldn’t ever trust Khavi again, but as another roar of fire roasted a swath of fleeing demons in a path toward them, she saw Khavi’s point.
    She called upon the power of Michael’s Gift . . . and got nothing. It was there, in the back of her mind. She could feel it. She couldn’t use it. A tumble of emotions rioted through the space he used to occupy, but there was only one rising above all the others.
    Hunger.
    Oh, Jesus. Taylor stumbled back, searched for the Gift again and again. “He won’t let me go!”
    And was it just her, or was that dragon coming really fucking close?
    Khavi’s Gift rolled out. The dragon shrieked. Enormous wings folded against its back, and he dove.
    Straight toward her.
    “Khavi!”
    The woman grabbed Taylor’s hand—and they were standing in Caelum, watching Michael’s temple fall. Columns cracked. Marble walls buckled and collapsed, crashing