Demon Bound (9 page)

As a human, Jake hadn't seen the ocean until he'd been on a foreign shore, preparing to go into combat—and wearing the brave face and swagger that they'd all learned to put on. Everyone had been afraid then, but the fear hadn't taken form yet.

And piss-scared hadn't come until later.

But despite the memories the sight of the ocean could wash up, he preferred it to this eerie, endless stillness. There wasn't anything out there. Not long after the Ascension, he and a few other novices had flown out over the sea, just to see if it ended. They'd given up after two weeks—at the same speed, they'd have circled the Earth eight times.

It was just as empty below the surface. Jake didn't know how far he'd followed the gigantic, submerged column that was Caelum's base, but he hadn't hit bottom. And though he must have swum dozens of miles underwater, Caelum's sun had penetrated even to those depths, lighting his way.

There were stories about Guardians who were still diving, still flying—spending their immortality looking for the end.

If the stories were true, they must be flippin' nutcases by now.

Jake grimaced and looked over his shoulder at the city. He couldn't see Alice's home behind the taller buildings nearer the water, but he almost expected to find spiders creeping up, preparing to make him pay for the insult to their mommy.

Yeah, he'd fucked that up but good.

But damn if he knew why. Halfway across her courtyard, Jake had realized it hadn't just been a stupid thing to say aloud—it'd been wrong to boot.

He'd always assumed his hormones were partially to blame for the crap that came out of his mouth. But in the forty-five minutes he'd spent with her, his only sexual thought had been a passing curiosity about spider reproduction—and yet he'd still managed to set a new record in dickery.

Unfortunately for them both, he couldn't stop thinking about that temple, and everything in that badass museum she called her quarters. They'd just have to get used to each other.

Something tickled the nape of his neck. Jake spun around, slapping at his shoulders, his hair. His fingers brushed a strand of . . . web? A spider leg?

With a shudder, he yanked it away from his skin—and ripped a hole in the neck of his shirt.

A cotton thread was pinched between his fingers. Jake stared at it, disbelieving. Jesus Christ in Heaven. He'd crawled through jungles without giving spiders a second thought. He'd taken bullets to his head. He'd tracked nosferatu, nephilim, and demons—and killed one.

Why was he going girly over a string?

Hell. Maybe spending more time with the Black Widow
would
be good for him.

 

Alice fed the spiders, bathed, and settled her nerves before she heard the novice's return. Two hours. She moved to her front doors, musing that Jake must have been surrounded by passive and forgiving people during his formative years if he thought that was enough time for tempers to cool.

Or he was just clever. He waited on the opposite side of Remus and Romulus's web, and when Alice emerged from her quarters, he said, “There's no hourglass. Just these red dots.”

So these will be our safe zones, Alice thought. Arachnids and artifacts.

“Only the females have the hourglass mark,” she said.

Jake leaned his shoulder against the column. A casual pose, but his alert gaze didn't leave her face. “So they're just two guys sharing a web. Alone.”

“It's for their safety.” At his questioning look, she explained, “Only the females live upstairs. Remus and Romulus will sire the next generation, but unless I rescue them after each mating . . .” Alice shrugged lightly. “Well.”

“A good way to go, though.”

“Better than some, I suppose.”

“You
suppose
? Then you obviously haven't had—” He stopped. Started again with “Did you take a bath?”

A laugh startled from her. “How on Earth did you decide that question was preferable to your original statement?”

“It's why I'm here.” He shook his head. “Not to bathe you, but—Where'd you get the hot water?”

He'd already leapt out of their safe zone, but Alice followed him, curious now to where this led. “Irena's smithy.”

“So you brought it from Earth in your hammerspace? That's a good idea.”

“Indeed. But—”

“I thought you might be going to Seattle. For Charlie's thing at Cole's.”

Another leap. But was this a new direction? “I am.”

“I came here to see, but I couldn't tell if you were going, because you're still wearing that black thing. But the air's humid, so you must have taken a bath.”

Guardians could remove dirt from their bodies and clothing by vanishing it into their cache—so Jake apparently thought that the only reason a Guardian woman might bathe was to prepare for a party.

Amused now, Alice said, “I did.”

He sighed. “Look, I just didn't want to insult you. I was trying to decide if you knew about it. I've known people who become all offended if they don't get a formal invitation, even when it's just a thrown-together thing like this is.”

How surprisingly thoughtful. “I've known several people like that, too.” Her eyes narrowed. “You're here to offer me transport?”

“Yeah. But it might be a little bumpy.”

That was of no consequence. Teleporting would save her an hour's flight—and if Ethan knew Teqon's location, it would allow her another advantage, as well. She couldn't carry living things in her cache or through the Gates, but they could be teleported.

“May I bring a passenger?”

Jake appeared confused for all of a second. Then he grinned. “A spider?”

“Yes.”

“Go for it.”

Alice focused her Gift upstairs. Most of the widows were sleeping, full and lazy after their feeding. But although her body was heavier than the others', Lucy was awake and moving restlessly beneath her web.

Alice caught hold of Lucy's mind and pushed.

“So that's how you knew where you were going in the temple,” Jake said. “You had spiders in there.”

“Yes. I brought in cave weavers.”

Lucy reached the window. Alice stepped out into the courtyard, watching her descend on a gossamer dragline.

“What happened to them when the temple vanished?”

Nothing
should
have happened. Alice usually took the spiders with her when she left—but, preoccupied by thoughts of Teqon, she'd forgotten.

“I don't know,” she finally said. With her Gift open like this, she couldn't hide the sorrow in her psychic scent.

Sorrow, for weavers she hadn't even bred and raised.

Her crimson markings gleaming against her ebony exoskeleton, Lucy dropped into Alice's outstretched palm. She lowered her Gift to a soothing hum, hoping to quiet the widow's anxiety—and her own.

Jake looked at her curiously, but he only said, “Grab on to me, then. And she'll have to be touching me, too.”

He only tensed a little when Lucy crept onto his forearm and secured herself with silken thread. Alice took his hand.

And waited.

His brow had creased with concentration. A powerful wave swept over her psychic senses—his Gift. His mind was strong, his effort undeniable. Yet they hadn't teleported.

“Would you like help?” She adjusted the focus of her own Gift until she heard the rapid click of Nefertari's claws from inside her quarters.

“I don't think it'd work this time.” He expelled a long breath. “Not when I know it's an illusion.”

The skittering paused just long enough for Nefertari to push open the front door.

He glanced over Alice's shoulder—and laughed. “Come on. You can't expect me to believe that.”

“Jake.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “Am I projecting anything?”

His eyes widened.

“You wanted to meet her,” she reminded him, just as Nefertari jumped.

 

He lay on short, dried grass that pricked and itched, even through his shirt. He opened his eyes. Stars shone above, too bright to be near a city.

At least he hadn't screamed, Jake thought. He'd just landed on his back in the middle of God-knew-where. A little awkward, but not emasculating.

Warm fingers brushed his arm, and Jake lifted his head. Alice knelt beside his hip, murmuring to the spider she'd scooped into her palm.

“That wasn't a tarantula,” Jake said. “That was a bear.”

“Oh, come now. She isn't that large.”

“A dog, then. A wolf.”

“She's more like a cat. She even purrs.”

“I'll bet.” Probably while eating kittens. “A mountain lion.”

“
Perhaps
an ocelot.”

“Too small.”

Alice met his gaze, and instead of freezing him, the ice in her eyes sparkled with humor. “But she so loves to jump.”

Hot damn. So the Black Widow didn't always bristle with disapproval. And with her mouth set in that prim, trying-not-to-laugh line, Jake remembered why kissing her in the temple had seemed like such a good idea.

He must've hit his head. “How's your friend?”

The spider wasn't in her palm now, and he was pretty sure the itch on his left arm wasn't just the grass.

“She's fine. The disorientation only lasted a moment.” She got to her feet in that disjointed, creepy way. “Shall we go?”

“Just a second. Let me figure out where we are.”

He rolled onto his knees. They were in a farmhouse's backyard—the kind that was just a scraggly patch of dead grass cut out of a larger field. Judging by the smell, chickens scratched out here during the days.

There was something familiar about the lay of the fields, the neighboring houses, but he supposed there were thousands just like it in the Midwest.

“Oh, dear,” the Black Widow said.

He followed the direction of her gaze to a window on the second floor of the farmhouse. A dark-haired girl stood in her ruffled nightgown, her eyes wide, her breath fogging a circle in the glass.

Her arms tightened, bending in half the pink rag doll she clutched. “Princess Mandy, look,” she whispered. Her psychic scent boiled with more excitement than fear. “It's the Wicked Witch.”

Jake fell forward onto his hands, laughing so hard he thought his gut would burst.

Small, running footsteps sounded from upstairs, and the girl yelled for her grandma.

“Shall we go?”

They'd be lucky if anything could get him to teleport now, but Jake nodded through his laughter and stood. The spider clung to his left arm, so he wiped away his tears with his right before taking Alice's hand. She frowned, gestured for him to quiet.

He tried. Damn, but he tried.

Alice's bristle was back. She signed,
Shall we fly? Do you know where we are—or how far it is to Seattle?

He shook his head, turning in a circle as he attempted to narrow their location, pulling her with him.

Halfway around, he stopped. At the opposite edge of the yard, an old red tractor and a Mustang with pancake tires rusted next to a weathered shed. Recognition stabbed through his chest, killing his amusement.

“Jake?”

From inside the house, a woman's voice joined the little girl's.

“We're in Kansas,” he said, wishing they were anywhere else.

Instantly, they were.

He was the damn cowardly lion.

Jake slumped in his chair and watched the foam on his beer dissolve. Now and then, he felt the concern of the others around the table, but their chatter went over him.

He'd leapt to Seattle—but he couldn't get his flippin' head out of Kansas.

Of all places, the Hopewell farm. The silo and barn that had been behind the house were gone now, but he couldn't mistake that tractor. He and Billy Hopewell had tinkered with that thing and ridden it around the Hopewell fields—down the roads, through town—too many times.

But the car had been Jake's. Cherry, back in the day, and he'd lost count of how many bales he'd tossed, how much slop he'd waded through to buy it.

A piece of shit now.

And the woman he'd heard inside that house . . .

Goddamn.
Nineteen years he'd tried to get out of that town. It just wasn't fucking right for his Gift to send him back now, when there was nothing he could do for anyone he'd left behind.

“Jake.” Charlie scooted her chair closer to his and leaned in. When she spoke in a whisper, the rasp in her voice all but disappeared. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He sat up straight, scrubbed his hand over his face. He was such a dick. “Just one too many jumps today.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand before turning back to the table.

Jake picked up his beer. Drifter was a lucky, lucky man. Charlie was the kind of girl you took home to Mom—if Mom was the kind to appreciate a girl with fangs, cold skin, and a right jab that could knock a Guardian's tooth loose.

Strange, then, that it'd been a while since Jake had wondered what she looked like naked.

Was it just that she'd been away from Seattle these past two months? Just for the hell of it he imagined undressing her, and mentally covered her up again an instant later.

Jesus. If he'd had a sister, Jake thought that was pretty much what taking a peek at her would have felt like.

And Selah, sitting on the other side of Charlie, was out, too. God knew she had a body worth stripping—but with her light blond hair and flawless face, she actually
looked
like an angel.