Ash added, “Even had you escaped with it, Gabriel, you know as well as we do that Templeton would’ve devoted his considerable wealth to hunting you down to get it back. Your status with the F.B.I. didn’t protect you then and it definitely wouldn’t have once he knew you had the Book. None of us would’ve been safe. Throwing it into the ethereal planes was the best thing you could have done, as you knew at the time. Miri and I will find it and destroy it in such a way that Templeton knows without a shadow of a doubt that it’s gone. It makes no sense to remove one threat only to replace it with another, if we have the choice.”
Gabriel sighed, accepting the sense of it.
“However, unbeknownst to Templeton,” she continued, “a money man and not an architect or builder, the explosion weakened the building dangerously. I sent inspectors to shut it down, to declare it unsafe. Which it was. Templeton didn’t like it but he couldn’t stop it. A small victory but mine own.”
She smoothed her hands over her swollen belly and smiled fiercely.
Miri looked at all of them. “What is this Book, anyway?”
She looked up over her shoulder at Ash, then at Asmodeus.
Ash’s breath caught, realizing that she didn’t know, that he’d never really explained it to her. He looked to his Prince.
With a nod Asmodeus held up a hand to him and answered Miri’s question himself.
“It’s called the Book of Demons,” he said. “It was created hundreds of years ago by the Church to summon our kind to their judgment.”
He gaze went to Ash.
Behind her, Miri felt Ash go still.
“They used it to summon me,” he said, his deep voice tightly controlled. “You know the result.”
Miri looked up over her shoulder at him, aghast.
“Ash,” she whispered, feeling his memories move through him.
She closed her hands on his arms and she pressed her cheek against his chest, trying to offer comfort against the horror of those images.
“The spells in it can be used to summon any of us,” Ba’al said, his tone furious. “As they did with Asmodeus. We’re all at the mercy of it.”
In that moment Miri understood just how important, and how terrible a threat, the Book was to them.
“Especially once Templeton gets control of it,” Gabriel said. “He wants control of all the Daemonae and their magic. It’s why he Summoned Asmodeus.”
She looked up at her mate, her hands curled around her belly.
“He took me to stop my investigation,” she said, “and as punishment. He intended to feed me to Asmodeus.”
She smiled, suddenly and radiantly. “He just didn’t know him.”
“Nor you, my fierce Gabriel.”
Asmodeus pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“So, Miri,” Asmodeus said, “how close is close?”
Miri shook her head. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I look.”
“Won’t it be like looking for a needle in a haystack?” Moloch asked reasonably. “Among all the temporal possibilities?”
Pleased at his perception, Miri smiled and shook her head. “Not quite. That’s another reason why it matters to be so close. That book is a human artifact where and when a human artifact doesn’t belong. It should ‘stick out’ in a way, psychically. Which will make it easier for me to find.”
Miri took a slow breath, leaned back into Ash’s arms for comfort and support.
Her visions echoed through her. “And somehow it’s important in a different way, not just for the Daemonae but for all of us, humanity included.”
Hearing something in her voice Ash looked down at her.
The others caught it, too, a vibrancy in her tone, and straightened.
Miri looked up at him and then uncomfortably at the others as the echo of Vision moved through her.
She let the breath go, slowly. “I’ve ‘
seen
’ it. It’s important somehow in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just something I feel.”
“You’ve seen it?” Gabriel asked, sharply, puzzled.
“What do you mean?” Asmodeus said at nearly the same time.
“I’m clairvoyant,” Miri explained, wondering how she could explain temporal physics and string theory in combination with psychic abilities. “A clear seer. Whether you call it the ethereal planes or the temporal planes, it’s all the same to me. Time and space.” She sighed in frustration. “I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I can see the future, glimpses of what might be, what could be, like a filmstrip. Yet there are nexus points…and this appears to be one. So, I can see the Book, clearly…as a turning point, as one of those pivotal points in time.”
At that moment a great void opened within her like a door, a great gusty breeze that rushed through space and time to blow through her. Suddenly she was thrust outside herself, suspended, with all the myriad possibilities spread out before her as a magician would fan a deck of cards and dare you to choose one, just one.
Her voice drifted off as the vision caught her up.
Ash sensed the change even as Miri quivered lightly in his arms.
“’Deus,” Gabriel breathed, in awe. “Her eyes. Look at her eyes.”
“I see it,” Asmodeus said quietly. “We’ve seen such before, haven’t we, Ash? The Oracles at Delphi?”
Ash nodded, his heart aching for his mate.
Everyone else in the room went still, watchful.
Both Asmodeus and Gabriel looked at Ash in unspoken question.
Is she all right
?
Ash nodded.
Looking into down into Miri’s oddly pale green eyes, in such marked contrast to her brilliant red-gold hair, his breath caught as her pupils contracted to pinpoints, as the green paled and turned luminous. Those otherworldly eyes shifted and moved beneath her half-lowered lashes as she watched what no one else in the room could see.
Ash held her close in the circle of his arms, his cheek against her hair.
In some distant way Miri was aware of him, he grounded her body in this time, this place. The gesture gave her comfort. As always there was the fear of getting lost in what she saw. In the visions she saw there. Lost forever. There were others who had, she knew. Both heart and breath caught as she fought panic.
A deep voice inside her mind said softly,
Never, I’m here. I would find you
.
Ash.
Tears pricked her lashes. She clung to his mental voice as if it were a lifeline.
Perhaps it was.
Struggling to retain herself, to not get lost as images battered her, Miri fought to make sense of what it was she saw, of why she’d been pulled into these visions at this time, this place.
Words poured out of her.
“The future isn’t fixed, the universe isn’t, both are mutable, ever changing. There are moments in time, critical moments when elements come together to create. Or destroy. Even on the very brink of destruction, though, the Universe tries to right itself, to find the path of Light. Sometimes I can see it, that path. Glimpses such as you see when driving down a highway. Between the trees or over a hill, you catch sight of that same road, a distant curve. The direction of the universe, of the great creative force that drives it. That unseen road can change. There might be a fork between here and there you can’t see. Or a crossroads. We stand at such a crossroad now. The Book is the Key to righting an ancient wrong or creating an even greater one.”
The door inside her slammed shut as suddenly as it had opened.
It left Miri reeling even as Ash tightened his arms around her.
For a moment, disconcerted, she was frightened as she looked around the room.
There had been those who’d run, if not screaming then they’d come awfully close to it, when confronted by her gift, despite all her care, all her assurances. And there had been at least one who’d wanted to exploit that talent. She flinched from the memory.
Inside her head a voice spoke, the sound soft, deep and familiar.
I will never leave you, you will never be alone. You knew it the first time we touched. Your Sight told you so.
Miri turned her head to look up at Ash.
With a sigh, she laid her cheek against his strong chest, listened to the steady beat of his heart. It soothed her. He was real.
He caught her cheek in his palm, cupped it and tipped her chin up for a kiss.
Ash felt eyes on them.
Around the room, several Daemonae who’d missed the earlier kiss stared in shock and amazement as Ashtoreth – grim, severe Ashtoreth who had often ground them into the dirt in training – visibly softened. And kissed his mate.
It was something none of them had ever thought to see.
Nor had he.
Ash glanced at Asmodeus, who nodded and went to fetch another cup of mead. The potent honey wine would ease Miri’s post-vision jitters.
He knew Asmodeus, too, remembered a time when gifts like Miri’s weren’t uncommon – before the priests had done their own version of ethnic cleansing on the small portion of the population with magic.
“Here,” Asmodeus said and offered Miri the fortified wine. “Drink this.”
Giving Ash a look, Gabriel asked, “When was the last time she ate, Ash?”
Ash closed his eyes and groaned.
Lifting an eyebrow, Gabriel fixed a hard look on him.
Mere food didn’t satisfy a Daemonae’s needs but it did taste good and it would sustain them, if only just, until they found true sustenance – preferably with their true mate but the pleasure they found in any and every woman they touched could carry most for some time.
Miri, though, needed real food and lots of it, especially if he were to feed from her with any regularity. Since he didn’t need to, he’d forgotten to consider it. Save for the energy bars and the food he conjured in the motel, there had been nothing.
Taking the offered cup, Miri looked up at him. “We have been a little busy.”
“That’s no excuse,” Gabriel said severely, giving Ash a look. “Mal, would you get food for Miri and Ash?”
With a nod, Moloch set a search engine to run and did as she asked.
Ash brought Asmodeus and the others up to speed on their adventures, with occasional asides from Miri, as he kept a wary eye on his mate. He lifted an intrigued eyebrow as she drained the cup of mead and then asked for more.
This would be interesting.
Between one thing and another, Miri found she was starving. The mead, though, was delicious. It made everything go down so much more easily. Sitting at the table beside Gabriel, she fell on the food like a starving wolf, trying and failing to eat delicately, to the mild amusement of the assembled Daemonae.
“When was the last time you ate?” Gabriel asked curiously, as Asmodeus, amused, went to fetch another cup of honey wine.
Ash watched his mate with fascination and smothered a smile.
For some reason Miri had trouble remembering.
“I get caught up in my research,” she said. She frowned a little as she ate, considering it. “And there was the lecture… I get nervous even if I’ve done it a thousand times. So I don’t eat then… I’m pretty sure I had breakfast though. Ash gave me some energy bars and there was the food at the motel. There wasn’t much time after that.”