Embrace of the Damned (12 page)

It was no woman; it was a demon.

She had a millisecond to figure that out before the demon was on her, fangs descended and flashing, eyes bled black. Sharp teeth nipped at her shoulder, catching the fabric of her shirt. Her skin burned from the thing’s touch. Jessa pushed back with every drop of strength and panic in her body, managing to rock the demon back on its heels. She lifted her leg and kicked her boot solidly into the demon’s chest.

The demon slammed back against one of the stall doors and staggered inside, nearly falling into the toilet. Jessa made a mad dash for it, but the demon, fast as a blink, tackled her from behind. They scuffled on the floor, Jessa punching and kicking, doing everything she could to avoid those wicked, snapping jaws.

She landed a solid punch to the demon’s throat. It made a gagging sound and its eyes bulged. She followed it up with a hard shove to the side and she managed to wiggle away from the thing … but she was on the wrong side of the room. She scrambled to her feet and watched the demon do the same thing, blocking her path to the exit. Slowly she backed away from it, her mind frantically casting about for ways to defeat this thing.

She had no dagger and neither did Broder. He’d sent his blade by special courier to Scotland, knowing he’d never get it onto the plane in his carry-on and not trusting his suitcase wouldn’t get lost. The only way to kill a demon without a special Loki dagger was to decapitate it … and the only weapon she had were her bare hands.

Jessa stared in horror at the demon, who was circling her, hissing, and blocking her way out. “Broder!” she screamed. She had no idea if he could hear her.

God, she hoped he heard her!

A bare half second later and Broder was there, swinging the demon around to face him. The thing made an inhuman squeal of terror at the sight of him. Immediately the demon’s
offensive became defensive. It didn’t matter. Broder’s huge hands closed around either side of its head and prepared to twist.

Jessa turned her face away. Even though the demon had wanted her dead just moments before, she couldn’t bear to watch the brutally cold way Broder dealt with it.

Soon the demon was so much ice sliding across the floor. Jessa stared in horror at a chunk of the demon that had come to a rest at the toe of her boot, then slowly raised her gaze to Broder.

He stood staring at her with fierce protectiveness in his eyes, his chest heaving and his dark eyes shining with rage.

Wide-eyed, she stood shivering. The patches of her flesh where the demon had touched her burned with pain.

Broder closed the space between them and in a few moments every trace of her injuries was gone.

Behind him a middle-aged woman trailing a rolling carry-on entered. She stopped short near the doorway, taking in the odd sight of an unmistakable male in the women’s bathroom and the ice on the floor. “Uh, everything okay in here?”

“Everything is just great,” Jessa answered a little too brightly. “Dropped my drink. Be careful not to slip.”

The woman’s gaze slipped to Broder and she raised her eyebrows.

Jessa took him by the arm. “He just got confused and wandered in here. Doesn’t speak English.” She offered a friendly, probably slightly crazy-looking smile to the gaping woman and led Broder out of the bathroom.

Once out, she grabbed her carry-on—luckily no one had spotted it unattended and tried to blow it up—and they headed to the gate. Every molecule of her body was on high alert now. Every person she passed was a potential demon.

“I thought you said you’d be okay out of my protection for five minutes,” Broder growled, falling into step beside her.

“Yeah, apparently I was wrong. No more bathroom breaks for me.” She was still shaking.

Jessa shifted in her seat, but she couldn’t shake her unease. Funny how being stalked by demons could set a girl on edge. Here she was in first class and headed to Scotland. Too bad she couldn’t enjoy it. Too bad this trip wasn’t a vacation.

She’d lied about this trip to those close to her. After all, she’d had to explain her absence, right? Her best friend, Lillie, had pressed her for details, wondering about her spur-of-the-moment decision to visit a country she’d never expressed any interest in. She’d had to fib a little and it had hurt her heart, but she needed to protect the people she loved.

Lillie had clearly also been hurt, wondering why Jessa hadn’t called earlier and why she wasn’t leaning on her more for support. Lillie thought this trip had to do with her aunt dying, that Jessa felt she needed to get away for a while. That was a conclusion Jessa was happy to foster because it was more believable than the truth … but she hated that her friend thought she wasn’t needed. She needed Lillie more than ever right now and it hurt somewhere deep inside not to be able to pour her heart out to her.

She settled back into the comfy airplane seat; she hadn’t known they even existed. At least they were traveling in style. She couldn’t complain about that.

Broder had dressed in a low-collared black linen shirt and a pair of tight-fitting jeans that he made look damn
good. He’d managed not to get a drop of demon blood on himself in the bathroom. He looked ready for first class, despite the casual dress, although Broder still looked awkward. He was too small for the seat, even though by airplane standards there was a lot of room, and kept shifting uneasily.

Perhaps a man like him, raised in the time he’d been raised in, would never be truly comfortable with air travel. Broder would probably be much more at ease at the helm of a Viking longship. Jessa could totally see him there, too, battling the icy tempest of the northern seas, water glistening on his bare chest, his hair long and trailing—

“What?” he barked at her, clearly on edge and with a glare in his eyes.

Jerking her gaze away, she muttered, “Sorry.” Apparently she’d been too busying imagining him half naked on the stern of a longboat, ocean mist caught in his hair, to realize she’d been staring. She shook herself mentally. “Just wondering why you’re fidgeting so much.”

“I hate planes. It’s not natural to be up here in the air like this.” He reached across her and slid the blind down to block the view of the clouds below them. “Give me a boat and the ocean any day.”

So she’d been right.

“You did really well back there,” he grumbled. “In the bathroom. Not many untrained humans or witches could hold off a demon that way.”

“It’s amazing the skills that come to the fore when you’re fighting for your life.” She thought about his words, then said, “You said
untrained
human. Does that mean there are humans who know about the Blight? Are there humans who fight them?” The cabin was dark and quiet; everyone was sleeping. They could talk about this now without fear of being overheard.

He nodded. “There are. Not many, but groups of them.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “All over. We’d prefer they didn’t mess with the Blight, but can’t stop them.”

“Interesting.”

He shifted in his seat again. “They get killed a lot.”

Yes, she could imagine. Snaking a hand out from her travel blanket, she rubbed a gummy eye and glanced at the little progress airplane on the map at the front of the cabin. “We’re almost there.”

He moved in his seat again, as if trying to stretch his back. She’d been to Europe once with her aunt, so she knew that the flight attendants would begin serving breakfast soon and everyone would start waking up. She hadn’t managed one second of sleep during the flight and she knew Broder hadn’t, either. They had no idea if any demons had come along for the ride or not; that really didn’t bode well for napping.

At least he’d taken off his duster. It wasn’t far, though. He’d stuffed it under the seat in front of him. She pointed at it. “What’s the story with the ancient coat?”

He hesitated a moment, then pulled it from under the seat and opened it for her to see. It smelled like leather and his cologne. “Look here.” He pointed at a few faint markings, swoops and swirls done in a very light black.

She leaned forward to examine them. They gave off a very faint pulse of energy. “What are those?”

“Runes placed by the seidhr. Every brother has some object or piece of clothing imbued with this type of magick.”

Something of the seidhr. She reached out and touched the markings. They sent a slight throb of magick up her arm. “What do they do?”

“These runes let me know when there are demons about. They also provide me with a small amount of protection from the coldness of their touch. The coat also allows me a place to hide my dagger.”

“That’s … amazing.”

“That’s what you are.” He held her gaze for a long moment … then finally tore his gaze from her and replaced the duster under the seat in front of him and settled back into his chair.

She glanced at him. “What happens when we get there?”
He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with the details, and she’d been too set on getting to Scotland to further discover who she was to worry about it too much. She understood the seidhr enclave was there and she was thrilled by the possibility she might finally get some answers.

He studied her in the dim light. “I’ll take you to my keep in the Highlands. It is one of the most protected buildings in the world against the Blight. There you will be well defended and you will learn more of who you are. You will also train. You need to learn how to defend yourself.”

“I did pretty well in the bathroom. You even said so.”

“Not good enough.”

“What the hell is good enough?”

“Good enough is taking a demon’s head off on your own.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

That light had entered his eyes again, the hungry one. Since discovering she was a witch, he’d been holding himself back from her, it seemed. She wondered about that. She wondered if, perhaps, the seidhr were somehow sacred in this new, strange world, if the Brotherhood were discouraged in some way from touching them.

Jessa wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or disappointed at that possibility.

She pressed her lips together and concentrated on information gathering, in order to calm the beat of her heart at the look on his face. She wanted very much not to want him, but that didn’t seem to be a realistic desire. “The members of the Brotherhood are Nordic, right? So why would you have property in Scotland and not in Norway?”

“My roots are in Norway. The weight of my past.” He paused. “Sometimes roots hold you back, hold you down. Some weights are too heavy to carry.”

She considered that. Broder obviously had more than one dark secret and a hell of a tortured past. Of course he didn’t want much to do with the country where his bad memories had been made. She should have thought about that before she’d opened her mouth. Just because she was interested in her roots didn’t mean everyone else was.

“Of course,” she replied softly.

“The Vikings settled in Scotland, as they settled in many places. Your people lived there primarily, even in the old days. That’s why their enclave is located there now.”

Her people. God, she had
people
. It was a heady thought for someone raised thinking she only had one living relative.

“Aside from all that, it’s beautiful there. And remote, which I enjoy. It’s not so crazy to think I would keep an abode there, is it?”

An abode?
Once in a while Broder said these archaic things. “No, of course not.”

“The Brotherhood resided in Scotland before coming to the United States. For centuries we were in the Highlands. Long ago I bought a castle there. It’s my primary residence when I’m not in Washington, D.C.”

She blinked. “Castle?”

“What did you think a keep was?”

“Not a castle.”

“It’s more of a fortress, guarded in every manner against the Blight. Most of the property is crumbling and under renovation, but the keep, which is the main tower, is habitable.”

She nodded, feeling, once again, a little overwhelmed. “I’ve never even seen a castle before.”

“It’s probably not like anything you’re imagining.”

That was true. When she imagined a castle, she imagined turrets and elegance. Sort of the movie and book rendition of what a castle would be like. In real life she bet it was far less glamorous. With most of the place under renovation, it sounded a little like they’d be camping. As long as it was safe, she didn’t mind.

“Why did the Brotherhood decide to set up in the U.S.? Why didn’t they just stay in Europe?”

“There is still a force of Brotherhood in Europe, but Loki moved a bunch of us to America in the seventeen hundreds. The Blight were moving in and we came to counter them. If we hadn’t, today the Blight would have a huge foothold in the States.”

“And you chose Washington, D.C., as your base because it was the center of government?”

He smiled. “Do you want to know how many demons live in Washington?”