Demon Bound

    These days, the people rode harvesting combines instead of horses, and the only paths they cut were through fields of wheat.
    But they did not harvest now—and blood would be spilled again, very soon.
    From the air, Alice searched the flat, snowy landscape. Though the cold did not affect her any more than the heat of the desert had, she shivered.
    She rarely felt alone; here, she did. The early winter had killed off the spiders or driven them to shelter in homes and outbuildings. In the endless frozen stretch below, there were no minds to connect to, no whispers for her Gift to collect.
    If she had been thinking clearly when she left, Alice would have brought a few of the cave weavers that had served her so well in the temple. Their ability to detect the slightest vibration—a footstep, the disturbance of air from a passing body or the flap of a wing—had allowed Alice to track the demons’ progress through the temple better than her hearing could have, and to navigate through the dark.
    Without a spider’s senses enhancing her own, she was bereft.
    She glanced down. A hare raced across the field below, then disappeared in a burrow beneath the snow. Its heartbeat fluttered in her ears.
    Alice smiled into the night sky. What a wretched creature she was. A Guardian possessed of extraordinary powers, yet blind and deaf without eight-legged companions.
    How very pitiable. Hardly fit to crawl through the sewers of Cairo, let alone the marble courtyards of Caelum. She ought to be eating rats . . . No, she ought to be feeding them her own contemptible entrails. That was, if they would not turn up their twitching noses at such an offering—
    If she went any further, she would burst into laughter.
    Satisfied that she’d trampled her melancholy mood, she reached out. Finally, a tendril from a familiar psychic scent flicked against her mind. Alice grabbed hold and followed it east.

    She found Irena hunting roe deer sheltered within a copse of stunted trees.
    There would be little contest. As fleet as the deer were, a Guardian could easily outrace them. Irena’s bow made it more sporting, perhaps—but she would be upon her target so quickly, ending its suffering immediately after the arrow struck, that Alice wondered why Irena didn’t just run the animal down with her kukri knives.
    Irena crawled forward through the snow. A white mantle concealed her shoulders and auburn hair, chopped short by her own sword, its reds as varied as the hide of the deer she stalked. The wind carried the scent of dried blood and soot that stained her leather leggings, yet they were barely discernible beneath the musk of the herd.
    Better to have come from upwind, Alice thought. Irena’s victory over her prey was certain, so she should have given them an opportunity to flee. Not picked them off while they slept.
    Alice’s boots crunched the snow as she landed. Irena froze, and cast a killing look over her shoulder.
    With a wave of her hand, Alice called, “A very good evening to you!”
    Though Alice didn’t know the word Irena spat, it was blunt and unmistakably Slavic.
    Alice didn’t have to yell over the thundering hooves for Irena to hear her, but once a task was begun, it was best to do it well. And besides, she needed to practice her Russian. “It is a cold night for hunting, yes?”
    Irena was already streaking through the trees. Alice followed at a leisurely pace. When she emerged from the opposite side of the copse, Irena was working over a steaming body.
    The deer snorted and circled, watching them warily. Blood darkened Irena’s forearms, obscuring to her elbows the blue tattoos that decorated the length of her arms. She’d vanished her white mantle. Her smithy’s apron protected her chest, leaving her arms and back bare.
    Alice ran her hands down her sleeves. She could never be comfortable with so much exposed.
    “And now you are quiet.” Irena did not look up as she disemboweled the deer. The grisly task was not so different from the one Alice had performed on the demon, only hours before. “You creep up on me like Zorya Polunochnaya, swathed in darkness. You only lack the white hair and hunched back.”
    Like the midnight aurora? Alice frowned, until she realized that she’d translated zorya polunochnaya to English instead of hearing it as a name. Oh, dear. When had she last read about the Zorya? To the best of her recollection, they were three mythical goddesses watching over a sky hound chained to a