Demon Bound

wondered, would they have sculpted the more recent events in Guardian history? Could they have expressed the emptiness of Caelum after the Ascension, when thousands of Guardians had moved on to their afterlife, leaving only a few dozen warriors and novices in the Guardian corps?
    And was it possible to show Michael’s victory two years before, when he’d won a wager with Lucifer—closing every Gate between Hell and Earth for five centuries, and locking all but a few hundred demons in that dark realm? A wager could not be sculpted; an invisible Gate couldn’t, either.
    Perhaps they would have only shown Michael being forced to give up his sword to Belial, who would use it in his war against Lucifer. That scene would appear to be a defeat—but Alice thought the loss was not so terrible, particularly if the demons in Hell completely slaughtered one another by the time the Gates were opened again.
    Easier to sculpt would be the nephilim, who had been released from their prison. Unable to remain in corporeal form outside of Hell, the nephilim had possessed the bodies of humans who’d died, and whose souls had been bound for Hell. Now, the nephilim policed the demons remaining on Earth, enforcing the Rules—but they’d also begun slaughtering vampires in various cities around the world.
    Those massacres would be all too easy to depict, Alice thought grimly. As was the Guardians’ frustration that, so far, they’d only been able to prevent the slaughter in one city.
    Demons, nosferatu, and now nephilim. The Guardians remaining after the Ascension had enough to fight.
    They should not have to fear one of their own.
    She was, Alice realized, looking at Michael again. She tore her gaze from his likeness—and felt the touch of a Gift, muffled by distance and stone.
    A Guardian was outside the temple. Frowning, Alice reached out in an ever-widening circle with quick, light flicks of her own Gift.
    She didn’t get as far as the Guardian. Startled, she extinguished her lantern and listened. She could not hear anyone, but her Gift did not lie.
    A Guardian was near . . . but he was not the only one.

    Moments after terrifying himself with memories of blood-splattered foliage and a splintered bamboo cage, Jake Hawkins opened his eyes and realized he had no idea where the hell he’d teleported.
    At least it wasn’t Hell . Though chances were, he’d end up in that realm sooner or later. Until he got his Gift under control, only dumb luck prevented him from taking a swim in the Lake of Fire. Or worse, landing on a warmongering demon horde.
    Backstroking through burning lava was a damn good alternative to being skewered by a thousand swords—or kept alive so the demons could play a gleeful game of Torture the Guardian.
    Fun for everyone but him.
    But his dumb luck had held for one more jump, and instead of screaming Below, Jake stood at the edge of a sheer cliff on the side of an arid, rock-studded mountain. A waxing crescent moon was setting behind the sand dunes on the horizon; early evening stars shot holes through the sky.
    Not Hell, but he wasn’t in Caelum, either—although the Guardian realm with its white marble and never-setting sun was almost as empty of people. No fires flickered in the foothills; no human odors floated in the air.
    And there was no one to see Jake form his wings and step over the cliff.
    Wind sifted through his white feathers, and Jake resisted the urge to look at his satellite positioning device. He’d been taking these unexpected jaunts since discovering his Gift; unfamiliar geography had become a challenge. If he used his GPS receiver to figure out his location, he’d failed.
    But this place almost had him beat. The low-growing prickly scrub and the distant stretch of desert could be anywhere in North Africa or the Middle East. The recent sunset and mountain range narrowed it to Tunisia, Morocco, or Algeria; but as one of three Guardians who could teleport, Jake needed to learn how to identify a specific region within seconds.
    He needed to be able to go where he intended, too.
    A Gift ain’t nothing but knowledge and willpower. Drifter, his mentor, had tossed out that not-so-helpful advice ten minutes before when Jake had been trying to teleport from Drifter’s home in Seattle to the Archives building in Caelum.
    Jake shook his head, circled back toward the cliff. Ignorance wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t spineless, either. He’d known where Caelum was, and he’d wanted to visit