“I’ll give you mine,” Eve offered grimly, “if you let the kid go.” She ripped the katana free of its sheath and hurled the lacquered wood at the demon’s head.
She reached out to Reed. Now!
The demon’s arms rose to ward off the projectile. The child was snatched by Reed before the yuki-onna caught it.
The Infernal’s cry of rage was accompanied by an icy gust that burst through the room like an explosion. Eve was thrust backward into a heated-air hand dryer with enough force to hammer it flush to the wall. She held onto the hilt of the katana by stubbornness alone. Her booted feet dropped to the floor with a dull thud, and she hit the ground running.
Arm raised and blade at the ready, Eve rushed forward with a battle cry that curdled her own blood. The child’s fear lingered in the air, the acrid scent mingling with the stench of decaying Infernal soul. The combination sent her mark into overdrive. She leaped, slashing down on the diagonal, but the demon spun away in a flurry of snow. The temperature dropped drastically. The mirrors fogged around the edges, and her breath puffed visibly in the chilled air.
Eve pursued her, feinting and parrying against the sharp icicles the demon threw at her. They shattered like glass against her flashing katana, sprinkling the tile with slippery shards.
Crunching across the hazardous floor, she advanced with precision. The beautiful kimono fluttered with the Infernal’s retreat, the thick silk shredded by Eve’s calculated attacks. Once the sorriest swordswoman in her class, Eve had practiced exhaustively until she stopped embarrassing herself. She still wasn’t much beyond passably proficient with the weapon, but she no longer felt hopelessly inept.
She began to hum a merry tune.
As she’d hoped, the demon floundered, caught off guard by the implied boredom. The yuki-onna’s next salvo lacked the speed of the previous ones. Eve caught it with her fist, hissing as the ice splintered its way across her palm. Blood flowed, its scent goading the demon into roaring in triumph, a sound audible only to those with enhanced hearing.
Eve lobbed the icicle back, followed immediately with the katana. The Infernal deflected the first projectile with an icy blast, but was left vulnerable to the second. The blade sliced along the demon’s right triceps, drawing blood before impaling the wall behind her. A crimson stain began to spread through the pristine white of the kimono.
“Checkmate,” Eve taunted. “Your blood for mine.”
The Infernal retaliated with an icicle that pierced straight through Eve’s right thigh. She cried out and dropped to one knee. Agonized, she sent up a silent request for a sword. She held her palm open to receive the gift...
...which didn’t come.
Shock froze Eve. She’d gambled with the loss of the katana and rolled snake eyes. She always feared this day would come. Formerly agnostic, she didn’t show the deference to the Almighty that others did. She wasn’t disrespectful per Se, but she might be too forthright in voicing her inability to understand the way God handled things.
She asked again, throwing in a “please” for good measure. The result was the same. Nada. Eve growled, furious that she would be denied the tool required to complete the task she was forced to perform.
The yuki-onna quickly deduced what had failed to happen. She giggled, a lovely melodic sound. “Perhaps he realizes that saving you is hopeless and not worth the effort.”
“Fuck you.”
“It is rare that Sammael sets a bounty so high or allows everyone in Hell a chance to claim it.” The demon grinned. “But then, this is the first time someone has run over one of his pets.”
“What bounty?” Eve hoped she hid the sudden fear she felt. “Is Satan upset that I ran over his dog? That’s hysterical.”
I’m not laughing, Alec snapped.
1 know. Eve sighed. My life sucks.
She struggled to her feet, favoring her impaled leg. Reaching down, she yanked the ice dagger free and tossed it aside. Blood spurted from the gaping wound, then gushed. She ignored it for now. She had bigger problems.
“What is funny,” the yuki-onna retorted, “is how you will be ripped apart by everyone in Hell.”
“Everyone, huh?” Eve shrugged. “He’ll have to do better than that, if he hopes to take me out.”
That’s my girl, Alec praised. Never let ‘em see you sweat.
But she heard the unease in his voice. She also felt him poised to leap to her rescue.
I’ve got this, she’ said, staying him. She wasn’t sure how, but she would figure it out on her own. Damned if some ice bitch in clogs would kick her ass.
“Sammael wants you,” the demon taunted. Her disheveled hair and wide eyes only made her more beautiful. “And I will be rewarded for bringing you in.”
Laughing through her growing panic, Eve made a third request—not quite a prayer—for a sword. Again, she was ignored.
She deflected the demon’s next icicle with her forearm, then darted to the left to catch another. She threw it back. It was knocked off course by a burst of frosty air. All the while, she closed the distance between herself and the wall that held the katana.
“You can take hostages,” Eve taunted, “but you can’t take me.”
Bravado. Sometimes it was all a Mark had.
“I am beginning to think otherwise,” the demon retorted with a malicious gleam in her dark eyes.
Pounding came to the locked door, followed by a string of anxious-sounding Japanese. Not for the first time, Eve wished her mother had taught her the language. All she knew was that someone wanted to come in, and the demon she was fighting was no longer eager to get out. In fact, the yuki-onna seemed energized by the intrusion.
Eve took another step closer. Her boot slipped on an ice shard and she skidded, her balance compromised by her injured leg. She was inspired by the near fall, her mind seizing on a possible means to the end.
Dependent upon God’s willingness to cooperate and give her a damn break, of course.
Kicking hard, she sent up a spray of water and ice. As the yuki-onna retaliated with a rapid volley of icicles, Eve shot forward, using the slush on the tile to drop to the floor in a careening, feet-first slide into home plate.
“I could really use that sword now,” she yelled skyward, as the white tile rushed past her in a blur. “Please!”
Nothing.
Time slowed to a trickle...
The demon leaped gracefully and was held aloft by icy air currents. Levitating into a prone position, the Infernal’s facade of beauty fell away, revealing the true evil beneath—eyes of blood red, a gaping maw of blackened teeth, and grayish skin with a network of inky veins that spread into her hairline. With arms splayed wide, spears of ice appeared in her hands like ski poles.
Alec and Reed roared in unison, their shouts reverberating in Eve’s skull with such volume they drowned out everything else. In slow motion, she watched the demon hovering like a ghostly apparition, her white robes in tatters, her hair a sinuously writhing mane. Eve raised her arms to ward off the coming attack, then jerked in surprise as a heavy weight forced her forearm to drop to her chest…
…weighted by the miraculous appearance of a glaive in her hand.
Her grip tightened on the hilt and her back arched up. Hurling the blade forward like a javelin, she struck the yuki-onna straight in the chest. The glaive pierced deep with a sickening thud.
The demon exploded in a burst of ash.
Eve continued to slide until she slammed into the wall. At impact, the katana dislodged from its mooring, twisting to fall point down toward her head. She jerked to the side, rolling to avoid the blade. It pierced the floor where she’d been an instant before. Behind her, the glaive—no longer embedded in the demon’s body—clattered to the tile.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
A pair of steel-toed boots appeared next to her head, then a hand extended into her line of sight. Looking up, her gaze met eyes of rich chocolate brown. Once, Alec had looked at her with a heat so scorching it burned her skin. She missed that look. Then again, she got hot enough for the both of them just checking him out.
At a few inches over six feet, Alec was as ripped as one would expect a skilled predator to be. He was God’s most revered and trusted enforcer, and his body reflected that calling. His hair, as always, was slightly overlong, but she would fight off anyone who approached him with shears.
“Could God have waited any longer to bail me out of the mess he put me in?” she groused.
“Did you note the lack of fire?” His voice—dark and slightly raspy—was pure seduction, even when laced with the resonance unique to archangels. It didn’t sound that way when he spoke to her telepathically, which was sadly appropriate. Who he was in reality was far different from who he was in her mind.
She blinked up at him. “You bailed me out? What the hell? Was he just going to let me die? Again?”
“Obviously not, since you’re not dead. It was a lesson in faith.”
“More like a lesson in ‘I am God, see me f**k with you.”
“Watch it’ he admonished.
Eve accepted his proffered hand. As he pulled her upright, his powerful chest and tautly ridged abdomen flexed noticeably beneath his fitted white T-shirt. She couldn’t help noticing stuff like that, even though she couldn’t touch what she was looking at.
“What is it with demons and bathrooms?” she asked. “Grimshaw started a trend when he sent that dragon to kill me. I swear I’ve vanquished at least half a dozen Infernals in bathrooms since then.”
The dragon had been a courtier in Asmodeus’s court, but he’d killed her for Charles Grimshaw— former Alpha of the Northern California Black Diamond Pack and father of the wolf she’d had to kill twice. Demon retaliation was a bitch.
Alec cursed at the sight of her thigh. Her toes were squishing in the blood soaking her sock and puddling along the sole. She would need a new pair of boots.
He bent to examine her wound more closely. “I would have gotten here sooner, but I had to scare off the crowd of Infernals in the hall first.”
“Crowd?”
“I don’t think the ice bitch was kidding about the bounty.”
“What do you know that I don’t? You wouldn’t believe an Infernal without some sort of proof.”
Alec had assumed control over the day-to-day operation of Gadara Enterprises—the secular front for the North American firm of Marks—since the archangel Raguel had been taken prisoner by Satan a couple of months back. That meant Alec was privy to almost every hellacious and celestial happening that occurred between the top of Alaska to the end of Mexico.
“The number of Infernals in Orange County has tripled in the last two weeks.”
Which was when she’d graduated from training. As she was often reminded, nothing was a coincidence. “No wonder it’s been so busy around here.”
He gave her a resigned look. “It will get busier, if Sammael’s set his sights on you.”
“With a free-for-all bounty open to all classes of demons? Jeez, you’d think I kicked his puppy or something. Oh wait. . . I did.” Eve put weight on her wounded leg and winced at the immediate throb of agony.
Alec tucked his shoulder under her arm to support her. “We need to bandage that leg, smart ass.”
“You like my ass, and not because of its IQ.”
“Love it.” He gave her butt an affectionate squeeze. Alec might be restricted from feeling emotional love for her, but lust wasn’t a problem. “But I love the rest of your hot body, too, and I’d like to keep it in one piece.”
The mark enabled her to heal super fast. In an hour or two, only a pink scar would remain, and by nightfall, the injury would be nothing but a memory. But she could help move things along in the recovery department by closing the hole with some butterfly bandages. She’d have to hurry; her mom was still waiting for her.
I’ll take care of Miyoko, he assured her.
“I’ll take Eve back to her place to change,” a deep voice intruded.
They turned their heads to find Reed by the door. The men’s features were similar enough to betray them as siblings, but they were otherwise polar opposites. Reed favored Armani suits and faultless haircuts. Today he wore black slacks and a lavender dress shirt open at the throat and rolled at the wrists. It was a testament to how completely, robustly male he was that he could look so damn fine in such a soft color.
Alec’s arm at her waist tightened. The two brothers were like oil and kerosene together. Dangerously flammable. They refused to tell her what started their lifelong feud, and they kept the memory so repressed in the darkest corners of their minds that she hadn’t yet been able to find it. Whatever the sore spot was, the murderous rage it incited was easily goaded.
They’d been killing each other for years—Cain more so than Abel—but were always resurrected by God to fight some more.
Which was just nasty in her opinion. Why God enabled the two brothers to keep fighting was beyond her comprehension.
“What are we going to do about this mess?” She offered a soothing smile to Alec before stepping away from him. A trail of blood marked her recent kamikaze slide across the floor. The rapidly melting ice was spreading the crimson stain along the grout lines, creating an oddly compelling map.
Stepping into the water, Alec snapped his fingers and the liquid and blood filled the nearest sink, transferred so quickly she hadn’t caught the movement even with her enhanced senses. She would go home with Reed in similar fashion.
Thankfully, Marks had handlers to pick up after them. She was luckier than most in that she had Cain, too, although that created some friction with many of the other Marks who thought she had an advantage. They didn’t take into consideration how many demons wanted to use her to get to the deadliest Mark of them all. She might as well wear a bull’s-eye for cocky and rash Infernals to aim for.