Bound by Light (19 page)

August glanced at his signet ring, a coiled serpent. It gleamed in the bright lighting, as if giving shine to the greatest of August’s many fronts and hoaxes.

The Legion itself.

A vehicle. A means to a glorious and well-deserved endgame with this shabby, deteriorated world.

As the men collected the bag and headed for the basement door, August smiled at Klaus once more, this time showing a few teeth.

Klaus had gone very, very pale.

Yes, he knew what was in the basement, too, and he had no taste for the brutish but highly effective Asmodai demons.

"Perhaps we should be going." August gestured to the door and allowed the perfect measure of tension and concern to lace his tone. "
Before
they return with our demon friends."

With no further prompting, Klaus all but ran back out to the waiting streets.

(13)

Black mist draped the mountaintop like a burial shroud.

In the moonlit night, nothing looked real or right or normal, yet everything seemed familiar.

Merilee’s heart thundered as she let herself down from the brief lift of her air funnel. Wind stroked her skin, then abandoned her. Her feet touched rock and dirt, and she knew,
knew
she had been to this cliffside before.

And it hadn’t been pleasant.

Káto Ólimbos.

No!

I’m not supposed to be here. It’s a transgression. It’s forbidden.

On instinct, she reached for her bow—and found it missing.

Shit. I’m not even wearing clothes.

She sucked in a breath and the copper stench of carnage filled her senses. Cold seeped through her skin, chilling her deep inside. Death itself seemed to ooze around her, drifting in that black fog, obvious even though she could see only a few feet in each direction.

Everything inside Merilee rebelled against standing on the bleak, rotting mountain.

This was a mistake. Time to go.

She had to get away from here
right now.

Too late,
her mind whispered in a rough, harsh voice that didn’t even sound like her own, as three or four black feathers drifted out of the mist to land at her feet.

They’re coming.

My life is forfeit now. I came here of my own free will. I’m just a suicide, as far as they’re concerned.

Mouth dry, chest tight, Merilee reached for her wind. Her elemental power grabbed so harshly at her own insides that her gut ached—but nothing happened.

"Damn it!" she yelled out loud, but the sound fell flat against the fog.

She could barely force in her next breath.

A shadow emerged from the unnatural mountain mists. Another, and another. Five, ten, too many to count, too fast to distinguish.

Confused, disoriented, Merilee assumed a defensive stance, circling as the dark shapes clotted into a solid wall around her. She felt like a novice. Her hands shook in ready position, and her muscles went weak from the primal terror coursing through her body.

The shadows began to take shape. Tall and lean, almost gaunt. Limbs, then torn, feathery wings. Heads with long, wild black hair. Red robes spattered with blood and filth. Hooked fangs, stained with Athena only knew what, curled from the creatures’ mouths, and gore-coated claws pressed into their palms.

The Keres gazed at her with eyes blacker than space itself, moonlight glinting off the white patches of their fangs. Despite their horrific appearance and the grave-stench rising from them like a putrid miasma, the creatures struck Merilee as distinctly . . . female.

But nowhere near human. Not even demon.

The circle of black winged monsters tightened and moved toward her.

Merilee tried to react, but fear froze her in place.

This is where I die.

The Keres grabbed at her arms.

Claws tore into her bare skin.

Blood rushed across her neck and shoulders. Bolts of pain blasted from her head to her fingers.

Merilee screamed, but the sound got lost in a whir of wings.

Her feet left the ground.

Wind shrieked past her as if it didn’t recognize her as an air Sibyl at all.

What’shappeningwhat’shappeningGreatHerawhat—
Blood from the claw gouges streamed across Merilee’s eyes. She struggled. Her arms wouldn’t move. Her skin burned everywhere the creatures gripped her.

She screamed again. Kicked harder. More rough, clawed hands snatched at her legs. Agony! She hurt. She hurt everywhere, and she couldn’t move even a damned inch!

Her brain lurched as they shot forward, flying so fast Merilee’s skin pressed in against her bones.

Higher. Higher.

Through a fog of misery, Merilee wondered if the Keres planned to hurl her off the mountain. She almost hoped they would.

So much pain . . .

Abruptly, the pressure eased—but not the wrenching throb in her hundreds of cuts and stab wounds.

Merilee felt herself move downward and hang in place, as if suspended in the talons of a giant eagle.

She was staring at the Earth, closer, closer, until she could make out towns and cities—flattened. Floodwaters lapping at neighborhoods. Buildings burned and ruined. Great holes in the countryside.

What the hell? Did somebody set off a bomb?

With a twist, the creatures turned her north. In seconds, she was gazing at New York.

Lower. Closer.

Streets littered with dead Sibyls.

A few triads were still standing, still fighting—but they couldn’t last much longer.

Revulsion and disbelief surged through Merilee. Her breath came so short she got dizzy. She wanted to scream again, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came. She couldn’t hear or smell, or feel anything but frigid cold and the terrible, tearing pains in her neck, shoulders, and arms. All she could do was hang there and stare, and see, and refuse to accept the absurdity her eyes registered.

Elemental powers and human hands and weapons tore apart houses and buildings . . . and suddenly, she knew
he
was there. She felt his presence as brutally as the dig of talons in her skin.

He
was in the middle of it all. Behind it all. The man carved from cold gray stone.

Merilee forced herself to squint at the heinous scene below her.

He
was standing a few hundred yards away, on the shore of what looked like Ellis Island, in front of the Statue of Liberty, arms folded, thin, raptorlike face sharpened by a vicious, bloodthirsty expression barely visible underneath locks of black hair.

"Take me lower," Merilee urged the Keres, ignoring the blistering ache in her arms. She had to see the Stone Man better. She had to find out more.

The creatures let her go.

Just . . . dropped her.

"No!" Merilee plummeted down, down toward the Stone Man.

She tried to call the wind howling around her—nothing.

Reached for the air, for her power—nothing!

The Stone Man unhinged his jaw and opened his terrible beak of a mouth.

Silvery moonlight glared off huge, sharp teeth—

Jake sat up and threw his sheets onto the floor, sweat coating every inch of his flesh. His room—
not
the room he had known in childhood—was empty except for a bed and two dressers. The space around him lay dark and undisturbed, but inside him, the world crashed down in murderous chunks.

Merilee.

Tortured by the Keres.

Then eaten by
him.
The Stone Man.

That Stone Man bastard looked damned familiar, almost like an ibis, the symbol for that Egyptian god Phila Gruyere had been focused on when she summoned her Vodoun god.

Whoever—whatever—he was, if he so much as snapped one fingernail off Merilee’s hand . . .

Jake hurled himself out of bed, grabbed his jeans, and stepped into them as he shouldered open his bedroom door. He had trained the Astaroths for hours over the last two days, but at night he had been checking on Merilee constantly, even sitting outside the library door. Tonight was the first night he left her alone, and now this.

He lunged up the steps from his third-floor bedroom to the fourth floor. His wings punched against the skin of his back, almost emerging in response to his alarm for Merilee. Jake ground his teeth and held the wings back as he ran down the hall and pulled up short in front of the library’s locked double doors.

Behind him, groups of wind chimes suspended from the ceiling jerked and clattered.

"Merilee?" He pounded on the solid wood. He’d yank the doors off their hinges if he had to. "Merilee!"

His voice echoed through the townhouse, drowning out the erratic twitch of the chimes.

From inside the library came a loud thud, followed by what might have been a dictionary recitation of every swearword known to humanity.

Merilee’s voice.

Relief rushed through Jake. He stopped banging on the library doors and rubbed his throbbing knuckles.

Was she okay?

He glanced from his knuckles to the doors.

If she was okay—what the hell had he just seen?

Voices rumbled from the floors below. Doors opened. The ground gave an ominous shake-and-rattle, and footsteps sounded in the townhouse halls.

Jake ignored the commotion. In OCU headquarters, there was always
something
going on somewhere. Whatever it was, it wasn’t important to him, not at the moment.

He focused on the library doors, willing them to open and show him Merilee in one piece, no wounds, no bruises or missing legs.

The library doors slammed against the outer walls, powered by a terrific gust of wind that ripped one set of chimes free from its moorings. The little copper pipes clanged together as the set crashed to the top step and bounced down to the landing.

Merilee stood staring at him, mouth open, blue eyes wide, her blond hair scattered and dancing across her forehead like soft wisps of down. She was wearing a sheer blue tank top that reached to her thighs, apparently put on hastily and backward.

The outline of her figure was clearly visible against the thin, rippling fabric.

Jake blinked in the increasing wind, and his mind scrambled and rang like the frantic chimes.

She sleeps naked.

His cock bucked against his jeans as he remembered what it felt like to hold her body against his own, to feel her hard nipples pressed into his chest, the muscles of her ass pliable beneath his hands as she arched from pleasure at his touch.

He squeezed his aching knuckles to focus, and gazed from her angry face to her neck and the smooth olive skin of her nearly bare shoulders. No vile cuts. No streaks of blood.

Thank God.

Before Jake could ask about what he saw in his dreams, Merilee’s blue eyes flashed. She stomped out of the library, came straight up to him, stood on her toes, stuck her face in his, and shouted, "What the
fuck
did you do that for?"

She punched his chest with both fists.

Not gently.

Jake coughed as air swirled and whistled around them in one great dust-stirring funnel. Even without the small tornado, her nearness unsettled him in ways no woman had done—and in his two years of traveling, he’d made it his business to know as many females as possible. Research. Learning. Understanding. And hell, catching up to his body, his age, his life
now
.

This woman, though . . .

He fought a desire to take Merilee in his arms, close his eyes, and breathe in her gentle scent of white tea and honey.

She would probably beat him to death with wind-devils if he tried.

"You kiss me and then you vanish for two friggin’ days," she was saying. "I don’t care if you
were
training demons down in the basement. I don’t care if you
are
so goddamned handsome you could be a billboard model. You could have stopped in. Said hello. Spent a few minutes? I’m not some toy you can pick up and play with and then toss in the corner. I don’t—"