Demon Soul (6 page)

At their entrance, the two turned to look at the door. "Busy here," Justin barked.

"So am I. Look." Gabriel pushed Rose in front of him. She stood there, her head held high. Gabriel might hate her, but it’s not like she’d had any control over what had happened.

The woman had eyes only for Rose. "Oh." Her voice was faint.

"See? I didn't make it up. She's real, she's here, and she's, she's..." Justin looked harder at Rose. He sat against the desk, stunned. “Wow.”

"She's an angel?" The woman took a step back. "No..."

Justin shook his head doubtfully. "Probably not. They aren't usually found this far south." He sighed, turned to Gabriel. "Gabriel, Rose, meet Magdalena de la Cruz. Magdalena, this is my brother Gabriel, and Rose Walters.  Magdalena is here because she thinks she's as good as her boss."

“He’s not my boss,” she snapped. “You can call me Maggie,” she said to the newcomers.

"She
glows
," Gabriel said, gesturing to Rose.

Maggie laughed. "I noticed."

"She didn't earlier," Justin muttered.

"I take back almost everything I said about you, Justin." Maggie circled Rose, fascinated.

“Oh, it gets better. She just took what was left of my soul. ” Gabriel leaned against the wall, his palms flat against it.

Justin stiffened and even Maggie’s eyes turned cold.

Rose caught her breath. “I didn’t know it until it happened. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident, I guess you could call it. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, right,” Gabriel muttered.

“Who really sent you?” Justin crossed his arms, looking much more formidable without his signature smile.

“I’ve already told you everything. Gabriel’s been in my head, he knows what I know. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I didn’t mean to take his soul.” She turned to Gabriel, her hands reaching for him. “I’ll give it back to you. Here, let me give it back,” she pleaded, and walked toward him.

Maggie put a hand on Rose’s arm. “Wait.” She turned to Justin. “She’s a Soul Chalice? You weren’t joking?”

“I don’t usually joke about things like this.”

“I’ve never met a Soul Chalice before. I don’t even know how they work.” Maggie narrowed her eyes as she studied Rose.

Frustration flowed through her. “I’m a human. I work the same way every other human works.” Rose shook off Maggie’s hand, her confusion flipping into irritation. “I eat, I sleep, I dream, I love, I hate, I have nightmares. This, right now, has turned into a nightmare that I can’t wake up from. Just let me give him his soul back, and I’ll leave.”

“You can’t leave.” Gabriel looked at her accusingly. “You can’t. If you really are a Soul Chalice then you’re my only hope of getting my soul, the majority of it, back from Satine.”

Maggie tilted her head toward Gabriel. “How does it feel, having your soul in two places?”

“Not now, Magdalena.”

Maggie flushed at Justin’s reproof. “Sorry.”

Rose barely heard them talking, she was so focused on Gabriel. “Will you let me try to return it to you? Please. I’d do anything to help you. You must know that.”

Gabriel winced. “You can try.” He flicked a glance at Justin. “My demon is unstable. I had problems, the past two days, of turning into my demon without being aware of it. Now that my soul is entirely gone?” He shook his head and flexed his hands. They fluctuated between human and demon, quick and sharp visual changes that blurred under Rose’s eyes. Maggie sucked in a breath and Gabriel looked to Rose. “I just don’t know.”

Justin moved to Gabriel’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got you. Go ahead, Rose.”

 She took a couple of steps toward him, but his ferocious concentration unnerved her. “Would you, um, close your eyes?”

Anger flared, but he shut them. Rose took another two steps and held her hand out to him, unsure. Finally she pressed her hand to his broad chest. She glanced over to Justin. He’d reverted to neutral, but stood ready to help his brother.

Rose closed her eyes and with all her heart, she willed his soul out of her and back into him.

* * *

Gabriel felt her touch go through him, soothing him. His demon reluctantly receded. As they stood there, connected through her hand, he could breathe easier. His vision, too, had cleared. It was as though she were containing his demon, somehow.

But his soul stayed stubbornly within the girl in front of him.

He opened his eyes and looked to his brother. “Nothing.”

“I’m trying. I swear it, I really am trying.” Pure determination rang in Rose’s voice.

Justin frowned. “Nothing? I felt something. You didn’t feel anything?”

Gabriel gave a slight shake of his head. He put his hand over hers. “You tried,” he said to Rose. He’d revised his opinion of her so many times in the past few hours that he didn’t know what to think anymore.

“Damn.” Rose freed her hand, wrapped her arms around her waist and turned toward the windows.

Gabriel took a deep breath and bent his head to Justin. “I did feel something,” he said softly.

“I know. Your demon is quiet now.”

“I don’t know how to explain it.” Gabriel glanced at Rose now on the far end of the small office and lowered his voice again. “Maybe it’s because she does have my soul? Maybe that’s why my demon subsides when she touches me?”

“That makes as much sense as any other explanation.”

Magdalena stepped closer. “So she really is a Soul Chalice?”

“I think we have to make that assumption. Which means, Gabriel, you need to stick close to her.”

"She spent time in Purgatory. Anything could have happened to her there." He looked over at Rose and sighed.  “She fills me.”

Maggie looked at him sharply. "She what?"

"You know we're tribreds?" At her impatient nod, he continued. "When I'm running low on energy, I can feed off other people’s fear. Pain. Panic. It's a desperation move on my part, and it doesn't feel good. A bracing tonic that energizes you, but at the same time turns your stomach."

“Okay.”

"But this is different - she
fills
me. A touch from her is pure energy, clean, light. Similar to what you do, Justin, but different. It's not a healing. It doesn't feel like a Fae power. But it makes me whole."

Maggie looked to the girl in the window thoughtfully. "Maybe I wasn't far off. Maybe she
is
an angel of some sort. Soul Chalice, huh?"

"Her aura grew solid and shimmery like that after I contacted Satine. Her scent is tainted with a splash of demon and something else I can’t quite identify." Gabriel leaned against the doorjamb. He held out his forearm, brushed at the burn marks there. "And her fingers carry fire. I thought maybe she’d picked up a fire demon, or was part fire demon herself, but now I don’t know."

"We need to know more about Soul Chalices," mused Justin. “I just don’t know where to go for that kind of information.”

Gabriel rubbed his chest absently. "With an aura that strong, coupled with that pull she has, demons will come out of the woodwork after her.”

Rose approached them again. "I’ve been thinking. I'm here to save you, Gabriel. If I'm not supposed to have your soul right now, I don't think I could. I don't think it would have been possible to take it from you if it weren’t meant to be."

Maggie nodded. “So what’s your theory?”

"That I’m meant to hold his soul for now. He’s not supposed to have it, not right now. I am. It makes sense when you think about it.” She turned toward Gabriel. “I mean, it didn’t hurt you, did it? It didn’t hurt the same way as it did when Satine stole most of your soul.”

He frowned, aware that his initial panic at missing his soul had subsided. The gaping hole was there, but no panic. “You’re right. It didn’t hurt at all. But that might have been the magic she used.”

“Maybe. But I didn’t use any magic. So just maybe I’m right.” Hope shone in her eyes.

Maggie turned to the men. “Hey, guys.  Can you give us girls some alone time? We won’t go anywhere, I promise."

Gabriel looked to Rose. “Okay?”

"It's fine by me."

"Right, then, off you go," and before he knew it, Gabriel found himself and Justin herded out and the door closed behind them with an audible ‘click’.

“I can’t believe you have to do this twice in one day.”

“I used to do it more than twice a day on you, remember?”

Gabriel remembered. He sat motionless while Justin did his Fae healing thing on him. That's how he used to think about it when they were kids, the "Fae healing thing". Justin would practice whenever one of them got a black eye or a skinned knee.

Gabriel had tried to do it once but ended up giving his brother an even bigger bruise. He never bothered again, figuring he didn't have enough Fae blood in him to get the healing gene the others had. Oh, he could do some small Fae things, like tapping into the power of all plant life; but he couldn’t heal.

It just confirmed what he already knew. He was a killer.

"So. Did you find Satine?"

"Yeah. She's local – owns a nightclub called Twisted. I'm meeting her late tonight."

Justin's hand moved up one arm to where scorch marks from Rose's fingers showed. The cool healing flowed, erasing the marks. He hovered his hand over Gabriel's heart, then up and down Gabriel's body, side to side.

"I can feel the place where your soul should be," Justin said. "I've never felt that before, that emptiness."

"Does it feel wrong?"

“Yeah, it does. But I believe in that girl, I believe she’ll help. I know, that sounds weird."

"You always sound weird."

"Ha ha." He moved his hand up Gabriel's neck to the scarred cheek.

Gabriel felt a cool tingling against his scar and hit his brother's hand aside. "Don't waste the energy." The words came out harsh. "I know how it drains you."

Justin sat back, concern in his moss-green eyes. "What happened to you? You didn't have that ten years ago."

"Demon fire, a very long time ago." He shrugged. "A lot of things happened to me. Nothing you could have fixed, so drop it. Okay?"

"Gabriel!" Rose's scream cut through the thin walls of the office.

Gabriel was up and halfway down the hall before she'd finished his name, the terrors in her voice a surprising prod to his protective instincts.

He shoved open the door to the conference room to see Maggie frozen by the couch and Rose plastered against a window, flames licking at her right arm. Shadows of tiny horns graced her temples and her skin had an orange cast.

Rose shot him a defiant look out of whirling yellow eyes. "Help me, damn it!"

Gabriel cursed under his breath and brought lessons back to mind he'd thought forgotten long ago. "Close your eyes and breathe slowly. No one is going to hurt you. We're here to help." He kept his voice low and even as he took measured steps toward her.

"You're fine, Rose. You call the fire and it responds to your call. Now thank it and send it back to its source. Send it away."

The flames shrank, disappeared as he reached her. Gabriel brushed his hand along her arm, cooling the heat there. Rose opened her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. "Okay, scared now. Really."