Read Demon Bound for Free Online

Earth.
    The warning light blinked again.
    Worthless, wretched machine. But there was no reasoning with it. She selected photos to print and wrote them to a flash drive. For now, she would have to rely on her memory and her sketches.
    Her senses hummed, and she glanced up, reaching out with her Gift. Beyond the entrance to her apartment, Remus and Romulus buzzed with excitement over some disturbance.
    Alice heard laughter a moment later. Her mouth slackened in what must have been an idiotic expression of incomprehension.
    Silly, softheaded cow. What was there not to comprehend? With a few exceptions, only Guardians had stepped foot in Caelum since the angels had transferred the realm over to Michael.
    Therefore, Guardians must be in her courtyard.
    Straightening, she moved to the marble doors that led from her quarters. On her portico, a web stretching between two columns trembled as Remus scurried upward to hide in the scrollwork. Romulus remained behind, repairing a limp thread like a nervous old woman tidying a room for unexpected guests.
    Alice resisted the urge to smooth her hand over her hair. An ache took up residence in her chest, but she repressed that as well.
    Though many Guardians had once lived in this part of Caelum, it had been empty since the Ascension. Since, more than a decade earlier, silence had abruptly fallen over the city as thousands of heartbeats and voices were extinguished. Alice hadn’t comprehended then, either—until she’d walked into the courtyard, and none of her students had been there to greet her.
    They’d spoken of Ascending before. Unconvinced that Guardians were needed in a modern world, they’d all chosen to move on to their afterlife.
    So had thousands of other Guardians; less than forty remained after the Ascension. Since then, only a few bored novices had wandered in this direction.
    And two years ago, when the novices had begun training in San Francisco instead of Caelum, “few” had dwindled to “none.”
    Now there was laughter in the courtyard again. The ivory buildings surrounding the tiled square were not as tall as they were in other parts of the city, or as graceful. There were more straight edges here, fewer domes and spires. But the marble ivy climbing their walls seemed to seek the touch of the sun, and was found nowhere else in Caelum. In the center of the courtyard, a sculpted ash tree spread its translucent stone leaves over an un-moving shadow. The pavers at the base of the trunk buckled, as if a root system fought for space below the ground.
    She could have sketched every detail in the courtyard with her eyes closed, yet with that sound warming the air, the familiar scene suddenly looked foreign to her.
    Oh, dear. Alice pressed her lips together. Foreign was a bit of an overstatement, wasn’t it? Next she would be decrying that the appearance of true life had stripped the courtyard of its illusions, leaving only coldness and death, woe and fie!
    If she let herself, the depths of histrionics she might plumb were dizzying.
    This was not something foreign, but something forgotten. And the courtyard was just as lovely and unique as it had ever been.
    Folding her arms over her chest, Alice watched the novice from the temple—Jake, she reminded herself—perform an odd, hip-and knee-twisting dance beneath the tree. Drusilla had doubled over, holding her sides and begging him to stop. Next to her, Pim had bent as well; but instead of laughing, the novice had her hands braced on her knees. Her sleek bowl of black hair slanted forward across her cheeks, and her psychic scent billowed with nausea.
    Nausea? Guardians didn’t need to eat and were never sickened by it. So Jake’s queer dance probably celebrated a successful teleportation, Alice decided. Drusilla, older and more accustomed to the disorientation that accompanied the jump, wasn’t as affected as the novice she mentored.
    Only Michael, Selah, and Jake could teleport, so Alice rarely used that method to