Read Demon Bound for Free Online

the opposite side of the copse, Irena was working over a steaming body.
    The deer snorted and circled, watching them warily. Blood darkened Irena’s forearms, obscuring to her elbows the blue tattoos that decorated the length of her arms. She’d vanished her white mantle. Her smithy’s apron protected her chest, leaving her arms and back bare.
    Alice ran her hands down her sleeves. She could never be comfortable with so much exposed.
    â€œAnd now you are quiet.” Irena did not look up as she disemboweled the deer. The grisly task was not so different from the one Alice had performed on the demon, only hours before. “You creep up on me like Zorya Polunochnaya, swathed in darkness. You only lack the white hair and hunched back.”
    Like the midnight aurora? Alice frowned, until she realized that she’d translated zorya polunochnaya to English instead of hearing it as a name. Oh, dear. When had she last read about the Zorya? To the best of her recollection, they were three mythical goddesses watching over a sky hound chained to a constellation. The hound would destroy the universe if he broke his bonds.
    Alice considered that as Irena rolled the deer’s body onto its back. The heat of its blood and innards had melted the snow to pink slush.
    Irena might have been the morning Zorya, Alice decided. The fierce young warrior. Neither of them would be the mother.
    And Alice would rather the world not rely on her as their defense against annihilation by a godhound. Demons were quite enough. “If I must be a crone,” she said, “I would prefer to be Baba Yaga.”
    â€œWould you aid the lost, or abduct children and eat them?”
    â€œBoth. It would lend more variety to my day. I should also like to have invisible servants.”
    Irena snorted. “And a home built on dancing chicken legs? With no windows, no doors—”
    â€œAnd you will not build a chimney through which I could leave.”
    The angled knife in Irena’s hand hesitated. Then she finished the cut, jaggedly slicing through the breastbone.
    Alice’s voice did not tremble. She could take pride in that, she supposed. At this point, it was the small things that counted. “A room of metal I cannot escape. Twenty years ago, Irena, you promised me this. If you hadn’t, I never would have returned to Earth after I completed my training.”
    â€œWe also promised never to speak of it again until necessary. Is it?”
    â€œTeqon contacted me. I’m to fulfill my bargain, or be killed.”
    Irena’s knife regained its former precision. “You are still trying to find an alternative?”
    Trying, but not succeeding very well. “Yes. There must be something he wants more than Michael’s heart. Something that would release me.”
    â€œSomething tied to this prophecy Drifter told us about?”
    Alice laced her fingers together, as if protecting the spark of hope that had burned in the months since she’d heard of the prophecy. “Perhaps.”
    Irena sat back on her heels, brushed her hair from her forehead with a bloody hand. “Teqon follows Belial in his war against Lucifer.”
    â€œYes.” Belial claimed that he fought for redemption, to return to the glory of Heaven. Alice didn’t believe him—didn’t think any Guardian believed him.
    â€œAnd according to the prophecy, Belial will be victorious.”
    â€œPerhaps,” Alice said again. What Ethan had told them was vague, at best. Belial’s demons would defeat Lucifer, but first they had to win other battles.
    What those battles were and how they would be won was still unknown, to Guardians and demons both.
    Irena reached into the chest cavity, tore out the heart. Alice waited quietly as the other woman said a few reverent words over it. When Irena tore off a chunk with her teeth, Alice said, “It is Michael’s opinion that the prophecy has no validity—that