Read Smoke and Ashes for Free Online

your education.” Dark eyes sparkled again. “I’m assuming that in this brave new millennium you don’t use the word master.”
    â€œWhat makes you think I have a teacher?”
    Leah sighed. “You’re young. Far too young to be on your own.”
    â€œSurprise.” He spread his hands.
    Brows rose. “What happened to your teacher?”
    He pushed chow mein around his plate. “I thought we were going to talk about the naked horny dude.”
    Fortunately, only a little rice went up her nose. When she finished laughing and snorting and blowing her nose on the crumpled handful of toilet paper Tony’d brought from the bathroom, she said, “His name is Ryne Cyratane. It means: He Who Brings Desire and Destruction. He’s a Demonlord.”
    â€œOh, man.” The fork bounced as he dropped it on the table. “Not again.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œA few years ago, some friends of mine stopped a Demonlord from coming through in Toronto.”
    â€œComing through?”
    â€œYeah, there was this lesser demon writing the Demonlord’s name on the city in blood and…” He frowned, trying unsuccessfully to remember the specifics Henry had told him about how they’d finally defeated it. “It got complicated, but he didn’t make it.”
    â€œObviously.” Her tone went beyond dry to desiccated. “Well, there’s no need for you to worry about this one. I’ve got him contained.” She stood and pulled up her sweater.
    â€œNice tat.”
    â€œThank you.” It circled her navel, row after row of black glyphs spreading almost up to the edge of her ribs like ripples moving out from the point of impact. “It’s a Demongate. As long as I live, the gate stays closed and my lord is denied reentry to this world.”
    â€œYour lord?”
    â€œLong story.”
    â€œOkay. Reentry?”
    â€œHe was here about four thousand years ago. For almost five hundred years, worshiped as a god, he ruled a territory in what’s now Lebanon. Ish. Same general geography anyway, near as I can figure. He had a temple, he had handmaidens, he had a lot of sex.”
    That would be the desire part, Tony figured.
    â€œThen something came up—he’s never said what—and he created a gate to return to the hell he came from. It took a lot of power. To get it, he killed everyone in the village and, with their blood, anchored the gate in his sole surviving handmaiden.”
    And that would be the destruction. Tony leaned closer. The tat wasn’t black. Not exactly. It was a very, very dark red-brown. “You’re the handmaiden.”
    â€œHandmaiden, priestess, lover; I was his…”
    â€œGirlfriend?” He winced at her expression. “Sorry. I was just channeling Young Frankenstein , you know when Frau Blucher is explaining and…Never mind. Sorry. Totally inappropriate interruption. I’ll just, uh, be quiet now.”
    She waited a moment longer.
    Tony picked up his fork and ate some more rice and tried to look like there was some other idiot in his apartment who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
    â€œI was his most beloved.” Leah continued at last. Her fingertips lightly stroked the edges of the pattern, raising goose bumps on her skin. “He cut the gate into my flesh, glyphs written in the blood of my people, because he intended to return but would be unable to open the gate from the other side. Gates from the hells have to be opened from our side or we’d be overrun by demons in a heartbeat.”
    â€œAnd they have to be asked in?” Then he remembered that he’d said he’d be quiet and he shrugged apologetically, but she seemed resigned to the interruption.
    â€œYou’re confused, that’s vampires.”
    It didn’t seem like the right time to correct her. Henry went where he wanted. “Why didn’t this Ryne