Using the pillar as a support, he stood, his ribs aching from their collision with the steel. He stumbled to the office door—just in time to see Claire break the rope like it was paper and slide off the desk with the same deadly grace he remembered from Natasha.
“Free.” She laughed. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “How could I have locked myself away like that—over a moment of guilt? Move one more inch, Jinn, and I will return you to the smoke and sand you came from.”
Marcus froze behind her, a small wrench clutched in one hand. Eric guessed it was iron.
“Claire.” Marcus didn’t flinch when she spun to face him. The same cold power emanated from her that Eric saw surrounding Natasha. “Remember why you have done this.”
The hand she raised to hurl some torment at him stilled. Then it started to shake.
“Annie,” she whispered. “How could I—drop the iron, Eric, before I drop you.” Claire glanced over her shoulder—and Eric jerked. Her eyes were silver, the blue swallowed by the almost pulsing color. “I need what strength I can keep, after you freed me with that damned thing. Now drop it.”
He let it slip out of his hand. The awl clattered against the cement, and Claire stepped back as it bounced toward her. Marcus wrapped both arms around her, pinned her arms to her sides and lifted her off her feet.
She screamed, kicked back, her heel smacking his leg. Marcus winced, but he kept moving until he trapped her against the glass wall. Eric saw the small iron wrench in his back pocket, which explained why he had any control over her. He must have slipped it there when Eric had her attention.
“From this moment, demon, you will squelch you desire for violence, and torture, and control, and focus on the reason you are putting yourself through this. Until we reach Natasha you will behave, or I will use whatever means necessary to do it for you.”
“I got it, Jinn. Let go of me—the iron in your pocket is making my injury throb like a bad tooth.” She took in a deep breath, and her next words sounded like the Claire Eric knew—before. “Please, Marcus. We are running out of time. And my strength is not what it was.”
He freed her, one hand on the wrench as he backed away. Claire turned, slowly, and Eric flinched when he saw the blood staining the front of her still opened jeans. She zipped them, gasping as the fabric brushed against the ragged wound. When she looked up, the blue had returned to her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice raw. “Thank you for believing, when you could have just as easily tied me up and dragged me to Natasha.”
Marcus smiled. “It would have been easier.”
“I do have one more favor to ask of you.”
Marcus leaned in when she whispered, and both eyebrows rose. “We can take the time for that. It will be a surprise for Natasha, and an unpleasant one.”
“That’s the idea.” Her laugh sounded rusty. “Let’s go. It’s time to get Annie back, free my cousin, and send the demon riding her back to Hell.”
FIFTEEN
Claire sat in the backseat of Marcus’ Jaguar, swallowing a scream when her jeans shifted over the gash on her hip. It took every ounce of control she had not to let her true nature take over.
The freedom, the power that flooded her when her barrier had been breached almost turned her back into that grasping creature. Into the demon who spent hundreds of years taking out the pain of banishment on humans who could not defend against her.
Until Claire—the real Claire—crashed into the demon’s existence. The child who fought for her life in a river, trapped in a sinking car while her parents died before her eyes. The child who became a demon’s salvation.
The demon that innocent child saved was hiding in a cave not far from the accident, licking her wounds after facing off with another demon who decided she would be the one to open the way home for him.
The body she rode was dying, and would finish the job the moment she left it. She was about to shed that body when she heard the screaming.
It took the last of the strength in her borrowed body, but the demon pulled a young girl out of the car that was nearly submerged in the deep, icy river. She couldn’t save the girl, but she couldn’t leave her to die, not alone. The compassion of the woman she possessed helped her remember her own, buried under centuries of hate and despair. The demon had been one of the blessed once, created and cherished by a beloved Father, before she gave away all that she was in a moment of rebellion. In the end she joined her brother Lucifer, and became one of the fallen.
When the girl Claire died in her arms, the demon made a vow to bury her true nature forever. To do what she could to make amends, by living as human, helping where she could. To do that, she needed a body.