Demon Bound Read Online Free PDF Page A

message.
    Her gaze drifted to the male’s chest, and a knife appeared in her hand. It would not be the heart Teqon wanted.
    But it would serve as an effective message in return.

CHAPTER 2
    The Pontic Steppe was even less welcoming than the Sahara. Once, it had been home to the Scythians and the Sarmatians, the Goths and the Huns. In her mind, Alice could see the paths those ancient peoples had taken on foot and by horse, their trading routes, and maps blazed with violence and bloodshed.
    These days, the people rode harvesting combines instead of horses, and the only paths they cut were through fields of wheat.
    But they did not harvest now—and blood would be spilled again, very soon.
    From the air, Alice searched the flat, snowy landscape. Though the cold did not affect her any more than the heat of the desert had, she shivered.
    She rarely felt alone; here, she did. The early winter had killed off the spiders or driven them to shelter in homes and outbuildings. In the endless frozen stretch below, there were no minds to connect to, no whispers for her Gift to collect.
    If she had been thinking clearly when she left, Alice would have brought a few of the cave weavers that had served her so well in the temple. Their ability to detect the slightest vibration—a footstep, the disturbance of air from a passing body or the flap of a wing—had allowed Alice to track the demons’ progress through the temple better than her hearing could have, and to navigate through the dark.
    Without a spider’s senses enhancing her own, she was bereft.
    She glanced down. A hare raced across the field below, then disappeared in a burrow beneath the snow. Its heartbeat fluttered in her ears.
    Alice smiled into the night sky. What a wretched creature she was. A Guardian possessed of extraordinary powers, yet blind and deaf without eight-legged companions.
    How very pitiable. Hardly fit to crawl through the sewers of Cairo, let alone the marble courtyards of Caelum. She ought to be eating rats . . . No, she ought to be feeding them her own contemptible entrails. That was, if they would not turn up their twitching noses at such an offering—
    If she went any further, she would burst into laughter.
    Satisfied that she’d trampled her melancholy mood, she reached out. Finally, a tendril from a familiar psychic scent flicked against her mind. Alice grabbed hold and followed it east.

    She found Irena hunting roe deer sheltered within a copse of stunted trees.
    There would be little contest. As fleet as the deer were, a Guardian could easily outrace them. Irena’s bow made it more sporting, perhaps—but she would be upon her target so quickly, ending its suffering immediately after the arrow struck, that Alice wondered why Irena didn’t just run the animal down with her kukri knives.
    Irena crawled forward through the snow. A white mantle concealed her shoulders and auburn hair, chopped short by her own sword, its reds as varied as the hide of the deer she stalked. The wind carried the scent of dried blood and soot that stained her leather leggings, yet they were barely discernible beneath the musk of the herd.
    Better to have come from upwind, Alice thought. Irena’s victory over her prey was certain, so she should have given them an opportunity to flee. Not picked them off while they slept.
    Alice’s boots crunched the snow as she landed. Irena froze, and cast a killing look over her shoulder.
    With a wave of her hand, Alice called, “A very good evening to you!”
    Though Alice didn’t know the word Irena spat, it was blunt and unmistakably Slavic.
    Alice didn’t have to yell over the thundering hooves for Irena to hear her, but once a task was begun, it was best to do it well. And besides, she needed to practice her Russian. “It is a cold night for hunting, yes?”
    Irena was already streaking through the trees. Alice followed at a leisurely pace. When she emerged from the opposite side of the copse, Irena was working over a