Demon Bound Read Free

determine size and direction.
    No human scent lingered in the air. Either the footprints were well over a week old . . . or a human hadn’t made them.
    Jake performed another mental sweep, but knew it wouldn’t be reliable. Any demon or Guardian knew how to conceal his presence, and dense stone could dull psychic probes.
    The footprints were probably nothing—but he wouldn’t go in unprepared.
    He stored several pistols and swords in his hammerspace, but called in a crossbow. The grip was comfortable when the weapon appeared in his hand; he practiced with it often.
    The prints vanished past the second chamber, where the corridor angled to the right and led to a narrow stairwell. It was too far inside for the wind to blow, and only a trace amount of sand lay scattered on the bare floor.
    He jogged up the stairs—three hundred and fifty—and into another corridor, his weapon ready at his shoulder. There were dozens more chambers on this level, and each he passed was stripped to its square bones. A few had stone benches carved around the perimeter of the room; more had recesses cut into the walls like shelves. The ceilings were high and flat.
    At the top of another long stairwell, the darkness, which had threatened with shadows in the corners of each chamber, became absolute.
    Surprised, Jake stopped. Even on moonless, overcast nights and in closed rooms, objects were clear to his Guardian eyesight. He only needed the faintest illumination to see: star shine, refracted light, the tiny glow of an LED indicator.
    But this was like closing his eyes and wrapping his head in a heavy black sack—and it was the first time he’d seen true darkness since he’d done exactly that as a kid. He’d walked out to the middle of a Kansas cornfield, put on the hood, and stumbled around with his arms out—
    His short laugh echoed in the stone chamber, revealing its enormous size and pressing away the suffocating darkness. Fifty years had passed, and he’d thought of that cornfield often, but had forgotten how that particular adventure had ended: his granddad had snuck up behind and scared the piss out of him.
    He’d screamed and taken off running.
    Jake shook his head, grinning. No wonder he’d tried to forget that part. His ten-year-old pride had been shredded.
    His sixty-year-old pride withstood being scared all the time—but stumbling around here wouldn’t get him very far.
    He searched through his hammerspace, his mind skipping over each item. There’d be something he could use. He’d never bothered to store a flashlight; he’d never needed one.
    Still didn’t. The dim backlight from his cell phone lit the chamber like a carbide lamp.
    It took a moment to register what he was seeing. The enormous chamber was terraced. A deep, rectangular pit had been carved into the floor of each level, with steps leading to the bottom. A colonnade surrounded the room; behind the rows of columns, giant arched entryways led east, west, north.
    A bath, he realized. A Roman bath. Sculpted out of solid granite.
    Inside a mountain.
    Two or three thousand years ago, someone in Tunisia had been flippin’ insane.
    Jake lowered the crossbow to his side, tossed a coin out of his hammerspace. Heads, so he went east.
    An antechamber lay past the bath. Jake stopped, blinking up at the arch leading out—a line of symbols had been carved above it. Aside from the columns and the design of the temple, it was the first indication of a specific culture he’d seen.
    But the symbols weren’t Latin or Greek. He’d have recognized those. No, this reminded him of a script he’d only seen engraved in living flesh and used to cast spells.
    A shiver ran up his spine. He turned and backed beneath the arch into the next chamber.
    It didn’t have to be the demonic script. There were many ancient languages he didn’t know. He’d take a picture on his way out—another Guardian would recognize it, or he’d find a reference in the Archives.
    Where he’d probably