Demon Bound Read Free Page A

low-growing prickly scrub and the distant stretch of desert could be anywhere in North Africa or the Middle East. The recent sunset and mountain range narrowed it to Tunisia, Morocco, or Algeria; but as one of three Guardians who could teleport, Jake needed to learn how to identify a specific region within seconds.
    He needed to be able to go where he intended, too.
    A Gift ain’t nothing but knowledge and willpower. Drifter, his mentor, had tossed out that not-so-helpful advice ten minutes before when Jake had been trying to teleport from Drifter’s home in Seattle to the Archives building in Caelum.
    Jake shook his head, circled back toward the cliff. Ignorance wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t spineless, either. He’d known where Caelum was, and he’d wanted to visit the Archives—but he’d still had to scare himself shitless in order to make the jump.
    He’d also been praying he wouldn’t run into the Black Widow. An image of the archivist’s cold, disapproving stare had filled his mind just before he’d teleported.
    So he hadn’t focused hard enough; his Gift had picked up on his reluctance and landed him here. Wherever here—
    Hot diggety damn.
    With a snap of his wings, he drew up vertical and stared at the wall of stone.
    A temple had been carved into the face of the cliff.
    And he was catching flies. Jake closed his mouth, vanished his wings. The drop and knee-jarring thud against the ground shook away the last of his surprise.
    No way could something like this have remained undiscovered, not for the length of time the architecture suggested. The portico of columns was unmistakably Greek. The pediment and entablature recalled the Parthenon’s—only lacking the ornamental sculptures.
    The interior extended farther back into the mountain than even his Guardian sight could determine.
    He’d seen rock-cut buildings before. Petra, in Jordan—though those were of sandstone. The Hindu caves at Ellora were granite, like this was; but they were far more ornate, and completely excavated from the surrounding mountainside.
    With a quick mental touch, Jake pulled the GPS receiver from his hammerspace. Screw failure—and, for now, the Archives.
    He was in Kebili, a sparsely populated governorate in south-western Tunisia. After marking the coordinates, Jake vanished the device back into his mental storage. He couldn’t contain his awe and excitement as easily.
    But only a fool rushed into something like this. He opened his psychic senses. Nothing. No unusual sounds, either. Insects, the small squeaking of a shrew or rodent, his own heartbeat.
    A light wind lifted and skimmed over his head, carrying grains of sand that settled on his scalp, rasped against his jeans, gathered at the neckline of his T-shirt. Each particle irritated his heightened nerves, distracting him. He scrubbed his hand over his buzz cut, brushing out the worst of the grit.
    The forward chamber was a tall stone box, and hadn’t escaped the desert wind. Sand lay thick on the floor, shifting beneath his feet.
    And his weren’t the only feet to have crossed it, Jake realized. Several sets of human footprints led to—or from—the inner chambers. The impressions had sunk deep in the soft sand, leaving the edges indistinct and making it impossible to 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