Elijah (11 page)

All of this lent a strong hand to a worry for a missing comrade the King would normally never consider worrying about.

There was a cry from near the fireplace across the Great Hall, and Noah immediately left his volatile thoughts behind and hurried to the delicate crib the cry had come from. He reached into it, scooping up the littlest bit of a baby into his big hands, taking a moment to tuck the infant girl into the crook of one arm, a blanket wrapped warmly around her.

“So, sweet,” he said conversationally to her, “you have something to say about this?”

The babe, little more than two weeks old, who could barely hold her head in a single position for long, made her face squish up even tighter than it naturally was, making the Demon King laugh in spite of himself.

“You are going to be just like your parents, I think. Will you be my Enforcer one day, sweet?

Fetching wayward Demons back to me for the punishment they so very much deserve?”

Noah turned his body to ease himself into his favorite seat before the fire. The Demon lifted up his hand and playfully began to light his fingers on fire, making the flame jump from one fingertip to the next, with a speed that made the baby go wide-eyed. She thrashed arms and legs in her excitement, reaching for him, but he made sure he kept the playful lights far out of her reach. She screeched in infant frustration.

“Shh,” he whispered. “If your mother knew, she would have my royal head.”

Noah grinned and put out his flames with the same passing thought that had lit them. The Fire Demon then reached to stroke warmed fingers over the silky cap of black curls on her head.

“I am quite put out that your parents chose Elijah to be your Siddah over me. However, I understand they anticipate you will be too much of a handful for a man busy running an entire species. And no,” he continued, stretching out his long legs and linking them at the ankles, “I most certainly did not appreciate your mother’s jest about possibly having a family of my own by then. It seems she is taking a great deal of delight in watching one Demon male after another fall under the wily spells of you females.”

The baby blinked newborn blue eyes at him, then reached to grab one of his thick fingers with an amazingly strong grip so she could force it into her mouth.

“I am glad you see this my way,” he laughed. “I am beginning to regret ever encouraging your father into your mother’s arms. Not that I could have stopped him. But since that woman entered this castle, things have not been the same. If this keeps up, Elijah is going to walk through that door spouting love sonnets and children of his own. Bad enough my sister…”

Noah trailed off, his humor fading as his thoughts turned back to the missing warrior. Frankly, it would have suited him fine if Elijah would walk through the door, no matter what circumstances. It was not like him to disappear and not tell anyone where he could be found.

Especially not with danger looming all around them.

Elijah had behaved like a madman these past months, working himself into the ground trying to find out everything he could about the cult of human females plotting against the Demons and
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other Nightwalkers. Running himself literally ragged with exhaustion as he hunted for the Demon betrayers, even though policing their own fell to Jacob’s jurisdiction. The warrior did not know that Noah was aware of the fact that he had been requesting a great deal of healing services from the Body Demons in his corps. Several of these soldiers had reluctantly approached the King, full of loyalty to Elijah and not wanting to go over his head but terrified he was pushing himself into serious harm. Every one of them had tried to underplay the seriousness of the situation, but their eyes had said everything they were unwilling to. It was why Noah had instructed Elijah to attend a meeting with him yesterday.

Elijah would never have missed such an appointment. He was correct to a fault when it came to Noah’s protocols, and he never ignored a summons, even if he had to drag himself to the chamber while close to death. For all his casual manners, Elijah was fiercely loyal, and it showed.

Noah exhaled, trying to calm his thoughts as he did so, turning his attention back to the baby in his arm.

“It appears you are hungry, little sweet. Your mama needs to come feed you before you nibble off my finger.”

The babe ignored him, continuing her nibbling.

“I hardly think a baby without teeth can do much nibbling.”

Noah looked up, startled to realize he had been so distracted by his thoughts that he had not been aware of the Enforcers’ arrival. His eyes immediately went to Jacob’s serious countenance as Isabella leaned over to scoop her child out of his hold. Noah knew the instant he looked into those dark eyes that the male Enforcer’s news was not going to be good.

“Nothing at all?” Noah asked, his troubled emotions coming through far too clearly with the question.

As soon as Bella had her infant in her arms and had moved aside, cooing softly to her daughter, Noah was out of his chair and approaching Jacob, who was standing back away from his family.

The Enforcers had been out looking for any sign of Elijah. A sure sign that Jacob was as worried about him as Noah was, was that Bella had left her newborn babe to go with him, and Jacob had allowed it without protest. Of course, it could be said that what he did and did not protest meant fairly little to the Druid Jacob was married to. Bella was a rather independent, modern woman with a sassy attitude and a will of her own that, it was safe to say, drove her husband up the wall as much as it delighted the hell out of him.

Noah moved back to the desk he had left only minutes earlier, his Enforcer following close at his side with his arms crossed over his athletic chest and his dark head lowered along with his voice.

“I do not understand this, Noah. I should have been able to track him anywhere. It is what I have been doing for all of my life. Especially during Samhain. You know my skills are at their sharpest now. But I followed him to Washington and then lost him completely.”

“It rains so much there, Jacob, and you were a full day behind him when you started. It is understandable.”

Jacob made a sound that broadcast to the King that he was not so forgiving of his failure as his monarch was. But that was Jacob’s way. He had been, and would always be, extremely hard on himself for his failures. It did not matter that they were few and far between. All that mattered to the highly moral Earth Demon was that one failure would always be one failure too many.

“Isabella cannot escape the feeling that he is in trouble,” Jacob said tensely, running a hand through his long, dark hair. “She was having so many premonitions back to back once we got to the end of his trail that I thought she was going to pass out from the overload.”

That news made Noah look up at the female Enforcer quickly, for the first time noticing her drawn complexion and the way she was cradling her child as if desperate for her warmth and affection. This had been a harrowing task, and this ambiguous result had clearly taken its toll on Elijah’s friends.

“What kind of premonitions?” the King forced himself to ask.

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“Of battle. Of pain. She kept saying that she was blinded by blood. Even without that information, she didn’t have to tell me she was certain something bad will happen or already has happened. I could feel it myself. The only thing I am glad of is that neither she nor I can be certain if he is alive or dead. She cannot say for sure if he has been Summoned. Did Ruth know Elijah’s power name, Noah? Could she have given it to one of the necromancers and had him Summoned and imprisoned?” Jacob’s hand clenched into a fist. “I swear on my child’s soul, Noah…if that bitch forces me into the position of having to kill Elijah, I will not rest until I have her black heart in my hand.”

Noah understood the Enforcer’s rage and fear. If Elijah had been Summoned, the worst of all fates known to Demonkind, he would probably already be perverted into a dark, soulless monster who would be a powerful danger to every creature within his reach. The magic-users used pentagrams drawn and empowered by their vile magic in order to imprison a Demon whose power name they had obtained. Once the Demon was in this trap, it was almost impossible for it to be saved. It was Jacob and Bella’s painful duty to destroy these monsters.

But if Elijah had become such a creature, the pain the Enforcers would suffer for being forced to kill the Demon they had chosen to raise their child during the Fostering would be unimaginable.

Elijah meant as much to them as he did to the King and so, so many others. The morale of all of Noah’s forces, so driven, guided, and flushed by Elijah’s very powerful presence, would have a difficult time rallying after a tragedy of that magnitude. The loss of a Demon of Elijah’s power and brilliance would devastate their entire race, and there was no need to mention the open wounds it would leave in dozens of hearts, including the heart of a King.

Noah’s head was aching and he rubbed at his pounding temples. The tension since he’d first noticed something was not right was packed tightly into those two points. Here they were, two of the most powerful of their kind, and they were at a loss? What a sad commentary on the future of their people, Noah thought in a rare, bitter moment of fatalism.

Noah pushed the feelings and the pain in his head aside as he felt Isabella’s approaching energy.

She was drained and worried enough without seeing him and Jacob looking thoroughly defeated.

Of course, she could read her husband’s mind and emotions as easily as she could read her own, but Noah was another matter. He was supposed to be the strength of his people.

Noah turned with a smile to look at her and her baby.

“Hey, how is my newest subject?” he asked.

“Hungry, as noted,” she said with a laugh. “I need to feed her. I want you two to relax, have a drink, and wait till I get back before you hash this over any more. I am your Enforcer too, Noah, and I will not allow you to coddle me like some fragile bird. Is that understood?”

She gave them both an extremely no-nonsense glare that made them nod obediently.

“Good. If you are going to find Elijah, it’s very likely you will need me to—”

Bella broke off, her entire complexion turning a frightening gray color as her eyes glazed over.

Jacob reacted an instant faster than Noah, grabbing her sinking body with one arm while trying to catch the baby up against her with the other. He managed quite well, making Noah’s helping hands seem superfluous as he reached to assist. As soon as she was down, Jacob handed Noah his daughter and bent over his wife to check her pulse and her clammy skin.

“This is too much. It is too soon after the baby for this to keep happening to her,” Jacob bit out as he watched his beloved mate succumb to yet another harrowing vision, very likely about Elijah and the fate he had met. “Noah, I think we better call Gideon. The pregnancy was hard enough, what with Ruth’s attack on her and everything else. I do not like her color, and her heart is racing at an insane pace.”

“Legna is not here anymore,” Noah reminded him. “The only way I can get her attention from here would be to set something near him on fire, and that is not exactly something I feel comfortable doing even with my skill.”

“Well, I cannot exactly grow a tree under him either,” Jacob barked, not marking the tone in his voice in his worry. “And I am too exhausted to drag him here as dust, even if he were not
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thousands of miles away. Put the baby in her crib and go find a Mind Demon who can either contact Legna so she can teleport them both here, or who can teleport him themselves.”

Jacob and Noah both looked to Isabella when she uttered a hoarse, incomprehensible phrase.

However, there was structure to it that Noah thought he recognized. Bella had an affinity for languages that had come with her Druidic powers, so it did not surprise him that a foreign tongue would be part of her visions.

Still, since neither of them recognized it offhand, it meant nothing to them until she came out of her visionary trance and could explain it to them. That was providing she could explain it. Bella’s sight was often more cryptic than not.

“They get stronger and stronger and she gets weaker. What good is a hellish power like this?”

her fearful husband asked bitterly. “Sometimes,” he said hoarsely, “I wish I had never touched her. She would not be suffering like this if—”

“Jacob, stop it,” Noah said sharply. “You do not mean that and you know it. You would be lost without her and you would not have this beautiful babe. I swear I am going to pass a law against the guilt you browbeat yourself with constantly. And Isabella will be happy to enforce it for me.”

Noah moved across the room to settle the baby back into her crib. He twisted into a column of smoke a moment later, leaving his Enforcers behind as he sailed out of a window in search of help.

Magdelegna sat up out of a sound sleep with a loud, fearful cry. Instinctively, her hands slid over the little mound of her belly as if protecting the babe within from whatever had disturbed her.

She was aware of Gideon coming awake beside her, sitting up and turning protectively toward her. Her husband instantly gathered her to himself, the warmth of his bare skin and fit, male form incredibly comforting as he wrapped his arms around her.

“What is it, Neliss?” he asked softly, pressing gentle lips to the curve of her cheek.

“A dream…I think,” she said.

Gideon pulled back to lock his silvered gaze with hers, his equally silver brows pulling down in a frown of concern.

“You keep having these nightmares. I am beginning to wonder if this is not a form of premonition like Bella’s. We have been waiting for some other changes in your abilities, perhaps it has been here all this time.” Gideon reached to stroke the backs of his fingers slowly down the copious length of Legna’s coffee-colored hair. “Tell me what you dreamed, Nelissuna.”

“It was about Elijah. Something was very wrong. I cannot recall specifics though. Sweet Destiny, I despise this,” she said wearily, rubbing at her temples. “If this is what you suspect, I see now why Bella dislikes this particular type of ability.”