Jacob by Jacquelyn Frank Read Free Book Online

perceptions, but he hadn’t seen fit to elaborate just yet. He needed time to think first. He needed to sort through the night’s implications before anyone else learned what had truly happened in that warehouse.
    First and foremost was proof of the existence of a true necromancer, one born with power and skilled enough in black arts to Summon a Demon. This he had seen with his own eyes, though it shamed and infuriated him to admit it because then he also had to admit that he had allowed that stained being to escape unchecked into the world. The sudden appearance of a magic-user did not bode well for Jacob’s race. Indeed, it did not bode well for any of the Nightwalker clans. Where there was one, there was bound to be others, and Demons were not always their only victims.
    And then there was...
    He stopped in his tracks, looking up at the ceiling where Isabella now slept in a room above him. He had broken an herb capsule under her nose, the combination inducing sleep, allowing him to make off with her to his home in England unawares.
    The woman had done the impossible. She had slain a Demon. Even more impossible, before the slaying had even taken place, she had sensed him, empathized with him, and tracked him. A human able to slay a Demon was unheard of. Not unless the human was a necromancer.
    Isabella was not a magic-user. Jacob would have known instantly. There was an unnatural aura, a vile stench that clung to magic-users. The bastard who had captured Saul had reeked of it up in the loft. The putrescence still singed Jacob’s sensitive nostrils. Isabella’s scent was soft, clean, and delightfully pure. Even under all the filth of that warehouse, Jacob had still been able to smell the enticing wholesomeness of her scent. No perfumes or lotions, no dissolute habits, not even the territorial musk of a male marred her bouquet.
    Nor was she any of the other immortals that walked the night. Nightwalkers who chose to walk amongst humans were nearly indistinguishable from them. However, breeds could identify each other’s “tells,” those little differences that gave them away. There was no doubt in Jacob’s mind that Isabella was human.
    But a human who could kill a Demon? Even Demons had a hell of a time killing one another. That was why being the Enforcer was such a lethal job. Only the eldest of their kind were powerful enough to do mortal harm, and only Jacob was unreservedly sanctioned to do so. Capital punishment was terribly rare, and it was no easy task accomplishing such a sentence.
    As was evidenced this evening.
    Isabella had merely picked up a rod of iron and plunged it into Saul’s heart. Jacob couldn’t do this. No Demon could bear touching iron. Contact with it was like violent acid on the skin. If the wound was penetrating, it was excruciating agony. If it penetrated the heart or brain, it was death. Jacob looked down at his hands, his thumbs slightly burned from the rust that had mingled with Isabella’s tears. He’d not taken note of the contact until it began to act the irritant against his skin.
    Regardless, the Demon skeleton was like steel, nearly impervious. How had a little thing like her pushed that rod through ribs and breastbone on the way to the heart? Besides, unlike the Lycanthrope’s vulnerability to silver, which was widely known in fiction, a Demon’s weakness to iron was not at the forefront of human knowledge. Had she somehow known this obscure detail? To assume that would be to assume she had known what Saul was, although, after transformation, Saul had appeared the epitome of a human’s ideal demon. Or had it been exactly as it seemed, a fortunate happenstance?
    Jacob remembered coming to, finding himself on the warehouse floor, and shaking his hair and blood out of his eyes. This just in time to see the monstrous Saul bearing down on the small woman and to realize he could never reach her in time. His head had been ringing so badly that he couldn’t even concentrate to use