Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

  Not really blind. But Taylor wasn’t exactly sure how he saw, either.

  “I’ve not been able to reach Katherine,” he said. “And she could find my aunt and uncle, even through the shield.”

  Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “She can find people?”

  “Objects,” Geoff said. “My uncle would never remove his ring.”

  Jesus. Apparently no one had told him about the hands.

  They weren’t going to now, either. “What if he was forced to?” Lilith asked. “If they made him leave everything behind.”

  “Then she could find Aunt Savi’s tooth fillings.” His gaze unfocused before sharpening again. After a brief hesitation, he said, “Katherine is somewhere dark. She’s awake, but I can’t tell whether her eyes are closed or if there is no light.”

  Was he seeing through his sister’s eyes? Taylor glanced at Michael, saw that his own had narrowed. Wondering, too.

  If so, maybe Geoff could see through other people’s eyes as well. That would explain a lot.

  “I visited her apartment in London,” Selah said and gestured behind her, where her vampire partner was speaking with Rosalia. “I was just there with Lucas. We searched everywhere else that Geoff told us to look. We couldn’t find her.”

  “I’ll find her.” Geoff rose to his feet, followed by Maggie. “You have the search for my aunt and uncle well in hand here, but I’m Katherine’s best shot—and Maggie and I found her after a demon took her before.”

  “You share the same blood,” Michael said. “So you are also at risk.”

  “I don’t give a bloody fuck.”

  “I don’t intend to stop you. Only to suggest that a Guardian accompany you. Or a Guardian and a vampire.”

  Obviously Michael had one in mind. Selah nodded, then looked to Lucas as he joined her. “We’ll teleport with you to London and try to pick up the trail. We can stay with you through the evening so that you can’t fall under threat from vampires, and when the sun rises over there, I can bring Lucas back to his community during the evenings here.”

  “And use the time zones to extend my waking hours?” Lucas nodded. “I’ll do that—unless you believe my community will be targeted, too. Lucifer’s demons already tried to open a portal near our city.”

  “And they tried to open one with Ash’s face,” Taylor reminded them. Demonic symbols were tattooed over the left side of the halfling demon’s forehead and cheek. “Should we be worried about her, too?”

  “Those were failures,” Lilith said. “Lucifer wouldn’t attempt to use them again—and I think these demons got what they wanted. As soon as Lucifer gets into Chaos and writes the proper symbols on that side, Savi and Colin can open a portal together. And if they don’t agree to do it, the demons can decide to use their blood and just kill them as part of a ritual to create a different portal. But they won’t go straight for the blood, because they have to wait for Lucifer—and because it’ll be more enjoyable to persuade them.”

  By torturing them. Or by forcing one to watch the other be tortured.

  No time. And this sickness wasn’t going away. If Taylor couldn’t step away for a couple of minutes, she was going to end up losing it—and she didn’t know what form that break would take. Screaming. Bawling. Maybe worse.

  Shaking her head, she started toward the elevator.

  “Andromeda?”

  She shook her head, kept going. “I just need some air.”

  * * *

  Ash gave Taylor the access code to the penthouse. From the rooftop garden, she had a view of the bay. Taylor didn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything but the bloody hands, the burning house. Brandt’s throat, ripped out. All those fucking pictures.

  Michael appeared beside her a few seconds later. Of course he did. He was determined to protect her, and the demons had targeted the tainted ones.

  He glanced at the cigarette in her fingers. She’d found the pack in her hammerspace. It tasted like shit, but smoking gave her something to do while she tried not to think.

  But that wasn’t really working. She sighed, gestured with the cigarette. “Stupid, I know.”

  “Not as stupid as when you were human,” he said.

  She laughed. Yeah, okay. At least there was that.

  It wasn’t much. “Do you think that taking Katherine is the backup plan, or just a way of making sure we don’t find Colin and Savi as easily?”

  “Not one or the other. I think she is both.”

  One thing for sure, those demons had their shit together. “But they won’t need a backup, will they? Colin will do it. To save Savi, he’ll let everyone else on Earth burn.”

  “Yes.”

  God, what would it be like to love someone like that? To be loved like that? Wonderful. Terrifying. To know that someone held the fate of the world in his hands . . . and that he would choose her instead.

  Taylor couldn’t even imagine. “You said once that you would have killed Colin for that.”

  “I might have, once.”

  “Not now? You sacrificed yourself to save the world. Don’t you expect the same from others?”

  “I never have expected it. And I did not sacrifice myself.” His smile was tight and bleak. “I knew I would be tortured. But I also knew that I would come back. If I hadn’t believed that the Guardians would find a way to free me from the frozen field and return me to my body, I don’t know that I would have given up my life for it.”

  Disbelief roiled in her gut. “But you sacrificed yourself before. You died when you killed the dragon in the Second Battle. That was why you were chosen as the first Guardian.”

  “Yes, but the sacrifice wasn’t intentional. It just happened. I didn’t want to die, and I wasn’t prepared to.”

  “But you’re the big damn hero. And you don’t even really have to worry about death. If anyone is going straight to Heaven, it’s you.”

  “No.”

  “What? You don’t believe in it? Or you think you’re going to Hell?”

  “Neither. I’m not human, and I don’t have a human soul. Lucifer created all of the grigori from the same energy that lives in the dragons. He harnessed it from Chaos. That is where my soul was created. That is where it will return.”

  She stared at him. Chaos, the realm of creation and destruction. Of dragons and their endless hunger. “So in Hell, that really was you stripped down to the core.”

  “Yes. And the core of me doesn’t want to die.” Eyes obsidian, he looked out over the bay. “With everything I have learned in this life, I can say with certainty that it is right to die to save the world, and I do believe it. But a strong part of me doesn’t care what is right. It only cares what I can bear to do.”

  Taylor could barely take that in. This wasn’t what she’d thought Michael was. She’d always thought that he was something worthy of believing in, even if he was scary. Like the guardian angel that Taylor’s mother had called him. He was strong, compassionate, perfect. And ruthless, sometimes, but that wasn’t bad. Justice could be ruthless, too. But she’d thought of him in the same way. Something untouchable and inherently good—or at least better than people were.

  Then Taylor had discovered that beneath the perfection, he’d rotted down to his core.

  But that wasn’t what it was. He’d always been rotten. Yet he’d made himself better than that. He was trying to be better than that—even though it would be easier not to try. Easier to choose the path most natural to him: consuming, destroying.

  And there were no easy choices now. “Could you bear to kill Colin for it, then? And Savi, if she decides to do the same?”

  “If I have no other option at all.” His gaze returned to her. “But there is almost always another choice. My first choice would be to kill the demons who took them. My other choice would be to let Lucifer create the portal and to fight whatever comes through.”

  Taylor hoped they wouldn’t have to choose that option. “If Lucifer came through, could we defeat him?”

  “Yes. Then we
would have no other choice.” He flashed an amused grin. “Except teleporting to Venus.”

  Taylor wasn’t sure whether it was right for the most powerful Guardian in the world to joke about an oncoming apocalypse, but she liked it anyway. “Can you jump to Venus?”

  “I like living too well to try. Another Guardian with a teleporting Gift attempted to jump to Mars. He never returned.”

  Was he still joking? She couldn’t tell. “Seriously?”

  “Yes.” The fading of his smile convinced her better than his answer did. “Savi was the last person I told that to. I was afraid she’d persuade Jacob to take her.”

  That sounded exactly like Savi, who wanted to be immortal partly so that she could live long enough to own a spaceship. Michael was right to warn her.

  Taylor sighed. “I wish she was on Mars now.”

  She felt Michael studying her face. When he spoke, his voice had softened. “You did well with Charlie earlier—to tell her that Mark Brandt had beaten them. It’s not easy to know what to say when someone grieves for a friend, but you helped her.”

  “Yeah, well. I would be happier if they hadn’t killed him for winning.” So would Charlie. “You have a soft spot for her.”

  “I do.”

  “What is it? Is it the music thing?”

  “No. It is that she never stops fighting. And she has had to—fighting herself, most often.”

  So he admired that? Taylor usually did, too. But now it chewed at her. After everything that Michael and Khavi had thrown at her, she’d chosen to Fall. Did he think badly of her for that? Did he think she was giving up?

  She shouldn’t care what he thought, but simply wondering started an ache in her chest. And now she was fighting herself, too. All of this stupid shit she felt for him, even though she knew better.

  He wanted to protect her. But she had to protect herself first.

  And she’d had enough air.

  Taylor pushed out her cigarette, began tossing around all of the evidence lurking in her head. Brandt. The vampires, nothing more than ash on a bed. Colin and Savi.

  Mark Brandt had beaten the demons, and they’d killed him. They were assuming that Colin would give in, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he knew the demons would just kill him and Savi anyway. Maybe he’d try to bargain with them—that would take more time, too. And the demons needed them both to open the portal, but Savi wouldn’t even be awake yet. When she did wake up, maybe Savi wouldn’t give in, even if Colin did. Or maybe she and Colin would hold out as long as they could, trusting that the Guardians would find them.

  And they would find them. But first Taylor had to go back to Mark Brandt and figure out the how and the when.

  “We’re missing something,” Taylor said. “Obviously, we missed the demons grabbing Colin and Savi. But we knew they might be a target. We just didn’t know how quickly the demons would make a move or how well they would execute it. So something else doesn’t fit. Because we all thought Colin and Savi would be okay. Maggie was there, and hurting a human would mean breaking the Rules, but they blew up the house anyway. And Colin could have asked Maggie to come up to the bedchamber and help—that’s what she’s there for—but instead he sent her to the safe room. So he must have believed that at least one demon would risk breaking the Rules and kill her in order to carry out their plan. Like a demon fanatic. That’s not normal, is it?”

  “It is not,” Michael said. “They will follow Lucifer’s orders because they are too afraid to defy him. They will die fighting in his armies, because deserting means torture before death. But most would not sacrifice themselves for him.”

  Yet Colin must have believed these would. “Has anyone checked out the housekeepers?”

  “Hugh is doing that now.”

  “Is anyone tracing the bomb materials?”

  “Yes. Bradford is our contact in the investigation.”

  At the FBI. Good. She liked Bradford. “How did he get the case?”

  “Lilith planted evidence to make it look like domestic terrorism.”

  Oh, boy. “Because SI couldn’t grab it.”

  “Yes. So she made certain he would get it.”

  Because Bradford knew what they were and knew to look where other investigators wouldn’t. “I wonder what he’ll find. As well executed as it was, as much info as they gathered, the demons must have been working on this since the Gates closed.”

  “Yes. And there is much they should not have known.”

  She looked up, saw his troubled frown. “What does that mean?”

  “Even I was not aware of Colin’s connection to Chaos until just before the Gates closed. I hid it from Lucifer—I took Colin to Caelum so Lucifer wouldn’t discover it. And Savi’s link wasn’t established until after the Gates closed. Lucifer also couldn’t have known of their ability to create the portal.”

  “So unlike the other demons, Lucifer couldn’t have sent these out with this plan.”

  “No.”

  “Could they have made the plan themselves, hoping to grab the power from Chaos on their own? A demon and a nosferatu teamed up and tried that before.”

  “It is possible.”

  But his voice said that he doubted it. Taylor did, too.

  “Yeah, and the timing just happens to coincide with Lucifer purging the Pit?” That was hard to swallow. Coincidences did happen, but not usually alongside such a well-executed plan. “Maybe he gave them a ‘figure out a way or die’ date.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But you don’t believe it, either.”

  “No. They might have a timeline to follow, but Lucifer doesn’t leave things to chance. He also doesn’t trust his demons to figure things out on their own—and he doesn’t offer them enough knowledge to do it.”

  But what was the alternative? One was betrayal. Michael must have been thinking the same thing. His eyes had filled with darkness, absorbing the light.

  “So we are both missing something,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go figure out what it is.”

  * * *

  Michael took Andromeda to the local federal building first, where she gave Luther Bradford a receipt and asked him to use his resources to find surveillance footage from the restaurant and the surrounding area. From there, he teleported them back to Brandt’s town house in Columbus. He held her as she spun, simultaneously changing his clothes from the suit he’d worn at the FBI office to the toga.

  As much as he liked the way Andromeda looked at him in his suit, Michael liked even more the feel of her against his skin.

  When she regained her balance, she spoke again of something nagging at her and began walking slowly through the home, replacing the items she’d taken and looking at them in context. Michael was content to wait, continually attempting to anchor to Colin, Savi, and Katherine, teleporting away four times to take Guardians to the new headquarters, and once after encountering a demon in his psychic sweep. He ripped out the demon’s spine and teleported it to the caverns in Romania, leaving it there until he had more time to question it—and that could wait until Andromeda was less preoccupied. She obviously wanted to be left to her thoughts, and he did not want to interrupt her.

  Michael enjoyed having these few quiet moments as well. They allowed him to mull over the questions that she hadn’t asked.

  He didn’t believe that any of the Guardians would betray the others in this way—but one might have had little choice. And it could not be just any Guardian. If Lucifer had been dictating the shape of this plan, then the demons here must have been communicating with those in Hell. With the Gates closed, that was impossible—unless a Guardian who could teleport was carrying the messages.

  Selah and Jacob were possibilities. Like Savi and Colin, they loved deeply. They might sacrifice everything to save their lovers, their friends. And when Jacob had been trapped in Hell with Alice, he’d barely escaped before making a bargain with Belial.

  But perhaps he hadn’t escaped in time. P
erhaps a bargain had been made and kept secret. Michael didn’t think so, but the question had to be asked.

  He heard Andromeda’s steps on the stairs. She never simply walked down, but used a quick one-two-three rhythm with a beat in between.

  She stopped abruptly on two. “Are you texting?”

  His use of a phone amused her? It must not fit the image she had of him. He was happy to surprise her.

  “I’m asking Hugh to discover whether Jacob and Selah might have been trapped in a bargain to share information with Lucifer or Belial.”

  She winced. “Ouch. Like an Internal Affairs rat.”

  “No. They respect Hugh too well. And they know that asking is necessary.” A bargain might also demand silence, and until they were asked, the truth couldn’t be revealed. “When I see Hugh next, he will also ask me.”

  “And Khavi?”

  “Yes. Anyone who can communicate with Hell.” Outside, a vehicle slowed, stopped. “Someone is here. Two humans.”

  She quickly moved out of view from the window. “Uniformed cops. Either Senator Blackwell filed that missing persons report or Seattle got on the horn and asked the local department to take a look around.”

  “Do you wish to leave? Did you discover what you were missing?”

  “I didn’t. And I’d rather stay close and listen in again, see what they’ve heard. Maybe something will click. I also want to get the police reports from Seattle when they are filed. Maybe they’ll mention something that we didn’t take—and I want to know who called the murder in. A million bucks says it was an anonymous tip.”

  “I never wager for so little.” Like bargains, wagers could be powerful tools.

  “Only to save the world, right? Or to force Lucifer to close the Gates.”

  “Yes.” He drew her in against him, teleported to a bus stop a half block away. She dropped unsteadily onto the bench, put her head in her hands.

  “Toga,” she croaked.

  With a sigh, he changed into the suit again. She didn’t scoot away when he sat beside her. After a long moment, she lifted her head and looked toward Brandt’s house.