“He tends to take security very seriously. Between the two of us we’ve pissed off more than a few very dangerous people. Sorry for not warning you, but most people don’t even notice. Can’t notice, is probably more accurate, even though Michael isn’t trying to be subtle about the inner wards. I’m actually impressed that you did notice, I’ve known a couple of big deal alchemical engineers who never even blinked.”
Brian could only nod. He thought that he was walking into a hotel, but now realized that he was actually being ushered deeper into a fortress. May led him off the elevator when it stopped, into the apartment and shooed him into what appeared to be an office.
The room was spacious, probably the size of one of the hotel’s larger bedrooms, and managed to be full without feeling cluttered. There were a few spaces devoted to working with power, including a small alchemy desk set up by the windows where it took advantage of the sunlight. Mostly, however, the walls of the room were almost completely lined with bookshelves, the rows packed with texts covering every science he could think of as well as every branch of magic and alchemy. There were two full cases that seemed to be devoted to murder mysteries, which threw him off a bit. The Alchemic Rune-casting: A Detailed Exploration of Inscribed Enchantments he expected in a room like this. The shelf full of collected volumes of The Journal of Alchemical and Structural Metallurgy he understood, and several tomes of Temple History made total sense. But somehow a room belonging to the man staring at him now didn’t feel like it would also contain the complete adventures of Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey.
Michael Gilbert simply sat there waiting until Brian had looked around the entire room, but now Brian’s attention was completely captured by the man himself. Sitting behind a fancy, expensive looking desk was a brown-haired man with mild eyes and an artfully scruffy beard. His face was sharp, somehow. Almost hawklike— especially as he watched Brian steadily, without blinking. When he finally shifted forward in the seat, he moved with the precise grace of a seasoned warrior, which was at odds with the business casual button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled past his elbows. Brian had interrupted his work, which lay scattered on the desk. A few small flasks and some bits of a dark metal sat by a detailed diagram of what could be an ornate hinge or maybe a clock hand.
“Satisfied that there are no hidden traps waiting to snare you?” The man behind the desk finally spoke, causing Brian to jump in surprise. He’d been trying to avoid looking directly at the Guardian, who leaned on forward to prop his elbows on the desk, laced fingers hovering near his chin. Brian had the uncomfortable feeling that the man was hiding a smile. Whatever was coming, there was no chance he could fight back; he’d be crushed like a particularly defenseless bug.
This man didn’t need any traps in this room and they both knew it. He nodded to the chair in front of the desk and Brian sat, stiff with nerves. He felt like he was back in elementary school, waiting in the principal’s office for his mother to come and hear about why he was in trouble for fighting this time. He rubbed his hands on his knees and tried not to look like a guilty 8-year-old.
“You didn’t take the medicine I left for you,” Michael said. Brian shuddered, the memory of the way the liquid had moved in the vial making his stomach clench again. He shook his head.
“I couldn’t. It looked… I took some Aspirin. I was fine.”
“I see. I suppose I can understand that,” Michael nodded. Brian could feel his gaze like a physical weight on him, getting heavier as the silence stretched out.
“Um. Thank you. For helping me. Laura said there was poison on the knife.” What did Michael want? Why was he drawing this out?
“It was Anna that did most of the work, I simply assisted her and prevented you from injuring yourself or anyone else when you lashed out. I could not in good conscience let you suffer when I know very well how terrible the effects are,” Michael answered. “I myself suffered from that poison not long ago.”
“It was…” Brian’s voice died away at the memory of that terrible void, and he shuddered. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. And I agree with your assessment. I would not wish that experience on my worst enemy, and I daresay I have more of those than you do. Unfortunately, the cure is almost as painful as the poison, but at least we both lived through it, so I consider the pain a price I am willing to pay,” Michael said. A brief smile flickering across his face.
“Do…” Brian took a deep breath and sat up straight in the overstuffed chair. “What are you going to do with me?”
“An excellent question. I honestly don’t have an answer to give you.” That lightning smile flashed over Michael’s face again. “I am, I must admit, in foreign territory here. I had no idea that it was possible for humans and demons to crossbreed. I suspected, but I never had any evidence of it, and I never bothered to look into it very deeply.”
“Why would anybody ever even think about it? Until I found my mother’s letters I never thought any monsters were actually real. Demons were just a bedtime story, you know, like the boogeyman,” Brian said.
“Oh, demons are very real, and can be very dangerous,” Michael nodded.
“I guess you’d know,” Brian shifted in the chair. He wished now that he’d sat in the other one of the pair, since it had a huge, colorful pillow tossed onto it that looked more comfortable. Maybe he just wanted something to fidget with. “I mean, I guess they teach you all sorts of stuff like that at the Temple. I didn’t even know what my father was until Laura said you had all figured it out. Mom just wrote that he was a monster of some kind, and she was afraid of him once she found out.”
“I understand what a surprise that must have been to discover,” again, Michael nodded thoughtfully. “Your mother must have spent her life very worried for you. And the Temple is not nearly so well informed on High Demons as you would think. I have been working to increase their knowledge.”
“Wait. How do you know more than the Temple in general does?” Brian frowned. He felt like they were talking in circles, somehow. Laura had hinted at something too, but he’d been too deep in his own worries to ask her to repeat everything.
Michael simply smiled, then as Brian watched as the man wavered, like seeing something through the heat shimmer off a paved road that had been baking in the summer sun. His mind stuttered and shut down. The man sitting across the desk was no longer a human being.
Michael’s skin was dark red, almost the color of crusted blood. The fingers now steepled beneath his chin had grown long and tapered and ended in sharp, vicious-looking points, and Brian would have called them claws if he hadn’t first seen them as human hands. His hair had darkened to a shade of black, and Michael’s whole face was now best described as sharp and… and just wrong somehow. But it was his eyes that held Brian hostage. They were huge, easily twice as large as they had been, and looked almost like they’d been swallowed by pupils so black they seemed to actively suck light in rather than passively waiting for it to reach them. They were the same as the eyes that stared back at him from the mirrors in his nightmares. Michael had changed from human to High Demon without even moving a muscle and the effect was terrifying.
Brian couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe past the terror racing along every nerve ending in his body. Michael simply sat there, calm and still while he waited for Brian’s mind to resume control of his body. The moment stretched beyond endurance and Brian had to speak or allow the insanity to take up permanent residence.
“You— You’re a High Demon? How? Aren’t you a Guardian?” he stammered.
“I am both,” Michael smiled again, this time showing a predator’s sharp teeth, leaning back into the leather desk chair he occupied like a king. “My genetic origin is only one aspect of my identity, but it is the one that provokes the strongest reaction here in the Human Realm.”
Brian’s stomach was turning somersaults and his mouth felt dry, but one question pounded through his brain and crowded out the hundreds of others he was too
afraid to ask. But this he had to know.
“Are… are you my father?” Brian wasn’t sure if he was relieved when the High Demon across from him shook his head. Michael actually looked wistful, if a demon could feel that emotion.
“I am afraid that real life is not nearly so tidy as that. No, I deemed it far too much of a risk to engage in that sort of activity when I fled my clan. At first because I was trying to avoid drawing attention, and then because…” Michael sighed. “Well. At any rate, no, I am not your father.” The air shifted slightly again as Michael resumed his human face. Brian tried not to be too obvious in his relief at the transformation, but he guessed that they both understood. Somehow, even though he now knew what lay behind the human-looking face, Brian’s instinctual panic started to fade.
“How can you do that so easily?” Brian asked. Michael frowned, seeming to ponder it himself. Brian wondered if it was like being asked how you walk and suddenly lose your balance thinking about it too hard.
“It’s a bit like flexing a muscle, I suppose. For other demons appearing human is merely a surface disguise to avoid unwanted hassles. However, the longer I lived here in the Human Realm— the longer I lived as a human— this became the face I wore more often than not. Even in my sleep. In fact, I realized just two years ago that I have worn only this human face continuously for nearly a half of my life. That this is just as much my natural face as the other now, and— for me at least—the transformation is no longer merely cosmetic.” He rubbed his rounded, human fingers over his forehead where it was now smooth, but where as a High Demon he’d had a row of bumps stretching back to his hairline. “I suspect becoming a Guardian has pushed that process along rather more quickly than it would have gone otherwise, though I wonder if it was already underway by then.”
“So, you’re a High Demon and a Guardian? How?” Brian asked. He felt like he needed the reassurance of saying it out loud. To make it really real. Michael’s confession about his comfort in his human guise went a long way to make him less frightening somehow.
“Everyone I have ever met— human or demon— has had more than one facet to their personality, more than one role to play in life. I am not so different as all that.”
Brian blinked at him. A memory popped up and he thought back to a moment with his mom when he’d been a young teen. They’d been at the grocery store and were joking around about which cereal to get or something, when a kid came racing around the end of the aisle laughing loudly, then skidded to a stop as soon as he saw them. His eyes were wide and shocked and the boy’s face got very solemn.
“Well hello, Sam. How nice to see you on the weekend!” Brian remembered his mother saying.
“Hello, Ms. Sedge,” Sam intoned, his voice still full of awe as his own mother came up behind him with their cart. Brian wondered what had gotten the kid so freaked out; they were grocery shopping, not doing anything weird. He waited while his mother chatted for a few moments with the other family, then both groups moved on to other aisles.
“It always makes me smile when I run into my students outside of school, it’s a good chance to see what they’re like when they’re not expecting to be seen,” she said as they moved on to pick out sandwich bread. “They always have the same face, too- total shock that their first-grade teacher ever leaves the school grounds,” she had laughed cheerfully as they moved down the aisle. Brian brought himself back to the present and frowned in thought.
“So… So you’re a High Demon, but you live here? You actually pretend to be human all the time? And you work for the Temple?” Brian asked.
“I am, in a manner of speaking. I do,” Michael nodded. “As far as I am aware it is a unique situation. However, my birthplace doesn’t affect my dedication to my duty, either to May or to the Temple.”
“But…” Brian met Michael’s eyes. “But how? How did this all happen?” The dark man shook his head slowly.
“It is a long story. Perhaps I will tell you the details of it someday. The short version is that I fled my clan and the Demon Realm over a century ago and have lived among humans ever since. I have learned a great deal about humanity, but I know I still have a great deal left to learn,” Michael sighed and glanced at the door. “Several years ago there was an attack. May and her previous Guardians went into the battle and won, but only May survived. I arrived there just before one of her Guardians died, and he asked me to take his place. I did, and now I feel that I am where I was meant to be. This is where I belong, protecting humanity at large and my Priestess, May, in particular.”
Brian sat in silence. The past two days were pressing down on him, the emotional whiplash of the nightmare, Owen’s honest faith in him, Laura’s trust, the perfect morning of ice cream and sunshine— gods, had that been just yesterday? Kevin’s attack. The poison. Finding out about exactly what his father was, and now…
“But how can you be a Guardian if you’re a High Demon? Aren’t all demons—” Brian realized that being rude was probably not the best course of action here, if he wanted to live through the day.
“Bloodthirsty and violent?” Again, the lightning smile flashed across Michael’s face, but the good humor stayed in his eyes even once he started speaking again. “What I am now has both nothing to do with what I was born as and everything to do with it. Had I not been born a demon, I would not have been able to do as James asked and would not now share his Mark. If I had not possessed the temperament I do, he would not have asked me to carry this burden in the first place and I would not have had the opportunity to live this life—a life I find deeply satisfying. I was born in the Demon Realm, a son of our clan’s leader and was expected someday to take a place in that leadership. My life would have been one filled with politics and intrigue and yes, constant violence. Now? Now I am something different. I protect May’s life and together we defend the Human Realm from threats, usually from the land of my birth but not always, and the resolutions are likewise not always violent. I am not truly a demon any longer, but also not a human. In that, we are much the same, I think,” Michael shrugged.
Brian stared at him. Not a demon anymore? But then how had he changed like that, because no way in hell a human could do that sort of thing. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped and closed it again. But now he’s a Guardian, so maybe that’s what he meant? He frowned at his hands, shifted in the chair, started to speak again. Nothing made any sense anymore.
“So, what are you now?” he asked, finally. Michael smiled broadly now, his amusement shining on his face. His eyes actually twinkled for a moment leaving Brian blinking in surprise.
“I am Michael Gilbert,” he shrugged again. “I am, by my own free choice, a Guardian of the Temple. I am family to May and Paula and Lee, and a friend and defender to humanity at large. I am a businessman and an alchemist. Like any good demon, I use what power and skill I have to further my own goals, however unlike any other demons, to my knowledge, the most important of my goals is the safety and well-being of a human Priestess and beyond that Riverton and its people, then the rest of the Human Realm. I am now something that I am certain would not be what was expected by the man that fathered me. I won’t recite any foolish drivel about being whatever you wish to be, but you certainly can be whoever you wish to be. My clan expected me to be one person— a bloodthirsty schemer clawing for political and social power regardless of who I destroyed in my rise— but I refused to be that person. I created a different future than the one expected for me. I am myself.”
Something in Brian relaxed for the first time in what felt like forever. Since he had discovered the truth about himself, about his father, he had been tense. Waiting for the moment that the side of him that was his father burst forth. He had to concentrate on keeping his breath steady; he was afraid he might just stop breathing altogether if he didn’t focus on it. When Michael spoke again, it took Brian a moment to understand what he was saying.
“I’m sorry?” He blinked up at Michael who simply blinked back and repeated his st
atement.
“I understand that yesterday was not your first scrape with this Kevin person.”
Brian’s face immediately hardened. He nodded, anger flooding in to replace his confusion. The emotional whiplash was beginning to make him feel dizzy.
“That guy seems to think that supplying some genetic material years ago means that he owns Owen, and that he can order Laura around. He went on the other day about being Owen’s father, but that guy wouldn’t know fatherhood if it hit him in the face with a brick. Laura wants nothing to do with the guy, and I can’t blame her.” He felt the heat of his anger building, so he took a breath to steady himself and slow the angry words that wanted to rush out. “I promised her that I’d stick around for a while until the situation settles down. If that guy shows up again I’m going to kick his ass cold.”
“I would suggest staying away from him myself, if he is involved with the situation we’re investigating. Which he must be, given the fact of his using that particular poison. There is only one person that we know of that could produce it, and you particularly are going to have to be very careful, Brian.” Michael leaned forward again. Brian had the sudden thought that Michael had just made a decision; that the whole previous conversation had been a sort of interview.
“Why me, particularly?” Brian’s eyes narrowed. “That asshole is after Owen and Laura, and I’m not leaving them alone to be targeted.”
“I don’t suggest that you do, but that poison won’t affect them.” Michael grimaced. “You and I, however, are at risk. That poison is strong, and it is deadly, and it only affects those of us with demon blood in our veins.”
Chapter 13
Brian wondered, in the back of his mind, if he was getting used to the idea of being half monster— half demon, he corrected himself— or if the constant barrage of shocks was just dulling his reactions. Maybe it would all catch up to him later and he’d have a nervous breakdown? He shook his head to clear the muddy thoughts and realized that Michael was still speaking.
Personal Demons: A Riverton Demons Novel Page 9