“You have it,” he said. “It’s your memory of everything they’ve ever done. Has any of it been evil? Name one thing.”
They apparently couldn’t. Angrily, they simply stared back at him.
“What have they done? Tell me why they deserved to die. Just one thing.”
“They hide their evil.” Miklia found her answer and immediately warmed up to it. Fists clenched, she tossed out, “They lie!”
“They lie,” Jessica echoed. “Just as demons do. Isn’t that true?”
“Vampires aren’t demons.”
“And demons sow doubts. Don’t they?”
Oh, Radha saw where this was going. Marc wanted them to doubt their actions. Therefore, he was obviously a demon. Marc must have seen the direction they were taking, too. With a sigh, he shook his head.
“And they can take any form! Isn’t that right? But you can’t hurt us. So we’re not afraid of you!”
“I’m almost sorry for that,” Marc said, and he glanced at Radha. Debating whether to try something else, she knew, or just leave.
Leaving seemed like the most sensible option. These girls weren’t going to be talked or scared into anything—and certainly not into accepting any truth but the one they already believed. Nothing she or Marc did would change that.
The sensible option wasn’t any fun, but that was sometimes the life of a Guardian.
Jessica crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you really have anything to tell us?”
Was there anything they’d listen to? As if tired, Marc rubbed the back of his neck. Yes, completely done with this whole scene. Radha was, too.
“Just try not to hurt anyone,” he said. “That includes vampires. That’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s all?” As if stricken, Miklia fell to her knees. “Then you can’t be a Guardian. A Guardian would have supported us, no matter what.”
So much for the power of glowing wings and a mysterious spicy scent. She met Marc’s eyes, gestured upward, and concealed her voice from the girls. “Ready to go?”
He nodded, but a movement in the bleachers across the field tore Radha’s gaze away from him. Not long enough to affect the illusion she’d created, but—
What is that redheaded girl doing with a crossbow? Ripping pain slammed through Radha’s wing and shoulder from behind. She cried out, stumbling forward from the impact.
“Radha!” Almost instantly, Marc crossed the distance between them and swept her up before she fell. He knelt, cradling her against him, his big body shielding hers. Face white, his gaze dropped to her shoulder. “God damn them. Are you all right?”
Through gritted teeth, she forced out, “Fine.”
A bloodied arrowhead and shaft jutted through the front of her right shoulder. It hurt—a lot—but that was what happened when a Guardian was stupid enough not to keep her eye on a deluded human: she got a surprise crossbow bolt.
It didn’t matter. She’d had worse. Still, it would hurt more before it got better. “Tear it out,” she told him.
Jaw clenching, he nodded, broke off the jutting arrowhead. Behind Marc, Jessica and Miklia stared at them, mouths hanging open. Her illusions had shattered, Radha realized. Another unfortunate consequence of a surprise crossbow bolt through the shoulder.
Jessica came out of her shocked stupor. “There’s two!” she shouted. She fell to her knees beside Miklia.
“Bl . . . blue.” Miklia was staring at Radha, stuttering from astonishment. “And wings.”
“Shut up! And hurry!” Jessica shouted at her, ripping off her gloves and digging through the snow. “Ines! Come on, shoot!”
“It’ll hurt.” Marc reached for the feathered shaft still sticking out the back of her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
So was she. But it was the fastest way—she’d begin healing as soon as it came out. “Do it quickly.”
He yanked. Radha screamed.
The ground shivered. Eyes glowing, the power of his Gift slipping through his shields, Marc looked over Radha’s head to the bleachers behind her. Lynn was still back there, Radha realized—the girl had shot the crossbow at her. Aiming for the illusion of Marc, but an invisible Radha had been in the way.
Aiming for Marc. And Ines was still in the other bleachers—
A wet, horrifying thunk. Marc jolted forward. His arms went limp. Radha tumbled from his grip, onto the snow. A crossbow bolt was embedded in his upper back. He hadn’t been struck through the brain, but through the spine.
Almost as bad. He couldn’t walk. She couldn’t fly.
“Grab them, Miklia!” Jessica shouted—and dragged a sword up from beneath the snow. “If you hold on to them, the Rules say they can’t get away!”
They couldn’t. And these girls knew exactly how to slay them. They’d planned it perfectly. Her own sword in hand, Miklia scrambled toward them, her determined gaze narrowed on the back of Marc’s neck. No wooden stakes now, because to kill a demon—or a Guardian—they needed to cut through the heart or chop off the head.
Marc’s power shook the ground. Unable to move, but still able to use his Gift. Yet if he hurt these girls with it—even inadvertently, while taking Radha and himself away from here—he’d break the Rules. He’d break them protecting her.
“No need,” Radha whispered to him.
Rising to her knees, she circled his shoulders with her uninjured arm, easily supporting his deadweight. Miklia and Jessica were almost on them. Not fast enough. Radha could form a hundred illusions before they took another step.
She usually didn’t like to remember past hurts, but Marc had a bolt sticking out of his back—and her illusions were always best when based on something real.
Discovering a demon’s collection, bodies gathered from graveyards and put on display for his sick pleasure.
Radha and Marc burst apart in an explosion of putrid gases, maggots spilling out of rotting flesh. With a shriek, Miklia skidded to a halt, began gagging. Jessica didn’t waver.
Almost falling beneath a demon’s sword.
Too quickly to avoid, a blade sliced through the air, through Jessica’s wrist. Blood spurted, melting the snow. Eyes widening in terror, she stared at the exposed flesh and bone. Then disbelief vanished, and she began to scream.
Her sword dropped from her real—and still attached—hand.
In the bleachers, Ines was reloading her crossbow, but Radha had a brand-new wound to share. Surprise crossbow bolt through the shoulder. The girl cried out, dropping her weapon. A moment later, Lynn did the same.
For thirty seconds, she let them scream and cry—and wanted to cry herself when she tore the bolt from Marc’s back. She gathered him close, then vanished the illusions.
Always fun, except for when it was horrifying.
“Go,” she told them. “Run now, straight to the sheriff, and confess what you’ve done. If you don’t, I’ll hunt you down, and I’ll give you nightmares that a demon couldn’t dream of.”
They only stared at her, sobbing. Enough. She rose up, thirty feet tall, eyes blazing down on them with the fires of Hell. Lightning streaked the sky behind the whirlwind of her hair. The ground shook beneath her steps.
Her voice thundered. “GO!”
They ran.
CHAPTER 6
Radha hadn’t been able to fly, but her one uninjured arm was more than strong enough to lift him, and her legs could run as fast as her wings could fly. Marc couldn’t say that he was proud to have been carried off the playing field and into the empty high school gym, but the tenderness with which she’d held him as they recovered from their wounds more than made up for it.
Her injury had healed within a half hour, but she remained snuggled up next to him on a blue wrestling mat. As soon as Marc was able to, he slid his arm around her. He could have gotten up then. He liked this better—because Radha was there, and because he had plenty of time to think.
“We were almost killed by four human girls,” he said.
“Is that the way you look at it?
” She lifted her head from the pillow of his shoulder and peered down at him. “It wasn’t even close. I could still run and carry you. You had your Gift. What were you planning to do with it? A dirt wave to ride us out of there?”
Not quite. “Just a wall to protect us, thick enough that they couldn’t knock it down.”
“Oh. That would have been simple.”
He was a simple man. “I’d have used it if your illusions failed.”
She gave him her best Don’t say stupid things look. “Marc.”
He grinned. “I have to consider the seemingly impossible. After all, we were almost killed by four human girls . . . who knew exactly how to kill us and had a near-perfect plan to carry it out. What are the chances of that?”
Her expression pensive, she pillowed her head on his shoulder again. “Not very good,” she said. “It’s odd, isn’t it?”
Yes. And Guardians didn’t ignore strange things like that.
They also didn’t ignore that no human girl could bash in a reinforced basement door . . . or that one said to another, The book said a door would open, and it did, didn’t it ?
“Which book do you suppose they were talking about?” Marc wondered.
By noon, not everyone in Riverbend had heard about the shocking confession from four high school girls yet, but enough had that the astonishment and disbelief rippled through the town. By noon, Gregory Jackson was behind the counter of his mother’s coffee shop, watching an American football game. Across the street at the library, children’s story hour had just begun.
Radha had to give Marc another look when he held the library door open for her—but she supposed that a library was probably the most appropriate place for an invisible friend. No one noticed his strange behavior, anyway . . . not even the old bat at the circulation desk.
Which was why, in the end, Guardians were always going to win out over demons: Guardians kept their eyes open.
In the corner, a semicircle of three- and four-year-olds sat enraptured while a woman read to them about giving a mouse a cookie. A few adults browsed the fiction shelves. A teenage boy sat at a computer, casting wary glances now and then at the circulation desk.
None of them noticed when Marc called in his sword—no one except Mrs. Carroll, the crotchety old librarian.
But only because Radha let her see it.
Her eyes widened behind horn-rimmed spectacles. Her voice lifted, shrill with alarm. “Who are you? What are you—”
The blast of Marc’s psychic probe cut her off, and beneath the cracks in the librarian’s shields, Radha felt the scaly touch of a demon’s mind.
The demon fell silent, glowering at Marc with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.
“It was perfect,” Marc said. “You’re everything a demon almost never appears to be: old, frail, in a position of service—a position that requires you to help people. The perfect disguise to hide from a Guardian, or to hide from Basriel when he was taking over this territory. But hiding just wasn’t enough, was it? You decided to start meddling. And who better to meddle with than teenage girls, who could do any killing for you? Especially if they were trained to kill Basriel—or later, to kill a Guardian that they believed was a demon.”
The librarian glanced at the children before looking back at Marc. “You won’t do anything in here.”
“Yes, I would. Because if you’ll notice, no one is pointing at my sword yet. I could slay you now, and no one would see a thing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you don’t.” Marc nodded. “Radha?”
With the slightest adjustment of her illusion, she appeared visible to the demon—crossbow in hand, only a few steps from the circulation desk.
“Now you’ll notice that no one is pointing at the naked blue woman,” Marc said.
Naked? Not even. When she wanted to be naked, there’d be no mistaking it. But she’d have to show him later.
The demon stood, calling in a long, curving sword to each hand. No one reacted. As if emboldened by the lack of response, crimson scales suddenly erupted over its skin. Black horns curled back from the librarian’s wrinkled forehead, and the demon shape-shifted— growing taller than Marc, its body heavy with muscle. Its eyes began to glow crimson.
“Come on, then,” the demon challenged them.
Marc shook his head. “I just want to know about the book you used to poison Miklia and her friends. Did you write it yourself?”
“It’s a work in progress.” The demon smiled, exposing long, dangerous fangs. “So were they. And after I kill you both, I’ll just write another one, and find another human.”
Radha sighed. Why did demons always sound the same? Blah blah kill you all blah. Neither Radha nor Marc was worried about the influence that book might have on someone who picked it up, because it had probably been written specifically to exploit the girls’ individual vulnerabilities—but it might have information that would expose the local vampire community.
She guessed, “So you wrote something like instructions or a revelation, then left it for them to find. Or maybe you dropped it out of your cache, and it seemed to appear by magic to them. Did they think a Guardian was doing it? Watching over them, guiding them?”
The demon’s lips drew back in a sneer. “They all loved the Guardians. Pathetic.”
The insult was probably as close to a confirmation as they’d get. Good enough. They’d search the library afterward, just in case, but if the demon kept the book in his cache, it would be destroyed when Marc slayed him.
Not in here, though.
“Pathetic, but they almost took us out,” Marc said. “I have to appreciate that. And since you didn’t do any killing, I’m prepared to let you go. But you have to promise to leave now, today—to fly out of town and never return.”
The demon laughed. “Lies.”
“No. I’m prepared to offer a bargain. If you walk out this door now and fly away, we’ll let you leave, no fighting or blood drawn. Neither of us will fly after you. You just have to agree to go without fighting or drawing blood.”
“Why?” The demon’s wary gaze ran from Marc to Radha. “There are two of you. Though mistaken, you must believe you’ll defeat me.”
“I just want you out of this town,” Marc said. “You’ve done enough damage; I won’t add to it now by destroying half the library while we fight. I’ll hunt you down another day.”
“And you will back this up with a bargain?” The demon all but licked his lips. Anyone who broke a bargain would find their soul trapped in Hell for eternity—and so that meant Marc couldn’t lie. It was a free pass out of Riverbend. “I leave, then. None of us draws blood while I go out. I fly away, and you don’t fly after me. Is that the agreement?”
Marc nodded. “Yes.”
“Then it is done. Fools. I know your scents now, but you will not know mine. I will kill you so quickly that you will still be screaming while your head rolls on the ground.”
Would the bastard ever stop talking and just leave? Demons were even worse than fanatics. Irritated, Radha asked, “Kind of like this?”
Whimpering, a double of the demon’s head rolled across the library floor, bumping along over its black curving horns.
The demon bared its teeth at her. “I’ll hunt you down first.”
“Back off, demon.” Marc’s expression hardened. “If you don’t leave in a few seconds, you’ll be breaking your bargain.”
And the demon wouldn’t risk whatever diseased thing passed for its soul, either—not when it meant eternal torture in Hell. Swords held at ready, it came around the desk, backing toward the door on cloven feet.
“I’ll keep you hidden from human sight until you’re out of mine,” Radha said. “So fly away, demon.”
Its huge, membranous wings formed as it passed through the door. Marc followed it out, vanishing his sword.
As soon as it stepped onto the sidewalk, the demon smiled. “I didn’t draw blood on my way out. I’m out now. I could ki
ll you.”
“You’d be a fool to try,” Marc said. “Because this is all an illusion, and I’m really standing behind you.”
The demon whirled. Radha grinned while Marc shook with silent laughter. No one stood behind the bastard. Still, it wasn’t sure. Carefully, it extended a sword, poking the air.
“He said he’d let you fly away,” Radha reminded it. “So, go.”
It hissed. “This isn’t over, Guardians.”
“’Bye,” Radha said. “Before I remember that his bargain doesn’t stop me from slaying you.”
With another snarl, it flapped its giant wings. Radha watched it climb. When she glanced back at Marc, he’d already left her side, heading toward a small strip of bare earth at the end of the street. She followed him, tracing the southbound flight of the demon.
“We should have slain him in the street.”
“That’s not as fun.” Marc glanced at her, smiling. “And it would never have left the library if we hadn’t said it could fly away.”
She knew. Still, she worried. Marc’s Gift allowed him to haul dirt, he’d said . . . and the demon had already flown high and far. “Do you wait for him to land?”
Marc didn’t immediately answer. His eyes had narrowed on the demon in the distance, and the power of his Gift became a low, gathering hum against Radha’s shields. Strong, overwhelming all of her senses—she could almost smell the fresh dirt. Reflexively, she looked down.
His feet were bare, toes digging into the frozen soil.
“Radha,” he said, “he’s about to fly over an empty field, do you see?”
Flat, covered with snow. “Yes.”
“Create an illusion that duplicates that entire area. The field, the sky, everything in between. Anybody who looks in that direction has to see the same thing they would now. Ready?”
The field, the sky, everything in between. Was he serious?
Her heart pounding, she created the illusion. “Yes.”
The gathering hum of his Gift suddenly wound higher, a controlled thrust of incredible power against her shields. The entire field erupted upward in a long column, as if pushed from below by a giant hand into a rectangular tower of dirt and stone—directly beneath the demon. The field at the top of the tower hinged like an enormous jaw. Unable to avoid it, the demon stopped flying, sword drawn, as the earthen mouth opened around its body. Hundreds of tons of soil and stone snapped together.
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