Demon Marked tg-7

by Meljean Brook

  So Taylor trained herself in the basic Guardian stuff like flying, shape-shifting, and weapons—she didn’t always want to rely on Michael—but she worked, too. Her job tracking down demons wasn’t much different than the one she’d had as an inspector in the San Francisco Police Department. She just lied a lot more, had a worldwide jurisdiction, covered up evidence instead of unearthing it, and when she located a demon, she tossed away anything resembling a fair trial and went straight to capital punishment.

  All of that had gone against the grain when she’d begun, but the more demons she met, the more she saw the necessity of it. Demons didn’t play by manmade rules; they played with them. So Guardians did the same. The difference was, Guardians tried not to hurt anyone while they did it.

  Which, when it came down to it, was really the same as the spirit of human laws: Try not to fuck other people over or hurt anyone. If you do, you pay for it.

  Simple, really.

  Taylor mentally swept the building as soon as she teleported into the large hub at the heart of the warehouse—a habit she’d picked up from Michael, but now, apparently, she did on her own. Since the sun was up, no vampires were working, though she sensed a few sleeping upstairs. Most of the Guardians’ minds were shielded, but a few sent a little mental probe in return; since they couldn’t actually send thoughts, only project emotions and images, that psychic touch was the equivalent of a Hello.

  A little disappointed that she couldn’t sense Joe Preston, her former partner on the force and now a human working for SI in almost the same capacity that she did, Taylor headed for the director’s offices, instead. She missed Joe, though she understood why they weren’t paired up on assignments; Michael or not, it would be like putting two novices together. Maybe when she had a few more years under her belt . . .

  Of course, in a few more years, Joe would hit retiring age. God, that was crazy to think about. Something that she didn’t want to think about. Taylor knew she was lucky—a hundred years of training meant that most Guardian novices never saw their family and friends again—but she didn’t know how well she’d take immortality when she saw her mother, her partner, and her brother aging themselves to death.

  Maybe Michael could help her deal with that, too. He’d seen hundreds of human generations grow old and die.

  Aaaaaand, no. That thought didn’t help at all.

  Shaking away the morbidity of it, Taylor rapped on the director’s office door.

  Her hope that a male voice would answer was dashed when Lilith called for her to enter. Crap. Taylor got along a little better with Hugh Castleford, a former Guardian who now shared the office with Lilith and served as a codirector when he wasn’t training the novices. This obviously wasn’t one of those times.

  Lilith sat behind her big desk, and didn’t glance up from her computer when Taylor came in. She must have had an outside meeting today. Instead of the leather pants and corset that Lilith usually wore, she appeared as she had the first time Taylor had met her: in a severely cut pantsuit, with her long black hair in a tight roll at her nape, and the bulge of her weapon just visible beneath her jacket.

  Lilith had been an FBI agent then, and she’d deliberately fucked one of Taylor and Joe’s murder investigations into a humping, unrecognizable mess.

  Taylor still couldn’t bring herself to like the woman, though she’d grudgingly come to respect her. Two thousand years old, Lilith had once been a demon halfling—a human who’d been given a demon’s powers through a sick ritual of symbols carved into flesh, bloodletting, and a vow to serve Lucifer. Almost every halfling disappointed him, however, and so they’d all ended up in the frozen field . . . all of them except for Lilith. A master of lies and self-preservation, she’d outlasted the others—and eventually lied well enough that she’d tricked Lucifer into releasing her from her vow to obey him, and won a wager that led to the Gates of Hell closing for five hundred years.

  She’d paid for it, though. Her demon powers had been stripped away and she’d become human again. Though the two thousand years had left its mark on Lilith, leaving her as strong and as fast as a vampire, she wasn’t immortal anymore. She couldn’t fly; she couldn’t shape-shift.

  She could still lie like the devil, though.

  Despite that, Michael had trusted her enough to put her in charge of Special Investigations’ operations—and Taylor couldn’t fault his decision. Those two thousand years as a demon meant that Lilith knew their methods better than anyone else on Earth. When an assignment popped up and Lilith gave her opinion about the demon Taylor would be looking for and the places she’d probably find him, Taylor shut up and listened.

  “Perfect timing,” Lilith said. “I just got a ping from the novices trolling local police reports. A double murder. Apparently, the guy already confessed.”

  “But?” There was always a but.

  “He said that the ghost of a dead girlfriend visited him, encouraging him to seek vengeance.”

  Probably not a ghost. Either the guy was delusional, or he’d been visited by a very solid, shape-shifted demon having a bit of fun with someone who’d been easy to take advantage of.

  “I’ll take a look,” Taylor said. “Who am I taking with me?”

  Lilith’s mouth twisted a bit. “It’s Marc Revoire’s territory.”

  The Midwest, which wasn’t exactly a thrill, but the expression on Lilith’s face made it a little better. Though a Guardian, Revoire didn’t take his assignments through SI, but he might know exactly who the demon was, and be in the process of hunting him down. Everyone understood that barreling into another Guardian’s investigation might bungle the whole thing and let a demon slip away. So although Lilith would have probably liked to flip Revoire the bird and send a team from SI to handle the double murder, she was forced to play nice, Guardian-style.

  Taylor didn’t mind working with Revoire, anyway. She’d met him before in Caelum, shortly after she’d come out of the three-month coma following Michael’s kiss, her transformation, and the link that had formed between them. Brooding and dark, with a hint of France in his voice, Revoire struck her as a solitary, silent type. He’d asked Taylor whether there was anything he could do for her and to let him know if there ever was, and then left to talk to Irena, who’d taken over as Guardian leader in Michael’s absence.

  Taylor hadn’t seen him since, but she heard mention of him now and again—though the other Guardians referred to him as Icarus rather than his name. Why, Taylor didn’t know, but after watching a few novices in their disastrous early flight attempts, she assumed that something similar had happened to him in his early years, and the nickname had stuck . . . for more than a hundred and fifty years.

  Considering that it had taken ten years on the force and a promotion to inspector before the other rookies in her year stopped calling her Red, Taylor had sympathy for him.

  “I’ll contact him now,” she said. “I also ran into Rosalia. She thinks that Nicholas St. Croix picked up a demon, but he’s gone under.”

  “St. Croix?” Lilith’s brows arched, her earlier irritation smoothing away. She turned back to her computer. “We’re already keeping tabs. We have been since he consulted for Legion Labs. Handsome, rich, and working with a demon-run corporation? It was too easy. Now we know he was just searching for his mother, but at the time, he looked good for being a demon himself.”

  “Rosalia thinks he still looks good for it.”

  “We can’t kill every asshole. Who would raise all of the asshole children?” Lilith narrowed her eyes at the computer. “And look at this. The asshole just landed in New York. No reservations or rentals yet, but if something pops, I’ll send it through to you.”

  That surprised her. “Me?”

  “You brought this to me. It’s yours unless you want to pass it on.”

  “I don’t,” Taylor said. She really didn’t.

  “All right. If you’re still with Revoire when the info comes, take him with you. Otherwise, I’ll send someone to meet you in
New York.”

  Suddenly rocking back in her chair, Lilith fixed a stare on Taylor’s face, looking deep, and nothing like Rosalia’s warm perusal. Lilith’s gaze flayed—not skin and flesh, but the shields Taylor wore.

  God damn her. Lilith didn’t have psychic powers anymore, but she didn’t need them. Two thousand years had told her how to read a woman’s face, to pick out every uncertainty and fear—and right now, Taylor carried too many of them.

  But the former demon only said, “Do you want Sir Pup to come with you?”

  Lilith’s hellhound. The mere sight of the three-headed beast could terrify a demon and there was little on Earth that could hurt it. If Michael’s absence from her mind meant that he couldn’t protect her, Sir Pup was more than an adequate replacement for the job.

  Except the hellhound terrified Taylor, too.

  “I’ll have Revoire with me,” she said.

  Lilith’s gaze sharpened. “And Michael?”

  Of course she’d zero in on what Taylor hadn’t said. Sooner or later, demons always found a weak spot.

  “If we find this guy’s ghost, I guess we’ll find out,” Taylor said.

  CHAPTER 5

  A steady vibration in Nicholas’s pocket woke him. A text message. Not the kind of buzz a man hoped to wake up to, but it’d been a while since anything more exciting had been in his pants.

  Vaguely aware of the wipers swooping across the windshield and the faint, static-filled country-western music coming from the speakers, he dug out his mobile and angled the screen away from the demon in the driver’s seat. Nicholas kept several private investigators in his employ; his London PI, Reginald Cooper, had begun verifying the demon’s story that morning. Nicholas had been expecting the investigator’s initial report, but unless the man confirmed that the demon had been lying or Cooper ran into something unexpected while digging around, the report should have come via e-mail.

  A text meant that Cooper must have unearthed a lie. Goddammit. Had the demon already broken the bargain? If so, that made her useless to him, and relieved Nicholas of his part in their agreement. He ought to just slay her now.

  But he couldn’t kill her while she drove on the highway, not without risking a wreck. And God knew how he’d explain a demon’s decapitated body to the authorities. He’d have to wait until he could paralyze her with hellhound venom, and either leave her behind—alive—or make certain her body was never found. His plan already forming, Nicholas skimmed Cooper’s message, picking up the words that anyone who’d ever met a demon might have expected: suicide, unusual circumstances, no warning, Cawthorne—Wait. What the hell?

  Thoughts of slaying the demon vanished. Nicholas reread the message and let the meaning sink in. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Cooper hadn’t uncovered a demon’s lie, but damn good news.

  Three weeks ago, Dr. Ian Cawthorne had hanged himself in his office.

  Bemused, Nicholas read the text again. So the crooked old bastard had finally done himself in. Nicholas couldn’t be sorry. Given the chance, he’d have tied Cawthorne’s noose himself. Twenty-five years ago, at Madelyn’s urging, Nicholas’s father had sought help from Cawthorne. After “treating” Nicholas’s father for symptoms of delusional paranoia—all the result of Madelyn’s shape-shifting tricks and lying tongue—the shrink had testified against his character, had taken away his pride, had ruined his business and his life.

  Had Cawthorne been treating this demon at Nightingale House? Nicholas wouldn’t ask her. He wouldn’t ask until he knew more—until he knew whether her answers were lies.

  Cooper hadn’t been able to confirm the demon’s story yet. Although his investigator had spoken to several nurses and administrators, they’d blocked him by citing patient confidentiality. Two nurses had recently quit their positions at Nightingale House, however, and the investigator planned to track them down.

  Good enough. With enough money greasing palms, someone would talk—and Nicholas would have more answers.

  He texted a reply and slid the phone back into his pocket, considering this new information. Cawthorne had killed himself three weeks ago. The same amount of time had passed since someone had first entered Madelyn’s house, using her code and tipping Nicholas off to her presence. Considering the timing, he couldn’t believe Cawthorne’s suicide was a coincidence.

  With demons involved, Nicholas couldn’t be certain of anything—but two distinct possibilities seemed likelier than any other.

  The first was that the demon had lied about her amnesia and about escaping Nightingale House. That she’d lied about everything so far, despite the bargain.

  That was the simplest possibility. Given any other circumstance, Nicholas would have calculated it as the likeliest. But simplest didn’t fit any demon’s scheme or methods, and didn’t account for the lengths every demon would go to avoid breaking a bargain.

  So the second, more probable scenario was that Madelyn had somehow escaped punishment in Hell. Then, for some unknown reason, this demon’s memories had been stripped and Madelyn had left her in Cawthorne’s care. God knew how long the man had been in Madelyn’s pocket—twenty-five years, at least. Compared to destroying a good man’s life and reputation, caring for a demon with amnesia amounted to little trouble . . . until the demon had escaped. Then Madelyn had returned to London and exacted payment for Cawthorne’s failure.

  Was Madelyn looking for this demon now?

  If so, that suited Nicholas perfectly. When Madelyn caught up to the demon, she’d also find Nicholas—and he had a payment to exact from her, too.

  He couldn’t fucking wait.

  Fully awake now, Nicholas levered the seat up and faced a wall of white. Sometime between the last stop for gas and the PI’s message vibrating in his pants, they’d driven into a snowstorm. Fat flakes whipped past the windows, piling in a thick blanket on the windshield almost as quickly as the wipers shoved them away. He couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “Where are we?”

  “Smack dab in the middle of BFE.” Without taking her eyes off the road, the demon jabbed the “seek” button on the radio console. “We just passed into Indiana.”

  He checked the clock. A few past nine. He’d slept longer than planned, but they were also making good time despite the snow. A glance at the speedometer showed him why—and sent his stomach into a dive.

  Christ. A demon’s vision rivaled a hawk’s, but a whiteout was a goddamn whiteout. “Can you see anything through this shit?”

  “Not really. I can hear other engines, though, and can tell how far away they are and the direction they’re in. Once I got used to that, it’s almost like seeing.” She flicked the blinker and angled smoothly into the left lane. A few seconds later, they passed a small hatchback crawling along like a bug. “The road isn’t bad yet, but we’ll need chains if this keeps up.”

  “I’ll buy some when we stop for gas,” Nicholas said.

  “That’ll need to be soon.” The scanning radio stopped on another static-filled country station. Maybe the same one. The demon pressed “seek” again. “The two times we stopped for gas, you paid in cash. There’s really no reason for that except you don’t want the Guardian finding us. But if someone wanted to, they could track you through your phone.”

  Not so easily. He’d also used cash to buy a prepaid mobile, and only Cooper had the number. The Guardians would find him, eventually. No doubt of that. He just had to stay ahead of them, and so he’d taken steps to slow them down: renting the SUV under a false identification, and using yet another name to reserve a hotel suite in Duluth.

  He wouldn’t tell the demon that. “So you have no memory, you’ve only been out of Nightingale for a month, yet you know about tracking phones?”

  “I watched a lot of television there. Cop shows.”

  “Violent television in a mental hospital. Brilliant.”

  “It’s what I wanted to watch. The nurses let me alone to do it.”

  Yeah, Nicholas bet they’d let her alone. A demon
was low maintenance. No need to sleep, eat, bathe—or piss. Jesus, he hoped they came across a gas station soon.

  As for the phone . . . Hell. Nicholas wanted Madelyn to find them. He didn’t want the Guardians getting there first—and there was nothing that Cooper could tell him now that couldn’t wait. He pulled out his mobile, powered it down.

  “Thank you,” she said, surprising him. “I don’t look forward to being killed on sight.”

  By the Guardians. Would Madelyn kill her, too? Nicholas didn’t think so. Madelyn wouldn’t have left the demon at Nightingale House unless she had some use for her. Considering the demon’s resemblance to Rachel, that use probably involved some scheme to tear Nicholas’s heart out.

  If this demon didn’t slay him through song first. She jabbed the radio button again, and the dial scanned through the frequencies before coming back to the same station. It must have been pissing her off. Her gaze actually left the road long enough for her to cast a deadly stare at the console.

  Hell, any more force in those jabs, and she might stab her finger through it. “You don’t like country?”

  Rachel had. She’d often joked that she was the only woman in England who had Martina McBride sitting next to Marilyn Manson in her music collection.

  “Like? That doesn’t matter. Only ‘familiar’ does—and I don’t know this song.”

  “You knew the others that have been playing?”

  “Yes. Most of them. And when I didn’t, I could find another station playing something else that I knew.” Her eyes began to glow faintly red. “I can’t find anything now.”

  “But you remember the music.”

  “As soon as I hear it, yes. I didn’t know it before that—or didn’t know that I knew it. But as soon as the song starts, I remember the lyrics, the singer. And I don’t forget again.” She pressed “seek” again, this time with less force. “But sometimes, it’s more than just knowing the words. Some songs, it’s like there’s more there, some other memory attached, and I can almost . . . touch it.”