Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

“He’s really something,” she said instead, and hated how her voice had thickened. Hated that even now, he took up any part of her head. Clearing her throat, she spooned up a heap of soggy flakes. “So—two and a half years. Did I miss anything?”

  * * *

  According to her mother, she’d missed a royal wedding, a presidential election, and a lot of reality television. Taylor didn’t care how much she left out. She could read the headlines later; catching up with her mom mattered more than loading up on current events—and it prevented her from dwelling on the time she’d lost. But even a pot of tea couldn’t stop her mother’s yawns, and Taylor urged her back to bed.

  In her own room, Taylor traded her sweats and bare feet for a pair of trousers and boots that she made by imagining them. God, she loved being able to do that. She didn’t know how it worked, but it was definitely one of the perks.

  Another perk was finding her keys and her Special Investigations–issued cell phone in her hammerspace, the battery still half-charged and her account still active. She locked the apartment behind her and dialed Joe’s home number as she made her way downstairs and onto the sidewalk.

  Three o’clock in the morning. Not every street in San Francisco would be quiet, but hers was. Drops from an earlier rain fell from the power lines crisscrossing overhead. A half-moon peeked through still-swollen clouds. Cold spring air filled her lungs, touched brisk fingers to her cheeks, but even though she’d only created a light jacket over her shirt, she didn’t shiver or wish for anything warmer. So strange that she could feel the cold, but not feel cold. Another perk.

  “This better be damned good.” Joe’s gruff greeting was heavy with sleep.

  Taylor grinned. It was so easy to picture his hangdog face lined with irritation, his brown hair sticking up every which way. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen him just out of bed and grumpy as hell. “Jesus, being a federal agent has made you soft. Whining over a three a.m. wake-up? It used to be, we’d just be getting started.”

  A sharp, indrawn breath. “Andy?”

  “That’s me. Sleeping Beauty.” Better than any fairy tale, though. Taylor hadn’t needed a kiss to wake her up.

  “Christ be nimble. You at home?”

  “Leaving it.” Before Michael decided to pop in. “My mom just went back to bed.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Savi’s.” She heard noises in the background—Joe was moving around. “No, don’t get up. I’m just calling because I wanted you to be the first after my mom to know. I’ll see you at SI later, because if I don’t see Savi before sunrise I won’t get a chance until tonight.”

  “Vampires.” He acknowledged her predicament with a sigh. “All right, then. How’d Carolyn take it?”

  Oh, God. Taylor wasn’t ready to talk about her mom with him yet. She closed her eyes, ignored the sweet note in his voice. “Really well. But I know it must have been rough for her.”

  “It was. But she’s one hell of a tough lady.” Admiration deepened the sweetness into something warmer. “How are you taking it?”

  Truthfully? “Not quite as well. I’m trying not to dwell.”

  “Dammit, Andy.” No anger. Just heavy regret, and no more needed to be said.

  There wasn’t anything to say, anyway. “Back to bed, old man. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Just remember this old man can still run circles around you.”

  “So your walker doesn’t roll in a straight line anymore?” Taylor asked, and his bark of laughter lifted the weight in her chest. “In the morning, then.”

  “Early. I’m jumping over to West Virginia at seven.”

  Teleporting across the country. She wouldn’t ask who was taking him. Only four Guardians could jump instantly from one location to another. Michael was one of them.

  “Early,” she agreed and ended the call.

  A two-mile walk would take her to Savi and Colin’s house in the Haight, one of the big Victorian mansions that were always featured in tourist brochures. It might have been an even more popular destination if people knew that a vampire had lived there since the 1906 quake, but fortunately, very few humans knew that vampires existed at all. Privacy meant safety—not just from humans, but from demons. Though vampires had once been human, nothing in the Rules prevented demons from hurting them . . . and the demons would enjoy every second of it.

  Taylor considered giving Savi a heads-up call, letting the vampire know that she was awake and on her way, but chances were that the news would spread to the Guardians—and to Michael. She’d make it a surprise visit instead.

  She started off at a leisurely pace. Taylor could run the two miles in under a minute—maybe a little slower now that Michael’s strength wasn’t augmenting hers—but she chose to walk. She didn’t want to dwell on the time lost, but she needed a few minutes to come to terms with her new status.

  A novice Guardian. An unskilled Guardian.

  She didn’t care that her body wasn’t as strong and as fast as Michael’s or any of the older Guardians’. Taylor didn’t measure herself against anyone else; only her own standards mattered. But her lack of skill bothered the hell out of her.

  Not that she was a complete newbie. She’d developed psychic shields while still human, which kept Guardians and demons from sensing her emotions. After her transformation, she’d quickly developed psychic blocks, too, which kept other people’s emotions out. Both were necessary for defense. The shields kept demons and vampires—or other Guardians—from sensing Taylor’s presence, while the blocks kept her from being overwhelmed by humans who couldn’t guard their minds.

  Though it wasn’t so bad now. In the apartments and houses she passed, most of the people were sleeping, their emotions blurred and indistinct in dreams, tasting like memories of flavors on her tongue.

  That had changed, too. When Michael had been in her head, emotions had sounded like a song that she easily recognized even though she’d never heard it before. Now they were like a taste, an odor, sometimes a sensation. She knew most Guardians experienced them that way, a psychic scent—and Taylor interpreted them easily, too.

  She hadn’t needed him to teach her that—and when Michael had blocked the link between them during the worst of his torture, she’d sensed psychic scents this way before. So this was one adjustment that would be easy to make.

  Not having his Gifts to back her up wouldn’t be as easy. No more teleporting. She’d never been good at healing, so that wasn’t a loss. And though she wanted to test out her own Gift, that would be a bad idea right now. Not only would using a Gift open her shields and reveal her position to any demon who might be in the city, she didn’t know what her power might be. Supposedly a Gift reflected some aspect of her human life, and Taylor had often been told by her superiors that she had anger management issues. Perhaps her Gift was simply an explosion waiting to go off. If so, better to practice it far away from populated areas.

  And that was only if she’d even developed a Gift yet. Some Guardians waited decades before discovering theirs.

  So she couldn’t rely on Gifts and superpowers. She needed to fly, to fight with swords and a hundred other weapons. She needed to know languages and martial arts. She needed to use her psychic abilities to attack as well as defend.

  That was all stuff that she’d have to learn, that she would learn. But learning the flying and the fighting wasn’t the problem. It just all took so damn long, and two and a half years had already been wasted.

  Being a novice wasn’t like being a rookie. A cop immediately worked the streets, putting herself out there. A novice Guardian had at least fifty years of training ahead of her before she became active. It might have been worse. Before the Guardians’ numbers had been reduced to a few dozen warriors and novices, new Guardians had trained for a hundred years in Caelum before they stepped foot on Earth again. Now they trained at Special Investigations headquarters under the tutelage of a human. After the Guardian realm had fallen apart, some novic
es began to keep apartments outside the warehouse headquarters, but aside from training and researching, they never saw any action. All for a good reason—Taylor might be able to hold her own against an unfriendly vampire, but a demon or nosferatu would slaughter her within seconds—but the next fifty years stretched ahead of her like an unending hell, five decades of being useless and frustrated.

  Maybe she wouldn’t be feeling this if she hadn’t begun her life as a Guardian differently. With Michael linked to her, she’d been out there slaying demons and nosferatu. Protecting humans. Working.

  That wouldn’t be an option now. And she wanted to work. She needed to be useful, to do something more than practice fencing and flying. She couldn’t be a detective. Both demons and Guardians operated under the Rules, which dictated that they couldn’t impede a human’s free will and couldn’t kill one, even in self-defense or to save someone else. A cop couldn’t do the job without breaking the Rules now and then, so working as a detective on the side was out. The one job she’d worked toward her entire life, the job that was in her bones and her blood . . . and she couldn’t be one.

  Instead of working, all that she had to look forward to for the next fifty years was Newbie Guardian School, while all of the humans around her—her mother, Jason, Joe—grew older and died.

  Jesus. How could she possibly come to terms with that?

  Taylor stopped. The tall, wrought-iron gate guarding the entrance to Savi’s house loomed in front of her. She’d made it here, but only now began to recognize why she’d come. Not just to get away from Michael. Not just to see her friend.

  She was done with being a Guardian. Done, done, done.

  But becoming a human again wasn’t a simple thing. There were rules that said how and when a Guardian could be transformed back—but unlike the Rules, these weren’t set in stone. Most Guardians had to wait a hundred years before they were given an option to Fall and resume their lives; the only other choice was to Ascend and await the judgment that would send their souls to Heaven or Hell.

  Taylor wasn’t ready to face judgment. She just wanted her life back—and Savi lived with the vampire who could tell her how to get it.

  Resolved, she pressed the buzzer at the gate and shot a toothy grin at the camera, which would tell Colin and Savi who she claimed to be but offered little real security. The array of thermal sensors in the console allowed a better confirmation of her identity. Demons registered hotter than a human would, and Guardians were a normal 98.6. Both vampires and nosferatu were colder than humans, but they couldn’t shape-shift and fool the cameras, anyway.

  “Please identify yourself.”

  Taylor recognized the crisp female voice. Maggie Wren, the butler—who would recognize Taylor as well. Even if Taylor hadn’t been a frequent visitor before her thirty-month nap, Maggie would have known her face. While still human, Taylor had investigated her for murder.

  The butler hadn’t done it. She’d been framed by a demon—and had taken the news that vampires, Guardians, and demons existed with far more aplomb than Taylor had. But then, nothing seemed to rattle Maggie. A former CIA operative, her ice-blond hair never strayed out of place, her glacial eyes saw everything, and her hands always remained rock steady.

  If Taylor hadn’t liked the other woman so much, she’d probably have hated her.

  “Special Agent Andy Taylor.” No doubt her response would be run through a voice analysis, though that was also less helpful than the thermal imaging. Any shape-shifted demon could impersonate a voice.

  Except for Michael’s voice.

  She pushed the thought of him away, forced herself to actually think like an investigator instead of just standing there. “Why are you here at night, Maggie?”

  The butler owned a house a few blocks away, where she lived with Colin’s great-great-great-something-nephew Geoffrey Blake. Usually Maggie spent the nights at home and watched over Savi and Colin during the day. Demons couldn’t hurt or force a human to do anything, so even though their strength couldn’t compare, humans like Maggie served as the best defense against them.

  “Geoff and I have moved in for the time being. I’m opening the gate now.”

  Taylor could have just jumped over it, but she liked how normal waiting for the gates to open was—and she liked taking the extra time to mull over Maggie’s response while she walked up the drive.

  Did Colin and Savi need the extra protection at night? Or was it Maggie and Geoff who needed it? If so, Savi and Colin would be able to provide it. Colin Ames-Beaumont was the most powerful vampire in the world—not as strong or as quick as a demon, but he could hold his own. He was one of two vampires who could remain awake during the day, and the only vampire who didn’t immediately burn in the sun. Savi had her own bag of surprises, starting with a houseful of technological defenses and ending with her fangs and claws and hellhound venom.

  But they were both linked by blood to Chaos, which had already made them a target when Michael’s sister, Anaria, attempted to gain access to that realm. Lucifer’s demons might try the same. Lucifer himself couldn’t—after losing a wager with Michael, he’d been forced to close all of the portals between Hell and Earth, effectively trapping him there. But before Lucifer had closed the Gates, he’d sent demons out to perform various tasks on his behalf. Some of those demons had immediately tried to create new portals; others were probably lying in wait.

  Perhaps Colin and Savi expected another attack. Or perhaps, in the past two and a half years, there had already been one.

  The front door opened. Savi came out onto the columned porch with Colin at her side. Taylor didn’t look at him straight-on. Though he wasn’t projecting the Terrifying Beauty stare that could make her knees shake with wonder and fear, his face still gave her a jolt that she felt down to her toes. Taylor focused on Savi instead. Short black hair stood in spikes over a fairy’s face, delicate with a pointed chin. She was biting her bottom lip and bouncing up and down on her bare feet a little—as if she wanted to run to Taylor, but held back.

  Of course she did. Neither Savi nor Colin was stupid.

  Colin’s powerful mind pressed against Taylor’s psychic shields. Thermal scans and cameras were all well and good, but there was nothing like touching someone’s brain to ascertain their identity. Taylor obliged by opening her shields a crack.

  Michael teleported in front of her.

  Terror dug into Taylor’s chest. His massive body towered over her, obstructing everything else in sight. She stumbled back, called in her gun. Whipping it up, she aimed between his amber eyes, both shining like the sun. Her hands shook. The barrel veered over his head, then down past his chin. Fuck, fuck! She tried to steady, but could only remember the scales, the sharp teeth. They weren’t there now but she could see them . . . and feel the familiar darkness of his mind probing hers.

  “Bastard!” She slammed her shields closed. “Stay out of my head!”

  “Andy!” Savi’s shout came from the porch. Colin was holding her back. Her confusion and fear tasted like acid on Taylor’s tongue.

  She blocked them out. On a deep breath, she steadied her hands. Michael watched her, his big body absolutely still. Despite her terrified memories, he looked like himself. Close-cropped black hair, bronze skin, amber eyes. He wore a simple sleeveless tunic and linen pants, but his clothes were just another deception. I’m harmless, they seemed to say. I look like a peaceful monk. Well, she wasn’t fooled. They didn’t hide his warrior’s physique, and his feet were bare. However nonthreatening he tried to appear, Michael was always ready to kill something.

  And he must have been searching for her. That was the only explanation for how he’d teleported in the very second she’d opened her shields. He’d been lying in wait, like a snake.

  Like a demon.

  “If you must shoot him, Taylor, please use a silencer.” Colin’s voice took on the droll tone he used whenever he was trying to soothe Savi’s fears—and whenever Savi had good reason to fear. “Visits from the polic
e are so very tedious.”

  Nothing from Michael, but the glow in his eyes was fading, the amber darkening to obsidian. She heard his inhalation, as if he drew in her scent, and another shudder of terror wrecked her aim.

  He’d smelled her in Hell, too.

  With effort, Taylor steadied and bared her teeth in a smile. “You’re not covered in armored scales now, motherfucker. So you take one step toward me, and we’ll see how you like having your brain torn apart.”

  Michael closed his eyes. When he opened them, his irises were amber again, appearing almost human. She knew they damn well weren’t.

  His somber gaze traveled up her length. “I’m pleased to see that you’re well, Andromeda Taylor.”

  The warm harmony of his voice washed over her skin and seemed to sink in, as if wrapping her in a protective embrace. She steeled herself against it.

  “Yeah? Fuck you.”

  When his lips curved, her finger tightened on the trigger. But this wasn’t the same terrifying razor-toothed grin he’d given her in Hell. Just a gorgeous one that almost made her forget what lay inside him.

  His smile widened. “I’m also pleased that you are yourself again.”

  Then he was gone.

  Taylor folded over, hands on her knees. Her stomach roiled. The breakfast of champions was a few seconds away from splattering over the manicured lawn.

  Light steps approached at a run. Savi’s cool hands caught her cheeks. “Hey. Are you okay? What was that about?”

  What was it about? Three hours ago, he’d been in her mind and she’d been crawling up his scaly chest, tangling a kiss with his forked tongue. It didn’t matter that two and a half years had passed. It had been a far shorter time in her head.

  And the hole in her chest had healed, but she could still feel it.

  “Nothing.” Swallowing hard, Taylor straightened and vanished her gun. “I’m all right.”

  Behind Savi, Colin stood with his hands in his tailored trouser pockets, grinning at her with his fangs on full display. When she’d met him, Taylor had disliked the vain bastard, but he’d grown on her. Like a tumor.