Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

  “We’ll see. Until then, I’m at your service, Agent Taylor. You need anything, just give a shout.”

  The way he looked at her mouth, Taylor couldn’t doubt the kind of service he was offering. She swallowed hard, but her voice still sounded husky. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will,” he said, and the predatory slant of his brows suddenly looked a little wicked instead. Holding her gaze, he took two steps back before pivoting toward the door. All business again.

  Would he keep up that persona? She moved to the front window and watched him on the sidewalk. He still had that Agent Smith stride, determined and confident, but now with an air of distraction. His head was down, the tip of his thumb rubbing back and forth over his bottom lip—as if thinking of a kiss.

  God, she could almost feel it, too. She touched her fingers to her mouth. The night he’d transformed her, his lips had been so warm. She’d thought they’d be hard, like kissing stone. But they’d just been firm. Gentle as they’d parted hers.

  With a shake of her head, Taylor jerked her hand from her mouth. What was she doing? What was he doing?

  She backed away from the window. This wasn’t just manipulation. She was being seduced.

  Yet she still couldn’t figure out why. And it shouldn’t have been working.

  It wasn’t working. The sudden sensitivity at the tips of her breasts and the empty ache between her legs didn’t matter. The memory of that long-ago kiss didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to have sex with him.

  But at least now she knew why Savi had called him Michael Smith. How many different people could he be? Each one culled from different aspects of his real history, reflecting some part of himself—and he had a hundred lifetimes to draw from.

  A hundred lifetimes, and he’d survived them all. Taylor hadn’t even made it through half of one yet and had already managed to fuck it up.

  She’d also become as distracted as Agent Smith. Except that he was knocking at a neighbor’s door and doing the job while she was just standing there.

  She kicked her own ass up the stairs and into Brandt’s office. No computer. Most likely he had a laptop to take with him. Law and history books on the shelves. Meticulous receipts in a file. God love him. She rifled through, keeping half an ear on Michael and his conversation with the neighbors. The perk of superhearing—he wouldn’t have to tell her what they’d said.

  Unfortunately, so far they’d noticed zilch.

  Nothing popped up in the receipts, and the timeline looked the same. No purchases starting two weeks ago. She vanished the file into her hammerspace to examine more closely later and texted Jake. I’m seeing apartment expenses in D.C.?

  His residence when the Senate is in session. Shared with two legislative aides.

  Great. Maybe the cheese was moldy because he’d forgotten to clean out the fridge before going. Could he be there now?

  Nope. Alejandro checked out the apt. Senator is on a legislative break for state work in Columbus. Brandt should be there, too.

  So at least she and Michael had come to the right place first. Any other residences?

  He still owns the family place in Bellevue, just outside of Seattle. Visits three/four times a year.

  She texted a thanks and headed for Brandt’s bedroom. Bed made, nothing out of order. A walk-in closet as organized as his receipts. No empty hangers, no gaps between the suits, his overnight bag and full-sized luggage up on a shelf. That made sense. If he kept an apartment in D.C., he’d travel light. Maybe take a briefcase, his computer. No need to lug around the clothes.

  And a demon wouldn’t need his clothes at all. They could just create their own.

  So what did this tell her? That the last time Brandt had left this house, he hadn’t intended to be gone for very long—or was headed someplace where he wouldn’t need much extra stuff. Or, if he’d been forced out of the house, someone had cleaned up any evidence of a struggle. So it didn’t tell her much.

  Except that the demon hadn’t made the video here. Not a single flag in any of the rooms. She couldn’t picture a flagpole standing in a shared apartment, either. But a senator’s offices—or the home of a political family?

  That would fit. She exited the closet and saw that Michael had either teleported back into the house or had quietly snuck back in—and, despite the suit, he was Big Warrior Guardian again.

  “I want to head over to the senator’s offices and visit his house in Seattle next,” she said. “I’ve just got the bathroom to look through first.”

  “You’re not finished?”

  Searching through an entire house? She was doing a crappy, rushed job as it was—

  Oh.

  “Superspeed, right? Oh, shut up,” she said when he laughed. That low, harmonic rumble did stupid things to her head. “Did you learn anything from the neighbors?”

  “You didn’t listen?”

  “I did. I just want to know if you latched on to the same things, and if we came to the same conclusions.”

  Michael nodded. “He used his vehicle to leave and return each morning and evening. No one saw him use another form of transportation. They never saw any visitors, only Brandt. But he hadn’t been eating anything, and this house doesn’t smell as if a human has been living here recently. I believe it confirms that a demon had been impersonating him for several weeks.”

  She thought so, too. “Impersonating him during the day, at least. He could have easily flown off at night. That’s probably what happened on Friday. The demon parked the car and didn’t even go inside. He just flew off. The video was uploaded, his work here finished.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why park the car? So that no one would realize he was missing right away?” An abandoned vehicle might have tipped someone off, raised suspicion. “But what would that matter? The video was already online.”

  “I don’t yet know what the demon has put into motion.”

  Taylor thought he suspected something bad, though. His eyes had darkened, and his features were like stone. Dread was building in her own gut. If the demon had just wanted to fuck with the Guardians, why make Brandt disappear? Wouldn’t messing with his life and reputation just add to the fun? Unless the demon wanted to fuck the Guardians over even harder, by making certain that Brandt never showed up alive.

  But the timing would have to be right. If forensics showed that Brandt had died two weeks earlier, his video upload wouldn’t make sense. If it happened after Friday, though, the timeline would work.

  Jesus. Three days had already passed. They needed to find this guy before it was too late.

  “We don’t know the demon’s plan,” she said. “So let’s follow the little we know for sure.”

  * * *

  Since Michael was still in that suit, Taylor let him hold her closer than necessary as they teleported, just to prove to herself that his body didn’t affect her. It didn’t matter that she was too busy trying not to be sick all over the top of a downtown office building to notice if any warm tingling started beneath her skin.

  She chalked it up as a win.

  His hand lingered at her waist when she stepped away. “All right?”

  “Yeah. But I need another minute.”

  Not to steady. Taylor hadn’t worried about running into anyone at Brandt’s house, but in a senator’s office, she wouldn’t pass. She pulled a hairbrush in from her hammerspace, flipped her head upside down, and started in.

  Two and a half years of bedhead. Ouch and motherfricking ouch.

  Done with the underside, she flipped her hair back up and noticed Michael’s dark frown.

  “Do you enjoy hurting yourself?”

  “Maybe. Why?” Would he try to protect her from this, too?

  “You could shape-shift and create new hair.”

  No, she couldn’t. If she tried, her body might end up looking like a mutant potato. Because even though she’d shape-shifted before, Michael had been in her head helping her through it.

  And thinking of
that would just piss her off. Which might be what she needed—why wasn’t she still angry at him?—but wouldn’t help Mark Brandt.

  So she’d think of something else. She’d think of what the demon might be planning, try to figure out his purpose and where he might have taken Brandt. “Have demons tried to expose the Guardians before?”

  “Several times. But only individual Guardians who had been posing as humans. We’ve never operated from a centralized location on Earth before.”

  Because Caelum was their centralized location. “I suppose there was no Internet to spread the word so quickly before, either.”

  “Yes. I usually do not wish a return to cuneiform. Today I do.”

  “Clay tablets? I suppose that would slow things down. Though rumors must have spread just as quickly.”

  “Not as quickly as a video.”

  She scraped her hair back into a ponytail. “So we’re advocating a return to cuneiform? At least there’d be less porn.”

  “Not true. Many men were creative with a stylus.”

  Taylor grinned. He would know. “I bet the first time a caveman picked up a stick, he drew boobs in the dirt.”

  “Only after he drew his own penis as twice its true size.”

  She gaped. Had Michael really just said that? His grin told her that she’d heard it correctly—and now she couldn’t stop laughing. True or not, she absolutely believed most guys would do exactly that, today or ten thousand years ago. Michael could probably joke about it because he didn’t need to exaggerate.

  Oh, God, and his smile was gorgeous.

  And that kind of thought needed to stop. Closing her eyes, she got hold of herself, steadied her breathing. No more of this.

  Mark Brandt. Senator’s office. Do the job. “Did you perform a psychic sweep?”

  “Yes. No demons.”

  So Brandt’s impersonator still hadn’t come in to work. They hadn’t expected anything different. Carefully, she probed the minds in the building, trying to sense their emotions.

  An overwhelming flood rolled over her tongue in a sickening miasma. Too many people, too many feelings. She couldn’t sort through them.

  “One at a time,” Michael said softly. “Picture the building as a distinct space and move from top to bottom, feeling out each mind as you encounter it.”

  “That’s what you do?”

  “Yes.”

  But a lot faster, she knew. His psychic sweeps lasted less than a second and encompassed huge areas. Eventually she’d work up to that. For now she picked her way through the building. Not many strong emotions. Some bored, some frustrated. Minor worries here and there, some satisfaction. But one cluster of minds was uncertain, uneasy. Just five people.

  Senator Blackwell and her staff?

  “That video names the senator,” Taylor said. “If people have seen it, they might be getting calls. Damage control is probably in full effect.”

  “It is. I have heard two of them on the phone, denying the existence of an infection or cover-up, that they believe the video was taken out of context, and that Brandt will soon clarify the statements made.”

  He’d parsed all of that through the office noise? She heard lots of voices, but also phones ringing and footsteps and copy machines and clacking keyboards and the ventilation system. Obviously she’d have to practice—but it could wait.

  “So, teleporting again?”

  “Yes.” He glanced to the building’s edge. “Or we can jump.”

  “I can’t fly yet.”

  “It is only twelve floors. You won’t need to.”

  Uh-huh. She walked to the edge and looked over. A wide alley lined with Dumpsters waited below. A lot of hard asphalt.

  And a lot of windows on the way down. “Someone will see us.”

  “Perhaps. But the moment they look outside and don’t see a body, they’ll assume they were mistaken.”

  True. But still. She’d prefer to practice this one on softer ground first.

  “If you are uncertain this time, I’ll hold you on the way down,” he said.

  That decided her. She held out her hand. “Teleport.”

  Into an empty office, where he ended up holding her anyway. As she swayed, the steel bands of his arms caught her up against his chest, and he looked down at her with his eyes glowing amber, just watching her as the room spun around him, his face the only thing in the world that was steady enough to focus on.

  Well played, Michael. Damn it.

  His grin flashed when he set her feet to the ground, but he wisely said nothing. A directory near the elevator put them on the floor below the senator’s office. Taylor mulled over her approach as they rode up. If the senator and the staff had seen the video, anyone from Special Investigations might put their back up.

  Flash the badge, then, and just give their names. Most people would assume FBI when she said agent.

  A glass door opened to a carpeted reception area. A pair of flags stood in the corner, but not the flag from the video. Behind the oak desk, a woman smiled at them and gave the expected “Welcome to Senator Blackwell’s office. How may I help you?” lines. Sleek dark hair, cardigan over a pink chemise. Friendly and professional, but the tightness around her eyes and the nervousness in her psychic scent warned Taylor to start off easy.

  She didn’t get a chance. The receptionist’s gaze flicked down to the badge Taylor had tucked into her waistband and landed on Michael. Her smile froze. Fear spiked through the nervousness. Her finger shot to an intercom button. “Senator? I think they’re here.”

  Frowning, Taylor glanced back. Ah. Michael wasn’t playing Agent Smith. He was just a big scary Guardian in a suit. She raised her brows.

  Too low for a human to hear, he said, “It wouldn’t have mattered. She was waiting for us.”

  On the intercom, a woman’s voice replied, “Thank you, Janet. Please collect their identification and make a photocopy. I’ll be out shortly.”

  Obediently, Taylor offered their ID. A door opened down a short hall. The woman who emerged didn’t project any fear when she looked at Michael, only anger, worry, and a hardening sense of determination. Tall and lean, and in incredible shape for sixty, she wore a tailored black pantsuit and blue blouse that gave the impression of modest good taste and power.

  She held out her hand, gave Taylor’s a firm shake. “I’m Trina Blackwell. Janet, have you finished with their IDs? Thank you. Please come with me, agents.”

  Most of the other offices were open and empty. No flags. Brandt’s name marked one door. Taylor took a detour inside and returned to the hallway a half second later. Michael’s mouth curved. Damn straight, she could do superspeed.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen anything useful.

  Reading the photocopies as she walked, Blackwell led them into her office, gestured to the pair of club chairs facing her desk. Books filled a wall of shelves behind her seat. A large window offered a view of the glass-and-steel building across the street and let in warm sunlight that gleamed across the surface of an oval conference table piled high with bound ledgers.

  A laptop sat at an angle to the senator’s chair, the lid closed. She set the copies of their identification on the desk and leaned back, her narrowed gaze moving from Taylor to Michael. “So. Special Agents Taylor and Smith of Special Investigations. You’re looking for Mark?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Taylor said. “We’re responding to a missing persons report. I understand that he has not been in to work today, though you expected him?”

  “A missing persons report? Who filed that? You’ll tell me that it was an anonymous caller, is that correct?”

  Okay, so no bullshit. “We have reason to believe his life may be in danger.”

  “From whom?”

  “That is what we’re trying to determine, ma’am. Where he’s been. Who he has seen. We would like to look through his appointment book and speak with your staff.”

  The senator’s arched brows and pursed lips said they weren’t going to get it. Her f
ingers tapped the arm of her chair. “This morning I spoke to Senator Dennis Maddox, a member of the committee on Homeland Security. He told me that Special Investigations does not exist.”

  “I was in the closed-door meeting with the senator when the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense approved Special Investigations’ creation and funding.” Michael’s voice wasn’t flat anymore, but that deep, beautiful harmony. “Along with Mark Brandt’s father.”

  As if drawn, the senator’s gaze went to his face and stayed there. Taylor couldn’t feel much from her—people who spent their lives watching their words and guarding their responses often had stronger shields—but wonder and speculation bled through. No real fear.

  Taylor suspected that in her conversation with Maddox, more had been discussed than just Special Investigations. Perhaps the other senator had told her what he’d seen in that meeting. Michael’s wings, his great strength.

  Blackwell shook her head. “Perhaps so, but as of this morning, you’ve been disavowed. I won’t answer your questions. You need to leave.”

  Taylor sat forward. “We were just at his home, Senator. No one has lived there for some time, but he has been here at work for the past two weeks. Perhaps you noticed that he was not himself. That his personality had altered.”

  Not a flicker on the senator’s face, but the sense of recognition in her psychic scent was confirmation enough. Recognition, then denial. “The recent accusations aimed at his father have upset him greatly, Agent Taylor. Of course he has not been completely himself.”

  The two-and-a-half-year gap in recent history raised its ugly head. Taylor had no idea what she was talking about. But she could ask for details about the accusations later. Mark Brandt himself was more important now. “So that affected him?”

  “It placed him under a great deal of stress. His father is not alive to defend himself, so Mark must bear the brunt of the speculation, and it has left a shadow on his own career.” Anger burned through her psychic scent; her face was impassive. “He’s a good man and an asset to my team. If he needs help, I will see that he gets it. But not from those whose purpose and authority are in question.”