Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

  Fine. No more dancing around. Taylor recognized a stone wall when she saw one. “Senator, we have seen the video. We don’t believe he made it.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “You believe it was created under coercion? To what purpose?”

  “To throw suspicion on the people who would help him. So that we’re given silence instead of information.” As you have. But Taylor let that hang there, unspoken. She stood. “Please consider filing a missing persons report, so that we are not the only ones looking for him.”

  “I will do that.”

  It wouldn’t be enough. Frustration dogging her every step, Taylor left the office, out to the elevators. She felt Michael’s hand settle on her lower back and shook her head.

  “No teleporting yet. I need a minute to think before my brain starts spinning again.”

  He nodded and stepped away. The elevator door closed. She pushed a button at random.

  “What accusation was she talking about? Brandt’s father?”

  “One of his former legal aides published a book last year. In it, she accuses him of forcing her to have sex with him and several other unnamed men. She suggests that other females in the office suffered the same.”

  Jesus. “Did you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  And why not? She supposed it only took a minute for him to read anything. “Did she have evidence?”

  “Yes. Recorded phone calls and e-mails. One video from a hidden camera in his office.”

  A video? “Are you sure it wasn’t faked by a demon? After all, Mark Brandt helped the Guardians fake his dad’s death. Maybe they wanted to screw him over.”

  “I wondered the same, so I watched it.” A hard, cold note flattened his voice. “They were human.”

  What a disgusting pig Brandt’s father was, then. People could be worse than demons, sometimes. “I shouldn’t be surprised. The nephilim could only possess souls that were on their way to Hell, and something he’d done sent him there. I guess he deserved it.”

  “Yes.”

  She was glad Michael agreed, especially considering the way he’d tried to persuade her to give up his body in Hell. The elevator dinged and opened. No one got on. She jabbed another button. “You were damn quiet in there.”

  Which wasn’t really new. But she was never sure if he was brooding or just keeping his thoughts to himself. Either way, he was often quiet.

  Except with her. She doubted that he shared everything—but he spoke more than she’d ever heard him speak when others were in the same room. She wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  She shouldn’t be thinking of anything but the case.

  “I prefer to listen,” he said.

  “So that you can hear threats coming?”

  “Sometimes. But in the senator’s office, there was nothing more to ask.”

  Nothing that the senator would have answered, anyway. “Are we going to find Brandt alive?”

  His eyes darkened, which gave her the answer before he did. “The video would not be enough for a demon.”

  “It was enough to get us disavowed.”

  “Yes. But that is an inconvenience, not damage. It is not enough.”

  What would be? “Okay, then. Let’s check out his place in Seattle, then go and talk to Alejandro in D.C. We can see if he’s heard anything about being disavowed, because these badges aren’t worth shit if we have been. And that will be really damn inconvenient when we’re searching for him.”

  And hopefully that inconvenience wouldn’t cost Mark Brandt his life.

  * * *

  She immediately knew that they were too late. Far below, cruisers sat in the driveway of a large house, lights flashing red and blue, flanked by an ambulance and unmarked police vehicles. Sharp like ice, Michael’s psychic sweep stabbed through her shields.

  The world spun again and Michael cradled her against him. In his lap? She jerked away and her feet slid on steep shingles. They were on the roof, she realized. He’d crouched down so that no one in the driveway would see them.

  Taylor hunkered down next to him, fighting the lingering dizziness. Rain splattered in heavy drops all around them. Why wasn’t she getting wet?

  She’d figure that out later. “Did they say anything while I wobbled?”

  Obsidian eyes met hers. “Throat torn out. Loss of blood.”

  Vampire. Maybe nosferatu. It wouldn’t be the first time demons played nice with their enemies so that they could get around the Rules.

  Damn it. “We need to get down there.”

  His clothes instantly altered. An EMT’s uniform—just as he’d worn the first night she’d seen him. A public park, a young man ripped apart. Hugh had been the suspect then.

  “Don’t talk to anyone,” she said, and when he glanced at her, she told him, “I knew there was something off about you the night Ian Rafferty was killed. Not just because I’d never seen you before, but because you talked to Hugh. So don’t give them any reason to look at you twice. We just need to know what happened to him.”

  He nodded and disappeared. A cold drop splattered on her cheek, another down the back of her neck. Lips parting in surprise, Taylor touched her cheek, looked at her glistening finger.

  He’d been vanishing the raindrops before they hit her. Protecting her, even from that.

  The rain stopped again when he returned. Taylor didn’t mention it. She didn’t want to think about it.

  “What did you see?”

  “It was a vampire. The police are taking pictures.”

  Damn it all again. Taylor clenched her teeth. She really didn’t like where this was heading—and what she’d soon be asking Michael to do.

  Maybe she wouldn’t need to. “And you’re sure that it is Brandt, right? Not the demon wearing his face?”

  Michael just looked at her.

  All right, she admitted. Stupid question. Of course he would know the difference. Smell the difference. But it was always best to talk it out, to raise possibilities. Even stupid ones. “So a demon impersonated Brandt in the video. But a demon can’t kill a human, so he had a vampire do it.”

  “Yes,” Michael said, his jaw like stone. That low, freezing hum that had terrified her before sounded beneath his reply. This time it didn’t scare her—and she recognized what it was.

  Rage.

  Her gaze searched his face. Not much different. His features just as hard as always, his eyes as black as night. “You must see people die all the time. This one is getting to you?”

  “They all get to me, Andromeda.” Each word was a snap, the syllables of her name a sharp series of bites. His fists tightened against his thighs. His voice softened. “Some more than others. I accept that death must happen. But not always so pointlessly. Brandt has not just been robbed of his life, but also his future. He’s been robbed of the choice to die in his way. And for what purpose? To expose us.”

  She could get behind that kind of rage. It pissed her off, too. People deserved better. They didn’t always get it—and she didn’t like accepting that, either.

  He shook his head. “Do they not get to you?”

  After being in her mind, he must know that they did. “Every one,” she said. “Which is why I spent my career trying to see murderers get what they deserve.”

  “That is what I will do.”

  “By slaying the demon?” Once, the idea of such justice had been repugnant to her. Why should Guardians decide whether demons lived or died? It wasn’t repugnant now. “What about the vampire?”

  “Once, I would have slain him without question. That has changed in these past years.” He met her eyes. “And I would like to know why he did this, first.”

  “And judge whether he deserves to die for it?”

  “Yes.”

  Taylor wasn’t as comfortable with that. Where did they draw the line? Not where the Rules began. Vampires weren’t required to follow them. And what if the demon had manipulated the vampire? Threatened someone he loved? There was no excuse for killing Brandt,
but did he deserve to die for that?

  Unless the vampire had simply enjoyed killing him. Then Taylor wouldn’t be so conflicted.

  So she was with Michael on this. She wanted to know why. They wouldn’t find out sitting here.

  Still, she couldn’t yet ask him. She texted Lilith instead.

  We’re in Seattle. The police are here. Brandt’s dead.

  Fuck. Lilith’s first response echoed Taylor’s. How?

  Vampire. We’re sitting tight for now. Senator Blackwell said that SI was disavowed. If we go in, we won’t get any answers.

  Fucking politicians. Get what you can.

  She tucked her phone away, put her head in her hands. “You’re one hundred percent sure it was a vampire? Not some human with a knife and a taste for blood?”

  “Yes. I smelled him.”

  Him? She thought he’d just been saying that in a gender-neutral way. Now she wondered. “You even know it was a male vampire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you track him by scent?”

  “I already tried. I lost the trail in the air.”

  Vampires couldn’t fly. And demons didn’t have enough of an odor trail to follow. “Then a demon took him out of here.”

  “Yes.”

  So find the vampire, maybe find the demon. Unless the demon anticipated that. “Would the demon leave the vampire alive after he’d served his purpose?”

  “Probably not. There might be nothing left but ash by now.”

  She glanced up at the sky. All clouds, but a vampire would burn even in indirect sunlight. “That would suck.”

  “Yes, but it is better than the alternative. Because if the demon has kept the vampire alive, it means that the demon needs him for another purpose.”

  And there might be another dead human later.

  Damn it. Damn it. They had to stop him, but she needed evidence to look at. She needed to trace where Brandt had been, to see if the vampire had left any clues that could identify him. The detectives might be good, but they wouldn’t even know to look in the right direction. They’d never find the vampire or the demon.

  Taylor knew it too well. She’d been in the same position as they were. The evidence they found wouldn’t add up, and they would have no idea that the problem wasn’t in the forensics or missing data, but that they were using the wrong math.

  Hell, they wouldn’t know that different math even existed.

  But walking onto the crime scene and pointing out the truth wouldn’t result in justice. Just disbelief. And Taylor would be stonewalled as hard as she’d been at the senator’s office.

  Oh, fuck it all. She lifted her head out of her hands and made herself say it. “Can you take the body without being seen? All the blood, too. And if you can steal those cameras without breaking the Rules, I also want them.”

  “I can. But are you certain?”

  Of course he’d ask. He knew her too well.

  “I hate it with everything in me,” she said. “But I’m sure.”

  He vanished. A raindrop fell on her hand. Then Michael was beside her again.

  The shouts began. The detectives’ confusion and anger, the disbelief. Taylor closed her eyes. God, she was sorry. She was so sorry.

  “I have the body and the blood, two cameras and a video recorder,” Michael said. “I couldn’t take one camera. It was in a technician’s possession.”

  And ripping it out of his hands would break the Rules. “All right. We’ll wait, try again in a few minutes. For now, just tell me what you saw.”

  “I can show you.”

  Yes, he could. If she opened her shields, he could project an image into her head. But he’d also feel everything else.

  “I don’t want you in there,” she said.

  His jaw clenched, but he nodded. “It was a personal library. A window was open to the front of the house, the shades drawn. Brandt was in the chair behind the desk. Around the body were three women, four men. Three in uniforms and armed, two in suits and armed, two unarmed.”

  Detectives, officers, and techs. “Was Brandt sitting?”

  “Yes. Blood from the wound sprayed the desktop. His neck was also broken.”

  “We’ll examine the body when we return to SI. How long ago was he killed?” She assumed that Michael had seen enough death in his lifetime to make an educated guess.

  “About two days.”

  One day after the video was uploaded, two days before the Guardians had known it existed. “Was there a flag in the room?”

  “Yes. The flagpole could have easily served as a spear.” He frowned, vanished, and reappeared. “The library is the same room as in the video.”

  She grinned. Now he was getting it. “Were they keeping Brandt here these two weeks?”

  Michael vanished and reappeared. God, that was so handy. She missed teleporting like that. No dizziness, no sickness. Just popping in and out.

  “He was here,” Michael said. “A room on the second floor locks from the outside. There was food waste in the bins. Most of it from drive-through restaurants. There were bags, cartons.”

  Good. That was what she would have asked next. “So they were bringing food to him. Why were they keeping him alive? Why not make the video and kill him two weeks ago?”

  “I can think of too many reasons. The foremost is that they wanted to persuade Brandt to make the video himself, so we wouldn’t know that a demon was involved.”

  That sounded about right. And if that was true, then Brandt had held out against a demon’s brand of persuasion for weeks, until the demon had no choice but to make the video himself. Did that mean there was some kind of deadline the demon had to meet? She hoped not. But they’d sort through those possibilities later.

  “Did you take all of the garbage?” Maybe they’d find a receipt to one of the restaurants and luck out on a surveillance camera.

  “I did.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The desk chair in the library was brown leather. Tell me how it matters.”

  How it mattered? Lilith must have really gotten to him. But he wasn’t being defensive, she saw. He truly wanted to know.

  “Perhaps it doesn’t matter,” she said. “It probably doesn’t. But in Hugh’s living room, the color does. He was a Guardian for how long?”

  “Eight centuries.”

  “Eight centuries, and the Guardians’ realm is all white. But there’s not a single white wall or countertop or piece of furniture in his house. So it’s not the specific color that matters; it’s that there’s color everywhere. It suggests to me that after he Fell, Hugh deliberately surrounded himself with things that wouldn’t remind him of Caelum or the Guardians.”

  “Or he chose color to remind him of Lilith, because he thought she was dead.”

  Taylor had never considered that, but he was probably right. She shrugged. “And perhaps it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he just doesn’t like white because he’s a klutz and he spills a lot of food. But if I was investigating him, it’s a detail that I’d mentally file away. Then I compare it to what else I know of him—what fits, what doesn’t, what motivates him. So I look for something out of place. Or if I establish a pattern, I can look for something that should be there, but isn’t.”

  And now the way that Michael was looking at her didn’t fit any patterns that made sense. The softness, the warm amber glow. She shouldn’t ask.

  She couldn’t help herself. “What?”

  “I like knowing how you think.”

  She’d like to figure him out, too. But it was smarter to remind herself why she shouldn’t care. “A year in my head didn’t tell you?”

  “No. I saw what came of such thoughts, but not how you reached your conclusions.”

  “And what will you do with that knowledge? Is it easier to manipulate me now?”

  “It would be,” he said quietly. “But I only intend to enjoy knowing it.”

  She didn’t believe him. And now, somehow, she felt like an utter bitch—so it
put her in the perfect mood to receive a text from Lilith.

  “‘Drifter and Hugh are in Seattle talking to Sammael,’” Taylor read aloud. “That’s the demon who gives Charlie the blood, right?”

  Vampires couldn’t live off animals or most bagged blood. But vampires could survive on bagged blood if the source was a living demon. Sammael sent a pint to Charlie daily, which she sent to the Guardians, so they could temporarily help out any vampires who’d lost a partner.

  But the donation wasn’t out of the goodness of Sammael’s heart. The demon was bound by a bargain. It was the only reason the Guardians hadn’t slain him.

  “Yes,” Michael said. “I would have also visited him next. It is rare for a demon to hate any individual specifically. They hate all humans. But Sammael hates Brandt more than any other.”

  “Why?”

  “Brandt discovered that Sammael was a demon, and tried to protect Jane Newcomb from him.”

  “Charlie’s sister?” Taylor had never met her, but she knew that Jane was human and married to a demon. “And Sammael supposedly loves her.”

  “He does.”

  “Demons can love? Really?”

  “In their way.” He met her gaze. “It’s more accurately obsession or a need to possess.”

  “Some humans call that love, too.” With only a thin line between them.

  “Yes. But with demons, dishonesty always comes with it. Whatever is required to keep Jane happy, to keep her in love—he will tell her that, he will pretend to be that, rather than offer her the truth.”

  “So he’ll give her whatever she wants?” Taylor snorted. “It sounds like the perfect relationship to me.”

  His smile came and went in a quick flash. “Eight thousand years of seeing perfect relationships fall apart has taught me that it’s better to know what is in someone from the start.”

  A few decades had taught Taylor that. “Does she know he’s a demon?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she knows what demons do?”

  “Yes. But she believes him when he says that he’s different.”

  “Is he?”

  “No. He trapped Charlie in a car with a vampire and forced her to choose between dying or becoming one herself.”

  Jesus. “Does Jane know that?”

  “Yes. Sammael convinced her that it was for Charlie’s own good.”