Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

  In the frozen field, he had only felt that she was hurting. In his desire to stop everything that could harm her, he’d only made it worse.

  Her expression softened slightly. “I suppose you weren’t exactly thinking clearly.”

  Because of the torture. “I wasn’t. But I do not accept that as my excuse.”

  “I’m not going to convince you to.”

  “And I won’t try to convince you to let me take you to another cheap hotel, and let me make you forget where you are.”

  Her only response was a narrowing of her eyes, a search of his face. Still not trusting his intentions.

  “I will not try tonight, at least.” There was not enough time. Perhaps there would never be enough time. He gathered her closer, slipped his arm below her knees. “You are ready? I intend to dive.”

  “Yes.” Her grip tightened. Her gaze rose and fell with the sweep of his wings. “I need to learn to fly.”

  She did. But he would not respond to her statement now and bring attention to the inadvertent admission behind her words.

  Andromeda only needed to learn to fly if she wanted to remain a Guardian.

  He folded his wings back. The wind whipped her hair into his eyes, so he guided himself to the balcony by emitting short bursts of sound at the upper range of his register and listening to the echoes. With a snap of feathers, he landed on the balcony rail. Wrought iron beneath his feet. He would stay here. The metal transferred vibrations better than the balcony floor would. Michael set Andromeda down and sank to his heels.

  Perched, he kept his gaze on Deacon. The vampire acknowledged his arrival with a sharp nod. Wariness tightened the vampire’s frame, but he didn’t make a move toward the swords strapped to his back. After drinking nosferatu blood, then nephil blood, Deacon’s strength and speed rivaled a Guardian’s. Against Michael, he would not even have time to reach the weapons.

  And it was necessary to keep Deacon alive, but Michael could rip his arms off without killing him. For each bullet that had struck Andromeda, there were a thousand ways to make the vampire pay.

  Michael enjoyed imagining every one.

  But he wouldn’t do any of them, for three reasons: Andromeda would not like it. Irena would not like it. And neither would Rosalia.

  From within the apartment, he heard her say, “It is only for one or two nights.”

  “I will not abandon them, Mother!”

  He recognized that voice as well. Camille, the head of the Parisian vampire community. Though not Rosalia’s daughter, the name fit. Rosalia had taken Camille under her wing many decades ago and watched over her since.

  “This is not abandonment,” Rosalia said. “Your people aren’t in danger, because they haven’t been exposed. So I only ask that you retreat to a safe location until we discover how severe the threat is.”

  “Would you leave now?” The clash of two strong wills filled a beat of silence. “I thought not.”

  Andromeda was frowning, her brow furrowed. She wouldn’t understand the French, Michael realized. But she couldn’t mistake the tone. She looked to Deacon. “What’s going on?”

  She asked in English. Deacon answered in the same language.

  “Rosie stays in contact with a vampire from London who works for the BBC. He told us about a file flooding their in-boxes since last night. It’s a list of addresses, a manifesto, and a video that shows a vampire killing a human. They are treating it as junk. But Rosie says it’s tied to that other video.”

  Andromeda shot a glance back at Michael. “Mark Brandt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll bet the manifesto was the statement that supposedly came from his father. What were the addresses?”

  “The home addresses of vampire community leaders around the world.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “Jesus.”

  Michael frowned. Communities around the world? This was not just exposing the Guardians, then. But he suspected it was not about exposing the vampires, either.

  Demons did not operate on such a large scale. Something else was happening.

  Deacon nodded. “The good news is, the info is a little outdated. They still had me in Prague and Rosie’s brother in Rome. But some of the others in Europe are there. Rosie wants them in the safe houses before the shit hits the fan. At least until she can get a handle on what the demons are planning.”

  And there was no one better to get a handle on it than Rosalia. Michael had known few people who had a better eye for strategy—and, unlike Khavi’s, Rosalia’s ability wasn’t the result of a Gift or foresight. Just her own knowledge and brilliance.

  He felt her clipped steps as she approached the balcony. As usual, she wore spiked heels. With other Guardians, Michael would have questioned their practicality, but he knew how dangerous those heels could be. She’d once ripped out Andromeda’s throat with them.

  Michael did not blame Rosalia for that. It had been his fault. She’d been defending herself and Deacon against his attack. Fortunately, she’d chosen a defense that did no permanent harm.

  She emerged from the apartment, the worry in her expression brightening and her mind singing a clear note of joy. “Taylor!”

  With easy affection, the women embraced. After a long second, Rosalia stepped back to look at her.

  “You’re all right?” With quick fingers, she pushed a curl back from Andromeda’s forehead, tugged her shirt collar into place beneath her jacket. “I have missed seeing you in my swimming pool.”

  “I would say I missed being there, but the time—” Andromeda snapped her fingers.

  “Yes, I know. You open your eyes and find that a year or two have simply gone.”

  Rosalia did know. A little over a decade earlier Rosalia had estranged herself from the Guardians—still hunting demons and watching over vampire communities in Europe, but she’d left her friends and Caelum behind. Michael had looked in on her from time to time, and when she’d disappeared, he’d thought she’d raised her shields and no longer wanted to be found.

  But he just hadn’t looked hard enough. She’d been in a catacomb beneath a church in Rome, an iron stake through her forehead and a handful of nosferatu feeding from her every night. If not for Deacon, she might still have been there.

  Another reason not to kill the vampire.

  “Michael.” Rising onto her toes, she kissed his cheeks with more warmth than he deserved. “You are here to take us back to San Francisco with you?”

  “Yes. We need to figure out their next step.”

  “But first, try to catch up. We didn’t see this coming, did we?”

  “No,” he said. “But this isn’t what we need to see. This is just where they want us to look.”

  “Murdering Brandt and exposing the vampires is a diversion,” she agreed. “But what is their goal?”

  It was more likely Lucifer’s goal. “Whatever it is, we’ll probably know soon.”

  * * *

  The Special Investigations warehouse had been gutted. Taylor got a spinning glimpse of bare walls and concrete floors before Michael teleported again.

  She didn’t know which Guardian he anchored to, but their next jump took them to an office with a view almost as dizzying. Enormous glass windows looked out over downtown San Francisco. Thirty floors up, maybe—and judging from the location, not one of the residential high-rises but the same building where Nicholas and Ash kept their penthouse.

  Before she’d steadied, Jake stood in front of her, two phones in hand. He gave one to Michael, the other to Taylor.

  “New cells. Everyone’s numbers are already programmed in. We’ll be replacing these every twenty-four hours until this shit is done.”

  To keep the demons from tracking them or monitoring their communications. Did Lilith really think they might?

  Better to be prepared, though.

  Despite the change of location, the Guardians obviously weren’t hiding their presence in the city—and if they had been, Rosalia had just given their locati
on away. Her dark Gift snapped around Deacon’s body like a film, protecting him from the sun.

  “I’ll get phones for you and Deacon in a second,” Jake said to her. “But for now, do you want to push your Gift into the next room and wake Charlie up? Drifter’s in there with her. He’d already brought her in because of her connection to Brandt. But now their house has shown up on that list, so we’re not taking her back anytime soon.”

  Michael frowned. “Charlie doesn’t lead the Seattle community.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. Angie and Cora do. But Charlie’s theater is the community center, and she’s connected to Drifter. So maybe they went with the higher profile and with the vampire linked to us. Or maybe they just never really took a good look at the communities and went with the info they had.”

  “Because it’s a distraction,” Rosalia said, sounding even more certain of it than she had in Paris. “Here we are, scrambling to protect our loved ones, and the vampire leadership will soon be in chaos. It’s already after sunset east of the Atlantic—word is going to spread through the communities and cause panic. The same in North and South America, as soon as they wake up.”

  Taylor wouldn’t blame them. She was getting pretty damn worried, too. “What about Colin and Savi?”

  “They weren’t listed,” Jake said. “And I popped over there about five minutes ago to check on them. My psychic sweep was all clear. Well, except for Colin and Savi, of course.”

  “And that’s something, but—”

  “I know. But I can’t teleport them out like I did Charlie. We’d just end up in Chaos.” Frustration briefly tightened his face. “They’re going to be covered, though. Lilith and Hugh are heading there now with Sir Pup to set up shop and wait for Savi to wake up. They’ll be there in ten minutes, max.”

  Okay. That was much better. “At least Maggie is there already, too,” Taylor said. They weren’t defenseless. “And Colin is awake today.”

  “I can teleport with them,” Michael said. “We’ll determine the best location and move them there. It can’t be an accident that their house was left off the list. The demons probably hoped that we would think they were safe and put our resources elsewhere.”

  “Or they knew we’d realize that, and they are counting on us to move them somewhere obvious, like his family’s house in England,” Rosalia pointed out. “Wherever it is, we need to make sure they are off the grid.”

  “What about Caelum?” Taylor wondered aloud. “They’ve been there before. Demons can’t get to them there.”

  “Yes, but Savi was human then,” Jake said. “Colin can survive the sun. She can’t—at least not until we put a roof over her head.”

  By rebuilding Caelum? Michael’s gaze met hers and she grimaced.

  “Okay, yeah. We’ll work on that.” She tucked her hands in her pockets. “Until then—what’s this about a video connected to Mark Brandt and a vampire killing someone? Maybe we can get a bead on the demons pulling the strings and head them off before they do whatever it is they’re hoping to do while we’re teleporting vampires around the world.”

  Rosalia looked to Jake. “Did you get the copy?”

  “Yeah. It’s all set up in here.”

  He led them into a room that mirrored the tech room at SI, but with a much better view. Swank, Taylor thought. If these were the kinds of digs that the Guardians were moving into, maybe they wouldn’t miss SI so much.

  “What is this place?” she asked Jake.

  “The thirty-third floor of Ash and Nicholas’s building.”

  Taylor had already guessed that, but something about the way Jake said it suggested that he didn’t mean Ash and Nicholas just happened to live there, too. “They bought the building?”

  “Kind of like the Avengers, right? But, okay, not so cool, because we don’t have a big A on the side. Or a G, I guess.”

  “I think that’s the Fantastic Four. They have a 4 on their building.”

  “That works, too. With Alejandro, we’ve got our own guy who creates fire. And we don’t have an invisible girl, but Rosalia hides in darkness, am I right?”

  Beside her, Michael sighed. Jake’s eyes went wide and his shoulders straightened.

  “This is all fronted by real offices,” he said in a rush. “An investment firm that Ash set up. If anyone looked, it would all appear legit. And apparently she and Nicholas have already set up a bunch of other locations, all buried under different layers and companies and more layers. Pretty soon we’ll pick one of the locations and head there with all of the stuff from SI.” He took a deep breath, turned toward one of the computers. “Okay, I’m just putting this off. Here’s the video.”

  Oh, damn it. Brandt again, in the same room with the flag. Taylor thought that this time it was the real man. Clearly frightened, he sat at a desk in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Hair disheveled, his jaw rough with whiskers. He looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed, but was probably just coming down from a two-week stay in a locked room.

  He faced a male figure, whose back was to the camera. Caucasian, dark brown hair, medium build. He and Brandt seemed to be speaking to each other, but Taylor couldn’t hear anything. “Is the volume muted or is there just no sound?”

  “No sound. But check this out.”

  Jake paused the playback as the figure moved around the desk, freezing the image on a clear picture of the man’s face, lips drawn back in speech.

  A vampire, Taylor saw. She couldn’t mistake those teeth. “Does anybody recognize him?”

  “Not yet,” Jake said. “When sunset comes, we’ll be flashing his picture around the communities in North and South America. We already have five teams going through Asia, Africa, and Australia. I assume that you have Europe covered, Rosalia?”

  “Yes. I don’t know him.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky soon. I’ve sent the picture out to all the Guardians—but for those that carry their phone in their hammerspace, they might not get our message for a while. I assume that’s why not everyone has shown up yet. That, and because they’re shielded, so Selah and I haven’t been able to jump to them.”

  Michael frowned. “Don’t assume that. And keep trying to find them. I will, too.”

  Jake nodded. “Okay. And— Ah, crap.”

  With a quick click, he minimized the video. Taylor glanced toward the door as Drifter and Charlie came into the tech room.

  The young vampire’s eyes were red, her cheeks still bearing the lingering moisture from tears. Her gaze was focused on the computer screen. “That it, isn’t it? The video.”

  Taylor didn’t know Charlie well, but she knew that the hoarseness of her voice wasn’t just from crying. A ragged scar slashed across her throat, the result of a drunken driving accident that had ended her singing career when she’d been human. Taylor knew that, like Michael, Charlie sensed emotions as sounds instead of tastes and odors. And she knew Michael had a soft spot for the vampire; Taylor had felt it through their link.

  But he felt similarly toward many of the Guardians. He loved them, admired them—and was often exasperated by them, as if they were friends or family. Of everything Taylor had learned about Michael, that one still surprised her the most. He was so much older than them all. So much more powerful. But she’d never sensed that he felt they were inferior or that he viewed them with contempt. Not even toward vampires who’d made stupid choices and were prone to addiction.

  Perhaps it would have been easier to hold on to her anger toward him if he had.

  Agitated, Jake ran his hand over his hair. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  With a nod, Charlie looked away from the screen, up to Michael. “When Drifter woke me up, I thought we’d have to break through the shielding spell. As much as that sucks, I wish that’s what it was.”

  Taylor did, too. Three demonic symbols and a few drops of blood could create a force field around a room that the Guardians couldn’t teleport through and that blocked all mental probes, so that even the strongest minds couldn’t det
ect a psychic scent. But Drifter’s ability to open any lock, combined with Charlie’s talent for mimicking a specific psychic resonance, allowed them to break through the shielding spell.

  Using his Gift that way made Drifter bleed from his eyes and ears, but he would have healed. Brandt wouldn’t.

  “It is not,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” Charlie wiped her cheeks. “You’ve still got something in your throat?”

  “Yes.”

  Taylor frowned. Michael had hesitated before responding. Not much. Just enough for Taylor to notice—and to make her wonder.

  And right now, a little distraction for Charlie wouldn’t hurt. “What do you mean, something in his throat?”

  Charlie glanced at Michael, who gave a nod. She shrugged. “It’s his voice. It’s been different since he came back. But I can’t . . . I guess the only way to explain it is that, usually, it sounds full. Like a bunch of orchestras playing different songs, but somehow those songs all harmonize. But ever since he came back, it’s like one of those songs is missing.” Her eyes narrowed a little as she gazed up at him. “Or actually, it’s more like that missing orchestra has been replaced by a big speaker playing a recording. The sound is there, but it’s not as robust as the others.”

  Taylor had no idea what Charlie was talking about, but her eyes had cleared a bit and her voice wasn’t as tight with grief. “Do you recognize the song that’s missing?”

  “No. It’s like a psychic scent, but I always have trouble holding his voice in my head, so I can’t grab on to it long enough to mimic it.” Pausing, she looked from Michael to Taylor. “Are you just trying to keep the video from me?”

  “Yes.” Taylor didn’t want to watch it, either. She knew how it would end—with Brandt’s neck broken and his throat torn out. But discrepancies between what they saw on the video and what they might find while examining his body could give her a lead. “You’re his friend, so perhaps you think you need to be strong for him and witness it. But there are some things you don’t need to see happen to your friends, and this probably isn’t how he would like to be remembered by those who cared for him.”