Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES)

by Meljean Brook

  “We will not fail!” Certainty and purpose boomed through Michael’s voice. His blade burst into flames. “And we will send Lucifer and his demons straight back to Hell!”

  Cheers erupted from the vampires behind her, from the Guardians overhead. Shouting, stamping.

  Taylor laughed and shouted and stamped along with them. “Thank you,” she said, knowing he would hear her even through the noise. “That was just what we needed. And I suppose saying that we’re sending him back to Heaven doesn’t have the same ring.”

  His gaze caught hers and he grinned. Behind him, the mirrored wall seemed to shiver. A hush fell over the assembled warriors again—and though fear remained, it wasn’t the same overpowering flood, but coupled with fierce determination.

  Forming her wings, Taylor rose up a few feet—just high enough that the vampires could see her.

  “Be ready to fire!” she called out. “You don’t have to wait for a signal. If any demon makes it past that line of Guardians, bring him down and finish him with your blades!”

  When she dropped to the ground, she saw that Michael had joined the Guardians again. He faced the wall with his sword in one hand . . . his phone in the other.

  A moment later, his message popped up on her screen.

  No words. Just a small, round face.

  * * *

  Andromeda’s startled burst of laughter rang out just as the fabric between the two realms shifted, dilating open and revealing the frozen sky on the opposite side.

  Michael hoped that her laugh was the first sound Lucifer heard. The demon had arranged Joseph Preston’s death to stab the same knife through Andromeda’s heart—and it had. Yet she had endured.

  But this was the end for Lucifer.

  Colin’s mind pressed against his shields. Michael had a glimpse of sixty demons diving in formation toward the portal before they burst through, eyes burning crimson and weapons held high.

  A sheet of electricity slashed through the air, melting steel armor and frying demon flesh. Dozens convulsed and fell, but there were more to slay. Michael jumped into the fray on a crack of thunder, his sword aflame and slicing through armor and bone as if through water. Below him, the yawning pit slammed closed and open again, crushing stunned demons to pulp.

  He teleported back to the line of waiting Guardians. Khavi appeared beside him an instant later, blood spattering her face and coating her spear.

  “He will send more through the next time!” she called out.

  They were already coming. Snarling wyrmwolves spilled out of the portal like rabid rats, some falling, others leaping across the chasm and hitting Alice’s webs. Razored silk as strong as steel shredded their flesh as they wriggled through. Their howls pierced the rumble of thunder and were swallowed beneath the chitinous skitter of spiders moving in for the kill.

  Then more demons dove through, a formation of two by two and a hundred deep. Jacob’s lightning stunned the first thirty-two as they breached the realm. Michael jumped in at the end of the electric flare, taking the right side of the portal while Khavi took the left. His sword slashed up and down, again and again, slicking through the demons’ necks above and below as they flew past him. As if recognizing the death ahead, a few demons at the tail of the attack veered wildly out of formation. They burst through the portal beyond the reach of his sword or Khavi’s spear—eight demons escaping their blades. Michael teleported in pursuit, slashing, slashing, crimson torsos and heads falling to the pit below. Three, then four dead. Khavi took the others, letting the final one fly into Alice’s web—stuck for an instant, before the spiders tore it apart.

  He returned to the Guardian line, where Irena sent him an irritated glance.

  “You will leave some for us, I hope?”

  Even as Michael laughed, he shook his head. Irena would have more than she wanted before long.

  Another swarm of wyrmwolves leapt through, falling and slamming into the web. The strands at the bottom began to break under the impact, more of the creatures disappearing into the mass of huddled spiders. Five hundred, a thousand—most of them halted by the pit and the spiders but some squirming through the spiders and bursting past them. The ground opened beneath the paws of one, pulling him down beneath the crushing dirt and stone. Colin raced to meet another, swords scything through the wyrmwolf’s neck. Sir Pup caught three, his enormous heads tilting back to devour them while they still yipped and howled. After tearing another apart, Savi tossed the remains to Sir Pup.

  More demons began their dive. A wider formation. Six by six—from one edge of the portal to the other.

  He and Khavi would not be able to slay them all this time.

  Electricity sheared the air in front of the portal. Michael jumped in, slaying dozens as they flew through. Impenetrable darkness covered the eyes of the demons that managed to pass Michael, blinding them. Nicholas’s Gift brushed across the back of Michael’s neck, cold fingers of fear, followed by the almost-imperceptible touch of Radha’s power. Near the web, a demon began screaming, slashing his weapon at nothing. Another stabbed his own chest.

  The clash of swords sounded above—Irena was getting her wish.

  Only a second passed before the next barrage of wyrmwolves and demons. Lucifer was sending them more quickly now and soon demons would be breaking through the lines. Tension gripped Michael’s chest. He wouldn’t be able to watch over Andromeda every moment.

  When lightning struck the newest formation, Michael glanced back. Eyes steadily sweeping the sky, Andromeda stood with her feet braced at the front of the crowd of vampires, her gun clasped between her hands and her wings folded.

  Beside him, Khavi said, “Lucifer will be coming through soon.”

  And expect to lead his demons into triumph. Except for a narrow window through the portal, Lucifer couldn’t see through to this side as easily as the Guardians did with Colin and Savi watching the mirrors. He would expect to find a slaughter; he wouldn’t expect that his demons had been the ones to fall.

  A new formation breached the realm. Michael jumped in again, until demon blood ran over the hilt of his sword and down his arms. Pim’s healing Gift flared here and there. No one dead yet, only injuries. Gunfire sounded from the third line. Andromeda’s ranks, shooting the demons that made it past the Guardians. Teleporting away from the portal to allow Jacob another lightning strike, Michael looked back as Andromeda fired into the air, as a demon fell and vampires converged to cut off its head.

  The barrage of demons stopped. Colin’s mind pressed urgently against his shields. Michael let the image through.

  Lucifer was descending toward the portal with a dragon sword in his grip.

  Michael’s heart began to pound. Closing his eyes for a brief second, he battled the fear.

  He and Khavi would defeat the demon.

  They had to. And they could. Khavi was certain that Lucifer had burned through some of his power tearing open the frozen field. Lucifer would still be stronger than either of them—but together, they had a chance.

  Tense and silent, Khavi waited beside him, her spear aflame and her heart racing as quickly as his. Michael looked to Lucifer’s sword again.

  “Block every strike,” he reminded her. “I can’t heal wounds from that weapon.”

  She nodded tightly.

  On the ground, Lilith and Hugh shot upward atop a pillar of earth, high enough to be seen over the spiders. Michael did not like making them so easy a target, but Lilith had been right to insist on this course.

  Lilith could enrage anyone, especially Lucifer. And the demon became more careless when enraged.

  Jacob looked to him as Lucifer neared the portal. Michael signaled for him to wait. For a long second, all was quiet but for the clacking of the spiders’ segmented legs and the thunderous beat of three thousand hearts.

  Lucifer emerged on enormous wings and flanked by two hundred sentinels.

  Once again, he’d taken the form given to the demons. Hooves, horns. Crimson scales covered his form,
but they weren’t like dragon scales. A demon’s were penetrable, even without Michael’s sword.

  Eyes glowing with hellfire, his dreadful gaze swept over the waiting Guardians and vampires. Though he must have scented them, Lucifer didn’t glance into the soup of crushed demons filling the pit below. They’d failed. Their loss would be nothing to him.

  “Hello, Father!” Lilith called across the distance. “It’s so lovely to see you again! Especially since visiting you became so difficult after you lost your wager with Michael and were forced to close the Gates. All because you believed one little lie, like a gullible fool.”

  Lucifer’s rage spit into Michael’s mind like a poisonous dart. But Michael didn’t fear the wrath; he feared the hatred that oozed into his heart like thick yellow pus. He could feel it infecting him, felt the impulse to turn to Khavi and strike her down.

  Trying to purge the hatred, he hummed Andromeda’s song, filling his mind and his voice with what he loved. Khavi began to sing of Hell beside him.

  They could not sing everyone’s song. Through the ranks, the others were valiantly fighting it—then crying out as the infection spread, looking at each other with hate-filled eyes, fingers tight on their weapons.

  But Lilith was laughing. “Awwww. Look at your eyes glow. Are you mad, Daddy? I bet you want to kill me. But you can’t, because you’re bound by the Rules. What kind of rebel are you? I wonder. You rebelled against Heaven, but you don’t even have the courage to strike down one human. You’re still a slave to the Rules that were dictated from Above.”

  The hate grew stronger. Panic swelled through the vampires. Irena screamed, holding her head. The Guardians’ line broke as individuals moved away from each other, as if afraid they would attack each other if they were too close.

  Suddenly deeming Lilith too insignificant to listen any longer, Lucifer’s focus slid past her. A smile twisted his lips. Michael followed his gaze.

  Lucifer was looking at Andromeda.

  Michael stiffened. Rage erupted through him, obliterating his fear. His heartbeat evened out. Everything within him condensed to one thought, one purpose.

  Destroy Lucifer. Protect Andromeda.

  “Kill them all,” Lucifer said and waved his demons forward.

  A clear psychic song rang out. Strong, stubborn, beautiful. The crystalline echo of the hum in his throat.

  Joy followed, warm and bright, washing away the fear and hate. In the moment when every sentinel stilled and looked across the ranks toward her, Michael signed to Jacob.

  Now.

  Sheets of lightning ripped through the demons. Michael teleported behind Lucifer.

  The demon whipped around. His blade crashed against Michael’s, blocking his strike. Michael’s sword didn’t break.

  His body did.

  Agony ripped down his arms, his bones shattering with the force of Lucifer’s blow—and instantly repaired with his Gift while Khavi attacked. Michael healed her arms even as he swung his blade again.

  And again. Every blow excruciating, as Lucifer parried each strike they made, though they teleported around him, coming in from a different angle each time, faster and faster. Lucifer blocked every swing of their blades.

  Through the haze of pain and purpose, he sensed the Guardians falling around him to the rhythm of each blow. Not struck down by demons—the sentinels were falling, too.

  Rattled out of the sky by the percussive waves from their battle.

  As one, he and Khavi changed strategy—no longer just attempting to strike Lucifer down, but driving him back, away from the portal, out over the water and away from their friends.

  They just had to hold him at bay long enough to tease out a weakness. Lucifer had not been pained by a single blow from their swords. Their combined strength was barely equal to his. They had to either find an advantage or force him into a mistake.

  And they both had to stay alive long enough to find it. Fighting alone, they’d have been dead already.

  Colin’s mind pressed against Michael’s shields. He didn’t dare open them to see the image . . . and he already knew what it would be.

  A dragon was coming.

  The joy from Andromeda’s Gift vanished. Her psychic song went silent.

  Michael couldn’t even take an instant to look back.

  * * *

  Joy blaring through her mind, Taylor swung her sword through a demon’s neck. Her blade embedded in the ground beneath and she had to yank it free, searching the sky for another sentinel to shoot down. Almost all of the demons who’d come through the portal with Lucifer were dead.

  A thud pounded through her chest and drew her gaze to Michael and Khavi, out over the water with Lucifer. Away from the Guardians and vampires, as if protecting them from that terrifying hatred.

  She glanced toward the portal again as shouts rose through the air. More demons coming through. Not in the same tight formations as they had been, but haphazard and scattered, as if fleeing from something behind them.

  Oh, God.

  Taylor realized what they must be fleeing just as Colin’s image slapped through her open mind. Orange scales. Giant body. Not as big as the one in Hell—Taylor didn’t think that dragon would have even fit through the portal—but big enough to be terrifying.

  And even though she wouldn’t be fighting it, Taylor wanted both hands free for this.

  She let go of her threads, slapped closed her psychic shields. Lucifer’s hate was still there, but not as strong. The demon lord was either too far away or too distracted to affect them as much as he initially had.

  Above her, Alejandro and Irena broke away from the Guardians’ line. Jake appeared beside them. Alejandro and Jake would use their Gifts to divert the dragon’s fire and herd it away from the city, while Irena attempted to get close enough to rip through its hide with her knife. Three of the strongest, most powerful Guardians.

  When the dragon burst through, they suddenly each looked incredibly small.

  Screams rose around her. Taylor shouted for the vampires to hold their lines, her voice lost in the dragon’s deafening roar. Fire belched from its gaping maw, melting the steel poles holding Alice’s web. Baby spiders popped like ticks as the flames spewed across their backs, toward the second line of defense—Colin and Savi, Lilith and Hugh. So many others.

  Taylor screamed for them to run, then Alejandro’s Gift seemed to suck the air from her lungs. The flames jetted upward, catching a demon that had slipped past the Guardians’ line and flaring out against the sky.

  Mouth agape, Taylor stared where the demon had been. Nothing. Completely vaporized.

  She glanced back as lightning forked around the dragon, driving it away from the portal. It screeched, enormous wings flapping, buffeting the air into a wind powerful enough to force Taylor back a step.

  Jake took Irena’s hand and they teleported after it. Alejandro followed, blood pouring from his ears and eyes and nose. They headed south out over the bay.

  She glanced north as another thud pounded through her chest. Still fighting Lucifer.

  But she couldn’t stand here and gape at Michael or the dragon. Her gaze flew back to the portal, where more demons were spilling through. Wiping her sweaty hands, Taylor quickly replaced the clip in her pistol. With Jake, Irena, and Alejandro fighting the dragon, more demons would likely break through the lines.

  A terrible reptilian scream and a flare of heat from the south drew a quick glance. Jake had managed to drop Irena onto the dragon’s back.

  Irena needed to get to the heart to stop it. Apparently, she meant to hack her way there from the top.

  The clash of swords brought Taylor’s attention back to the Guardians’ line. On the right side, Pim was healing Mariko’s severed arm while Selah guarded them with her sword. Closer, Drifter slashed through a demon’s neck just as another sped past, yards beneath him. She heard his curse as he swung at it and missed, but he didn’t go after it.

  That was Taylor’s job. Taking careful aim, she blew the
fucker out of the sky.

  The bullet ripped through the demon’s shoulder, the venom instantly paralyzing it. Wings flapping and spinning, it plummeted into the cleared area between the second and third lines. Calling in her sword, Taylor sped toward it. The venom wore off in some demons more quickly than others—and she wasn’t conflicted anymore about slaying helpless demons.

  With a single blow, she hacked through its head. Too fast. She aimed again, and properly severed its neck.

  “Taylor!”

  She glanced up as Selah dove toward her, Pim at her side. God, what had happened? Had someone in her line been hurt?

  Except . . . Selah wouldn’t be flying toward her. The woman could teleport.

  Oh, fuck. Sudden fear burst her Gift open. All bright threads.

  Instinctively Taylor called in her gun again but they were on her, a demon’s foot snapping the pistol from her grip. Her face slammed into the ground. Blood filled her mouth, and she wildly tried to grab, tried to yank any threads, but a taloned hand gripped her throat and another pinned her wrists behind her back in an unbreakable grip.

  Screaming, Taylor fought. She couldn’t die now. Not now.

  Then the demon behind her said Lucifer’s name and lifted her up, and she knew it was going to be worse than death. Because Lucifer knew that Michael loved her.

  And just killing Michael would never be enough.

  * * *

  Halfway across the bay, Lucifer hacked off Khavi’s right arm above the elbow. Michael couldn’t heal it, only grit his teeth and take the next two blows while she teleported beneath the falling limb and grabbed her spear from the grip of her useless hand. Then she was beside him again, her balance altered and striking with her left arm instead of her right, but just as quick and strong, and squirting her blood into the demon’s eyes in an attempt to blind him.

  She’d always been the first among the grigori to try out a new weapon, but blood from her stump didn’t help them much.

  Michael caught a glimpse of her wild grin while teleporting around Lucifer, then the sound of Andromeda’s Gift rang clearly through his mind—panic and horror chiming like shattered glass through the beautiful notes. Then realization slipped through her song, and a sudden warning.