Demon Forged (14 page)

“Perhaps it wouldn’t matter to her. Stafford is being groomed by his party, and she’s ambitious,” Alejandro continued.

Irena frowned. Why not pursue a position of power for herself, then? Women could in this era, and Julia Stafford would have the necessary education and connections.

The crowd cheered again. Rael smiled and nodded.

Perhaps that was why. He had charisma. So many demons did. But still, Irena could not imagine being satisfied by the position her partner attained. What kind of ambition was it to have a powerful husband? It said nothing of Julia Stafford except that she’d married well.

Irena eyed the pearls again. Rael had married well, too. And groomed by his party? Did that mean he would rise higher than congressman? She frowned. Aside from the presidency, what
was
higher than a congressman in America? Irena had no idea.

“How do you know he’s being groomed? Do you follow American politics?”

He glanced at her, amusement in his eyes. “You don’t?”

Her laugh was lost in the cheering of the crowd. Her question had been as idiotic as his, though for exactly the opposite reasons. Of course Olek followed politics—probably in this country and elsewhere. And of course she didn’t.

Rael staggered. Blood spattered over his wife’s pearls. She jerked, her smile freezing. Rael fell.

The gunshot cracked over the shocked, silent crowd—the sound delayed by distance, Irena realized. Julia Stafford collapsed, out of Irena’s sight. She began to turn, but Olek was at her back. He wrapped his arms around her and waited, waited, his body shielding hers.

Only a second or two. The screams started, the panic. People crouched, covering their heads. Others were running, bumping into one another. No more shots rang out.

“The wife was hit, Olek. Help her.”

Alejandro would be safe up there with the demon. Rael couldn’t touch him in front of all these people, the cameras.

She felt his nod against her hair. “And you?”

“I’ll go hunting. Be safe, Olek.”

His heat left her back. He slipped through the panicking crowd, shape-shifting and altering his clothing as he ran.

“Guardian!”

Irena turned. Detective Taylor bore down on her, gun drawn. Though her badge was visible on her trousers’ waistband, humans were veering away from her.

Irena pointed. “Your shooter is in that direction. Are you coming with me?”

Alejandro ran up the stairs, flashing his federal badge at the officers who tried to stop him. The scent of blood was sharp here. Demon blood, human blood.

He immediately saw that nothing could be done for Rael’s wife. The bullet that passed through the side of the demon’s throat had hit hers square on. Beneath the roar of voices and screams, he heard her heartbeat cease.

A woman knelt over Julia Stafford’s body, trying to staunch the wound with a folded cloth. Blood covered her hands. Pale hair, Alejandro saw. Her black suit, vest, and starched white shirt were too precise to be anything but a uniform.

Alejandro crouched beside her. “She’s gone,” he said quietly.

The woman’s eyes were flat and gray. “Yes.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. Cameramen moved closer to the stage. Detective Preston climbed up the stairs, huffing and flushed. Alejandro glanced back once; Irena and Preston’s partner were gone.

Rael rolled over, holding his neck as he crawled toward his wife. He still bled; crimson dripped in a long trail beneath him. “Julia?”

Alejandro didn’t suppress his disgust. “You must remain still, congressman.”

The demon looked up at him. And quickly—a human couldn’t have detected it—used a talon to dig another furrow in his neck.

God damn him. Alejandro
had
to help. The demon’s life wasn’t in danger, but if his quick healing was discovered, too much could be revealed. Alejandro created a length of cloth, pretended to pull it from inside his jacket, and gave it to the demon.

Rael pressed the cloth against his neck, gathered up his wife, and began to sob.

Taylor ran flat-out to keep up with the Guardian’s trot. What was this one’s name? She couldn’t remember, only that she carried two wicked huge knives and dressed like a blacksmith stripper with a fur fetish and a deep appreciation for Daniel Day-Lewis’s leather stockings in
The Last of the Mohicans.

Her sprint had just begun to rake at her lungs when the Guardian stopped to study the buildings rising around them. Her head tilted back, the white hood falling away from auburn hair that looked as if she’d hacked at it with a dull ax.

“That building,” she said, her voice thick with some eastern European accent. Russian, Czech. Taylor didn’t know. “The roof.”

Jesus. Taylor turned and eyed the distance back to the courthouse. Six or seven hundred yards. That meant a sniper with a long-range rifle.

“Come with me,” the Guardian said. “We will have to do this quickly to avoid being seen.”

Do what quickly? Taylor ran after her into a recessed loading ramp at the side of the building. When they were out of easy view of the street, the Guardian stopped and held out her hand.

When Taylor looked at it blankly, the Guardian sighed. “Unless you wish to stay on the ground, I need to hold you against my chest.”

Oh.
Oh, God. They were going to fly up to the roof. Taylor’s stomach dropped to her knees. She could almost see the nail in the coffin that held her career. She was going to have a great time explaining this in her report to Captain Jorgenson.
Yes, sir, after failing to recognize the threat to a demon congressman, I flew up the side of the building.
Yeah. Bye-bye, badge. But what the hell. She moved in closer to the Guardian, and once Taylor realized they were almost exactly the same height, her debate between facing the woman or turning around became a quick one. She backed up, let the Guardian wrap an arm around her waist.

“The speed will affect you. You might pass out.”

Great. “Just get on with it.”

Taylor thought the Guardian might have laughed, but in the next second white flashed in her peripheral vision—
holy shit those were wings
—and then her head dragged down to her chest and enormous pressure squeezed her lungs. Bright spots burst behind her eyes, and darker spots swam through her vision. Her stomach ached and roiled.

Oh, God. She was going to puke.

She stumbled, and the Guardian steadied her. Solid concrete lay beneath her feet. Taylor looked up. The Guardian had vanished her wings.

“We’re here?” Already? And, what—a second had passed?

“Yes. I smell burnt gunpowder.”

Taylor couldn’t. She could hear pigeons, the rattle and blow of air ducts—and didn’t see anyone. Just the flat, gray expanse of the roof, broken by vents and a stairwell block. From the street, police sirens wailed past the building.

The Guardian took off across the roof. Taylor swore, then went after her toward the south end of the building, where a low wall provided a minimal safety barrier.

A rifle lay in front of it. Semiautomatic, some serious hardware. The scope alone probably cost more than all of Taylor’s weapons combined.

“I’ve got to call this in.” Get a forensics team here, call the building management and have security shut the place down. “And for God’s sake, don’t touch anything,” Taylor protested when the Guardian fell to her knees beside the rifle and sniffed. “I . . . you’re going to track him?”

“Yes.”

Wasn’t that handy? “Let’s go, then.”

She radioed dispatch as she followed the Guardian toward the stairwell block. Jesus, maybe it would be this easy. Only a couple of minutes had passed since the shooting; the guy couldn’t have gotten too far.

The Guardian reached for the stairwell door. Oh, shit.

“Wait!” Taylor caught her wrist. “Fingerprints. Maybe.” Okay, probably not a chance in hell that the guy had left prints, but they couldn’t take even that small risk.

The Guardian looked at the metal fire door as if sizing it up. She turned and gave Taylor the same once-over. “Will you let me take you through?”

“How?”

Her stomach wobbled as the Guardian stepped
through
the door as if the steel were water. The metal warped around her body and solidified again into a flat surface. Taylor’s mouth dropped open. The Guardian’s forearm poked back through, and her fingers curled in a beckoning gesture. Taylor took her hand, a deep breath, and hurtled through the door. Being sucked through a vat of dark JELL-O might have felt weirder, but not by much.

Taylor half-expected to be in some other realm when she opened her eyes. But on the opposite side of the door, the beige walls of the stairwell were refreshingly normal—and quiet.

The Guardian cocked her head, listening. “I hear no one on the stairs.”

“He got off on one of the floors, maybe.” Good. They could search the building room by room. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Irena.” She skipped down the stairs, stopped to sniff at the door, then skipped down another flight. She paused on the landing. “Here.”

Instead of a knob, the door opened with a press-down bar. Taylor drew her weapon and pushed her hip against the end of the bar, sweeping into an empty hall. Tall plants flanked a bank of elevators. The directory at the end of the hall pointed to a suite of law offices on the right, accountants on the left.

“Which way?”

Irena headed straight for the elevators.

“Dammit.” The arrows above the elevators were unlit, and there wasn’t a floor indicator to show where the cars had stopped. “You can search the building super-fast?”

“Yes. But if I find him, I cannot detain him.”

That’s right—a Guardian couldn’t prevent someone from exercising free will. That was why she’d asked before flying up here, before pulling Taylor through the door.

“A description and a location would help.”

Irena glanced at her, her brow creased. “How will you explain that to your courts?”

“I’ll say that I saw and followed him.”

“You would lie?”

About this? “Yes.”

To Taylor’s surprise, Irena seemed pleased by the answer. She nodded. “I will search.”

Irena disappeared, and the rush of wind told Taylor that she hadn’t simply vanished, but run. She must have taken the stairs—and hadn’t even bothered to open the door.

Taylor looked toward the directory again. Someone in the offices might have ridden in the elevator with this guy—

“I picked up his scent again in the underground garage,” Irena said beside her, and it took every bit of Taylor’s control not to shriek and jump. “But he wasn’t there. He must have taken a vehicle.”

Her heart still racing, Taylor nodded. “Security cameras might have caught it.” Fat chance. The guy moved too smoothly. It screamed of a planned hit; he’d have taken steps to avoid identification. And if it hadn’t been a professional, she’d eat her badge.

If Jorgenson didn’t shove it down her throat first. Shit. Taylor headed back upstairs to secure the scene. From this point forward, she’d go by the book.

Her phone vibrated at the same time Irena tilted her head. “The police are here,” she said.

Taylor nodded and answered her phone with, “We lost the shooter, Joe. Found the site, but he took off.”

Her partner bit off a curse, which told Taylor he wasn’t alone. In the background, an ambulance siren blared. “Julia Stafford didn’t make it. I’m en route to San Francisco General with the congressman and Agent Cordoba of Special Investigations.”

The other Guardian. Of course.

“This isn’t going to be ours, Andy,” Joe added in a low voice.

“I know.” The FBI would take this one—or Special Investigations would. SI had been grabbing every case involving demons and vampires for two years, and covering up the supernatural involvement to make it look human. And even if the feds didn’t take it, the case wouldn’t be Taylor’s. Jorgenson wouldn’t risk it. She’d been skating too close to the edge.