Demon Moon (5 page)

Somehow, Selah managed to avoid the piles of hardware and wiring materials littering Savi's apartment. Despite the successful landing, Savi had to help steady her grandmother—though she wasn't too steady herself; teleportation was disorienting.

Their luggage appeared on the wooden floor next to them, along with her laptop, and Savi sighed in silent envy. Guardians, demons, nosferatu, and hellhounds had the ability to hold items in an invisible pocket of space…or something. No matter how many questions she'd asked, Savi had never been able to determine exactly what it was, but it resembled the hammerspace in a video game: it didn't matter the size or shape of the item, the Guardians could shove it into their cache, carry it around without effort, then make it reappear with a thought.

Selah gave a quick smile before shifting her form. For a moment, Savi stared at a mirror image of herself, down to the clothes and jewelry. Then Selah altered it slightly, darkening her skin, widening her face, narrowing her eyes, thinning her lips.

“Colin will be here in a few minutes,” the Guardian said, and her voice was also like Savi's—perhaps a bit lower in tone. “Follow his instructions. I need your clothes; I can't return them. Tomorrow, take the files you need off the computer. I'll come back for it then.”

Lilith must already be at work, changing the story, creating lies, and destroying evidence. Savi nodded her permission for Selah to take them; her skirt, sandals, and shirt vanished into Selah's hammerspace, and Savi stood barefoot on the cold floor in her underwear.

Nani shook her head. “You won't leave me nude,” she said in her accented English.

“We'll worry about yours later. With luck, they won't get past Savi to look at you. I've got to get back before they charge the bathroom. I hope they don't shoot me.”

Savi winced. “Sorry.” Bullets wouldn't kill a Guardian, but they'd still cause considerable pain.

“No worries; I'm tough.” Selah disappeared.

Nani sank onto the sofa with a sigh, kicked off her sandals. “Dress yourself,
naatin
. You'll become ill.”

Savi crossed her arms beneath her breasts, shivering. Not just clothes—a shower was a necessity; she didn't want to stink of fear and blood and nosferatu when Colin arrived.

She found her bathrobe in her luggage and shrugged it on, wincing as the rough terry slid over her shoulder. She had to tie the belt one-handed.

A scratch sounded at the door connecting her apartment to Hugh's house. Sir Pup. And the vampire, if the knock accompanying it was any indication.

Dammit. She glanced around the apartment—the silk paintings, the DemonSlayer posters, the jumble of mismatched furniture—and sighed. No time to straighten anything. Nani would likely spend the entire meeting apologizing for Savi's clutter.

She opened the door, and the hellhound streaked through and almost toppled her over in his eagerness to welcome her home. Then he stopped and growled, each of his three heads swinging around as if to search out the source of the nosferatu scent.

“It's okay, Sir Pup,” Savi told him. “It's just Nani and me. I had an adventure.” Smiling wryly, she lifted her gaze to Colin's face.

Oh, god. It wasn't fair. She'd prepared herself for it, yet still her breath caught and her heart began to hammer in her chest. And he knew it. Her psychic shields blocked her emotions, but couldn't hide her physical reaction.

Yet there was no mockery in his eyes as he looked her over. His perusal was quick, intense. “Invite me in, Savitri,” he said quietly.

The request startled a laugh from her. “Vampires don't need an invitation.” She pitched her voice low as well; Nani knew Colin wasn't human, but probably assumed he was like Michael and Selah. Perhaps even Lilith. No one had disabused her of the notion—her fear of the nosferatu was too great. She had accepted Hugh's friends and background, but she wouldn't like knowing Colin was basically half-nosferatu. Demons, Guardians…they were tolerable. Nosferatu were not.

“No,” he said, and the tips of his fangs showed when he smiled. “But I am a gentleman, and a gentleman doesn't enter a woman's house uninvited.”

She willed her heartbeat to return to its normal pace. She needed to step away from the door, put some distance between them, but it was difficult not to stare. That golden hair, artistically messy. His sculpted cheekbones and angular jaw. The lean, elegant length of him in his tailored trousers and soft, clinging sweater. How did he manage it when he couldn't even see himself in a—

There, a reason for escape. She swallowed and nodded. “Alright, but give me a second?”

His smile widened. “Of course, sweet Savitri.”

She felt his gaze follow her as she walked across the living room to the cheval mirror that stood in the corner. Nani rose to her feet and narrowed her eyes disapprovingly. “You cannot leave him at the door,
naatin
,” she said in Hindi. Then added in English, “Mr. Ames-Beaumont, please come in.”

“It's okay, Nani.” Savi turned the mirror to face the wall, and looked around for any that she'd missed. “I'm just making sure he'll be good company, instead of ignoring us in favor of admiring himself.”

“Savitri!”

“Don't scold her, Auntie,” Colin said, laughing. “She has the right of it. There is another by the kitchen, Savi. Sailor Moon?”

She shot him a surprised glance as she flipped over the small frame depicting anime characters in schoolgirl uniforms.

“A short obsession…with their equally short skirts,” he added as if in explanation, then turned his attention to her grandmother. “Mrs. Jayakar, you are as beautiful as ever.”

She blushed and patted her hair. “And you are too kind to an old woman.”

His brows rose. “Hardly old.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “If it weren't akin to cradle-robbing, I'd steal you away and ravish you so completely you'd never leave my arms.”

Savi couldn't stop her grin as her grandmother swatted his arm and protested his audacity, laughing. Even Nani was not immune to his looks and charm. After the tension and fear of their flight, this was exactly what she needed.

But unfortunately, they couldn't stay there. “I'm going to get ready,” Savi said. “Where are you taking me? Any dress code I should follow?”

His assessing gaze swept from her bare feet to the tips of her hair. “Not a tattered housecoat.”

And that easily, he declared her inadequate. Her mouth flattened, and she bit off her automatic reply. Nani did not approve of
gaalis
.

“You're going out?” Dismay filled her grandmother's voice, and Savi sighed.

“I have to be seen, Nani, so that no one can say I was on that plane. No suitable boy is going to marry a girl who's a terrorist.”

She ignored the sharpening of Colin's expression and waited for Nani's reluctant nod before she headed for the bathroom.

“Savi,” Colin said, and she glanced back over her shoulder. “Anything you put on will be appropriate.”

“Only because they won't be looking at me anyway.”

His delighted grin warmed the room—or her blood. It just wasn't
right
for a man to be that beautiful. Even Guardians and demons who could shape-shift into ideal forms couldn't equal Colin when he smiled.

“They will,” he said, “…after a while.”

Colin angled the lamp, shining the light more fully onto the painting. His masterpiece, if he'd ever had one. But it had not been his brushstrokes, the color, nor the composition that made it beautiful: it was the subject.

Caelum. The realm the Guardians made their home.

Seven months before, only Guardians and their angel predecessors had ever seen Caelum. But when Lucifer had threatened Savitri's life, Michael had teleported her to his temple in that realm, out of the demon's reach. Several days later, the Doyen had taken Colin so that Lucifer would not discover Colin's link to Chaos.

Lilith had not been able to escape as easily: a symbol on her chest anchored her to Hell and prevented her being teleported to Caelum. Moments before Michael had taken Colin to Caelum, before she and Castleford had left to face Lucifer, Castleford had requested that Colin bring Caelum back to her, and the painting Colin had created filled one wall in Castleford's living room.

He'd chosen the prospect from outside the doors of Michael's temple. It had been from that spot Colin had first seen the splendor of that realm; he didn't know if he'd managed to capture the effect for Lilith, but it still overwhelmed
him
.

He traced his fingers over the rough canvas, followed the curve of a spiraling tower in which the anterior edge of the lower spiral was the same as the posterior edge of the higher. What had Savitri said of the shape? He pondered for a moment. That it was the result of the Gestalt effect, he suddenly remembered; that they couldn't truly see it and their minds completed the form with the most rational interpretation. He'd painted what he'd seen—but she was correct; there was no sense in such a structure.

And she'd been as awestruck as he, naming most of Caelum's forms irrational. Indeed, the spires seemed too tall and thin to hold their weight; the sky too blue and the sun too bright; the waters surrounding the city too still.

How many times had she stopped him to point out a physical impossibility? How many times had he pulled her along to show her another sublime arrangement of shape and shades of white?

She'd had to leave the day after Colin had opened the doors of the temple. He'd had two months; time given by Michael so he could paint—and recover.

But had she seen it better than he?

The click of Savi's heels sounded quick and light on the stairs. He resisted the urge to shut off the lamp, to give himself the advantage of darkness. In the months since his return, he had never observed her reaction to the painting.

She'd always run too quickly; the moment he arrived, she'd fled for the safety of her flat or the dark little office she kept downtown.

Savi stepped through the entrance to the living room, and paused. Her gaze slid past him. Her eyes darkened, her lips parted on a sharply indrawn breath.

And it was the only time in his long life he'd been pleased that something other than his face had caused such a response. Would that he could read her emotions as well, but as usual, her shields were firmly in place.

He smiled, and the change of his expression must have caught her attention; she narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you put my grandmother to sleep?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I didn't know you could do that.”

“You've never asked me, Savitri. I did not take her blood.”

Oh, but to have Savi's again; to have the whole of her. He settled for looking, though he shouldn't have taken so much pleasure in that, either.

She'd chosen low-waisted, black trousers and a crimson silk top with sleeves that split at her shoulders, leaving her slim arms bare. Her skin seemed the warmer for the blue tones in the crimson; it shouldn't have. A long cream coat was draped over her forearm.

He didn't look at her shoes for fear that he might fall to his knees to examine the contrast of strap against ankle, the arch of her foot.

She glanced at the painting for an instant, and her mouth tightened. “Can other vampires? Can nosferatu?”

“No. Yes, if the human has little psychic resistance or if the nosferatu drinks the blood.”

“Does Nani have resistance?”

“Not to me.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

She walked slowly into the room, circled the sofa, and leaned her hip against the upholstered back. “Why?”

“Why do you have more resistance? Or why did I suggest she sleep?”

A wry smile touched her mouth. She'd slicked clear gloss over her lips; they glistened as if she'd eaten a ripened fruit and forgotten to lick away the juice. “Both?”

He gave a small shake of his head.

“Why did you suggest she sleep?”

Was she aware of how much she gave away with that decision? Concern for her grandmother rather than protection for herself.

He had only six feet to cross to her side; he did it in an instant. She blinked, and he lifted her right hand. “I didn't want her to see me do this,” he said. The scent of her perfume eddied around them: vanilla, jasmine. His mouth watered, and he swallowed before adding, “I can't heal it in the same way as Michael, but I can accelerate it and ease some of the pain.”

His thumb smoothed over the raw tip of her forefinger, the gash on her knuckle. She winced and tugged her hand from his grip.

She shifted her coat to her opposite forearm and opened her left fist. “This?”

His breath hissed through his teeth. Deep, straight cuts across the first bend of her fingers; shallow slices over the center of her palm. They'd been cleaned, but they must be stiff and sore. “From the garrote?”