Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (21 page)

Michael returned to Alejandro’s office, his arm around Andromeda’s waist again. Though Irena was just as dizzy, the older Guardian didn’t show it.

She immediately narrowed her eyes at Alejandro. “Remove that demon’s face before I tear it away.”

He smiled at her, his appearance altering with the curve of his mouth. Blond hair to dark, a pointed goatee forming on a clean-shaven chin, his broad-shouldered form narrowing to wiry strength. Alejandro, as he’d been in life—but it was only a physical change. Even wearing what had once been a demon’s form, Alejandro was as he had always been. A negotiator and a politician. One of the best swordsmen the Guardians had ever seen. Like a fine steel blade, not easily malleable, yet willing to bend.

He had bent when he’d taken a slain demon’s identity as a congressman. Alejandro disliked deceiving the people he represented, yet he believed that helping the Guardians furthered the people’s safety and interest. So he’d served as well as he could, despite his internal conflict. Michael admired him for that. It was never easy to accept contradictions—and Alejandro never attempted to give any excuses. Only reasons.

Beside him, Andromeda caught her breath. She looked from Alejandro to Michael, her eyes wide with sudden realization.

“I get it,” she said. “Appearance really
doesn’t
matter when we can look like anyone. Hair color, body type. It’s all meaningless.”

Michael nodded. “Yes. What matters is their movements. Their reactions.”

She began to nod in return, then stopped. Her lips parted. Her gaze held his, her heart beating faster. Perhaps thinking of which reactions he’d wanted to learn. Her movements beneath him. Her responses, how wet she might become—and how quickly.

“Reactions are helpful, yes.” Irena’s voice pulled Andromeda’s gaze from his. “But Michael is stupid to say that appearance doesn’t matter.”

Though Alejandro agreed, his response was more diplomatic. “If it didn’t matter, we wouldn’t bother to return to the forms we’re most familiar with. And even though I am still Alejandro in another body, I never feel wholly myself unless I look like this.”

“Because they treat you like another man,” Irena said. “They respond to a demon’s history and the human life that he created. Not yours.”

Andromeda shook her head. “But saying a demon has blond hair doesn’t help you know whether someone is one.”

“That is true. Such a detail would not tell you anything of anyone,” Irena said. “Yet you still search for someone with an appearance that offers the demon the most gain, because you know that a demon will use it.”

Alejandro nodded. “They manipulate with their looks. And if they are targeting a specific individual, they will tailor their appearance accordingly. Everyone has prejudices, preferences.”

“Yes, but that’s not what we’re talking about.” Andromeda gestured from herself to Michael.

Irena’s brows pulled together in a frown. “Then what are you talking about?”

“How to know someone.”

“Ah, yes.” She shrugged. “Still, it matters. I would know Alejandro from a single breath, yet I do not like to kiss a demon’s face—even though it was never the demon’s true face to begin with.”

Michael would like to kiss Andromeda in any face. Man, woman. Young, old. Wearing a demon’s scales and horns or bald with a nosferatu’s fangs. He would know her in all of them.

He had seen millions of other redheaded women, had seen women with a million other differences and a million other similarities. Irena’s hair was of a similar color. They were of the same height. The shape of their faces was different, but not the angle of their cheekbones. Andromeda was paler, Irena tanned. Hard muscles sculpted Irena’s body, while Andromeda appeared frail. She had always been small in stature, yet her strength belied that fragility—and Irena would be just as physically strong in Andromeda’s form.

It all meant nothing. Forty-seven freckles were not singular to Andromeda. They only said that, when she’d been human, her skin was sensitive to the sun.

He did like how she looked, however. Everything about her was pleasing to his taste. Michael was not blind to physical beauty; he simply never measured anything by it. No physical form compared to the beauty of the woman who inhabited it—and he suspected that if Andromeda changed her appearance, it would also be to his taste.

But no matter the composition of her body, he would always know her by her scent, the rhythm of her breath. Her stance. Her smile and her laugh. Her psychic melody, unlike anyone else’s. Even that was not unique—everyone’s was different. Some were as complicated and some more harmonious. Yet hers echoed within him as no one else’s did.

And her kiss would be exquisite, no matter the shape of her lips.

“I will soon have to wear that face again,” Alejandro said. “We have been called in to speak with the committee that approved the creation of Special Investigations. I assume that they know of the video. I don’t yet know if they’ve heard that Brandt is dead—and I’m not certain if we should tell them. You took the body?”

“Yes,” Michael said, and he heard Andromeda’s soft sigh.

Still conflicted. But not offering any excuses, either.

“Then do we intend to bring him back to life?” Alejandro said. “It is not the preferred option, but it is one. Then Lilith can spin the story and overturn the video and the body as a hoax.”

Clearly uncomfortable, Andromeda tucked her hands into her trousers, hunched her shoulders. “You mean have a Guardian impersonate Brandt and say that the cops finding his body was all part of a joke? I don’t know. Erasing evidence is one thing. But that just seems really . . . wrong, somehow.”

“Disrespectful,” Michael said.

“Yes.”

Michael agreed with her. Yet sometimes even wrong and distasteful were necessary.

The question was whether this was necessary.

Irena shook her head. “We cannot spare any Guardians. Impersonating Brandt would require their full commitment. We can barely spare you, Alejandro—and you are every night still working your other assignments.”

A buzz came from Alejandro’s pocket. He pulled out his phone, glanced at it. “Perhaps I will not be torn between my duties much longer. We are summoned. I suspect that we are to lose funding and all official standing. Shall I fight for it?”

He directed the question to Irena, who sighed. “I am not the best person to judge,” she admitted. “My immediate response is not to fight for it, because I do not like this deception, and because I have been a Guardian for so long without any assistance from a government. But Special Investigations is useful to us. And it angers me that politicians would discard us so easily, and because of what a demon has done. I want to fight them all for it.”

Beside him, Andromeda flattened her lips as if repressing a laugh. Michael didn’t conceal his own amusement. Watching Irena argue with the senators would be entertaining, but wouldn’t end well.

“You will want to, but I don’t know what a victory will be worth,” Alejandro said. “And we have alternatives. Ash and Nicholas have been preparing for this. They have secured money, new facilities. We’d hoped for more time to establish our independence, but the footing is solid if we want to venture out now. We would not have badges or official approval, but we would get by.”

They held each other’s gazes for a long moment, seemed to come to an agreement before they both looked to Michael.

“Do not fight for it,” he said. “Our alliance with them was necessary at the time, but it has run its course. We will adapt again.”

Alejandro nodded. “We’ll meet up with you when we are finished, then.”

He started for the door, but Irena stopped after a single step, turning back toward Andromeda.

“When I last spoke to Khavi, she warned me not to let you pull my threads,” she said. “What does that mean?”

Andromeda’s brow furrowed as she thought it over. After a moment, she shrugged. “I don’t know. Michael?”

He didn’t know, either. Irena wore no threads; all of her clothing was fur and leather, not woven materials.

“With Khavi, it could be many things. She might not even know,” he said, then saw Andromeda’s quick laugh and nod of agreement. “I suspect, however, that it is in regard to Andromeda’s Gift.”

Irena frowned. “Who is Andromeda?”

“Taylor,” Michael said, and he grinned when she smirked. That expression would look the same on another face, and she would be the same with any name.

But to him, she was always Andromeda.

Irena’s eyes narrowed on her. “What is your Gift?”

Andromeda shrugged again, then reached into her jacket when her phone vibrated. “I don’t know that yet, either.”

“We will practice it soon,” Michael said.

“Or we’ll do it later.” She looked up from the message. “Lilith says, ‘Go see Rosalia. Then get your asses back here.’”

“Rosalia?” Alejandro frowned. “That cannot be good.”

“No,” Michael said. “It can’t.”

*   *   *

Michael anchored to Rosalia and teleported in three hundred yards above her location. The distance would allow him to observe Rosalia’s situation before appearing to her—and Andromeda couldn’t fly, so she wouldn’t step out of his arms as quickly.

He did not make excuses, either. He simply had reasons.

Some of them were more selfish than others.

They jumped into the night sky over Paris. Michael spread his wings and stopped his breath. Nothing on Earth could match Hell’s stench, but up until one hundred and fifty years ago, the odor of this city had been approaching it. That wasn’t true any longer, but centuries of habit had taught him not to immediately test the air when he arrived here.

A block of residences lined the street below. Rosalia made her home in Rome, but with her Gift she could wield the night itself and travel through the darkness like sliding across ice. Not the same as teleportation, but it made her almost as mobile.

A vampire waited on the balcony of one apartment. Familiar rage instantly stiffened Michael’s frame.

Deacon.

The man who’d killed Andromeda—though not directly. A demon had held the lives of Deacon’s vampire community hostage, forcing him to betray the Guardians and transform the vampire who
had
fired the bullets into her chest.

In Seattle, Andromeda had asked whether he would slay the vampire who’d murdered Brandt. Perhaps she’d been thinking of Deacon then, and what the demon had forced him to do. Michael understood the helplessness and despair that had driven the vampire—yet he’d still have slain Deacon for it.

Irena had allowed Deacon to live, however. Because, even though he had followed the demon’s orders, Deacon’s community had been slaughtered—and she’d believed that living with such a burden would punish him worse than death. Michael could accept that she’d made the right decision. And now that the nephilim were dead, he had no other choice but to leave Deacon alive.

When demons broke the Rules, they had to be punished or killed. In Hell, Lucifer did it. But with the Gates closed, Lucifer could not enforce the Rules if a demon on Earth broke them.

He’d released the nephilim to enforce the Rules in his stead, but Rosalia had destroyed all of them. Now, with nephil blood in his veins, Deacon was the only enforcer left on Earth.

And the Rules
had
to be enforced. If they were not, Hell would either reject Lucifer—just as Caelum had rejected Michael—or the Gates would open, so that Lucifer could carry out the punishment himself. Michael didn’t know what the realm would choose. Lucifer must not have been certain, either, or he wouldn’t have sent the nephilim to begin with. But he wouldn’t risk losing Hell.

As the Doyen, Michael enforced the Rules for the Guardians. For a time, Andromeda had held that duty—though she had never been called upon to do it. If she didn’t Fall, Andromeda could become the Doyen again. Caelum had already chosen her. If she became human again, however, he would pass the responsibility to Irena.

Andromeda shifted against him, suddenly clinging tighter. “We’re in Paris?”

He glanced down. Her gaze swept over the Seine, the lighted tower. She was recovering more quickly now. This time, only three or four seconds had passed before she’d steadied.

“Yes.” He studied her face, felt her faint longing and cynicism. “I would give that to you.”

“What?”

“A kiss in the moonlight over Paris.”

Sudden anger tightened her features. “Are you in my head?”

“No. But it fits what I know of you. You think of Paris as a city for romance, but instead you are brought here by death. And you think that death is what you get each time, that it has been your lot. But you deserve more. I’d give it to you.”

Her gaze flattened and cooled. “I deserve more than you. Last time you brought me here, it was to a cheap hotel—where you were trying to make me kill Deacon.”

“And I am sorry for that.” Not that he had tried to avenge her death, but that he’d done it in the way most painful to her.

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.