Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (24 page)

“Yes, and that will be their mistake.” Darkness filled Michael’s eyes. His voice was an icy, terrifying thrum. “We
will
have enough time. We
will
find them. And the demons will regret they ever left Hell, because they would find more mercy there.”

And for the first time since Michael pushed his way into her head, Taylor wanted to believe every single word he said.

But it wasn’t enough to hope they were true. She’d damn well
make
them true.

“Let’s pin these demon bastards down,” she said.

The only problem with pinning demons down: The fuckers were damn slippery.

Watching a vampire kill Mark Brandt on video didn’t yield any surprises. Neither did her examination of his body. She made herself slow down and carefully inspect each photo from the crime scene, though every beat of her heart seemed to push her faster and faster, chanting the same refrain.
No time, no time.
Every second was another that Savi and Colin were in the demons’ hands.

The new offices were quiet. Except for Rosalia, who’d set up a little war room and was keeping lines open to vampire communities around the world—while using her Gift to keep Deacon from burning and Charlie awake—almost everyone was out searching for a hint of the direction the demons had taken Colin and Savi, or even
how
they’d taken them. By air, by vehicle.

The reports coming in had been depressingly thin on info. The only thing that was clear: The demons had been organized. They’d been prepared. And they’d been quick about it. So organized, prepared, and quick that all of the Guardians had begun to assume there were more than one.

But maybe that was just to make themselves feel better.

Taylor finished with the pictures and started sorting through the garbage. One receipt. Five days ago, someone had paid cash for a sausage biscuit at a drive-through. Taylor set it aside. She couldn’t go there now, but she would soon. Michael, Jake, and Selah were popping in and out. She’d hitch a ride with one of them—and try to use whatever pull her badge had left to grab surveillance.

Taylor glanced at the clock when Lilith showed up. Just a few minutes after noon. Jesus. Only five hours had passed since watching Mark Brandt’s first video. This had been the longest day of her life, and it wasn’t even close to over.

Taylor vanished Brandt’s garbage and intercepted Lilith. “Anything new?”

“No. You?”

“Not yet.”

Mouth tight, Lilith nodded and continued to the desk where Maggie and Geoffrey Blake had set up shop. Both had phones growing out of their ears. When Maggie hung up and shook her head, worry and sickness began gnawing at the anger that had carried Taylor through the past hours. Still trying to locate Katherine. Still not having any luck.

Lilith didn’t wait for Geoff to finish his call. She focused on Maggie. “I’ve already heard it through the others, but I want to hear it from you. What happened before it blew?”

Taylor had already heard. Maggie Wren, the butler who saw everything, hadn’t seen anything. Just Colin over the intercom. She’d made it to the safe room. Normally, Colin would have followed—or would have at least taken Savi down there.

But he hadn’t. And the only reason Taylor could imagine why he wouldn’t was that the demons had already been in the bedchamber. They’d already gotten to Savi, lying helpless and asleep in their bed.

If it kept her safe, Colin would have gone as quietly as they wanted. He’d have agreed to anything.

“The housekeepers came in at eight,” Maggie said. “All of them were human, and they all checked out on the scanners coming and going. Mr. Ames-Beaumont always stays in his bedchamber while they work. The housekeepers have no access to that floor. They left at nine thirty. I counted heads as they left. Usually, we put up the shielding spell around the house at that time, and Mr. Ames-Beaumont paints or watches movies while she sleeps. But after we heard about the video and Brandt’s murder, along with the list of addresses, he kept the shields lowered so that we could keep communications open. He remained in the bedchamber. I was in the kitchen at nine fifty-five when his request for the DVDs came over the intercom.”

“No shields.” Lilith clenched her teeth, whipped around. If there’d been anything to kick, Taylor thought it would have been flying across the room right now. “No shields, because I called and told him about the list. And because I told him we were coming to back him up.”

And that was what the distraction had really been about, Taylor thought. The demons broke Colin’s usual pattern. They’d just managed to slip in before Lilith and Hugh arrived.

“Of course Colin kept the shields open,” Taylor said. “He leads this community. He’d want to know what was going on before everyone else woke up, and if he needed to protect his vampires.”

“Yes.” Lilith leveled a flat stare at her. “I know this. Don’t worry about me, Agent Taylor. I don’t do guilt. Whatever my part in this, whatever is my fault, whatever I should have seen and did not—I will make sure that Colin pays for it when we get him back.”

That sounded just fine to Taylor.

The shift of Lilith’s attention told Taylor someone had arrived behind her. Two someones—Selah and Michael. In his short toga again, all bronze skin and ropes of muscle, his eyes obsidian. For once, Taylor appreciated the Big Badass Warrior look. It eased the sick worry in her gut, just a little.

Until Geoff hung up his phone. His psychic shields were strong, but she read the fear and unease in the lines of his face.

With unerring focus, he looked to Michael. Taylor didn’t know how Geoff did it—he’d been born without pupils, and his eyes were just irises and whites—but he always knew who was in a room, and often responded as if he’d seen expressions, not just heard words.

Not really blind. But Taylor wasn’t exactly sure how he saw, either.

“I’ve not been able to reach Katherine,” he said. “And she could find my aunt and uncle, even through the shield.”

Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “She can find people?”

“Objects,” Geoff said. “My uncle would never remove his ring.”

Jesus. Apparently no one had told him about the hands.

They weren’t going to now, either. “What if he was forced to?” Lilith asked. “If they made him leave everything behind.”

“Then she could find Aunt Savi’s tooth fillings.” His gaze unfocused before sharpening again. After a brief hesitation, he said, “Katherine is somewhere dark. She’s awake, but I can’t tell whether her eyes are closed or if there is no light.”

Was he seeing through his sister’s eyes? Taylor glanced at Michael, saw that his own had narrowed. Wondering, too.

If so, maybe Geoff could see through other people’s eyes as well. That would explain a lot.

“I visited her apartment in London,” Selah said and gestured behind her, where her vampire partner was speaking with Rosalia. “I was just there with Lucas. We searched everywhere else that Geoff told us to look. We couldn’t find her.”

“I’ll find her.” Geoff rose to his feet, followed by Maggie. “You have the search for my aunt and uncle well in hand here, but I’m Katherine’s best shot—and Maggie and I found her after a demon took her before.”

“You share the same blood,” Michael said. “So you are also at risk.”

“I don’t give a bloody fuck.”

“I don’t intend to stop you. Only to suggest that a Guardian accompany you. Or a Guardian and a vampire.”

Obviously Michael had one in mind. Selah nodded, then looked to Lucas as he joined her. “We’ll teleport with you to London and try to pick up the trail. We can stay with you through the evening so that you can’t fall under threat from vampires, and when the sun rises over there, I can bring Lucas back to his community during the evenings here.”

“And use the time zones to extend my waking hours?” Lucas nodded. “I’ll do that—unless you believe my community will be targeted, too. Lucifer’s demons already tried to open a portal near our city.”

“And they tried to open one with Ash’s face,” Taylor reminded them. Demonic symbols were tattooed over the left side of the halfling demon’s forehead and cheek. “Should we be worried about her, too?”

“Those were failures,” Lilith said. “Lucifer wouldn’t attempt to use them again—and I think these demons got what they wanted. As soon as Lucifer gets into Chaos and writes the proper symbols on that side, Savi and Colin can open a portal together. And if they don’t agree to do it, the demons can decide to use their blood and just kill them as part of a ritual to create a different portal. But they won’t go straight for the blood, because they have to wait for Lucifer—and because it’ll be more enjoyable to persuade them.”

By torturing them. Or by forcing one to watch the other be tortured.

No time.
And this sickness wasn’t going away. If Taylor couldn’t step away for a couple of minutes, she was going to end up losing it—and she didn’t know what form that break would take. Screaming. Bawling. Maybe worse.

Shaking her head, she started toward the elevator.

“Andromeda?”

She shook her head, kept going. “I just need some air.”

*   *   *

Ash gave Taylor the access code to the penthouse. From the rooftop garden, she had a view of the bay. Taylor didn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything but the bloody hands, the burning house. Brandt’s throat, ripped out. All those fucking pictures.

Michael appeared beside her a few seconds later. Of course he did. He was determined to protect her, and the demons had targeted the tainted ones.

He glanced at the cigarette in her fingers. She’d found the pack in her hammerspace. It tasted like shit, but smoking gave her something to do while she tried not to think.

But that wasn’t really working. She sighed, gestured with the cigarette. “Stupid, I know.”

“Not as stupid as when you were human,” he said.

She laughed. Yeah, okay. At least there was that.

It wasn’t much. “Do you think that taking Katherine is the backup plan, or just a way of making sure we don’t find Colin and Savi as easily?”

“Not one or the other. I think she is both.”

One thing for sure, those demons had their shit together. “But they won’t need a backup, will they? Colin will do it. To save Savi, he’ll let everyone else on Earth burn.”

“Yes.”

God, what would it be like to love someone like that? To
be
loved like that? Wonderful. Terrifying. To know that someone held the fate of the world in his hands . . . and that he would choose her instead.

Taylor couldn’t even imagine. “You said once that you would have killed Colin for that.”

“I might have, once.”

“Not now? You sacrificed yourself to save the world. Don’t you expect the same from others?”

“I never have expected it. And I did not sacrifice myself.” His smile was tight and bleak. “I knew I would be tortured. But I also knew that I would come back. If I hadn’t believed that the Guardians would find a way to free me from the frozen field and return me to my body, I don’t know that I would have given up my life for it.”

Disbelief roiled in her gut. “But you sacrificed yourself before. You died when you killed the dragon in the Second Battle. That was why you were chosen as the first Guardian.”

“Yes, but the sacrifice wasn’t intentional. It just happened. I didn’t want to die, and I wasn’t prepared to.”

“But you’re the big damn hero. And you don’t even really have to worry about death. If anyone is going straight to Heaven, it’s you.”

“No.”

“What? You don’t believe in it? Or you think you’re going to Hell?”

“Neither. I’m not human, and I don’t have a human soul. Lucifer created all of the grigori from the same energy that lives in the dragons. He harnessed it from Chaos. That is where my soul was created. That is where it will return.”

She stared at him. Chaos, the realm of creation and destruction. Of dragons and their endless hunger. “So in Hell, that really was you stripped down to the core.”

“Yes. And the core of me doesn’t want to die.” Eyes obsidian, he looked out over the bay. “With everything I have learned in this life, I can say with certainty that it is right to die to save the world, and I do believe it. But a strong part of me doesn’t care what is right. It only cares what I can bear to do.”

Taylor could barely take that in. This wasn’t what she’d thought Michael was. She’d always thought that he was something worthy of believing in, even if he was scary. Like the guardian angel that Taylor’s mother had called him. He was strong, compassionate, perfect. And ruthless, sometimes, but that wasn’t bad. Justice could be ruthless, too. But she’d thought of him in the same way. Something untouchable and inherently
good
—or at least better than people were.

Then Taylor had discovered that beneath the perfection, he’d rotted down to his core.

But that wasn’t what it was. He’d always been rotten. Yet he’d made himself better than that. He was trying to
be
better than that—even though it would be easier not to try. Easier to choose the path most natural to him: consuming, destroying.

And there were no easy choices now. “Could you bear to kill Colin for it, then? And Savi, if she decides to do the same?”

“If I have no other option at all.” His gaze returned to her. “But there is almost always another choice. My first choice would be to kill the demons who took them. My other choice would be to let Lucifer create the portal and to fight whatever comes through.”

Taylor hoped they wouldn’t have to choose that option. “If Lucifer came through, could we defeat him?”

“Yes. Then we would have no other choice.” He flashed an amused grin. “Except teleporting to Venus.”