Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (7 page)

But they were both linked by blood to Chaos, which had already made them a target when Michael’s sister, Anaria, attempted to gain access to that realm. Lucifer’s demons might try the same. Lucifer himself couldn’t—after losing a wager with Michael, he’d been forced to close all of the portals between Hell and Earth, effectively trapping him there. But before Lucifer had closed the Gates, he’d sent demons out to perform various tasks on his behalf. Some of those demons had immediately tried to create new portals; others were probably lying in wait.

Perhaps Colin and Savi expected another attack. Or perhaps, in the past two and a half years, there had already been one.

The front door opened. Savi came out onto the columned porch with Colin at her side. Taylor didn’t look at him straight-on. Though he wasn’t projecting the Terrifying Beauty stare that could make her knees shake with wonder and fear, his face still gave her a jolt that she felt down to her toes. Taylor focused on Savi instead. Short black hair stood in spikes over a fairy’s face, delicate with a pointed chin. She was biting her bottom lip and bouncing up and down on her bare feet a little—as if she wanted to run to Taylor, but held back.

Of course she did. Neither Savi nor Colin was stupid.

Colin’s powerful mind pressed against Taylor’s psychic shields. Thermal scans and cameras were all well and good, but there was nothing like touching someone’s brain to ascertain their identity. Taylor obliged by opening her shields a crack.

Michael teleported in front of her.

Terror dug into Taylor’s chest. His massive body towered over her, obstructing everything else in sight. She stumbled back, called in her gun. Whipping it up, she aimed between his amber eyes, both shining like the sun. Her hands shook. The barrel veered over his head, then down past his chin.
Fuck, fuck!
She tried to steady, but could only remember the scales, the sharp teeth. They weren’t there now but she could see them . . . and feel the familiar darkness of his mind probing hers.

“Bastard!” She slammed her shields closed. “Stay out of my head!”

“Andy!” Savi’s shout came from the porch. Colin was holding her back. Her confusion and fear tasted like acid on Taylor’s tongue.

She blocked them out. On a deep breath, she steadied her hands. Michael watched her, his big body absolutely still. Despite her terrified memories, he looked like himself. Close-cropped black hair, bronze skin, amber eyes. He wore a simple sleeveless tunic and linen pants, but his clothes were just another deception.
I’m harmless,
they seemed to say.
I look like a peaceful monk.
Well, she wasn’t fooled. They didn’t hide his warrior’s physique, and his feet were bare. However nonthreatening he tried to appear, Michael was always ready to kill something.

And he must have been searching for her. That was the only explanation for how he’d teleported in the very second she’d opened her shields. He’d been lying in wait, like a snake.

Like a demon.

“If you must shoot him, Taylor, please use a silencer.” Colin’s voice took on the droll tone he used whenever he was trying to soothe Savi’s fears—and whenever Savi had good reason to fear. “Visits from the police are so very tedious.”

Nothing from Michael, but the glow in his eyes was fading, the amber darkening to obsidian. She heard his inhalation, as if he drew in her scent, and another shudder of terror wrecked her aim.

He’d smelled her in Hell, too.

With effort, Taylor steadied and bared her teeth in a smile. “You’re not covered in armored scales now, motherfucker. So you take one step toward me, and we’ll see how you like having your brain torn apart.”

Michael closed his eyes. When he opened them, his irises were amber again, appearing almost human. She knew they damn well weren’t.

His somber gaze traveled up her length. “I’m pleased to see that you’re well, Andromeda Taylor.”

The warm harmony of his voice washed over her skin and seemed to sink in, as if wrapping her in a protective embrace. She steeled herself against it.

“Yeah? Fuck you.”

When his lips curved, her finger tightened on the trigger. But this wasn’t the same terrifying razor-toothed grin he’d given her in Hell. Just a gorgeous one that almost made her forget what lay inside him.

His smile widened. “I’m also pleased that you are yourself again.”

Then he was gone.

Taylor folded over, hands on her knees. Her stomach roiled. The breakfast of champions was a few seconds away from splattering over the manicured lawn.

Light steps approached at a run. Savi’s cool hands caught her cheeks. “Hey. Are you okay? What was that about?”

What was it about? Three hours ago, he’d been in her mind and she’d been crawling up his scaly chest, tangling a kiss with his forked tongue. It didn’t matter that two and a half years had passed. It had been a far shorter time in her head.

And the hole in her chest had healed, but she could still feel it.

“Nothing.” Swallowing hard, Taylor straightened and vanished her gun. “I’m all right.”

Behind Savi, Colin stood with his hands in his tailored trouser pockets, grinning at her with his fangs on full display. When she’d met him, Taylor had disliked the vain bastard, but he’d grown on her. Like a tumor.

Taylor narrowed her eyes at the vampire. “What are you smiling at?”

“‘You’re not covered in armored scales now, motherfucker.’” Colin’s fancy English accent made her words sound cleverer than they’d been. “I pray that the security cameras captured that. I shall replay it for my enjoyment over the next few centuries.”

“Pervert,” Savi said.

“Video blocked, of course.” He gave a mock shudder when his gaze ran over Taylor’s hair. “I see that whatever happened to you has also stolen your ability to see your reflection.”

Taylor flipped him the bird. Most vampires could see themselves in a mirror, but because of the same curse that linked him to the Chaos realm, Colin couldn’t. His dark blond hair hadn’t seen a comb in decades, yet he still managed to look perfectly, artfully tousled. Taylor’s red curls were just a tangled mess—and she couldn’t care less.

Savi stepped back, looked her over. “So. How was Hell?”

“It sucked. Did anything happen while I was out?”

Colin and Savi exchanged a glance. “Well,” Savi said. “The world didn’t end.”

“So the Mayans were wrong, then.”

“Fox Mulder was, too. Either that, or their calculations were a few months off.” Savi stepped back, gestured to the house. “Come on. We’ll fill you in.”

*   *   *

With soaring ceilings, walls painted a golden yellow, and spindly-legged chairs upholstered in flowered silks, the second-floor parlor of Colin and Savi’s mansion reminded Taylor of British historical dramas on public television. If not for Savi herself, Taylor would never have felt comfortable enough to stay ten minutes, let alone visit as often as she did.

Or at least, as often as she had before Khavi shoved a spear through her chest.

Savi hadn’t changed much in that time. As a vampire, she would never really change physically. Her dark skin might lighten a tiny bit as the years passed without a touch from the sun, her hair might grow, but she’d forever be twenty-six years old. Neither her curiosity nor her wide-eyed enthusiasm and good humor had changed, though. Taylor prayed Savi never lost those, never became hardened or cynical, because if she did, there obviously wasn’t any chance for the rest of them to make it to the end of life happily.

As it was, Taylor considered it a minor miracle that she and the other woman had become close. A genius with computers and more interested in shooting zombies in video games than handling a real gun, Savi would have fit well into the circle of friends that Jason had before his accident, but she was unlike any of Taylor’s. She was the sort of person that Taylor had absolutely nothing in common with.

Except for death . . . and the Guardians.

Six years before, they’d both still been human. Taylor had been in the other woman’s apartment, investigating the ritual murder of one of Savi’s friends, when a winged woman had teleported in from nowhere and crashed into Savi’s kitchen table. Until that moment, they’d both thought that the stories of nosferatu and the demonic symbols attached to the case had been a sick joke.

Seeing the Guardian had convinced them. Over the following months, they’d shared all of the information they discovered about demons, vampires, and Guardians—most of that information flowing from Savi to Taylor. But Savi had actually
wanted
to become a vampire. Learning about the Guardians had opened a new world for her, while Taylor’s world seemed to fall apart. She’d begun clashing with her superiors, with the director at Special Investigations who’d kept horning in on her cases, with Michael when he showed up at her scenes . . . and all of the friends she’d told about vampires and Guardians slowly backed away, no doubt thinking that she’d gone crazy.

Maybe she had. A little.

Then Savi had been transformed, and Taylor hadn’t been able to deal. Savi had become too much a part of everything that had been screwing up her head, so she’d tried to cut ties between them. No more lunches, no more e-mails. But when Savi had shown up at the police station where Taylor had worked, hoping to heal Jason with a blood transfusion, Taylor’s reluctant affection for the geeky young vampire had become solid loyalty. It hadn’t been long before she’d considered Savi one of her closest friends—and since she’d become a Guardian, that friendship had probably saved her from going off the deep end a couple of times.

So now she had a rich, brilliant buddy who could hack into almost any computer system. The only drawback: that buddy came with Colin Ames-Beaumont. Taylor liked to think that hooking Savi up with the vainest vampire in existence was just Nature’s way of keeping everything in balance.

In Savi’s defense, though—if Colin never opened his mouth, Taylor might have fallen in love with him, too. He was undeniably beautiful.

And he made certain that everyone knew it. A series of self-portraits—with his face perfectly rendered and painted from memory alone—hung over the staircase leading to the second floor. Fortunately, he wasn’t featured on any of the paintings in the parlor, so she could pace the room without his life-sized image smirking down at her. Landscapes depicting his family’s estate in England decorated the walls instead. His relatives were captured on other canvases, their clothing and hairstyles showing the fashions from the early 1800s to the current decade.

Two hundred years old. Taylor could barely wrap her head around it, yet she knew that Irena, who’d led the Guardians while Michael was in Hell, had been born more than sixteen hundred years before—and Lilith, the director of Special Investigations, was a few centuries older than that.

Then there were Michael and Khavi, who were maybe eight or nine thousand years old. Taylor wasn’t sure of the exact date. Though Michael had shared some early memories with her, they hadn’t come with a calendar. She’d seen houses and temples of clay brick, and white plaster courtyards swept clean. She’d felt the hot sun on the back of his neck, the hard soil beneath his bare feet. The primitive hoe in his hands, the wood worn smooth from use. The endless toil of breaking up the clods, the dry fields that gave so little until the rains came—and then the odor of the storms, the heavy, wet earth, breathing the fragrance deep into his lungs.

If she closed her eyes, Taylor could smell it now. She looked to Savi instead, raising her brows. “So?”

With a grin, Savi held up her left hand. She’d already worn a platinum band, but now another lay nestled against it. So they’d made it official, then.

“Congratulations.” Taylor had to grin along with her friend and was sincere when she said, “I’m sorry I missed the ceremony.”

Savi caught her tongue between her teeth, her expression turning mischievous. “I can give you the video.”

“Good God, no.” Colin raised a pained glance to the heavens. “She marries the Invisible Man.”

Because he didn’t show up in mirrors or on film. “I’d watch that,” Taylor said. “So do I owe you guys a wedding present?”

“Oh, please!” Colin exclaimed, hand over his heart. “I’ve always longed for a ten-dollar gift certificate from Target.”

Damn it. That was exactly what she’d have given him, too, simply to see his expression when he opened it. “Did it take you the full two and a half years to come up with that one?”

He flashed a stunning grin. “You’d best fan yourself now. Witnessing the exercise of my extraordinary wit can be quite overwhelming.”

Okay. Sometimes she did like him.

Especially now, when she sat on the bench in front of the grand piano, her back to the keys. In this position, she faced the window seat overlooking the park. The pillows were dented from recent use, and on the floor lay an open violin case. He and Savi had been sitting there when she’d arrived at the gate, Taylor realized. He’d probably been playing for her.

That was sweet. Romantic. They had a good thing going—except for the part where they sucked each other’s blood. No matter how sexy a vampire’s feeding supposedly felt, that was just gross.

“Anyway.” Savi sank into the window seat, pulling her legs up and curling them beneath her. “That’s pretty much all that has happened. Here on Earth, anyway.”

On his heels beside the violin case, Colin nodded and loosened the bow’s screw. “With most of Belial’s demons dead and the nephilim slaughtered, we’ve little to report. A few nosferatu have ventured out of their caves, but the Guardians quickly dispatched them.”

“And Lucifer’s demons seem to be lying low for now,” Savi finished.

“Then it was quiet while I was out.” And would hopefully stay that way.

“Mostly. There have been the usual squabbles in some of the vampire communities, a few who have broken the Rules and had to be dealt with.”

Nothing that could end the world. “And away from Earth?”

“All of Hell is at war,” Colin said.

“So everything’s the same.”

Lucifer had ruled Hell since he’d led his angel cohorts in a rebellion aeons ago, but in his endless grasp for power, he’d created his greatest enemy—Belial, one of the demons who consumed dragon flesh in order to produce offspring with a human.