Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (44 page)

His smile faded, his gaze intense again. “But I wouldn’t risk that rejection. So I won’t declare what you are, Andromeda—I will only say what I am. And I am yours.”

Hers. Because he wanted her, but didn’t want to lose her.

No chance of that.

Smiling, she leaned in. Her lips brushed his neck, just above the point she’d licked. His arm tensed at her back, his heart pounding. She kissed his hard jaw, moved to his mouth. Not touching. Just breathing in the warmth, anticipation building in her chest.

“Andromeda.” A rough whisper across her lips. “This need is deep. If you taste me now, I won’t stop.”

She knew. And she’d wait. She slipped her arms around his shoulders and removed her mouth from the temptation of his by tucking herself closer, her cheek against the side of his neck.

But although they couldn’t act on this need now, she liked talking about it. “What you feel—is it like hunger? Like when you were a dragon?”

He shook his head. His wings flattened slightly, and they began rising again. “This craving is new to me. But it is a pleasure. And also like falling into an abyss.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Normally, she thought it might be. But this was the man who skydived from the stratosphere when he wanted to clear his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to simply fall—I want to throw myself into it. But I also feel my destruction waits at the bottom.”

His destruction? “That’s how I make you feel?”

“Yes.”

Her throat constricted. “I wouldn’t.”

“I know. It will not be you who destroys me.” His arm tightened around her. When he spoke again, the harmony of his voice seemed flat. “Let us retrieve the blood now and find Katherine.”

Maybe not flat. Maybe just determined. “And then?”

“Then I will taste you again.”

Like the prize at the end of the quest. Taylor smiled against his neck. That sounded good to her.

A moment later, she lifted her head. Michael was hovering again. A frown had darkened his features.

“We’ve reached the correct elevation,” he said. “The crevice here is empty.”

Her stomach dropped. If they were too late, they wouldn’t know it. Demons didn’t carry a scent. Michael wouldn’t be able to tell if one had already been here or if he was just looking in the wrong spot. “Maybe we’re a few yards off.”

He scanned the cliff face before meeting her eyes. “Let us hope.”

*   *   *

They scoured the cliff face for an hour. By the end of it, Taylor was almost as adept at clinging to the stone as Michael, and she’d searched more than a hundred small crevices. Finally, they had to admit defeat.

They teleported back to London. Instantly, the despair and grief swamping the apartment flooded Taylor’s dizzy mind.
Oh, no.
Her head swimming, she could barely focus on the couple sweeping through the living room toward the door.

Colin and Savi. Both dressed to kill in long leather and packing blades of steel. Savi’s eyes glowed orange . . . the light glinting on her cheeks, damp with tears. And Colin was—

Holy shit.
His face. Not shining with visible light, but so bright, painfully beautiful, and terrifying.

Knees like water, Taylor hastily looked back to her friend. “What happened? Is it Katherine?”

Savi’s only answer was a growl. The hellfire burning in her eyes darkened.

“We intend to tear this bloody fucking town apart.” Colin opened the door and didn’t glance back. “The demons are yours, Michael. Whoever did it is ours, whether vampire or human. Don’t even think to stop us.”

The door snapped shut behind them.

The temperature dropped. Icy shards of rage stabbed Taylor’s shields.

Michael.

Taylor looked up, heart pounding, her skin suddenly slick with fear. Not afraid
of
him—her body instinctively responding to the danger standing so near. Eyes pure obsidian, no reflection, just endless dark, and that rage, colder now, sharper and harder.

“Don’t, Michael.” Desperately, she clutched at his arm. “Don’t go after them. Don’t hurt them.”

Because Colin had said they would hunt down and kill a vampire or human, but they had to find that person first. By that time, their rage and grief would have cooled a little. And though any vampire was doomed, Taylor didn’t think that, after he regained his senses, Colin would kill a human. But even if he would, Savi wouldn’t. She’d make him stop, rethink.

But in this state—Colin resolute and Michael raging—there could be only one outcome if Michael went after them.

And Taylor didn’t want to lose her friends like this.

His obsidian gaze dropped to her face.
“I would not, Andromeda.”

Oh, God. That wasn’t his voice, but the echo from the abyss. The core of him, the dragon.

She stared up at him, heart thundering. So he wouldn’t go after Colin and Savi. But what would he do? His rage was still growing, not just icy shards now but a frozen scythe, slicing through her shields, and she couldn’t stop herself from shaking, shaking.

“I will return.”
Jaw clenching, Michael closed his eyes.
“I am sorry, Geoffrey Blake.”

He vanished.

Her breath coming in shudders, Taylor looked to Maggie. The butler sat on the sofa next to Geoff, her face pale, her fingers tight on Geoff’s knee. Terrified. She couldn’t have felt the psychic rage, but she’d seen Michael, she’d seen the darkness and heard his voice.

“What happened?” Still trembling, only sheer will kept Taylor from collapsing to the floor. “Did someone find Katherine?”

“No.” His eyes rimmed with red, Geoff lifted his head from his hands. “I lost my connection to her.”

Because he could see through his sister’s eyes, Taylor remembered. “She’s not just sleeping?”

“No. I still feel her when she’s asleep.”

“What about behind the shielding spell?”

“I feel her then, too. Through everything. All my life.” His voice cracked. “Now she’s gone.”

So was the dragon blood. Katherine must have tried to bargain and told the demons where it was . . . and then they’d had no more use for her.

A good woman. A good cop. Gone, just like that.

Heartsick, Taylor shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

Mouth tight, eyes wet, Geoff nodded. Maggie slipped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face against his neck. And when the first harsh sob broke from him, Taylor went for some air.

Michael returned a half hour later, stinking of demon blood and Hell.

A small garden enclosed by a fence served as the private entrance to Katherine’s ground-floor flat. Sitting on the single step in front of the door, Taylor didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. Bare feet on stone pavers, Michael sank to his heels. Amber eyes met hers.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” His own voice again.

“I figured that out.”

Just as she’d figured out that he hadn’t been pissed at Colin and Savi. And there was no point in asking him whether he’d raged at the demons for killing Katherine or at himself for not stopping it. After years on the job, Taylor already knew that answer: There wasn’t a difference. Even knowing the demons were to blame, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that a woman was dead.

And it had gotten to him. He’d told her that it always did. She’d seen that rage before, when they’d found Mark Brandt. But some got to him harder than others—and this one had apparently kicked him square in the gut.

But although he’d cleaned the blood away and wore a tunic and pants now, there was no doubt who’d paid for it.

“How many demons did you kill?”

“Not enough.” His eyes were still locked on hers. “It could never be enough.”

Especially now. Throat tight, she patted the step beside her. “Did you check in on Colin and Savi?”

“Yes,” he said, rising—from absolute stillness to a fluid display of strength. He took the seat she’d offered, bracing his elbows on his knees. A casual posture for anyone else, but his return to watchful stillness told her what it really was. Michael wasn’t relaxed—he was simply contained. Sheer power, just waiting to be used. “They are currently terrifying a good portion of London’s vampire community.”

Hoping to shake out even a tiny bit of information. “Do you know what gets me the most about this? I mean, aside from . . .”

Aside from Katherine being dead. Aside from the grief and pain she left behind.

But of course Michael understood that. He nodded for her to continue.

“The thing that just really pisses me off is that people did it. Rosalia and Deacon came by about twenty minutes ago. They’d just heard about Geoff losing his connection to Katherine. But Deacon hadn’t been called to enforce the Rules, so that means a sentinel didn’t kill her. So a vampire or human had to do it—and they’re both people. And you would expect it of a demon. But humans, you hope they’re going to be better. But sometimes they’re worse.”

“Sometimes they are,” he agreed softly.

“And
this
time . . . whoever it was did more than just kill her, didn’t they?” Taylor drew a shuddering breath. “Because this is it, isn’t it? The sentinels got the dragon blood.”

Jaw tight, he looked through the garden fence to the darkened street. “Yes.”

“So whoever killed Katherine probably opened the portal to Chaos, too. Why waste her death when they can perform a ritual at the same time? And we can’t even blame the demons, because somebody, some
person
, did it themselves. Brought Hell right down on us.”

“Not yet,” Michael said.

“But we’re kind of screwed now, aren’t we?”

“No.” Eyes glowing amber, he looked to her again. “Lucifer has not yet broken through the frozen field in Hell to Chaos. And we don’t know whether the portal has been made here on Earth. If it has, that doesn’t . . . fit.”

A pattern. He was using Taylor’s language. “Why doesn’t it?”

“Because we haven’t found Katherine yet. Lucifer won’t just want to open the portal. He’ll want to hurt the Guardians as deeply as possible.”

“And you don’t think this hurts everyone?”

“It does. But not enough for Lucifer. We haven’t seen her body.”

“You think he’d shove it in our faces? Because fear and dread and
not
knowing is pretty bad, too.”

“But when someone is missing, even if you fear them dead, there is always hope. Lucifer would want to destroy all hope. And he would want us to know every horror visited upon her.” His voice was grim. “Particularly if she was used to open the portal. He would never resist triumphing in that success, but he can’t triumph if we don’t know of it.”

So Lucifer would want to rub it in as painfully as possible. “But wouldn’t that give away the portal’s location? We’d know exactly where he was coming through. We could be waiting for him.”

“And he wants us to. Lucifer doesn’t conceive of defeat, Andromeda. He wants us there so that we’ll witness his victory, and so that he can watch us bleed and die and fail.”

All of which Taylor had been sitting here and dreading for the past half hour. She’d been certain that the portal was already open and they were that much closer to the end.

“Why wouldn’t he be more careful, though? He’s been defeated before. When he lost the wager and the Gates to Hell were closed—and every single time he sent some demon out with a plan to open a new Gate.”

Michael shook his head. “He does not see them as
his
failures. To Lucifer, his demons failed
him
.”

“Including Lilith.” Because she was the one who’d tricked Lucifer into losing that wager.

“Yes.” His face darkened. So Michael was thinking the same thing.

Unease trembled through Taylor’s stomach. “Lilith would fit, wouldn’t she? And I bet that would be
really
satisfying to Lucifer, too. She’s the reason he was trapped in Hell. He’d probably like to use her to get back out. God. We need to assign extra protection to her.”

“I already have,” Michael said.

“Did she argue?”

“No.”

Because Lilith knew Lucifer just as well—if not better—than Michael did. Taylor nodded, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. “So you don’t think the sentinels have opened the portal yet?”

“I can’t be certain. But I don’t think so.”

“They have the dragon blood, though. Let’s say we’re wrong about them targeting Lilith—or that they’ve anticipated we might protect her, and they have a backup plan. Which they probably do.”

As organized as they’d been, Taylor couldn’t believe anything else. Michael didn’t, either. Jaw clenched, he nodded.

And that really sucked. “So with the dragon blood, the demons basically have a clear path to open a portal. They just have to kill someone. So how much trouble are we in?”

Michael didn’t answer for a long second. Finally, he said, “We’ll look for the sentinels here on Earth. Then I’ll go fight with Anaria, to help stop Lucifer from breaking through to Chaos.”

Fight with Anaria? Jesus. “It’s
that
bad?”

“If we don’t stop the sentinels here.”

So that was their priority. Find a lead. Track the sentinels down. Because, although the Guardians had killed the sentinels who’d tortured Colin and Savi, there must have been more demons furthering Lucifer’s plan. They’d taken Katherine, taken the dragon blood.

“Is there anything else to go on? Does the ritual have to be performed in a certain place? At a certain time?”

With a shake of his head, Michael said, “It will probably be somewhere that has meaning for Lucifer—so that opening it in that location satisfies him in some manner. But he has a long memory, and he hates everything. That location could be anywhere on Earth.”

It could be. But that didn’t fit everything Michael had just told her about Lucifer, either. “You don’t think they’ll open the portal just anywhere, though, do you?”

“No. Lucifer won’t want us to miss it—and he’s arrogant enough to believe we can’t stop it. So it will be somewhere close to San Francisco.”

Where the Guardians had set up headquarters. “On our doorstep.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else about the ritual that might help? Before, we were assuming that they focused on Colin’s family because of their tainted blood. But if the sentinels have the dragon blood, does it matter who they kill? Can they just sacrifice one of the other sentinels—or would that death not hurt us enough to satisfy Lucifer?”

“It wouldn’t hurt us enough. But there is a more practical reason, too. Demons have an anchor to Earth, but it’s not as strong as a human’s. This portal will open to Earth, and Lucifer will want that anchor to be as strong as possible. So he’ll use a human—or someone who once was a human.”

Human, vampire, or Guardian. “And Lilith is human now, too,” Taylor said, frowning as she considered that further. “But she’s still anchored to Hell. Her anchor is so strong you can’t even teleport her anywhere else; it’s even stronger than a regular demon’s. So would Lucifer take a chance on using her to create the portal?”

He gave her a wry look. “I hope so.”

Even though Lilith would be in danger. Because if the sentinels went after her, the Guardians had a better chance of stopping the demons—if Lilith didn’t manage to stop them herself.

And because if Lucifer didn’t target Lilith, he could choose anyone. A human would be risky, though. A ritual would take time to set up. Symbols to write, getting the person to the site, then the killing. A human would have to be taken alive, and a demon couldn’t kidnap someone without interfering with his free will. If the human struggled against the demon at all, trying to get away, Deacon would know. He’d be called straight to the demon’s location, Rosalia along with him. To avoid breaking the Rules, the sentinels would have to rely on vampires again—or recruit the nosferatu.

Which meant any humans would probably be okay during the day. Taylor’s mom, Joe, Lilith, and Hugh. They didn’t have to worry about vampires or nosferatu while the sun was up. The danger would come at night. The Guardians could make certain that any humans connected to them had additional protection after sunset—if not someone watching over them, then at least using the shielding spell while they slept.

The easiest target would be a vampire. The sentinels could take one without fear of breaking the Rules and alerting Deacon. The Guardians would need to contact each vampire community and warn them to use the shielding spell during the day—and if possible, while they were awake during the night. And those vampires who worked for Special Investigations and were partnered with Guardians would need a bit of extra protection.

The sentinels probably wouldn’t target a Guardian. Too much could go wrong if the demons tried to snatch one. Just to be safe, though, it would be best for everyone to pair up—especially the novices. Which included Taylor, but she didn’t think Michael was going anywhere.

With a heavy sigh, she pushed her hands through her hair. This wasn’t what she’d imagined doing right now. She’d hoped to have the dragon blood. She’d hoped to have found Katherine. And she wanted to slide closer to Michael, push him back against the stairs, and finally take a long, slow taste of his mouth.

Instead, they needed to get back to work. Between Colin and Savi and the Guardians still in London, there were enough people here trying to track down whoever had taken Katherine. Irena and Alejandro were searching through the caves where the spiderweb chamber had been, to see if the demons had left anything behind. Taylor planned to head back to San Francisco, because the best lead they had to find the sentinels was still Mark Brandt. The vampire who’d killed him must have been in contact with the demon who’d impersonated Brandt in his video. If she discovered who that vampire had been, maybe she could discover how he’d communicated with the demon, whether by phone or e-mail or in person, or she might find a connection that would tell her where the sentinels had holed up, an identity used,
something
.

That vampire wasn’t much to go on. But it was what they had.

“We’ll be spread pretty thin,” she said softly. Only fifty Guardians standing between humanity and the end of the world. “All of us trying to watch the people we care about and trying to track down the sentinels at the same time.”

“Even if our warriors still numbered in the thousands, we would be spread thin. We can’t watch everyone.”

The sentinels probably counted on that. “Should we start letting everyone know that they should use the shielding spell as much as they can?”

“The novices are doing that now.”

Back in San Francisco—where she and Michael should return soon. But not yet. First Taylor needed to know, “What do we do if the sentinels create the portal and Lucifer comes through?”

Obsidian eyes met hers. Determination lay like steel over Michael’s harmonious voice. “We’ll fight him. We’ll win. Then we’ll close the portal again.”

Because they’d have no other choice. But Taylor wished she felt even half as certain as he sounded. “You ever get that feeling like your days are numbered? Because it’s pretty hard to shake right now.”

His expression shuttered. Just when Taylor had begun to think she could read his face, he closed everything away. “Your days are
not
numbered, Andromeda.”

She hoped so. “How long do you think we have before they try to open the portal?”

Michael looked out over the street again.
Not long enough,
she thought he would say, because he’d said it in so many other ways lately. And he would be right. Despite his determination to defeat Lucifer, despite his certainty that the Guardians would prevail, there could never be enough time between now and the moment the portal opened.