Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (65 page)

“And Khavi.”

“Both of us, then. But either way, it was not the result of your deserving something, but the result of my actions and
my
will. Khavi’s will. And while we are living, we receive no punishment but what we put on each other or that we make for ourselves.”

“So we can’t know any other purpose? You’re right. I don’t like that.”

“Well, what should I say this is?” His arms tightened around her. “Are you a reward, a final bit of joy at the end of my life? Are you punishment, that you love me when I have so little time, and that I lose you so quickly? What should I make of you being born when you were?”

“I don’t know.” Pain scraped her throat. “But I wish it had been five thousand years ago.”

“And what if you were granted that wish? Would you have loved me five thousand years ago? I don’t think you would have. If I met you then, would that be a punishment—because I would miss this opportunity? I can’t know what was intended, or why you arrived in my life when you did. I only know there was booze to blame.”

She laughed against his chest. “Yes.”

“So that is why I say that purpose does not come from above—and meaning is what we choose to make of it. What we
believe
is another choice. I choose to believe in a creator whose intentions I can’t know. Some choose to believe in no creator and still believe the universe has a purpose. Some believe in no purpose. But the only thing we can be certain of is our own purpose and our own choices. You can know yours. I can know mine.”

She exhaled on a shuddering breath. “That’s not so bad, actually.”

“Because it’s not different from what you already believe. People should be responsible for what they do to each other, and their reasons for doing those things matter—but only to the extent that it affects their own actions. Everything else is just an excuse.”

“Yes.” And it did help. Michael’s answer wasn’t what she’d been hoping for. But it was one that she could live with.

Rising up on her toes, Taylor softly kissed him—but she couldn’t give in to hunger now. She quickly stepped back, took a deep breath.

Michael glanced down at the portable CD player she called in from her hammerspace; she’d found it in the bottom of her closet. The disc had been in her mother’s stash.

“You’re going to sing?”

“Yes. You might want to close your ears.”

His grin flashed, gorgeous and sweet. “Never.”

“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She knelt beside the little stereo. “I don’t know this song very well. I just remember that on our first stakeout, Joe had the radio on and he started singing along with it. I never forgot that. He’d always seemed so serious and all ‘You’ve gotta learn the ropes, kid, or this city will eat you alive,’ and I thought I’d been paired up with an asshole. Then he starts telling these crazy, bizarre stories. And turning this way up, and singing about drunk bullfrogs named Jeremiah.”

“‘Joy to the World,’” Michael said.

“Yeah.” She glanced up, saw his smile. “You know it?”

“I hear all the songs.”

“That’s good. Since I’m building Caelum with karaoke, you can remind me of some of the lyrics when I get stuck.”

“Or you can fake it. Caelum won’t care. Just hold your emotions close, picture what you want. Then sing it.”

She didn’t have to hold her emotions close; they were pressing in all around her.

“I just keep thinking that Joe was going to visit Caelum with my mom, and see what I made of her. But I can’t go back. I can’t change what happened. I can still do this, though.”

Her voice was becoming hoarser with each word. She didn’t know how she’d sing. But maybe Michael was right; maybe it wouldn’t matter.

Flattening her hand against the marble, she felt for Caelum. What did she want the realm to look like? Taylor said to her, “I told Joe that Michael’s temple was like the Parthenon, but that wasn’t how you looked. You were so much more. I remember standing beside the columns, feeling you under my hands and Michael in my head. And I wanted to share that with Joe, so much. I want you to be something that would knock Joe’s socks off. I want you to be a strong and beautiful home for my friends. And I don’t want either of us to be a ruin anymore.”

As if in answer, Caelum pushed against her palm. All right, then. She pushed the play button, closed her eyes, and visualized Michael’s temple as he’d made it—or as she remembered it.

The song started with a few sharp beats. Her throat was so tight she barely squeezed out the lines. Those first silly lyrics, which Joe had belted out like a hallelujah.

Caelum rumbled beneath her feet.

“It is more beautiful than mine,” Michael said.

Taylor opened her eyes and burst into a laugh. The temple she’d created wasn’t more beautiful. It was just
more
. Bigger, with huge columns. On the front doors was the same frieze of Michael slaying the dragon that had been there before—but instead of well-proportioned figures, now Michael dwarfed all of the demons, even the dragon.

But that made sense. Whenever Taylor had looked at it, she’d looked the longest at him.

She restarted the song, closed her eyes. Another building. What would Joe have loved? The weird, spiraling tower. She’d described it to him once. This courtyard wasn’t where it had been, but it hardly mattered.

This time, she belted out the lyrics—and felt Caelum’s answer within her, full of joy. But not the same joy as when she touched the threads. That was warm, comforting. This was bursting with hope.

God, and she should begin studying architecture, too. She’d never really paid attention to how buildings were made or what they looked like. The spiral tower went up in crazy twisting directions, and the next building looked like the Transamerica Pyramid on steroids. A few apartment houses. Castles from the Disney films she’d watched as a kid. A few domes and spires, because they’d been so beautiful in Caelum before. Minas Tirith from
The Lord of the Rings
movies.

That was Savi’s fault. Taylor had seen them multiple times only because of her friend. And maybe because of Aragorn, too.

The song had run through almost fifteen times before she formed her wings and wobbled her way into the air, hovering as she looked over her work. It felt like she’d put up a hundred buildings, but only a tiny portion at the center of the city was covered. The rest was still flat.

She looked to Michael, hovering beside her. “What else should I make?”

“Whatever you like.”

“But I’m out of ideas.” She’d had to wrack her brains at the end, and most of them were just copies of other famous buildings, anyway.

“You don’t have to do it all now. She’s beautiful as she is.”

Was she? Taylor looked down. The arrangement was haphazard, many of the buildings deformed and uncertain. But she did like it.

Looking over it again, she took a deep, satisfied breath. “It
is
beautiful. I should ask the others what they want for their homes, so that this will be their realm, too. And are your scars bleeding again?”

The scent had hit her on the last inhalation. She’d noticed it before, but there had been so many distractions. Not here. There was no other smell here in Caelum.

“They haven’t
stopped
bleeding,” he said softly. “I won’t heal anymore, unless it’s in battle.”

Pain reached up from her heart and grabbed hold of her throat. He shook his head as if to stay her response, caught her hips, and drew her closer. His voice was warm as he said, “Which one is your home?”

She looked down at the city with him and pointed to his temple. “That one. And Caelum agrees with me.”

“Does she?”

Yes. Taylor didn’t know how she knew it. Like an echo of her own feelings. Raising her hands to his jaw, she let the beat of her wings lift her a little closer. “Do you really think she rejected you? Because nothing in me reflects that.”

“I could not tell you why,” he said. “Perhaps she resonated with you better than she did with me. Or, since she was a reflection of me, perhaps she wanted what I did—to remain linked with you.”

Taylor couldn’t feel the answer, either. She couldn’t feel anything but the terrible ache in her heart, in her throat.

Gently, he skimmed his lips across her brow. “Do you sense what she is?”

Taylor nodded. Roughly, she whispered, “Hope.”

Because emotions weren’t always a sound or a flavor. Sometimes they perceived them as unbreakable, beautiful marble.

“Yes.” He smiled against her mouth. “When she sings through you, it’s impossible not to feel her. Boundless hope. And she is not just this city. She is an endless sea, an infinite sky. She will always have more hope to offer you. I know this well. She will keep you going, even when there seems to be little reason to. Caelum will be here for you . . . when I cannot.”

Taylor couldn’t bear those words. Only this. She pressed her lips to his—then drew back when she took another breath. “Does that hurt?”

“No.” His fingers tangled in her hair. “That makes the pain go away.”

Then she would never stop. Her mouth slanted across his, hunger sparking deep, and she would have made it an endless kiss—but another doubt pulled her away.

“Is this too much? Until a few days ago, you had no interest in sex. For thousands of years. Now I’m all over you.”

Amusement deepened his voice. “If it were possible, we would only do this. I would be with you every second of the next ten thousand years.”

She had to laugh. “Okay, but seriously.”

“I am. In all my life, I have never slept. Not even a minute. But I still have dreams, Andromeda. And in all of them, I am with you.”

Her heart swelled, choking her with sweet, unexpected emotion. “Michael.”

“And I am always hungry for you. Not just physical desire, though there is that, but a burning need beneath my skin.” Catching her hand, he pressed her fingers to the pulse at his throat. “It pounds through me like my blood, but deeper. I would take you at any time. As long as you are safe, there is no moment I would not have you. I always want to claim you, and I have no boundaries. If it didn’t embarrass you, I would take you in front of every Guardian.”

Her face heated just at the thought. “Thank goodness we’ve got a few hours before they show up.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and vanished her clothes, loving the change that came over his face—the darkening of his eyes, the tension in his jaw. “I’m not going to kiss you. I just want to watch you this time.”

“You can always.”

“No. You make me wild, and I can’t focus on anything.”

Reaching between them, she found him hard and thick. She watched his lids grow heavy, half concealing the sudden amber glow.

Slowly, she slid over him, slid all the way down. Breathing ragged, her lips so close to his. Their wings beating, hearts pounding. Everything between them liquid and hot—and still losing it, but in a long, slow burn that left her shuddering against him and crying his name.

But not losing her focus. Still watching his face, his eyes. Still sliding over him, taking him deep. Her body trembling with aftershocks, she whispered, “Are you mine?”

His fingers clenched on her hips and he drove up into her hard, fast, making her gasp. “Always.”

Always. Hers, as he began to fall, his eyes darker than shadows, his voice claiming her, dangerous and strong and ancient.
You are mine,
he said, but this time she saw the dive into the abyss—she saw his utter vulnerability as he shuddered and tensed in her arms, pulsing deep inside her. Taking possession of her, yet throwing all of himself completely into her trust as he did.

Taylor caught him with a kiss. Not an endless one.

Not yet. But she would find a way to tie him to her, because he was
hers
.

And she would never let him go.

Shortly before the gathering began, Michael brought Carolyn Taylor to Caelum. Andromeda held her mother’s hands, made her close her eyes and breathe deep. Other Guardians began arriving through the Gates and were teleported in by Jacob and Selah. Their happiness at finding even a small part of Caelum rebuilt sang through the realm, their voices lighter than he’d heard them in years.

Lighter, even when the gathering began. But that was always the way of these meetings. Sometimes somber, sometimes a joyous celebration of a life. The first years in Caelum, these meetings had not been planned, but had begun as Guardians coming together to tell stories of a warrior who had died. Partially for comfort, partially to share memories—whether the others had known him or not. The gatherings had become more traditional as the years passed, but the purpose was the same.

Andromeda started, as everyone expected. She had known Joseph Preston the longest, and she had known him the best.

Thousands of years earlier, after Michael had ordered his sister’s execution, he had been the one to start the gathering for Anaria. Over five millennia, he had more good stories to tell of her than stories that pained him. He was grateful he’d never had to choose from stories after that. Tales of slaughter and death and betrayal.

But his last memory of her was an offer to help him find a cure. He would hold close to that.

Beside him, Khavi looked on, her face a mask of grief. No doubt thinking of Anaria as well. Losing her had hurt Khavi as much as it did him.

Or perhaps thinking of Hell, and the pandemonium still reigning there. He could see her goal more clearly now—and he understood why she had allowed Belial to live so long. She’d wanted his help to remove Lucifer from his throne, but not to seat Belial in his place. Khavi wanted the realm for herself.

She would be a far better choice than any of the others could have been.

At the center of the courtyard, tears had finally overwhelmed Andromeda’s voice. She returned to his side, standing between Michael and her mother. Ethan stepped forward to offer his own stories, and soon the others were laughing. But gradually the story changed, and the mood became more somber, the Guardians falling silent.

Thinking of past gatherings, perhaps. Or dreading the gatherings that would come after the battle with Lucifer.

His might be one of them.

The pain in his chest grew larger. Too large to ignore anymore.

“Michael?” Irena’s voice was sharp with worry.

He glanced at her—and scented his own blood. Not from his back. Sliding from his eyes like tears. He pressed his fingers to his cheeks, and the muscles in his arms protested, as if they were being stretched thin. As if he were weak. He opened his healing Gift. It couldn’t repair his body, but he could know what was happening inside it.

His organs were failing. Those didn’t matter. He didn’t need a stomach, a liver. He could fight without his eyes. But the rest of him was tearing apart, too. Cell by cell. Muscles and bones. Tiny bits of him dying.

Andromeda’s Gift sang her sweet, clear song—and projected her despair and pain as she looked at him. Michael touched her mind, then slipped in when she nodded her consent, tears dripping over her cheeks.

With the spell broken, his threads weren’t constricted around his body anymore. Nor did they waver gently. They stood straight out, as if being pulled.

Death, preparing to give the final yank.

It didn’t matter. Michael would find a cure. And if he didn’t, he had to last until Lucifer was defeated.

Andromeda closed her Gift. “Michael—”

That was all. Her voice broke, and he slipped his arm around her, brought her in close against his side. He vanished the blood from his cheeks.

“Please continue, Ethan.”

The Guardian stared back at him, grief etching deep lines into his face. His mouth opened, but every word seemed to fail him—until finally, he shook his head.

So it would be Michael’s turn to share Joseph Preston with everyone. The breath he drew was filled with the scent of Andromeda and his blood, and he held it deep in his chest as he began to hum. Andromeda lifted her head to stare at him. He grinned at her and let Joseph Preston’s song swell from his throat. A solid melody, full of humor, underscored by a deep belief in right and wrong. Bursting with love for the woman at Michael’s side—and with more for the woman who was his lover. Lifting his voice, he intertwined Carolyn’s song through the melody, then Andromeda’s. He told everyone here of the family they’d made, of the partnership that had started it. Then he sang only Joseph Preston again, his laugh sounding through each note, his courage and his curiosity riding along.

And when he finished, it was the first time that Andromeda’s tears did not destroy him. She held her mother, and they wept softly together, their psychic songs full of love and loss, but with the sharp edge of pain worn away.

At the center of the courtyard, Ethan wiped his eyes and started again.

Michael listened to his story, watching Andromeda. Liquid warmth slid over his upper lip. His nose was bleeding.

Beside him, Khavi let out a ragged breath and tears slipped over her cheeks. “I will sing for you, my friend.”

I prayed that, before your end came, we would defeat Lucifer and that I would sit on the throne, so I could anchor you to the frozen field.

I prayed we would have enough time.

Michael nodded. The frozen field would have been torture, but it could have given them more time to find a solution. And there was still hope. They
would
defeat Lucifer. If the realm chose Khavi as the demon’s replacement, Michael would endure the frozen field again.

He would endure anything for her.

Andromeda suddenly lifted her head and stared back at him, determination like steel through her mind.

Then a sharp burst of pain stabbed through his head, and she closed her eyes.

He glanced down as another drip fell from his nose and splattered against the marble, crimson against white.

His vision blurred. Red on red—and rage rising beneath. He wasn’t ready to die.

This wasn’t enough time. He
needed
more time.

And he
would
get it.

*   *   *

Andromeda didn’t go with him when he returned Carolyn Taylor to her home. Her mother kissed his cheeks as he raged inside.

Michael teleported back to Caelum. Andromeda was still in the courtyard, weeping as she explained the reason he was dying to Irena—whose rage and pain were rising to meet his.

Andromeda’s tears ripped at his chest. Those weren’t for Joseph Preston.

Those were for him.

She shouldn’t have to cry. She deserved more than this.

Snapping his wings open, he launched himself into the endless sky, toward the sun that never came any closer or lay any farther away, no matter how far he flew. Higher, higher. Not any closer to Heaven. They would hear him from anywhere. But the rage drove him up, up, until Andromeda’s tears were just an echo in his ears.

“You can’t do this to her! She doesn’t deserve this!” He screamed it into the heavens, a cry of rage that was a song in itself, a melody of pain and anger. “
I
don’t deserve this!”

Silence answered him.

His rage burned hotter, swelling into a louder song. “I have served you for a hundred lifetimes, and I’ve never asked for anything! But I’m asking now. Another lifetime. Just one more. Enough time to stop Lucifer. To make certain she’s safe.”

Silence again.

“Please! One year. Just one year to hold her.”

Silence.

Despair began cutting through the rage. Why didn’t they answer? He would offer anything. “Do you want me to live as a man? Take my wings. Take all my strength. I would give it all for another year, for another day.”

Silence.

“I’ve never asked you for anything!”
he screamed until his voice broke, the song shattering into sobs in his throat. “Please. I love her. There is never enough time. But I am
begging
for a little more. I’ve never asked you for anything. Please hear me now. Please answer me now.”

Silence again—except for a strange thickness in his ears. He touched the side of his head, pulled away with more blood on his hand.

Pain ripped through his gut like a burning sword.

Lucifer had not even started the ritual yet. He had to hold on.

“Just long enough to stop Lucifer, then,” he pleaded, and nothing but a hoarse whisper was left of his voice. “Please.”

Silence.

And so that was the answer.

He would have a few more hours with Andromeda. And it would have to be enough.

Michael looked down. Caelum waited below, barely visible from this height. Normally he would have let himself fall, then caught himself at the last second, teleporting before he smashed into the marble. But even that was too much time to waste.

He simply teleported instead. Other Guardians still lingered in the city, but he only had eyes for Andromeda, sitting on the steps of his temple, fresh tears on her cheeks.

This time, the ripping pain through his chest was not his body failing. Just his heart tearing in half.

“Michael.” She ran to him, slid her arms around him, and buried her face against his shoulder. “That song. That
song
.”

So she had heard his prayer, and that was why she cried now. Like Anaria, so careless with his voice.

But she didn’t wallow in the tears. Determination set her face. She took his hand. “Come inside.”

Into his home.
Their
home. How many times had he envisioned her here? He would hold this close, too.

She led him through the doors, the same determination lengthening her stride. Inside, the great room was empty.

Except for their bed.

Michael hesitated, and she turned to him, her brows drawing together in a fierce line.

“What?”

“There is nothing more that I want than to spend this time in your arms. But I am . . . dying, Andromeda.” Bleeding now, and soon it would be worse. “I won’t do that to you.”

“Then just be with me,” she said, though there was still no softness or need in her. Just determination and fear and worry.

Michael had never seen her like this before.

Curious, he followed her to the bed and allowed her to push him to the mattress on his back. She climbed up over him, straddling his hips, her knees caging his arms.

And even dying, even with the pain tearing through his body and blood spilling from his eyes, the hunger burned—the need to claim her was sharp.

He laughed, but she bent her head and silenced him with a kiss filled by desperation. Her incredible taste overwhelmed his senses, and Michael thought that he would not even know he’d died, if he was kissing her. He would simply pass from ecstasy into nothingness.

But she pulled back and offered him a crooked smile. “Will you grow your hair? I want to run my fingers through it,” she told him, though it was fear giving her eyes that glassy look, not arousal. “Unless it leaves you too vulnerable, of course.”

It wouldn’t. But he finally realized—that was what she intended. She would try to hold him in place while . . . what?

It didn’t matter. Whatever she did, he would trust her.

With barely a thought, he shape-shifted and let his hair grow another inch. She froze, looking at him, her lips parting. And for an instant, it was exactly what she’d said. Her fingers fisted in his hair and she kissed him, her mouth hot, her need deep. Losing herself in him.

Until Andromeda recalled whatever it was she intended to do.

Her body stiffened. Though a smile curved her lips as she lifted her head, tears filled her eyes again.

Strong fingers tightened in his hair. She’d learned well. She didn’t draw her arm back, that unmistakable signal of an attack with a sword or a knife. The steel spike simply appeared in her hand, and she thrust it forward.

The instinct to block her strike shot through him, but Michael stopped himself before his hands rose more than an inch. He balled them into fists and waited.

To him, an eternity passed before the tip of the spike reached his forehead. Before it pierced his skin and cracked his skull.

An eternity—then nothing.

*   *   *

She had to stop crying. She had to stop. He was already dying. She needed to do this quickly, and there were so many threads.

The skin around the spike wasn’t healing—blood was streaming down his face—but his heart was still beating. She had a little time. God. She’d seen it in his eyes, that he’d known. He’d known why she’d asked him to grow out his hair. He’d known she wanted him vulnerable—yet he’d done it, anyway.

He trusted her that much. And she’d betrayed that trust.

But that wouldn’t matter if this worked. And nothing would matter if it didn’t.

She opened her Gift and pulled Irena’s dragon blade from her hammerspace. Warm, the weapon thrummed in her hand. The other woman had trusted her, too. Irena hadn’t even asked why she needed it—she only knew that Taylor hoped to help him.

Taylor glanced at Michael’s threads. Dark, tight. She wouldn’t start with his.