Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (8 page)

That demon was also Michael’s father.

According to Michael, consuming the dragon’s flesh had transformed Belial in a deeper way: He’d become good. More like a man than a demon. Then the effect of the transformation had worn off, and although Belial’s physical form returned to his original angelic appearance—blindingly, painfully beautiful, with six wings and the same harmonic voice—that appearance was deceiving. He’d started a rebellion against Lucifer in Hell, claiming that he would lead the other demons back to Heaven and return them to Grace. But that was just the propaganda. Belial’s only intention was to take Lucifer’s throne—which would leave the Guardians with one bad option over another.

Belial wouldn’t be bound by the terms of the wager that had forced Lucifer to close the Gates to Hell. He probably wouldn’t bring dragons from Chaos with him, but Taylor thought Belial might be just as bad. If he secured the throne in Hell and set his sights on ruling Earth . . . She didn’t even want to think about the kind of damage that someone who looked like Belial could do to humanity. They already had enough fanatics running around. And that would be the worst of it; the Rules forbade Belial and his demons from hurting humans. But God knew what humans might do to each other in his name, and the Guardians wouldn’t be able to stop them. Any Guardian who tried and broke the Rules would have to Fall. Soon there would be no Guardians left—or they’d have to stand by and let it happen, focused purely on stopping the demons.

“Not the same,” Savi said. “Anaria has joined the fray.”

“Anaria?” She’d known that Michael’s sister intended to join the war. After Belial’s demons on Earth had slaughtered the nephilim—Anaria’s children—she’d sworn to kill Belial and avenge them. “But with the nephilim dead, she doesn’t have an army.”

“She does now. Orange juice?”

“I— What?” She glanced over at Colin, who stood beside a small table, a crystal decanter in hand and a brow arched. Most vampires couldn’t taste anything but blood. Thanks to the hellhound venom in Savi’s blood, these two could, and Colin was apparently still reveling in his renewed sense of taste. Taylor accepted a glass, primarily so that she could do something with her hands. “Where did she get an army? Did she convince a legion of demons to follow her?”

Having experienced firsthand how compelling Anaria could be, Taylor wouldn’t have been surprised. When Anaria spoke, it took an effort to think
of any opposing argument—and worse, Anaria made Taylor desperately
want
to believe her, even when Taylor fundamentally disagreed with her ideas. It was as if Anaria’s will and beliefs simply overrode her own.

“Not demons,” Savi said, scooting over to make room for Colin to sit beside her. “She’s spent the past two and a half years recruiting everyone whose soul was released from the frozen field at the same time that Michael’s was. Hundreds of thousands of them.”

Taylor frowned. “But they are just humans and halfling demons. And down there, they don’t have the protection of the Rules.”

Humans were much weaker than demons, and even halflings—humans given demonic powers by Lucifer—weren’t as strong as the demons in Belial’s and Lucifer’s armies.

“But unlike demons, they can’t die,” Colin said.

“What?”

“That’s what Selah told us,” Savi explained. “She teleported down there to see what was happening. Demons were cutting through Anaria’s army, chopping off heads, slashing through their hearts—but it didn’t even hurt them. All of the demons who were cut down stayed down, though.”

Taylor shook her head, trying to imagine . . . but Michael had said the same thing. He’d said that he couldn’t be killed in Hell. At least, not until they returned his soul to his body. And all of the humans and halflings in the frozen field were just souls, too. There was no body to kill, and the rest was truly immortal.

“So Anaria is basically unstoppable,” Taylor realized.

“In Hell, anyway, because her army couldn’t come to Earth. But they might be defeated in Hell, eventually. Lilith thinks that if they were burned in the Pit, they’d be released to . . . up there.”

“Heaven, my sweet agnostic,” Colin said.

“Or an alien mothership. We don’t know for sure.”

They didn’t, but Taylor tended to agree with Colin. “But what about the demons who were in the frozen field? Are they unstoppable now, too?”

“Nope. They’re just gone.”

“Where?” Taylor had seen them all disappear when the frozen field cracked, but had no idea where they’d disappeared
to
.

Savi shrugged. “Maybe to the demons’ version of Hell.”

Maybe. Taylor supposed it didn’t matter, as long as they were gone. “So what happens if Anaria takes the throne? She could open the Gates, too.”

And probably would, because Anaria was the very worst sort of “good.” She wanted everyone to be happy and joyful and kind—and she’d destroy anyone who dared not to be. And unlike Belial or Lucifer, she didn’t have to follow the Rules. The Guardians might be able to stop her—but as powerful as she was, and with an ability to compel people to follow her, Anaria could do a lot of damage to the world first.

“No doubt she’d rid the world of vampire abominations,” Colin said dryly. “We ought to cheer for her.”

Anaria considered them all a corruption, a human disease. And she already knew about Colin and Savi; they’d probably be first.

No. All of the Guardians would be first, because they’d oppose her.

“Jesus,” Taylor said. “There is no one to cheer for, is there? Lucifer will bring on the dragons and kill us all, Belial will put the whole world at war, and Anaria will crush us beneath her feet.”

“Her tiny, perfect feet,” Savi agreed.

“Is there any hope that they’ll all just kill each other off?”

“I believe that
is
the hope—with Michael helping them along,” Colin said. “We’ve heard that he has been teleporting there often and slaying legions of them.”

Because he wanted to burn them all. But Michael was no longer a dragon, and he only had swords. “That won’t be enough. What has Khavi been doing?”

“No one really knows,” Savi said. “She pops in every once in a while, then leaves again.”

“Does she say anything? How close are we to Hell breaking loose?”

“We don’t know. Khavi sees it happening, though.”

“Tomorrow? Next year? A thousand years from now?”

“She sees all of the above, I think,” Savi said. “She says she doesn’t know.”

And if Khavi did know, would she tell? She sure hadn’t mentioned the spear through Taylor’s chest. “Of course.”

Savi opened her mouth again, hesitated, bit her lip.

Taylor had to laugh. Savi’s curiosity had begun to bleed through her shields. Waiting even this long had probably almost killed her. “Go ahead and ask,” she said.

“What the hell happened to you down there?” Suddenly on her feet, Savi began pacing a path in front of the window seat. “All that anybody knows is that Michael is suddenly back, you’re in a freaking coma, and Khavi is afraid to show up in the same place as him.”

“Really?” Apparently he didn’t like a surprise spear-through-the-chest, either.

“Yeah, really. Then you pull a gun on him, and I have
never
felt you so scared. I really thought you’d shoot him.”

“I
hoped
you would,” Colin said with a grin.

Savi threw him a narrowed look before turning to Taylor again. “What in the world did he do?”

“Ah, well.” Taylor appreciated Savi’s willingness to be outraged on her behalf, but she didn’t intend to fan that anger. Fortunately, her friend was easy to distract with details. “I was walking around, and Michael showed up as a big dragon just in time to save me from a hellhound. Then he ate it.”

“
Ate
it?” Savi’s mouth dropped open. Even Colin looked a little squicked.

“In about three bites. Then Michael shifted into his own body, and Khavi came and stabbed us both with the spear.”

Savi stared at her. “But . . . where did the hellhound go? Why didn’t Michael explode when he shifted? How can all of that mass in his stomach just disappear?”

“I know, right? I wondered that, too.”

“And I prefer not to ponder such things.” Colin hadn’t been distracted, Taylor knew. He studied her face for a moment as if debating whether to ask everything that she hadn’t said. He finally continued, “Your psychic scent is different from before you left.”

“A lot different?”

“It is your own again—as it was when you were human.”

So definitely no Michael in there, then. That was a relief.

“And everything else is back to normal, too? Caelum’s been rebuilt, Michael’s in charge again . . .” She trailed off when Savi grimaced a little. “What?”

“Caelum still lies in ruins,” Colin said. “And Irena still leads the Guardians.”

“What?” Taylor stared at them, certain they must be joking, but Colin steadily returned her gaze and Savi appeared apologetic, as if she was sorry that they’d been the ones to tell her. “Why?”

“Michael says he’s not connected to Caelum anymore.” Savi returned to her seat, plopped back down. “We don’t exactly know what he means by
connected
, but he can’t repair the realm.”

Taylor knew what he meant, in a fashion. She’d felt the way the city responded to him when his mind had been linked to hers—almost as if Caelum had been seeking his touch. Not like a lover, exactly. But as if the city recognized him, called him her own.

In Hell, he’d told her that connection had been lost. She’d never imagined that it wouldn’t return when he did.

Unsettled, Taylor rose to her feet. She didn’t know what to do with the glass full of juice in her hand, so she vanished it. “And why isn’t he leading the others?”

Not that Irena was doing a bad job. She’d been great, in fact. Given her temper, far better than anyone had expected. No one would complain if she led the Guardians forever.

But that had been the whole point of bringing Michael back. He’d been going to lead them all to victory against Lucifer.

“Well,” Savi said, “he’s been scary.”

“He’s always been scary.”

“Not like this. We’ve never been afraid that he’d hurt us—”

“Never afraid that he’d hurt
you
,” Colin interrupted, glancing at Savi. “He has come uncomfortably close to it with me.”

“Because you were an ass and deserved it,” Savi said.

But Colin must have been afraid, even for Savi. Taylor looked to him. “You held her back. Out there, when he teleported in—you held Savi back.”

“I am reasonably certain that he would never harm her,” he said softly. “Except that she might have come between him and you.”

Savi’s mouth rounded, as if in sudden realization. Taylor pinned her with a look.

“Okay, well—that’s kind of the reason some of the Guardians aren’t so sure about him.” She hesitated and glanced at Colin, who lifted his hands as if to say,
Go ahead.
“I’ve been monitoring computer searches, so whenever someone looks up certain names in different databases or online, I receive a notification. One of those names is yours. Another is your mom’s.”

Not exactly legal, but no different from some of the other things Savi did. Taylor nodded. “All right.”

“Because you were just lying helpless in bed, and if someone looked up your mom’s address, we wanted to know why.”

“You were protecting me. I get it. It’s fine.” What did this have to do with Michael?

“And in your case, the search has to be really specific, you know? Otherwise ‘Andy Taylor’ just takes them to Mayberry. Oh! And he passed away while you were out. I’m sorry.”

Baffled, Taylor shook her head before realizing that Savi meant the TV sheriff. In her career, Taylor had already heard all the jokes. Everyone assumed that she’d been named after him. She hadn’t been. “You mean Andy Griffith?”

“Yeah.” Savi pinched the bridge of her nose. “Anyway. Sorry for the tangent. Okay. So, a few months after you got back, a search for Andromeda Taylor pops up. So I asked the Guardians to look for whoever conducted the search, and they found a demon.”

She was glad that Savi had set up the search, then. “Why was he looking for me?”

“That’s what Lilith wanted to know. So Jake teleported him in to the holding cell at SI, and they got Hugh down there, too, to see if the answers he gave were the truth. But the demon wasn’t talking at all.” Her tone increasingly troubled, Savi began to wring her fingers. “Then Michael popped into the cell.”

Dread built in Taylor’s chest. “And?”

“He tore the demon apart.” Colin caught his wife’s hand. “Starting with his feet, and one joint at a time.”

“Literally tore him apart.” Savi looked sick. “I didn’t really believe it, so I got into the security feed afterward. But it was true. He did it in front of everyone, even though they were telling him to stop. But he didn’t. Lilith and Hugh even went in and got up on him, tried to hold him back, but he just kept on going. He said he wouldn’t stop until the demon explained why he was looking for you.”

“Did the demon ever say?”

“No. And even Irena was taken aback when she saw what he’d done.”

Irena, who loved to kill demons as painfully as possible. That told Taylor how horrific it had been, but she didn’t know what to think. What Savi was describing sounded completely unreal. “So what happened then?”

“There hasn’t been anything that extreme since, but Colin and I have heard that he’s just making everyone uneasy. Like he hasn’t been himself.”

Remembering the scaly giant who’d forced her to kiss him, who’d threatened to take bites of her until she’d returned his body, Taylor thought she knew who he’d been.

“They assume it is the effect of the torture,” Colin added. “And his therapy of choice is slaying demons.”

“So they decided that Irena should continue on until he got his head in order. Apparently Michael agreed,” Savi finished.

At least there was that. But Taylor could still barely comprehend it. Everything they’d just told her seemed distant, as if it had happened long ago to people she didn’t know. And she could feel something inside her curling up in self-defense, as if forming a shield around that knowledge to keep full understanding away until she could figure out what to do with it. As if something might break if she dwelled on it now.