Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (9 page)

Until then, there was still something that Savi hadn’t said. “Why are Maggie and Geoff staying here?”

Colin’s gaze cooled, as she’d expected it to. The vampire was incredibly protective of his family. It was one of the other reasons that Taylor liked him. Sometimes.

Even Savi’s expression had gone blank—until Colin seemed to relent. He sighed a little, nodded. Still, Savi didn’t offer much.

“Geoff’s name has also shown up on a few searches. So has Katherine’s.”

Brother and sister, descendants of a former Guardian and Colin’s twin—both of whom had blood tainted by a sword that Michael had once used to cut through a dragon’s heart. That same sword had tainted Colin’s blood and linked him to Chaos.

There was a painting of them here, somewhere—it was why Taylor had come here today. Her gaze scanned the room, searching.

Colin had never shared with Taylor how that taint had affected his sister and the Guardian, or what effect it might have had on their children. Or their children’s children. Taylor supposed that keeping those secrets was part of keeping his family safe.

But it wasn’t hard to guess why demons might be looking for them. Anaria had once taken Colin’s blood, hoping to open a portal to Chaos. Lucifer’s demons might be trying to do the same.

Taylor turned to look at the paintings on the opposite wall. “Is Katherine staying here, too?”

Even as she asked, Taylor knew Katherine Blake wouldn’t be. Colin’s niece was too much like her.

“No,” Savi said, and Taylor heard the “damned stubborn chit” that Colin added under his breath.

She had to smile, then her gaze lit on the portrait she’d been searching for. Emily Ames-Beaumont looked much like her twin, though her eyes were warmer than Colin’s and her blond hair a lighter shade. But it was Anthony Ramsdell who interested Taylor. The boyishly handsome doctor had been a Guardian once . . . but less than a year had passed before he’d become human again. Taylor slipped her hands into her pockets, nodded to the painting.

“Tell me about Anthony,” she said. “And how he convinced Michael to let him Fall.”

Michael stood at the edge of the Pit, staring into its depths. The abyss stared back at him, but he could see only Andromeda Taylor, her weapon aimed at his face and her staccato “fuck you” flying from her tongue. In his mouth he held the last breath he’d taken, still heavy with her scent. The echo of her psychic song hummed in his throat, a complex melody dominated by low, vigorous notes and a stubborn rhythm. He’d been humming it since his return from Hell, but even his voice couldn’t replicate the vitality of her presence within the song.

That vitality had been missing for too long, her mind silent while she’d lain unmoving in her bed. But she’d finally awoken.

Andromeda Taylor, the woman who’d saved him.

If he lived another eight thousand years, Michael doubted that he’d ever again feel as much relief and pleasure as he had upon seeing her, healthy and whole—and completely herself. Awake, full of anger and determination, battling her fear.

He didn’t want to let her image recede into a vision of Hell. He wanted to hold on to her, in any way he could. But he needed to confirm what his other senses had already revealed: Lucifer had purged the Pit.

Shimmering waves of heat rose from the rivers of molten rock that flowed across the Pit’s stone floor. Machines of torture stood empty, their bindings loose and their blades dulled by a fine layer of soot. Only a small cluster of damned souls remained on the distant side of the Pit, strapped into devices, and their numbers told Michael that no more than one or two days had passed since the purge. Those few thousand souls were the newly deceased—Hell’s daily harvest of the damned from a population of seven billion humans. Not thirty seconds passed before another soul appeared, naked and confused. Confusion quickly broke into babbling denials, then desperate cries as a demon dragged him to a machine. One hundred and fifty-three demons attended to the souls, flaying and rending, their taunts and laughter underscoring the screams and sobbing pleas for mercy that would never come.

Only a few thousand human souls. A week ago, Michael had stood in the same spot and that number had been many millions greater—more humans in the Pit than had populated the entire Earth when Michael had been born, their combined screams a deafening roar.

He could still hear them. For millennia, the towering black cliffs surrounding the Pit had been absorbing the humans’ terror and pain. Despair wailed from the stone in a psychic dirge, underscored by the howls and shrieks of anguish and horror.

It was all sweet music to Lucifer’s ears. The demon’s power came from releasing those souls after they were cleansed in the Pit’s fires—but he kept them here for centuries first, torturing them for his amusement.

Yet now Lucifer had burned millions of souls all at once. His power must be immense.

Would he be too powerful to defeat?

Foreboding settled like a heavy hand on the back of Michael’s neck. His gaze swept the empty Pit. Whatever the demon planned would likely happen soon—if it hadn’t already.

Another figure appeared below, far from the cluster of humans and demons. She wore modern clothing, jeans and a shirt tight enough to prevent an adversary from easily grabbing hold. Black-feathered wings obscured her face.

Aside from Michael, only one person alive could form those wings. But even if every demon and Guardian wore them he would have recognized her stance and the angle of her wrist as she lifted her sword, the way she turned her jaw in to protect her throat when she looked up in his direction.

Khavi.

Her obsidian eyes met his. For an instant he didn’t see his oldest friend but Andromeda again, a spear through the infected symbol on her chest and blood dripping from her mouth, cringing away from him as her mind screamed with fear and agony.

Rage burst through the memory, twisting in his muscles and sharpening his teeth. He stiffened and held himself motionless. His talons dug into his palms. He would not kill his friend.

He would
not
kill her.

Khavi vanished and reappeared beside him, her sword no longer in hand. That certain of him? Probably not. Just careful not to provoke him.

A faint smile curved her lips. “I couldn’t see a future for me if I visited before Taylor woke. So I waited.”

Like his, her voice was a harmony that carried the echoes of a lifetime of conversations, each resonating as clear and as strong as the words she’d spoken.

You would have killed me, Michael.

Will you now?

He would have. And he wanted to now. He wanted to rip her throat with his teeth, to tear her apart limb by limb. He wanted to hear her scream and beg, to cry bloodied tears before he stabbed the dragon spear through her heart.

But he would not.

Michael answered with a shake of his head. Speaking required breathing, and the rotten stench of Hell was strongest near the Pit. He continued holding his last breath, laden with Andromeda’s scent.

He should have tasted her so that he could hold her flavor, too. But if he tasted her again, Michael didn’t know whether he’d stop.

Khavi sighed and looked out over the Pit. “I saw that Lucifer would burn them, but I didn’t know when. Anaria believes that he feared she would storm the Pit and add millions of souls to her army.”
I told her that was not true, but you know that your sister believes whatever she likes.
“Lucifer did not do this to obstruct her plans—though he undoubtedly relishes that outcome as well. He required the additional power. He intends to act soon.”

And he is more powerful than ever before. The both of us together could not destroy him now.

He will open Chaos.

Bringing Hell to Earth . . . and Michael didn’t have much time to stop him. Nor could he yet see a way to do it. But he would.

Khavi had fallen silent—an unusual state for her. Michael glanced at her face. She watched him, tears welling in her eyes. Her strong psychic touch pierced his skin and found the unraveling strands that held him together. She saw what he had not yet revealed to any other Guardian.

Andromeda Taylor had saved Michael . . . and losing her had destroyed him.

It couldn’t be much longer now. Not even a week. A few days.

The hours didn’t matter. He only needed
enough
time to complete one task: prevent Lucifer from returning to Earth. For that purpose, Andromeda had risked her life and faced Michael’s dragon. He wouldn’t fail her.

Not again.

“I didn’t know this would be the result when I separated you from her.” Sorrow and grief deepened Khavi’s voice. “I didn’t know you would cling so tightly.”

I could not see your future, but thought I knew your nature well enough. And I have killed you.

Please forgive me.

Michael already had. For a time, he had wondered whether Khavi had deliberately torn away part of his psyche, leaving the harmonic gap that created dissonance between his body and soul. Like Michael, she was one of the demon-born grigori, and she’d become more of a sister to him than the woman who had shared his mother’s womb. But Khavi’s actions were always to her own benefit. Even now, he knew that she was working toward some goal that she wouldn’t reveal until all of her pieces were in place.

But he believed that she hadn’t known his future or the choices he would make. Her foresight allowed her to know certainties and to see possibilities as they narrowed into probabilities. Free will made every future uncertain, however, and a dragon was a creature of Chaos—his nature could be known, but ultimately unpredictable.

And it hadn’t been Khavi who had killed him. The symbol she’d carved into Andromeda’s chest assured a smooth separation. When she’d pulled the spear away, the link between them should have severed cleanly—and for Andromeda, it had. She’d looked forward to their separation, had been ready to dissolve the connection. She’d willingly let him go.

Michael hadn’t been able to do the same.

But he believed that Khavi hadn’t anticipated his resistance. Andromeda made him vulnerable, and in the past, Michael had always excised his vulnerabilities: either letting them go or destroying them. Knowing him well, Khavi would have assumed that he’d release Andromeda, too.

Instead, Michael tried to keep her, and he’d destroyed himself. The spear had ripped her completely away from his mind, taking every trace of her psychic song—along with the part of his own psyche that had echoed hers.

Death was peeling him apart now, like a hunter skinning the hide from his prey, then carving flesh from bone. Only determination held him together; his resolute will was strung like tendons between body and soul. Death would inevitably cut through that, too, and finish him.

Sniffling, Khavi pushed away the tears with the heel of her hand. “You hum her song to fill the gaps in yours. That is like plastering over a crack in a wall when you need a new foundation.”

It doesn’t stop the pain, does it?

No. The dissonance shredded his flesh, tearing him apart cell by cell, forcing his body to heal, heal, and heal again. But after two and a half years, the increasing pain had become a part of him, like the hunger that always burned at the back of his mind.

And in two and a half years, the pain had only eased once: in those brief seconds when Andromeda’s shields had opened and he’d heard her psychic song. The pain had flooded over him again when she’d closed her mind, but the joy of seeing her awake would have overwhelmed the deepest hurt—and his dying body couldn’t compare to the agony of seeing her in that bed. His fear that he’d destroyed her had been an icy sword wedged between his ribs, slicing his heart with every beat.

So the physical pain did not matter. He’d endured worse—and he could ignore it for now. All that mattered was what he could do in the time he had left.

Khavi spoke again on a shuddering sigh. “If you have Irena’s knife or the spear, I can bind you to your flesh.”

It will not stop your death, only slow it.

If you trust me.

Michael frowned at her. She was a liar. She only looked to see her own ends. He could not trust her words.

He
could
trust her intentions. Those were more important to him.

From his cache of weapons, he produced the spear—the steel still heated by the dragon’s blood, still reverberating with the beat of its heart. Shortly after his return, Irena had heard of his frequent visits to Hell and passed it on to him.

He could kill many demons with any sword. He could kill many, many more with a weapon such as this.

Khavi took the spear. As he turned his back to her, she said, “Belial still has the sword you used to slay the first dragon.”

A wry
I have not yet convinced him to give it
to me, even for a second
echoed beneath it. And
I cannot believe you were so stupid as to lose it
.

Michael shook his head, smiling. He’d been tricked by Lilith, another liar. In one false breath, she had reclaimed her soul, saved his friend’s life, and forced Lucifer to close the Gates to Hell. For a while, he’d only been able to look back on the events with anger—not at Lilith, but at his own foolishness. Now he was fond of that memory.

His smile became gritted teeth as the spear’s burning point traced between his shoulders, searing skin and muscle. He forced himself to follow the lines she made and visualize the symbols.

Flesh. Mind. Song.
Khavi wrote them in a triangular arrangement before carving
bind
into the center, the last symbol overlapping the others. She closed the glyph with a loop.

Every fiber in his body seemed to constrict. The spell hadn’t muffled the dissonance, as humming the missing notes did, but bound his flesh to his soul as if she’d wrapped them in chains. It couldn’t last. The bindings would eventually rattle apart and his body would stop healing itself. But now he was held together by more than just his resolve.

She returned the spear. “I don’t know how long it will be.”
I still cannot see you.

Frustration filled her voice. She’d never liked uncertainties, and all that made him up now was his determination and a magic spell. Both could fail at any moment.

But the spell would break before his will did. Michael swore it.

“Taylor’s presence will help,” she continued. “If you keep close to her and if her shields are open, it would reduce the dissonance better than your humming does. But even that won’t stop it from tearing you apart. Only slow it.”

You should force her to stay by you. Force her to open her mind.

Force her? The spear still in his hand, Michael looked at Khavi.

“Or not,” she amended quickly.
I wouldn’t like to be killed now, either.
“She will ask to Fall.”

She saw too much of you. You frightened her too deeply.

Just as I once told you.

He bit off his sharp denial. Khavi spoke the truth. But he wanted to hold on to the relief of Andromeda’s awakening—and to forget that when she’d seen him in Ames-Beaumont’s driveway, she’d been struck sick with fear.