Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (15 page)

Snagging his arm around her waist, Michael pulled her up against his chest. He only needed to touch Andromeda’s hand to take her with him, but he wanted to see her reaction.

He wasn’t disappointed.

Her fingers clenched on his biceps, her elbows locked—forcing a sliver of space between their bodies, but not before he pushed his thigh between hers and let her weight carry her feet back to the ground. Her gaze lifted to his, pupils dilating. Her lips parted. A flush pinkened her pale skin.

Confusion and irritation quickly followed, darkening her eyes and firming her mouth. An enthralling response. He wanted to kiss her just to see what she’d do. If her lips would open for the thrust of his tongue. If she’d slam her knee between his legs. If she’d surprise him.

But he wouldn’t press any further now. Until the moment she reached the point of rejection—marked by her succinct “fuck you”—her nature was to step away from impulse, to consider evidence and examine possibilities. Her physical reaction would be an argument in his favor, but this decision would play out in her head, not her body. So he’d give her time to think about how he felt against her before he mentioned bedding her again.

Holding her steady, he anchored to Jacob’s mind and teleported.

Into a conference room at Special Investigations. Six other people in the room, including Jacob in front of him. Four behind him, all Guardians. He faced one human—Lilith. She shielded too well to verify her psychic song but he knew her posture, recognized the arching of her brow and cold smile in response to his appearance. Behind him, the novice Rebecca sat on the conference table with her feet propped on a chair. Uncertainty and dread leaked through her shields. Pim stood beside her, well shielded but her hand on Rebecca’s leg the familiar touch of a friend and the comforting touch of a healer. Selah waited in the corner, her expression curious. The scent of a pine forest wafted from her like a perfume. She must have also been notified by Jacob and recently teleported in. She smiled and started toward Alice, who stood against the wall, her posture straight as a blade and wearing a black dress made from spider silk that no demon could hope to replicate. Alice met his gaze and her mouth tightened into a prim line.

Unhappy with him, but not yet ready to strike his head from his shoulders.

No immediate threats. Nothing but the faintest, muffled noises from outside the room. Michael disliked the soundproofing; he couldn’t hear an enemy’s approach from above. If they came by ground, however, he would know. The vibrations in the floor told him that Sir Pup was trotting down the hallway toward Lilith’s office. If anyone else came near, he would feel that, as well.

He glanced down. Andromeda’s eyes had closed. Her throat working, she swayed to the side. Her grip on his arms tightened. Not pushing him away this time, but holding on until her balance returned.

That didn’t mean she trusted him. It only meant that anger no longer ruled her.

“We’ll give Taylor a minute to recover,” Lilith said.

Andromeda stiffened. Instantly, Michael’s protective instincts surged. His gaze snapped to Lilith, whose words were weapons.
Don’t speak to her.

He bit back that response before it emerged. Except for the Guardians with a teleporting Gift, everyone experienced the disorientation. When they had been linked, Andromeda hadn’t—but now she did. The dizziness itself wouldn’t bother Andromeda; that Lilith remarked upon it did. Particularly after their argument that morning.

But Michael had arranged that argument. He’d needed Andromeda’s anger to erupt and burn out, and no one was better at producing that eruption than Lilith. The clash had been inevitable after he’d threatened Hugh, and Lilith had reacted exactly as he’d hoped. She’d struck back in the way that would damage him the most: by prodding Andromeda to expose how much he’d hurt her.

Michael had known that there was much to atone for. And from the moment he’d seen her in Ames-Beaumont’s driveway, he’d known that she would want to Fall.

He didn’t care whether she became human again. That was her choice. Caelum would still respond to her and, unlike any other human, she would always be able to walk through the Gates to that realm. But he couldn’t bear that she would also push away everything related to the Guardians in her desperation to be rid of him.

Yet he had no doubt she wanted to move away from this city with her family, leaving her friends behind. He’d seen it before. Andromeda was not the first human injured in the war between Guardians and demons. She would not be the first to sever ties to protect herself. And some of those humans did well afterward, rebuilding new lives and new connections.

Andromeda wouldn’t. He’d seen that before, too—not just in other humans, but in her. He’d seen her withdraw from friends who knew nothing of vampires and Guardians. He’d seen her question everything that she was and despair when she couldn’t find the answers. He’d seen how difficult it was for her to trust and to let anyone close.

She would endure. Andromeda was too strong to do anything else. But she would soon be alone.

And Michael would soon be dead. He wouldn’t be able to protect her. But if her anger abated, she might reconsider and remain near to those who could. A few weeks might be enough time to persuade her to stay, but only if she moved past her rejection of him.

So he had hoped for that explosion. Yet even he hadn’t known how much her anger would reveal.

Khavi had played matchmaker.

For Andromeda, the idea that Michael might love her had been outside the realm of possibility. But with a few words, Khavi had created that possibility within her without adding expectations, like building a door for Andromeda to step through if she ever developed softer feelings for him.

Perhaps Khavi had only acted as a friend, hoping to help him. Showing him where he was most likely to fall in love.

Except that Michael had already known. Khavi had only seen the possibility because he’d already recognized it. For Michael, that door had been created the day he’d first seen Andromeda standing over the body of a murdered boy, fury and sorrow and suspicion singing their determined march through her mind.

But that door was closing. Everything he might have felt and everything he’d been was ending. A few weeks left.

A few weeks in which he might overwrite some of the pain he’d caused her with pleasure he’d happily give. A few weeks to hoard his memories of Andromeda Taylor like a treasure. She’d helped him endure once. If there was anything left of him after death, he would have memories of Andromeda to hold on to for eternity.

A few weeks to create his own heaven or hell.

Perhaps it would be both. She released his arms and stepped back. A quick shift in her footing said that she was still dizzy. Though his instincts roared at him to help her steady again, Michael didn’t attempt to reach for her. This time, she
would
push him away.

“Ready, then?” Jacob asked.

She nodded and glanced around the room. Her features tightened and another flush tinged her skin before she faced Lilith again.

Embarrassed. She must have realized that news of her argument with Lilith had probably spread—and news of her desire to Fall. Even now, Alice recounted it all to Selah with silent, sharp gestures. Andromeda likely wondered if they looked at her with pity or blame.
The Guardian who couldn’t hack it,
she would say.

Michael could have assured her that they knew exactly where the blame lay: with him. Their disappointment sang a soft lament throughout the warehouse. They’d thought better of him. Even after discovering he was the son of a demon. Even despite their wariness after his return. But now he’d hurt one of their own, and they couldn’t think so well of him now.

And Michael wished that he had been better. If only because Andromeda wouldn’t believe herself a ruin now.

“Start the video over, Jake.”

Lilith stepped away from a large screen on the wall, where an image had been paused. A young man stood in front of an American flag. Mark Brandt. Michael recognized him by appearance, but wouldn’t trust that until he saw Brandt speak.

Jacob tapped on a laptop keyboard and the image went black. Not television feed, Michael saw, but a video from the Internet. Text appeared on the dark screen—
The Truth
—before sliding away to show Brandt again.

“My name is Mark Brandt. For three years, I’ve served as chief of staff for Senator Trina Blackwell of Ohio, and previously as legal counsel for Senator Walt Gareth. My father was Senator Bill Brandt from Washington State. You may remember that he passed away five years ago, after suffering a heart attack on the steps of the Capitol Building.”

Andromeda glanced at Jacob. “That’s the senator who Drifter killed, right? And Alejandro impersonated him afterward and pretended to have the heart attack.”

“Technically, a vampire killed the senator first, and one of the nephilim possessed his body. Then Drifter slew the nephil,” Lilith said. “But watch.”

“That death was a lie. My father died months before that date, of causes more horrible and more unnatural than heart failure. The truth is, our great country has been under assault from terrorists that don’t originate from another country or serve a specific religion. They don’t attack buildings or use bombs. Instead they have been waging a war on our very humanity. For centuries, they have been living among us.

“My father was not killed by a heart attack. His neck was broken by a man who was no longer human. A man who had been infected by an ancient plague—and this disease has been covered up by our own government. My father was killed because he’d tried to expose these secrets. I suspect that I will die exposing them as well. Perhaps I will also be replaced, as my father was, because that was not my father who died on those steps. It was a staged event arranged by a government entity. This entity, known as Special Investigations, was created solely for the purpose of hiding the truth.”

An image of the building that housed the headquarters appeared onscreen. At the bottom of the picture was the address.

“Oh, shit,” Andromeda breathed.

Jacob nodded. “Yep.”

Michael was not as concerned. Special Investigations was useful, but exposing it would not stop the Guardians or affect their purpose. Brandt’s status worried him more. He held the young man’s psychic song in his mind and tried to teleport to his location, but couldn’t find an anchor to jump toward. Brandt was either shielded or dead.

“I expect that many of you will dismiss this warning as a hoax. But I urge you not to—that is how they keep their secrets. They hide behind the shield of our disbelief. They destroy evidence that exposes them and produce lies to replace truth. But they cannot hide forever.

“I do not expect anyone to believe my claims without the proof to back them up, however. To that end, I have sent a full statement and copies of documents gathered by my father to media outlets around the world. You must demand their broadcast. You must demand that these lies are exposed. Only you can stop this infection. You must demand the truth . . . before we are all destroyed. God bless you all.”

The screen darkened again.

“Oh, Jake. You brought me here for this?” With a heavy sigh, Selah shook her head. “Even the silent film era had movies with better dialogue.”

Michael agreed. “They did not have better actors, however.”

This one almost passed for human.

Andromeda’s grin flashed. “Okay. Corny, yes. But what is he trying to do? The media won’t take this seriously for an instant. Yet it’s obviously a call to arms. Do you think he’s trying to spark a human uprising against us?”

More probably lay behind it than that. “He was not Mark Brandt,” Michael said. “His breathing was too regular, his voice too flat.”

“A demon,” Lilith agreed.

“It might be him,” Jacob said. “If he rehearsed enough or medicated up.”

“Yes. Theoretically, it could be him. Would Mark ever do
this,
however?” Alice walked around the table to Jacob’s side, each step a jolting rush followed by a pause, as if her limbs were disjointed. When fighting and when focused, she glided. But now she was preoccupied, her body reflecting the influence of the spiders that she psychically controlled. “Mark is a friend to Charlie, and the infected he speaks of must be vampires. Would he put her in such danger?”

“He might,” Jacob said. “He seemed pretty cool about helping us get everything right when Alejandro impersonated his father. But his reactions haven’t always been stable, so this might have been building, or maybe something set him off. Like when he first found out about his dad, he went kind of crazy. He even shot Charlie, saying that all vampires were evil. She forgave him. I can’t say that Drifter or I have.”

Michael hadn’t, either. “Bring in Hugh, then, so that we can be certain.” While Lilith opened the intercom, he looked to Jacob again. “Did you also try to find Brandt?”

“Yeah. I can’t jump to him.”

“I can’t, either,” Selah said.

A thoughtful frown creased Andromeda’s brow. “Demon or human, he was careful. He never said anything about Guardians or vampires, which would make everyone instantly dismiss the warning and send him straight into an institution. But terrorists? Infections? Government cover-ups? People will worry and some will believe him. Some conspiracy theorists will
want
to believe him.”