Angels of Darkness

though some demons destroyed human souls simply for the pleasure of it, most preferred to gain influence or wealth on the side. If the emotional rot in Riverbend had trickled down to these high schoolers, the bastard had gotten his claws in deep.
    As a Guardian, Marc was on a mission to rip those claws out. As a man who’d seen too many lives ruined by too many demons, he’d enjoy every second of it.
    One and a half centuries ago, a demon had destroyed the community where he’d lived, too. Sixteen years old and human, Marc hadn’t been able to psychically detect the festering seeds the demon had sown, but he hadn’t needed to—he’d seen the hate and distrust tearing everyone apart, splitting the community into factions. At the demon’s urging, resentment had eventually erupted into violence, and Marc had died after taking a bullet meant for his father. Later, he’d learned that his death had shocked the community so deeply that they’d all taken a step back, tried to untangle all of the lies the demon had been spreading. Not every rift had healed, but they’d begun to move forward again.
    Marc had gone on, too. His sacrifice gave him a chance to become a Guardian, a warrior given angelic powers, and it was a chance that he’d taken. After a hundred years of training in Caelum, the Guardians’ heavenly city, he’d returned to Earth and begun hunting demons. Some were easier to find than others, their arrogance shining like a psychic beacon through a town—but this demon was proving to be the clever, hidden variety.
    Eventually the demon would reveal itself. They always did, but Marc didn’t plan to wait that long . . . and maybe he wouldn’t have to.
    One hundred and fifty years of combined training and hunting demons had taught Marc to listen to his instincts, and right now they were telling him that something had just changed. Something he was seeing, hearing, or smelling wasn’t as it should be, but his brain hadn’t figured out what his senses had already noted.
    Tense now, expectant, he cocked his head. No unusual scents floated on the air. He could account for every footstep he heard, every voice, every heartbeat. He glanced up at the roof, the school windows, scanned the parking lot again. Everything appeared all right, no one moving too fast and everyone breathing, unlike a demon who might have forgotten himself. His gaze skimmed the snow, slipping over the drifts, and stopped.
    The play of darkness and light was wrong. Cloud-diffused sunlight cast a faint, long shadow of the school building over the parking lot, but the long edge didn’t match the straight lines of the roof. Marc looked up.
    No one. But now he saw the depression in the snow at the roof’s edge, as if someone had recently crouched there. Perhaps he’d heard the snow crunch—and even as he watched, the depression deepened slightly, as if shifting beneath someone’s weight.
    As if someone was still crouching there. Tricky as demons were, they didn’t possess any powers of invisibility, and Marc only knew of one person who could project such a powerful illusion.
    Though that person was also a Guardian, his tension didn’t ease. Of the few people in the world who might seek him out, Radha was the last woman he expected to see.
    Of course, he wasn’t seeing her yet.
    â€œYour shadow,” he said quietly.
    A frozen puff of air betrayed her exasperated huff of breath. When he’d known her, Radha had been frustrated by any holes in her illusions, had constantly striven for perfection. Apparently those small mistakes still irritated her.
    Marc knew that if he turned to look now, those shadows would appear exactly as they should. He continued to watch the roof instead. “And you breathed. If I wanted to shoot your head, I’d know exactly where to aim.”
    â€œNow you’re just rubbing it in,” she said, and the illusion concealing her dropped away, revealing her narrowed brown eyes, her wry smile.
    He should have looked the other way. He should have given himself that break. But it would have only been delaying the inevitable punch to his chest, the sensation of staggering while standing in place. It didn’t matter when he saw her, or how often—which wasn’t often. A few minutes every few years. Never speaking with her, only hearing the lilt in her voice from afar, a lilt that bespoke of English learned