Demon Angel

breath.
    "You have a camera in your phone, too?" he asked. Taylor's brows drew together, but she nodded and holstered her gun.
    In the hallway, he heard two nurses chatting easily as they exited another room; Michael's power must have been closely contained, only felt by those in a very small radius. Though a hospital-wide healing might have been a more spectacular display, a Guardian's healing power only worked on injuries sustained from inhuman causes: a nosferatu's bite, a wound from a demon's sword, or a bad landing made during transportation.
    "It's not much," Hugh said, peeling away the bandage at his neck.
    "It's enough for now," Taylor breathed as he exposed perfectly healed skin. "It's something ."
    "Perhaps he has a twin," Preston said, but Hugh could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
    "Those pictures from the bridge," Hugh said. "Has anyone else seen them?"
    "No. And except for a few people, it would be taken as seriously as a grilled cheese sandwich," Preston said, shaking his head. "But there were witnesses, and we don't know what lengths these things would go to keep their presence a secret."
    Hugh suddenly felt like laughing. "Not very far; they'd love the results of such a revelation. Imagine, if it became known that evil creatures, who could take any human form, walked among us." At their blank looks, he said with a wry smile, "You would never get another conviction, to start. A shape-shifting demon is the best defense."
    Taylor nodded slowly. "Then why don't they?"
    "Lucifer," Hugh said simply. "No demon wants to be singled out, or star in a world-wide broadcast."
    "You singled out Lilith with your book," Preston said.
    "She was dead."
    "But no longer."
    "No." He held Taylor's gaze with his own, saw the knowledge in her eyes. "But she's not behind the murders. Don't waste your time looking at her."
    Preston's brows raised. "Who should we look at?"
    There was a threat in that question, and the offended tone of one who didn't like being told what to investigate, but Hugh didn't respond to it. "The nosferatu. Beelzebub." He recalled the demon's appearance in Colin's basement, the witness who'd seen Smith leaving the house. "Who must be Agent Smith. Was the house completely destroyed?"
    "No. Neighbors saw that one side of the house had imploded, and thought there'd been an explosion, so the fire trucks were already on their way. Were you there?"
    "Yes," Hugh said. "There will be traces of my blood in the basement. There might be ash remains of several nosferatu."
    "Within two hours you were at Auntie's; Milton's apartment in Hunter's Point; the Beaumont place in The Haight; and back to your place?" Taylor frowned. "You got around the city rather quickly."
    Realizing what she was thinking, that he had also managed to be in two places almost at once, Hugh said softly, "I didn't murder those kids, or Sue. Some things are exactly as they appear, and some appearances are deceiving."
    "We just have to trust you?"
    Hugh ignored the mockery in Preston's tone. "No. You just have to look for the truth. Trust takes much longer." Eight hundred years, at times.
----

CHAPTER 26
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    Waiting had been easy for Hugh, once. Easy to let things happen around him, without doing anything himself. Now, when it was forced upon him, it ate at him with sharp teeth. He pounded the weights until he shook with fatigue, but the exertion was routine, leaving his mind busy and his thoughts drawing out endlessly—as time seemed to.
    Javier, Ian, and Sue, dead. Colin and Selah, missing. Savi and Auntie, swept away to Caelum for their protection though no human had ever been taken to that realm before.
    Had he failed them all?
    Curled atop his desk, Emilia watched him, blinking lazily each time the bar clanged into its cradle. The minutes crawled by. It was near midnight when the cat rocketed across the room, screeching, her fur standing on end. His heart pounding, Hugh let the weights fall to the floor, and ran after the cat. He detoured to the living room when he saw it disappear under his bed. If the cat was afraid, then either a nosferatu had come to finish him—or a hellhound.
    A scratching at the back door, then an urgent chorus of barks.
    Sir Pup broke the latch just as Hugh skidded into the room, and he caught her as she tumbled from the hellhound's back. She was shivering—her clothing soaked through, her lips blue, her skin pale and bloodless.
    Only one symbol remained on her chest.
    "Lilith," he said,