Demon Forged

since he has left Hell? When was that?”
    “Two or three thousand years ago. I don’t know the exact date.” He smiled slightly. “And since that time, he has lived as a saint. Apparently.”
    And appearances were almost always deceiving. “Because that is what Lilith knows of him.”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you know of anything different?”
    “No.”
    But Rael had been successful in Hell. Why move to Earth and remain here? Why not defend his position Below? Did he have his own reasons—or did he follow Belial’s orders? “Why the change? What does he gain?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She met his gaze. His eyes were amber—and they appeared so human. “Why haven’t you killed him?”
    “He concealed himself well. Not just psychically, but physically. He knows human habits. He was not in the public eye until after the Ascension—and after the Ascension, he was not a priority. Those demons who were trying to harm humans were.” His gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Now, he is useful.”
    Useful? Irena clenched her jaw and seethed.
    “It makes me no more happy than you.”
    “But less angry.”
    He smiled. “Perhaps I should be angry, too.”
    She wanted something from him, but it wasn’t anger. She wanted to believe in him again. “Is Rael’s change genuine?”
    Michael brows rose, as if she’d surprised him with the question—not the question itself, but that she had asked it.
    He took his time answering. “Demons cannot be judged by their actions, because even those might have a purpose.”
    Manipulation. As she’d always thought.
    But now, it was why she didn’t know if she could take Michael’s actions—and his history as the Guardians’ leader—for what they appeared to be. “You have said your father was a good man. How do you judge that?”
    He looked out over the city. “When the rebelling angels were tossed down from Heaven and changed into demons, I don’t know if they were given the corruption that is in all of them, or if the corruption had always been there, and the transformation merely stripped the layers that hid it.”
    “So you don’t know if he was truly good,” Irena said.
    “I don’t know if the dragon blood changed him in the same way,” he countered. “It allowed him to have children with a human, but like the transformation from angel to demon, it might have been more than a physical change. His treatment of us—Anaria and I—was not what Lucifer had asked of him. I say with certainty that he loved us—and my mother, too.” A quick smile curved his lips. “Loved my mother more than us, perhaps. She was . . . a good woman.”
    He paused. Irena tried to imagine him as a young grigori, growing up among humans, with a human mother and a demon father . . . and could not. “But that didn’t last.”
    “No. As time passed, he became more demonic again, even though his form returned to its angelic one.” He glanced at her. “And, yes, it is true I don’t know if the dragon blood changed him for a time, or if it just allowed him to hide what he was—so well that Anaria and I couldn’t see it in him—and let him become the father I knew. Perhaps he was not a good man. He was a good father.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Once.”
    “And your sister? The light one.” She couldn’t hold back her sneer. All the grigori were twins. One dark, one light. And Anaria was the one each of the grigori had thought of as the best of them, the most good . Yet she was the one who’d studied with Lucifer, who’d created the nephilim, who’d killed humans. “Is she truly good, or just a good sister?”
    “Demon blood runs through us, but the human side gives us more choice in the matter than demons. Anaria’s choices have not always been what I would have wished.” When Irena did not respond, he added, “I have been searching for her.”
    “What will you do when you find her?”
    He didn’t answer. Perhaps he couldn’t.
    “And Khavi?” Irena asked, and lost interest in the past as she felt her anger well up again. “Did she tell you of the woman she foresaw? The one we are supposed to protect?”
    “No.” His mouth tightened. Michael did not like Khavi’s Gift, either. “Who?”
    “She did not say. Perhaps it is the Margaret Wren woman—Rael’s employee. Perhaps it was Julia Stafford, and we have already failed. I would like to know for certain.”
    “I will ask her.”
    They shouldn’t have to ask. Not if a woman’s life was at stake.