Demon Marked

humping, unrecognizable mess.
    Taylor still couldn’t bring herself to like the woman, though she’d grudgingly come to respect her. Two thousand years old, Lilith had once been a demon halfling—a human who’d been given a demon’s powers through a sick ritual of symbols carved into flesh, bloodletting, and a vow to serve Lucifer. Almost every halfling disappointed him, however, and so they’d all ended up in the frozen field . . . all of them except for Lilith. A master of lies and self-preservation, she’d outlasted the others—and eventually lied well enough that she’d tricked Lucifer into releasing her from her vow to obey him, and won a wager that led to the Gates of Hell closing for five hundred years.
    She’d paid for it, though. Her demon powers had been stripped away and she’d become human again. Though the two thousand years had left its mark on Lilith, leaving her as strong and as fast as a vampire, she wasn’t immortal anymore. She couldn’t fly; she couldn’t shape-shift.
    She could still lie like the devil, though.
    Despite that, Michael had trusted her enough to put her in charge of Special Investigations’ operations—and Taylor couldn’t fault his decision. Those two thousand years as a demon meant that Lilith knew their methods better than anyone else on Earth. When an assignment popped up and Lilith gave her opinion about the demon Taylor would be looking for and the places she’d probably find him, Taylor shut up and listened.
    “Perfect timing,” Lilith said. “I just got a ping from the novices trolling local police reports. A double murder. Apparently, the guy already confessed.”
    “But?” There was always a but.
    “He said that the ghost of a dead girlfriend visited him, encouraging him to seek vengeance.”
    Probably not a ghost. Either the guy was delusional, or he’d been visited by a very solid, shape-shifted demon having a bit of fun with someone who’d been easy to take advantage of.
    “I’ll take a look,” Taylor said. “Who am I taking with me?”
    Lilith’s mouth twisted a bit. “It’s Marc Revoire’s territory.”
    The Midwest, which wasn’t exactly a thrill, but the expression on Lilith’s face made it a little better. Though a Guardian, Revoire didn’t take his assignments through SI, but he might know exactly who the demon was, and be in the process of hunting him down. Everyone understood that barreling into another Guardian’s investigation might bungle the whole thing and let a demon slip away. So although Lilith would have probably liked to flip Revoire the bird and send a team from SI to handle the double murder, she was forced to play nice, Guardian-style.
    Taylor didn’t mind working with Revoire, anyway. She’d met him before in Caelum, shortly after she’d come out of the three-month coma following Michael’s kiss, her transformation, and the link that had formed between them. Brooding and dark, with a hint of France in his voice, Revoire struck her as a solitary, silent type. He’d asked Taylor whether there was anything he could do for her and to let him know if there ever was, and then left to talk to Irena, who’d taken over as Guardian leader in Michael’s absence.
    Taylor hadn’t seen him since, but she heard mention of him now and again—though the other Guardians referred to him as Icarus rather than his name. Why, Taylor didn’t know, but after watching a few novices in their disastrous early flight attempts, she assumed that something similar had happened to him in his early years, and the nickname had stuck . . . for more than a hundred and fifty years.
    Considering that it had taken ten years on the force and a promotion to inspector before the other rookies in her year stopped calling her Red , Taylor had sympathy for him.
    “I’ll contact him now,” she said. “I also ran into Rosalia. She thinks that Nicholas St. Croix picked up a demon, but he’s gone under.”
    “St. Croix?” Lilith’s brows arched, her earlier irritation smoothing away. She turned back to her computer. “We’re already keeping tabs. We have been since he consulted for Legion Labs. Handsome, rich, and working with a demon-run corporation? It was too easy. Now we know he was just searching for his mother, but at the time, he looked good for being a demon himself.”
    “Rosalia thinks he still looks good for it.”
    “We can’t kill every asshole. Who would raise all of the asshole children?” Lilith narrowed her eyes at the