Demon Moon

gun at the eastern window. Nothing. Another blur, across the bay window. She whirled.
    Nothing.
    He’s just trying to scare you .
    And doing a good job of it. He was too quick; she imagined him skittering around the exterior of the house like a spider, all grasping fingers and clinging feet.
    The hair at the back of her neck prickled. Fighting to keep her arms steady, she looked at the turret window again. In his demon form, Dalkiel beckoned her with a crook of his claw, then sliced a fingernail over the tape sealing the box closed.
    She didn’t want to know what was in there; he liked to rip off heads too much. But if he had killed someone, she needed to know who.
    She swallowed and stepped forward, until she was only a couple of feet from the glass.
    Dalkiel flipped open the lid, lifted out the head by a tangle of blood-matted hair. Eyeless. In the instant before the sun disintegrated it to ash, Savi recognized him.
    Ken Branning.
    The gassy pop! of the silencer was louder to her ears than the snap of glass, the fissured hole in the window.
    She’d missed; he was too fucking fast. Her teeth grinding, she made a slow turn. Her heart skipped, raced.
    His wings slowly flapping, Dalkiel hovered at the side of the house and flicked open a lighter. A tiny flame leapt from the igniter.
    Savi jumped onto the bed, rolled the sheets around Colin’s body, scooped him up, and ran.

    Colin woke, fear and exhaustion heavy in his lungs and mouth. Savi’s psychic scent.
    He opened his eyes to smooth steel walls: the shelter in the basement. He sat up, silk falling to his waist; Savi turned away from the monitors, offered him a strained smile.
    “Dalkiel. He didn’t burn it; I thought he was going to burn it,” she said in a near-babble. “But I think he just wanted to freak me out. Branning’s dead, and I shot out one of your windows.”
    Oh, Christ. She’d been trapped in here, prevented a call for help by the very thing that protected them. Even the pendant around her neck had been useless behind the spell. Colin wrapped her in his arms, tucked her head against his chest.
    “Is he still out there?” His voice was rough.
    “I’ve been watching, but I haven’t seen him pass any of the security cameras in a couple of minutes. Not since the sun set, and the thermal sensors aren’t picking him up anymore.”
    “Inside or outside?” She could have escaped without fearing for herself—Dalkiel couldn’t hurt her, even if she’d abandoned the house—but it would have left Colin alone, vulnerable.
    “Outside. I’m not paying for the window.”
    He tried to drum up a smile as his palms swept the length of her. No injuries, but he needed to touch, to be certain. His fangs ached to taste, to feel the truth of it from inside—to completely erase the fear. He kissed her instead, a sweet slide of texture and scent against his lips.
    The tension in her slim form slowly eased; her muscles quavered lightly beneath his hands, as if she’d held them too tight for too long.
    She breathed his name when he drew back. Arched her neck in a wordless plea.
    Oh, sweet Savitri. No need to ask for this; he would beg for it. Her blood: a shock to his tongue, a burst of light and color. She gasped, panted as he slipped in, around the thick spiraling vault of memories, sampled the emotions spinning over its surface, found the right notes to strike.
    Awe. Fear and delight. Passion and enthrallment.
    Caelum.
    He could give her this. If only this.
    It was hardly enough.



CHAPTER 26

    Before the Guardians were created, angels protected humans from demons and nosferatu—but mankind never mistook them for humans, even though, beautiful or not, their forms must have been perfect replicas. So what gave them away? Are they beings of light who transform to matter when they shape-shift? Is it energy they couldn’t obtain? A psychic presence? I don’t know…but I think I’ve seen something like it in Caelum .
    —Savi to Taylor, 2007

    This was not a course he should have been taking—not with Savi. And yet Colin still found himself sitting on a bench outside the new glass-and-steel Federal Building in the middle of the day, waiting for a man who could kill him with little effort.
    Probably would kill him for daring to manipulate him in this way.
    “I should have expected this of you,” Michael said as he sat beside him. “But I’ll admit I did not. Do you need a covering?”
    Thick gray clouds hung low in the sky; there was direct