Demon Night

been playing DemonSlayer in our downtime.”
    “Learning a bushel from it, are you?” Ethan asked, his voice dry as desert sand. Though based on a book that accurately described Guardians, the game was riddled with errors—but, fortunately, the public assumed both were fiction.
    “There’s only so much porn you can download before the thrill is gone.” The toothpick bobbed with Jake’s unapologetic grin. “Speaking of, that’s probably why Becca’s ready to snap: I think Emo Vamp always falls asleep right afterwards.”
    “I can hear you, you bloody bastard.” Rebecca’s reply came clearly through the door, but this time it was rounded by Jeeves’s cultured voice. “And Mackenzie’s worth it.”
    Her vampire lover likely fed from her just before falling into the daysleep, then. Ethan didn’t allow his revulsion to show; the thought of the blood and feeding didn’t disgust him, but the memory of a vampire’s bloodlust, and of how easily it had slipped into his own mind, left a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d done a lot of wrong in his lifetime, but what he’d done to that vampire had been one of the worst.
    He’d been a Guardian with a century’s training—but the overwhelming need had left him as weak as a human…or a vampire.
    A hiss of compressed air and the slide of the door preceded Lilith’s entrance, and Ethan made a mental amendment as she strode toward them, her long black hair coiled tight at her nape, her dark eyes fixed on his. Lilith was human now, but with the physical strength of a vampire, and “weak” described her about as well as “unsightly” described an Arizona sunset.
    And nothing about Lilith was unsightly, either, though Ethan wasn’t used to seeing so little of her. Perhaps in deference to the crisp morning, she’d traded in her corset for a high-necked black shirt and a jacket that rivaled his in length.
    She didn’t stop and offer a greeting; as she passed him, she simply commanded, “Drifter. In my office. And bring your puppy.”
    Jake made a woofing sound, but Ethan was surprised that her dog wasn’t trailing at her heels. Lilith’s three-headed hellhound could make a demon quake with fear and served as her protection. She rarely went anywhere without it, and Sir Pup’s absence likely meant that, wherever Castleford was, he had needed the hellhound more than she did.
    Which gave Ethan an advantage he’d have been a fool to squander. Whistling soundlessly, he fell into step behind her.

    With its walls painted a rich gold, mahogany furniture, and shelves of books, the office that Lilith and Castleford shared could have fit as easily in a nineteenth-century English manor house—although a gentleman farmer likely wouldn’t have had an arsenal of weapons hidden in his library. Lilith sat lightly on the front edge of her desk; Jake dropped into one of the club chairs facing her. Ethan didn’t take the seat she pushed toward him with her boot.
    Though her psychic blocks were impenetrable, he felt her dark gaze as he moved toward the painting of Caelum that hung against the east wall. Columns and spires of white marble rose against a gloriously blue sky.
    “Your pup ain’t here,” Ethan said.
    “Washington, D.C.’s vamp community was wiped out last night,” Lilith said. Though her voice was flat, she allowed her frustration and anger to slip through her shields. “Michael took Hugh and Sir Pup with him, looking for evidence. They teleported there just after dawn.”
    Jake sat forward, inhaled through clenched teeth. “Was it the same as in Rome and Berlin last month? No survivors?”
    “Yes. Whoever they are—and however many of them there were—they were methodical.”
    As they had been in Rome and in Berlin. Ethan could hardly comprehend the organization and planning it must have taken to wipe out every vampire in a city over the course of a single night. “Nothing to show whether it was demons or nosferatu?”
    Though demons and nosferatu had once been angels, the nosferatu hadn’t been tossed into Hell after Lucifer’s rebellion—instead, they’d been cursed with bloodlust and intolerance for daylight. Most demons and every Guardian would slay a nosferatu on sight; for that reason, they usually hid in caves, safe from psychic detection.
    But not always—in the past year, Ethan had seen more nosferatu than in the first two decades of his active Guardian service. And, to a one, nosferatu despised vampires. If ever a group would want