Demon Night

in his hand, and walked around the back of Cole’s to examine the twisted gate.
    The lock was intact, but even a vampire could have broken it with a hard twist of the knob, or pulled the gate’s metal frame from its seat of brick.
    They’d intended to scare her first, then. It didn’t surprise Ethan that a demon would recruit vampires with a streak of mean. And like a horse or a dog with a rabid temperament and an eagerness to hurt, there was but one option: put them down.
    Ethan had destroyed a few animals when he was human, and he reckoned he felt worse for them; they didn’t know any better. Anything that had once been human did.
    And Charlie had been well and frightened. Her fear had dogged her several times during their walk. Each time, she’d managed to push it away—leaving Ethan torn between his relief that she wasn’t relying on him, the sting to his pride that she thought he couldn’t defend her, and his unexpected need to reassure her that he would.
    But a conflicted man was a distracted one, and he wouldn’t be doing right by her if he allowed his ego to get in the way of protecting her.
    As it was, Ethan hadn’t sensed the vampire nearby until they’d been standing outside Cole’s. Ethan didn’t figure this particular vampire was any danger to Charlie…but chasing him down might be exactly what Ethan needed to cool the heat she’d created in him.
    Ethan walked quickly down the deserted alley, picking up speed. His duster appeared on a thought, and his forward motion created its own wind, the coattails flapping behind him. He’d have to cross two blocks to reach the vampire, and he was moving faster than a human could; he ought to get up top.
    And although Ethan was certain no one watched, it was best not to perform impossible feats. It was easy enough to change his direction, take a leap at the alley wall and push off with his foot, using the momentum he’d gained to launch himself to the roof of the opposite building. Every human who’d ever watched a martial arts movie had seen a man run up a wall and flip away from it; Ethan had taken that to an extraordinary level, but not outside the realm of human belief.
    Wings would have been.
    Crossing the street took only another leap. No one was likely looking up—and in the dark, they would mistake whatever they’d seen. The next block down, Manny’s red boat of an automobile idled off a side street, its wheel rims shiny as spit. A human was in it with him.
    Ethan propped his foot on an air-conditioning unit, rested his elbow on his knee, and settled down to watch and listen.
    Luckily for Manny, the person in the car with him didn’t sound all that young. The first and last time Ethan had found the vampire passing something off to a boy not much past puberty, Ethan had rolled him over hard. Guardians had to respect human free will, even when the decisions humans made were foolish. If they wanted to rot their brains with the shit Manny sold, that was their choice. But Ethan figured kids didn’t know any better—and if he couldn’t stop the humans from selling to them, at least he could stop Manny.
    Hell, there were plenty of reasons to beat the vampire, but not enough reasons to slay him. And, at any rate, it was Ethan’s own damn fault Manny was alive. He’d been the one to transform the vampire twelve years before, when he’d heard the screams coming from an alley in Tacoma. Only the nosferatu’s focus on Manny and its bloodlust had allowed Ethan the easy kill; but the nosferatu had already fed well, and Ethan had had to use the nosferatu’s blood to transform Manny into a vampire.
    A Guardian wasn’t meant to judge, but there were times Ethan reckoned he’d have done just as well to let Manny bleed to death in that alley.
    But those times inevitably led to wondering whether Michael had thought the same of him, transforming him to Guardian in an oven of a jail cell. And so it was best not to wonder at all, and just get the job done.
    And if the vampires who’d come after Charlie belonged to the Seattle community, Manny might prove a useful source of information. Until a few months ago, he’d remained on the periphery of the vampire community. Aside from his two female partners, Manny had only associated with Vladimir and Katya, the heads of the Seattle community, acting as their enforcer.
    A community’s leaders meted out punishments and executions to vampires who threatened the secrecy of their kind or who fed from