Angels of Darkness

appreciated and where a musician can hone his craft. So the only question I have left is—”

“Will I come with you?” I interjected. If he could speak for me, I could speak for him.

“Yes. Will you?”

It was a risk. He might think he loved me unconditionally, he might believe he would never tire of me, but two people had a tendency to wear on each other, and I was more wearing than most. But I could bear it if he left me, as long as he left me in Luminaux, I thought. And maybe he wouldn’t leave me. I guessed I wouldn’t know unless I made the experiment.

“Yes,” I said. “Just let me get my coat.”

Ascension Meljean Brook

CHAPTER 1

A demon had moved into Riverbend.

Judging by the amount of anger and despair that Marc Revoire could sense ravaging this community, the demon intended to rot the small Illinois town from the inside. A lot of work, a lot of whispers, a lot of doubts to sow. The demon might gain the pleasure of watching a few humans die in the process—but from Marc’s vantage point, it seemed easier to wait for a cold snap and watch the male half of Riverbend’s teenaged population freeze to death instead.

Though a good four inches of snow had fallen since noon, most of the boys coming out of Riverbend’s high school and into the parking lot wore T-shirts and cargo shorts. Some had the sense to pull on a stocking cap and a long-sleeved shirt, but they still shivered and hunched while scraping the snow from their windshields. Apparently, the girls had less to prove. Bundled in coats and scarves, only a few wearing short skirts bared their legs to the cold.

Marc expected the foolish clothing. He also wasn’t surprised that they completely ignored his presence, as if a man in a dark suit and with a badge tucked into his belt waited at the building’s rear exit every day. After fifty years of watching over the Midwestern states, he’d become accustomed to seeing all kinds of teen behavior, from shy to rebellious, ignorant to insightful, clever to outright stupid.

He was less accustomed to watching a bunch of kids leave school on a Friday afternoon, and not a one of them projecting relief or anticipation for the coming weekend. Instead, Marc sensed resignation, dread. Where those emotions hadn’t taken hold, a heavy dose of apathy resided.

Demons usually didn’t bother with kids. Teenagers didn’t have much power and rarely possessed any money—and though some demons destroyed human souls simply for the pleasure of it, most preferred to gain influence or wealth on the side. If the emotional rot in Riverbend had trickled down to these high schoolers, the bastard had gotten his claws in deep.

As a Guardian, Marc was on a mission to rip those claws out. As a man who’d seen too many lives ruined by too many demons, he’d enjoy every second of it.

One and a half centuries ago, a demon had destroyed the community where he’d lived, too. Sixteen years old and human, Marc hadn’t been able to psychically detect the festering seeds the demon had sown, but he hadn’t needed to—he’d seen the hate and distrust tearing everyone apart, splitting the community into factions. At the demon’s urging, resentment had eventually erupted into violence, and Marc had died after taking a bullet meant for his father. Later, he’d learned that his death had shocked the community so deeply that they’d all taken a step back, tried to untangle all of the lies the demon had been spreading. Not every rift had healed, but they’d begun to move forward again.

Marc had gone on, too. His sacrifice gave him a chance to become a Guardian, a warrior given angelic powers, and it was a chance that he’d taken. After a hundred years of training in Caelum, the Guardians’ heavenly city, he’d returned to Earth and begun hunting demons. Some were easier to find than others, their arrogance shining like a psychic beacon through a town—but this demon was proving to be the clever, hidden variety.

Eventually the demon would reveal itself. They always did, but Marc didn’t plan to wait that long . . . and maybe he wouldn’t have to.

One hundred and fifty years of combined training and hunting demons had taught Marc to listen to his instincts, and right now they were telling him that something had just changed. Something he was seeing, hearing, or smelling wasn’t as it should be, but his brain hadn’t figured out what his senses had already noted.

Tense now, expectant, he cocked his head. No unusual scents floated on the air. He could account for every footstep he heard, every voice, every heartbeat. He glanced up at the roof, the school windows, scanned the parking lot again. Everything appeared all right, no one moving too fast and everyone breathing, unlike a demon who might have forgotten himself. His gaze skimmed the snow, slipping over the drifts, and stopped.

The play of darkness and light was wrong. Cloud-diffused sunlight cast a faint, long shadow of the school building over the parking lot, but the long edge didn’t match the straight lines of the roof. Marc looked up.

No one. But now he saw the depression in the snow at the roof’s edge, as if someone had recently crouched there. Perhaps he’d heard the snow crunch—and even as he watched, the depression deepened slightly, as if shifting beneath someone’s weight.

As if someone was still crouching there. Tricky as demons were, they didn’t possess any powers of invisibility, and Marc only knew of one person who could project such a powerful illusion.

Though that person was also a Guardian, his tension didn’t ease. Of the few people in the world who might seek him out, Radha was the last woman he expected to see.

Of course, he wasn’t seeing her yet.

“Your shadow,” he said quietly.

A frozen puff of air betrayed her exasperated huff of breath. When he’d known her, Radha had been frustrated by any holes in her illusions, had constantly striven for perfection. Apparently those small mistakes still irritated her.

Marc knew that if he turned to look now, those shadows would appear exactly as they should. He continued to watch the roof instead. “And you breathed. If I wanted to shoot your head, I’d know exactly where to aim.”

“Now you’re just rubbing it in,” she said, and the illusion concealing her dropped away, revealing her narrowed brown eyes, her wry smile.

He should have looked the other way. He should have given himself that break. But it would have only been delaying the inevitable punch to his chest, the sensation of staggering while standing in place. It didn’t matter when he saw her, or how often—which wasn’t often. A few minutes every few years. Never speaking with her, only hearing the lilt in her voice from afar, a lilt that bespoke of English learned over two centuries ago and half a world away.

But she was here now, rising from her crouch at the edge of the roof. Thick black hair tumbled to her waist. The long, curling strands and a few wisps of orange silk formed a scanty covering for her breasts. Scarves knotted at her left hip flirted with her inner thighs, hinting at but never revealing anything other than smooth expanses of skin that she’d dyed indigo.

Behind her, white feathered wings arched over her head. She must have still been concealing herself from everyone else. Even apathetic kids would stop and stare at an almost-nude blue woman with wings standing atop a school building.

He couldn’t stop staring, either. Couldn’t stop remembering that he’d once unwrapped those scarves. That he’d buried his hands in that impossibly thick hair before burying himself in her body.

She’d left without a word the next day. When he’d tried to discover why, the door he’d knocked on remained closed. The note he’d sent returned unopened.

He hadn’t tried again. He’d been young, and damn stupid in those days, but her message had been