In addition to the demons, nosferatu—angels who refused to take a side in the First Battle, and who were cursed with bloodlust—were banished here to Earth. Although the nosferatu have been hunted almost to extinction, those who come out of hiding still pose a terrible danger to humans.
Initially, warrior angels loyal to Heaven protected humans from both demons and nosferatu. When humans began worshipping them as gods, however, Lucifer became jealous. He summoned a dragon from the Chaos realm, and used it to wage another war upon the angels—but this battle took place on Earth, instead of Heaven.
Mankind joined the side of the angels, and one man, Michael, struck down the dragon by severing its heart. With Lucifer’s most dangerous weapon slain, the angels prevailed.
After the Second Battle, the angels bestowed upon Michael the powers of a Guardian, and gave to him the power to change any other men or women who sacrificed themselves to save another with the same power. The Guardians’ only duty is to protect human free will and life from the threat of the nosferatu and demons. . . .
In the past two years, however, new threats have arisen. The nephilim, created by an alliance between Lucifer and one of the grigori—a half-demon, half-human offspring born before the Second Battle—now intend to take the throne in Hell, and suppress human free will. That grigori, Anaria, was imprisoned by the Guardians more than two thousand years ago; she has recently escaped, and now leads the nephilim. . . .
Despite our recent losses, the Guardian corps is strong, and Special Investigations remains committed to protecting mankind against those who threaten human lives and free will. Defending human life and liberty is our purpose, our duty. We will persevere with or without your support, with the utmost faith and confidence that we will prevail against our enemies. I trust, however, that we have your support and that recent events have clearly demonstrated the necessity of our continued operation.
We are all that stands between you and Hell, gentlemen.
CHAPTER 1
Three months earlier . . .
Once upon a time, all roads had led to Rome. As a human girl, Irena had been marched into Rome on the Via Salaria, as frightened by the imposing city walls as she had been of the shackles binding her mother’s wrists. Frightened—and forbidden the comfort of remembering the home that had lain at the beginning of their journey. They hadn’t been allowed to look back; all that lay ahead of a conquered people was service to the Empire.
Twelve years later, the Visigoths had sacked the city, and Irena had escaped by the same road. She’d looked back then, but only because she’d hoped to see Rome burning behind her.
It hadn’t. To Irena’s bitter disappointment, the barbarians had shown restraint. Although fires had lit the nighttime sky, the city hadn’t been consumed by flames.
Time consumed it, instead. Over sixteen hundred years, all that Irena had known of Rome slowly crumbled. In another sixteen centuries, the celebrated remnants of the empire might collapse into nothing. Humans labored to preserve and restore the ruins, but Irena wouldn’t be sorry when they were gone. She preferred what had risen in their place.
Now, as she jogged across the Via Salaria, she relished the feel of smooth concrete beneath her leather soles rather than paving stones under bare feet. Automobiles with their blinding headlights and blaring horns swerved to avoid her. One driver shouted obscenities, and Irena grinned at him through the windshield. One of the few things she’d liked about Rome had survived—and Italians were still inventive.
Irena suspected she’d soon be coming up with a few curses of her own.
The vampire she was scheduled to meet at the nearby Piazza Fiume shouldn’t have been here. Not in Rome. Less than a year ago, the nephilim had slaughtered every vampire within the city. The demons might still be here, hidden within the bodies of their human hosts and shielding their psychic scents.
The nephilim still might be here . . . but they weren’t just demons,
Irena reminded herself, and her amusement leached from her thoughts, leaving them sour and dark. The nephilim had come from Hell, but they hadn’t been created when Lucifer and his angel comrades had rebelled against Heaven and been transformed into demons. No, the nephilim were the offspring of Anaria and Zakril, two demon-spawned grigori who’d once called themselves Guardians.
There were
still
other grigori who called themselves Guardians. Until a few weeks ago, Irena would have fought to the death for one of them: Michael—the first Guardian, and their leader.
She would not die for him now.
Michael hadn’t explained why he’d lied about his parentage for millennia, or why he’d written in the Scrolls that he’d been human before slaying the Chaos dragon. Not that an explanation was necessary. As the son of Belial and a human woman, Michael was half demon—and lies were as natural to demons as their scales and horns.
Since she’d learned the truth, Irena couldn’t make herself trust or believe in him. Not while Belial’s blood ran through his veins.
But although she’d lost faith in the Doyen, she was still a Guardian. Still believed that every demon and nosferatu needed killing, that humans—and some vampires—needed protecting. And she would have met with Deacon even if the vampire hadn’t been a friend.
A friend, but not close enough to know what this part of Rome had meant to her. She’d never told Deacon that she remembered the walls when they hadn’t been ruins, and the gate that had opened Rome to the Via Salaria. This meeting and location had nothing to do with her past. And she could have avoided this road and the memories associated with it by flying directly to the piazza, but she’d wanted to be reminded of the changes in the city. She wanted the stink of exhaust burning her nostrils, rather than the stink of bodies, animals, and waste.
And she’d wanted to see the metal. So much metal.
Yes, she liked what had risen—and
who
had risen. Whether they lived here or were tourists fascinated by the past, humans experienced the same emotions they always had, but they governed those emotions differently. There were still too few with too much power, but despite the corruption at its foundation, the civilization that humanity had built was impressive.
Impressive, but not perfect. There were always exceptions, large and small.
On the sidewalk ahead of her, beside the entrance to a wine bar, a small exception slouched at a wrought iron table. His jacket and shirt were unbuttoned despite the crisp autumn evening, and a medallion winked from a bed of dark hair. Empty wine bottles stood next to an overflowing ashtray.
His bleary eyes sharpened as they fixed on Irena.
“Mi sento come un buon pompino. Quanto, puttana?”
How much?
She studied his face as she drew nearer, and dug into his emotions—arrogance, overblown machismo, a need to humiliate, a sharp loneliness—but she was unable to summon either pity or disgust.
And she felt no surprise at his suggestion. No matter the century, there were always men like this. Men who would see the brief top she wore, the cling of the soft suede from her hips to her upper thighs beneath the belt and straps of her leather stockings, the face that had aroused a Roman senator before she’d reached her ninth summer and assume rights they didn’t have.
At least this one offered to pay—and she’d known too many whores to be insulted when mistaken for one. She dismissed him, and her gaze moved on. Ahead, a fenced monument marked the Piazza Fiume.
The human’s derisive command returned her attention to him.
“Venite a succhiare il mio cazzo.”
He cupped his crotch, jiggling his hand as if Irena were a horse and his balls a bag of oats. His mouth slid into a leer.
“E si inghiottire troppo.”
At that, Irena smiled. She would swallow—but only if she bit off a chunk first.
She didn’t need to tell him so; her expression served as a reply. He dropped his gaze to his table.
Cowed, but not quieted. Even if she hadn’t heard the word he muttered as she reached him, its shape was unmistakable on his lips.
“Stronza.”
Bitch.
Irena’s breath hissed from between her teeth in a thin stream. This one, he did not know when to quit. She halted in front of him and bent over to grip the arms of his chair. Her smile was still vicious, but he didn’t glance at her face. Unease slithered through his psychic scent as he took in the winding blue serpents tattooed from her wrists to her shoulders.
“You are a handsome man,” she told him, and didn’t attempt to suppress the accent that chopped at her Italian, “but you use your tongue in the wrong way.” Irena crooked her index finger beneath his necklace. Gold. Such a worthless metal. Far too soft, even when blended with stronger materials. Irena favored steel, iron, or platinum. She tugged lightly on the chain. “Stand, and I will show you what your mouth is good for.”
Like a dog, he obeyed. Her fingers drifted down over his chest as he rose from his seat, and she shape-shifted subtly, increasing her height so that his tobacco-scented breath gusted heavily over her lips. His breathing stopped when she reached the waistband of his tight jeans, and she paused to test his emotions. Fear trembled in him, but also lust.
And this one had no resistance to lust. Even as his flesh hardened beneath her hand, his arousal left him as malleable as gold. Left him easily manipulated. Demons loved humans such as these.
Irena did not. She dragged her fingertip up his brass zipper, and her Gift melded the teeth together.
The human wouldn’t sense the psychic touch. If Deacon had already reached their meeting spot, however, he would know she was near.
And if she’d revealed herself to any other creatures who might be in Rome, she looked forward to meeting them. Killing them.
Excitement fermented within her, and she imagined rending a demon’s crimson skin when she placed her mouth to the male’s. The flesh behind his zipper swelled as her tongue slid over his, pulling, sucking.
He reached for her chest and she stepped back. He panted, his eyes glazed.
She wiped his taste from her lips with the back of her hand, leaving a sneer. “Not good for much, after all.”
His face reddened. Rage choked him; she’d turned away and walked half a block before he managed to roar
“Stronza!”
after her.
She continued on. The insult did not anger her so much now that a plea lay beneath it. A small-minded man, frustrated by such a small thing.
He would know true frustration as soon as he sought release for his bladder or his arousal.
Her good mood was restored and her steps were lively as they carried her to the piazza. The evening was cold and clear; on the tundra, this was the kind of night when only the sharp, freezing air separated the earth from the heavens. A night for hunting. All that this moment lacked was the use of her blades. But if a nephilim or demon had felt her Gift, perhaps bloodshed wasn’t far off. She couldn’t detect any nearby, but they could block their minds and hide from her psychic probes.
She had expected to find Deacon—a vampire’s mind wasn’t as powerful as a Guardian’s, and his shields weaker—but she didn’t sense him, either. Only humans.
She rounded the stone blocks at the corner of the monument, her gaze sweeping the piazza. It froze near the monument entrance. A tall male stood in front of the iron gate. His dark eyes met hers.
Olek. Her step didn’t falter. She didn’t betray her surprise with movement or breath, but her heart became a sledgehammer against her ribs. Did it pound with anger, shame, or need?
It did not matter. With Olek, they were all the same.
He was Alejandro to every other Guardian, but always Olek to her. Try as she might—and she
had
tried—she couldn’t think of him as anything else.
Olek, the silk-tongued swordsman whose idea of honor was to die for nothing.
Like Irena, he dressed not in modern clothing, but clothing comfortable to him. A black long-sleeved shirt hugged his torso, loose enough to allow movement but leaving little for an enemy to grab. His fitted trousers were tucked into knee-high boots. She knew their soles were as soft as hers—and as sure-footed. Both she and Alejandro would sacrifice a hardened boot and the damage a heel could inflict in order to feel every aspect of the ground beneath their feet.
Old-fashioned garb, but it hardly drew a second glance from the humans milling near the monument with cameras in hand. There had been centuries when Guardians had been careful to blend; these days, almost anything was acceptable, if unconventional. For all Irena knew, her leather leggings and the ragged cut of her auburn hair might have even been fashionable.
Alejandro’s haircut was severe. Gone were the overlong, thick curls that he’d worn when she’d met him. Now his dark hair was short, with edges as sharp as his face. It was not a style that invited a touch.
And she hated her desire to comb her fingers through it. She refused to clench her fists against the urge.
Alejandro was as controlled as she was. He held his lean body still and his mouth in a firm, immobile line.
Her gaze rested on the sharp point of his beard. She had seen his facial hair diminish over time, according to human custom, until it was short and tight. The beard no longer extended past his chin; the mustache curved just past the corners of his wide mouth. A devil goatee, her young friend Charlie had once called it.
The description was more accurate than Charlie knew.
Irena pushed away the memory of a silken brush against her inner thigh, of heated lips. Pushed away the anger, shame, need.
“Alejandro,” she said deliberately.
Dark and unwavering, his gaze lifted from her mouth. He spoke in French, lightly accented with Spanish. “You tread near a line that cannot be uncrossed, Irena.”