“I know,” Marc said. “And if it had just been the vampires—hell, it’s not right—but I’d have just set them straight about vampires, make them understand who they killed . . . and then make them live with what they’d done.”
“Maybe not punishment enough, but still punishment.” And if the other option was turning the girls over to the vampire community, and letting them dispense justice or punishment . . .
That wasn’t even an option. Maybe in some circumstances. Not this one.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But for what they did to Marnie Weaver, that’s not our decision to make.”
No, it wasn’t. That was for the human courts to decide, and he knew this territory and the law of the land better than she did. “What will you do?”
“Most likely, I won’t have to do anything. There will be evidence. Someone will have seen the Cherokee. The girls will have left a fingerprint. There’s no chance that four teenagers got in and out of there without leaving some kind of trace. So I’ll wait. I’ll head back to Riverbend and keep an eye on them, make certain they don’t slay any more vampires. And if it seems like the sheriff isn’t getting anywhere in the investigation, I’ll point him that way. Maybe send him those text transcripts when SI puts them together.”
“That’s probably the best way.” Radha rose up onto her toes, softly kissed his mouth. “This is one of the harder ones. It’s not just the vampires, not just a woman—those four kids threw their lives away, too.”
He nodded, focusing on her lips. Maybe thinking of the kiss she’d just given him so easily. “You have to go back?”
“Not right away. Rosalia and Mariko are covering the news for me. Nothing has popped up yet.”
And that was the most efficient way of hunting most demons. They stumbled across some demons, so regular patrols around a territory were necessary, but almost all of the other demons Radha found came from a mention of something odd in the papers, a detail that didn’t make sense, or a half-heard rumor flying around a city. It was all a lot easier now with computers, and with Special Investigations digging up leads from all around the world. Still, Radha had recently spent two months in London on another mission—and though other Guardians had covered her territory, she wasn’t ready to leave it again for more than a day or two at a time. Anything else felt like ignoring her responsibilities.
So, maybe another day here . . . and then he could come to her in another day or two, when everything in Riverbend had been settled.
She looked up at him. “We’ll work this out, won’t we?”
His eyes sparked with green light. His kiss was hot and thorough. The perfect answer.
Until his phone rang. Marc groaned, held her for another long, scorching second before pulling away. Radha grinned, appreciating his reluctance to break away almost as much as the kiss.
“Hopefully SI with those transcripts,” he muttered, glancing at the screen. He frowned. “Local.”
“Someone you gave a card to?”
Humans, vampires. How many people had he talked with? But if someone called at five in the morning, it was most likely a vampire.
“Probably.” He brought the phone to his ear. “Revoire.”
Radha had no trouble hearing the other end of a telephone conversation from this distance, but to begin, there was only a brief silence. Then a young female voice: “Agent Revoire?”
“Speaking. May I help you?”
“My friend Sam said you talked to him yesterday. About Jason.”
Marc’s brow furrowed. “Miklia?”
“Yes,” she said, before continuing with obvious uncertainty. “I wondered . . . if I could talk to you. About . . . a few things. If you could talk to me and my friends.”
His face stilled, a quietly dangerous expression hardening his eyes. “About what you did yesterday morning?”
Another silence was followed by a long, indrawn breath. “Kind of. No. My friend said . . . said you might be a Guardian.”
Had Brand already told Jessica, and she’d passed it on? Maybe.
She saw the same question in Marc’s eyes, but his voice didn’t betray it to Miklia. “I’ll talk to you. What do you want to know?”
“Not on the phone. Not where someone might overhear.”
“Where would you be comfortable? The library?”
“No. It’s . . . it’s closed.”
Radha met Marc’s gaze. The girl broke into a vampire’s house, but worried about a closed library?
“The football field,” Miklia said. “No one’s here right now. And it’s open.”
Wide open, a public space, free of witnesses—and apparently, the girls were already there. Radha’s instincts were telling her that something was off.
“When?” Marc asked.
“Can you be here in ten minutes?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be here. Thank you.” The girl rang off.
Radha shook her head. “You’re in their way. And you can’t touch them, defend yourself. Not without breaking the Rules.”
Marc grinned. “And they’ll stake me?”
All right. Put that way, her worry was ridiculous. He wouldn’t let them get close enough to stake him—and humans simply couldn’t match a Guardian’s speed. He could run across that football field faster than any of those girls could blink.
His grin faded. “This might be the only chance to set them straight. If not for that, I wouldn’t bother. I’d just wait for the sheriff to catch up to them. But once he does, no one will tell them the truth about vampires and Guardians. It will all be cast aside as nonsense.”
True. “I’m going with you.”
“Of course you are—though I’d prefer they don’t see you. If they brought a gun instead of a stake, and they get lucky enough to knock me out with a head shot, I’d like someone to pull me out of there.”
Because a bullet anywhere else would hurt like hell, might slow him down, but it wouldn’t kill a Guardian. A bullet to the brain wouldn’t kill him, either—but lying unconscious on a football field probably wasn’t how Marc wanted to start the day.
“So I watch over you?” She liked that.
“If you have to. But I think it’s more likely that we’ll just need a few of your illusions to back me up.”
Either to drive a point home to the girls or to scare them straight. Radha grinned. “That sounds fun.”
“I hoped you’d say that.” His own smile faded quickly. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes. “A demon could have impersonated her voice.”
“And that’s what you’re still hoping for?” Radha had to admit that she was, too. “That he’s trying to lure you there?”
“Yes. Or that maybe of all the girls, just one of them is. But if one of them is a demon, he shouldn’t have chosen to face me on a football field. He should have chosen the protection of the library, of concrete and stone.”
Because of his Gift. And when he turned his face toward her again, Radha almost didn’t recognize the change that came over him. That quiet, dangerous look—but intensified. Marc, the Guardian warrior. Hardened with experience, determined to win.
So damn sexy. And, thank the heavens—no longer celibate.
She’d make sure he was even less celibate when they were done with the demon and she got her hands all over him again. Forming her wings, Radha leaped off the building’s edge.
“Let’s hurry, then.”
Marc obviously didn’t intend to mess around. As they flew in over the field, he lashed out with a psychic probe strong enough to pierce even Radha’s shields—but unless one of them was a demon, none of the girls waiting in the middle of the field would feel it.
“All human,” he said softly. “And no one else is here.”
Damn.
But, human or not, Radha wasn’t messing around, either, and she wasn’t taking any chances. Marc could speak to these girls, he could do this his way . . . but he wouldn’t be where they thought he was. Even Marc might not realize that she’d concealed his body and created a perfect double of him, an illusion that immediately mirrored his voice and movements—except that it landed five feet closer to them than he truly did.
Radha settled gently onto the ankle-deep layer of crunchy snow covering the field. This illusion required her to watch Marc continually, so that she could perfectly mimic his actual movements. By standing off to the side and even with Marc’s double, she had a wide enough view to see both him and the girls, standing shoulder to shoulder at the midfield line.
Or what would have been the midfield line in real football, Radha supposed. She didn’t know what they called it in American football.
The little blonde closest to her was Miklia, she remembered. The slim, dark-haired girl had been driving the Jeep—so she was Jessica, the coroner’s granddaughter. The two other girls were Lynn and Ines, but Radha wasn’t certain which one was the tall, dark blond teenager and which one was the redhead with the faint orange tan.
None of them carried weapons, unless they’d managed to stuff some beneath their puffy coats or under their knitted caps. They definitely didn’t have any room to hide something in their tight jeans.
Marc didn’t vanish his wings. With mouths half open, the girls stared at them—or at the double’s wings, in reality. That’s right, Radha thought. Be impressed, you little murderers. She added a subtle glow to the white feathers and his skin, then let a hint of a complex, spicy scent drift toward them. Different, exotic.
And that was laying it on thick, but these girls needed to understand right away that they had no real understanding of anything a Guardian was or did. And that when Marc told them, they needed to listen.
He waited, giving them the opening. If they dared to take it. Tall and strong, arms crossed over his broad chest and legs braced apart, he clearly intimidated them.