Guardians need you back on Earth.”
He was still coming, still smiling. “You need me?”
“Yeah. Caelum has fallen apart.” The Guardians’ realm lay broken, nothing but piles of shattered marble where a beautiful city had once stood. “Khavi says it’s because you were tortured, but that you can put it back together by singing or something.”
With a forefinger tipped by a sharp talon, he touched the center of his forehead. “Caelum isn’t here anymore.”
He wasn’t linked to the realm anymore? Great. “Okay. But there’s more. The spell that broke you out of the frozen field strengthened the barrier between Hell and the Chaos realm, but Khavi still sees Lucifer finding his way into Chaos. And from Chaos, into Earth. If he does that, he’ll bring along dragons and who knows what else. We can kill one or two dragons, but more? God knows how many people might die. So we could really use your help back on Earth. But to do that, you need to return to your body.”
“What help would that be? A dragon could kill me in that body. One has killed me before.”
“Well, yeah. But that’s what Guardians do, right? We try to help people even if it’s dangerous. And you set that standard, so you don’t get to wimp out on us now.” Thousands of years ago, sacrificing himself to kill a dragon was why the angels had offered him the powers of a Guardian. That was Michael, the big damn hero. But this was a different Michael—and he was only ten feet away. “You have to stop now. I don’t like the way you’re smiling. I don’t like the way you sound, and you’re scaring the shit out of me. One more step and I’m shooting a ball of lead through your skull.”
He stepped, damn him. Taylor fired.
She barely felt the recoil. The report cracked in her ears—followed by a dull clink! The bullet flattened against the scales armoring his forehead and fell to the sand.
Michael didn’t even flinch. His long stride never faltered.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered, and stumbled back against the boulder again.
The cotton of her T-shirt felt damp. God. Guardians didn’t perspire except under severe emotional distress, but sweat was practically squirting from her pores.
This was extreme fucking distress.
He loomed over her, coming to a halt with the barrel of her gun digging into his chest. The slow, rhythmic thud of his heartbeat reverberated through the steel, into her palms. Heat radiated off him—hotter even than a demon, whose skin felt feverish to the touch. Taylor had heard that a dragon’s heart was like a furnace. Apparently Michael’s was, too.
His big hand folded over the top of the gun, engulfing the weapon in his grip. A sharp talon scraped her forefinger. Shuddering, Taylor let go and jerked her hands back—then immediately wished she hadn’t. Without her arms extended and braced, nothing separated them.
But after she imagined flattening her palms against his scaly chest to hold him in place, she kept her hands where they were.
“I can’t die here.” He dropped the pistol to the sand. “Even if you cut off my head or slash through my heart.”
The only ways to kill a Guardian…or a dragon. Taylor swallowed hard. “Okay. Since you’re invincible, maybe you should go kill Lucifer, then.”
Maybe he should go right now.
“I will.”
“You haven’t yet.”
“The coward hides from me. But you do not.”
Another panicked laugh bubbled up. Lucifer obviously had more brains than she did. “And what will you do after you kill him? Rule over all of Hell?”
“I have no desire to rule. Only to burn every demon to ash.”
Taylor could get behind that idea. “That sounds great. But before you do that, we need to talk about getting you out of my—”
His head dipped toward hers. Taylor choked, turned her face away. There was nowhere to go—but this wasn’t what she’d thought. He wasn’t aiming for her lips. He bent lower. Polished horn pressed against her jaw. Her body shaking, she remained absolutely still, his heat warming her chest like an oven.
With his mouth hovering an inch from the curve of her neck, he inhaled. Smelling her? His eyelids drifted closed, as if he were savoring the scent.
Did she smell like food? An image of those sharpened teeth flashed through her mind and a terrified whimper built in her throat. She desperately needed to think of something else. What had they been talking about?
Demons. “So you’ll burn them all.” Her voice emerged trembling and faint. “Then eat them?”
“Some. But the