Demon Moon Read Free Page A

a folded business card in her palm.
    She looked up, startled. He only smiled and walked away through the gyrating bodies, toward his suite of rooms.
    He didn’t bother to turn on the lights. Though he’d only moved in a month previous, he was as familiar with these rooms as he’d been with his house. He’d lived in the Victorian mansion in the Haight for over a century—now he waited for its restoration to be completed.
    The soundproofing around the suite erased the heavy electronic beat. Three symbols were carved into the door frame, and he might have used them only to silence the noise from outside, but the spell they cast also prevented any communication from being sent or received. The form of communication did not matter; a phone call, an e-mail, or sign language were equally useless.
    His computer screen glowed softly in the corner of his office. His message to Lilith was short: My dear Agent Milton, you may soon expect a call from Paul and Fia. She’s human, but he’ll likely transform her soon. She is the brains; they share the ballocks. Your compliments had best be poetry to my exquisite ears, because your sodding little experiment is a bloody pain in my arse.
    Lilith could interpret that as she pleased.
    Christ, what a nuisance this had all become. After Lilith and her unlikely partner—Hugh Castleford, a former Guardian, knight, and composer of horrid prose—had out-wagered Lucifer and saved Castleford’s students from the nosferatu seven months before, the nosferatu had been teleported to the Chaos realm and the Gates to Hell closed for five hundred years.
    With such a resounding success, Colin had never imagined there’d be a need to recruit vampires to fight rogue demons, that Lilith would continue playing secret agent under the same Homeland Security directorate as the FBI—within the newly established and vaguely named Special Investigations division—or that she and Castleford would head operations from a dilapidated warehouse in Hunter’s Point. The agency had three primary functions: to slay the demons and nosferatu who remained on Earth, to conceal from the human population and cover up all otherworldly activity, and to train novice Guardians and vampires.
    Which, Colin supposed, suited Lilith and her partner well—she liked nothing better than to lie, and Castleford nothing better than to lecture.
    Still, it was absurd. But nothing equaled the absurdity of the Guardians and their blasted Ascension, which had left the angelic corps reduced to a few dozen warriors—a force incapable of containing the hundreds of rogue demons who’d escaped from Below before the Gates had closed, or the nosferatu who’d yet to crawl from their caves. Even Castleford, for all he lacked in style, had the grace to Fall and give up his Guardian immortality, rather than Ascend and leave Earth defenseless.
    Nor had Colin imagined that he’d involve himself in SI’s operations and become part of that defense. He hadn’t resisted Lilith’s suggestion that he appear in public to gauge the vampire community’s knowledge of things Above and Below, and to enlist those who could be of use to her. Initially, it had been an amusing diversion, but the level of attention he’d garnered from the vampire community had been…unpleasant.
    They should look and admire; they shouldn’t expect anything in return.
    Colin leaned back, stared up at the ceiling. He’d known that others had watched him and his movements over the past few months, but he hadn’t realized they’d catalogued his victims and analyzed the results. Statistically, dark-haired women would be his primary source of blood—but statistics wouldn’t account for the trend they’d observed.
    An obsession, fueled by guilt. This one would burn out soon, as well.
    A chime from his computer alerted him to the incoming mail. Lilith, likely with an effusive