Eternally. Maureen Child

edges of the narrow road. A flash of red eyes as the lights crossed them but Kieran didn’t slow. It wasn’t the demon. Only another nocturnal animal.

      “This is true, Mac. But I think it was not the point of this call to discuss the sad state of our too long lives.”

      “No.” Too long? He didn’t know anymore. He looked at mortals and sometimes wondered how they could be satisfied with eighty or so short years. But he’d had centuries to fight and sometimes he thought perhaps the mortals had the better deal.

      He took another sharp turn as his thoughts splintered. He glanced at the speedometer and slowed down a fraction. One thing he didn’t need was one of L.A.’s finest giving him a ticket. “I want to know what you know about Mates. The Guardian legend.”

      The legend Kieran had never put much stock in, despite the few Guardians he’d known over the years who had actually found women to bind themselves to. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t that he couldn’t believe in the legend itself, but that it held no truth for him.

      “Ah.” Curiosity colored Santos’s voice as he asked, “You have met…”

      “A woman.”

      “Always a good place to start.”

      “She’s…different.” Stupid word. Incomplete. Julie Carpenter was more than different. She was a flame to his dry tinder. The heat to his cold. And just thinking of her now tightened his body until the ache of it nagged at him like a rotten tooth.

      “What do you wish to know?”

      “Everything that isn’t common knowledge,” Kieran said flatly as the Lexus finally reached the bottom of the hill. He took a hard right, weaving in and out of traffic like a man with a death wish—or a man to whom death meant nothing. “I’ve never bothered to find out more than the basics before. Now I want to know. So discover whatever you can and get back to me.”

      “And the beast?”

      “I can handle it.”

      “If you change your mind, I’m near.” He paused, took a drink of what Kieran knew was probably Napoleon brandy, “I followed my quarry to San Francisco.”

      “You get it?”

      “Was there any doubt?” Santos chuckled.

      “No,” Kieran said, smiling now. As a warrior, he could appreciate the talents of another. “I’ve never known you to fail.”

      “Nor you, my friend. After all, we have reputations to protect,” Santos mused. “Now, I find I am enjoying the view from my hotel of the bridge on the bay. I will be in the city for a while yet.”

      “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need assistance.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat beside him.

      Though he wasn’t interested in asking for help, Kieran admitted to being glad for the knowledge that Santos was close by. Still, thanks to satellite phones and private jets, no Guardian was isolated anymore.

      So many things had changed over the centuries, he thought, drawing to a stop at a red light. His gaze moved over the crowded sidewalks. Hookers, dressed for business, lounged against the sides of buildings and waved desperately at passing drivers. Homeless men and women crouched in dirty doorways and teenagers looking for trouble strutted in packs.

      Kieran looked at them all as the beast would. As potential victims. Wandering from light to shadow, the people moved, separate and apart.

      And he realized that no matter how much had changed, death remained the same.

      Chapter 3

      The crime scene tape was long gone. As a reminder of what had happened, though, dark splotches of dried blood muddied the sidewalk under the pale yellow wash of a nearby streetlight.

      Nicole Kidman, movie star, had deserved better. But then, so had the young woman whose life had ended on a dirty city street. Moving about the scene, Kieran searched for the faint energy trace left in the wake of all demons. Not much more than a smudge on the air, it was a key weapon in fighting the beasts. But the scent of it had already dissipated enough that tracking in the usual way would be unfeasible.

      So, he took a chance.

      Kieran stood on the sidewalk star and opened his mind, reaching blindly for a connection to the demon. Not that a telepathic connection was always possible. Every demon was different—though all provided that faint trace element—each of them had different abilities and weaknesses. This particular demon was slightly telepathic—something that just might help Kieran find it.

      He frowned as he concentrated. Snatches of malevolence slapped at him, but nothing complete. Nothing substantial enough to help him in his hunt. But the demon was even older than Kieran, so its ability to evade pursuers wasn’t really surprising.

      Just frustrating.

      Disgusted, he scanned the area, discounting the cluster of cars with irate drivers cursing at each other as they sat, locked in congestion. The traffic never changed here. Two in the morning or two in the afternoon, the cars would be stacked up bumper to bumper. Idly he thought that the time of horses had been much better. Though he’d been among the first to buy an automobile, he’d missed the companionship of a horse.

      A blond hooker walked slowly past him, shooting him a quick, appraising look, then scurried on, limping slightly on sky-high heels. A young man with wild eyes and a scraggly beard handed out flyers inviting passersby to one free drink at a local topless bar and the neon sign across the street from Kieran fluttered like a racing heartbeat.

      The demon could be anywhere by now. Could have even left the city in an attempt to escape him. But Kieran didn’t think so.

      This particular demon was a creature of habit. It preferred crowded areas, where people were practically stacked on top of one another. And usually, when it found a place, it locked in on it. The last time, in 1888, it had been London, the East End.

      Whitechapel. A section of the city so crowded with back alleys and a twisting, sinuous layout of tenements and bolt holes that it had taken Kieran almost five months to track it down.

      Just thinking about that time, brought it all back with a rush that filled his mind. The damp fog swirling through filthy, overcrowded streets like gnarled fingers of smoke, coiling around the unwary, holding them fast in the bowels of the city. He could almost smell the greasy stench of bad liquor and the nearby slaughterhouse. The layer of hopelessness and decay that had colored every square foot of Spitalfields.

      Five long months he’d spent in that miserable hellhole. He’d tracked the demon relentlessly—not an easy task since the damned thing had changed bodies too damned often. But Kieran had finally caught the vicious bastard. Just like he would this time.

      Turning abruptly, Kieran started down Hollywood Boulevard. Even late at night, the sidewalks were crowded. Not so much with the tourists, who usually had enough sense to keep to their hotels, but with the local denizens who reclaimed the street every night.

      Teenage runaways, caution in their eyes, grouping together for whatever protection they could find. Homeless men digging for food in trash cans, and the ever present hookers, masking their own fatigue with brittle smiles and halfhearted come-ons.

      Here on the streets, no one expected anything from him. No one knew he was actually Kieran MacIntyre, wealthy man with a mysterious background. Here, he was simply known as “Mac.” A solitary man with a hard eye and little patience. Kieran blended into the background, becoming a part of those who wandered in the darkness. Women watched him as he passed and, mostly, other men steered a wide path around him.

      “Hey, Mac.”

      He stopped, looked to the right and nodded at Howie Jenkins. A Gulf War vet, he kept his Purple Heart proudly attached to a stained gray overcoat he wore religiously, winter and summer. His salt-and-pepper beard hung to his narrow chest, and his blue eyes were filmy with an alcoholic haze.

      But