Nate closed the door to his large upstairs office at TERRA and stood there a moment absorbing the quiet calm of the space. The dark walnut flooring, pure white walls, and simple bamboo furniture were set against a wall of windows that overlooked downtown Minneapolis. The chairs were uncomfortable by design because he didn’t want anyone to linger. He was a social bloke, but he wanted it to be on his terms.

He waved his hand in front of the panel that switched on his favorite R&B music and exhaled deeply as a singer crooned to him about her erotic motivation. He wished it was Jessie singing to him. He’d purposely kept this room simple, kept it quiet. It was an epic acoustic victory, because opposite the wall of windows was another paneled wall hiding one-sided glass, which let him unobtrusively observe the pounding madness in the club below, should he care to do so.

And still not hear a single bass beat drop.

It had taken four sheets of soundproof glass to make it happen, but it had been well worth the hefty price tag.

Nate pushed a button on the wall and the club’s dance floor and upper balconies vanished behind the whisper of the white wall panels. The chaos of opening night would happen soon enough. Right now he craved tranquility so he could think about Jessie.

And what had just gone down at her apartment.

A succubus—a female fallen angel who appeared in a human male’s dreams as a beautiful woman to drain his human vitality through seduction—had been sniffing around Jessie’s uncle. Mason had that telltale appearance that suggested he was coming down with a cold, but Nate suspected that the succubus had already spent a few evenings raping Mason’s life force.

A succubus didn’t often take shape outside human dreams. Granted, she appeared to be wavering on some plane of alternate reality, because her form would flicker between a glamoured facade and her true visage. And she didn’t seem to be able to actually touch Mr. Jacobs.

Yet, by the way Jessie had reacted when the succubus flew by her, Nate was certain Jessie had felt the fallen angel.

This succubus’s appearance was different than others he’d fought. In addition to the usual brown horns, emerald hair, and rust colored, bat-like wings, this one seemed to have borrowed a couple of traits of the male incubi. Namely, the long, leonine tail and iridescent scales growing up her shins from her feet.

Night after night a succubus would return to her human target, gradually sucking away his life force via sex to maintain her human-like glamour. Succubi emitted a dark aura that even humans could sense, but it rarely prevented the human from resisting them since, in most cases, these demons could only touch a human who was already walking a path of wickedness.

You’d have to be out of your bloody mind—or damned desperate—to have sex with one of their ilk because it was a choice. Apparently there were millions of humans who fell into those categories, though, because the succubi and incubi ranks were innumerable.

The succubus hovering over Mason wouldn’t be able to rape anyone ever again, but she’d delivered a shock of her own before Nate had decapitated her. She’d told him a war was coming. And then she’d laughed like a maniac.

What the devil was that supposed to mean?

If she’d been following him, he’d completely missed the clues. Which meant she’d become aware of how bent he was getting over Jessie. What if she’d told others of her kind?

Not good.

His preoccupation with Jessie was not only befuddling his ability to carry out his duties, but it was also putting her in demonic cross hairs.

Nate sat down heavily in his chair. From what he’d overheard Mason say, Jessie had already had more than her share of heartache as a neglected and verbally abused child—trying to be noticed, trying to be loved, but only getting knocked around instead.

Her mother apparently had a lot in common with his flunkee parents. The difference was, the scars of her childhood sometimes subverted her naturally spunky nature, whereas his rough upbringing had continued a cycle of selfishness. He could openly admit that he’d been a relentless manipulator while he’d been alive, but he refused to feel bad about it. Lying, cheating, and manipulating might still be his flaws, but they were what had kept him alive during the poverty of early twentieth century England.

He did what he had to do.

Sometimes a flaw helped you flourish when you became good enough at it. He looked around his austere office. How much did Jessie know about what Sonja had seen in the sanctorum—the spiritually-warded protection room where no demons could enter? It not only housed a powerful, religious relic, but it was also where they stockpiled demon byproducts and evil-summoning objects.

The Guardians could, and often did, destroy these objects as they came across them in the heat of battle over a human soul. But they reaped a much stronger benefit if they were able to collect the evil objects, and then destroy them in a massive vanquishing ceremony called a domo. It required at least two Guardians to perform a domo, more if the cache of evil was enormous. If they were successful at destroying the objects, the back draft sucked every demon within a twenty-mile radius into a state of nothingness.

The best part? Those demons never came back.

Therefore, guarding the sanctorum—and keeping it a secret—was paramount for the Guardians, but even more so for the welfare of the humans they were charged to protect.

Which brought him back to Jessie. Thankfully, she was moving in with him. He could protect her better this way.

But only for a week.

That would be enough. He’d make sure everyone around her was free of demon activity before she left him. He was tempted to call her to check in. To make sure the heavy wards he’d placed on her door were holding. To spur her efforts on that contract.

But that was something a pussy whipped guy would do. Sure, she brought out the colors, flavors, and textures of his world, but come on, it was his first time. At less than two hundred years old, he was still a baby by Guardian standards. This sense enhancement typically happened several times during a Guardian’s existence. So for now, he’d keep Jessie close and enjoy the benefits of her companionship.

He was anything but pussy whipped.

He stood and walked to the wall of windows, placing a palm on the cool glass as he stared at the moving traffic in the street below. Maybe the succubus’ taunt and her flickering form meant there was something to Alexios’s warning that a shift seemed to be happening in the Seam between Earth and Hell. But what was causing it? And what would it mean?

Nate picked up the phone to get to the next item on his mental to-do list—call Jinx for intel on Jessie’s mother’s background—when Spencer walked in. Nate held up his hand, then tried his best to ignore Spencer as the older Guardian sauntered to the small bar in the corner of the room to pour himself a brandy. After Nate hung up, he braced for his fellow Englishman to take the piss out of him.

Spencer raised an eyebrow and offered a silent toast to Nate. “You really fancy her. Could she be your compar?”

Nate picked up a pen and laid it back down. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then?”

“She’s fun to be around.”

Spencer smiled faintly. “Lots of birds with curves are amusing.”

Nate needed a drink of his own. “When was the last time you were with a woman who made your colors burst and your taste ignite?”

Spencer’s brandy paused on the way to his lips.

Interesting. The once-upon-a-time son of a Marquess was never taken off guard.

“Ignite. Witty,” he said.

“I wasn’t referring to your fire element, Jameson. Don’t try to pretend like it hasn’t happened to you. I overheard Jinx telling Katherine about it,” Nate said.

Spencer swilled the liqueur around in his mouth, then swallowed. “Probably eighty-four years ago. And the experience has a name. They call it amplio.”

Spencer rarely avoided looking anyone in the eye as there was no faster means of intimidation. Right now he wasn’t looking at Nate.

“Why is that? Nate asked.

“Why what?”

“Why does amplio happen? What does it mean?”

“No one really knows. Some Guardians think it’s a gift for good behavior, so to speak.”

“So it has nothing to do with a specific person?”

“Generally not,” Spencer replied.

Why that would be a disappointment made no sense. Nate should be glad it had nothing to do with Jessie. How many times had he told himself that human attachments only spelled trouble because, well, the whole mortality thing. So far, it hadn’t been an issue. He’d have to keep that in mind in the coming week.

Spencer rose from the hard chair that hadn’t seemed to discomfort him in the slightest. “Dorian caught one of the club’s previous employees in the sanctorum. She found the demon cache we collected over the last couple of fortnights.”

“I heard. Is the relic safe?”

Spencer nodded. “She didn’t discover the wall panel behind your bookcase.”

“Good.” Nate looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. Jessie had one hour to catch Katherine before she left. If they didn’t notarize the document, he was afraid she’d bail on him before their week was over. “Has Dorian found her and wiped her mind yet?”

“Yes. The duffer should have never forgotten that step in the first place. Who knows how many people that muppet Sonja told about the room and what she saw? There will probably be a fair amount of fallout from this.”

“Dorian’s still young. I made lots of mistakes in my first five years post-human, too.” Still do. And judging by some of the ancient Guardians’ inner darkness, fighting temptation while trying to live a good life the second time around never seemed to get easier. And damn, that was either depressing—

Or he just wouldn’t think about it.

Fuck you, Purgatory.

The walls of Nate’s office shook, sending the large oval mirror on the wall smashing to the floor. The sensation of ocean-deep, echoing laughter rasped across his skin. Spencer set his drink down with an unsteady hand and leaned forward in his chair as a blast of white light seared their eyeballs.

Only one being besides the big guy upstairs scared the shit out of all the Guardians—Alexios included—like this.

Archangel Michael. Supreme Commander of Heaven’s Army and the one who’d brought the Guardians into existence when he’d breathed life back into Alexios eons ago.

Given the choice to come back to redeem himself by protecting humans until the end days, Alexios had accepted Michael’s uncompromising offer, though everyone knew it had more to do with Alexios wanting to keep Sophia in his life than any compelling desire to save humanity.

The fact remained, however, that their Guardianship had begun with free will. And it would end that way.

Still didn’t mean Nate had to like it.

When Nate could see from his watering eyes once again, the archangel towered before him, garbed in black from the barrel of his massive chest to the bottom of his wide-planted, leather-shod feet. Intricate, colorful tattoos covered his powerful forearms as well as what could be seen of his neck beneath the fall of raven’s blue-black hair. Nate forced himself to meet the archangel’s searing blue eyes.

“You don’t have to like your lot, Guardian,” Michael said. “Hell’s gate lies open should you change your mind at any moment. I can even escort you there if you like. It’s been awhile since I gave my regards to Lucifer.”

Nate shoved his fingers in his ears and pulled them out to see if his brains were oozing. “Can you turn down the angelic boom a little? I’d like to keep my gray matter from liquefying.”

It was just his luck that the moment he’d been bitching about his cosmic misfortune, the archangel had decided to check in.

And when Michael appeared, it was usually bad news.

The archangel raised his hands and a pair of double-edged, two-foot long Xiphos swords materialized in his grip. He crossed the shining swords in front of him as he chanted a Latin prayer of protection, which made Nate start to sweat. If a demon was beheaded with one of these blades, it didn’t get dispatched back to the fiery pit, it was permanently eliminated.

Michael gripped the blades, extending the handles of the two Xiphos to him and Spencer. The most primal corner of Nate’s brain told him to reject the archangel’s blade. Things were about to get royally screwed on Earth if Heaven was permitting big guns like this. Alexios fought with the original Xiphos he’d used as a Spartan warrior, but Jinx had received a Xiphos forged by Michael when she and Alexios had battled one of Hell’s Legions in the seventh century.

Jesus.

“Have a care for your language, Guardian, unless you are calling upon the Son directly. Else I shall remove your head altogether.”

“Beg pardon, archangel.” He gritted his teeth and reached for the sword, the gold and ivory handle warm and pulsing in his hands. “Will you leave one for Katherine as well?”

“No, I expect all Guardians to shield her as she is cleansing the unholy.” Katherine, one of the few Purifier Guardians, had special exorcism talents in addition to control of one of the natural elements. Instead of a warrior, she was a human soul doctor.

When Spencer had likewise taken his blade, Michael nodded. “I am glad you are unwilling to abase yourself before The Dark One. Now I suggest you gird yourselves in earnest for the coming All Hallows Eve, for one of Lucifer’s first line children is snarling at the Seam.”

He was gone in the next instant.

“What Seam?” Nate yelled, knowing the archangel would hear him, but wouldn’t answer.

“I bloody well loathe when he drops in like that. Makes me feel knackered for upwards of an hour afterwards.” Spencer drained his brandy and stood up, slightly unsteady on his feet. He pointed his Xiphos at the stack of forms and financial statements on Nate’s desk. “You want, we can get that pile of rubbish quelled in no time.”

Nate looked down at his own sword. The forged metal was truly a work of art. “I shall finish on my own. I only plan to be here for a little while longer anyway.”

One side of Spencer’s lips tilted up. “Sordid rendezvous?”

He was not going there right now. Spencer and everyone else who worked at TERRA would find out soon enough there was something extracurricular going on between he and Jessie. A stroppy wave of anticipation hit his chest. “Anything else you can think of that we need in place before we open on Friday?”

Spencer shook his head, his hand on the door handle.

Nate leaned back in his chair. “What do you make of Michael’s ‘snarling at the Seam’ rhetoric?”

“I don’t doubt that we’re in for something major. It’s been ages since there’s been a massive fissure between Earth and Hell. Alexios has made mention of it as well.”

Well, blast. Nate frowned.

One side of Spencer’s lips tilted up. “Belt up and do enjoy yourself this evening, mate. But should you fail to pull your weight around here on the morrow, I’ll ensconce you in the sanctorum myself. We need all hands on deck and tallywhackers in their trousers to face a threat like a Seam rending.” When Spencer opened the door, the sound system’s sudden blast sliced through the silent office like a Xiphos through a demon’s carotid. Violent and messy. Spencer raised his voice accordingly. “Katherine speculates that we’ve had it too easy for too long now. She believes it’s only a matter of time before the balance of power shifts. I happen to concur.”

Spencer left before Nate could respond, but it didn’t matter. He’d sensed the disturbance, too.

He only hoped he had at least one night with Jessie before the Earth splintered.