So he was here, in the back alleys of downtown San Diego, following the trace energy patterns of the demon that had escaped him. He’d never failed to capture his target and he wasn’t going to fail now.
His quiet, careful footsteps were lost in the noise of the city. A rat scuttled out of his way. Traffic hummed on the main streets and tourists laughed and chatted as they meandered along the sidewalks. None of those in the light could even guess at what was happening in the shadows.
But that was as it had always been. Those safe in their own comfortable little lives rarely took the time to glance around them at the darkness. Which ordinarily made his job that much easier.
He stopped suddenly at the mouth of the alley and lifted his gaze to the night sky. The moon was partially covered by clouds, allowing peaks of silver to shine through as brightly as diamonds. The stars were nearly invisible, lost in the harsh glare of the city lights. But did it matter? Humans so rarely looked outside themselves, he doubted many of them ever bothered to glance upward. Shaking his head, Santos stared down the sidewalk and looked past the crowds, searching for the demon’s trail.
He could see nothing from his vantage point though, and moved to enter the crowd. But first Santos waved one hand, creating a wall of energy around himself that would hide him from all eyes. Now he could move through the people of this perpetually damp city without concern. No one here would ever know that an Immortal Guardian had walked among them. Had tracked and captured a demon bent on trouble. No one would have any idea that life was anything but ordinary.
He shook his head and took a deep breath of the sea-scented air. He’d had enough of this place. The damp, cold air seeped into his bones. The never-ending crowd of tourists choked him. The tangle of homes and cars annoyed him. He longed for his home in Barcelona. There, even though he lived atop a cliff overlooking the ocean, the air was cool without the ever-cloying sense of wet. His blood was made for Spain. The heat, the searing sun and the sense of openness that was denied him here.
He averted his gaze from a homeless man staggering along behind his shopping cart and looked instead out at the night. San Diego might be thought of as a nice place to live but to Santos, it was merely another city, with a dark, dangerous underbelly like any other.
The moment he could, Santos would be taking his jet and flying home.
He’d only meant to remain in San Diego briefly. He had come up from Mexico, where he had followed a demon, expecting to go directly to the airport to fly his jet to Spain. Instead, Michael, the being who directed the Guardians, had asked him to stay.
The Guardian who had long protected San Diego, had finally chosen to end his existence. Pain whipped through Santos like a lash and then dissipated again. That Guardian, Stewart Marsh, had been a friend. A stalwart fighter. One who had held the demons at bay for three hundred years. Santos frowned at the loss, then let it go. There was no time. For pain. For remembrance. There was only battle.
Until Michael could assign someone else, this area was undefended. So it was Santos who must stand between the city and the dark.
“First, there is the matter of the demon.” His dark eyes flashed as he scanned the motley crowd near the downtown bus station, searching for that soft pulse of colored energy that would lead him to his prey.
Finally, he spotted a pale wash of red stretched across the base of trees lining a postage-stamp-sized piece of green in the middle of downtown. It wasn’t really a park. There wasn’t enough of it for that. It was more an open spot not yet swallowed by the decaying buildings crouched alongside it.
For those who lived here, the empty lot with straggly bushes and a few spindly trees wouldn’t mean much. But the demon was obviously trying to lose himself there.
Stepping out of the alley, Santos rushed into the street, never slowing for traffic. Instead, he simply leaped over the hoods of moving cars, their drivers completely unaware of him.
His blood quickened, and his heartbeat raced in anticipation of the coming fight. This was what made eternity worth living. Pitting his own strength against the demon world, one at a time. This was why he continued in an existence most men would have given up as empty centuries ago.
As his friend had.
To Santos, there was no other world but that of the warrior. He’d lived and died fighting and he would continue on doing so throughout time.
He moved through small swatches of pale yellow thrown from the street lights. He slipped into the tree line, no more than a barren square. This was what passed for countryside in the city. This tiny plot of ground where trees tried to survive and grass was parched and brown. Where straggly bushes bent in an icy wind. Santos sneered and once again allowed himself a brief memory of home.
The brown hills, the craggy mountains scraping the sky. The winding paths a man could wander and taste freedom. The sun spilling out of a brassy sky. The wide open expanse of land surrounding his mountaintop home. And the crash of the waves against the rocks below. Room enough for a man to breathe. He missed it with a soul-deep ache.
A rustle of sound caught his attention and Santos stopped. Lifting his head, he tasted the wind and smiled. Turning right, he crouched, moving along the gnarled bushes until he came to the final hibiscus. Gaudy pink flowers bloomed among the dusty green leaves, but he wasn’t interested in the plant, only in what lay beneath it.
“You try my patience, small one.”
“I’m not going back, Guardian.” The bush rattled again as though the demon were trying to scramble even deeper into its cover of leaves. As if that would protect it. “I’ve done nothing to make you hunt me down this way.”
Santos shrugged. He’d heard desperate pleas from his prey before and hadn’t been moved to mercy. This time would be no different. “You are here, demon. Where you do not belong. That is enough.”
The hibiscus swayed with a violent motion and suddenly the small, dark demon was standing in front of him. Like humans, every demon was different. There were those who were the stuff of nightmares—and there were those like this one. Annoying yes, but hardly evil.
“Your master has already been returned to its hell.” That was a fight to remember, he thought, his blood stirring at the memory. The demon had fought with teeth and claws and a raw desperation. This creature would not provide such diversion. “You must follow.”
“Forget you saw me,” it whispered frantically “and I’ll disappear. I’ll get out of your territory.”
Santos laughed and damn, it felt good. It wasn’t often he ended a hunt with humor. “Demon, this world is my territory,” he said, though that wasn’t exactly the strictest truth. “And you are not a part of it.”
“I’ll fight.”
“Good,” Santos said, reaching for the sword in the scabbard at his side. “I had thought when you ran from me this morning that you had no honor. I am glad to see I was mistaken.”
The demon was a foot shorter than Santos and its long black hair hung nearly to the ground. Its legs were short and bowed and its arms thick with muscle. Its dark red eyes locked on Santos as it mused, “I could shimmer again. You wouldn’t be able to find me. Why not just let me go, save us both the trouble?”
Santos sighed. “You tire me. I thought you would fight like a—” he broke off and let that sentence fade.
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