Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) by Meljean Brook

them.
    “Early,” she agreed and ended the call.
    A two-mile walk would take her to Savi and Colin’s house in the Haight, one of the big Victorian mansions that were always featured in tourist brochures. It might have been an even more popular destination if people knew that a vampire had lived there since the 1906 quake, but fortunately, very few humans knew that vampires existed at all. Privacy meant safety—not just from humans, but from demons. Though vampires had once been human, nothing in the Rules prevented demons from hurting them . . . and the demons would enjoy every second of it.
    Taylor considered giving Savi a heads-up call, letting the vampire know that she was awake and on her way, but chances were that the news would spread to the Guardians—and to Michael. She’d make it a surprise visit instead.
    She started off at a leisurely pace. Taylor could run the two miles in under a minute—maybe a little slower now that Michael’s strength wasn’t augmenting hers—but she chose to walk. She didn’t want to dwell on the time lost, but she needed a few minutes to come to terms with her new status.
    A novice Guardian. An unskilled Guardian.
    She didn’t care that her body wasn’t as strong and as fast as Michael’s or any of the older Guardians’. Taylor didn’t measure herself against anyone else; only her own standards mattered. But her lack of skill bothered the hell out of her.
    Not that she was a complete newbie. She’d developed psychic shields while still human, which kept Guardians and demons from sensing her emotions. After her transformation, she’d quickly developed psychic blocks, too, which kept other people’s emotions out. Both were necessary for defense. The shields kept demons and vampires—or other Guardians—from sensing Taylor’s presence, while the blocks kept her from being overwhelmed by humans who couldn’t guard their minds.
    Though it wasn’t so bad now. In the apartments and houses she passed, most of the people were sleeping, their emotions blurred and indistinct in dreams, tasting like memories of flavors on her tongue.
    That had changed, too. When Michael had been in her head, emotions had sounded like a song that she easily recognized even though she’d never heard it before. Now they were like a taste, an odor, sometimes a sensation. She knew most Guardians experienced them that way, a psychic scent—and Taylor interpreted them easily, too.
    She hadn’t needed him to teach her that—and when Michael had blocked the link between them during the worst of his torture, she’d sensed psychic scents this way before. So this was one adjustment that would be easy to make.
    Not having his Gifts to back her up wouldn’t be as easy. No more teleporting. She’d never been good at healing, so that wasn’t a loss. And though she wanted to test out her own Gift, that would be a bad idea right now. Not only would using a Gift open her shields and reveal her position to any demon who might be in the city, she didn’t know what her power might be. Supposedly a Gift reflected some aspect of her human life, and Taylor had often been told by her superiors that she had anger management issues. Perhaps her Gift was simply an explosion waiting to go off. If so, better to practice it far away from populated areas.
    And that was only
if
she’d even developed a Gift yet. Some Guardians waited decades before discovering theirs.
    So she couldn’t rely on Gifts and superpowers. She needed to fly, to fight with swords and a hundred other weapons. She needed to know languages and martial arts. She needed to use her psychic abilities to attack as well as defend.
    That was all stuff that she’d have to learn, that she
would
learn. But learning the flying and the fighting wasn’t the problem. It just all took so damn long, and two and a half years had already been wasted.
    Being a novice wasn’t like being a rookie. A cop immediately worked the streets, putting herself out there.