Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) by Meljean Brook

as many demons as he could. They would never harm her.
    And before his body failed, Michael would stop Lucifer and anyone else who threatened to.
    “I have just told you that she will ask to Fall. But, human or Guardian, she will die if the world burns.” Khavi blew out a sharp breath. “Have you nothing at all to say?”
    He had much to say. But he didn’t want to take a breath.
    There were many things that he didn’t want to do, however—yet he did them if necessary.
    Michael released Andromeda on a reluctant exhalation, then drew in air stinking of his own charred flesh and the rot from the Pit. Carefully modulating his voice, he flattened the harmony, as he did when speaking to humans who knew nothing of Guardians. With Khavi, it erased the echo that said more than he wanted her to hear.
    He met her eyes. “The territory you left her in was empty. You brought the hellhound that hunted her.”
    “Ah, yes.” Khavi tucked her fingers into her pockets and shrugged. “I couldn’t see your future, but I knew that would draw you out.”
    I knew you would save her.
    Yes. Khavi didn’t need her Gift of foresight to know that certainty. But what of this future?
    “Have you seen the world burn?” Even if she had, it wasn’t inevitable. But she might show him where to start—where Lucifer might soon be.
    “I have seen it burn in many ways. No matter who wins this war, it will burn.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t know when.” Her gaze flicked out over the Pit.
Soon.
    With so much power, would Lucifer focus on Chaos or the war? “Who is more likely to prevail?”
    Her shoulders lifted in another shrug. The gesture was so human; he wasn’t accustomed to seeing it on her. In the past few years—after more than two millennia trapped in Hell—she had acquired more than just modern languages and clothing.
    “I see many outcomes,” she said.
    Michael could, too, and he didn’t need a Gift for it. Lucifer had the edge in power and numbers—and when he broke through to Chaos, he would have even more. Anaria possessed the greater army in the long term, but her smaller numbers meant a slower progression. Belial had a dragon sword and the faith of his demons. Michael could imagine any one of them defeating the others.
    But he knew Khavi would have already chosen the one she preferred. “Which outcome do you favor?”
    “I have been helping Anaria.” A laugh echoed through her voice.
    Michael answered with a wry smile and a shake of his head. He did not envy Anaria, then. Khavi might be helping her, but only to further her own plan—and it was impossible to know how long ago she’d put her plan in motion. Perhaps when she’d returned from her solitary confinement in Hell. Perhaps thousands of years before that.
    “She needs to abandon her quest for vengeance and align herself with Belial,” Khavi continued. “Fortunately for me—and for your father—it pleases Anaria to be forgiving.”
    And it is the end toward which I have been working.
    But not her ultimate end. Michael knew it was pointless to ask what that might be. He knew she would arrange Belial’s death—the demon had killed her husband thousands of years before, and though Khavi’s gaze was often fixed on the future, she never let bygones be.
    That vengeance would not be all that she planned, however. Not if Belial had another use first.
    “And if Anaria and Belial do combine their strengths?”
    “Then I will persuade them to destroy Lucifer before he burns the world.”
    Of course she would. But that told him what he needed to know: Lucifer still posed the worst threat.
    And Michael still had one purpose. “You say that Andromeda will
ask
to Fall, not that she does Fall.”
    “Because I cannot see anything of you or the choices you make, and whether you transform her to human.” He heard the pique in her voice, the deep frustration. “I cannot see her paths when they cross with yours.”
    So at least for a short time, Andromeda’s future was