"Detective Styles!" Harry woke up on his desk, startled by the slamming on his desk.

"Yeah?" He asked, half dazed.

"Don't you have a house? Is your work desk your bed? Have you finished writing up the case report of your team's last case?" His superintendent demanded.

"Yes, yes and yes."

"Yes, as in you do have a house or that you don't?"

"I do have an apartment, not sure if it counts as a house." He shrugged, just as the doors to their precinct burst open. A half crazed man, with blood dripping down his back and broken spectacles on his nose stumbled in.

"Help me! Please, help me!" He shrieked, pointing to the doors. "She's going to kill me, save me!"

Harry followed his finger to the woman in the doorway, clad in a black dress that hugged her curves and fell around her ankles. She held a sword in her right hand, a blood red stone shining on the black hilt.

"You just had to come in here and make things difficult didn't you?" She sighed, lifting her sword up as if to inspect it. There was blood on the blade, and Harry had a good idea whose it was.

"What are you talking about? Who's trying to kill you?" Niall asked, frowning. "Shouldn't you go to the hospital first?"

Harry snapped to his coworker in surprise and confusion as the man begged, "Can't you see her? She's right there! She's holding a sword, can't you see?!"

The woman smirked, stepping forward slowly, making the man shriek in terror and back away.

"None of them can see or hear me. How long do you think you can hide in here before they throw you out thinking you're insane? Better if you just accept your punishment quicker before making things worse for yourself." She told him.

Harry knew he should say something, do something, but none of his colleagues seemed to see the woman. Maybe he was hallucinating from lack of sleep, but his gut told him he was completely awake.

As if sensing his eyes on her, she turned to look at him. One look into her dark eyes and he knew that she knew he could see her. The dark, bloodthirsty look that had been in her eyes when she had looked at the man vanished to be replaced with curiosity.

"Interesting," she muttered before turning back to the man. Her eyes grew dark once more as she leaned down to his ear.

"Hide in here as long as you like. I promise you, the second you're vulnerable, I'll be there. Just like you were." She whispered loudly, backing away slowly with a smirk on her face.

A ding sound of a text message hit the air, making her frown. She pulled a phone out of thin air and flipped it open. Harry resisted rolling his eyes. Of course, he should have known from her expensive dress that she was rich enough to have the latest Samsung flip smart phone.

Her eyes widened at whatever she read on the phone and looked up at Harry. Then back down at her phone. She made an outraged noise and put away her phone, turning to Harry and scowling before stalking out of the police station.

   "Umm, boss? I need to check something real quick, I'll be right back," Harry said, running out of the station before his team leader could stop him.

   "Oh, sure," Louis muttered, "leave the nutter for me to deal with."

   Outside the station, Harry ran up to the woman. Hearing his footsteps she stopped and turned back to him.

   "Who are you?" He demanded once he caught up.

   "Maia Ryder. And you must be Harry Styles."

   "How do you know my name? Why were you attacking that man? Why couldn't anyone else see you?"

   Maia sighed, glaring up at the sky like she would dearly love to fight it. She turned back to the man before her and sighed again. "I guess it's better to get it over with sooner than later. I've been appointed by the heavens, despite my not being under their jurisdiction, to be... your... guardian." She said guardian as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

   "Say what?" He blinked at her.

   Maia ran a frustrated hand through her hair and yelled up at the sky, "Why the fuck did it have to be a bloody policeman of all people?!"

   "Never mind, I got my answer. You're a nutter as well," he muttered.

   "Is your shift over?" She asked him, pretending to not have heard him.

   "Well, I guess-"

   "Good. You're coming with me for a briefing." She grabbed him by his arm and he didn't what she did but his vision suddenly went dark and for a frightening moment, he felt the ground vanish from beneath his feet. When his vision returned, they were somewhere entirely different and nausea hit him hard.

   "That was a brand new carpet!"

   "Sorry," he muttered. Maia shook her head, flicking her hand towards the puddle of vomit. The carpet became clean, as if nothing had ever happened. Harry blinked, then turned to face Maia with wide eyes.

   He was standing before a bar counter, but this was clearly a house. A really huge, expensive house. A mansion.

   "Is this-?"

   "Yes, it's my house," she replied shortly, moving to the other side of the counter and taking out two glasses. "I hope you drink, 'cause this isn't something you can handle fully sober."

   "Just some beer would be fine," he said dazedly. Maia raised an eyebrow, but complied. She poured out a glass of brown substance that Harry highly suspected of being whiskey.

   "Okay, first order of business," she spoke after downing her glass in one go and waiting for Harry to finish his own glass. "Demons and Angels exist," she said frankly.

Harry raised his eyebrows sceptically. "I don't go to church. And even if I was religious, I wouldn't believe such nonsense."

"Well, you better start believing it, kid, because you're gonna start seeing a lot of them soon enough." She poured out another glass of whiskey and downed it. "The fact that you saw with your own eyes that no one else could see me should be proof enough."

"That could be a trick," he insisted obstinately.

"Could be. But it doesn't change facts and I have neither the time nor the patience to get you to believe in such nonsense as you put it." She downed a third glass. "But how do you explain how we got here?"

"You could have staged it up after you drugged me."

Maia gave a low chuckle. "You humans, you can be so brilliant when you're being stubbornly stupid. Very well, Detective Styles, explain this." She looked him straight in his eyes. Even as he held her gaze, her obsidian eyes turned blood red. But to her surprise, he didn't back away in fear.

   "Lenses," he said simply. She stared at him, annoyed. She snapped her fingers and her fourth glass of whiskey burst into flames.

   "Rigged."

   "Fine, not my problem if you're going to insist on being a moron. But it's my duty to inform you that I'm your guardian. When you summon me, I shall come. But I hope you won't call me unless you're in danger because I'm a very busy person."

   "Busy doing what? Assaulting innocent people?" He asked sarcastically. "Which reminds me, I can arrest you for assault."

   "Innocent?" Maia scoffed. "If you look him up on your records, he is a repeat offender for abusing his girlfriends. Four out of seven of them reported him but he paid them off with threats to their life and livelihood. You call such a man innocent?!"

   "Then you should leave it to the law-"

   "The law?" She laughed. "Oh please, this country's law is the biggest joke I've heard. He won't even serve the sentence he deserves. People like him need to experience the pain they inflict firsthand."

   Harry clenched his hands. "You're crazy!" He declared.

   "I probably am," she admitted.

   "I'm leaving!" He announced and turned to the door and stomped away. Maia counted to five in her head before a yell floated down, "Where the hell is the front door?!"

⊱ ────── {⋅. ✯ .⋅} ────── ⊰

Harry lay on his bed half an hour later, trying to make sense of what had happened. Part of him scoffed at what she had told him, but part of him felt sure what he had witnessed and what she had said was true.

"When you summon me, I shall come."

Should he try? He shook his head, trying to clear his head of such ridiculous thoughts. Even if what she said was true, he would never call on her. She was crazy and a bloodthirsty one at that, it would seem.

Fate, however, had different plans.

"We're going to do what?!" Harry exclaimed.

"No need to shout, you bastard!" Louis complained.

"Ani, even if he is crazy, shouldn't we at least investigate who did that to his back?" He conveniently left out the fact that he knew who did it, but it didn't matter.

"We know who did it. It was Maia Ryder."

Harry's eyes widened. How did he know?

"Which is why we're not going after her. She's one of the biggest and most dangerous gang leaders in the country and also the most charitable one, despite her... disturbing habit of hunting down perpetrators and mutilating them."

Harry couldn't believe his ears. But he didn't protest when Liam, the youngest of the team continued, "There is one thing common between all her victims: they're all hardcore abusers and people who have done disgusting and inhumane things. That guy that came in yesterday? Known offender for abusing his girlfriends to the point of landing them in the emergency room."

"It's an unspoken rule in all of London's police force," Liam put in. "When Maia Ryder's involved, turn a blind eye. Because if you interfere, she can release all of hell."

Harry wondered if he knew that could almost be meant in a literal sense. She had told him angels and demons existed, but not which one she was. But now, he had a feeling he knew which one she was. Because those eyes, were not the eyes of an angel. He shook his head at his thoughts, berating himself.

Angels and demons don't exist, Harry. Get a grip.

The rest of the day was uneventful except for a flasher being brought in by Zayn and Niall. He was on night patrol, a job he did not particularly enjoy. It was going wonderfully dull, until a human sized mutilated, shrieking Gollum like creature jumped onto his windshield.

He did what any sleep deprived, panicking, terrified human would do. He turned on his windshield wipers while screaming his head off. The creature, startled by his shrill shriek that was almost identical to its own, got assaulted by the wipers and snarled in pain and annoyance.

Regaining a bit of his composure, he locked all the doors of the car. Yes, he was trapped but it will stall the creature rather than him running out and becoming an easier target. As his mind raced to figure a way out, despite the panic and disbelief at the sight in front of him, a voice floated through his head, unbidden.

"When you summon me, I shall come."

"You better start believing it, kid, because you're gonna start seeing a lot of them soon enough."

Against his better judgement, he called her name, "Maia Ryder!"

Nothing happened and the creature continued to try to claw its way into the vehicle. Fear continued to grow inside him as cracks began to appear on his windshield under its fists, when it was suddenly yanked back by an invisible force.

Harry stumbled out of the car, despite knowing it was a dumb move and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw Maia standing a few feet in front of him, a whip in her hand. She looked back at him, a feral grin on her face, like a predator hunting its prey.

"I never thought you'd actually call me, much less so soon. Did you miss me so much?"

The creature pounced on her before Harry could warn her, but she turned around and punched it square in the face, snarling.

"Go back to where you crawled out of," she hissed, "this human is under my protection."

To his growing bewilderment, the creature made a sound akin to a laugh. "The most vengeful demon of them all, sworn to dedicate her life to avenge the damaged people that fall victim to this wretched world, now bound to protect something rather than destroy it? A guardian demon, how amusing."

"Let's see if you can still laugh once I chop your head off."

"Just as they did to your flower?"

Maia froze. Ice frosted the handle of her whip, now clenched tightly in her grip. One second she was in front of him, the next she held the creature up by its throat.

"Just for that little comment, I'm going to destroy you slowly and painfully."