Demon (2 page)

The elevator was taking its own sweet time, considering the entire building was practically deserted. My desk phone stopped ringing and my cell phone started. I cursed, reaching into my pocket and flipping it open just as the elevator arrived.

It was Julie, sounding panicked. “Rachel, I need you,” she said in a tear-filled voice.

Something bad had happened. My stomach knotted. “What’s wrong?” And like a fool, I stepped into the elevator.

“It’s the baby. She’s—”

As the door closed and the elevator began to descend, I lost the signal.

“Shit,” I said, very loudly. My office was on the twenty-second floor, and I’d pushed the button for the second level of parking, but I quickly hit a lower-level floor to stop the descent. The doors slid open on the dark and empty eighth floor and I jumped out. I pushed my phone’s call-back button as the doors slid closed, abandoning me in the darkness, and a shiver ran over me, one I tried to ignore. I had nerves of steel, but I was never foolhardy, and there was no reason to feel uneasy. I’d been in this building alone on numerous occasions.

But I’d never felt so odd before.

Julie answered on the first ring. “Where did you go?” she said, her voice frantic and accusing.

“Lost the signal,” I said briefly. “What’s wrong with the baby?”

“I’m at the hospital. She couldn’t breathe, and I called an ambulance. They’ve got her in the emergency room and they kicked me out, and I need you here for moral support. I’m terrified, Rachel!” Her voice was thick with tears.

“Where’s Bob?” I said, trying to be practical.

“With me. You know how helpless men are. He just paces and looks grim, and I need someone to give me encouragement. I need my best friend. I need
you
. How soon can you make it?”

Strange how we could become such good friends in so short a time. It had felt like an enduring bond, not an office friendship, almost as if I’d known her in another life. But she had no more clue about my past than I did. “Which hospital?”

“St. Uriel’s. We’re in the emergency waiting room. Come now, Rachel!
Please!
”

St. Uriel’s,
I thought.
That’s wrong, isn’t it?
Was Uriel a saint?
But I made soothing noises anyway. “I’ll be right there,” I said. And knew I lied.

I flipped the phone shut, mentally reviewing the contents of my desk. Nothing much—a copy of
House Beautiful,
the latest Laurell K. Hamilton,
and the Bible, which was admittedly weird. I didn’t understand why I had it—maybe I’d been part of some fundamentalist cult before I’d run away. God knew. I only knew I needed to have a Bible with me.

I would find another, as soon as I checked into a hotel. There was no need to go back. I traveled light, and left as little impression behind as I could. They’d find no clues about me if they searched my desk. Particularly since I had no clues about myself.

My apartment was only slightly less secure. There were no letters, no signs of a personal life at all. I had a number of cheap Pre-Raphaelite prints on the wall, plus a large framed poster of a fog-shrouded section of the Northwest coast that spoke to me. I hated to leave it behind, but I needed to move fast. I’d have to ditch the car in the next day or two, buy another. It would take Julie that long to realize I’d gone missing. She’d be too busy hovering over baby Amanda, watching each struggling breath with anxious eyes.

But Amanda wouldn’t die. She’d start to get better, as would all of the other newborns that I knew were filling the hospitals as I lingered. All I had to do was get far enough away and they’d recover. I knew it instinctively, though I didn’t know why.

I pushed the elevator button, then paced the darkened hallway restlessly. Nothing happened, and I pushed it again, then pressed my ear to the door, listening for some sign that the cars were moving. Nothing but silence.

“Shit,” I said again. There was no help for it—I’d have to take the stairs.

I didn’t stop to think about it. The time had come to leave, as it always did, and thinking did no good. I had no idea how I knew these things, why I had to run. I only knew that I did.

It wasn’t until the door to the stairs closed behind me that I remembered my watcher, and for a moment I freaked, grabbing the door handle. It was already locked, of course. I had no choice. If I was going to get out of town in time, I had to keep moving, so I started down the stairs.

In time for what? I had no clear idea. But baby Amanda wouldn’t survive for long if I didn’t move it.

I tripped on the next landing and went sprawling, slamming my shin against the railing. I struggled to my feet, and froze. Someone was in the stairwell with me. I sensed him, closer than he’d ever been before, and there was nothing, no one, between him and me. No buffer, no safety. Time was running out.

I had no weapon. I was an idiot—you could
carry concealed weapons in this state, and a really small gun could blow a really big hole in whoever was following me. Or a knife, something sharp. Hell, hadn’t I heard you could jab your keys into an attacker’s eyes?

I didn’t know whether he was above me or below me, but the only doors that opened from the stairwell were the ones on the parking level. If I went up, I’d be trapped.

I started down the next flight, moving as quietly as I could, listening for any matching footsteps. There were none. Whoever he was, he made no sound.

Maybe he was a figment of my paranoid imagination. I had no concrete reasons to do the things I did, acting on instinct alone. I could be crazy as a bedbug, imagining all this power. Why in the world should small, insignificant Rachel Fitzpatrick have anything to do with the well-being of a baby? Of a number of babies? Why did I have to keep changing my name, changing who I was? If someone was following me, why hadn’t he caught up yet?

What would happen if I simply drove home and stayed there? Joined Julie at the hospital?

Amanda would die. I had no choice. I had to run.

AZAZEL MOVED DOWN THE STAIRS
after the demon, silent, scarcely breathing. He could sense its panic, and he knew it was going to run again. He had taken longer to find it this time—it must be getting better at coming up with new identities. If the demon vanished once more, he had no idea how long it would take him to find it again. The longer it roamed the earth, the more destruction it could wreak.

It was time to make his move. He didn’t know why he’d hesitated, why he’d watched it without doing anything. His hatred for the creature was so powerful it would have frightened him, if he were capable of feeling fear. He was incapable of feeling anything but his hatred for the monster. That must be what had stayed his hand. Once he killed it, he would feel nothing at all.

How difficult would the demon be to kill? It looked like a normal female, but he felt its seductive power even from a distance. It didn’t need any of the obvious feminine wiles to lure him. It didn’t wear makeup, didn’t flaunt itself in revealing clothes. It tended to dress in dark colors, in loose-fitting T-shirts and baggy pants. There was nothing to make a man think of sex; yet every time he looked at her—at it—he thought about lust. He must never underestimate her.

It.
Part of the demon’s power was to make him
forget that it was merely a thing, not the vulnerable female it appeared to be. So easy to slip, to think of it as a woman. A woman he would have to kill. Maybe it had been female once, but not anymore. Now it was simply a repository of all the seductive female force in creation, channeled into a demon that looked like a soft, vulnerable woman.

He could catch her in the parking garage, break her neck, and then fly up high and fling her body into the sun. He could bury her deep beneath the earth in the belly of a volcano. He sensed he would need fire to eradicate her completely, her and her evil powers. Only when she was dead would the threat dissolve.

The threat to newborn babies. The threat to vulnerable men who dreamed of sex and woke to find only a demon possessing them.

And the threat to him. Most of all he hated her for the connection that was foretold, with him of all people. And the only way to make certain that never happened was to destroy her.

He was standing in the corner of the stairwell on the bottom floor, watching her. He’d pulled his wings around him, disappearing; though she searched her surroundings, she saw nothing, and moved on.

More proof of her power, the power she was
trying so hard to disguise. No one else sensed him when he cloaked himself. But she did. Her awareness was as acute as his. And he hated that.

Tonight, he told himself. Tonight he would kill her. Whether he’d present proof to Uriel was undecided. He might simply leave him unknowing. He could finally return to Sheol, take the reins back from Raziel if he must. And see Raziel’s bonded mate in Sarah’s place.

No, he wasn’t ready. Surely there must be something else he had to do before he returned.

She’d escaped into the garage, and he followed her, the door closing silently behind him. The place was brightly lit, but there were only a handful of cars still there. She was already halfway to the dark red one he knew was hers.

He knew where he would take her—as far away as humanly possible from this place. To the other side of the world, one of the few places where the scourge known as the Nephilim still thrived.

What better place for a demon?

He waved a hand and the parking garage plunged into darkness, every light extinguished. He could feel her sudden panic, which surprised him. He wouldn’t have thought demons feared the darkness. She started running, but her car was parked midway down, and he spread his wings and took her.

I
SCREAMED, BUT MY VOICE
was lost in the folds that covered me. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, could barely move, so disoriented and dizzy that I felt sick. I felt the ground give way beneath my feet, and I was falling, falling. …

Something tight bound me, but I couldn’t sense what. It felt like irons bands around my arms, holding me still, and my face was crushed against something hard, something that felt like cloth. I breathed in, and oddly enough I could smell skin, warm, vibrant, indefinably male skin. Impossible. I smelled the ocean as well, but we were at least a thousand miles away from any salt water.

I squirmed, and the bands tightened, and I couldn’t breathe. My chest was crushed against whatever thing had done this, and I was helpless, weightless, cocooned by the monster that had grabbed me. I tried to move once more, and the pain was blinding. As if my heart were being crushed, I thought, as consciousness faded and I fell into a merciful dark hole.

I
COULD HEAR SOMEONE SINGING,
which was absurd. Either I was dead or I’d been captured by some science-fictiony creature who’d sealed me in a cocoon or a hive, probably to be eaten later. I’d seen those movies, could remember them even
though I couldn’t remember my own parents.

I hurt everywhere, but most particularly my chest. It felt as if someone had reached inside me and crushed my heart in his hand. Another movie, I thought, feeling dizzy.

But one thing I did remember was that life was never like the movies. I didn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls and things that went bump in the night. Whoever had done this to me had to be human, and therefore I could fight back.

Cautiously I opened my eyes.

I was lying in the middle of a lumpy bed in what looked like a seedy motel room. A radio played in the background, something soft and depressing. Another bed was beside me, empty, but with a depressed area on the pillow where someone had been, so presumably I wasn’t alone.

I tried to move, just a little, and while my body screamed in protest, I was no longer restrained. I was lying facedown on the mattress, as if someone had dumped me there, and I was relatively sure I hadn’t been raped or otherwise interfered with. Someone had simply managed to scoop me up and run off with me.