Demon (6 page)

His deep-blue eyes were shadowed, and I thought I could see a streak of blood on his mouth. Whose blood? “Because I am a fool and a half,” he whispered as well, the night air all around us. “Because I know who and what you are, and I want you anyway.”

And he kissed me. His mouth was rough, pushing mine open as his hard body pressed me back against the car, and I felt heat, desire, sweep through me, not knowing if it was his or mine. He was hard against me, I was wet just feeling his
mouth on mine, and if he’d stripped off my clothes and taken me there by the docks I wouldn’t have protested.

I put my arms around his neck, kissing him back, my tongue sliding against his, and he pulled me up, up against him. I wrapped my legs around his hips, trying to get closer, shutting out my mind and my doubts, sinking into the hot wet cloud of need that enveloped us both.

Common sense hit him first. He pulled his mouth away, and I lowered my legs to the ground, letting them slide against his, slowly. He reached up and pulled my arms from his neck, stepping back, his eyes hooded, his expression as cool and unyielding as if the last few moments hadn’t existed.

“I’m letting you go,” he said in a voice only slightly roughened by what we’d been doing. “I would suggest you run before I change my mind.”

I stared at him in disbelief. It was as if the kiss had never happened. Maybe I’d dreamed it. In the end, it didn’t matter—what mattered was he was letting me go. “Just like that?” I said.

“Just like that,” he said. “I have decided killing you is more trouble than you’re worth.”

I could happily agree with that. But I couldn’t move. I still felt that strange, magnetic draw, still
wanted to put my hands on him, to feel his body tight against mine, his skin sliding against me. I stayed motionless until his voice lashed out: “I told you to run.”

And then I ran. Into the midnight-dark streets. No purse, no money, no passport. No name, no past, and no future. I didn’t care. I was alive, and I was free. I’d figure out the rest later.

A
ZAZEL PERCHED ON THE EDGE
of the cliff, looking out over the roiling ocean, letting the cool sea breeze blow his overlong hair away from his face. He closed his eyes, drinking in the feel of it. In an empty existence, the feel of the wind, the smell of the sea, were among the few pleasures he could experience.

He opened his eyes again, sensing Raziel’s approach. In the year and a half since Azazel had rejoined the Fallen, Raziel had repeatedly tried to hand the leadership of Sheol back to him, and he’d steadfastly refused. Raziel as the Alpha and his unconventional wife made a good ruling pair. Raziel had more compassion than Azazel was capable of feeling, and his wife, even though she’d
shaken things up a bit, was proving to be a warm and caring Source.

He could look at her now without wanting to kill her, even hold short conversations with her. Because Sarah had liked her. He suspected his wife had known her death was coming—Sarah had often had unexpected visions—and she had already set the stage for Allegra Watson to take her place. If Sarah approved of her, he couldn’t very well despise her.

Everyone had left him alone since he’d returned from his self-imposed exile, knowing that when he was ready to fully rejoin the ranks of the Fallen, he’d tell them. In the meantime, he’d spent the days poring over the old texts, searching for some hint, some clue, to Lucifer’s whereabouts.

The first of them, the Bringer of Light, the most favored of God’s angels, had been the first to be punished, imprisoned somewhere deep below the earth in an unending silence. Until they found him, they were helpless against the tyranny of the only archangel never to have been tempted. Uriel, bloody, ruthless, and completely without mercy, had been left in charge when the Supreme Being had given the human race free will and then withdrawn, leaving them on their own. Uriel had been charged with watching over things, but he’d followed through on the most horrific of
the Supreme Being’s punishments. Plagues that wiped out two-thirds of the world’s populations—the Spanish influenza, smallpox, cholera—were successive gifts for the unrighteous. Uriel’s particular favorites were syphilis and AIDS. The punishment for sin was death, and fornication was the worst sin of all in Uriel’s eyes.

And no one could touch him, no one could stop him, as scourge followed scourge and mankind fell into wars and famine. Only the Fallen had any chance of halting his inexorable march toward human extermination, and time was growing shorter as Uriel’s power grew.

Raziel settled beside Azazel, folding his wings about him as he stared out at the sea. “You have to go after her, you know.”

“No.” One didn’t refuse the Alpha when he made a request or issued an order, but Azazel didn’t hesitate.

He and Raziel had been the next to fall after Lucifer, with Tamlel and twenty others, and had been damned for eternity for the crime of loving human women. Neither humans nor angels, they were simply the Fallen, cursed to live out eternity with an unstoppable need for blood. The wretched Nephilim were the flesh-eaters, the darker side, the creatures of filth and decay.

“You were the one who found the link in the
old texts,” Raziel said in his calm, patient voice. “You can’t deny that she alone holds the key. We’re just lucky you didn’t let the Nephilim destroy her before you found the connection.”

“She remembers nothing,” he said stubbornly. “It would have made no difference.”

“Did you bestow the Grace …?”

“It would have failed. I could do very little with her. I could read her, just a bit, but it was all confusion. She didn’t know who or what she was; she had no memory of her past life. If she cannot even recognize that she’s the Lilith, how will she remember some minor bit of information that we’ve only just discovered could lead us to Lucifer?”

“We don’t have any other choice. His voice is growing fainter, Uriel is growing stronger, and it won’t be long before he finally abandons restraint and comes after us. We must find Lucifer, and I would consort with the foulest creatures in existence, even the remaining Nephilim, if it would help us.”

He knew Raziel was right. He’d known the moment he’d come across that obscure reference:
The She-Demon who devours men and infants and lies with the Filth shall be entombed near the Bringer of Light, and bring forth the means of his deliverance.
Of course, it was only one line in a relatively obscure
text, and its provenance was questionable. And it didn’t begin to say how she might help them find Lucifer, only that she’d show them the way to do it. Which did them no good when she couldn’t remember anything.

He thought back to the demon. The demon with the shape and smell and feel of a woman, who had only to look at him to stir feelings that should have been dead. He’d kissed her. That kiss had been burned into his body and his brain, tormenting him. What insanity had made him reach for her? No one else had managed to touch him in the nearly seven years since Sarah died, further proving just how dangerous the Lilith was. If she could arouse his dead soul, then she had strong powers indeed.

“I haven’t kept track of her,” he said, only half a lie. He’d stopped looking after her six months ago, once she’d gotten in bed with the young doctor. But he had little doubt she was still in Brisbane, still in that strange apartment that looked out over the Brisbane River. It would take him very little time to collect her.

But he would have to touch her, hold her, carry her. Breathe in the seductive scent of her skin. He would have to bring her into the safety and protection of Sheol. The very last place he wanted her.

For that one line from an obscure text that hinted she held the answer to Lucifer, there were dozens of other references to Lilith, queen of demons, and her marriage to the king of the Fallen. It didn’t matter that Raziel now ruled the Fallen as the Alpha. Azazel had led them in their disastrous fall; Azazel was decreed to mate with the Lilith and reign over hell with her by his side.

Of course, those same sources equated the Fallen with a mythical Satan, a force of evil as powerful as God. In Azazel’s endless experience, the only creature who came close to that description was Uriel, the one remaining archangel.

“You know where she is,” Raziel said, unmoved.

“She cannot belong in Sheol. She is a demon.” Was there a tinge of desperation in his voice? No, he simply sounded pigheaded.

“I know she doesn’t. I know the prophecies. If you won’t bring her here, you can take her to the Dark City and find the Truth Breakers. If there are answers to be found, they are the ones to do it.”

He froze. He’d barely managed to survive his time with the brutal Truth Breakers long ago. And he was a lot stronger than the body the Lilith had taken. “Why me? Michael could—” He stopped. Michael had brute strength, the ultimate warrior.
He would destroy her, whether by accident or design.

Which would solve his problem, but bring them no closer to Lucifer. He racked his mind for anyone else among the Fallen who could take on the task, disposing of the demon once the information was garnered. There was no one. The strong ones would kill her; the gentle ones would be in danger once she regained her true self. He was the only one who knew enough to confine her without killing her. At least before her usefulness was past.

If she was brought into the sanctuary of Sheol, he might not be able to stop the prophecies from coming true. No matter how fierce his determination not to fall prey to the succubus, once she had breached the walls there would be no stopping her. He wasn’t convinced that she had forgotten everything; but even if she had, sooner or later it would all come back to her. Prophecies had a vicious habit of coming true, particularly the ugly ones.

Though if they were to rule in the everlasting torment of hell, Uriel’s favorite place, then he might embrace it. Embrace the pain as an alternative to the cold emptiness that filled him. Better to feel torment than nothing at all. Maybe.

“Take her to the Dark City,” Raziel said, already
knowing he would give in. “If you find what we need, you can always leave her there. It would take her centuries to escape.”

Azazel didn’t move. The tide was coming in, and the wind had picked up, sending whitecaps scudding across the surface. A storm was coming. And he would be riding the wind.

I
ZIPPED UP MY DUFFEL BAG AND
slung it on the floor, trying to ignore the cloud that lingered in the back of my mind. I glanced out the window at the Brisbane River. It was a bright day, sunlight glinting off the water, and there was a strong breeze blowing through the open window. It was no day for portents of disaster.

I lived on the third floor of an old colonial mansion that had been rehabbed into quirky apartments. The raucous birds had woken me every morning of the year and a half I had lived there, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I loved birds—the noisy ones and the demure. There was something about watching them in flight that left me breathless and awestruck.

Not that I wanted to fly. I hated heights.
Hated flying, I expected, because I had no interest in leaving Australia to find out more about my clouded past. I liked being safe in my top-floor apartment with its tiny bathroom stuck under the eaves. I liked my job and my friends and my boyfriend, Rolf. I didn’t want the changes I sensed on the wind.

I heard the footsteps from a distance, coming up the three flights of stairs, and an odd sense of apprehension filled me. Rolf was early. He hadn’t phoned or texted me to be down on the wide porch that surrounded the building, though I knew he disliked the old house and the climb to my aerie. And suddenly I didn’t want to answer the rapping on my door, afraid of who would be on the other side.

The knock came again, more peremptory, and I glanced out my open window, wondering whether I could climb out. … I was being ridiculous, I chided myself. Who did I think was lurking behind my door—the Grim Reaper?

I crossed the room and flung the door open, trying to ignore my relief at seeing Rolf standing there, looking hot and rumpled and bad-tempered. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he demanded. “I’ve been calling you for hours,”

I picked up my cell phone, glancing at the screen. There were no missed calls—no calls at all,
in fact, which in itself was unusual. Though my friends knew I was going out of town, so there was a reasonable explanation for that. But no sign of Rolf’s multiple calls.

“Are you sure it was me you were calling? My phone says otherwise.”

“Then your phone’s broken,” he said in a disgruntled voice. “I can’t go.”

I should have been disappointed at the very least. Instead I felt reprieved. I did my best to look upset. “Why not?”

“Last-minute emergency. I need to fill in for another doctor on the ob-gyn floor. Everyone’s decided to deliver at the same time, and they’re shorthanded. I don’t really have a choice.”

“Of course you don’t,” I said in a practical tone. “Can you get a refund on our travel?”

“Already taken care of,” he said. “I called the resort before I tried you, so I know my phone is working. It must be yours.” In fact, if anything was ever wrong in our relationship, it was usually my fault. And it was typical of Rolf to safeguard his money before he tried to reach me. He was a very careful man.

Really, there were times when I couldn’t figure out why I put up with him, but then when I went out I remembered. For some reason, Australian men seemed to think I was irresistible. There was
nothing that special about me—my curly red hair was more of a curse than an enticement, and I wore loose clothes and no makeup—yet for some reason men kept hitting on me. Having Rolf at my side kept them at bay.