Demon (5 page)

“Don’t.” My voice broke this time. “Please.”

But he left without looking back, and a moment later I heard the car start up, heard the tires on the rough terrain. I listened until I could hear nothing, and the darkness began to close in around me.

And I waited to die.

H
E DROVE FAST.
H
E OPENED
all the windows, ignoring the dust that was swirling into the POS Ford, his foot down hard on the accelerator. A car accident wouldn’t kill him. What was true for the Lilith went for him as well. It would take an otherworldly creature to finish him, and as appealing as that sounded, there would be no one around to do the job.

He could have waited. Bound himself to that chair beside her and let the Nephilim come. When he’d felt her cool hand slide over his hot skin, he’d wanted to. Nothing could make him want to release her, nothing at all, but dying with her might have had a certain desperate symmetry.

He could have waited to make certain they’d finished her, but he knew what he could and couldn’t do. And there was no way he could watch as they tore her into pieces, feeding on her flesh
while her heart still pumped blood. He would come back in the light of the new day and find traces, blood and bone and skin. The Nephilim left destruction in their wake, and there would be enough left to bring proof to Uriel, if he chose to do so.

He was driving east, and in the rearview mirror he could see the sun on the horizon, sinking low, bright splintery shards of light spearing outward toward him. They would come for her as soon as the sun disappeared. They would come, and they would feast, and it would be over. There would be no way for any of the insane prophecies to come true. The Lilith would take no more innocent newborns; she would steal into no man’s dreams and take his very breath.

And she would never marry the king of the fallen angels and rule over a hell on earth.

That particular prophecy had been scorched into his brain since the beginning of time. He had no idea who had existed longer, the Lilith or the Fallen, but they were both from before time was measured. The harsh judge who’d cast out Azazel’s kind and cursed them was the same who’d cursed the first human female much more cruelly. The Fallen were left alone, simply to serve as couriers for souls between death and the hereafter, cursed to subsist on blood. The Lilith was taken
up by demons and forced to lie with them, and she’d disappeared.

He would hear of her—stealing into men’s dreams and leaving them drained and near death during the Middle Ages, leaving infants lifeless in their cribs—but then she would vanish again into obscurity. This time she would be gone for good, and the Fallen would continue with their endless quest to find the First. Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, entombed in a living darkness, waiting for them.

After the death of Azazel’s beloved Sarah, the Fallen’s stronghold had become not a haven but a prison, and he’d left Sheol in search of the demon destined by a sadistic Ultimate Power to be his bride. To destroy her would be to destroy one more source of evil in this misbegotten world—and ensure that that particular curse never came to pass.

The speedometer was climbing, but the road was empty, and if he lost control he would walk away. Nothing could kill him but fire or another otherworldly source—the Lilith, the Nephilim, Uriel’s host of angels, who were more like Gestapo storm troopers than seraphim. But no one would put him out of this pain that had slid from unbearable to merely numbing.

He heard the unearthly howl, ululating as the
last spike of sunlight shrank below the horizon. He was too far away—there was no way he could actually hear the Nephilim as they caught the scent of her and moved in—but the sound shrieked into his mind, and he could see her, the tangled red curls, the pale skin and soft mouth, the frightened eyes. The eyes that called to him. The soft mouth that moved him more than he wanted to admit.

He slammed his foot on the brakes.

The car went into a spin in the swirling dust, coming to a stop sideways at the edge of the road. He soared upward, smashing through the metal roof as if it were aluminum foil, straight into the rapidly cooling air.

The Nephilim were already advancing on the deserted house. He slammed through the remainder of the roof, bits of lumber and debris coming down with him as he landed a few feet behind her. He folded his wings swiftly and moved toward her.

She sat absolutely still, and her eyes focused on him, on the knife in his hand, as he stepped in front of her. “Decided to do it yourself?” she said in a voice that didn’t hide her fear. The Lilith was afraid of nothing, not even death. Could he have been wrong about her?

The groans and grunts of the Nephilim as they converged on the house were chilling, and their stench preceded them, the filth of decomposing
flesh and ancient blood and maggot-ridden organs. She could hear them as well as he could, and she was trembling.

He slid the knife through the ropes. He looked out the empty frame of the window and could see them approaching. He would be no defense against so many, and he could simply stand there, wait for the monsters to take both of them.

There was no time to find the key to the lock that held her chains. He yanked, shredding the chains, pulled her out of the chair, and shot upward into the night sky, the howls of the Nephilim following them into the darkness.

H
E LANDED LIGHTLY ON THE
deserted highway, her body limp in his arms. The car was where he’d left it, the metal roof peeled back as if a firecracker had exploded inside. He angled her into the backseat and quickly ripped away the shackles he hadn’t managed to unlock. Her slender wrists and ankles were raw and bleeding—she must have struggled after he left her. It wouldn’t have done her any good—he’d used iron chains on purpose. Only iron could chain a demon, and she would have been helpless.

But supposedly she didn’t know that. She claimed she knew nothing about who and what she was, and the torn and bleeding flesh almost
seemed proof of that. He closed his hands around her ankles, so delicate that he easily encircled them. He released her, and they were smooth and unmarred once more.

He paused. There’d been times in history, when women wore layers upon layers of clothing, that ankles had been considered one of the most erotic parts of a woman’s body. Nowadays, when everything was on display, one forgot about ankles, but hers were well shaped and surprisingly arousing.

This was the Lilith, he reminded himself, reaching for her bloody wrists. She was the original siren, luring men to their doom.

The warm, earthy scent of her blood hit him then. He pulled back, leaving her wrists healed, and squatted down, staring at her limp body, absently licking his fingers. And then he realized what he was doing.

He jumped away, spitting, gagging, trying to drive the taste and the smell and the lure of her blood from his body. He struggled to the ditch beside the road and threw up.

It hurt. His body fought him, craving the soothing balm of her; but he had always been in control of this strange human flesh of his, and he emptied himself of every trace of her. And then he rose, wiping his mouth, and went back to her.

He had no idea whether the Grace of
forgetting would work on a demon, but he put his hand over her face, not touching her, and let it sink in. There was dried blood on his long fingers, her blood, and he cursed.

He shoved her all the way in and closed the door, then climbed into the front seat. He grabbed his bottle of water, swished his mouth out, and spat again, then poured the rest of it over his hands, rubbing away every trace of her blood. It wasn’t his fault that he could still feel it there.

The car started easily enough, ignoring its ill treatment, and he pulled onto the road again. He could hear the muted noise of the Nephilim, screaming with rage at being denied their prey. They would follow, and he couldn’t afford to linger. He could always move faster than they could, but having
her
with him would slow him down. He needed bright lights; he needed people.

But most of all he needed time and space to figure out why the fuck he’d just made the most stupid mistake of thousands of years of his endless life.

I
HEARD THE SCREAM.
I
T
tore from my throat as I was slammed into consciousness, the sound deafening, and I wanted to stop, I did, but I couldn’t. Only for a moment, to suck in a deep, rasping gasp of breath, and then I screamed again,
the sound sickening in the pure terror that had infused my very bones.

And then it stopped, this involuntary anguish, by his voice simply saying, “Stop.”

For a moment I didn’t move. I was lying stretched out on the seat of a moving vehicle. Logic dictated that it was the car Azazel had used to drive me out into the bush, but this one had a moonroof, and the stars overhead were oddly calming. I wondered if he’d frozen me as he had in the restaurant, but I found I could move, slowly, carefully, as if my bones might shake apart. I managed to pull myself into a sitting position.

It was almost full dark. I rubbed my tender wrists, but they were whole, no marks left by those damned ropes, which shocked me. I’d struggled like a madwoman when he left me in the muffled darkness, and I thought I’d felt the wetness of blood. I reached down to my ankles, but they were smooth and undamaged as well.

I had no idea whether he was going to let me talk or not, but I had to try.

“Why did you come back?” I didn’t mean for my voice to sound accusing. He’d changed his mind about killing me, for God’s sake. Why should I complain?

He didn’t glance back at me. Fresh air came from the open roof, blowing his hair away from
the elegant bone structure of his cold, emotionless face. “I have no idea,” he said finally. “If I were you, I wouldn’t question it. I may recover my sanity long enough to take you back there and dump you, so I suggest you just sit back and keep quiet.”

I was smart enough to do just that. I was so cold, after the blisteringly hot day, and I shivered. I remembered the howls coming closer, the horrible smell that had assailed my nostrils, and I felt my body tremble almost imperceptibly. I decided to push my luck.

“Could you close the moonroof? I’m freezing. It must get very cold once the sun sets.”

He hesitated. “It isn’t that cold,” he said finally.

“But I’m—”

“Deal with it.”

Okay. I wrapped my arms around me, trying to get warm. He was probably right—it was just as likely shock and fear as anything else. I wanted to ask him where he was taking me, but he’d warned me not to ask questions, and I didn’t want him changing his mind. I curled my legs up under me and huddled in the corner of the seat, as far from the open roof as I could get. The stars were very bright in the inky black sky overhead, and I realized I would probably be able to see the Southern Cross for the first time in my life. I had always had a secret weakness for astronomy, for the stars
and constellations and the way they seemed to rotate in the sky. This might be my only chance to actually see the Southern Cross, and I hoped the sky stayed clear for as long as we were here. Unless he planned to abandon me here, which would suit me very well indeed. I could disappear into a new name and new identity here as easily as in the Northern Hemisphere. I’d had lots of practice.

I could tell by the dimming of the stars that we were approaching what looked like a small city. The electric lights were warring with nature, and electricity was winning. Light pollution, they called it. I thought I’d grown used to it, but that brief period without it had simply reminded me how much I loved the vast, endless sky.

I could smell the sea, which surprised me. I’d assumed we’d spent the day driving directly inland, so the proximity of the ocean was disturbing. I hated the ocean. It terrified me, the waves, the swells, the ebb and flow. I forced myself to take a deep breath of the rich salt smell, licking the taste off my mouth. Then I realized he was watching me in the rearview mirror, his gaze fastened on my mouth, and his deep-blue eyes were burning.

I ducked back into the darkness, unnerved. Remembering that I had reached out to touch him
when he’d been chaining me up to die. I could feel that look in the pit of my stomach, between my legs, like a rough caress, and my face was suddenly hot. I turned toward the window, shutting him out, and concentrated on the port city we were driving through. A working city, not a resort, I could tell immediately. Not sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

When he pulled over and parked, I looked around in surprise. We were in a narrow alleyway, deserted except for a few parked cars, and he slid from the front seat, slamming the door behind him before pulling mine open.

I considered staying put, but I knew he’d climb in and get me without hesitation, and he wouldn’t be kind. I moved, landing on slightly unsteady legs. “Aren’t you going to close the roof?” I looked up at him. I’d forgotten he was so tall.

“I am leaving the car. And the roof doesn’t close.”

Both those statements mystified me, until I looked more closely at the car. The metal had been peeled back over the driver’s seat, as if a can of soda had exploded from the heat. What the hell had been strong enough to do that? “You can just ditch cars?” I said. “You must be very well paid.”

“It wasn’t mine in the first place.”

“Well, whoever you borrowed it from isn’t
going to be too happy with that hole in the middle of the roof.”

“Possibly not.” He paused, looking at me, and I wished I could even begin to guess what was going through his mind. “You are everything that is evil. I should have left you to the Nephilim.”

I was leaning back against the car, my legs still a bit unsteady, a strange, churning feeling inside me, in my breasts, between my legs, feelings that were totally foreign to me. He was standing too close to me, but I couldn’t tell him to move away. I didn’t want to.

“Why didn’t you?” My voice was almost a whisper, as if I knew what he was going to do and I was afraid to startle him. Distract him. Stop him. I knew what he wanted, and God help me, I wanted it too.