Demon

“Your bedroom is at the end of the hall,” he reminded her.

He needed her gone. The scent of her was maddening, elusive, bewitching.

She moved into the formal parlor, taking a seat and looking at him out of those warm brown eyes. “I want to know what Beloch meant. What kind of test is he expecting you to perform?”

He knew what Beloch wanted. He was supposed to fuck her and then prove he could walk away from her, turn her over to the shattering destructiveness of the Truth Breakers and then celebrate the destruction of one more demon.

He looked at her and his body stirred, and he despised her—and himself. He could tell himself it was simply her wiles, her powers, that were doing this to him. But he wasn’t asleep, he wasn’t drugged.

And he wasn’t going to do it. Not tonight, when need vibrated through his body and he wanted to shove her up against a wall and take her. By tomorrow he’d be back in control.

“Go to bed,” he said gruffly. “Or you’ll wish you had.”

She simply raised an eyebrow, the foolish creature. It was unwise to underestimate him. He could squeeze the life out of her in a moment, end her as he’d come so close to doing, more times than he could remember.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be,” he said. And before she knew what was happening, he shoved her up against the door and slammed his mouth down on hers.

ALSO BY KRISTINA DOUGLAS

Raziel

Available from Pocket Books

Pocket Books

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Anne Kristine Stuart Ohlrogge

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2011

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Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson

Cover design by Lisa Litwack

Cover illustration by Craig White

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-9193-4

ISBN 978-1-4391-9195-8 (ebook)

Contents

Beginnings: The Real WorldChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeThe Dark CityChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenSheolChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourIn The BeginningChapter One

For Sally,

because she likes world-building

ON THE SUBJECT OF ANGELS

THE WORLD OF THE FALLEN is my own creation, based on Apocryphal works like the Book of Enoch and other obscure texts that didn’t make it into the current Old Testament. Being a new age liberal Christian, I’ve always been fascinated by the inexplicable behavior of the Old Testament God and his tendency to use the smite key on his celestial computer at random. It’s easy enough to do a little Internet research to find references to all the less than charitable things that God supposedly did, and I wanted to come up with a world that explained the difference between a just and loving God and the big old meanie from the past. Hence the world of the Fallen and the Archangel Uriel.

I took bits and pieces of mythology and changed them to suit my story—the Nephilim are generally considered to be the offspring of the fallen angels, but I decided to make them the next wave. There are countless references in the Bible that argue against the “eating of blood,” so it seemed an obvious curse. And fallen angels are so much more interesting than the ones who are still supposedly perfect.

So you need to take it all in the spirit in which it’s intended. Most of the Old Testament is open for debate, anyway. I just shifted things the way it worked best for my fallen angels.

BEGINNINGS:

THE REAL WORLD

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS FOLLOWING ME AGAIN. I knew it instinctively, even though I hadn’t actually seen him. He was just beyond my vision, on the outer edges of my sight, hiding in shadows. Skulking.

Not stalking. There might be huge gaps in my memory, but I had a mirror and absolutely no delusions about my totally resistible charms. I was determinedly average—average height, average weight, give or take ten pounds. I had short hair, the muddy brown you get when you dye it too often, and my eyes were a plain brown. My skin was olive-tinged, my bone structure unremarkable, and there was no clue to who or what I was.

Here’s what I knew: My name was Rachel. My current last name was Fitzpatrick, but before that it was Brown, and the next time it might be Montgomery. Average names with Anglo-Saxon antecedents. I didn’t know why, I just went with it.

I’d been Rachel Fitzpatrick for almost two years now, and it felt as if it had been longer than usual, this comfortable life I’d built up. I was living in a big industrial city in the Midwest, working for a newspaper that, like most of its kind, was on its last legs. I had a great apartment on the top floor of an old Victorian house; I had an unexciting car I could rely on; I had good friends I could turn to in an emergency and have fun with when times were good. I was even godmother to my coworker Julie’s newborn baby girl. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was November, and I thought that probably I had never liked November. The trees were bare, the wind was biting, and darkness closed around the city like a shroud. And someone was watching me.

I didn’t know how long he’d been there—it had taken me a while to realize he was back again. I’d never gotten much of a look at him; he kept to the shadows, a tall, narrow figure of undeniable menace. I had no wish to see him any better.

I was very careful. I didn’t go out alone after dark, I kept away from secluded places, and I was always on my guard. I had never mentioned him to my friends, even Julie. I told myself I didn’t want them to worry. But I didn’t go to the police either, and it was their job to worry.

I spun any number of possibilities out of the big gray blank that was my memory. Maybe he was my abusive husband, watching me, and I’d run away from him, the trauma of his brutality wiping my mind clean.

Maybe I had been in the witness protection program and I’d gone through some kind of horror, and the mob was after me.

But it didn’t explain why he hadn’t come any closer. No matter how careful I was, if someone wanted to hurt me, to kill me, there was probably no way to stop him short of … well, there probably was no way to stop him. So my watcher presumably didn’t want me dead.

I was working late on a cold, rainy Thursday, trying to get a bunch of obituaries formatted. Yup, doing obituaries late at night was not my favorite thing; but with the Courier on its last legs, we all put in overtime whenever asked and worked on anything that was needed, though I drew the line at sports. I was ostensibly home and health editor, editor being a glorified term for the only reporter on the beat, but I generally enjoyed my work. With obituaries, not so much. It was the babies that got to me. Stillbirths, crib deaths, miscarriages. They made me feel like crying, though oddly enough I never cried. If I could, I would weep for those babies, weep for days and weeks and years.

I didn’t wonder whether I’d lost a child myself. Instinct told me I hadn’t, and besides, grieving for lost babies was a logical, human reaction. Who wouldn’t feel sorrow at the loss of a brand-new life?

The wind had picked up, howling through the city and shaking the sealed windows of the new building the Courier had unwisely built less than three years ago, and I logged off my computer, finished for the night. I glanced at the clock; it was after ten, and the office was deserted. My car was in the parking garage—there had to be someone there. I would have my keys out, make a dash for my reliable old Subaru, and lock myself in if anything loomed out of the darkness.

I could always call Julie and see if her husband could come and escort me home. While I hadn’t told them about my watcher, I had explained that I was extremely skittish about personal safety, and Bob had come to the rescue on a number of occasions. But they had a brand-new baby, and I didn’t want to bother them. I’d be fine.

I grabbed my coat and was heading for the elevator when the phone at my desk rang. I hesitated, then ignored it. Whoever it was, whatever they wanted, I was too tired to provide it. All I wanted was to get home through this blasted wind and curl up in my nice warm bed.

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.

The watcher. I rolled over on my back, very gingerly, half-afraid he was waiting to pounce again. I kept picturing him like a bat, swooping down on me, dark wings beating at my head. Either I had hit my head and had a concussion, or someone had drugged me.

The room was even worse than I’d thought, more a flophouse than a motel. Not that I’d ever been in a flophouse before—at least, I didn’t think I had—but the small table and two chairs, the hot plate, and the dismal china sink all looked like my idea of one.

I turned back and almost shrieked. The other bed was no longer empty. A man lay there, watching me out of hooded eyes.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice was strangled in my throat. He must have seen the fright and fury in my eyes, but he didn’t move.

There was one small, grubby window, and I could tell from the color of the sky that it must be a little past dawn. And then I remembered Amanda and the others, and real panic set in.

“Have to … get out of here,” I managed to wheeze.

He didn’t move, didn’t react, and I wondered if he’d heard or understood me. Maybe he didn’t speak English.

I couldn’t afford to waste time. I began to pull myself to a sitting position, ignoring the pain that shot through my body. “You have to listen to me,” I managed to say, my voice still thick with pain. “I can’t be here. I have to get far away. People will die.”

He still didn’t move. The room was murky in the predawn light, and I couldn’t see him clearly. All I could tell was that he was long and lean, and he was most definitely not from around here. They didn’t grow them like that in the Midwest.

I sat up, my feet on the soiled carpeting. “I’m getting out of here,” I said, starting to push myself up from the bed. I hurt like hell, but I could make it. I had to make it.

“No.” Though I hadn’t seen him move his lips, the word was, sharp, definite.

“I told you—”

“You told me people will die,” he said in a bored voice. “The only one who is going to die is you.”

His cool words should have chilled me, but I’d already figured out I was a lost cause. “Look,” I said patiently, “you can do anything you want. Stab me, strangle me, shoot me—I don’t care. Just do it miles away from the city.”

I suppose I should have looked him over more carefully to see if I could find a weak spot, but I was too wound up thinking about Amanda. No more, I thought. For God’s sake, no more babies.

“We are in Australia,” he said.

I stopped trying to get up, finally looking at him. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long.”

Okay, now I knew he was a certifiable fruitcake. Not that I should have had any doubt—a sane person doesn’t swoop down on you like a bat and abduct you. I tried once more to get off the bed, and this time I made it, as if whatever had held me back finally let go.

“Go to the window if you do not believe me.”

I went. I didn’t see koalas or kangaroos bouncing by the window—it looked like any dingy waterfront. Even so, it would take more than a couple of hours to reach the ocean from the last place I remembered being. So clearly I’d been out for longer than he’d said, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Amanda and all the other newborns would now be safe.

“Okay,” I said, turning back to face him. I was tired of running, tired of the fear and panic that had threatened to strangle me. “Go ahead. Make my day.”

And I spread my arms wide, waiting for him to kill me.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAN GAZED AT ME, HIS FACE expressionless. “You have seen too many movies.”

I sighed. “Look, I don’t know who or what you are and I don’t care. I’m tired of running, tired of questions with no answers. If you want to shoot me, then go ahead and do it; otherwise, give me some answers or leave me alone.”

“I don’t possess a gun.” I was still deciding whether or not I was relieved when he continued, “You know as well as I do that I do not need a gun to kill you.”

I sat back down on the lumpy bed. “I don’t know shit,” I said flatly. “I don’t even know who I am, much less who you are. I’m sure you could overpower me if you wanted to, but I’m also going to presume that if you were planning to kill me you would have already done it.”

“You should not presume anything. I can come up with half a dozen reasons why I have yet to kill you. Perhaps I need a better place to dispose of your body.”

“Like Australia?”

His face was impassive. “Perhaps I want to draw it out, let you suffer. Or maybe I have decided to give you a chance to talk me out of it. Or even give you a head start.”

Okay, none of that sounded even the slightest bit reassuring. I took a good look at him. By some standards he might even be considered attractive. Hell, freaking gorgeous—if it weren’t for the incredible coldness in his blue eyes. He had long, straight, very black hair, pale skin, a narrow face with finely chiseled high cheekbones, a thin mouth, and a strong nose. He looked as cold as Antarctica, and his faintly formal diction made him seem even more impenetrable.

“You know, for some reason none of those possibilities seems very likely. You don’t strike me as someone filled with the milk of human kindness.”

“I am not human.”

This barely struck me as odd. Impossible as it was, I had begun to guess as much, considering that we had apparently managed to travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours. “Then what the fuck are you?”

“You know.”

I was facing death with what I considered a fair amount of noble equanimity, but he was getting beyond frustrating, ruining the whole Joan of Arc bit. “I don’t know. I told you, I don’t even know who I am, and even though you came swooping down on me like a bat out of hell, I’m having a hard time processing the idea that you’re anything but a crazy stalker who’s probably going to dismember my body and gnaw on my bones.”

“We do not eat flesh. That would be the Nephilim.”

That word, that name, struck an odd chord inside me, a surge of nausea that it took all my willpower to control. Yet the word meant nothing. “Who are the Nephilim?”

He didn’t answer. He rose, and I watched him, looking for any sign of weakness. Presumably he wasn’t lying about the gun—he was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and I could see no sign of one on him. For a moment I was afraid he was going to approach me, and I steeled myself to fight, but instead he walked over to the window, pushing open the curtain to let in the early morning light. The soft singing on the radio finished, and the announcer came on—most definitely Australian. I felt a shiver wash over me, and tried to control it. At least Amanda was safe.

And then he switched off the radio, turning to look at me. “It is time to go.”

“Go where? Are you going to explain anything at all or leave me to die of curiosity?”

He didn’t make the obvious answer. He just stood there waiting, and slowly, painfully I rose to my feet again. I felt as if someone had used me as a punching bag—presumably this man. I wondered if I looked as bruised as I felt. As I started after him I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. And screamed.

Even before the sound erupted he was on me, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other around my waist, imprisoning me as I struggled against the rising hysteria. I didn’t know that woman in the mirror—a stranger looking back at me out of warm brown eyes. In fact, in that first horrifying glimpse, it was only the eyes that seemed familiar.

I might have been fighting a machine. His body was impervious to my struggles, my frantic kicks. And as quickly as the panic had come on, it drained away, leaving me staring at myself in the mirror, with him behind me, holding me.

My hair was red. With all the bottles of dye I’d used over the years, the one color I’d never used was red. I’d been blond, brunette, and everything in between, but the very thought of red hair had made me ill. My skin was pale, almost transparent, and the hair was thick and curling, hanging below my shoulders when I’d favored something short and manageable. His hand covered half my face, but I’d seen my mouth—wide and curving, different from the small mouth I’d occasionally augmented with lipstick. My own eyes stared out from the face of a stranger, and I wanted to throw up.

He must have felt the fight leave my body, because he slowly released me. I had no doubt those iron hands could clamp over my arms again at any moment, and I did my best to make my body soft and pliant.

“You do not fool me,” he said in my ear. “I am not going to turn my back on you for a minute.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said out of the stranger’s mouth in the mirror. “I’d run.”

“You would be more likely to disembowel me.”

Startled, I looked up at him. Again, he was totally without affect—I’d picked up that word during one of my lifetimes, but I couldn’t remember where. His eyes were cold, his face blank. He’d said he wasn’t human. Impossible as that was to comprehend, looking into his soulless eyes made it marginally more believable.

“Not likely, unless you’re going to hand me a knife.” I was pleased with the caustic tone I achieved, until his next words hit.

“You wouldn’t need a knife.”

“I think I’ll just stop talking,” I said, feeling ill at the picture his words conjured. That was twice he’d sent me to the edge of nausea. Probably a combination of jet lag and hunger. My brain was still trying to make sense of it all. So he said I hadn’t been out long, yet somehow we’d gotten to Australia. Clearly he was lying, and I must have been unconscious for days. It was no wonder my stomach was in an uproar—I was starving. “Just feed me,” I added, “and I promise I won’t bother you.”

He stared at me, and I thought I could feel his eyes on my throat. He still clasped one of my wrists, but the pain of that manacle-like grasp was nothing compared to the rest of my body, so I’d barely noticed.

Then he nodded. “After you.” And with a none-too-gentle shove, he pushed me out the door.

Yes, it was Australia, or he was going to great lengths for a practical joke. The license plates were different, and the ordinary-looking sedan he pushed me into had the steering wheel on the wrong side. He closed the door and moved around to the driver’s side, not even bothering to see whether I was going to try to run for it. He must have known I was past fighting.

We drove in silence, into the dawning of what was presumably going to be the last day of my life. I leaned back in the seat, watching the landscape whiz by with incurious eyes. We’d been in some kind of port city, but by full daylight we were already past the suburbs and into the countryside. Oddly enough, he’d turned on the radio once we got in the car, and quiet music filled in the blank spaces in my mind. It seemed an anomaly—he was much too cold and empty a person to care about music. I figured that was the least of my worries. I listened to plaintive voices, some familiar, some not, and waited to die.

I must have slept. When I awoke, the sun was blazing brightly overhead and we’d stopped outside a restaurant that seemed to have erupted in the middle of nowhere. I glanced at my nameless companion, wondering if this was one of his creations, but it seemed real enough, and as I followed him out of the car I noticed a sign announcing that they had Foster’s. At that point I was grateful for small favors.

“Nice of you to feed me,” I muttered gracelessly after we’d slid into a booth and my captor rattled off an order to a sullen waitress. “But you might have let me order for myself. The condemned woman should get to choose her last meal.” Though a hot lamb sandwich with gravy and chips wasn’t a bad choice, come to think of it.

“Deal with it.” He’d ordered a veggie burger for himself. So he could kill people but not animals. Great. I sat back in the booth, taking a surreptitious glance around me. He hadn’t used the bathroom since I’d been with him, but sooner or later he’d have to, wouldn’t he? Unless he truly wasn’t human, which I took leave to doubt.

I wondered if I could hot-wire a car. Newer ones might be tricky, but there were enough older cars parked outside the restaurant that I might have some luck, if I could just manage to distract my kidnapper for a short while.

I didn’t know his name. I didn’t want to. For some reason, thinking of him as an abstraction made the situation easier to deal with. If he had a name, like Joe or Tom or Harry, that would make it more real, and as long as it stayed a little otherworldly I could handle it.

When he went to the bathroom I could make a run for it, I thought. I could beg for help from some of the rough-looking customers—surely they’d help a lady in distress. There were two burly ones at the counter, another one toward the back—

“No one will help you.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what I was thinking. “Why not?”

“Because you cannot get up from that seat. You cannot speak.”

What the hell do you mean? I began, and then realized my mouth hadn’t moved. No words had come out, not even a mute squeak of protest. I tried to move, but my butt might as well have been superglued to the booth. I put all my fury and panic into my eyes, but he simply looked away, bored, as the waitress brought a foaming mug of beer. One. For him.

I reached out, planning to either grab it or dump it in his lap, but my hands couldn’t move past the centerline of the table. It was as if there were a Plexiglas sheet between us, thick and hard and invisible. A diet soda had been left at my place, and I found I could reach it. Couldn’t swipe his beer, but in fact I was happier with the Diet Coke.

I waited for him to lift his voodoo spell, but he simply drank his beer, looking out at the dusty landscape, ignoring me. I went from fury to pleading to tears and back again, and it was a waste of time. When my food came I could reach it, but my appetite was gone and I just stared at it.

“I do not care whether you eat or not,” he said, not looking at me. “You have another ten minutes and then we leave.”

I glared at him, a wasted effort. And then I ate, because if there was a chance I could make a run for it, I’d need my strength.

He must have drugged me. That, or hypnotized me. Some way he’d managed to fuck with my mind, convincing me I couldn’t move or speak.

For a last meal, it wasn’t bad. He’d ordered dessert as well, and when the waitress cleared the dishes and brought me a huge slice of coconut cake, my stomach did another leap. I loved coconut cake. How did he know?

I couldn’t very well ask him. I smiled my thanks at the waitress, then ate every single crumb of that damned cake.

The stranger rose. “Time to go.”

My feet were no longer stuck to the ground, but my enforced silence was still in effect. He took my arm in a fairly brutal grip and led me back to the car, and it wasn’t until he shoved me inside that I could speak.

“I have to pee,” I said in a flat voice. It was a lie, but I figured it was my only chance at getting away.

He shot me a glance. “Then I expect you’ll be uncomfortable for the next few hours.”

I subsided, not bothering to try the door. Even normal people could lock car doors from a distance. He pulled out onto the empty road, his expression the same. Empty. Grim. Purposeful. He really was going to kill me.

“What’s your name?” I hadn’t wanted to know, but the silence was driving me crazy.

“Does it matter?”

“Hell, yes, it matters. I want to know why you’ve been following me all these years.”

“I thought you failed to remember beyond the last year or so.”

“I don’t even remember my own name. But I remember you.”

He looked at me then, the deep black emptiness of his eyes chilling me. “Azazel.”

AZAZEL CONCENTRATED ON THE NARROW, sun-baked road ahead. Her cluelessness was beginning to annoy him, but if that was her main line of defense it was easy enough to deal with. As long as she didn’t shift into her real form, his job would be relatively easy. What he couldn’t understand was why she wasn’t putting up a better fight.

She had weapons she hadn’t begun to use, not the least of which was her ability to shift into Lilitu, the storm demon, the birdlike monster who could claw the entrails from a man, given a moment of inattention. It would be useless against him, but she wouldn’t know that. She never remembered.

It wasn’t the first time he’d battled the Lilith. With the curse of eternity on his head, he’d come face-to-face with her in many demonic forms, and each time he’d vanquished her. But never completely.

He’d destroyed other demons and abominations in the thousands upon thousands of years he’d been on earth. Most obviously the Nephilim, as well as others that Uriel had allowed to run free in an attempt to vanquish the Fallen. But the she-demon Lilith was beyond even his control. And he’d waited long enough.

He hated to think of her as female, but now that he was around her he couldn’t continue putting her in the nongendered group to which most demons belonged. Her destructive power was like that of no other female, and he’d always tried to think of her as it. Particularly given the unacceptably prophecy he was determined to avoid. She was dangerously female, and even now he could feel her seductive power.

She hadn’t reacted to his name, but she should know exactly who he was. It was always possible she was telling the truth, that she didn’t remember anything. He’d been watching her for the last five years, and her behavior had been odd, supporting what she said. By the time he’d finally taken her, she’d already lived under four different names in four different cities. He’d assumed it was an effort to avoid him, but there was the slight chance she really didn’t remember. He could sense very real distress coming from her, and he needed to fight it.

Demons were expert at clouding expectations. And most creatures felt distress when they saw death staring down at them. He had no room for pity or second thoughts.

The landscape had gotten scrubbier as the day wore on. They’d reach their destination well before nightfall—he’d have more than enough time to take care of things. He wondered vaguely if he’d return afterward, to see if there was anything left. The idea should have filled him with grim satisfaction. For some reason it was no longer as soothing.

She—it—was doing too good a job.

“Azazel?” she said, obviously trying to sound normal. “That’s an odd name. Is it Middle Eastern?”

“Biblical,” he said briefly.

“My name is Rachel Fitzpatrick.” At his uncontrolled snort, she changed tacks. “All right, so Fitzpatrick isn’t my real last name. Since you seem to know more about me than I do, why don’t you tell me what my real last name is?”

He said nothing. Richard Thompson was on the radio, and he leaned forward to turn it up, wanting his mournful voice and stinging guitar. The moment he pulled his hand away, she reached out and turned it off.

He glared at her. “If you want to be able to move and talk,” he growled, turning it back on, “you will keep your hands off the radio.”

She sat back, folding her hands in her lap. They were normal hands—pretty, even. Odd—she wore no rings, no polish, none of the adornments women had used since the beginning of time. Yet he could almost imagine those hands on his body.

He shuddered, fighting it. It was so easy to forget, to see her as a desirable female, when he’d done his best to submerge his sexual nature. He glanced at her face. Her curling red hair was the same as always, a snake’s tangle to ensnare men, to make them want to bury their faces in the silken strands. He was immune—the moment he felt even the slightest pull, he was able to slam a lid on it. She wouldn’t reach him as she had so many men. He couldn’t let her.

RT was singing “Can’t Win,” which seemed absurdly prescient. When it was over he turned the radio down again, glancing over at her. “That isn’t your name.”

“Then what is it?” she said, her voice breaking with frustration. “For God’s sake, if I’m going to die, don’t I deserve some answers first? At least to know why I’ve been targeted by a killer? I’ve done my best to be a good person. If I did something bad in the past, something that deserves punishment, then at least I should know what it was.”

“Your crimes are too numerous and horrific to detail.”

Her forehead creased, and he wanted to smooth it. She was working her wiles, and he forced down his reaction. “That’s wrong,” she said. “Now I know you’ve got the wrong person. If I committed horrible crimes, I’d know it. I couldn’t commit … atrocities and then live a normal life. You’ve got the wrong person. You’ve got me confused with someone else.”

“I’m not confused.”

“Then who am I? What did I do?” she cried.

And tired of her whining, he finally answered.

“You are evil, a succubus and a murderer of infants. You are a nightmare, a horror, a monster.” He looked into her dazed face. “You are the Lilith.”

CHAPTER THREE

YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR MIND,” I said. My voice shook, even as I tried to be firm. I felt as if the universe were suddenly made of sand and everything were shifting beneath me. “Not that that’s news—I already figured you had to be demented to want to kill me. So who told you I was Lilith? Your neighbor’s dog?”

He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Son of Sam,” I said briefly. “You know, the serial killer? I imagine you’ve studied his work.”

He shook his head. “I am not a serial killer. Think of me as an executioner.”

“Oh, that’s extremely comforting.” I was clenching my hands tightly together, so tightly they were cramping. I was getting nowhere with my whines—I needed to work on this logically. “Look, assuming by some wild chance I actually were this Lilith, why would you want to kill me? She was Adam’s first wife, wasn’t she? Trust me, I don’t feel anywhere near that old. For that matter, I don’t think I believe in Adam and Eve. It’s a nice story, but that’s about it. And even if I were Lilith, is that any reason to kill me?”

“Do I need to tell you all this?” he said, ignoring my protests. “You were Adam’s first wife and you refused to lie beneath him. You ran away, and when he begged you to return you refused. You chose to consort with devils and take the souls of babies, as bloody and terrible as Kali the Destroyer or any of the bloodthirsty demons that have roamed the universe. You fornicate with beasts, you seduce men in their dreams, and you slaughter newborns.”

I stared at him, stunned, and managed to pull one last ounce of attitude from my weary soul, not quite ready to give up. “Honey,” I drawled, “I don’t seduce anyone, in dreams or out. Nor do I fuck animals or murder children.”

“I said beasts. Other demons, neither animal nor human. And you can argue all you want—I know who and what you are, and you have admitted you do not.”

“In that case, don’t you think you should think twice about killing me?”

‘“No.”

There was something implacable in that short, cool word, and I gave up, staring out into the scrubby, deserted brush. None of this made any sense—he might as well be talking about a stranger.

Except for the part about newborns. Why had I felt the desperate need to get as far away as I could from my newborn goddaughter? It had been nothing but instinct, strong enough to make me throw everything away and vanish.

And what exactly had I thrown away? No memory, no history, no family. Could he possibly be right? I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, closing out everything, doubts and stray thoughts and fear. I closed my eyes and waited for what would come to pass.

It must have been hours later when the car came to a stop. I sat up, looking around me with dazed acceptance. The sun was close to the horizon, and we had pulled up to a deserted building that might once have been some kind of farmhouse. The windows, doors, and most of the roof were long gone, and it looked as if no one had been anywhere near it in decades.

Azazel looked over at me. He must have sensed that I was past fighting him. I unfastened the seat belt I’d been wearing, the seat belt I’d been silly enough to wear, considering I was going to die anyway, and slid out of the front seat to stand in the scorching heat of the late afternoon, waiting for him to come around the car.

“Inside,” he said. I went. I was past romanticized visions like Marie Antoinette on the scaffold. Impossible as it seemed, what he’d said made an eerie amount of sense. I knew there had to be some reasonable explanation, but I couldn’t find it, and I was tired of running. If there was any truth to his crazy allegations, and I was beginning to believe there might be, then … then I wasn’t going to fight it. If I had somehow been involved in the deaths of babies, of innocent newborns, I would rather die than risk doing it again.

The inside of the house was empty, nothing but a single chair bolted to the floor in the center of the main room. There were chains and ropes in a neat pile beside it, and belated panic swept through me. “No,” I said. “You’re not going to burn me alive.”

“No, I am not. Sit.”

It wasn’t as if I had any choice. He could move faster than I could, he was stronger, and if I was the demon he said I was, all my abilities had vanished along with my memories. “Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?” At least I didn’t sound as pathetic as I felt. Though why dying with dignity should matter was debatable. If I screamed and cried and begged, no one would know but this son of a bitch. No one would pass judgment.

I sat. He knelt at my feet and began to tie my ankles together, and I looked down at him, at the broad shoulders, the silky black hair that had fallen forward, obscuring his cold face as he prepared my execution, and I had no idea why I moved my hand.

I put my fingers under his hair and stroked his hard face like a lover, my fingers caressing his skin and dancing across his mouth. He froze and looked up at me, his deep-blue eyes burning into mine with such heat that my entire body was swept with arousal, and I swayed toward him, wanting his mouth.

He stumbled back away from me, cursing, and cold reality hit me once more. I dropped my hand and turned my face away, refusing to look at him.

“If you do that again,” he said in a harsh voice, “I’ll strangle you myself. Though you would probably prefer that, would you not?”

He moved back in, grabbed my wrists, and tied them with quick, jerky moves. I ignored the pain—it no longer mattered. I was sickened by what I had done, by the rush of emotion and longing I’d felt for my soon-to-be murderer.

I managed one last salvo. “Prefer strangling to what? You said you weren’t going to burn me. Are you just going to leave me here to starve to death?”

He shook his head, threading the heavy chain around my tied wrists and ankles and clamping it to the floor. He really wasn’t taking any chances. He moved away, and that shaken expression was gone, leaving him stark and cold and beautiful in the waning light.

“I’m leaving you for the Nephilim.”

“And they are …?”

His disbelieving snort would have been annoying under any other circumstances. “They are an abomination. As are you. You cannot be killed by human means, and I prefer not to touch you. The Nephilim are a fitting end for you.”

“And just who are the Nephilim?” I demanded again, not certain I wanted to hear the answer.

“They prey on the unearthly. You. And my kind,” he said. “We have killed most of those that roam the world, but there are still some here in Australia. I am leaving you for them.” He brushed the dirt off his dark clothes, almost as if he were brushing off the guilt of killing me. “It will hurt,” he said. “But it will be over quickly. And you shouldn’t have too long to wait.”

There was almost kindness in his voice. An executioner’s mercy. I watched as he moved toward the door, his figure outlined by the setting sun, and my voice stopped him, for just a moment.

“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.

HE DROVE FAST. HE 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.

HE 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. IT 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.

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.

THE DARK CITY

CHAPTER FOUR

AZAZEL 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.

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

Which meant my heart wasn’t broken when he had to cancel our plans. I plastered an understanding smile on my face. “When are you due at work?”

He glanced at his watch impatiently. “I should be there now.”

“Then go ahead. Don’t waste your time talking to me,” I said, shooing him toward the door. “I’ll be fine.” Of course, he hadn’t asked me if I minded. Perhaps it was time to give up on good Dr. Rolf. Surely I could find someone else to provide a buffer, though I couldn’t understand why I needed one.

I listened to him clatter down the stairs, secure in the belief that all was right in his world, then glanced at my packed bag. I moved back to the big open window, looking down into the garden, and for a moment I thought I saw a shadow near the hedge, something dark and narrow and threatening. Then it was gone, blending with the tall brush. I was getting squirrelly.

Well, if Rolf didn’t want to go anywhere, that didn’t mean I couldn’t. My bags were packed, I had time off from work, and if I stayed I’d start seeing shadows in my own rooms. I was absolutely free for the next four days—much as I loved my strange little apartment, the walls were starting to close in on me.

I grabbed my duffel and backpack and left, trotting down the stairs that Rolf hated and I loved. I always felt like a princess climbing to my turret when I headed up those narrowing stairs. I let my hand brush the dark mahogany handrail in a strange kind of caress. It was almost as if I were saying good-bye.

My tiny Holden was parked in the shade, and I climbed in, tossing both bags into the backseat. I started to back out, then turned to glance in front of me. Something was standing there, something dark and shimmering like a heat mirage, and without thinking I stomped on the gas, shooting into the street and narrowly missing my landlord’s parked car. I shoved the car into drive and took off, not looking back. Afraid to.

My heart was slamming in my chest, sweat on my forehead and palms. I didn’t want to, but I glanced in the rearview mirror. The street was empty—there was no shadowy figure following me. No slippery horror-movie creatures looming up to take my soul. I slowly eased my foot off the accelerator as I headed down the hill toward the traffic, stopping carefully. And then, like a complete idiot, I suddenly forgot I was in Australia, and I took a right turn directly into oncoming traffic.

I heard the screech of tires, the slam of metal on metal, the grinding noise of cars crumpling. Oily smoke billowed into the air. Somehow the EMTs were already there, and I watched as they rushed to my tiny car, the driver’s-side door crushed in.

“No one here!” one of the paramedics shouted. “Someone must have forgotten to put on the parking brake.”

Odd. I didn’t remember getting out of the crushed car. And no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me, when I would have thought everyone would be screaming at me for being such a stupid American.

They were working on getting a woman out of the car I’d hit, but she was talking and looking relatively unscathed, so some of my guilt faded. I turned to the man standing behind me. “She looks okay.” And then I froze.

I had turned to him automatically, knowing he was there, comfortable with it. Ugly reality came roaring back as I looked up into his cold blue eyes. “Azazel,” I said.

He said nothing, simply watching me. I turned and looked at the accident scene as they pulled the woman from the wrecked car. Maybe I could run for it once more. Where the hell was Rolf when I needed him?

And how had I gotten out of the car? I finally turned my back on the accident. “Am I dead?” I asked, matter-of-fact.

“Why should you think that?” His deep voice sent shivers through my body. I remembered that voice. I’d heard it in my dreams. The erotic, embarrassing dreams I’d rejected in the daylight.

“You’re here again.”

“You remember. That surprises me.” He didn’t look particularly surprised. Then again, he had never seemed to react to anything when we were together the last time.

Strange way to put it. When he’d kidnapped me and tried to kill me, the son of a bitch.

I glanced toward the police, who were now directing traffic, wondering if I had time to reach them, to scream for help. His gaze followed mine, but he didn’t move. “It won’t do you any good. They can’t see or hear you.”

I think I knew that. I just didn’t want to believe it. I looked back at him. “I’ll ask you again—am I dead?”

“It is not that easy to kill the Lilith.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped as someone walked right through me as if I weren’t standing there. “I’m Rachel.”

His eyes narrowed. “It is not that easy to kill you.”

“I remember.” I was standing too close to him. Odd that I could feel his presence, practically feel his body heat, yet people were walking through us to get to the accident. I took a surreptitious step back from him. “Have you changed your mind again?”

“It was not a permanent reprieve. But I’m here for another reason.”

I took one more longing look at the police wandering around the accident, then turned back to him. Another step away. “Then explain.”

“We have need of you.” He looked as if he were eating an unpleasant bug as he said it. “I’m taking you out of here. It is against my better judgment.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You have no say in the matter.” He looked bored. “Come.”

I’d managed to move a good five feet from him in small increments. “I don’t think so.” He could probably will me over there, but I wasn’t going under my own steam.

“Come. Now.” His rich voice was soft and deadly.

I still managed not to move. I wanted to, God, how I wanted to. I wanted to cross that careful space I’d managed to give myself and press my body up against his. Against the man who wanted to kill me. I fought it, fought the need to move, glaring at him. It was a battle, one I was determined not to lose. He didn’t fight fair—I believed his claim that he was something other than human, even though he was flat-out insane when he said I was a demon. But despite all his efforts, I wasn’t going to let him control me. The illogical, powerful attraction I felt was probably just one more of his tricks.

I don’t know how long we stood there. He didn’t ask again. He stared at me out of those deep-blue eyes, so vivid in his calm face, and I fought the chill that swept over me. If I gave in there’d be no hope, though I couldn’t begin to define what I was hoping for.

“You are wiser than this,” he said finally. “You know I am your enemy, and it would take very little to kill you. Instead of antagonizing me, you should be trying to soften me up.”

Soft was never a word I would use for Azazel. He was lean, strong, all harsh planes and angles. I didn’t think he’d ever be soft at the wrong time.

Color flooded my face at the thought. Why was I thinking of sex when I looked at this man? If he wasn’t human, he might not even be sexual. And even if he was, it had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t turned on by someone who wanted me dead.

But unfortunately, he had a point. I shouldn’t be antagonizing him. I should be meek and submissive and maybe he’d let me go again. But I didn’t move. Not this time.

To my shock, the merest glimmer of a smile danced across his mouth and then was gone as soon as it appeared. “Your choice.”

And everything went dark.

I had felt this before: being crushed in an unbreakable hold, the scent of warm male and the ocean surrounding me. I didn’t struggle—I remembered it would hurt more if I fought. I held still in the dark, blinding embrace, trying to register everything.

It was crazy, but it felt as if I were flying. Soaring through clouds and space and time, and it felt glorious. Ridiculous, because I hated the very idea of flying. Right now I was simply cocooned in something, my imagination going wild. But I breathed in deeply, the scent of his skin and the sea breeze in my nostrils, and I gave in to the pleasure of it, letting my will dissolve.

HE SOARED UPWARD, THE DEMON wrapped tight against him. She didn’t fight him this time, which made things more difficult. He was better off fighting her. He could feel her head tucked against his shoulder, feel her warm, moist breath against his skin. If she struggled he could drop her, forget about her, and who knew where and when she would surface? But surface she would. Killing a demon wasn’t that easy, even for him.

It hadn’t taken long to find her—in truth, he’d always been aware of her, ready for the day when he could finish what he’d started. Letting her live was unacceptable.

He still didn’t know why he’d changed his mind, gone back for her a year and a half ago. Maybe it was the simple fact that Sarah would have hated what he’d done. Even so long after her death, her gentle influence fought against his more bloody-minded instincts.

And bloody-minded was the term. The Lilith could bleed—he remembered that. Remembered the torn flesh of her wrists and ankles, which he’d healed after he pulled her out of there. He could make her bleed again, and this time no misguided charity would stop him. He wouldn’t have thought there was a charitable bone in his body.

He would take her to the Dark City and, if it came to that, hand her over to the Truth Breakers to find out all her secrets. He would have no choice but to expose himself to her temptation, and he would prove to himself that he could resist her. He would mourn Sarah forever. She was the wife of his eternal banishment. The Lilith was a murderous whore.

No matter what she believed, he couldn’t afford to let himself forget that essential truth.

CHAPTER SIX

I OPENED MY EYES, BLINKED, THEN closed them tightly again. There was something wrong with my vision. Something wrong with my mind as well. My heart raced with remembered fear, and I took deep, slow breaths, willing calm back. I was lying on a bed, and déjà vu swept over me. This had all happened before. Where was Azazel?

I opened my eyes again, slowly, then sat up and looked around me. I was in a bedroom, large, luxurious, with a high ceiling, heavy old furniture, and what looked like a marble floor. I couldn’t be sure, because the room was leached of color. Everything was a strange sepia tone, like an ancient photograph. I looked down at my body, and breathed a sigh of relief. I was in full color, my jeans the same faded indigo as when I’d put them on, my sneakers a dirty white, my arms their normal lightly tanned skin color. Some odd memory made me reach up to my hair. It was the same, long and thick, and I pulled a strand into sight. The same red I’d become accustomed to.

I stroked the coverlet beneath me. It was thick and velvety, despite its gray-brown appearance. Someone must have a really strange decorating sense, to have chosen everything in these colorless shades. Even the marble. I slid off the high bed, and the floor was hard beneath my feet. Was there such a thing as brown marble, or had they painted it?

But I knew paint was too easy an answer. I knew what I’d find when I opened the door, when I pushed the heavy beige curtains away from the tall windows, beige curtains that something told me ought to be pure white.

I turned the knob, hoping for some Wizard of Oz effect of the bright colors of Munchkinland beyond the door. Instead it was another sepia-toned room. No sign of Azazel, and I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief. There were the same tall windows covered with heavy curtains, and I didn’t want to go look. But I was made of tougher stuff than that, and if I was here I might as well know what I was facing. I crossed the room and pushed the curtains aside, then stood there, frozen, staring out into the city.

I had no idea where I was—it looked like a cross between New York in the 1930s and London in the 1890s, mixed with some early German filmmaker’s notions of a dystopian future. And it was all the same monochromatic chiaroscuro. A sort of grayish brown, like an old movie. I held my arm out in front of the cityscape. Still normal, a shock of color against the dark, shadowy lines of the strange place. I let the curtain drop, turning away, and then let out a little shriek. Azazel stood there, watching me.

At least he was in color, or as much color as he had in him. He was dressed in black as always, black jeans and a black shirt, and his long, ink-black hair framed a pale face, his dark blue eyes and high cheekbones uncomfortably familiar. But even his pale skin held a healthier color than the room, and his mouth had color. I stared at it, not sure I wanted to examine my own thoughts, and that mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile.

“So what kind of hell have you brought me to?” I managed to sound no more than casually interested. “Is this purgatory?”

“Purgatory is a mythical construction. This is the Dark City.”

“You could have fooled me.” I looked around me. “So why are we here?”

He didn’t answer, his unsettling eyes moving over me with what I knew was cool contempt. I still couldn’t figure out what I’d done to merit this, why he was so certain I was some kind of demon, but I wasn’t going to ask him. I already knew that he wouldn’t tell me anything.

“Are you hungry?” he said instead, which surprised me. So far he hadn’t shown any particular interest in my well-being.

And I realized I was starving. “Yes.”

He nodded, turning toward the door, and I stared at him speculatively. He was tall, maybe six two, and lean, with wiry strength that was oddly elegant. He wasn’t quite as gaunt as he had been the last time I’d seen him—clearly he’d gotten a meal or two in the interim, though he still could have used a few more pounds. I couldn’t rid myself of the peculiar sense that there was something missing when he turned his back on me. It was a strong back, broad shoulders, and muscled arms. But there should have been something else there.

He glanced back. “What are you looking at?” He sounded wary, irritated. The irritation was nothing new, the wariness a small triumph for me when I was feeling weaponless.

“Nothing,” I said. “We going someplace?”

“You said you were hungry, and I’m certainly not about to cook for you. I know a restaurant.”

“We’re eating in a restaurant like normal people?” I scoffed. “Don’t tell me—we’re on our first date.”

“We are not people, demon. Neither of us. You know that, whether you wish to face it or not.”

“You’re not people,” I shot back. “If anyone’s a demon, it’s you. You swoop down and carry me off to impossible places, places that make no sense. So far I’ve seen nothing to prove I’m anything more than a normal human being who’s attracted a supernatural stalker.”

“Not even when you look in the mirror?”

I’d forgotten about that. The red hair, the warm brown eyes, the secretive set of my mouth, my determined jaw. It still felt strange, even after well over a year, yet oddly familiar. But I wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “I figure that’s you clouding my mind.”

“ ‘Clouding your mind?’” he echoed. “If only it were that simple. Are you coming?” He was holding the door open, and I could see a hallway beyond it.

Maybe he’d be more forthcoming when we were eating. I’d been mocking him about the date, but in fact people tended to relax when they were eating. With luck, he’d start answering at least a few harmless questions.

Though he hadn’t done so in that diner in the bush, I remembered suddenly. He’d simply made sure I couldn’t talk and proceeded to eat, giving me no choice but to follow suit.

We were on the second floor. I followed him into the formal hallway of what looked like a movie set, down the stairs, through the heavy front door, into the street. Gray cars and trucks drove by; gray-faced people filled the streets, with their gray clothes and their gray souls. Azazel seemed like an absolute rainbow as he walked among them in his stark black, but none of the inhabitants seemed to notice that both of us were different.

I could think of a dozen different movies of people living in black and white in a Technicolor universe, and I tried to remember what they’d done to break the spell. Dorothy had traveled in a house and landed on a witch in Oz. I could only wish a house would fall and splatter bits of Technicolor Azazel over the landscape.

Pleasantville? Hadn’t people fallen in love and broken the black-and-white curse? Unfortunately there was no one for me to fall in love with, only my mortal enemy. Besides, I was pretty certain I’d never been in love in my entire life, even during those vast blank periods that made up most of it. I certainly hadn’t loved Rolf. He’d filled a need, imperfectly, and I’d already let go. I wouldn’t miss him.

I rushed to keep up with Azazel. He was barely paying any attention to me. He must have known escape was pretty much out of the question.

“Do those creatures live here as well?”

That managed to get his attention. He glanced back at me. “Which creatures?”

“You know perfectly well which creatures—the ones you were serving me up to last time you kidnapped me. I never actually saw them, thank God, but—”

“The Nephilim.”

I shuddered, my memory still imperfect, my instinctive horror very real. “The what?”

“You heard me. They’re called the Nephilim. Creatures as old as time, angels who fell from heaven and went mad in the process. We have managed to wipe out most of them, but a few remain in Australia, others in Asia.”

“I don’t believe in angels.”

He kept walking ahead of me, but I somehow got the impression he was smiling. Which was flat-out impossible—Azazel didn’t smile. “Nevertheless,” he said in a neutral tone, “that is what they once were. Now they are simply abominations, feasting on human flesh.”

A shiver washed over me. “And who is this ‘we’?”

At that he did glance back at me, raising an eyebrow.

“You said, ‘We have managed to wipe out most of them,’” I said. “Who is ‘we’?”

“The rest of my kind.”

“And your kind is …?”

“None of your business.” He’d stopped outside a gray restaurant, the heavy drapes in the windows making it look like a café out of last-century Europe. He opened the door, his hand looking strange on the sepia knob, and gestured me inside.

This odd city might be devoid of color but the smells in the restaurant were rich and strong, spicy. The maître d’ who led us to a table was very old-school in shades of gray—he was dressed in formal wear, his manner punctilious as he held the chair for me. He glanced over at Azazel. “Will you be wanting to see him tonight, my lord?”

That managed to startle me. Why the hell was he calling Azazel “my lord”? A flash of annoyance crossed Azazel’s face. “I have yet to decide, Edgar. I will let you know.”

“Very good, my lord,” he said, bowing himself away from us. I watched with interest. I’d never seen someone actually try to move in that position, but clearly Edgar had a great deal of experience.

I turned back to … to Azazel. There were other guests in the restaurant, speaking in muted voices, but no one even glanced in our direction. I assumed that to them we looked as gray as they did; otherwise they would surely be staring at us. In fact, anytime other diners glanced our way, they quickly averted their gazes, as if they’d looked at something they weren’t supposed to see.

They all looked beaten down and depressed. Well, if I lived a monochromatic life in a place called the Dark City, I’d be depressed too. I wondered if they were here because they wanted to be, or if, like me, they’d been dragged here against their wills. Not that Azazel would tell me if I asked.

It couldn’t hurt to try. “What is this place?”

“A restaurant.”

I gave up. It was a waste of time to ask. I sat back, biting my lip in annoyance, and again an expression flitted across his austere face that in someone more human might almost be a smile. “That is much better,” he murmured. “I prefer not to have you yammering at me. Your questions will be answered when the time is right.”

“And I don’t give a good goddamn what you prefer,” I replied in my sweetest tones. Again he looked almost amused. “And what’s so damned funny?”

“Your phrasing.”

“Do you want to explain?”

“No.”

I contented myself with a low growl. I didn’t even ask if he was going to let me order for myself this time. I doubted it. It probably only made him feel superior to shut me down, and I was mortally tired of it. I could be just as taciturn as he could, even if it didn’t come naturally to me. Then again, I didn’t know what did come naturally to me.

“I am not convinced that mortally is the right word.”

I jumped. “Don’t tell me you read minds.”

“Occasionally.” He said it as if it were merely a boring incidental. “You are ridiculously easy to read.” Then he added, “You know you’re not mortal.”

I stared at him in astonishment, then remembered I was supposed to be some kind of demon. “I gather so-called demons are immortal. Then how could you kill me?”

“Immortals can be killed only by other immortals. Not by human means or natural occurrences. You cannot drown unless I am the one holding you under.”

“Doubtless a fond wish on your part,” I said. At least I had seen no water around this dark, depressing city.

He didn’t reply as a waiter appeared, laden with plates that as far as I could tell hadn’t been ordered. The food was horrible-looking—gray meat in gray gravy, pale potatoes, and taupe-colored vegetables. Even the wine looked muddy. But it smelled good, and that was all that mattered. I had a choice. I could let him cow me, refuse to eat, sit there in sullen silence. Or I could eat.

I ate. It tasted heavenly, so good I closed my eyes and moaned in pleasure. Normally I wasn’t a big fan of heavy German cooking, but this was so wonderful I’d risk a thousand clogged arteries for it. I glanced at his plate. Not much on it, and I had the sudden horrifying suspicion that they’d given me the wrong plate. His looked much more like the diet plates I’d been subsisting on for most of my life. Whatever life I could remember.

I set down my fork. “Did they give me the wrong plate?”

“No. You said you were hungry. I never eat much.”

I was going to ask him how they knew what to bring, then picked up my fork and shoveled more food into my mouth instead. Two could play this game.

I ate in silence, slowly, savoring every bite, trying not to notice as he picked at his meager food. He wasn’t as thin as the first time I’d seen him. He’d filled out a bit, and there was definition to the muscles of his arms. Strong arms. But I knew that—he’d carried me effortlessly, flown with me …

No, that was wrong. I had no idea where that notion had come from, but it was ridiculous. Just as I finished the heavy meal, feeling not quite sated, coffee and a raspberry pastry arrived in front of me. I glanced up at him. “No chocolate bribes?”

It was a test. “You have never liked chocolate,” he said, giving me another piece of information. I was strongly tempted to demand a hot fudge sundae, but he was, as always, correct. I didn’t like chocolate. I had no idea how he knew these things, the minor details of a human life, but he did. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him.

The maître d’ appeared at our table when we were done, and I expected to see a discreet bill placed at Azazel’s elbow. There was no neat folder in Edgar’s hand. “He knows you’re here,” the man said in an undertone. “He wants to see her.”

An annoyed expression crossed my companion’s face. “She needs time.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, my lord.”

Azazel tossed his heavy linen napkin on the table. Another man would have sighed in frustration. Azazel simply looked colder, if that were possible. He rose, glancing down at me. “Come.”

I was beginning to hate that word in his cold, commanding voice. “I’m not finished.” In fact, I was too full to eat much more, but I was determined to fight him at every step.

“Yes, you are.” He reached down for me, but I managed to keep out of his way, rising and almost knocking the chair over in my hurry to keep out of his grasp. The other customers were watching now, surreptitiously, and I wondered if it was good manners or something about Azazel in particular that made them circumspect. Or perhaps they were just so beaten down they didn’t really care.

I took a quick look around, wondering if there was anyone I could turn to for help. But the moment I tried to catch someone’s eyes, the person turned away as if I were unclean. I huffed with annoyance. I was on my own, but that was no novelty. I’d survived thousands … decades …

No, that wasn’t right. I’d survived years without anyone’s help, and I’d survive this. After all, I’d managed to get out of the last trap he’d laid for me. Granted, it had been by his good graces, though I hated to call it that. His guilty conscience.

This new situation wasn’t nearly as desperate. He wasn’t threatening to kill me, at least not so far. Things had to be looking up.

We made a strange procession, the maître d’ leading the way through a door in the back of the dining room into a maze of dark, narrow hallways, Azazel behind me to keep me from bolting. It was scarcely necessary—where would I go? I tried to ignore my growing panic as we went deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building. If I was about to confront someone who could bend the intimidating Azazel to his will, then this creature must be terrifying indeed.

We finally stopped in front of a large, unprepossessing door. Our guide knocked, then pushed it open, and a none-too-gentle nudge from Azazel propelled me forward.

I found myself in a cozy room with comfortable furniture scattered about, a fire blazing in the fireplace, piles of books on most surfaces. The kind of place one would want to spend a rainy afternoon, I thought, looking around me for the inhabitant.

I hadn’t seen him at first, sitting in an overstuffed chair, at one with the cozy room. He was very old, with silky pale hair covering his scalp and drifting over his ears. He was as colorless as everyone else in this place, and I wondered if the same thing would happen to me and my captor, assuming we stayed long enough. He wore some kind of robe, and there was the comforting scent of pipe smoke in the air. Odd, how cigarettes and cigars smelled nasty but pipe smoke seemed dignified and comforting.

The old man gazed at me out of milky eyes, a pleasant expression on his lined face. “There you are, my dear,” he said, and his accent was British. No surprise—it fit perfectly with the ambience of old books and older brandy. His eyes narrowed as he saw Azazel behind me, and he was patently displeased. “Azazel.”

“Beloch,” Azazel murmured in return with the merest inclination of his head. “This is not a good time.”

“It’s a good time for me,” the man called Beloch said in a sharp tone. “You’ll have to adapt.” He turned back to me, and his smile was both charming and avuncular. If he and Azazel were enemies, then he was clearly my new best friend. “My dear, why don’t you have a seat across from me? It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a lovely young woman visit me in my old bachelor quarters. This is quite a treat. Azazel, pour us both a glass of brandy. Pour one for yourself while you’re at it.”

I’d been right about the brandy. I considered refusing—the idea of drinking anything stronger than wine was not appealing—but I didn’t want this distinguished old gentleman looking at me with the scarcely veiled contempt he directed at Azazel. A moment later Azazel placed a brandy snifter in my cold hand, and I reflexively closed my fingers around the stem, brushing against his skin.

He jerked back, and the brandy sloshed a little.

Beloch made a deprecating sound at such clumsiness. “You may leave us.”

“No.” Azazel’s short, unemotional response wasn’t reserved for me alone, I was glad to see.

Beloch’s mouth tightened. “Then sit in a corner and be quiet.” He must have noticed my worried glance at Azazel, for he continued in a warm voice, “Don’t worry about him, Rachel. He has a very controlling nature, and he doesn’t like bowing to the will of others. Unfortunately for him, I outrank him when he’s in this place, and he’s sworn to do as I command.”

At last, a champion, or at the very least a cohort. Someone with the power and ability to stand up to Azazel’s high-handed ways. I gave Beloch a brilliant smile as I sank down on the ottoman.

“So tell me, young lady,” he said, leaning back and surveying me out of those wintry eyes. “What brings you here to the Dark City? Besides our unpleasant friend over there?”

“I have no idea.” I took a tentative sip of the brandy. Again, the taste more than made up for the lack of color, and the richness of it burned my tongue.

“There is no need for games, Beloch,” Azazel snapped. “You know as well as I just why I brought her here. We need answers.”

“And how do you intend to get those answers if you’re terrified of her?”

Azazel’s snort conveyed his contempt for such a suggestion. “Terrified? Hardly. Even at full strength she would never be a match for me. She insists that she has no knowledge of her powers, but even if she did I’m well equipped to counter any of them.”

“Now, why don’t I believe you?” Beloch said in a silky voice.

I sat very still, cradling the brandy I didn’t want to drink, observing. While they were ostensibly talking about me, they almost seemed to have forgotten my existence, an ancient enmity surfacing instead. Which was fine with me—I had my own skin to worry about. As long as they were fighting, I could stay beneath the radar and try to figure out how to escape.

“You’re terrified the prophecy will come true,” Beloch continued, “so terrified you might have destroyed her before you found out what the Fallen are so desperate to discover. You won’t find out what secrets she holds until you face your fears.”

“Do not be tiresome, Beloch,” Azazel said, unmoved. “I am far older than you are—I never let human fears and frailties affect me.”

This was enough to startle me. If hunky, gorgeous Azazel was much older than the wizened Beloch, then the rules had really gone out the window. But then, I knew that. There was a great deal I knew, simmering just beneath my consciousness, things I didn’t want to remember. Was afraid to remember. It could all stayed buried as far as I was concerned.

Beloch snorted in amusement. “You may be older, Azazel, but you are scarcely wiser. I give you a choice. Take her back and test the prophecy and your resistance to it. Once you know the answer to that, bring her back and I’ll find the answers you need. That, or she stays here with me.”

Azazel’s expression didn’t change, but his hooded glance darted my way, and he couldn’t miss my watchfulness. He didn’t argue, however, rising from his seat and tossing back the brandy with a gesture that brought a disapproving sniff from Beloch. And then he looked at me. “Come.”

God, I hated that word in his deep, cold voice. Everything about him was icy, and I glanced back at Beloch’s avuncular expression, wondering if it would do any good to throw myself on his mercy.

But I wasn’t that naïve. Beloch might seem like a kindly old professor, but there was a hardness in his eyes that he might reserve simply for an old enemy like Azazel, or that might be a clue to his real nature. Either way, I knew enough to think before I jumped from one trap into another.

I rose, setting my barely touched snifter of brandy down and giving Beloch a smile. “It was so nice to meet you.”

For some reason, my words amused him. “I look forward to continuing our association. Don’t let Azazel intimidate you. You have more power than you realize, if you only decide to acknowledge it. I expect it will be very interesting to discover just how susceptible our friend is.”

Not exactly my friend, but I said nothing as Azazel muttered something unflattering, took my arm in his hard grip, and pulled me out of the room. A few minutes later we were out in the dark streets of the strange city, emerging on a lower level from the restaurant near a black, fast-flowing river. Earlier, in what had passed for daylight, the city had been shrouded with shadow. Now it was pitch-dark, and I was suddenly ready to drop. Had it been only this morning that I’d been packing for a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and bright, endless sunshine? And now I was in some strange, colorless universe, once more a prisoner, and the fight went out of me as exhaustion swept in. All I wanted to do was find some quiet place to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

“We haven’t far to go,” Azazel said, and if it had been anyone else, I might have thought he had read my exhaustion and was offering respite. Both things were impossible—he didn’t care what I was feeling, and he would never volunteer comfort. He was my enemy, and I couldn’t afford to forget it.

I didn’t say anything, letting him steer me down the street, past the gray inhabitants with their soft voices and disinterested eyes. I had no idea what Beloch wanted him to do, and I didn’t care. As long as I could collapse in a bed for twenty-four hours, I’d be just fine. I stole a glance at my hard-eyed companion. He’d leave me alone, wouldn’t he? In the past he’d wanted nothing more than to keep his distance, as if I were unclean.

But he hadn’t released my arm, and I made no effort to break his hold as he guided me along the street, back toward the brownstone we’d exited a few hours earlier. There was a strange, perverse comfort in his touch. He was my enemy.

But he was the only familiar thing in this strange world. And for that reason, I wasn’t willing to let him go.

CHAPTER SEVEN

AZAZEL KEPT HIS PACE MEAsured, determined not to give in to the fury that had swept over his body. He despised Beloch and always had, and the feeling was mutual. It wasn’t simply that Beloch was one of the strange, quasi-mortal inhabitants of the unknowable world of the Dark City. Azazel routinely disliked all of the inhabitants—they were like the Nephilim without the appetite. Empty, unreadable creatures, not human nor Fallen nor sanctified, and Beloch, as ruler and high mayor of the Dark City, was the worst of them.

But his power was undeniable for all that it was incomprehensible. He was the one to deal with if you needed to use any of the Dark City’s unpleasant assets. Such as the Truth Breakers. The Truth Breakers were the only beings in existence who could extract the truth from anyone, though their methods ranged from painful to shattering. The most stubborn never survived, and Azazel had seen more than one body explode into countless pieces as the process reached its conclusion, and the memory still haunted him.

He had survived his own encounter with them countless years ago, and so would the Lilith. She was too epic and powerful a demon to be destroyed by them, no matter how brutal the Truth Breakers were. They would extract the truth from her, and he could leave her here in this bleak, empty world, where she could do no harm and he would never have to see her again.

The Dark City had existed for almost as long as Azazel could remember, a mysterious, floating place of supposed sanctuary and peace, though in truth he had no knowledge of who and what came here. He only knew that those who’d been brought were usually broken in the end. But he expected most of them had been human, unable to withstand the rigors the place offered. He’d been called there centuries ago for both punishment and questioning, when he’d refused Uriel’s demands one too many times. He’d survived. Just as she would.

Beloch oversaw the Truth Breakers, as well as everything in the Dark City, and he’d always taken special pleasure in the more brutal methods his underlings employed. He sat in his quarters looking like a kindly wizard while he engineered atrocities that sickened Azazel, who had seen the worst that the creatures could offer.

He was convinced Beloch had wanted to take the Lilith immediately, and he’d known an odd regret. Azazel would have forced her to admit the truth eventually, without turning her bones to jelly and her skin to flakes of mold. He could only hope it wouldn’t have to go that far. Physically she was just a girl. Evidently she could no longer shift into the ancient forms she’d once used, of Lamia, the snake woman who devoured children, or the wind demon with raptor’s talons. No matter how hard he’d pushed her when he first took her to Australia, she’d stayed in this form, even facing death. Clearly she no longer had the gift of transformation. Because she was physically as frail as most humans, she would give up her secrets quickly. He could have gotten them out of her, but in bringing her to the Dark City he had no choice but to do as Beloch commanded.

Now he almost wished Beloch had taken her, gotten it over with. The old man’s sadistic alternative made him furious. He despised the Lilith for the vicious, murdering creature she was, for her power and her wickedness, her cruelty over millennia. But Beloch was right about one thing. He despised her most for the prophecy that held them both, and until he could let go of that rage, a rage he refused to call fear, she would still have power over him.

She’d stopped with her infernal questions, at least for now. She was silent as he force-marched her down the street, no more whats or wheres or whys. He would take her back to the house, shove her into a bedroom, and proceed to get drunk. Beloch had thrown down a challenge, but he was in no hurry to pick it up. And in no mood to test himself.

He loathed the Dark City. It was depressing. Not that that surprised him—not much in creation didn’t depress him nowadays. The raw, screaming pain of Sarah’s death had dimmed to a constant ache, and when he thought of her, which he did often, he did his best to let go of her. She’d hate his mourning. He’d known her so well—if she’d lived out her life normally, she would have had time to prepare him for her loss. Instead, she’d been ripped away by the Nephilim, and Raziel’s wife had taken her place.

At the thought of Raziel’s wife, cold anger stirred inside him. There was nothing he could do about it, and he knew that what had happened wasn’t her fault. He’d even gone so far as to accept blood from her, though he’d refused to use her wrist, insisting that one of the healers remove the blood from her body first. He’d been starving, close to death, when he’d finally returned to Sheol. He would have welcomed eternal darkness, but that wasn’t his fate. Once he died, he’d continue in everlasting torment, judgment for the sin of falling from grace, for loving a human woman.

Over the thousands of years, he’d often regretted that first impulsive reaching for what he wanted. But not since Sarah had appeared in his life. Sarah had made everything worth it.

And this … this thing walking beside him. It was foretold that she would take Sarah’s place by his side, in his bed, to be his consort and wife and rule the darkness with him. But the prophecy was wrong.

She was trying to ensnare him, he knew that much. He could feel the power of her sexuality, the sexuality that had crept into good men’s dreams and seduced them, the sexuality that had filled the beds and pallets of a thousand demons. She was the Lilith, irresistible to most, and it was no wonder he looked at her and thought of sex. No wonder he’d given in to temptation and kissed her when he’d left her in Brisbane. It wouldn’t happen again.

Beloch underestimated him. Azazel had been the Alpha since the fall until Raziel took over seven years ago, and as such he’d chosen the Source, the woman whose blood sustained those who had no wives. He had never thought about finding the perfect mate. When the time came, the right woman had always been there. He’d recognized them, taken them, mated with them, ruled with them. And when one died, he’d simply choose another, loving each one as best he could.

But Sarah had been different from the very beginning. He wasn’t going to think about her, he reminded himself. He just needed to remember that he’d bedded countless women, icy ones, shy ones, hot-blooded sexual ones. He’d performed as he’d needed to, as he wanted to, with tenderness, with passion, with love; but never had one of them held any power over him. Not until Sarah.

The Lilith would hold no power either. He would prove to Beloch and himself that her body was simply a tool he could use and discard, that he would never fall prey to her siren’s lure. He had for a brief moment. He never would again.

The house was just as they’d left it. He hadn’t bothered to lock the place—most of the inhabitants of the Dark City steered clear of him. He frightened them, he knew it. Presumably they looked at him and saw garish color and eternal damnation, and they wanted neither. The denizens of the Dark City worshipped truth and moderation, attraction rather than desire, appetite rather than hunger. He and his kind were anathema to the curbed needs of the Dark City.

He had never stopped to question who and what populated this drab and sorrowful place. It was Beloch’s kingdom, a place out of time, and the shadows who moved here seemed more like lost souls than human or demon. He didn’t care. They were no threat to him or his kind—not even the Truth Breakers or Beloch’s police force, the Nightmen. They couldn’t leave this place; they simply existed. But even here they couldn’t touch him. They could only touch her, because he’d brought her here for their cruel services.

He could smell her. He’d known her scent the moment she’d walked out her apartment building door that morning, the subtle fragrance of her skin. He wondered if she emitted a mating scent, if that was how she’d doomed so many. If so, he was mostly immune to it. He looked at her and wanted her. He knew that. Beloch must think him a fool not to have accepted that simple fact. Everyone should want the Lilith, even a dried-up husk of a man such as Beloch.

But while he wanted her, he hadn’t been tempted to touch her or take her, and he could have, so many times. It would go no further than desire, not action. He wanted her and he ignored it, as he ignored so many of his appetites. Beloch was a fool to think he’d be no match for her or his own needs.

He pushed the buttons on the old-fashioned wall switch in the front hallway, turning on the dim lights that only made the shadows deepen. She looked around her nervously, as if worried about what might be hiding in the shadows. She was foolish. The only thing she had to fear was standing right next to her. At least, until he handed her over.

“Go to bed,” he said gruffly as he released her. His fingers felt warm, almost stinging.

He expected her to scamper away, and indeed, she moved back, out of his reach. But then she paused, and he groaned inwardly. “What did Beloch mean? Why should you be frightened of me?”

“Do you think I’m frightened of you?”

“Of course not,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I’m depressingly harmless. Still, he made it sound like there’s some history between us.”

“There isn’t,” he said, only half a lie. “Until last year we had never spoken, never met. Most people think you are the stuff of myths.”

“Like demons and the Nephilim.”

He glared at her. She was so very different from what he’d expected. Her protective coloring hadn’t fooled him when he’d first taken her, but even in her real form, she was a far cry from a sex goddess. Her breasts were on the small side, the curves of her hips subtle; her chin was stubborn, her mouth tight, her eyes filled with either anger or fear. He’d known sirens—demons and humans, creatures who tried to lure any man into their clutches—and he’d even given in a time or two, for the sheer pleasure of it.

But the Lilith was like no siren or demon he knew. Her clothes were plain and baggy, her face free of paint; she wore no adornment of any kind. It was almost as if sex were simply not a part of her life.

But he knew otherwise. He knew that beneath her drab exterior the heart of a raptor existed, a predator who was ready to claw a man to pieces once she’d mated with him. Lamia, cursed shriek owl; Lilitu, the wind demon, monster of storms. And he was drawn to her anyway.

“Your bedroom is at the end of the hall,” he reminded her. He needed her gone. The scent of her was maddening, elusive, bewitching.

“I’m not tired anymore.” She moved into the formal parlor, taking a seat and looking at him out of those warm brown eyes. “I want to know what Beloch meant. What kind of test is he expecting you to perform?”

He let his eyes drift over her, slowly. He knew what Beloch was ordering, challenging him to do. He wanted Azazel to touch her, taste her, bed her. Azazel was supposed to fuck her and then prove he could walk away from her, turn her over to the shattering destructiveness of the Truth Breakers and then celebrate the destruction of one more demon.

He could no longer fool himself. They would destroy her. She might have demon blood, but she no longer had the ability to change form. She had the frail human body of a woman now, one that would break under the Truth Breakers’ hands. And he would have no choice but to give her to them.

He looked at her and his body stirred, and he despised her—and himself. Every reaction was a betrayal of who he was. He could tell himself it was simply her wiles, her powers, that were doing this to him. But he wasn’t asleep, he wasn’t drugged.

And he wasn’t going to do it. Not tonight, when need vibrated through his body and he wanted to shove her up against a wall and take her. By tomorrow he’d be back in control. By then he could take her to his bed and then walk away, untouched, unchanged. He could expose the demon the only way possible, through the act of sex. And she could no longer pretend she didn’t know what she was.

What it was. “Go to bed,” he said gruffly. “Or you’ll wish you had.”

She simply raised an eyebrow, the foolish creature. It was unwise to underestimate him. He could squeeze the life out of her in moment, break her neck, end her as he’d come so close to doing, more times than he could remember. He could end this farce.

She must have read some of the violence in his eyes. She rose, shoving her hair away from her face, and sighed melodramatically. She came up to him, pausing in the doorway. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be,” he said. Just a taste, just a warning, he told himself through a haze of desire. So she knew what was coming. And before she knew what was happening, he shoved her up against the door and slammed his mouth down on hers.

I FROZE, IN SHOCK, OUT of necessity. His hands were on my arms, imprisoning me. His body crowded me against the doorjamb, and his mouth was hard, angry, punishing.

I would have kneed him in the balls, but he was too close, trapping me between his hard body and the wall. I kept my mouth shut, wondering whether I could bite him hard enough to draw blood, wondering why my breath was coming fast and my heart was racing. It wasn’t fear. I’d told the truth—I was no longer afraid of him. I remembered his kiss from the dockside, the rush of desire that had suffused my body.

As it did now. My pulse raced, my skin heated; I was wet and ready. I thought, Fuck it, and opened my mouth for him, taking the sweet invasion of his tongue with a shock of pleasure, and I knew I’d been waiting for this, longing for this without knowing it. Longing for him, my enemy.

His hands slid down my arms to the hem of my loose T-shirt and then up underneath, cupping my breasts in the thin bra I wore. I could feel my nipples harden at his rough touch, and I hated it, hated that I wanted him, that I needed him so badly my legs shook and my hands trembled, and he was hurting me. …

And then, just as I was about to struggle, he gentled, and the kiss became a sweet wooing, a delicious temptation, and his long fingers slid beneath the flimsy bra, pushing it up and out of the way, and I wanted to gasp with the sharp pleasure of those fingers against my pebbled flesh.

He brought his hands up to cradle my head, as impossibly the kiss deepened, and I wanted my clothes off—now. I wanted to strip him naked and feel him inside of me, pulsing and thrusting. I could sense it, anticipate it, feel the thick push of him, and I cried out against his mouth as a small climax startled me.

And then I was shoved away, roughly, and I almost fell. My legs felt weak, rubbery, and I wanted more, wanted to reach out and beg him, wanted everything wicked and impossible and glorious. For the first time in my memory, in any of my twisted memories, I wanted sex and darkness and lust. His push had knocked my head against the doorjamb, but I hid it. I stared up into his eyes and saw the contempt and hatred there, and the desire, the need, vanished. I wanted to shrivel up and die.

“Quite lovely,” he said in an acid voice. “You have the reserved-virgin thing down pat. If we wanted to kick it up a notch, you could try to summon the Nightmen and I could disappear, but I don’t think they’ll come. You have no choice.”

I stared at him. He was doing a damned good job of controlling his breathing, but I had felt him against my stomach, hard. I wasn’t going to look at his crotch, I wasn’t going to look anywhere but his hard, furious face, and his coldness reached into me so that I wanted to shake and shiver. I pressed back against the wooden doorjamb to keep my body still, lifted my chin, and found a cool smile to answer him with.

“No choice?” I echoed, taking the salient phrase from his biting attack. “No choice in what?”

“You are a whore,” he said. “You exist to corrupt mankind.”

I didn’t flinch. It was another of his lies. My memory might be damaged, but my body had known with Rolf—known the frustration, the emptiness. Sex was a necessity for men and a trial for women. “But you said you’re not a man,” I shot back, uncowed. “Therefore you’re incorruptible.”

“That’s what Beloch wants me to prove.”

“Prove that you’re resistant to my so-called wiles?” I laughed, just slightly shaky. “You’ve already proven that.” I ignored the memory of his erection against me. “It’s hardly a great accomplishment. I’m no great beauty, no seductress. It should be fairly easy to resist me.”

He made no effort to come closer, and my heartbeat was beginning to slow. My mouth burned from his, and I wanted to get away from him. “You know that you are impossible to resist. To deny it is a waste of time.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. The idea was patently absurd. “Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

“You know as well as I do. You are not simply some ordinary demon. You are the Lilith, the first wife, the consort of monsters, the succubus who enters men’s dream, the one who smothers newborn babies for pleasure. You’re a monster.”

His words chilled me. His ice finally covered me, trapping me, and I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out that he was lying when I knew that beneath it all there was truth there, somewhere amidst all the great lies.

He didn’t expect any response. He could see the shock in my eyes, knew that he’d managed to reach me. “Go to bed,” he said. “Or I’ll take you there.”

The threat shouldn’t have astonished me, not after that kiss. But it did, it shook me to my soul. Because I despised him. And I would have gone with him, willingly.

Without another word, I left him staring after me. I went, and I hid. From him. And from the creature I was afraid I was.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM. OF COURSE I didn’t. He could just as well have said I was Jack the Ripper. I might have an impaired memory, but I would know if I were the epitome of female evil.

Because oddly enough, I remembered all the stories. The sources of the Lilith myth, and myth it was. Lilitu, the Mesopotamian storm demon. Lamia, the screech owl who devoured children and drove men to distraction, the queen of infertility and predatory sexuality, the queen of the night and the wind. Lamia, the raptor. As well as Adam’s first wife, the one who was cursed and banished to lie with demons and kill children.

I was shivering now, and I didn’t have to hide it. I managed to get back to my room, slamming the door behind me. I leaned back against it, staring around the grayness with numb horror. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

But … I had run from babies, certain they would die if I stayed near them. It had made no sense, but in the snippets of my various lives I could remember what had precipitated my flight. A sick infant. Or the return of the shadows. Of Azazel, watching, waiting to take me. Just how long had he stalked me? How long had he waited before taking me?

I slid down onto the floor, wishing I could weep. I’d never been one to cry—could demons cry? But I’m human! I wanted to scream. I bled, I loved, I hated. I hated Azazel with such a fierce passion that I could burn through the ice that encased him. But surely demons could hate.

There was little else average about me. I had no family, no history. I kept away from men in general, even though they tended to pay me too much attention. If I were some eternal seductress, surely I would have a better sex life to show for it, not the unsatisfying couplings Rolf had provided.

But that was another clue, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t I remember more of the mythology of the first wife? Why had she been banished? It wasn’t eating the apple. That was the crime of the second wife, the usurper, the—

Christ, what was wrong with me? Though as a feminist icon Eve had left a lot to be desired, my cold contempt felt … personal. There was no way this absurd story could be true. If I remembered clearly, those stories ended up contradicting themselves. Some sources saw Lilith as a goddess figure, ripe and loving and powerful, while others saw the devouring demon. Those sources were likely divided along gender lines—patriarchal historians never liked a strong woman.

But why did I know so much about this? Early myths were hardly common knowledge. What had driven me to study these things? If, in fact, it was study and not some ancient memory.

No, he was wrong. I knew that. It was no wonder he hated me, treated me with such contempt. No wonder he thought I deserved execution and nothing more. But he was wrong. He had me confused with someone else.

The more I fought it, the more the truth pushed back. His kiss had awoken something, some hidden memory that I was still refusing to examine. I’d felt it, along with the rush of desire. The truth had come with it, a nagging, hated hitchhiker that I was still avoiding.

The bed across the room looked too big, too far away, too high to climb into. I made an effort to stand, but it was too much. Everything was too much. I curled up on the rug, my hand beneath my face. My eyes were dry, when surely this was a time for tears. But I couldn’t remember crying, not ever. I squeezed my eyes tight, willing them to come, but they stayed dry. And then I simply closed them. If I couldn’t force tears, I could at least force sleep, and I did, giving in to the darkness.

AZAZEL LOOKED DOWN AT THE demon, curled up on the hard floor. She didn’t look like a fabled monster. She looked like a woman, a human being with all the frailties and astonishing strengths of her kind. Love for a human woman had caused him to fall, brought about his hideous curse. The loss of a human woman had brought him to his knees. Women were as dangerous to him as demons, perhaps more so. A sad, lost female could get beneath his armor, touch him when he wanted to be untouchable. He could fight power with power. Vulnerability was a greater danger.

He leaned down and scooped her up effortlessly, settling the Grace of sleep over her when she stirred. He had no idea how his powers would work with her. For all he knew, the Grace would jar her into hyperactivity. But she sank against him, deep asleep as the Grace moved over her, and he carried her to the bed, setting her down carefully.

Nothing he did would wake her now, not for at least eight hours. He worked efficiently, stripping off her clothes, looking over her all-too-human body for signs of the Lilith. Her breasts were small but perfectly formed, and they’d peaked beneath his hands as he’d known they would. The soft curls between her legs were the same red-gold as her hair, and her legs were long, her hips slightly rounded. She had the body of a young woman, not a temptress, and he wondered if he’d been wrong.

He put her in one of the nightgowns provided, fastening the row of tiny buttons up to her chin. Her red hair blazed against the soft gray room, a shock of color, and he brushed a lock of it away from her face.

No. He’d known the moment he tasted her that she was his nemesis, his curse, his doom, his redemption. If he bested her power over him, then he would prove that there was hope. That prophecies could lie, or be changed. He would do as Beloch told him, because he had no choice. He would bed the demon, and he would turn his back on her with no regrets.

And he would be free.

I DREAMED. I FLOATED INTO sleep, wrapped in safety, and I embraced its soft richness, wanting to burrow into the wordless comfort. As long as I stayed there, no one could harm me. Enemies would step back, hard hearts would soften. Ice would melt.

I could feel hands on me. His hands, and I knew those hands had never touched me before. They were hard and cool on my skin, and I wanted to reach out to him, to open my arms and my legs and draw him in, hold him as tightly as I could, to keep the darkness at bay.

And then I drifted further, deeper into the abyss, and I could feel the children, the babies, in my arms. Sweet newborns, sleeping toddlers, helpless infants wrapped in my gentle, protective arms and smiling up at me. I would coo at them, tickle them under the chin, kiss their soft, sweet foreheads and tiny noses, and breath in the sweet baby smell of them.

And I would carry them, oh so carefully, to the same place on the mountaintop, and hand them over into the waiting arms of the mother goddess who had many names, and in my dream I wept for them, the tears that were denied me in life.

I hadn’t killed them, smothered them, stolen their breath. The cruelty of nature and an unreachable god had done that. I had merely been there to comfort them, sing to them, bring them home to the mother goddess until they were ready to be reborn again, this time living out a full life.

Relief swept through me, even in the depths of sleep. I was innocent of the worst of the crimes thrown in my face. The one that had the ring of truth.

I was no temptress, seductress, wizard of sexuality and delight. That truth was twisted as well. I was the essence of desire that could never be fulfilled. I was always searching, searching, for what should be mine. What would be mine for the rest of eternity, though I had no idea what it was. Time was meaningless. Hour followed upon hour, century upon century, and I wandered, looking for what evaded me. A winged creature who would be joined to me, body and soul.

Because I had a soul. No matter what my enemies said, my soul was strong and good, even as I worked out an age-old penance, though my crimes were still lost in the mists of memory. I had been strong against the curses that had pressed down on me. I would continue to stay strong in the face of my enemies.

I stirred, moving in my sleep, and once more I could feel hands on me. They weren’t real this time, though they were the same hands, cool and hard and impersonal as they brushed my body. Then they slowed as his fingertips responded to the rushing heat of my skin, and they slid down the curve of my side, almost absently, as they circled my waist, his palms against me, cupping my hips.

And his mouth followed, his face pressed against my belly, worshipping me, and I arched my back, accepting him, my arms around his neck, my fingers in his long black hair. I drew him up to me and kissed him with the fullness of my heart, and he moved my legs apart, and I was wet and hot and ready, wanting him, needing him.

And then he rolled me over so that I was above him, straddling him, and I took him, sinking down onto the hard thick delight of him, making soft little sounds of hushed pleasure as he filled me. This was what I had spent eternity searching for. This was what made me whole. This man. And the climax shook me, startled me out of the deepest layers of sleep, and I knew I was alone and always had been.

I tried to move against the smooth, soft sheets, but I was trapped beneath a weight of sleep. I couldn’t reach out to him—he wasn’t there. All I could do was lie there and feel the tears burn and evaporate in my dry eyes.

“Lilith,” he whispered against my ear, but I ignored him, even though I wanted to turn and pull him to me. “Lilith.”

And with the sound of my name in my ear, I sank deeper into a dreamless sleep.

WHEN I AWOKE, A FAINT light was coming through the drab curtains, and I could hear the noise of cars outside. There were too few of them to even call them traffic, but the muted sounds of motors were unmistakable. I was still in the Dark City. I was still Rachel.

My crazy dreams were only to be expected. He’d kissed me. I could still feel the heat and pressure of his mouth, taste him. It felt as if I’d somehow taken part of him inside me and there was no way to get rid of him.

The night, his words, were a jumble in my head. A test, he’d said? His harsh kiss had made no more sense than his words—he hated me, he wanted me dead. Why in God’s name had he kissed me?

And then I remembered the feel of his erection, hard against my stomach. I knew there had to be some other meaning. Maybe he’d simply needed sex and was responding to the only female in the house. Maybe he’d managed to convince himself that I was some kind of sex goddess, though that would have taken quite a stretch of his imagination. I could remember his long fingers on my breasts, teasing the nipples into fierce arousal. A sex goddess didn’t wear 34B.

I had dreamed about her. Dreamed about the demon goddess who inspired fear and hatred among men. I had known her in my dreams, a lost woman of strength and anger, a mother and a lover and a goddess and a … was she a whore? Or was that simply part of the lies men told?

The lies that Azazel believed. But then, he was a man, wasn’t he? For all that he said he wasn’t human. He had a dick, one that got hard. He was a man, with all men’s frailties and lies.

The dream was fading now, like mist in bright sunlight, burned away, and I couldn’t recapture it. It seemed to be what passed for late afternoon here, and the room was filled with shadows. I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, but the shadows and gloom remained despite the glow of the light. I looked down at my body, just to reassure myself that I was still in living color, and I froze. I was wearing a stark white Victorian nightgown, all eyelet and ruffles, buttoned primly up to the neck. Those hands had been no dream, and I skittered up to the top of the bed, wrapping my arms around myself protectively, as if I could belatedly keep his hands away.

Azazel had come into this room and stripped the clothes off me, dressed me in this absurd thing, and put me in the bed. I didn’t imagine for a moment that anyone else had come in to perform these services. He wouldn’t care that stripping me would be humiliating. Then again, why should he care whether I slept on the floor or in the bed? He would be happier throwing me in a dungeon.

He believed I was Lilith. And he said Beloch had sent us back so Azazel could prove he could resist me, and then he’d said I was irresistible. Clearly that wasn’t true. He’d kissed me, kissed me more deeply than I’d ever been kissed before, and then shoved me away, even with the proof of his body pressed against mine. He could have had me, easily. For all that I thought sex was no pleasure for women, I would have stripped off my clothes and lain beneath him without a word of protest.

But he hadn’t wanted me. Despite the stiff cock against my belly, despite the hunger of his mouth, he hadn’t wanted me. So much for being an irresistible siren.

And then when he’d stripped me, I’d been asleep, but I could almost see his steady, efficient hands as they’d removed my clothes. His cool, assessing gaze as he looked at my naked body. And then covered it up, from my chin to my toes, in this enveloping nightgown.

I was no threat to him. Hadn’t he already proven that? That he could kiss me and walk away, that he could strip me and cover me again with no more concern than a eunuch? But he wasn’t a eunuch.

We should be done by now. Whether or not he still believed I was Lilith, he knew that he wasn’t affected by my so-called seductive powers. He looked at me and saw Rachel, ordinary except for the flame-red hair. He looked at me and turned away.

I slid down off the high bed and went searching for my clothes. They weren’t there—just a pile of gray-brown jeans and T-shirts, the usual. I didn’t want to dress like the ghosts of the Dark City. I didn’t want to turn into them.

But I couldn’t wander around in a Victorian nightgown, and nudity was no option. I reached for the clothes in the huge wardrobe, the underwear in my size, the jeans that fit perfectly. And saw, to my relief, that once they were on my body the color slowly leached into them. They soaked up color like a paper towel set next to paint—the jeans were sand-washed indigo, the T-shirt a deep rose that oddly enough didn’t clash with my hair. I pulled the neckline out to look down at the bra next to my body. Pale lavender, with delicate lace. O-kay.

I headed for the door. It wasn’t as if I had any choice. I was starving, and staying holed up in this room got nothing accomplished. I left the room, and safety, behind.

He was in the outer room waiting for me, as if he’d known I was about to emerge. I felt color rise to my face, the memory of that searing kiss between us. But then, he’d pushed me away from him, passing whatever test he’d given himself, and I should be able to meet his gaze with no embarrassment.

I straightened my shoulders, waiting for him to say something. He looked at me out of hooded eyes, and I couldn’t read his reaction. And then he spoke.

“Come.”

I ground my teeth. “Where?”

“You slept a long time. You must be hungry. I was planning to feed you.”

“Are you taking me back to Beloch?” I tried to keep the hopefulness out of my voice. Pleasing me was the last thing on his agenda.

He shook his head. “The time has not yet come. There’s food in the dining room.”

“And where is that? Oh, I know. ‘Come,’” I mocked him. “Lead on. I’ll put up with you for the sake of food.”

“You have little choice in the matter, demon.”

“Don’t call me that!” I snapped.

“What do you expect me to call you? A made-up name for a made-up human?”

I didn’t bother arguing. “Yes. My name is Rachel.” I pushed past him, anything to keep him from that one sepulchral word that made me crazy.

“Second door on the left.”

I halted, not daring to hope. “You’re not coming with me?”

“I expect you can manage to feed yourself without my help.”

“And then do we go to Beloch?”

He hesitated, and I had the strange thought that there was something ugly that he didn’t want to tell me. But then, he was my enemy. Almost everything he told me was ugly. “Nothing has been proven yet.”

“Oh, come on! I think it’s more than clear you find me eminently resistible, as do most men. And for your information, I can do without them, and sex, quite happily. So you’ve got the wrong girl for your sex demon.”

He made no flattering protest, of course. He simply turned away, and I watched him go, aware of a strange sense of desolation. It was illogical and had nothing to do with the reality of the situation. I wanted him gone.

The food on the sideboard in the dining room was abundant, brown, and horrible-looking, but I managed to use my sense of smell to choose what I wanted. I wondered if there actually was a kitchen in this house, or whether some caterer had brought all this food. For that matter, were we alone in the house? I’d heard no footsteps, no voices. If only Azazel and I were in residence, there would be a lot of food going to waste.

It wasn’t my problem. I ate slowly, knowing that once I was done I’d have to face Azazel again. When finally I could eat no more, I pushed away from the table and went looking for him.

He was nowhere to be found. It took me long enough to search the place—it was large and rambling, with living rooms and parlors and a library, dining rooms and breakfast rooms, and upstairs half a dozen large bedrooms, including my own. As far as I could tell, Azazel hadn’t set foot in any of them.

Fine, I thought, heading for the front door. It was already afternoon and I was damned if I was going to sit around waiting for him.

The front door was locked. I shook it, beat against it, but nothing helped. Enraged, I headed for one of the tall windows, but they were locked as well. For one moment I considered throwing a chair through the glass and escaping that way, but I didn’t quite have the nerve. I would sit and wait, and when he came back I’d tear into him.

If he came back. Maybe he was planning on being gone a long time. There was too much food in the dining room—maybe it was supposed to last for days. Maybe he wasn’t coming back at all, and I’d slowly starve to death. No, I could throw a chair through a window before that happened. Assuming the glass wasn’t some kind of bulletproof composite that would resist being smashed by an angry woman.

I headed back into the library. The walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases, filled with colorless texts of every shape and size. I moved closer, and started reading the titles. Maybe I could find a mystery to keep me occupied. Though it looked as if there was nothing from the current century and very little from the last.

It was in plain sight: Angels and Demons. I grabbed it, hoping for Dan Brown. Instead it was a heavy tome, ancient and thick, with an engraved cover. I almost shoved it back, then thought better of it. Maybe I could do a little more research on Lilith.

It opened to the right page. Someone else had been reading this, but the pages were too worn for it to have been caused only by Azazel. Maybe they’d been bringing hapless women here for decades, convinced each one was Lilith.

If so, what did they do when they discovered the women were simply human? Would it be any better than what they planned for the real Lilith?

I curled up on one of the sofas, pulling my knees up under me as I opened the huge volume in my lap. I started reading, pleased to discover my dreaming memory had been correct. The Lilith myth originated in Sumer, and had been found in some shape or other in most religions, up to and including Christianity. For some sources, she’d been a benevolent mother goddess, to others an all-devouring Kali-esque demon. And everything in between.

But nothing sounded right. None of the citations had the ring of truth, though a bit here and a bit there sounded reasonable. Still, history and mythology were written by men. It was no wonder they got it wrong.

Lilith was fated to wed the demon Asmodeus, and together they would rule a secret place and bring forth many demon children. Great. If they thought they were marrying me to a demon, they had another thing coming. Though they were probably not looking for a happily-ever-after for the monster they imagined me to be.

But why in hell weren’t they out looking for this Asmodeus character? If Lilith’s future was to pop forth tiny demons, wouldn’t getting rid of the prophesied father take care of the problem?

Men, I thought with disgust. Typical that they’d go after the woman.

I was about to turn to the front of the book, to read about the demon Asmodeus, when I heard the front door open, and I knew he’d returned.

He walked past the open library door, heading up the stairs without a word to me. I shot out of the room, catching up with him halfway up the stairs. “I don’t like being locked in.”

He paused, then turned back to look down on me. Mistake, I thought. If I accosted him on the stairs, I should somehow make it to a higher step. He already had a tendency to loom over me; giving him the added advantage of the stairs made it worse.

“It’s not safe for you outside,” he said.

“And you’re concerned about my safety? Since when?”

He considered it. “Point taken. It won’t be locked again. Go wherever you wish.”

I looked up into his pale, set face. “Good,” I said.

A moment later I was gone, into the night, into the Dark City, without a glance behind me.

CHAPTER NINE

A ZAZEL HEARD THE DOOR SLAM, and he cursed, slowly and savagely. He needed to let her go. If she ran afoul of the Truth Breakers or the Nightmen, then so be it. He didn’t want to be looking out for her. It was bad enough that she still lived, though he had no one to blame but himself for that one. He wasn’t going out into the night, chasing after her, protecting her from all the midnight horrors of the Dark City.

And there were many. The rules were strict in this shadowed place, and the demi-souls who lived here couldn’t stray far without earning punishment.

He couldn’t decide whether she really was as innocent as a newborn lamb or simply stupid. She had no idea just how lethal Beloch was, or she would keep her distance. She had no idea that the man she thought of as her worst enemy was, in fact, her only hope of putting off the inevitable. If it were up to him, he would see that she didn’t suffer, though he wasn’t sure why. She’d made countless souls suffer over the endless years she’d lived. She deserved some rough justice. He just didn’t want to be around to witness it, and he was beginning to realize that there would be no escape from the Dark City. Not for her.

He would have believed her last night, that she was a far cry from a sexual icon, if she hadn’t kissed him back. If the feel of her hadn’t sunk into his very bones, shaking him to the core. He wanted her and he despised himself for it. Beloch was right. He might be a sadist, overseeing the Dark City with the same cruel implacability with which the archangel Uriel oversaw the whole of creation, but he was indisputably wise. As long as Azazel ignored her siren call, he would never be certain that the prophecy was a lie, that he was invulnerable to her mythic allure. Resisting the seduction of a simple kiss wasn’t proof enough.

Maybe the Nightmen would take care of her. Those savage creatures, who scoured the streets of the Dark City and wiped them clean with the blood of those who displeased them, would show no mercy. Even Beloch’s demands might have no influence.

Or the Truth Breakers might find her and bring her before Beloch. He hated to think of her reaction when she discovered the scholarly old man was a torturer par excellence. He had no intention of being around when that happened.

He had no idea how far they’d go in extracting the truth from her. For all her fierce, hidden spirit, her body would break quite easily—they would barely have to hurt her to get what they needed. But he realized now that they wouldn’t be likely to let her go once they were done with her.

He paused at the top of the stairs. He ought to go back down and lock the door. There were things crawling in the alleys of the Dark City that he didn’t want entering the house, but a simple lock was enough to keep them out. He started back down, walking through a faint drift of scent, her skin, her hair, and he cursed again. He moved faster, racing down the stairs, and a moment later he was out into the night, going after her.

Could she see the sickness and decay beneath the gray-brown of everything? Or would she take things at face value? Wouldn’t she wonder why she still had a healthy color?

The Nightmen were lurking by the sluggish black river that flowed through the center of the city. He could sense them, hear them, and he knew that she couldn’t have made it that far. He heard a faint scream of agony, but it came from a man’s throat and he dismissed it. At least she was safe from them—by her scent, he could tell she’d headed in the opposite direction. She was smart enough to avoid danger. The problem was, danger came at you from every angle here in the Dark City.

He turned his back on the screams and sobs of the dying man and followed her. He’d find her. And when he did, he’d drag her back to the house and handcuff her to the bedpost until Beloch was ready to send for her.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A nice night for a walk. The air was warm with just the faint hint of crispness that presaged autumn, and a soft breeze brushed against my skin. If only the shadows didn’t lie so heavily on everything, leaching the color from the buildings I passed, from the trees overhead, the cars, and, most of all, the people. They were sepia ghosts of another time, and no one met my eyes or responded to my tentative greetings. It was almost as if they were afraid of me, but that was impossible. I was harmless. Wasn’t I?

Because if I held any latent power, if I were the monstrous demon that Azazel declared me to be and the mythology books described, then surely I would have wreaked vengeance on everyone and everything in my path, including Azazel. I would have ripped him apart if I’d had the ability.

But the people I passed scuttled by me in their gray ghostliness, heads down, and finally I caught a young woman by the arm, forcing her to look at me. “Excuse me, but do you know where there’s a public park?” I had the sudden longing to kick off my shoes and feel grass beneath my feet, even if the grass was gray.

She’d frozen at my touch, her eyes wide with fear, and I wondered if she’d been struck dumb. If I hadn’t been holding her gently, I think she might have run.

“We don’t have parks,” she said finally, her voice low and totally without inflection. Almost like a computer-generated voice.

“Then is there a place outside where I could sit for a while?” I persisted.

“It wouldn’t be a good idea.” There was just a trace more life in her voice, something that sounded like concern. “We don’t … you shouldn’t …” She stopped, clearly frustrated. “You should go home. You should leave here. You don’t belong here.”

Curiosity had always been my besetting sin—after all, I’d been a reporter in Brisbane and, I suspected, elsewhere as well. “Who does belong here? Who are you?”

She looked startled, and even more wary. “We earned our places here. It is our reward.”

“Doesn’t look like much of a reward,” I said with my usual lack of tact.

“You should go away. I mustn’t be seen talking to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a stranger. The only reasons strangers come here are bad.” She tugged at her arm, and I released her.

“But—”

“I can’t help you,” she said. “I shouldn’t even warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“Leave the Dark City if you can. If you cannot, stay in your house and don’t wander the streets at night. Whatever you do, keep away from the Nightmen.”

“Who are the Nightmen?” I was trying to hold on to her with questions, but she was edging away.

“The police. Keep away from the river.”

“What—”

But she’d already gone. I stared after her, one more gray person shuffling through the city streets. She’d been young, but her eyes were empty, her clothes shapeless and drab. Instead of finding answers, I was left with even more questions .

Keep away from the river, she’d said. I could do that. In fact, if I had any sense, I’d turn around and head back to the huge old house and my unpleasant companion.

The problem was, he wasn’t unpleasant. For all his cool, cynical reserve, a fierce bond of heat and longing flowed between us, set free by his mouth on mine, his body pressed up against me. He felt it as well as I did, and it made no sense. We hated each other.

But even so, I was horribly afraid that if I went back there, if I went back to him, we would be past kissing. I would lie with him, I would take him inside me, I would …

No. I’d written about women who fell in love with their abusers. I wasn’t going to let errant hormones get in the way of reason. I wasn’t going to let him touch me again. And the longer I stayed away from him, the stronger my resolve would be.

Stay away from the river, she’d said. It wasn’t that far away—I could smell the water on the night air. I’d turned around to head in the opposite direction when I heard the screams.

The sound was horrifying, chilling me to the bone, the raw, terrified sound of a man in such horrible pain that I wanted to cover my ears. The few people still out on the streets seemed totally unconcerned, unaware of the fact that someone was being murdered, and I wanted to grab them and shake them.

I seized an elderly man’s arm in a punishing grip, surprised at my own strength. “Do you have a cell phone? We need to call nine-one-one! Someone’s being murdered.”

The man was looking at me in terror. “Leave me alone!” he cried. “Go away!” And he managed to pull free, taking off down the street.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath. So it was up to me. I started running in the direction of those screams, which had now moved on to sobbing pleas for mercy, racing past the gray people out for an evening walk, totally oblivious to the horror going on.

I was furious, and I shoved more than one out of my way in my desperation to reach the poor man in time. The sound was getting closer, and there was another noise beneath the screams, the ominous snick of sharp metal, and I could smell blood, as thick and evocative as the food scents had been in this drab place. I could see the dark ribbon of the river up ahead, and I sprinted the last two blocks, narrowly dodging a brown taxi that looked like it came from the 1930s; the noise stopped abruptly, leaving the air thick with silence.

I came to a stop at the edge of the river. The streetlights overhead illuminated a deserted landscape. Not even the heartless city strollers had ventured this far, and the only sound was the heavy rush of the river, black in the moonlight. I’d ended up in the last place I wanted to be.

I peered around, but the victim was gone, and I knew without question that I was too late. I stood frozen, staring, as a man appeared furtively from a nearby doorway, a hose in one hand, and proceeded to spray down the dark wet pool of liquid on the cobblestone walkway before he scurried back inside. The smell of the brackish water couldn’t quite wipe out the scent of blood, and the huge dinner I’d eaten threatened to make a reappearance, especially after my desperate run. I swallowed, trying to calm down.

There were benches lining the waterside, even though no one was taking advantage of them, and I sank down onto the nearest one, my legs shaking. If I’d had any doubts about the kind of place Azazel had brought me to, they had now settled into an unhappy certainty. This place was wrong.

I could think of only one place where I’d felt safe. Beloch’s. I tried to remember the name of the restaurant, but I hadn’t paid any attention when following Azazel there. And the streets had all looked the same as I’d raced through them. I’d never had a particularly strong sense of direction, and I’d be hard-pressed to find my way back to Azazel.

Not that I wanted to, of course. Except, sitting there on the bench, I had no idea where I would go.

I smelled them first.

An awful thought, but that sense had been heightened as my sense of sight had been depressed, and I could smell blood, and human sweat, followed by the sound of footsteps, the muffled quiet of voices drawing nearer, and I knew without question that I was in even worse trouble than I’d been before.

Someone had been killed within a few feet of me, and I’d decided to sit down and think about things in the place I’d been warned against? Some people are too stupid to live, Azazel would tell me, and for once I agreed. I glanced at the fast-flowing river, but there was no escape there—water held more terror than whoever was approaching. I jumped up, tensing to flee, but it was already too late. They’d seen me.

I’d automatically braced myself for something like the Nephilim, but the group of men who appeared looked quite ordinary. They wore dark uniforms with high-necked collars and walked in military formation, straight at me.

They carried swords and knives, not a gun in sight, and I wondered whether I could outrun them. Probably not. Besides, why would they want to hurt me? I was just a harmless young woman sitting by the river, enjoying the night air.

Of course, I was a different color than they were, drastically different, which might be reason enough. I held very still, stiffening my back, ready to offer a friendly explanation, when the huge man who was clearly the leader of the group spoke.

“Gut her.”

Those swords were unsheathed in an instant, and before I could move they encircled me, blocking off all avenues of escape. I just stared at them stupidly, noticing how shiny the blades were in the moonlight. They must have cleaned them after they killed that poor man, I thought, and then I snapped out of it.

“How dare you.” The words came from me of their own volition, in an icy, regal tone that shocked them almost as much as it shocked me. The men froze, looking to their leader for encouragement.

But the surprise lasted only for a moment, and then they were advancing on me, and it was those blades or the river. I preferred the blades. “I’m a guest of Azazel’s,” I said in a more normal voice, but it didn’t slow their determined approach. A sword sliced past my face, just missing me. “Beloch wouldn’t like it if you hurt me!” The last came out on a tiny scream.

“Beloch.” The leader spoke the name, not as a question, just a word. And this time the words worked. “We’ll take you to Beloch,” he said finally. He was a giant of a man, with broad shoulders, brutal hands, and empty eyes. “And if you’ve lied, we’ll show you no mercy.”

As far as I could see, they hadn’t been about to show me any mercy in the first place, but I simply nodded, not wincing when two of them grabbed my upper arms and force-marched me away from the river. I felt something trickle down my face and onto my T-shirt, and I realized the saber had been closer than I’d guessed. I made an attempt to reach up and wipe the blood away, but their grip on my arms made such a move impossible. All I could do was let them march me through the now-deserted streets of the Dark City.

We approached the restaurant, now closed, of course. They took me in through the lower level, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I recognized slightly familiar ground. They pushed me into the building roughly, then shoved me into some small, dark closet, locking me in.

Okay. I was only slightly claustrophobic, and that mainly went for MRIs and caves. Not that I could remember any MRIs or caves, but I must have encountered them at some point. I leaned back against the wall, reaching up to check my face.

I was still bleeding, but the cut wasn’t deep, and it wouldn’t leave much of a scar. Figuring I was safe for the moment, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and carefully cleaned the wound, using the back of the shirt to soak up the blood so I wouldn’t look too gory. It stopped bleeding after a while, and I pulled the T-shirt carefully back over my head. Sudden exhaustion swept over me as the last day and a half caught up with me. Humans weren’t made to live at this high pitch of stress, and I was human. I was tired, tired of being afraid, tired of being brave anyway, tired of wondering what was going to happen to me. I leaned against the wall, then slid to the floor, putting my head on my knees, shaking. No tears. Why couldn’t I cry? Surely I had more than enough reason to cry.

I reached up and touched my eyes. Dry. Maybe I was born without tear ducts. It was just as well—tears were a sign of weakness and I couldn’t afford to show any. I leaned my head back against the wall, willing myself to relax. Staying at this high pitch of anxiety wouldn’t do me any good. I took a deep, calming breath, centering myself, and felt my body relax.

“Do not tell me you’ve fallen asleep.” An amused voice broke through my self-imposed reverie, and I opened my eyes to look up into Beloch’s kindly face framed by the doorway.

I smiled back at him, relief flooding me. I yawned and rose, stretching. Everything was going to be fine. “There wasn’t much to keep me occupied,” I said in an unruffled voice.

“I must apologize for the Nightmen. Our crime problem is small but virulent, and you were down by the river where the criminals tend to lurk. It was a good thing you thought to mention my name. I shudder to think what might have happened otherwise.” He looked over his shoulder, and there was a faintly querulous note in his voice. “And just where is Azazel? Why didn’t he accompany you? He would have made certain you didn’t wander where you shouldn’t have, and no one would have come near you.”

“I went out without telling him.” I didn’t stop to wonder why I was shielding him. There was already enmity between the two men, and anything I did to further that would presumably aid me.

Beloch held out a thin, gnarled hand, and I took it, propelling myself upward. He was an old man, and I figured he would topple over if I really used him to get up. There was a light of amusement in his rheumy eyes, as if he knew I’d been sparing him, but he said nothing.

“I have tea and cake waiting for us in my study, my child,” he said. His fingers had caught mine in a grip that was surprisingly tight, and I wanted to pull away, but there was no polite way to do so. He led me down the utilitarian hallways, hallways I sensed ought to be painted the universal industrial green, toward the heavy wooden door of his study. He held it open, and warmth poured out, physical and emotional. Beloch fussed over me like a grandfather, settling me into a comfortable chair, covering my legs with a lap robe, and handing me a cup of Earl Grey.

I hated Earl Grey. The smell of bergamot reminded me of old women and disapproval, but I drank anyway, glad of the warmth. “What time is it?” I asked, only vaguely interested.

“We don’t keep track of time here the same way people do in the outside world,” Beloch said, settling in the chair opposite me. To my surprise, a cat jumped into his lap and settled there, and he stroked it absently with his strong, gnarled fingers. The cat turned to look at me for a moment, then settled back on its master’s lap.

Odd. I loved cats. And yet I’d looked at this sepia-toned cat and felt an instant revulsion.

“You’re admiring my lovely Lucifer, aren’t you?” he said. “He’s quite beautiful, is he not? Such a sleek, lovely coat.” His hand stroked the shiny fur.

“He’s gorgeous,” I said politely, only the truth.

“I feed him a diet of raw meat. I find it not only improves his health but it brings him more in tune with his atavistic nature. Of course, it makes him quite savage with other people. I would suggest you don’t pat him—you could lose a finger.”

I laughed politely, assuming he was kidding. But I looked down into the cat’s face and wondered.

“I thought I might have them make up a room for you here,” he continued. “I had hoped that Azazel … well, he has certain things he needs to work out, but since it appears he’s unable to deal with them, you may as well stay here.”

That was just what I wanted. So why in the world was I trying to come up with objections? I wanted to be here. At least, I should. I cleared my throat. “I don’t think Azazel has anything in particular to work out. Apparently he needs to prove that he isn’t attracted to me. He’s done that in spades. I don’t think he wants me dead anymore. I think he just doesn’t care. As for finding me attractive, that’s simply ridiculous.”

A faint smile curved Beloch’s mouth. “I think you underestimate your charms, my dear.”

I smiled back, still feeling vaguely uneasy. “You’re very kind, but as far as Azazel is concerned I might just as well be a … a Nephilim.” I used the word deliberately, wondering if Beloch knew it.

He seemed to. “And you hate him as well?”

“Of course. He’s kidnapped me twice, maybe more, if I could only remember. He tried to have me killed, he keeps me prisoner, and he never answers questions. He won’t talk to me at all.” The last argument sounded rather lame compared to the others, but in truth it made me crazier than all the other offenses.

Beloch said nothing for a moment, stroking his self-satisfied, finger-eating cat. “To give him his due, he’s had a sad life. His wives keep dying. I believe he’s still mourning his last one to an excessive degree.”

I was suddenly very cold. “What happened to her?”

“To Sarah? I believe she was murdered.”

Oh, shit. Was Azazel some kind of Bluebeard? He didn’t seem like a serial killer, but then, how would I know what a serial killer was like? They could be quite handsome and charming, couldn’t they? Azazel fit the former—when considered dispassionately, he was absolutely gorgeous. But charming he was not.

“Er … how many wives has he had?”

“You’d best ask him. Though he may have lost count.”

I no longer bothered to hide my alarm. How could I have been so stupid? Stupid because I had felt his mouth on mine and responded, stupid because for a brief moment I had wanted him, really wanted him.

“Maybe I’ll skip that.”

Beloch chuckled. “But why waste our time talking about Azazel? I’d rather talk about you, my dear. About your lives and loves, your memories, your dreams.”

My lives? Just how much did he know about me and my past? I had the sudden, unbidden suspicion that he knew more than I did. Yet that was impossible.

Then again, no one could know less about my past. “I’m surprised Azazel didn’t tell you. I know almost nothing about my life. I’ve got some odd form of amnesia.” I didn’t tend to use that word for it, but it seemed like a nice, reasonable explanation for something that felt much more sinister.

“Amnesia,” Beloch echoed. “My poor child. But you know, we’re quite advanced here in the Dark City. We have very effective ways of helping you to remember almost anything.”

I must have looked doubtful, for he laughed. “Don’t look so worried, my dear. It’s simply a form of biofeedback.”

For some reason, a shiver ran down my backbone, but I managed a cheerful smile. “I think I’ll pass. If my past is even close to what Azazel thinks it is, I’m better off not knowing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know the old saying: ‘The truth shall set you free.’”

I blinked. “That’s an interesting concept. I’ve never heard it before. Who said that?”

“Someone after your time, child,” he said with a soft laugh. “Let me order some more tea. Yours must be cold by now.”

I glanced down into the tea leaves floating at the bottom of the bergamot-scented sludge. They looked like drowned tree limbs after a hurricane. I looked up and managed a smile. “I’ve had enough, thank you. Too much tea makes my hands shake.” I set the delicate cup carefully on the table beside me.

Beloch simply nodded. “Then perhaps I’ll introduce you to—”

The door opened with no warning knock, and Beloch’s gentle face darkened with displeasure as he surveyed Azazel in the doorway. “You finally decided to come after your charge?” he said in an icy tone. “You’re too late.”

But Azazel was looking at me, and there was a blazing intensity in his eyes. Blue eyes, deep and vivid, so different from the muddy grays and rusty blacks and browns of this sepia-tinted world. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he snapped. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I love you too,” I said sweetly, but the mocking words fell oddly flat, making me uncomfortable. “I went for a walk down by the river, and some people found me and brought me here.”

“People?” he echoed.

“The Nightmen,” Beloch supplied. “You’re lucky she’s still alive. If she hadn’t given them my name, she would have disappeared, and you’d have a hard time explaining yourself. Apparently your name had no effect on them.”

“This is your element, not mine,” Azazel said.

“True enough. And my word is law.”

Azazel moved between us, blocking my view of Beloch. “It is. Which means you should think carefully before you make a pronouncement. What is more important? Vanquishing me, or her?”

Silence, and I wished I could see Beloch’s face. “You make an excellent point,” he said finally. “And I must say, it’s not an easy decision. The leader of the Fallen, or the first female … when, if I wait a few days, I can have you both.”

“I would hardly think you would settle for less.” Azazel’s voice was silken, persuasive.

“What I find interesting is why you’re suddenly set on keeping her, when before you wanted nothing more than to dump her. Have you already begun to lose?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” There was contempt in his voice, and I wondered how Beloch would respond. Unfortunately, all I could see was Azazel’s tight rear end in black jeans. Which wasn’t a bad view. “I didn’t wish to hand her over the first night, though I would have acquiesced if you’d insisted.”

“Would you have?”

“You rule the Dark City. As you have said, your word is law. But I have my own curiosity about her, and about the prophecy. If you take her now, I will never know the truth.”

“Perhaps I enjoy the idea of you spending eternity wondering,” Beloch suggested in a voice far removed from that of the courtly old gentleman who’d served me tea.

“Perhaps knowing my weakness would be an even greater punishment.”

Silence. “Again, I wonder why you’re seeking to lose with such determination. It does seem like the wisest choice would be to deny what you’re wanting so desperately.”

“Hardly desperation,” Azazel said in a voice devoid of emotion. “It is your choice, of course. I merely offer it as an intellectual exercise. If you take her now, I will simply return to Sheol and forget about her. Perhaps that might be the best answer after all.”

“Do not attempt to play games with me. You will lose.” There was another silence. “Take her. And I use those words deliberately. If I were you, I wouldn’t let her out of your sight. If she were to run afoul of the Nightmen again, I expect everyone would be very distressed, in particular your friends back home.”

“She won’t escape again.” He turned, and I could see Beloch’s face now, looking as sulky as a child deprived of a toy. And then he caught my eye and smiled.

“Don’t worry, my child. Azazel won’t hurt you. He wouldn’t dare. He has something to prove to himself where you’re concerned, and I know you have a generous spirit, enough to allow him to find the answers to what’s troubling him.”

I wasn’t sure of any such thing, but I didn’t argue, rising gracefully. Azazel hadn’t moved away, and he was too close, intoxicatingly so. God, if anyone was a sex demon, it was Azazel. I only had to look at him and I felt my insides melt.

He took my arm in a hard grip, and I wondered if I’d end up with bruises. If I had any sense I’d throw myself on Beloch’s mercy—the comfort and safety of the library versus Azazel’s dangerous presence. But I knew I wouldn’t. I knew I would follow Azazel wherever he led me, and I didn’t know why.

We were at the door when Beloch spoke again, and his words sent ice into my veins. “Don’t look so worried, my dear Rachel. Azazel won’t hurt you. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky. It’s not every women who gets to fuck a fallen angel.”

CHAPTER TEN

WHAT WAS HE TALKING about?” I demanded as he led me from the building.

“Be quiet. We will discuss this when we get home.”

“We don’t have a home,” I snapped. “And I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain this.”

“Yes, you are.” He was right. His grip on my arm was unbreakable, and I’d already had experience with his iron will. He would knock me out, cast some weird spell over me, do anything within his power to make me comply, and his power was impressive.

He led me past the uniformed men, who were clustered near the river as if waiting, and I could feel them watching us. We came to an abrupt halt when their massive leader moved in front of us.

It should have been ridiculous—compared to Azazel’s lean, wiry frame, he was huge, overpowering. He should have frightened me more than Azazel ever had. But there were different kinds of fear.

“Where are you taking her, my lord?” The honorific sounded sarcastic to my ears, and Azazel’s fingers tightened even more around the soft flesh above my elbow.

“To the house on Cedar Street. Beloch has put her in my custody. I regret having to disappoint you.” Sarcasm dripped from his words, and the man’s eyebrows snapped together.

“Why would he do that? She was promised to us.”

“You’d best ask him, hadn’t you?” Azazel said, but I could see the alarm in his blue eyes. “Besides, wasn’t she to go to the Truth Breakers first?”

“We would have her when they finished with her.”

“You know as well as I that there’s usually not much left after the Truth Breakers finish.” He seemed to have no idea what effect those words were having on me.

“An excellent point. Hence my concern that he’s letting her go with you. She should stay here.”

“Again, discuss it with Beloch.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“Then stand aside.”

For a moment the large man seemed to vibrate with rage, looming before us. And then he nodded curtly and backed off. “I’ll set a guard outside the house,” he said. “So you don’t run the risk of losing her again.”

“Very kind,” Azazel murmured. “But unnecessary. She won’t be going anywhere without me.”

“Until you hand her to the Truth Breakers.”

I could feel his hesitation, though I doubted the captain noticed it. “Until I hand her to the Truth Breakers,” he agreed smoothly. And with a none-too-gentle tug he pulled me into the endless night of the Dark City as shadows closed down around us.

Until he handed me to the Truth Breakers, who didn’t leave much when they finished with you. Had he rescued me from the Nephilim simply to turn me over to the Dark City equivalent? As he ushered me through the deserted streets, I glanced around for any possible avenue of escape. If I got away from him, I was no longer sure where I’d go. I already knew the people who lived here would be no help, and I was beginning to have the strong, if belated, suspicion that Beloch wasn’t the cozy, absentminded professor he appeared to be.

“Don’t even bother,” Azazel said beneath his breath. “You wouldn’t get ten feet. There are Nightmen stationed all around, watching us, and I expect they will be there from now on.”

I jerked, startled both by the thought of them watching and by the knowledge that Azazel, again, had read my mind. Though I supposed it would be easy enough to guess what I was thinking as my head swiveled back and forth. I dug in my heels when we reached the old brownstone, but it did me no good. He simply hauled me up the steps, shoved me inside, and slammed the door after us, locking it.

“Not that it will do any good,” he muttered. “Enoch can get in anytime he wants to.”

“Enoch?”

“Your new admirer. The captain of the Nightmen. He’s not the best enemy to make.”

“He hates you.”

“Yes. And now he hates you as well.”

I sighed. “Well, aren’t things going just swimmingly. So tell me, what the hell did Beloch mean?”

“We’re better off talking upstairs.” His hand was no longer clamped on my arm, and I wondered if he’d continue to force me if I held back. I had no intention of it. I wanted answers, and this time he was going to give them to me, though I thought he was about as much an angel as I was a prehistoric sex goddess.

He started up the stairs and I followed him. I could always kick him in the head and escape, no matter how many Nightmen were lurking around the house.

One of the doors was open, and the high bed, similar to mine, was rumpled. This had to be his room, and I tried very hard not to show any reluctance as I walked in. After all, we were both adults—we could hold a discussion in a bedroom as well as in a library.

There was an uncomfortable-looking Victorian sofa at one side of the huge room, and I went and took a seat, perfectly ready to cross-examine him.

He raised an eyebrow, and I almost thought I saw a quirk of amusement at his formerly stern mouth. I had the sudden feeling that he didn’t hate me as much as he had, though I had no idea what had changed his mind. He settled into a wingback chair that stood at a right angle to the sofa.

“Why did he call you an angel?” I launched right into it, not waiting for him to control the conversation. “You’re not my idea of a gentle cherub watching over people.”

“I’m not,” he said flatly. “I’m fallen.”

For a moment I didn’t move. This I could almost believe, looking at the unearthly beauty of his pale face, the cold anger in his tightly wired body. “When?”

“Before time was calculated.”

I racked my brain for the snippets I’d read. “Are you Lucifer?”

I’d managed to startle him. “What do you know of Lucifer?”

“Not much. He was the first fallen angel, wasn’t he? God’s favorite angel, who became too arrogant and fell from heaven to become Satan.”

I could practically see the wheels turning behind his cold eyes as he decided just how much to tell me. “Yes and no,” he said finally. “He was God’s favorite, and his name means Bringer of Light. As for being arrogant, that arrogance was simply questioning God’s choice to destroy men, women, and children for one man’s sin, as God had done so often. Lucifer asked questions, and for that he was banished to eternal torment. As for Satan, he is simply an artificial construct used by men to explain the actions of God and the archangel Uriel.”

“You’re telling me God is Satan?”

He sighed, clearly annoyed. “I am telling you Satan doesn’t exist. He’s made-up.”

“So are fallen angels,” I shot back.

“I’m far too real,” he said. “Touch me.”

I tried not to jerk away at the thought. I’d touched him already, and the feel of his smooth, supple skin beneath my hands was disturbing. “Never mind. I believe you.”

“So aren’t you going to ask me about the other part of what Beloch said?”

“I don’t remember.” A complete lie. I remembered exactly what he’d said, and his words had sent a shiver through my body, though not, I had to admit, a shiver of revulsion.

“He said it’s not everyone who gets to fuck an angel.”

That same heated shiver sliced through me. I chose my words carefully. “I presumed he was being facetious.”

“And yet you didn’t think he was being facetious about the angel part.”

I leaned back, summoning every ounce of control to appear relaxed and faintly curious, when my entire body was tingling. This wasn’t an intellectual discussion. This was going somewhere, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go along. Then again, I might not have a choice. “Why don’t you explain it to me? Everything. Such as why you’re planning on handing me over to people who aren’t going to leave anything when they’re done with me.”

He didn’t even blink. “I wish I weren’t forced to give you to the Truth Breakers. I’d much rather find out what I need to know without bringing them into it.”

“What do you need to know?”

“It’s really quite simple. I need to know what you know about Lucifer.”

“I already told you—”

He shook his head, and his silky black hair danced against his pale face. “I’m not talking about the tired mythology you’ve parroted to me. The Lilith knows where Lucifer has been interred. You were imprisoned nearby, as a punishment for questioning the word of God.”

“I guess there was a lot of that going around. Is that why you fell?”

He didn’t even blink. “No. I was the second to fall, along with twenty of my friends. We had been sent to earth to teach humans about metals and farming, and we made the dire mistake of falling in love with human females. The God of that time was an angry, vengeful entity, and we ended with eternal damnation.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “That was the last thing I expected,” I said finally. “I would have guessed you didn’t even know the meaning of love.”

He looked at me, and for a moment I couldn’t move, caught in the deep, fiery longing in his rich blue gaze. Yearning, sorrow, and the pure dark heat of sex flamed in his long, slow look, and I felt shaken inside, my assumptions shot to hell. His expression seared me, and for a moment I could feel my body quicken in response.

And then sanity returned as his lids lowered and his expression grew cool and distant. I quickly tried to change the subject. “What do you mean, ‘the God of that time’? Are you going to try to convince me there’s more than one?”

“There are as many gods as people can envision, but in the end they’re all the same, the Supreme Being who finally granted humankind free will and then stepped back to let them flounder on their own.”

“That’s not so bad, is it?”

“No, not compared to the harsh taskmaster who created the world. But he left the archangel Uriel in charge to enforce his word, and the results have been … less than optimal. There is no chance of forgiveness or redemption, merely eternal damnation.”

“So you’re damned?”

“As are you. Raziel leads the Fallen now, and he bade me bring you here to the Dark City to find out what you know. I have no power in this place. Sooner or later I will be forced to hand you over to the Truth Breakers, and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re ruthless and unstoppable.”

I stared at him in surprise. “Why would you want to do anything about it? I thought you wanted me dead.”

He looked uncomfortable. “I have my reasons. But in truth, as long as you lived far away and your life didn’t come in contact with mine, I was willing to wait a few hundred years.”

“I’m not going to live a few hundred years. I’m human.”

He made a sound of disgust. “There’s no hope for you as long as you keep up this game. You’re not human, and haven’t been for millennia, not since you defied God and were cursed. By the end of the week, the Truth Breakers will take you and you will be destroyed, and I can’t change it.”

“So why are we even having this discussion?”

He leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes, and I watched the still, elegant planes of his face, the high cheekbones, the narrow nose, the angry, tempting mouth. “There may be a way out.” He spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear him.