“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.