“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.