She blinked quickly, gave a watery smile. “Do, or do not. There is no—”
“God,” he groaned before she could finish. “No more. I’ll try.”
“But you’re going running now.” She drew back to look at him. “Aren’t you?”
“I have to.” He clenched his teeth, wishing he could lie more easily to her. A glance at the window and the darkness outside made him pause. “But I’ll wait until dawn. And try to sleep.”
CHAPTER 9
For two thousand years, the night had been her ally.
Men’s fears ran shallow in the dark, made their souls easier to manipulate with whispers and dreams. Lilith had learned to use its inky face to mask her own; deception had become her sword, her shield.
But there were others who’d known the darkness longer than she had, and the night betrayed her in favor of an older acquaintance: the nosferatu.
The night, Lilith decided, was a bitch. A bloodsucking, hellhound-whelping bitch. And she was going to enjoy tearing out the hearts of the two bloodsucking, night-loving nosferatu in hungry pursuit behind her.
That is, she was going to enjoy it if she survived.
The line of trees surrounding Lake Merced blurred as she ran; she couldn’t outpace the creatures behind her, but as long as she maintained some distance she could plan her defense and try to think of a way to gain an advantage.
Unfortunately, the nosferatu had superior strength and speed, and they knew it. Delight tinged their psychic scent: her flight pleased them, allowed them to play a malevolent game of cat and mouse.
Nude, hairless, seven-foot-tall cats, against a halfling demon mouse.
Lilith let them play; she benefited from the extra time afforded her. With every step, she learned more about them. The smaller nosferatu seemed just as interested in upstaging his companion as chasing her. The tempo of his gait increased in spurts, as if he occasionally needed to overtake the other nosferatu, to prove his power like a peacock flaunting his feathers.
She could use that against them, if she could only find the right stage for the confrontation.
Turning down a lightly used path, she sprinted away from the lakeside, toward the municipal golf course. It had closed hours ago, and little danger existed that a human might see her demonic form. The open fairways wouldn’t hide her from her pursuers, but without the distraction of the obstacles in the wooded area that kept them marginally occupied, they might reveal more of the rivalry—and weaknesses—between them.
Odd, that they were together at all. She’d never heard of a nosferatu paired with another. Not that she minded; nosferatu-slaying was one of her few remaining pleasures, though an infrequent one of late. She hadn’t seen a bloodsucker in almost a decade. And though she’d returned to San Francisco that afternoon and found the city reeking of nosferatu, she hadn’t anticipated finding one in plain sight. It hadn’t been necessary to track him; she’d been flying over the park, spotted his poor attempt at traveling furtively from shadow to shadow and dived into her attack.
The appearance of the second nosferatu had been an unpleasant surprise. Unprepared, outclassed, she’d run.
It was humiliating.
She reached the seventeenth fairway seconds before the nosferatu and streaked down its length. The instinct to materialize her wings and escape by air grew insistent, but she ignored the impulse—flying limited her maneuverability. She concentrated on the sounds her pursuers made instead, on the flavors of their psyches.
The first one—the peacock—radiated confidence. Unconcerned about losing his quarry, he chased her for the pleasure of it. He did not fear her. Good. She’d take him out first, before he could learn differently. But the effort would leave her open to attack from the second, whose focus hadn’t deteriorated. Though he thirsted for the kill, he remained cautious.
Leaping across a bunker, she landed hard and veered right. Her boots flung divots from the carefully manicured green as she ran up the slope toward the clubhouse. Behind her, she heard one of them slip on the rain-soaked grass.
Idiots.
But bless their worthless souls—she hadn’t been this exhilarated in years: her heart pounded, excitement hummed along her skin. For the past six months she’d been stuck in a podunk town in Oregon, infiltrating a Satanic cult and gathering evidence against the leaders. Their eventual arrests had taken place without a single shot being fired; a travesty, in Lilith’s opinion. All that time—all that paperwork—and no shoot-out.
Unfortunately, the past sixteen years had followed the same pattern as the last half-year. If the nosferatu didn’t kill her, boredom soon would.
God, but her life was shit.
Had she not needed to hear the nosferatu’s progress, she would have laughed aloud at how far she’d descended since the last time she’d died: from a low-ranking, oft-thwarted demon; to a chicken- and goat-sacrificing government lackey; to a bloodsucker’s snack on a putting green.
She wasn’t afraid of death, but she would have preferred to avoid a pathetic end this time.
It was Hugh’s fault she’d come to this. If he’d cut off her head instead of tenderly wrapping her body and burying her, she’d have been free—not fleeing from white, naked creatures who had likely spent every year since Creation in a cave.
Hugh. He probably had a paunch, thinning hair, a vapid blond cheerleader wife, and ten fat kids by now. When she finished with the nosferatu, she was going to find his address and spend the rest of his life tormenting him. No need to wait for her father to call in her debt; for once, she’d be proactive. Hugh had wanted her to move into the modern era? She’d proactively stick her modern FBI-issue pistol up his ass and tell him to dance.
The image broke her control, and she was shaking with laughter when she reached the clubhouse. Backing up against the side of the building to protect her rear, she called in her weapons and waited for the nosferatu.
Judging by the way they slowed in their approach, they hadn’t expected to find her giggling hysterically. Most of their prey probably screamed in terror or cried for mercy.
Lilith was tired of terror and sick of mercy.
Peacock halted fewer than ten feet from her, grinning. His fangs glistened in the moonlight. For a moment Lilith was tempted to show her own, but shifted to her human form instead. The peacock underestimated her; she might as well capitalize on his assumption and appear as weak as possible.
The other nosferatu was not fooled. Unlike Peacock, who disregarded the sword in her right hand, he carefully approached Lilith on her left. Did he not recognize the gun in that hand, or just not fear it? After all, a bullet couldn’t decapitate him, nor rend his heart in half.
“Did you think to escape us, little demon?” Peacock asked, his English absurdly over-enunciated. He strutted back and forth, chest puffed out, and his exaggerated musculature rippled with each step. He apparently hadn’t been out of his cave very long; Lilith hoped the same was true of his companion. “Look, Mondiel, how the halfling threatens us with her steel.”
Not just steel. Lilith’s laughter slipped away, and she repressed her triumphant grin. Ignorant bloodsuckers.
Mondiel materialized his weapon, a bronze battle-axe. Ancient, but just as efficient as her blade. “Silence, Pandibar.” A simple command in the Old Language; it could be an indication of his unfamiliarity with English, or a tactical decision. He might think she lacked fluency in the angelic tongue.
He would be wrong.
“Pandibar?” she echoed in the same language, lacing the name with scorn. “My father has spoken of you. How you cowered behind a frozen mountain on Pluto until the victor was declared in the battle between the demon army and the angel horde. How you, wormlike, slunk back to the Throne and declared your fealty. How you sobbed when He cursed you and the others who abstained from taking a side in that war.” She pointed her gun at Mondiel, and felt no reaction in his psychic scent. “Mondiel’s name is not mocked Below, but we all laugh at Pandibar the Worm.”
&nb
sp; “You lie!”
“Do I?” She did, and the blinding rage that filled him was exactly the response she’d wanted. Now, to blind his companion.
She squeezed off two shots. Mondiel fell to his knees, howling and clutching at his eyes. Pandibar swung around in surprise and disbelief, vulnerable for an instant, and she scythed his head from his shoulders.
Moonlight flashed against bronze. Dropping to a crouch just as Mondiel’s axe sliced the air above her, she twisted, stabbed upward.
And missed. She felt her blade cut through flesh, saw the line of blood appear on his chest, vivid against his pale skin—but steel hit bone and was deflected away from the creature’s heart.
Oh, fuck.
His foot shot out, caught her chin. Luckily, it was only a glancing blow; even so, her head snapped back and pain shot through her jaw and neck. Rolling with the momentum to keep his next kick from taking her skull off, she barely avoided the swing of his axe. It dug into the ground an inch from her left shoulder. Too close.
She levered her legs under her, tried to push herself upright, but his foot slammed down on the wrist of her sword arm, pinning it against the grass. His hand clamped around her throat, fingernails cutting deep. Her gun slipped from her fingers.
Mondiel’s face twisted into a snarl, revealing his canines. His eyes had partially regenerated; glassy white orbs reflected her moonlit face. This was the end, then. Again. She thought she’d be angry, mortified, but instead a fierce pleasure rose.
Lucifer wouldn’t be able to revive her after this. Nosferatu tore their demon and Guardian adversaries apart. Finally, escape from her role. The nosferatu would thwart Lucifer and his plans for her, as she’d never been able to.
Mondiel paused, stiffened. “The Morningstar? Your father?” His hand flexed on her neck with crushing pressure.
Lilith’s eyes burned. Morningstar—the name by which Mondiel would have known her father before the First Battle. Had he arrived just in time to ‘save’ her, to keep his plot alive?
But no . . . Mondiel did not look around; his focus remained intent on her face. She realized she must have been projecting her final thoughts, that Mondiel must have picked the name from her mind.
“You are not one of Belial’s, but Lucifer’s?” The nosferatu ground his foot against her wrist, snapping bone. Lilith dropped her sword, stifling a cry of pain. Her left hand fisted in grass, tore it from its roots. She’d suffered worse than this in silence; she’d not break now. “Did the Betrayer send one of his halflings to kill us? Does he betray again?”
His furious questions barely registered, but the brush of her hand against hot metal did. The gun barrel, still retaining the heat from the two shots she’d fired. She grasped, clutched, until its familiar weight rested in her palm.
Suddenly, with hope in her hand, death didn’t seem as agreeable. She’d only have one chance—a slim chance—but she’d take it.
“Are you Morningstar’s? Are his promises made with doubled tongue?” His blind eyes bored into hers, reminding her for a moment of a poet who’d said her fate and her role were fixed, unchangeable—and of Hugh, certain that the poet had been wrong. Hugh, who’d cut her heart in half.
One bullet might not do the same, but surely ten would.
Cerberus’s balls, this was going to hurt.
She slipped the gun between them, pressed it hard against his breastbone, and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, changing the angle slightly with each shot. As the first bullet whipped through his chest, he tore her throat out. The third, he dug his fingernails into her abdomen, burrowed under her ribs toward her heart. The eighth, he shuddered, fell dead atop her.
She quickly pushed him off to keep his blood from mixing with hers. Her body screamed at the movement; light-headed, too numb to triumph, she curled into a ball and waited for her body to heal itself.
It’d better do it quickly. Morning neared, and the maintenance crew would arrive soon. Finding her like this would be bad enough; seeing the nosferatu might have irreparable consequences. Though their bodies turned to ash at the touch of the sun, she couldn’t depend on their remaining undiscovered until then.
She lay with her eyes closed and dragged a wet breath through her regenerating windpipe. The rush of cool air into her damaged lungs felt like heaven. Her gut slowly knitted back together; in a few minutes, she’d be able to move without her insides falling out.
Lucky that Mondiel had been distracted by her connection to Lucifer. Why had he assumed she’d been one of Belial’s demons? The war between Lucifer and Belial for supremacy over Hell had raged for eight centuries, but both sides hunted the nosferatu with equal fervor and hatred.
The rumble of a diesel engine brought a halt to her uneasy contemplation. Staggering to her feet, she vanished her sword and gun. Nothing could be done about the blood; the nosferatu’s would be destroyed by the sun, but hers wouldn’t—and it would make her sick to carry it in her mental cache. It would be found, investigated, but remain a mystery.
Next time, she promised herself, she’d have more firepower. She’d pull out an Uzi, and the nosferatu would never get near her.
A self-deprecating grin tilted her lips as she hoisted each nosferatu up, her arms wrapped around their waists. She lied even to herself: she’d never give up hand-to-hand combat—she enjoyed it too much, and only rarely had circumstances been so dire.
She’d been fortunate the bloodsuckers had been ignorant of modern weaponry, but she couldn’t depend on it again.
And she had no doubt she’d soon be fighting more. With the death of Mondiel and Pandibar, the psychic stink should have dissipated. Instead, it surrounded her, coming from the city in waves and pulses as if previously shielded bloodsuckers were opening their minds and reaching out for their dead companions.
Six months away, and her city had become infested.
Her unease multiplied. Had the nosferatu, like those Below, decided to infiltrate human society and live among them? Why hadn’t the city’s demons and Guardians sought them out, killed them before now?
She jogged across the golf course, the nosferatu bouncing limply at her sides. She’d dump their bodies in the lake, and then return to her apartment and clean herself up.
She might find the answers she wanted at work; if anyone would know the reasons behind this infestation, it would be her boss. Her grin twisted into a snarl.
God, but she hated her day job.
CHAPTER 10
ASAC Bradshaw’s office reflected its occupant all too well: bland and tasteless. The Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Division of the FBI, Bradshaw was also careful, precise, intelligent—and completely unaware that his immediate superior, SAC Smith, happened to be one of Lucifer’s lieutenants.
And although Lilith suspected that Bradshaw thought her a nutcase, she knew he had no idea how far from normal she actually was.
He listened silently as she gave her account of the Oregon arrests, steepling his chocolate brown fingers as if in deep contemplation. More likely, he was trying to think of a way to take her badge. He’d quietly opposed her methods and assignments since she’d been transferred to the San Francisco office ten years ago, suspecting their legality and her reliability.
With good reason, too. Lilith didn’t hesitate to manipulate evidence when the truth couldn’t be proven through usual means. With demons and vampires involved, truth and lies became distorted; she created an official version that was as authentic as possible.
She doubted that Bradshaw would appreciate hearing that the head of the cult had been a rogue demon posing as a god; Lucifer had taken exception to the rogue’s arrogance, and SAC Smith had given her the assignment. She’d had only to capture and take the demon to one of the Gates leading Below, but bringing down the human part of the cult legitimized Lilith’s presence there.
Why Lucifer didn’t just send a horde of demons in and take out the rogue, she could only guess. Perhaps he enjoyed playing according to human r
ules, and then bending them to his purposes; perhaps it gave him pleasure to infiltrate and act through human institutions.
And perhaps he just relished the knowledge of how much Lilith despised it.
In any case, the favoritism and leeway shown her by SAC Smith hadn’t earned her any friends in the division—not that she needed or wanted any. But she would have appreciated avoiding the type of bullshit she was being forced to endure now.
Still, when Bradshaw closed the case folder and didn’t run through his typical piercing questions in an attempt to locate flaws in her report, she was almost disappointed. She’d created some truly spectacular lies; it was a pity her brilliance would be wasted, accepted without a single argument.
What he said instead was better. “I don’t like you, Agent Milton.”
She stared at him expressionlessly a moment, delighted by the unexpected admission. How she loved it when humans were honest. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” she said. “I shall make acquiring your respect my sole endeavor from this point forth.”
In a twisted way, he already had her respect—not that she’d let him know that. His insight and determination to do right reminded her of Hugh, though Bradshaw lacked the underlying passion that had drawn her so powerfully to the knight. Bradshaw presented her a pale substitute, but it was, at times, an entertaining and challenging one.
He tapped the folder against his desktop, contemplating her wordlessly. “Just so we understand one another,” he finally said and passed the file back to her.
Her smile was genuine. “I think we always have, sir.” Tucking the folder beneath her arm, she stood.
“You’ve put in for time off this afternoon?”
She couldn’t tell him that she wanted a chance to backtrack the nosferatu’s trail through the park and would rather do it during the daytime. “Yes, sir. I have no current investigations, and during my absence my personal affairs—”
“It’s been approved.” He waved off her explanation.
Lilith snapped her mouth closed, disappointed that another lie had gone to waste.
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