Demon

by Kristina Douglas

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.

  C HAPTER N INE

  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 afrai
d 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 bl
ades 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.