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.