Demon

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.

“No.” Though I hadn’t seen him move his lips, the word was, sharp, definite.

“I told you—”

“You told me people will die,” he said in a bored voice. “The only one who is going to die is you.”

His cool words should have chilled me, but I’d already figured out I was a lost cause. “Look,” I said patiently, “you can do anything you want. Stab me, strangle me, shoot me—I don’t care. Just do it miles away from the city.”

I suppose I should have looked him over more carefully to see if I could find a weak spot, but I was too wound up thinking about Amanda. No more, I thought. For God’s sake, no more babies.

“We are in Australia,” he said.