Demon Read Online Free PDF Page B

human female much more cruelly. The Fallen were left alone, simply to serve as couriers for souls between death and the hereafter, cursed to subsist on blood. The Lilith was takenup by demons and forced to lie with them, and she’d disappeared.
    He would hear of her—stealing into men’s dreams and leaving them drained and near death during the Middle Ages, leaving infants lifeless in their cribs—but then she would vanish again into obscurity. This time she would be gone for good, and the Fallen would continue with their endless quest to find the First. Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, entombed in a living darkness, waiting for them.
    After the death of Azazel’s beloved Sarah, the Fallen’s stronghold had become not a haven but a prison, and he’d left Sheol in search of the demon destined by a sadistic Ultimate Power to be his bride. To destroy her would be to destroy one more source of evil in this misbegotten world—and ensure that that particular curse never came to pass.
    The speedometer was climbing, but the road was empty, and if he lost control he would walk away. Nothing could kill him but fire or another otherworldly source—the Lilith, the Nephilim, Uriel’s host of angels, who were more like Gestapo storm troopers than seraphim. But no one would put him out of this pain that had slid from unbearable to merely numbing.
    He heard the unearthly howl, ululating as thelast spike of sunlight shrank below the horizon. He was too far away—there was no way he could actually hear the Nephilim as they caught the scent of her and moved in—but the sound shrieked into his mind, and he could see her, the tangled red curls, the pale skin and soft mouth, the frightened eyes. The eyes that called to him. The soft mouth that moved him more than he wanted to admit.
    He slammed his foot on the brakes.
    The car went into a spin in the swirling dust, coming to a stop sideways at the edge of the road. He soared upward, smashing through the metal roof as if it were aluminum foil, straight into the rapidly cooling air.
    The Nephilim were already advancing on the deserted house. He slammed through the remainder of the roof, bits of lumber and debris coming down with him as he landed a few feet behind her. He folded his wings swiftly and moved toward her.
    She sat absolutely still, and her eyes focused on him, on the knife in his hand, as he stepped in front of her. “Decided to do it yourself?” she said in a voice that didn’t hide her fear. The Lilith was afraid of nothing, not even death. Could he have been wrong about her?
    The groans and grunts of the Nephilim as they converged on the house were chilling, and their stench preceded them, the filth of decomposingflesh and ancient blood and maggot-ridden organs. She could hear them as well as he could, and she was trembling.
    He slid the knife through the ropes. He looked out the empty frame of the window and could see them approaching. He would be no defense against so many, and he could simply stand there, wait for the monsters to take both of them.
    There was no time to find the key to the lock that held her chains. He yanked, shredding the chains, pulled her out of the chair, and shot upward into the night sky, the howls of the Nephilim following them into the darkness.
    H E LANDED LIGHTLY ON THE deserted highway, her body limp in his arms. The car was where he’d left it, the metal roof peeled back as if a firecracker had exploded inside. He angled her into the backseat and quickly ripped away the shackles he hadn’t managed to unlock. Her slender wrists and ankles were raw and bleeding—she must have struggled after he left her. It wouldn’t have done her any good—he’d used iron chains on purpose. Only iron could chain a demon, and she would have been helpless.
    But supposedly she didn’t know that. She claimed she knew nothing about who and what she was, and the torn and bleeding flesh almostseemed proof of that. He closed his hands around her ankles, so