Demon Angel

everything is healed, or made better, or stronger. You're still practically blind; I may still be barren."
    He nodded, unable to do more.
    She grinned. "But we'll buy more anyway." Scooting down, she laid her head on his chest. Her fingers circled his flat bronze nipple, and they both watched as the nub puckered. "I am good," she said. With a self-satisfied laugh, she relaxed against him and let her palm rest on his abdomen.
    They lay in silence in the darkened room, until she finally said, "The nightmare—it was Seattle." A harsh breath ripped from him; though she didn't raise her head to look at him, she shook it in denial of his assumption. "Not you slaying me. My father. The bargain."
    He waited; eventually, she turned her chin against his breastbone and met his eyes. He slid his arm around her, pulled her closer to him so he could read every nuance of her expression. Her breasts were a soft pressure against his chest, the bulk of her weight supported by her forearms, denting the pillow on either side of his head.
    "The man who shot Savitri—do you regret his death?"
    The man who'd killed Savi's parents without reason or guilt? Had murdered others as well? Would have killed Savi, simply for being able to identify him? "No," he said hoarsely, forcing it out. "The method. Using my Gift in that way. He shot himself of his own will, but I could have made certain he was caught, convicted—tried under human law—yet I did not." Each word scraped his throat like broken glass. "And we should not be executioners. Of demons, nosferatu, even vampires: aye, for there is little alternative to contain them but death. But Guardians should not execute humans, lest we become tyrants and think ourselves above them."
    She touched his neck, he felt a tug as she slid her fingers up to toy with the short curls against the pillow. "You can sign with your hands. It's not as secret as you Guardians think." Her smile was wry, her gaze steady—and tinged with fear. "Are you certain you can take me?"
    It wasn't sexual, that question—he'd claimed there was nothing that could make her reject him, but she apparently thought whatever she was going to tell him would change his mind. Or perhaps it was what she'd just done.
    His arms tightened around her. "I'm certain," he said, unwilling to let go to sign. Pain was preferable to that.
    "I enjoyed it." She focused on her fingers, gently twisting a short lock of hair behind his ear. "When I first began, I enjoyed it. The first one was in Greece: a husband who had killed his wife for bearing yet another daughter. The second, a woman who'd tortured and killed her male slaves. A father who'd raped his daughter, then killed her when she became pregnant. On and on. And I tormented them until they took their own lives. I thought of myself as one of the Furies, a servant of the gods— not answerable even to the gods—and I enjoyed it for over a thousand years. Not because it served Lucifer, but because I thought they deserved it." She took a deep breath, met his eyes again. "I still do."
    "Enjoy tormenting them?"
    She shook her head. "That wore thin before I met you. And though it was still deserved, I no longer had a taste for it. In that you are right; we have no place in this modem age to be executioners. To assist, perhaps, but not to judge." Almost absently, she began rubbing her toes up and down the length of his calf as she spoke. "But I still enjoy the… the game of it. The challenge of trying to make the impossible seem an everyday occurrence, the extraordinary seem normal. That's what I did with them; I took their fears, paranoia and guilt, and used my powers and deception to draw them out—without ever letting them realize it was something outside of themselves. And that is the only part of my job that I enjoy now: coming up with explanations that, while sometimes absurd, at least were believable to someone who'd never seen a demon, a vampire, or a Guardian. Explanations that made sense within the context of the modern world."
    He fought to hide his smile. Did she think he hadn't known this? That he would ask her to be something she wasn't—had never been? "So you are saying you could never be a suburban housewife." The words came out as a rough whisper.
    "Yes," she said quietly. "There is truth in the mark Lucifer left on me: I will always be Lilith."
    And she thought he would turn away from her because of that? That he wouldn't stay with her? He briefly wrestled with the