Demon Angel

at her head. Instinctively, she ducked and threw herself at his legs to knock him off balance. He staggered back into the TV stand; Lilith rolled to the side and leapt up onto the bed next to Sir Pup.
    Probably a mistake; though it offered height, her feet sank into the soft mattress. It would slow her down. "Crossbow," she said, and the stock immediately landed on her palm—perfect placement. She closed her fingers around it; the skin around her knuckles felt uncomfortably tight, raw from the harsh soap and endless scrubbing.
    Hugh lifted a brow as she raised the weapon to her shoulder and took aim at his throat. "The bolts are still drying on the table."
    A quick downward glance confirmed the truth of it. The weapon wasn't loaded. They would ready it and the gun— bullet in the chamber, safety off—before they left, but she should have been aware of the crossbow's state before calling it in. Beelzebub couldn't hurt them, but if he managed to get past them they'd lose their chance to get the information they needed. There couldn't be any mistakes. "Shit," she said, sinking to her knees beside the hellhound. "That would have been very, very bad."
    He nodded and dragged his fingers through his hair. "The venom didn't coat the bullets well."
    "We just need enough to slow him down. A trace amount will do that." She ran her hand under Sir Pup's jaws; no swelling or abnormal heat. The incisions had closed and healed within the first half hour, but it had taken her twice that time to let him move from the bed, to let herself be certain he was no longer hurting.
    Hugh watched her. "How did you manage to befriend a hellhound?"
    It wasn't a casual query; he was leading up to something. Though she feared she knew what it was, she stroked the length of the hellhound's back and tried not to lie. "Eight years ago, I went through the Gate and there was a pack of hounds waiting. I was bit, once—halflings and humans are immune to the venom, so I wasn't paralyzed—but still injured badly enough that I'd probably have been killed. Except he was in the pack and managed to fight through and hold the others off. So I took him back through the Gate with me."
    Sir Pup licked her hand, and she waited for the next inevitable question, dreaded it. She stole a glance at Hugh; yes, he was weighing her response, listening to what she had left unsaid.
    "He must have known you before to have protected you," he said finally. "You spoke of a Punishment that he'd managed to avoid; did you help him in that?"
    Dammit. "Yes."
    A muscle in his cheek clenched before he asked, "What kind of Punishment did you suffer?"
    "The normal kind," she said flatly and slid off the bed. Her suit lay folded atop the dresser, but she only picked up her shirt, shrugging it on before turning to face him. His unreadable expression made her chest ache; he'd closed himself off from her. He hadn't hidden anything since the night at her apartment, and she hadn't realized how dependent she'd become on the transparency of his emotions.
    In the past, he'd hidden from her to protect himself. Had she hurt him so badly now, or did he hide to protect her?
    "No," he said, shaking his head. For a moment she thought she'd been completely unguarded, had said it aloud, until he continued, "I don't know what 'the normal kind' is, Lilith—and Beelzebub will use it against me if he can. He mentioned it before, and I could not separate truth from lie; I was not prepared for it. It will be like charging in with faulty weapons if he can twist my emotions, yet you could prepare me for whatever he might say."
    He shoved his hands into his pockets, and she could read that easily enough: he was angry, on the edge of violence. He wanted to move, but he forced himself to stay in place.
    She turned away, laid the crossbow on the table. He was right, of course; she had to tell him. Beelzebub would use it. "Dismemberment. Burns. Eyes and organs taken," she recited. "They heal, or grow back, so it doesn't matter much. The worst is the contraption they make to keep the blood circulating." She couldn't look at him, so she busied herself refilling the clip with ammunition. "If the blood is gone, you die—and their fun is over. So it's collected and pumped up to a cistern. It has a hole in the bottom, and if they put your neck in the hole with your head inside, it plugs the hole and the cistern fills and they don't have to worry about it, because you drink or drown in it… either way, you ingest it