Demon Angel

him, and stop his pain. There is nothing left on Earth for him to do but suffer. Waiting only draws it out unbearably."
    Numbness slid over him, brittle, icy crystals beneath his skin. "Perhaps you ought to remain here, and try to convince Colin of it."
    "Perhaps. I have not the time, however, nor the desire to wait and play nursemaid until he returns. I've had enough of that role." She shifted, took on face and body of a Japanese woman in a nurse's uniform. "I saw your Guardians trying to use their healing Gifts among the humans in the hospitals. They were useless, but they continued to try."
    Aye, it must have been useless. A Guardian—even the Doyen—could not heal damage humans inflicted upon each other, whether it was with a sword or a destructive weapon of war and its resulting radiation sickness. Michael would have no better luck healing the consumption that took Winters in this bed. "Why were you there?"
    "For my pleasure, of course," she said, and slipped back into her red skin. "There is nothing quite like the flesh falling from bones outside of Hell, and we do not get any children Below."
    Her shields had not slipped, but he read her lie. How easy it was; for centuries, he had been able to determine truth from lie with the lightest psychic touch—now he no longer needed that touch. Forcing truth, however, still required his Gift.
    But he did not use it; he could imagine all too well what had happened: Lucifer had once again determined she should enjoy the humans' suffering—and what he deemed a delight would be as punishment to her.
    "You did not save any of them," she said softly. "Nor any in • the camps, or the trenches, or in the firebombing—"
    "I could not save them," Hugh bit out. "I cannot stop them if they kill one another of their free will." He swallowed past the bitterness in his throat. "What will save you?"
    Her face was rigid. "Not one such as you. Not a coward who ties his own worthless hands." She turned, leapt out the window.
    Coldness worked its way through him; he'd not known his heart could still beat when frozen.
    That had been truth.
----

CHAPTER 7
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    Seattle
    February
    The bridge shuddered against the gusting wind; Lilith dragged her sodden hair out of her eyes and decided that if Thaddeus White didn't jump to his death soon, she would push him.
    After weeks of whispering suggestions of suicide into his sleep, and twice as long listening to his whining declarations of misunderstood genius, her patience was at an end. The satisfaction of his splattering against the highway below would almost be worth the inevitable Punishment killing a human would bring.
    Almost.
    He whimpered and turned away from the edge. Lilith fought the urge to roll her eyes and let them glow bright red instead. The effect wasn't as startling as it had been before horror films had inured the American population to monsters and demons, but it was still impressive.
    So were the membranous wings and crimson skin she'd chosen to shift into during this assignment. Her face was her own, but when she saw him wavering yet again, she adopted the features of his first victim.
    "The police—they suspect, they know," she said. A hint of impatience threaded through her voice, but she doubted he noticed: he was transfixed by her appearance.
    She tucked in the grin that pulled at her mouth; this tactic was one of her best, and she'd employed it often over the weeks with him. He fancied himself in love with his prey, and her ability to mimic each of them had alternately frightened, overjoyed and enraged him—and had reinforced his delusions of godlike impunity. He thought of Lilith as a manifestation of his work, a sign of his imminent triumph over the rest of humanity.
    She played on that now.
    "They'll take that away, lock you up and keep you from me forever—but you can join me." Lilith shifted into another woman and another. "You can join us . And those pigs will never touch you. You'll have beaten them."
    He gave a greedy, self-satisfied smile and looked down at the wet concrete as if it held glorious reward.
    Lilith shed the dead woman's likeness and angled her wings to keep the worst of the rain off her head. It wouldn't be long now; her father would have another soul for his army, and she would be one step closer to regaining his confidence. She'd had a succession of failures, but this time she'd performed her duty and composed Thaddeus's suicide with skill and style.
    So why wasn't she