Demon Angel

bloodsucking, hellhound-whelping bitch. And she was going to enjoy tearing out the hearts of the two bloodsucking, night-loving nosferatu in hungry pursuit behind her.
    That is, she was going to enjoy it if she survived.
    The line of trees surrounding Lake Merced blurred as she ran; she couldn't outpace the creatures behind her, but as long as she maintained some distance she could plan her defense and try to think of a way to gain an advantage.
    Unfortunately, the nosferatu had superior strength and speed, and they knew it. Delight tinged their psychic scent: her flight pleased them, allowed them to play a malevolent game of cat and mouse.
    Nude, hairless, seven-foot-tall cats, against a halfling demon mouse.
    Lilith let them play; she benefited from the extra time afforded her. With every step, she learned more about them. The smaller nosferatu seemed just as interested in upstaging his companion as chasing her. The tempo of his gait increased in spurts, as if he occasionally needed to overtake the other nosferatu, to prove his power like a peacock flaunting his feathers.
    She could use that against them, if she could only find the right stage for the confrontation.
    Turning down a lightly used path, she sprinted away from the lakeside, toward the municipal golf course. It had closed hours ago, and little danger existed that a human might see her demonic form. The open fairways wouldn't hide her from her pursuers, but without the distraction of the obstacles in the wooded area that kept them marginally occupied, they might reveal more of the rivalry—and weaknesses—between them.
    Odd, that they were together at all. She'd never heard of a nosferatu paired with another. Not that she minded; nosferatu-slaying was one of her few remaining pleasures, though an infrequent one of late. She hadn't seen a bloodsucker in almost a decade. And though she'd returned to San Francisco that afternoon and found the city reeking of nosferatu, she hadn't anticipated finding one in plain sight. It hadn't been necessary to track him; she'd been flying over the park, spotted his poor attempt at traveling furtively from shadow to shadow and dived into her attack.
    The appearance of the second nosferatu had been an unpleasant surprise. Unprepared, outclassed, she'd run.
    It was humiliating.
    She reached the seventeenth fairway seconds before the nosferatu and streaked down its length. The instinct to materialize her wings and escape by air grew insistent, but she ignored the impulse—flying limited her maneuverability. She concentrated on the sounds her pursuers made instead, on the flavors of their psyches.
    The first one—the peacock—radiated confidence. Unconcerned about losing his quarry, he chased her for the pleasure of it. He did not fear her. Good. She'd take him out first, before he could learn differently. But the effort would leave her open to attack from the second, whose focus hadn't deteriorated. Though he thirsted for the kill, he remained cautious.
    Leaping across a bunker, she landed hard and veered right. Her boots flung divots from the carefully manicured green as she ran up the slope toward the clubhouse. Behind her, she heard one of them slip on the rain-soaked grass.
    Idiots.
    But bless their worthless souls—she hadn't been this exhilarated in years: her heart pounded, excitement hummed along her skin. For the past six months she'd been stuck in a podunk town in Oregon, infiltrating a Satanic cult and gathering evidence against the leaders. Their eventual arrests had taken place without a single shot being fired; a travesty, in Lilith's opinion. All that time—all that paperwork —and no shoot-out.
    Unfortunately, the past sixteen years had followed the same pattern as the last half-year. If the nosferatu didn't kill her, boredom soon would.
    God, but her life was shit.
    Had she not needed to hear the nosferatu's progress, she would have laughed aloud at how far she'd descended since the last time she'd died: from a low-ranking, oft-thwarted demon; to a chicken- and goat-sacrificing government lackey; to a bloodsucker's snack on a putting green.
    She wasn't afraid of death, but she would have preferred to avoid a pathetic end this time.
    It was Hugh's fault she'd come to this. If he'd cut off her head instead of tenderly wrapping her body and burying her, she'd have been free—not fleeing from white, naked creatures who had likely spent every year since Creation in a cave.
    Hugh. He probably had a