Demon Angel

she'd never been able to.
    Mondiel paused, stiffened. "The Morningstar? Your father?" His hand flexed on her neck with crushing pressure.
    Lilith's eyes burned. Morningstar—the name by which Mondiel would have known her father before the First Battle. Had he arrived just in time to 'save' her, to keep his plot alive?
    But no… Mondiel did not look around; his focus remained intent on her face. She realized she must have been projecting her final thoughts, that Mondiel must have picked the name from her mind.
    "You are not one of Belial's, but Lucifer's?" The nosferatu ground his foot against her wrist, snapping bone. Lilith dropped her sword, stifling a cry of pain. Her left hand fisted in grass, tore it from its roots. She'd suffered worse than this in silence; she'd not break now. "Did the Betrayer send one of his halflings to kill us? Does he betray again?"
    His furious questions barely registered, but the brush of her hand against hot metal did. The gun barrel, still retaining the heat from the two shots she'd fired. She grasped, clutched, until its familiar weight rested in her palm.
    Suddenly, with hope in her hand, death didn't seem as agreeable. She'd only have one chance—a slim chance—but she'd take it.
    "Are you Morningstar's? Are his promises made with doubled tongue?" His blind eyes bored into hers, reminding her for a moment of a poet who'd said her fate and her role were fixed, unchangeable—and of Hugh, certain that the poet had been wrong. Hugh, who'd cut her heart in half.
    One bullet might not do the same, but surely ten would.
    Cerberus's balls, this was going to hurt.
    She slipped the gun between them, pressed it hard against his breastbone, and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, changing the angle slightly with each shot. As the first bullet whipped through his chest, he tore her throat out. The third, he dug his fingernails into her abdomen, burrowed under her ribs toward her heart. The eighth, he shuddered, fell dead atop her.
    She quickly pushed him off to keep his blood from mixing with hers. Her body screamed at the movement; light-headed, too numb to triumph, she curled into a ball and waited for her body to heal itself.
    It'd better do it quickly. Morning neared, and the maintenance crew would arrive soon. Finding her like this would be bad enough; seeing the nosferatu might have irreparable consequences. Though their bodies turned to ash at the touch of the sun, she couldn't depend on their remaining undiscovered until then.
    She lay with her eyes closed and dragged a wet breath through her regenerating windpipe. The rush of cool air into her damaged lungs felt like heaven. Her gut slowly knitted back together; in a few minutes, she'd be able to move without her insides falling out.
    Lucky that Mondiel had been distracted by her connection to Lucifer. Why had he assumed she'd been one of Belial's demons? The war between Lucifer and Belial for supremacy over Hell had raged for eight centuries, but both sides hunted the nosferatu with equal fervor and hatred.
    The rumble of a diesel engine brought a halt to her uneasy contemplation. Staggering to her feet, she vanished her sword and gun. Nothing could be done about the blood; the nosferatu's would be destroyed by the sun, but hers wouldn't—and it would make her sick to carry it in her mental cache. It would be found, investigated, but remain a mystery.
    Next time, she promised herself, she'd have more firepower. She'd pull out an Uzi, and the nosferatu would never get near her.
    A self-deprecating grin tilted her lips as she hoisted each nosferatu up, her arms wrapped around their waists. She lied even to herself: she'd never give up hand-to-hand combat—she enjoyed it too much, and only rarely had circumstances been so dire.
    She'd been fortunate the bloodsuckers had been ignorant of modern weaponry, but she couldn't depend on it again.
    And she had no doubt she'd soon be fighting more. With the death of Mondiel and Pandibar, the psychic stink should have dissipated. Instead, it surrounded her, coming from the city in waves and pulses as if previously shielded bloodsuckers were opening their minds and reaching out for their dead companions.
    Six months away, and her city had become infested.
    Her unease multiplied. Had the nosferatu, like those Below, decided to infiltrate human society and live among them? Why hadn't the city's demons and Guardians sought them out, killed them before now?
    She jogged across the golf