Demon Angel

Easy to admire the play of strength and agility in his body. "You've trained him well, for a human."
    He cast her a disapproving glance. "You are not so different from him."
    She let her eyes glow red for the briefest moment. "I am."
    He stared at her, seeming to pierce inside her until she had to look away. "This new role is not for you, Lilith. The old one, where you played the Fury and acted in the name of vengeance sat more easily upon you."
    She laughed. "I grew bored, and that role wore thin. Damning souls for the armies Below will be much more rewarding." She looked at Hugh, who had finally managed to win and gave an exaggerated lick of her lips. "Much more rewarding."
    "I will not allow you the same leniency in this new role, Lilith," he warned.
    "My sword is ready."
    "Your soul is not," he said. When she waved a dismissive hand, he continued, "You are not the first of your kind, the halflings, to attempt this role. They all failed." She felt him study the stony line of her face. "How many are left, Lilith?"
    Only five. Sick dread tightened her belly, and she forced it and the image of the frozen faces away. She would not renege on her bargain.
    "Perhaps if you succeed in this, the Morningstar will make more of your kind. Perhaps he'll include you in the making of them. Instead of collecting souls, you'll simply have to persuade men into blood sacrifice. How would that role suit you? I wager no better than this one."
    Her mouth finned, but she was distracted as, on the field, Mandeville was forced to his knees. The fine tremor in Hugh's arms, his stranglehold on the handle of the sword suddenly fascinated her. "Look," she said. "He shakes with the desire to strike the seneschal again, and the effort it takes him to hold back. All for a bit of practice. Think you not I can break him, bring that forth in a manner so destructive it will tear him apart?"
    "Aye, he bends to temptation," Georges said. "But he will not break. You know naught of good men, Lilith."
    Unsettling, that a Guardian said what she'd thought to herself upon meeting the young knight. And, indeed, Hugh was pulling back from Mandeville now—the danger had passed.
    "I know I should like to kill you ," she said sweetly. "And he has already entered into a bargain."
    No surprise on Georges's face; of course not, he would have heard its making from his post on the road. "Will you not release him?"
    She answered with her laughter. Entering a bargain didn't endanger its participants' souls, but failing to complete it did. A human could release himself from a bargain in which neither of the terms had been fulfilled, or only the human's part completed—and a demon was bound up to that point. But once a demon had fulfilled its part, only she could release the human.
    And she had completed her part.
    He sighed, and she clenched her jaw against his disappointment. She should not feel it.
    "I leave this evening," he said.
    Her brows rose, mocking. "To search for your sword?" All knew he'd lost that great weapon a millennium before.
    "A nosferatu, in the northern part of the isle."
    Anticipation of a hunt boiled through her, but she forced it away. She could not chase after nosferatu and work on the baron and countess.
    The Doyen smiled. "Aye, this new role chafes already, does it not?"
    And she could only seethe, for Hugh's return to their side prevented her the last word.
    "I do not think you've fulfilled your side of the bargain," Hugh said, unable to hide his amusement. Flicking a glance at Mandeville's seat upon the dais, he found the seneschal watching them. "He glowers at me like death. 'Tis fortunate my lord has forbidden weapons in the great hall, or I fear I would be one of the courses, skewered and laid out on the table."
    Lilith turned to see, her eyes narrowing as she took in the seneschal's expression. Hugh watched her stare him down with a touch of amazement; Mandeville looked away, his face flushed and with not a tiny bit of fear.
    She glanced back at Hugh, her chin raised at a haughty angle. "Death," she said, "would never cower before me."
    "I should like to learn that trick," he murmured. "Though I'm certain I wouldn't like to do what it was that made him fear you so."
    "His fear will turn to anger soon enough," she said. "As for the matter of our bargain, I did as you asked. He has no idea that you saw him."
    He sliced her a doubtful glance.
    She laughed. "You must allow that I had little to work with; tales of your jaunt into the ruins