Demon Night

sounding like it had been ground between two jagged stones.
    “Sorry,” she murmured, and swiftly got the tweezers going. When the steely tension in his back eased, she said, “So the demons were jealous?”
    “Enough to wage another war against the angels. Only this time Lucifer had creatures from Chaos, a dragon and demon dogs and such, and they just about slaughtered the seraphim—that’s the angels—until humans began fighting with them. I felt it there, Charlie.”
    “Yeah, I found it.” She bit her lip and held her breath as she carefully dragged the tweezers against the bullet, searching for the edge. “So the demons started killing people, too?” She made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “It’s slippery.”
    “You’ll get it.” Her probing must have been hurting him; his thumbs were working circles on his thighs, though the rest of him was still. “Demons can’t kill humans—it’s against the Rules. No killing or hurting them, no denying them free will.”
    “Why?”
    “Used to be, they got dragged back to Hell by Lucifer, then Punished or destroyed.”
    “Used to be?”
    “The Gates are closed now. But that’s another story, Charlie, and not nearly so old. This one, the men who joined in the battle turned the victory back the angels’ way.”
    “How?”
    “One of them—Michael—killed the dragon.”
    “Got it,” she breathed, and slowly began to draw the bullet out. She lost it, and fished back in, trying to work under it instead of squeezing this time. “Damn. It’s going to take a second, though. And then what?”
    “And then the angels gave Caelum—their home—to Michael, gave him a Guardians’ powers, and left him to recruit others.”
    “When did all of this—Oh, shit, here it is.”
    The slug landed with a plop in her cupped hand, and she held it over his shoulder, grinning.
    Ethan whistled low and picked up the mushroomed bullet between his thumb and forefinger. “A forty-four hollow-point—unfortunately, only the light cartridge behind it. If they’d used a Magnum round, it’d likely have punched right on through, made it all a bit easier for me.” The slug vanished, and he slanted a glance up at her. “Thank you kindly, Miss Charlie.”
    The darkness of his lashes only made the impact of his amber eyes more intense, knocking the wind out of her. She swallowed, forced a reply. “Sure thing. Just give me another minute, and I’ll get you cleaned up.”
    Herself, too. Blood covered her fingers, pooled in her palm. She didn’t want to look down and see how much was on her shoes and pants.
    “It ain’t necessary, Charlie. I can…” The rest of it was lost beneath the sound of the faucet, and by the time she’d soaked a towel with warm water and lathered soap into it, he’d apparently decided to let her help.
    His elbows were resting on the seat back, his posture easy, his booted feet flat against the floor. He tensed beneath the first swipe of the towel over his skin. His right boot slid back a couple of inches, his heel lifting, and she paused, remembering how he’d reacted on the first cut. But the incision had healed; only a four-inch pink line remained against his tan, and that was fading quickly.
    The triumphant haze of getting through the operation without fainting was fading, too.
    “That didn’t hurt, did it?” It wasn’t really a question. And now she recalled how he’d vanished the blood from her hands in the booth.
    “Not a bit. I suspect there’s more hurting to come, though.”
    She wasn’t so slow that she couldn’t interpret that . “Yet you’re still sitting here,” she said, and wiped another section of skin clean. Efficiently, though she was tempted to take her time, to make that hurt just a little worse—maybe even bad enough he’d want to relieve it.
    “Well, Charlie, I just ain’t man enough to walk away when a pretty woman offers a warm bath.”
    A dark emotion grabbed at her throat. She’d been pretty enough to kiss, too. And apparently pretty enough to get his dick hard, but she’d bet that if she walked around the chair and took any of that for herself, he’d push her away and tell her it was for her own good.
    She let the towel drop to the floor. “But I don’t think I’m woman enough to keep nurturing a man who doesn’t need it.”
    She backed up to the island, lifted herself up onto the wooden surface, and kept her hands clenched on the edge of the counter. Her fingers were screaming