Free Demon by Kristina Douglas Page B

wanted to do was find some quiet place to figure out what the hell I was going to do.
    “We haven’t far to go,” Azazel said, and if it had been anyone else, I might have thought he had read my exhaustion and was offering respite. Both things were impossible—he didn’t care what I was feeling, and he would never volunteer comfort. He was my enemy, and I couldn’t afford to forget it.
    I didn’t say anything, letting him steer me down the street, past the gray inhabitants with their soft voices and disinterested eyes. I had no idea what Beloch wanted him to do, and I didn’t care. As long as I could collapse in a bed for twenty-four hours, I’d be just fine. I stole a glance at my hard-eyed companion. He’d leave me alone, wouldn’t he? In the past he’d wantednothing more than to keep his distance, as if I were unclean.
    But he hadn’t released my arm, and I made no effort to break his hold as he guided me along the street, back toward the brownstone we’d exited a few hours earlier. There was a strange, perverse comfort in his touch. He was my enemy.
    But he was the only familiar thing in this strange world. And for that reason, I wasn’t willing to let him go.

C HAPTER S EVEN
     
    A ZAZEL KEPT HIS PACE MEA sured, determined not to give in to the fury that had swept over his body. He despised Beloch and always had, and the feeling was mutual. It wasn’t simply that Beloch was one of the strange, quasi-mortal inhabitants of the unknowable world of the Dark City. Azazel routinely disliked all of the inhabitants—they were like the Nephilim without the appetite. Empty, unreadable creatures, not human nor Fallen nor sanctified, and Beloch, as ruler and high mayor of the Dark City, was the worst of them.
    But his power was undeniable for all that it was incomprehensible. He was the one to deal with if you needed to use any of the Dark City’s unpleasant assets. Such as the Truth Breakers. The Truth Breakers were the only beings in existence whocould extract the truth from anyone, though their methods ranged from painful to shattering. The most stubborn never survived, and Azazel had seen more than one body explode into countless pieces as the process reached its conclusion, and the memory still haunted him.
    He had survived his own encounter with them countless years ago, and so would the Lilith. She was too epic and powerful a demon to be destroyed by them, no matter how brutal the Truth Breakers were. They would extract the truth from her, and he could leave her here in this bleak, empty world, where she could do no harm and he would never have to see her again.
    The Dark City had existed for almost as long as Azazel could remember, a mysterious, floating place of supposed sanctuary and peace, though in truth he had no knowledge of who and what came here. He only knew that those who’d been brought were usually broken in the end. But he expected most of them had been human, unable to withstand the rigors the place offered. He’d been called there centuries ago for both punishment and questioning, when he’d refused Uriel’s demands one too many times. He’d survived. Just as she would.
    Beloch oversaw the Truth Breakers, as well as everything in the Dark City, and he’d alwaystaken special pleasure in the more brutal methods his underlings employed. He sat in his quarters looking like a kindly wizard while he engineered atrocities that sickened Azazel, who had seen the worst that the creatures could offer.
    He was convinced Beloch had wanted to take the Lilith immediately, and he’d known an odd regret. Azazel would have forced her to admit the truth eventually, without turning her bones to jelly and her skin to flakes of mold. He could only hope it wouldn’t have to go that far. Physically she was just a girl. Evidently she could no longer shift into the ancient forms she’d once used, of Lamia, the snake woman who devoured children, or the wind demon with raptor’s talons. No matter how hard