Demon by Kristina Douglas Read Free Book Online

somewhere deep below the earth in an unending silence. Until they found him, they were helpless against the tyranny of the only archangel never to have been tempted. Uriel, bloody, ruthless, and completely without mercy, had been left in charge when the Supreme Being had given the human race free will and then withdrawn, leaving them on their own. Uriel had been charged with watching over things, but he’d followed through on the most horrific ofthe Supreme Being’s punishments. Plagues that wiped out two-thirds of the world’s populations—the Spanish influenza, smallpox, cholera—were successive gifts for the unrighteous. Uriel’s particular favorites were syphilis and AIDS. The punishment for sin was death, and fornication was the worst sin of all in Uriel’s eyes.
    And no one could touch him, no one could stop him, as scourge followed scourge and mankind fell into wars and famine. Only the Fallen had any chance of halting his inexorable march toward human extermination, and time was growing shorter as Uriel’s power grew.
    Raziel settled beside Azazel, folding his wings about him as he stared out at the sea. “You have to go after her, you know.”
    “No.” One didn’t refuse the Alpha when he made a request or issued an order, but Azazel didn’t hesitate.
    He and Raziel had been the next to fall after Lucifer, with Tamlel and twenty others, and had been damned for eternity for the crime of loving human women. Neither humans nor angels, they were simply the Fallen, cursed to live out eternity with an unstoppable need for blood. The wretched Nephilim were the flesh-eaters, the darker side, the creatures of filth and decay.
    “You were the one who found the link in theold texts,” Raziel said in his calm, patient voice. “You can’t deny that she alone holds the key. We’re just lucky you didn’t let the Nephilim destroy her before you found the connection.”
    “She remembers nothing,” he said stubbornly. “It would have made no difference.”
    “Did you bestow the Grace …?”
    “It would have failed. I could do very little with her. I could read her, just a bit, but it was all confusion. She didn’t know who or what she was; she had no memory of her past life. If she cannot even recognize that she’s the Lilith, how will she remember some minor bit of information that we’ve only just discovered could lead us to Lucifer?”
    “We don’t have any other choice. His voice is growing fainter, Uriel is growing stronger, and it won’t be long before he finally abandons restraint and comes after us. We must find Lucifer, and I would consort with the foulest creatures in existence, even the remaining Nephilim, if it would help us.”
    He knew Raziel was right. He’d known the moment he’d come across that obscure reference: The She-Demon who devours men and infants and lies with the Filth shall be entombed near the Bringer of Light, and bring forth the means of his deliverance. Of course, it was only one line in a relatively obscuretext, and its provenance was questionable. And it didn’t begin to say how she might help them find Lucifer, only that she’d show them the way to do it. Which did them no good when she couldn’t remember anything.
    He thought back to the demon. The demon with the shape and smell and feel of a woman, who had only to look at him to stir feelings that should have been dead. He’d kissed her. That kiss had been burned into his body and his brain, tormenting him. What insanity had made him reach for her? No one else had managed to touch him in the nearly seven years since Sarah died, further proving just how dangerous the Lilith was. If she could arouse his dead soul, then she had strong powers indeed.
    “I haven’t kept track of her,” he said, only half a lie. He’d stopped looking after her six months ago, once she’d gotten in bed with the young doctor. But he had little doubt she was still in Brisbane, still in that strange apartment that looked out over the