Demon Angel

by Meljean Brook

  “The lady in crimson,” Georges said softly. He was looking in the opposite direction, and Hugh turned to see Lilith striding across the bailey. She saw him at the same moment and smiled boldly, redirecting her steps on line with him and Georges.

  Georges rested his hands on the hilt of his sword, as if casually, but Hugh had known him long enough to sense the tension and readiness within the older man. He had barely a moment to wonder at it before Lilith reached them.

  “Sir Hugh.” He bowed, and as he rose noticed her sudden rigidity. Her hand clenched at her side. Her smile was brittle. “And—?”

  Realizing that she stared at Georges, he quickly made the introduction. “Sir Georges mentored me during my time in the Angevin court,” he added.

  Her head tilted, her eyes narrowed. “Indeed.”

  “Indeed,” Georges echoed.

  Awkwardly, unsure of how to explain her when he knew only her Christian name and nothing of her connections, Hugh continued, “And this is the lady, Lil—”

  “I am Marie de Lille,” she said smoothly. “Recently come from Rochester Castle.”

  Hugh nodded; likely, she’d been a part of the household before the siege and had been shuffled between distant relatives after the castle had changed hands. Unmarried, brash, unremarkable in face and form—she would be a difficult fit in many ladies’ circles. He eyed her rich clothing; she must have some form of support, and he doubted it was the generosity of other women.

  She slanted him an amused glance, as if she could read his thoughts, and his cheeks heated. He was almost thankful when Sir William interrupted them.

  “I see you are returned, pup.” His gaze ran between Lilith and Hugh, hot with anger.

  Hugh fought to keep his dislike from his expression. “I am.”

  “And you returned on the same worthless nag you borrowed ere you left,” Mandeville said.

  Hugh felt the insult. A horseless knight was one of little value, a burden to his lord. “He was too worthless to eat, and so I rode him,” he said.

  “For two years? Tourneys are not outlawed in France, yet you’ve not earned arms nor mount.”

  Lilith stood with her hands behind her back, rocking back and forth from heels to toes as if enjoying the tension immensely. “Why is it, Sir Hugh, that you have armor but no arms?” He flushed, but she only pursed her lips and allowed her eyes to run the length of his form. “I have heard speak of a young man—an exceedingly young man—knighted the evening before the barons met Lackland at Runnymede. And of how d’Aulnoy gave him his own suit of mail, feeling the deepest affection for him.”

  Hugh shrugged, trying to control his embarrassment. “He’d had another made for him; it no longer fit him, but it did me.”

  “Aye, he grew too fat,” Lilith said bluntly. “But you have grown in those two years, for you’ve had to split the links at the shoulders.”

  She couldn’t have known that, since he’d removed the heavy armor soon after arriving at the castle, but she’d seen him wearing the mail. It was impossible to pretend he’d not met her at the temple now. Mandeville’s face mottled with his rage; Georges stared at her without expression.

  “I had plenty of time to practice,” Hugh said quietly. “I expanded.”

  Her eyes glittered with humor. Tapping her finger against her bottom lip, she continued, “But Sir William thinks you should have been making your fortune in tournaments. Yet you did not enter even a one, and so you own nothing of a knight’s belongings but a poorly mended bit of armor. Even your horse was loaned to you for the mission only.” A sly look entered her gaze. “But I suppose it would have been difficult to protect the countess had you jaunted off to every tourney.”

  “Aye,” Hugh said, suddenly baffled. Was she making sport of him or defending him? “Many men die in the tournaments, and I couldn’t fulfill my duties injured or dead.”

  “So you let yourself grow soft in the courts?”

  “He has said he expanded in practice,” Lilith said to Mandeville with a touch of exasperation. “Sir Georges mentored him.”

  “Aye?” He gave the older man a dismissive look.

  “You are welcome to try his arm,” Georges said.

  A bit of glee lit the seneschal’s face. “Are you game, pup? Want a bit of practice?”

  Hugh grinned, a cold, confident expression that belied the angry resignation in his gut. “Of course.”

  Lilith leaned against the wall next to Georges, her hands behind her back. In her fists, she clutched the sword she had called in from her invisible cache of weapons, and hid its length between skirts and stone.

  Unfortunate she couldn’t make it appear in the center of his chest instead of in her hand.

  “You reek, Guardian,” she said for his ears only.

  “You did not notice my odor at the ruins earlier.”

  That he was right annoyed her. “You sent him in, knowing I was there.” She glanced away from the field, where Hugh and William circled, each holding swords with blunted edges. Though he’d adopted the appearance of a man long past his youth, this close he couldn’t hide what he was from her. Michael—the Doyen, leader of the Guardians, sworn to protect humans from such as she.

  Except he had never killed her as he did other demons; she knew why, and the reason made her bold and angry. “You should no longer be so careless with innocents around me.” Unlike Lilith, Michael did not take his eyes from the combatants on the field, as if he did not consider her a threat. “You thought he would distract me from my mission,” she guessed.

  “He has.”

  She smiled. “He is but part of my plan. Surely you’ve seen how he looks at the countess? And she him?”

  “It means nothing; he will not do what you think.”

  “Of course he will.” She returned her attention back to the combatants. William fell back, unable to withstand the onslaught of Hugh’s speed and quickness. 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 firmed, 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 herse
lf 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 have already spread through the castle. I had to include that into my tale, or he would find me out for a liar.”

  “What was your story?”

  Her mischievous gaze held his. “That I encountered you outside the temple, enticed you from your horse, and allowed you under my skirts.”

  He paused with a bit of lamb halfway to his mouth, his eyes widening. “Nay,” he said, choking on a horrified laugh.

  “Indeed.” She grinned. “And I explained that your horse wandered into the temple, and then out between the time I first took you into my mouth and you spent your seed within me.”

  A groan rose within him, accompanied by a rush of heat, but he couldn’t stop laughing. “Nay,” he repeated, and dropped his head into his hands. He peered through his fingers. “Please tell me that you jest.”

  “I’m in earnest.” She dipped her fingers into her goblet, lifted them to trace wine over her lips. “And when you had left me, I returned inside the temple and explained to him that you had left me so well used that I did not feel like finishing with him. That, in comparison to your great length, youth, and virility, there was little reason for me to continue with him. He was so distracted by such a thought, that all his anger turned to me and the idea of his having been seen by a stranger fled.”

  Hugh held himself very still, his laughter dying. “The aim of our bargain was to keep myself from his anger; you have merely transferred it from one reason to another.”

  She blinked slowly, like a cat full of canary. “I fulfilled the terms of the bargain.”

  And he was in the same predicament he had tried to avoid. Bewilderment and a sense of betrayal stalked his emotions, though he did not know why. He could not find anger within him at her, though—he had himself to blame. He should not have trusted her.

  “Aye, you did,” he agreed. “And I owe you a lie. Perhaps I should call you a beauty.”

  He immediately regretted such cruelty, but it was as if she didn’t feel it. “Nay,” she said, her eyes leveled on his face. For the first time, he could detect no hint of amusement, or mischief. “I will let you know when I need the lie.”

  Nodding stiffly, he turned back to his food, began eating with his full attention. He felt her gaze upon him, though. Trying to ignore it became impossible, and when he finally gave in, he found her grinning at him.

  He couldn’t resist. She was wicked, terrible—and the most intriguing person he’d met. Perhaps he was too easily led astray by sin, too eager to enter into bargains and let his curiosity get the better of his judgment, but for now, he would allow it. “How did you know me?”

  “At the temple?” At his nod, her grin widened. “Sir William spoke of you often. ‘The foundling pup favored by the baron.’ That is what he calls you: Sir Pup.” She looked him up and down. “I knew who you were, not only because the castle was expecting your and the countess’s return, but because of your youth. And your beauty; Sir William is not the only one to talk.”

  He blushed, and she looked upon it as if his embarrassment were a present solely for her.

  “Though Essex does not seem to favor you so much now,” she said softly. Hugh’s gaze dropped to the table. It was true; a coolness had descended between, though he knew not the reason. “Perhaps he has realized that knighting a boy in his fifteenth year could be perceived as a display of weakness, more than strength. How many were knighted that day?”

  A smile touched his mouth. “All who had earned it and had the means to procure their armor and arms.” Hugh had not been one of them, and he was three years younger than any other. “You think it a weakness, to arrive with a large retinue of knighted men?”

  “It is when the soldiers are boys, and the knighting an obvious attempt to bolster his numbers. It reeks of desperation. Perhaps you have become a symbol of that failure to d’Aulnoy—he lost his holdings for a year and a half. His display of strength was apparently not great enough to keep the king at bay.” She smiled suddenly. “But perhaps an advantageous marriage will change your luck. Amongst the ladies, there is naught but gossip of the handsome knight who has finally returned.”

  Hugh glanced down the length of the table, uncomfortable with this talk of what he had—and what he did not—and met the interested gaze of several women. A few puzzled looks as well, as they glanced past him to Lilith. He quickly dropped his gaze again; he should not be sitting with her—he had not the importance. But, upon meeting him within the hall she had insisted he serve her, and he’d not wanted to cause a scene by refusing. And, he forced himself to admit, he still resented that Mandeville had put him in his place in the courtyard.

  A capon sliced easily under his knife, and he laid several choice pieces upon Lilith’s trencher. “ ’Tis unfortunate they do naught but gossip.”

  “And which one would you have do more?” Though neither her expression nor tone betrayed her amusement, he felt it and could not resist smiling in return. “Behind you sits the youngest daughter of the sheriff of Chelmsford, and I have heard her speak of your eyes, bright blue as the afternoon sky. She is exceedingly comely, is she not?”

  “Aye, but her poetry lacks originality.”

  “Her father is rich.”

  He stole a look over his shoulder, grinning. “Aye? Perhaps her singing will compensate for her poor verse-making.”

  “A fine voice can give life to dull lyrics,” Lilith nodded, her eyes sparkling. “And she will sound lovely in bed, even if her movements put you to sleep
before the song is spent.”

  Hugh choked, coughing until his laughter cleared his throat. “Has a man ever dared fall asleep before you?”

  “Only very brave and very stupid men.” She placed a small bit of roasted apple daintily on her tongue. “But I’ll admit my singing is not particularly fine.”

  “Just exceptionally loud?”

  “Aye, loud.” She tilted her head, and her gaze dropped to his lap. “And I have mastered the appropriate instruments.”

  Her words inspired an image that heated his blood, and he was grateful for the table, hiding the effects of it. His breath hitched, and her gaze met his; knowledge and temptation burned in the dark depths of her eyes. Remembering Sir William’s situation, some of the wicked bravado that had allowed him to equal her in the conversation deserted him.

  As if sensing his withdrawal, she frowned. “Come now, Sir Hugh. Do not disappoint me.”

  “I do not mean to, my lady,” he said, his voice rueful. “But I’m unused to such conversation with a woman.”

  “You were enjoying it.”

  “Aye.”

  A page set the new course before them, allowing Hugh a moment to gather himself—though it was not a lonely moment, for he felt Lilith examining his face as if she could discern every thought that passed through his mind.

  “Perhaps that is the difficulty,” he said when the boy had moved down the table. “I should not take pleasure in such a discussion.’Tis . . . unseemly.”

  She regarded him in silence for a moment. “I frighten you.”

  A flush reddened his skin. She was laughing at him, and after a moment of wrestling with his masculine pride, he allowed himself the same. “Aye, my lady. I would not like to end up tied to a wall—but I think your conversation and the temptation you offer may lead there.”

  “Such frank conversation arouses you?”

  His face burned. “Aye.”

  “Is it so terrible to be aroused?”

  He nodded, and took a sip of wine, hoping that it would soothe his suddenly parched mouth.

  “Then we should turn our conversation to a different topic,” she said. “What non-arousing subjects did you and the countess speak of when you fled to Anjou? And in the two years during? For certain, you never discussed anything that wasn’t perfectly innocent. What could have filled your thoughts two years ago? The decision of the Lateran Council, forbidding clerics from issuing an order of execution? Forbidding them to bless the water and hot iron used in torture?” She nodded, her lips tilted in amusement. “Such would be fine conversation between a lady and a knight.”