Demon Angel

by Meljean Brook

  It would tear apart and destroy those they sought to protect from the demons, Hugh realized, trying to imagine such an event.

  “Morningstar chose his arena well,” Georges continued. “For though the seraphim managed to destroy many of the hounds and their demon handlers, their ranks were badly damaged due to the care they took to keep the fighting away from the human sphere. But they pressed onward, and seemed almost to prevail until Morningstar brought in a wyrm. The seraphim fell back against the terrible dragon, attempted to regroup, but were scattered.”

  It was preposterous, shockingly blasphemous. Hugh turned away, but Georges’s story followed him, weaving it in a voice as deep and compelling as the most talented troubadour.

  “But it was impossible to keep such a battle from the ears of men, and many rushed to join the fight.”

  Hugh closed his eyes. “Only to be slaughtered, surely.”

  “Neither demons nor angels have leave to take human life.”

  “As dictated by God?” he guessed, swinging back to Georges. “After his revolt, why would Satan agree to such terms? How could killing a human be worse?” As the words left his mouth, he felt a rush of shame and horror that he had asked the question in earnest, as if it were a truth to be sought.

  “Free will and life are the two gifts bestowed upon humanity which may not be compromised.” Humor flitted over Georges’s face. “And as few men will bring injury upon themselves, the demons could not hurt them.”

  Questions flooded Hugh’s mind, but the image of Sir William bound and awaiting Lilith rushed to the fore. He gave a short laugh, and the answering smile on Georges’s lips told him the older man divined his thoughts. “Aye, some do will it upon themselves,” he said, sobering. Perhaps the man could see within his mind.

  But if Georges did, he gave no indication that he recognized Hugh’s suspicions. His gaze, though directed at Hugh, seemed far beyond him. “The men could do little against the demons, for they had neither the strength nor speed to combat them effectively. But the army of human foes distracted them, scattered them, as the dragon had the seraphim. And one man, finding himself alone against the wyrm, managed to defeat it with a strike to the heart.”

  Of course—Saint George and the dragon. Hugh had heard this tale from the time he’d been a lad. “Do not forget to include the virgin, Georges,” he said, his mockery little disguising his anger. Young he might be, but rarely a fool. “The king’s daughter, a sacrifice to the dragon, saved moments before it devoured her.”

  “That is a later story,” Georges replied. “And I failed to save her.”

  Hugh shook his head in disgust. “You are mad.” But his breath drew fast and tight, and he could not erase the image of the winged creature from his mind. If Georges was mad, then Hugh must be equally.

  “And what of that?” he said, gesturing with his sword to the bailey. “A demon, was it? Or a dragon come to devour the castle?”

  Georges did not answer him directly; he stepped to the parapet and looked over the side. There was naught to see. This side of the castle faced the valley, and everything below the ridge lay in shadow. “The ruins here, in Greece and Rome—we heard many a tale from the Crusaders and traveling knights while in the Angevin court, did we not? Of their magnificent structures, and the wonder of a society that could produce that beauty. That ours is a poor and corrupt society in comparison, succored on the last remnants of their greatness.”

  “That is what they claim,” Hugh said impatiently. “If not for the degeneracy of men, it would still be standing, not a rotting memory.”

  Georges shook his head, turned to lean against the parapet, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. “Men are no more evil—or better—than they were then. Nor has the number of demons, sent to tempt and lead men astray, dwindled. But that second battle made apparent to those Above that the seraphim, in all their power, could not relate to men, nor protect them, without being worshipped themselves. And men could not be blamed for that—the seraphim were too different, too . . . inhuman; they could not pass, even in a human guise. Likewise, so the demons are too inhuman for one who knows how to look—for one who knows that he needs to look. And so to gain an advantage, those Above created the Guardians: men and women given angelic powers, enabling them to defend against the demons, but who remained men and women. The one who destroyed the dragon was the first made, and he was given the task of choosing others to join him.”

  Hugh’s laughter rang out over the bailey, echoing against the stone and returning, the angry edge worn off by disbelief. “I suppose you are here to recruit me then? What shall be my test? To kill the demon in our midst?”

  “That is not how it is done.” His eyes darkening, Georges said, “You saw that demon, and you still reject the truth I have told you.”

  “Aye, because demons are well known—but men who are as angels, and take the name of Guardian? ’Tis profane.”

  Georges stared at him for a moment, and then his face softened with the slightest of smiles. “I told her you would bend, but not break—I was mistaken: in some things, you don’t even bend.”

  “Does she think to unbalance me?” Hugh did not need to ask whom Georges was speaking of. If one knew how to look; it had not taken him long to think of all he’d seen since his return to Fordham Castle. There was Lilith, who moved with uncommon swiftness. Who bargained for kisses and lies. Who indulged men’s perversity. “Is that what you spoke of? How she intends to corrupt me?”

  Georges’s eyebrows rose. “Nay. Indeed, if there has been an unbalancing, it has been hers. She informed me that she would do no work upon you, and focus on her true target.”

  “Isabel.” Hugh breathed the name, dread tightening his throat. “Why did you not kill this demon, if you are one of these Guardians?”

  “Ah, and now you charge me with failing in duties you do not believe in.”

  Frustration, worry for Lady Isabel, fear—aye, fear, though he hated to admit to it—forced the words that burst from him. “You have given me nothing to believe! Only an impossible, blasphemous tale!”

  Georges’s transformation was so swift that once again Hugh doubted his eyes. Then he accepted, and fell back; his breath rushed from him, and he stumbled, landing hard upon the stone walkway, his spine jarring from the impact.

  The knight stood before him, but no longer Georges. With close-cropped dark hair and features that seemed sculpted in bronze, wings of black feathers, and a body garbed in a loose, flowing garment that draped over one shoulder and gathered at the waist, he appeared an ageless warrior, terrible and deadly in his beauty. His eyes glinted like obsidian. “Do you see?”

  “Aye,” Hugh whispered, sweating as if with sudden sickness, his stomach balled into a tight knot. His fingers automatically rose to his forehead, but he paused, uncertain. “Who are you?”

  “Michael.”

  Unable to comprehend, Hugh looked away. His hand fell to his side. The stone pressed cold and hard against his back, but now he welcomed its solidity. Michael: the same name as the archangel, but the man before him claimed to have been human once. Did he also lay claim to the deeds that had been ascribed to that other, greater being? And if such an illustrious figure appeared before him, what manner of creature had Hugh seen speaking to Michael? Lucifer, in the guise of a woman? “The demon. Was it the Deceiver?”

  He transformed back into Georges and proffered his hand, but Hugh could no longer see his friend in that skin. He stood without help, refusing to lean against the parapet though the trembling in his legs demanded it.

  “Nay. Though the name fits her, in her fashion.” Michael’s arm dropped to his side. “Many things from Above and Below are not as they seem. You must learn that appearances are almost always deceiving.”

  A wry smile curved Hugh’s lips as his gaze skimmed over his mentor’s changeable form. “I am well taught.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The castle readied for evening’s entertainment. Servants folded tables and pus
hed them from the center of the great hall. Conversation accompanied the scrape of wooden benches against the floor as they were shoved and carried toward the perimeter of the room. Lamplight flickered, lit each corner and crevice, and danced over the ceiling’s great polished arch.

  In the minstrel’s gallery, a player struck a discordant note on his pipe, a short, piercing shriek that drew attention and laughter from the ladies gathered near the screen’s passage.

  Hugh looked toward the group in time to see Lilith slipping away from the women, threading her way through the hall and disappearing behind the dais.

  Hesitating but for a moment, he moved to intercept her. He used the opposite entrance into the family chambers; his departure would not go unnoticed, but it was unlikely any observer would associate his leaving through one door with Lilith’s exit through another.

  The partition separating d’Aulnoy’s rooms from the hall did little to muffle the noise, and the chambers were dimly lit. Hugh waited for his eyes to adjust, uncertain of her direction. Instinct drove him through the archway that led to the newel stairs. Isabel’s bower was on the floor above the chambers—and it was there that Lilith had managed to avoid Hugh for nearly a sennight.

  Hugh paused on the first riser; darkness filled the stairwell. Below, the faint glow of the torch lit the flight from the lower floors. It flickered against the curving stone near his feet, but didn’t penetrate the shadows above.

  The air was laden with a thick, acrid odor, the heavy scent of a flame recently snuffed.

  He pulled his eating knife from his belt and briefly wished for his sword—but perhaps it was better this way. If someone should come upon him, he could more easily hide his dagger than sheathe a larger weapon.

  His back pressed to the cold stone, he presented as small a target as possible. The newel stairs had been designed with defense in mind, spiraling so that the person ascending, with a weapon in his right hand, would leave his body open to attack. No need to fear attack, he reminded himself; though he’d not seen Michael since that night on the wall walk, he’d reviewed the conversation in his mind countless times, and had accepted the Guardian’s declaration that humans could not be harmed by demons. For if it were not true, wouldn’t they have destroyed mankind, and murdered every last man, woman, and child?

  True or not, he took the stairs with care, and his need for caution seemed verified when he reached the torch; the head was still hot under his questing fingers.

  He lurched up the next step, into cobwebs that tickled his cheeks and nose. He brushed them away impatiently; Lilith was expecting him, or she wouldn’t have extinguished—

  His heart caught, skipped.

  For as long as he’d been in the castle—as a young page, carrying items up and down these stairs—the passageways had been kept scrupulously clean.

  Not cobwebs. Hair. Automatically, he glanced upward and felt the strands sliding over his face again. He grabbed them, gave a sharp tug.

  His pull met resistance, and a brief hiss of pain was followed by a scrambling noise, like claws against stone.

  Lilith’s voice came from the darkness above him. “You think to take that sticker to my flesh and devour me?”

  Though unnerved to realize she could see his knife when he might as well have been blind, he shook his head and blithely raised the blade. “I think to take a trophy.”

  The edge sliced through the strands held taut between them. Released from the strain, the cut ends curled soft in his palm, and he wondered at his daring. Why did he bait her when he knew what she was?

  “Is it not the custom to take a trophy after the opponent is defeated? Are you so confident that, because a kiss was easily attained, my heart will be easily opened as well?”

  He felt her amusement, imagined the white flash of her grin. Hefting his knife, he said softly, “ ’Tis long enough to open any heart.”

  “No man lives who does not think his blade long enough.”

  He smiled despite himself. Tucking the dagger and the hair into his belt, he tried to gauge her position by the sound of her voice, the angle of the hair he’d cut. Did she lay on the upper curve of the stair, leaning over? “Why are you here, when the rest of the castle revels in music and acrobatics?”

  “I left a kerchief half-embroidered in the bower, and I must finish my work.” She did not disguise her mockery. “I could ask the same of you, but I know your answer.”

  “And what would it be?”

  The unexpected touch of her finger against his lips made him draw a sharp breath. He reached for her hand but could not find it, and lowered his arms to his sides rather than flail about in the dark.

  “You desire my companionship,” she said lightly. “For I have been required by Lady Isabel to embroider and sew and gossip the last sennight, and you’ve had no one with whom you can speak. Aye, for Sir Georges has absented himself, has he not? And everyone else looks at you askance—as if tales and rumors had been spread, naming you mad.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I have heard you spoke to Father Geoffrey about a demon in our midst.”

  Could she see the flush that rose over his neck? He had visited the priest, confessed what he’d seen; Hugh did not blame the man for doubting him. “He did not see; he could not believe what I had to tell him, but called it a nightmare.”

  “Perhaps the good father is correct.” Her breath skimmed over his forehead, teasing the ends of his hair and sending a shiver over his skin. Where was she? He wasn’t certain he wanted to know the answer. The sudden image rose of her hanging above him like a bat, and he shoved it away. She must want his fear, would likely feed on it. “A nightmare—brought about by frustration. I left abruptly that evening. If I had stayed, perhaps you would not have these notions of demons in the castle.”

  Remembrance of her weight, her warmth made him ache. “My flesh and my eyes are weak, my lady,” he said, “but my mind is not.”

  Her lips brushed his eyelashes, and he felt a soft exhalation against his cheek. He leaned into the contact. As if surprised, she drew back.

  Did she expect him to retreat, then? He had no intention of playing to her expectations.

  “What do you think you know, Sir Pup?”

  “That a woman came to me with the intention of leading me like an animal to her bidding.”

  “Whatever you think my sins might be, I assure you I have never done that with an animal.”

  He bit back his laughter, shaking his head. How did she so easily manage to amuse and distract him? “A horse, a dog, oxen—all are led by the foremost part. You thought to lead me by mine.”

  The slight thump as she landed on the stairs in front of him and sudden waft of displaced air were his only indication of her movement before her palm covered his burgeoning arousal. “Indeed, a woman has but to touch it and it swells to better fill her grip. I daresay it was made for this.”

  “A man is not an animal.” His throat closed on a groan, and he had to clear it before continuing. “After you left, I saw you—”

  He broke off, sweat breaking over his skin as she placed his hand on her breast. Bare, it burned like fire under his fingers, her nipple tight beneath his palm. “Then a woman must be led by these,” she said.

  Heat rushed through him, and he ground his teeth against the ache of his erection. Acting on the lust she created in him—or running from it—would both serve her purpose; he could neither give in nor flee. Steeling his resolve to act contrary to her expectations, he gently pinched the tip of her breast and pulled.

  She gasped and fell against his chest, his hand caught between them. He echoed her earlier mocking tone. “Apparently you can be led thus.” Letting go her nipple, he traced his fingers along the underside of her breast. He cupped his hand; she filled his palm, but barely. Certainly not as much as Marie’s generous proportions had suggested. The beat of her heart thrummed against his fingertips. “But I find most women are led by what is beneath.”

  Her chest rose and fell in a quick, ragge
d breath, and she wrenched herself from his embrace. He let her go, listened to the scratch of claw and stone. Her voice came from above again, laced with bitterness. “Only when she is a fool.” As if with great effort, humor returned to her tone and she added, “Fortunately, there are many women willing to think with their hearts, and it makes them as brainless as their tits.”

  “And there are many demons willing to take advantage of them.” Hugh crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the wall, and let the cold stone ease the heat she had built within him. “After you left me, I saw you in the courtyard with Michael.”

  She did not reply; music and voices from the hall filled the air between them. He wished for a light that he could see her expression, discover what lay behind the darkness. She wore neither clothes nor the form of Marie, but he did not think she looked as she had in the courtyard, either. She’d not had wings when she’d been in his arms.

  “Will you not try to convince me it was a nightmare? Or pretend to have no knowledge of that which I speak?”

  “I’m not a priest, nor do I have need for lies.” She paused as he burst into laughter, and she joined in after a moment. “Why are you not afraid of me? It is extraordinarily vexing.”

  He smiled broadly. “I was told you cannot do me harm.”

  “Michael.” The name was followed by a hiss of displeasure. “And you believed him?”

  Recognizing her question for what it was—an attempt to fuel uncertainty—he shrugged and said, “Difficult to refute the evidence I saw.”

  His casual tone held no indication of the doubts and thoughts that had plagued him over the week, the sickness that roiled within him as he’d forced himself to accept a different version of truth than he’d known. How easy it would have been to take Father Geoffrey’s explanation, to call it a nightmare. How many times had he almost convinced himself that he’d heard incorrectly, that he’d experienced an hour of madness?