Something slimy slithered across her cheek. She jerked back, but something caught her arm and yanked her up. She dangled blindly, thrashing her limbs, and felt the world tilt and herself being dragged upward.
The smoke thinned, and then she breathed clean, frigid air.
“So here you are, but where is he? He was supposed to be with you.”
She struggled to open her eyes because her lashes were crusted with soot and dried soap and tears. When her vision was clear enough to see, Gadreel’s face came into focus. Stretched behind him were oily black bat wings. She stood facing him. They were on the roof.
“Hey there,” she said, and then slammed her fist into his perfect nose. The crunch was satisfying. His arm was a blur as it struck her. She flew back, landing on the concrete, every bit of air knocked free of her lungs. She wheezed out a single word. “Asshole.”
A moment later, he dragged her up by the front of her robe, the way a toddler would snatch up a fallen doll. She worked to get her feet under her, but her toes barely touched the ground.
She watched the brackish blood stream from his nose over his lips.
“What happened? Did he get tired of you already?” Gadreel asked.
“There’s a divot in the bridge of your nose. I guess that means I broke it,” she said.
“You did. It’ll take about thirty minutes to heal. When I break yours, though, about four weeks.”
“Gadreel.”
The demon spun, skinning her toes over the concrete. He whipped her in front of him and thrust the tip of a dagger against her throat. Familiar dread washed over her.
Nathaniel closed the distance between the three of them until Gadreel pricked her skin.
“Close enough, or I’ll open a window from her windpipe to her spine.”
Kate grimaced, but she clenched her teeth. “I’ve had this dream so many times before,” she said.
Gadreel said, “Too bad for you, this time isn’t a dream.”
“Too bad for you, too. The part coming up is where he kills you.”
Gadreel levered his forearm across her throat, choking off her air.
“Does this one belong to you, Nathaniel? Or can I have her?”
Nathaniel’s eyes were deadly cold. “If you kill her, you have nothing with which to bargain.”
The pressure on her throat eased. “There’s only one bargain that interests me. You give me back my ring, I go free, and you hunt me no more.”
“You can have the ring and a day’s head start, but you’re damned, Gadreel. Whenever you’re on earth, an archangel will hunt you.”
“Then Kate is very unlucky. If she’d never met you, I’m sure she would have lived a nice long life.” Gadreel ripped the robe down, exposing her chest. She tried to free herself, but Gadreel nicked her shoulder in warning.
“Everything you do, I will visit back on you tenfold,” Nathaniel said.
Gadreel laughed, and he bent his head and bit her shoulder hard enough to break the skin. She screamed, the pain like fire burning through her flesh.
A dagger flew through the air and stabbed into Gadreel’s arm. Gadreel shouted and yanked it out, dropping it without ever giving her enough room to break free.
“Nice throw, but see how you grimace, Nathaniel?” Gadreel licked Kate’s blood from his lips. “You don’t have a taste for torture. In two thousand years, each time we fight, it’s been a clean kill every time. And I rise again. And again. And again. I have an easy way into the world now. We’ll go on and on, you and I. But Kate will be gone. And you’ll have nothing to do all year but wait for me and visit her grave.”
Nathaniel eyes didn’t meet hers.
“Or I could let her go, and we could keep this just between us.”
“I’m listening,” Nathaniel said.