Her bright blue eyes blazed at him, still caught in the ecstasy of vanquishing the demon. With her luscious human curves, the pulsing blade in her hand, the passion in her eyes… Lucian could understand why his brother desired her above all things on Earth. The love-sick, lust-filled expression on Leksander’s face was all too obvious, and the arousal scent rolling off him was impossible to miss. For a dragon, at least. But angels didn’t scent the same way, and per usual, Erelah was oblivious to the silver dragon standing at her side, drooling for her.
“Lucian.” Her voice was still angel mode, filled with resounding power. She lowered her arms, her chest heaving, her pale cheeks flushed—he often thought slayers preferred demon-killing to sex not just because it was righteous, but because it actually was sex for them. At least, the ecstasy looked the same from the outside. How his brother thought he could compete with that kind of heavenly climax, Lucian would never know.
“He attacked her,” Leksander said, already making excuses for her. As if he hadn’t brought her here to win his way into her good graces.
Lucian just shook his head.
Erelah blinked and seemed to just now recognize Leksander’s presence with them in the alley. “Yes!” she enthused. “He attacked. But I took him with my blade.”
“Yes,” Lucian said. “I saw that part.” He grimaced at the man slumped on the ground. If Lucian had just been a little sooner upon the scene, he could have stayed her hand, if only for a moment or two in order to question the demon. Then he realized—he was actually early. Leksander must have never intended Lucian to see him sneaking his slayer into the city.
The man moaned and moved slightly.
“He lives!” Erelah clasped her hands together with delight. Now that the demon had been vanquished, the man was fully human again. And apparently, he was going to live. Maybe. But now that he was human, Erelah and her kind would have nothing but love for him.
She knelt to the man’s side and clasped his cheeks in her hands. Then she kissed him, full on the mouth, but that was no ordinary kiss—she was breathing life back into him. The man convulsed in her hands, and his arousal scent blossomed in the alley. His eyes popped open to see the full glory of the slayer giving him life, and his erection instantly tented out his pants. Erelah continued the life-kiss for an interminable time, obviously enjoying it as much as the man. For beings who stayed mostly chaste, there was a hell of a lot of sex-like-things angelings did. Then again, demons were infrequent on the face of the Earth these days, and the life-kiss was restrained to special circumstances like this, which happened rarely. Erelah was a young angeling as well—less than a hundred years since her angelic father lost his mind for a moment and mated with a human woman. Lucian doubted she had actually killed a demon before. Although she certainly had revived a human with a life-kiss—that was the main occupation of halflings like her in modern times, in the absence of demons to slay.
She was certainly enjoying it. If it was painful for Lucian to watch, Leksander’s face was a picture of torment. It was one thing to see the woman he loved slaying demons… another thing entirely to see her flushed in the arms of another man. Lucian had no doubt this was solely the angel-love Erelah had for every human, no matter the circumstances, not that she actually felt the stirrings of a True Love for this hybrid demon in the alley.
But that didn’t make it any easier to watch.
“Leksander.” Getting his brother to pry his pained stare from her wasn’t easy. “Leksander!” he hissed.
His brother blinked, hesitated, then strode over.
“Is this the only demon you found tonight?” Lucian asked, trying to distract him. Erelah was done with the actual life-kiss, but the man was still recovering—and he seemed loathe to let go of the beauty who had resuscitated him. For her part, she was glowing with the aftereffects of that encounter, even more so than the demon slaying, and was in no hurry to release him, either.
Leksander wrenched his gaze away from her and focused on Lucian. “No. There was one other. Both of which were Odious Class.”
Lucian narrowed his eyes. Demons were chaotic forces of evil, generally speaking, although they obeyed their masters once summoned. But once mated and producing hybrids, all bets were off. They aligned with the forces of evil surrounding them, and those usually lined up with the seven deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and especially Pride. Each sponsored a class of demon specialized in bringing that particular evil out in humans, not that demons couldn’t be multi-talented and bring out more than one. Especially when cross-bred with humans, who seemed to have a limitless talent for evil.