by Larissa Ione
Whatever. Regrets were for douchebags.
“There!” Silth pointed to a crude wooden crucifix near the site where animal blood ran thick from a stone outcrop in the cliffs. “The Unfallen.”
Hades sprinted toward the crucifix, dodging a volley of spears raining down from demons perched on the rock outcroppings of the canyon’s walls. He wished he could use his wings, but flying would make him more of a target. For now, he was safer in the enemy crowd.
He kept his eye on the crucifix as he ran. From this angle, he could make out the slim body of a female hanging limp from the crucifix, arms tied to the cross-board, her head falling forward, her face hidden by a mop of bright red hair. A spark of recognition flared, but it snuffed like a squashed firefly as an axe struck him in the head. Pain screamed through him as shards of bone from his own skull drove into his brain.
“Bastard” he snarled as he wheeled around to his attacker, a burly Ramreel with a black snout and glowing red eyes. “You fucked up my Mohawk.” At least, that’s what he thought he’d said. The words were garbled. Clearly, the bone shards had also fucked up the part of his brain that controlled speech.
One eye wasn’t working, either, but his ability to draw and quarter a demon with a single thought was still intact, as he proved a heartbeat later.
Head throbbing as flesh and bone knit back together, Hades made a run for the Unfallen female. Lightning flashed overhead, and electric heat sizzled over his skin. That lightning wasn’t natural. He looked past the giant wooden crucifix, and his hackles raised.
An Orphmage, one of the most powerful sorcerer-class demons that existed, was moving toward the female, a bone staff in his hand. And from the staff, tiny bolts of lightning surged.
Impossible. Im-fucking-possible. No one but Azagoth, Hades, and his wardens could wield power here. No one. Not without a source from outside the realm. He supposed the demon could be drawing energy from the Unfallen, but she wouldn’t have enough for the kind of magic he was brandishing.
No, something much, much bigger was in play here.
Hades lunged, sending a stream of white-hot electricity at the demon. The Orphmage flipped into the air, avoiding Hades’s weapon like he did it all the fucking time. As he landed, he whirled, and in a quick, violent motion, he stabbed the Unfallen in the chest with the sparking end of his staff. She screamed, a sound of such suffering that it somehow drowned out the violence of the battle and reduced the cries of the wounded to muted whispers in the background.
Hades froze. He finally recognized that voice. And that hair. And, as her scream began to fade into a tortured rasp and her body went limp, he recognized her clothes. Faded, torn jeans. Black and emerald corset. Bare feet.
Cat never wore shoes.
The Orphmage stepped back, his head covered by a burlap hood, but Hades could make out a sinister grin stretching his thin lips into a hideous slash. He raised his staff to strike Cat again. With a roar, Hades hurled a series of fireballs at the demon even as he charged toward him. Somehow the demon blocked the fire, but the force of their impacts against his invisible shield still knocked him backward with each blow.
In Hades’s peripheral vision he saw one of his wardens go down, his body going one way, his head going another, and dammit, Geist might have been a sadistic tool, but he’d served Hades well for nearly a thousand years.
Quickly, Hades put the dead fallen angel out of his mind and charged up the rocky slope, using his mind to continue throwing shit at the Orphmage. A crude arrow punched through Hades’s arm, and as he yanked it out, several more pierced his legs and back. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hauled himself up the incline and leaped onto the plateau where demons had been making their sacrifices and where Cat was hanging limply from the crucifix.
“Cat,” he breathed. “Cat!”
He ran toward her, ignoring the volley of projectiles raining down on him. Pain wracked him, blood stung his eyes, and his battery of powers was draining, but none of that mattered. He had to get to Cat. She was only about thirty yards away, but it felt like he’d run miles by the time he unsheathed a dagger and sliced through the ropes holding her captive.
Awkwardly, he threw her over his shoulder and reached out with his senses to locate the nearest portal. It wasn’t far, but naturally, a horde of well-armed, giant demons were standing between him and the way out.
“Hellhounds!” he shouted into the flashing sky. From out of nowhere, two inky canine blurs shot up the side of the canyon toward him. “Make a path!”
Instantly, the hellhound veered toward the group of demons and went through them like bowling balls through pins. Hades followed in the beasts’ wakes, reaching the portal as a demon with a missing arm swung a club at him. With relish, Hades sent a blast of power into the bastard’s head, exploding it in a fabulous gore-fest.
The portal swallowed him, and an instant later, panting and exhausted, he stepped out of the 5th Ring’s mausoleum at the graveyard. He flew the short distance to the wall where portals to and from Azagoth’s part of Sheoul-gra were laid out and triggered by only his and Azagoth’s voices.
“Open,” he barked. Nothing happened. Frowning, he tried again. “Open.”
Again, nothing. What the hell? Reaching out, he smoothed his hand over the dark stone surface. It felt the same as always, so why was it not opening?
“Open!” Gods, he might as well have been talking to a wall. He snorted. Sometimes he cracked himself up. “Damn you, fucking open!”
Given that the passage was the only way to get out of the Inner Sanctum, this was not good. Had Azagoth sealed the door on purpose? Was this a weird glitch? Or had the demons in the 5th Ring had something to do with this?
Hades wasn’t sure which scenario was the better one.
Cat groaned, and shit, he needed to get her someplace safe where she could recover from whatever the Orphmage had done to her. And as soon as she was able to talk, she had some serious explaining to do.
Chapter Seven
Everything was gray. Light gray. Dark gray. And every shade of gray in between.
Cat blinked. Where was she? Squinting, she shifted her head from side to side. She was lying down, apparently inside some sort of lidless stone box. It was huge, about the size of a king-size bed, and like a bed, it had blankets and pillows. Who the hell slept in a giant box?
She sat up, but she was so weak that it took two tries, and as she peered around the room, her head spun.
“Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakens.”
Cat turned to the owner of the voice, and she would have gasped if her breath hadn’t clogged in her throat. Hades? What was he doing here? Of course, it might help to know where “here” was. “Here” appeared to be a room constructed from the same stone as the box she was sitting in. Iron sconces on the walls gave off a gloomy light, but the fire in the hearth kept the place from being completely horror-movie chic.
“Where am I?” Her voice sounded cobwebby, which seemed appropriate, given that the room looked like a tomb.
“My place.” Hades walked over to the far wall where a pot steamed over the fire’s roaring flames. He was shirtless today, and the light from the fire flickered over his skin, the shadows defining every glorious muscle as he went down on his heels and ladled something into a cup.
Gods, she was confused. Why was she here? What had happened? The last thing she remembered was being in Azagoth’s office...no, wait. She’d gone to the Inner Sanctum to find a human. But everything was pretty cloudy after that.
She rubbed her eyes, which were as blurry as her memories. “What happened to me?”
Hades came over, moving in that way of his, like a panther on the hunt. Not even the chains on his massive black boots made a sound when he walked.
“That’s my question for you.” He held out the cup, which was really more of a bowl. That looked suspiciously like the top of a skull. “Drink this.”
She eyed the contents as she took the bowl, nearly splashing the clear yellow
liquid on her hand. It seemed safe enough, wasn’t full of floating eyeballs or anything.
“Smells good,” she said as she put it to her lips. “What is it?”
“It’s a healing broth. Made it myself from the skin and bones of a Croix Viper.”
Cat tried not to gag even though the liquid actually tasted decent, like spicy chicken soup. “Thank you.” She tried to hand it back, but he shook his head.
“Drink it all. It’ll heal the rest of your wounds.”
She looked down at herself, but there wasn’t a mark on her. Her jeans were dirty, and there were splashes of what might be blood on her feet, but it didn’t appear to be hers, and otherwise, she seemed to be in great shape. “What wounds?”
He picked up one of several blades he’d laid out on a crude wooden table and began wiping it down with a rag. “You were pretty messed up when I found you. I have the capacity to heal minor physical damage, but the other stuff is beyond my ability.”
“The other stuff?” She watched him slide the blade into a leather harness hanging off a chair.
“Psychic wounds,” he said gruffly. “The kind you get when an Orphmage thrusts his magic stick in you.”
She drew a sharp breath. “Magic...stick?”
“Not that kind of magic stick. Seriously, you ever seen an Orphmage’s junk?” He snorted. “I figure they use their staffs to compensate for their tiny dicks.”
She’d have laughed if she wasn’t so confused about why she was here and what had happened to her. She hadn’t spoken to Hades much, but she’d seen how he interacted with others, and she loved his sense of humor. He was so inappropriate and nothing like the people she’d dealt with in her sixty years of life in Heaven. She was pretty sure most angels had magic sticks up their asses.
“Maybe I could get out of this...” She looked around at the box she was sitting in. “This...um, coffin? Am I in a freaking coffin?”
“It’s actually more of a sarcophagus.” He grinned. “Cool, huh?”
Actually, yeah. Hades, guardian of the demon graveyard, had a sarcophagus for a bed. He really lived the part, didn’t he?
He offered her his hand, which she took, relishing the hot static buzz that skittered over her skin as she allowed him to help her to her feet and out of the giant coffin. And man, his hand was big. And strong. And it made her wonder what his fingers would feel like as they caressed her skin.
This was the second time they’d touched. She liked it. Wanted more. Being this close to a male was rare and strange, and aside from the unfortunate incident with Zhubaal, she’d never really had more than casual contact with the opposite sex. In Heaven, many angels were all “free-love” and “if it feels good do it,” but Seraphim tended to be conservative, determined to use ancient practices like arranged matings in order to preserve the inherent abilities that made Seraphim unique among angels.
She’d always thought Seraphim customs were a drag, even though her parents hadn’t been as militant as most others. Even so, just before she’d been booted from Heaven, they’d started to nudge her in the direction of suitable mates.
Now she was on her own, curious, and frankly, she was horny. Her brief encounter with Zhubaal had been ill-conceived and had only left her more sexually frustrated. Although, if she were honest with herself, she could probably lay some of her frustration at her own feet since she hadn’t been shy about asking Lilliana about sex with Azagoth.
Lilliana had been shocked at first, but they’d grown close, and soon Azagoth’s mate was confiding in Cat, sharing what they did in the shower, with the spanking bench, out in the woods... Cat shivered at the thought of doing some of those things with Hades.
The desire to feel more than the buzz she was getting through their clasped hands became a burning need, and she stepped closer to him, drawn by his bare chest and thick arms. If she could just smooth her palm over his biceps or abs––
Abruptly, he released her and leaped back, almost as if she’d scorched him. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stood there, staring down his perfectly straight nose as if she were an enemy. And yet...there was an undercurrent of heat flowing behind the ice in his eyes.
Could he read her mind? And if he had, wouldn’t her naughty thoughts have made him want to touch her more? She didn’t know much about the males of her species, but she knew it didn’t take much to get them interested.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said gruffly. “I don’t have a lot of visitors, so...” He shrugged as he gestured to one of two chairs in the small space.
Right. So...pretend that neither one of them had been affected by the brief moment of...well, she didn’t know what to call it. Maybe avoidance was for the best.
She cleared her throat in hopes of not sounding like a moron. “This is your home? I wouldn’t have expected you to live in a one-room...what is this? A crypt?”
“Ding, ding,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm but not malice. “Give the girl a prize. More snake soup, maybe?”
She held up her still-full bowl. “Thanks, but I’m good.” The crackling fire drew her attention to the carved gargoyles on the ends of the mantel and the faded painting of angels battling demons in a cemetery hanging above it. Okay, maybe Hades was taking the graveyard guardian thing a little too far. “So, why do you live in a crypt? Surely you could have a mansion if you wanted.”
“You’d think, right?” He gestured to the chair again. “Sit.”
It didn’t occur to her to not obey, so she sat carefully in the rickety chair that must have been put together by a five-year-old child. As far as she could tell, it was constructed of branches and strips of leather.
Hades folded his arms over his massive chest and stared at her until she squirmed in her highly uncomfortable seat. As if her discomfort was exactly what he was waiting for, he finally spoke.
“Tell me, Cat. What did you do to piss off Azagoth, and why would he send you to the Inner Sanctum without telling me?”
Shit. She was a terrible liar, and she had a feeling that Hades would see through a lie, anyway, but the truth...man, it was probably going to get her punished in a major way. She stalled by sipping the snakey soup.
“Also,” he pressed, not missing a beat, “what do you know about communications being down and the door between Azagoth’s realm and the Inner Sanctum being locked?”
She choked on the broth. “It’s locked for you, too?” At his nod, her mouth went dry. This was bad. Really bad. “I tried to go back, but I couldn’t. I thought I screwed something up.”
“You screwed up, all right,” he said, “but you couldn’t have gone back. Only Azagoth or I can operate the doors.” He tossed a log on the fire. “Why did you come here?”
Dread made her stomach churn, as if the soup had morphed back into a snake in her belly. “Before I answer your questions, I need to ask something.”
“Sure,” he drawled, arms still crossed over his chest. “Why the fuck not.”
Well, that didn’t sound promising. “Azagoth has the ability to destroy souls.” She shuddered at the very idea, at the sheer power one must possess to undo what God himself had done. “Do you?”
One corner of his perfect mouth tipped up. “You worried?”
“A little.”
“Seriously?” He lost the smile. “What the fuck did you do?” His eyes narrowed, becoming shards of angry ice. “Azagoth doesn’t know you’re here, does he? You entered the Sanctum without his knowledge. Holy shit, Cat, do you know what I’m supposed to do to intruders?”
She could guess, but she really didn’t want to. The bowl in her hands started to tremble. Calm down. He probably won’t kill you. Probably.
“Cat!” he barked. “At least one of my wardens is dead because of you, so I need some answers. Now.”
She couldn’t look at him, so she concentrated on her feet and said softly, “I accidentally let some souls into the Inner Sanctum.”
“Accidentally?”
“Of course it was an
accident,” she snapped, annoyed that her motives were in question. “Who in their right mind would open the tunnel without Azagoth’s permission? I didn’t even know how to open the thing. I was cleaning, and I accidentally––”
“Okay,” he interrupted. “I get it. It was an accident, but that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
She set the bowl on the edge of the coffin and blew out a breath. “I wanted to fix my mistake. I know it was stupid. I changed my mind, but the portal closed and I couldn’t get back.”
“So you traveled to the 5th Ring?” he asked, incredulous. “What kind of dumbass move was that? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I needed to find the human,” she shot back, feeling a little defensive. She might be impulsive, and she might not have made the best decision ever, but she had been trying to make things right. “But I swear, I’d barely stepped out when demons surrounded me.”
“That’s because you’re different. You are, for lack of a better word, alive. They can sense your life-force in a way my wardens and I can’t.” He scowled. “Wait. Human?” He moved a little closer, and she suddenly felt crowded. “What human?”
Ah, yeah, this was where things got really sticky. And bad. “One of the souls that got through...it was human.”
“So?” He picked up another of his wicked knives off the table and ran his thumb over the blade. “Evil humans are admitted to the Inner Sanctum every day. The souls you allowed through would have made their way to one of the five Rings...which isn’t a catastrophe. Eventually we’d have figured out that they were in the wrong place. If they were in the wrong place. So why did you worry about it? Because you were afraid of Azagoth’s wrath? Not that you shouldn’t be afraid,” he threw in. “He peeled me once. Peeled me. Do you know what it feels like to be fucking peeled? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not as fun as it sounds.”