“The gray realm?”
“Purgatory for want of a better word.” The cigar was clenched between his teeth as he stared down at her. The man was as tall as Azaiel and just as fierce. “I wasn’t meant to be there, so I wandered like a blind fool. I’d lost my faith and belief. It was”—he tossed a handful of leaves into the bag—“the darkest time in memory.”
“I think dying would be pretty hard to beat.”
Priest grinned at that, a rakish tilt to his mouth that made him look like a movie star. An action hero like Willis or Statham. “Dying is the easy part. Trust me. It’s but a moment in time. It’s what comes after that can be a challenge. With no purpose I was like a child, a blind, weak, sniveling child. My soul didn’t belong in purgatory and there was no moving forward or backward for me,”
“So what happened? How did you . . . escape?” Was that even the right word?
“There is no escape from the gray realm. You either move on, find the light as it were, or you live out your days in limbo. Never resting, always searching for something that you never really find.” Priest blew out a ring of smoke. “Or you make a deal with someone who has power.”
“You made a deal with someone.” It wasn’t a question.
He handed her the last bag. “I did.”
“Who?”
Priest shook his head, and she was struck at his raw, male beauty. “We’ve just met, Rowan James. Don’t expect me to share all my secrets with you.” His eyes flashed. “We haven’t even kissed.”
Her cheeks blushed a deep red, and she stared at her hands. Sheesh, Priest probably thought she was flirting with him, which was absurd. Sure he was hot and sweaty and freaking gorgeous, but the only one she wanted to kiss was . . .
Rowan cleared her throat and asked the question she was most dying to have answered. “So what’s Azaiel’s story?”
The Knight Templar straightened, his expression no longer easy. “What has he told you?”
She shook her head. “Nothing really, other than he’s Seraphim.”
Preist’s eyes narrowed at that. “Azaiel’s story is for him to tell.”
“Why don’t you like him? Why does Nico hate him?”
Priest exhaled and tied up the last garbage bag. “My feelings for the Fallen are ambivalent; as for Nico, I can’t really say. The shifter runs on emotion with a lot of highs and lows. There’s not much in between with him.”
“The Fallen? That’s what Nico calls him, and I know Azaiel doesn’t like it. What does that mean?”
Priest clamped the cigar tightly as he tossed the remaining bag into the huge pile of crap that would now have to be dragged to the front for garbage collection.
“It means that no matter your origin, there is always room to fail . . . to fall.”
Rowan studied Priest, thinking the entire conversation had been one circle of freaking confusion. She decided to change tactics and go with a hunch.
“Why is Bill your boss? What makes him so special?”
Priest’s mouth thinned, and she knew by the very silence that fell between them she’d been correct. She arched a brow and opened her mouth, but his expression changed as his eyes shifted behind her. Gone was easy, and it was replaced with something dark.
Rowan turned and spied Hannah lingering near the fountain that stood beside the garden path. Nico was a few inches behind her, as well as Vicki, Terre, and Abigail. The jaguar shifter was solemn, his hard eyes averted, but Rowan’s gut twisted at the look on her cousin’s face. On all their faces.
Something bad had happened.
“Ro,” Hannah paused and bent over. “Oh God.”
“What is it? Hannah, you’re scaring me.” Rowan rushed to her side and rubbed her cousin’s back. Her first thought was for her mother, which startled her so much she stumbled, her feet tripping over themselves.
Hannah slowly straightened, her eyes now brimming with tears. “Clare didn’t make it to the airport.”
“What do you mean?” The fist in Rowan’s gut churned again, and a wave of nausea rolled over her.
Hannah shook her head, her large blue eyes swimming in pain. “She was found in the city, some back alley near the downtown core. She never even made it out of Dublin.”
“Found?” Rowan asked dully.
“She’s dead, Ro. It was him. I just got off the phone with the police. She was . . . oh God.” Nico stepped forward, his harsh features twisted as he stood behind Hannah, hands fisted, cold eyes fierce.
“The police said the attack was savage, judging by the . . . the amount of trauma, they feel it was personal. The sergeant said there was a mark carved into her chest. He described it to me.” Hannah’s voice broke. “It looks like your mark,” she whispered. “Mallick’s mark.”
For a second only white noise rushed through Rowan’s ears. The buzzing was intense, and Rowan stepped back, horrified. Clare was twenty-five. Twenty-five.
“What about Simone?” she finally asked.
Hannah glanced back at her cousins. Terre shook her head, her curls bouncing crazily around her face. “We can’t get hold of her.”
Hannah grabbed Rowan’s hands. “It doesn’t look good.”
Rowan was silent, letting the pain inside expand and touch every cell in her body. Her breathing slowed, and her chest constricted. As the wall of hurt rolled through her veins she clenched her fists and took a step back. The wind picked up, tossing whatever leaves had escaped Priest high into the air.
One large golden maple leaf caught her attention as it swirled in the air—a fall jewel amidst the dreary brown and gray. She focused on it and let the pain grow as large as it could. Until she thought she would break apart from the force of it.
Her grandmother’s face drifted in front of her, a hazy, familiar image, and yet it was distorted. Cara’s mouth moved. What was she saying? Was that Patsy Cline Rowan heard?
Rowan thought of what Cara’s final moments would have been. What had she felt? Terror. Pain. Sadness. Where was she now? Was her Nana in this place that Priest had spoken of? The gray place? The in-between place?
The pain grew until Rowan’s jaw ached from pressure. Until the ground trembled beneath her feet. Until the flagstones cracked, and large gaping rifts sliced through the newly raked lawn. The roaring in her ears intensified until she covered them and bent over.
“Hold on to your faith, Rowan. You need it now more than ever.” Priest’s words filled her mind, but she ignored them, and they faded just like everything else. Except the pain.
Still the pain grew, like a worm twisting inside her. It didn’t stop until she was sick all over the newly turned earth.
And then it was quiet.
She slowly straightened and wiped her mouth, her hard eyes on Priest as she walked past him without speaking.
To hold on to faith meant you had it in the first place. Rowan was empty inside. She’d lost hers a lifetime ago.
Chapter 23
Azaiel and Kellen arrived in District One in the middle of a storm. Such was the way of it there. The perpetual night sky was a vibrant red, with slashes of black ripping across the horizon as thunder and lightning boomed loudly.
The smell of sulfur was heavy in the air, and Azaiel wrinkled his nose in distaste. The metallic scent of it would forever be ingrained into his mind, imprinted upon his memory.
God how he hated that fucking smell.
The clock tower was where it had always been, there in the middle of the market. He paused for a moment as they emerged from the large structure and glanced down the street. Thick fog swirled lazily along the ground, hiding the cobblestone surface and who knew what else. Tall buildings dressed in shadow lined either side of the street, but it was too dark to see them clearly. Instead they stood like macabre caricatures, spectral and hollow shells of what they were.
He studied them through the cold wind and driving rain, pulling his leather coat up as far as it would go. Most were decrepit, crumbling facades, but some were in use and hid things bet
ter left in the shadows.
He thought he saw something there, reflected in the glass of one of the only windows that wasn’t boarded up. A flicker of light . . . a deviation of the dark.
They couldn’t linger.
To his immediate left was the hotel, Soul Sucker. It looked much the same as the last time he’d seen it. It was a tall building, but the upper floors were cloaked in fog and darkness. The paint was peeling, many windows were broken. It was as old and used as District One seemed to be, and it had stood for millennia.
When Azaiel had been a prisoner here he’d been allowed out of his cage occasionally—like a pet out for a walk—and though he could count those few moments of freedom on the fingers of one hand, all that he’d seen was burned into his memory like a movie playing inside his brain.
Club Doom was at the end of this street—a raucous gathering place where alcohol, drugs, and mayhem mixed all too frequently. The dunes—which was where he was headed—were well beyond that place.
“This looks like some fucked-up version of a Hitchcock film.” Kellen was beside him, his face hard as he took in everything. “Not at all what I expected.” He glanced at Azaiel. “Who knew Hell was as cold as the Arctic?”
“This place is unlike any in the known realms.” Azaiel started forward. “Stick close to me. If anyone or anything gets in your face, do not challenge. If you die here, I won’t be able to bring you back, do you understand? You’ll be bound to this place forever.”
Kellen’s lips thinned. “Got it.” He tucked his jacket up and squinted into the gray mist. The rain had petered off, and the wind had died down, but the mist rode the coattails of fog and created an illusion of depth and movement. “Where we headed?”
“The dunes. It’s where Seth’s compound is located.”
They started forward. “I take it we’re not going to be able to walk through the front door and ask for the grimoire.”
“No.” Azaiel shook his head. “There’s another portal, one that will take us inside Seth’s.”
“And you know where this portal is?”
“I do.” At least he knew where it had been located . . . if it had been moved, he was screwed. He was counting on Seth’s arrogance and the fact that the demon was very much a creature of habit, not nearly as paranoid as Samael. Though he supposed playing for both sides in this war of the realms would make anyone paranoid.
They were nearly upon Club Doom; the pounding beat shook the street beneath his boots, and several demons crowded the entrance. Two of them were wraiths, their flimsy bodies transparent as they flitted back and forth, searching . . . always searching. Their large, almond-shaped eyes were hollow, and maggots squirmed from mouths that were open in a perpetual scream of agony.
In their former lives they’d been human, or demon, or otherworld until a trip below to District Three had changed them forever.
“Do not meet their gaze,” he warned Kellen. “And if they sing, do not listen. Think of anything but the voice in your head.”
A large crowd was gathered in front of the entrance of the club, waiting to get inside. An eclectic assortment of otherworld demons and those from the human realm—vampire, shifter, magick. District One was the most forgiving realm in Hell, and in many ways mimicked any city in the human world—a seedy, destructive, and violent city—but nevertheless it drew many parallels.
Club Doom was the only place in the entire district where one could drink, party, and do all sorts of evil, illicit things. That it was owned by Samael was no coincidence. The demon laid claim to half of District One, but Club Doom was his jewel. It provided him with both intel and entertainment.
The smell of hedonism was rank in the air, and Azaiel grimaced. It was sweet and seductive. It had called to him many a night that he’d passed down here and now . . . it made him ill. Small victory but one he clung to fiercely.
They were a block away. “Aren’t you afraid someone will recognize you?”
Azaiel shook his head. “There’s always a chance, I suppose, but the type of souls who haunt Seth’s compound do not generally mix with the filth that inhabit this place.” His gaze swept the crowd that milled about, and he drew his collar up higher as he nodded to the left. “We’re headed there to Café du Blood.” An alley separated the small shop from the club, a small sliver of darkness between the two buildings.
He paused, about to cross the street, when a whisper of something strange drifted over him. Azaiel glanced back toward Club Doom. A young woman stared at him with wild, beseeching eyes. Long, tangled, blond hair fell to her waist, the dress she wore, something out of Victorian England, was in tatters, and the demon who held her by the shoulders looked like a mean son of a bitch.
She appeared too frail. Too weak. Too human.
For one second their gazes met and held, and Azaiel felt defeated because he knew he couldn’t do anything for her. There was too much at stake. He turned his back, heart heavy, and wished her well.
They’d almost reached the café when a mountain of a beast stepped directly into their path. He was demon though of a higher class than a bottom feeder blood born. A lot of the creatures felt the need to hide their true selves behind a human facade. Not this one.
His true form glittered in the darkness, the faint oil lamps from above reflecting off the shine of green, blue, and silver. His skin was like pieces of hard reptilian glass sewn together—his head sported not two but four horns, each with deadly, poisonous ends. He was well over eight feet in height, with mini tree trunks for thighs, a neck nearly as thick, and shoulders impressively wide.
His eyes glowed red, and he huffed large clouds of dark smoke from nostrils flared wide open. “The café is closed.” Sharp, razorlike teeth glistened overly white as the creature bared them.
Azaiel glanced toward the dimly lit café, watched as a hunched-looking dwarf of a man poured a steaming cup of red liquid for an elegantly dressed humanoid creature.
He arched a brow and gazed up at the demon. “Looks open to me.”
The demon’s smile widened. “Not for the likes of you. The café only hosts those invited inside.”
Azaiel glared at the beast, aware that they were attracting attention from the crowd outside Doom. It was not the time to start something. He needed to keep a cool head.
“I’ve business with Seth, so unless you’d like the heat of his wrath on your impressive ass, move the fuck out of my way.”
The demon’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared even more, and Azaiel kept his right hand loose, near the hidden weapons that filled his pants and his jacket. He was weak in this new skin he’d been given, and he needed all the help he could get.
If it came to a fight, Azaiel was certain he could slay the beast, but he was also certain his ass would get kicked all over the square and back before the job was done. He thought of Rowan and clenched his teeth together. He would do this for her. He would get it done.
“What business do you have with the golden?”
Azaiel was fast losing impatience. “You will move or—it pained him to play the weakling, but at the moment it was necessary—I will call forth Seth, and you can ask him yourself.”
Azaiel glared at the demon, hating the impotency he felt. He would persevere, and one day his powers would be fully restored. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept him putting one foot in front of the other.
The demon glanced around, and Azaiel knew he had him when he took a step back. “I’ll be watching you . . .” Its gaze swung to Kellen, “both.”
Azaiel ignored the taunt, pushed past the creature, and he and Kellen entered the café. The dwarf glanced up in surprise, his distorted features wrinkling as he studied them for several long moments. The patron that sat was a vampire, an ancient from the looks of it, but the vampire ignored them all as he drank deeply of the dark red liquid. Its fangs were gone—punishment no doubt—and the only way it could feed and survive was to frequent the café.
The small dwarf set his large server on th
e table and shuffled over to them, limping badly with his right foot. His skin was dried and aged so that his cheeks hung like sacks of withered gray tissue paper and his dull, watery blue eyes had no pupils.
The dwarf rubbed his chin, eyes narrowed, and grunted. “Are you here for food?”
“No,” Azaiel answered quietly. “We’re passing through.”
The dwarf glanced at the vampire, but the ancient was still engrossed in his cup. “You cannot pass unless you know the words.”
Azaiel nodded, his gut clenching. Now was crunch time. If things had changed . . . if words uttered before meant nothing now, he was fucked.
He spoke in Egyptian. “Backward is forward.”
The dwarf stared up at him, and the moments that passed were some of the longest Azaiel had ever spent. He didn’t breathe, didn’t blink . . . didn’t do anything but watch the little man, hands loose at his side and ready to rock and roll if need be.
The dwarf turned to Kellen, then swung his gaze back to Azaiel. “As you wish, sir.” The little man moved aside, and Azaiel moved past, signaling for Kellen to follow. The two men headed toward the back of the café and walked through a small storage room that held nothing but large glass vials of blood.
A door on the far wall opened as they neared it, and they headed down the stairs, two at a time, the same dank smell Azaiel remembered thick in the air. Water trickled down the stone walls as if they bled perpetually, and the steady drip that echoed below got louder as they made their way into the basement.
There amongst the many boxes of supplies and whatnot stood a massive oven. It was made of precious metals, the kind found only in District One, and Azaiel knew that Seth had had it forged by a powerful mage.
This was the portal Azaiel remembered. His relief that it was in the same spot was huge, as was the need to keep moving forward. To not stop. Legs without motion were legs that could be cut off. They needed to hurry.
“This is it,” he said curtly. “The oven.”
“Seriously.” Kellen glanced around, his face dark, eyes unreadable. “This is fucking unbelievable. You know this.”
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