by Larissa Ione
He turned back to the demon. “So,” he said, as he watched his hands form the claws that were going to do the ripping he’d promised, “are you still insisting that you and your demon buddies just happened to stumble upon my daughter while you were innocently roaming the streets after a night of terrorizing humans? That you didn’t know I was Gretchen’s father?”
Azagoth had never met Gretchen, one of his young children who had been raised in the human realm, but she was safe in Sheoul-gra now, and once she was settled in and had gotten over the shock she’d been through, he’d introduce himself.
Fear flickered in the demon’s eyes as Azagoth dragged one sharp claw down his skeletal chest.
Lower, and the demon began to tremble. Lower, and he swallowed hard, the veins in his scrawny throat bulging.
Lower.
“Okay, okay,” the demon blurted, his eyes wild now.
Azagoth dug his claw into the soft abdominal skin. “Okay...what?”
“W-we were sent to kill her,” he said in a rush, and now they were finally getting somewhere. “But we didn’t know she was your daughter! I swear!”
That was most likely true. It would be stupid to tell underlings too much, especially if the information might make them balk at following an order.
“I believe you,” Azagoth said in a pleasant, calm voice. He even paused his finger, letting the demon relax for a moment. Letting him feel hope.
Hope was for fucking morons. This creature was going to die a terrible, painful death, no matter what.
Obviously.
“How unlucky for you that Memitim are rounding up all of my children in the human realm, and Gretchen was next in line.” They’d gotten to her just in time. Five minutes later, and her body would probably have been found partially eaten and dumped in a German forest or field. “But you can change your luck.” He leaned in, baring his fangs as he lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “Tell me who sent you to kill my daughter.”
Silence hung in the air, and for a long moment, Azagoth thought the demon would refuse. But just as he began to drop his hand to start squeezing things until they popped, the Croucher let out a resigned groan.
“Bael,” he rasped. “The fallen angels Bael and his brother, Moloc.”
Azagoth went taut. The names weren’t surprising; Moloc and Bael had been testing Azagoth’s patience for centuries in their quest to find ways to keep souls that rightfully belonged to him. But that wasn’t what made anger singe the edges of Azagoth’s patience as he turned to Hawkyn.
“Bael,” he snarled. “The bastard who took Cipher.”
“Then this is all connected,” Hawkyn said, but he was missing the real link.
Azagoth laid it out, crystal fucking clear. “Cipher has access to the locations of all my human-realm children.”
Hawkyn’s emerald eyes—Azagoth’s eyes—shot wide as the implication sank in. “No way.” He shook his head. “No damned way. Cipher wouldn’t have given Bael anything.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. I know it,” Hawk insisted. “He would never betray us. He’d never betray you.”
Hawkyn was so convinced of his friend’s innocence. Azagoth wished he could be as sure. Or even a little sure. Cipher had been an asset, and he’d been loyal. But in Azagoth’s thousands of years of life, he’d seen loyal people turn. Everyone had a price...or a breaking point.
Someone banged on the door. “Hawkyn! Father!”
The urgency in Journey’s voice raised the hair on the back of Azagoth’s neck. With a mental flick of his mind, the heavy office door swung open.
“What is it?” he asked as Journey rushed inside.
“It’s Amelia,” Journey breathed.
“Who?”
“Amelia,” Hawkyn repeated miserably. “Dammit.”
“She is—was—one of your...ah...fuck.” Journey dropped his gaze to the floor and Azagoth’s gut went with it. He knew where this was going. “She was a sister in the human realm. I was with Jasmine. We went to get her. She...she was the last one on the list. She’s dead.”
Sudden rage turned Azagoth’s blood to acid. Everything inside him burned as he rounded on Hawkyn.
“Still think this is a coincidence?” His voice was warped, spoken through clenched teeth. “Find Cipher. Find him now.”
“But Father—”
Azagoth’s inner demon clawed at his control, and he wasn’t in the frame of mind to restrain it. The monster was about to be loosed.
“I offer this one mercy, my son,” he growled. “Find Cipher. Find him and kill him. Because if you don’t, I will.” His sons just stood there. “Go!”
They scrambled out of the office, and Azagoth let his beast loose. He was going to break some rules and people were going to pay for killing his children. Eyes for eyes.
He started with the Croucher’s.
Chapter Fourteen
In the hour it took for Lyre and Cipher to get from her place to his computer, Cipher’s fury had dulled enough that he could temporarily relegate his part in Azagoth’s child’s death to the background.
Revenge, though, was very much in the foreground.
He fired up his laptop with the single-minded focus of a vampire on the trail of a bleeding human.
“Do you think you can do it?” Lyre asked as she locked the door behind them.
“What, write a virus? Sure.”
“The kind of viruses Bael wants?”
Cipher let out a bitter laugh. “No. People have been trying since the internet began.”
“But there are stories about people being possessed or cursed after opening emails or files.”
He nodded, familiar with those. He’d written code for dozens of types of viruses like that, but as a powerless Unfallen he’d lacked the ability to execute them. Now, maybe he could. They’d be perfect to kill individuals like the enemies Bael wanted dead.
“Those are useful for individuals, but they’re limited in scope and expire quickly. Not to mention that the spells can be broken by deleting the emails or closing out the app or whatever. But Bael also wants me to create an enchanted computer virus that can spread from the computer to the human world, and then keep on spreading. It can’t be done.”
At least, he hoped not.
“Then what are you doing? You said you were going to make a plague.”
He’d said that, but really, he was going to cause a plague. Because once Azagoth knew Bael was behind his children’s deaths, Azagoth was going to become an epidemic. All Cipher needed to do was hide a message inside one of the viruses meant for Bael’s enemies. When the virus activated, a subprogram would deliver a warning to Azagoth via the demonweb. Bael would never know.
“Cipher?”
Oh, right. He was supposed to answer her. Probably shouldn’t tell her his real plans. He opened his mouth to spew some bullshit he hoped she’d buy. But before he could say anything, his wings sprouted from his back, wrenching and twisting with so much force that he grunted in pain.
“What is it?” Lyre rushed toward him. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he gritted out. “They popped out on their own and—”
He broke off as an electric tingle sizzled across the surface of his skin and pinprick points of light filled his vision.
“What the hell..?” Transparent cyan glyphs appeared before his eyes. Random numbers, letters, and symbols took shape in the air, some skimming the floor and hugging the ceiling. Holy shit.
“It’s code,” he whispered.
“Code? Ciph? Are you okay?”
Ciph. She’d called him by his nickname. Felt intimate. Felt...right.
And that was so not what he should be concentrating on right now. No, the programming language floating around was way more significant.
Because weird.
He blinked. Maybe he was hallucinating. What had Lyre said was in the sandwiches? Demon beef and hellrats? Maybe they’d gone bad.
“Hey, Lyre...how
old were those sandwiches?”
“I bought them yesterday.” She frowned. “Why?”
Closing his eyes, he shook his head. Maybe he could reset his operating system. But nope, when he opened his eyes again, the atmospheric graffiti was still there.
“Can you see this?” he asked.
Lyre glanced around. “See what?”
“The symbols.” He pointed at a group of them. “The greenish-blue symbols.”
She looked right through them and then turned to him like he’d lost his mind. “I don’t see anything. What’s going on? You’re weirding me out.”
“I don’t know. It’s language of some sort.”
“Language? Like a demon language?”
“Like programming language.” As he watched, character sets and entities rearranged themselves. A Greek omega symbol spun into a tilde operator squiggly mark and caused a cascade of code into lined formation. “Holy shit,” he breathed, as what he was witnessing started to make sense. “It’s a spell. Fuck me, I’m seeing a spell!”
“How can you see a spell?” She grabbed his arm to get his attention, but he couldn’t look away. “What kind of spell?”
“I don’t know.” It was fascinating how the symbols unique to demonic computer language vibrated while the others were static. “I’m not even sure how I know it’s a spell. Or maybe a curse.” He remembered a theory he’d hashed out with Hawkyn, and he finally looked down at her. “You know, some people believe that everything in the universe is really made up of mathematical code, and if you could just see and access it, you could control it. Reprogram it. Delete it.”
“That’s insane.” She frowned, appearing to rethink that. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted. “But I also didn’t believe that active spells had source code, either.” This was so crazy. Was it his unique fallen angel ability? If so, it was majorly awesome.
“Well, what’s the spell you’re seeing?” Lyre moved toward a book shelf. “Maybe one of the books is enchanted.”
He glanced over at the books, and sure enough, tiny rows of code surrounded a leather-bound tome lying on its side. But that wasn’t related to the millions of lines of programming language floating in the room.
“Dammit, I need access to the internet. If I can just plug some of this into the translator I stored in my cloud—” He sucked in a harsh breath, his mind reeling at the sudden clarity. “It’s the spell that blocks internet access.”
Lyre wheeled around, and he cursed his stupidity at blurting it out. He kept forgetting she was the enemy.
She doesn’t feel like the enemy.
No, she didn’t. But Flail hadn’t felt like an enemy either...until it was too late.
“You’re kidding,” she said, and just as he was about to say that yes, he was full of shit, she added, “Can you break it?”
Well, that was unexpected. “Are you asking me to?”
“Yes, of course. You can put it back, right? Cipher, this is your gift.” Her excitement made him wonder what hers was. “You need to practice with it.”
“So Bael can force me to use it? Yeah, great.”
She hissed and grabbed his arm. “Bael can never know about this. Never tell anyone about your gifts. Especially not someone like Bael.”
“You’re not going to tell him?” He looked at her sideways. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you to report every one of my abilities to him.”
“He did,” she admitted. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Oh, yes it would. Cipher swore it.
“You don’t like your boss much, do you?” As he waited for her answer, he concentrated on a few individual characters in the code, using his thoughts in an attempt to rearrange them.
Nothing. Maybe the spell was voice activated.
Lyre plopped down on a fur-lined ice bench. “I hate him.”
They could start a club. “Then why are you working for him?” He studied the code and considered another tack. “And what’s the Sheoulic word for delete?”
“Altun. And I’m working for him because I want revenge on the people who got me expelled from Heaven.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “But why a deranged lunatic like Bael? Why not a regular lunatic like Revenant?”
“Because the people I want revenge on are in Heaven, and Heaven backs Revenant.”
He looked over at her as she kicked her slender legs up on the bench. Legs he’d been between just an hour ago.
Fucking Flail.
“They don’t back him,” he said. “They just prefer him over Satan.”
She gave a dismissive snort. “Same thing.”
No, it wasn’t. Heaven needed allies like Revenant, but from what he’d heard, the Powers That Be didn’t interfere with his rule. If Revenant wanted to help someone get revenge on an angel, Heaven might be miffed, but ultimately, they needed him.
Okay, maybe they backed him.
Not wanting to admit she was right, he focused again on the code, choosing a random ampersand as his victim. “Altun!”
The code just laughed at him. Well, not literally, but it felt that way.
Sighing, he turned back to Lyre. “So what happens after you get your revenge?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you want to do with your life? Spend it helping Bael torment Azagoth? Spend it preparing for Armageddon?”
She drew her knees up to her chest, her expression troubled. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“So you shackled yourself for all eternity to Bael and his empire of evil for the sole purpose of getting revenge and without any thought about what comes after? Seems a little shortsighted.”
She glared, the silver in her eyes glinting like daggers. “Well, hello, did you think about the consequences of ruining a Primori before you did it? Or were you bent on your own self-gratification or self-destructiveness?”
“Touché,” he muttered. “But in my defense, I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite.” That coaxed a smile from her, but it was distant. He’d touched a nerve. Maddox insisted that was the best time to keep pressing for information. Cipher had always found the opposite to be true, but hey, he’d give it another shot. “So, this is off topic, but what did Flail mean when she said you couldn’t set wards?”
“Nothing,” she said with a jerky shrug. “It’s just not my skill set.”
Seemed odd. Wards were the most basic kind of conjuration there were. Sure, he didn’t know how to set one, but that was because he’d only had access to his fallen angel powers for a day. He should have a firm grasp on them within another day or two. Lyre should have obtained the knowledge years ago.
“So how’s your progress?” She jumped to her feet. Clearly, she was ready to talk about something else. “Were you able to delete any of the code?” When he shook his head, she cocked hers and asked, “Can you touch it?”
“I tried earlier. My hand passed through it.” He suddenly remembered how he used to manipulate 3-D programs in Heaven, and an idea came to him. “But maybe I don’t need to touch them.”
His wings quivered as he summoned energy to his fingertips and reached out as if trying to swat at a group of characters. They vibrated, and he held his breath as he tried again, harder this time.
Yes!
Three numbers and a demonic glyph spun away from the main group and hung in the air. Refocusing his objective from manipulating symbols to obliterating them, he pointed at each line of code and watched as they broke apart and dissolved into sparkly glitter.
“I did it!”
Lyre sat up straight. “We have the internet in here now?”
He blasted the last remaining lines of code. “We should.” He turned to his computer and searched for a connection. When the signal lit up, he let out a whoop. “We have active demonweb, baby.”
Excited, hopeful for the first time in months, he went straight for his private inbox. Junk. Junk. More junk.
<
br /> And an email from Hawk, dated seven months ago.
We’re looking for you.
That was all. Four words. But those four words meant everything.
Another one from Hawk, dated six months ago.
We’re looking for you.
There were more, one each month, ensuring he’d know they hadn’t given up. But it was the most recent one that had his heart pumping a mile a minute.
We found you. Flip the bedora gateway switch.
He grinned like a lunatic. Hawkyn and Journey had hacked into Bael’s private network and given Cipher a way to shut down his security system. Cipher just had to access it.
“Um...Cipher? What’s going on?”
He looked up, alarmed by the urgency in Lyre’s voice. The walls, once opaque, were growing transparent, and suddenly a klaxon rang out.
The code...oh, damn, oh, shit!
“I missed the failsafe.” How could he have been so stupid?
“What?”
His fingers flew over the keyboard. He had to get a message out. Fast. “There was code in the spell that triggers an alarm if the spell is broken.”
The door burst open, and armored guards, their weapons drawn, spilled inside.
He. Was. Fucked.
Chapter Fifteen
Lilliana smiled into her laptop’s camera as her friend Cara held up baby Aleka. “I know I’ve only been back in Sheoul-gra for a couple of days, but I swear she’s grown.”
Cara cradled the infant, swaddled in a blanket made from the golden wool of Heavenly sheep, in the crook of her arm as she tenderly stroked her rosy cheek. “I think so too.”
Longing stirred in Lilliana’s chest as she smoothed her palm over her belly. She couldn’t wait to hold her own child in her arms. Only a month to go. She and Cara had conceived within days of each other, but as an angel Lilliana had an extra four to five weeks of gestation.
“Well, you both look amazing,” she said. “I’m so glad you got a chance to call.”
“I just wish you were here.” Cara sighed. “I miss having you around. Maleficent misses you too. She’s been searching the island for you, and she won’t stop whining.”