by Julie Kenner
Watchers––Individuals assigned to keep an eye on the Four Horsemen. As part of the agreement forged during the original negotiations between angels and demons that led to Ares, Reseph, Limos, and Thanatos being cursed to spearhead the Apocalypse, one Watcher is an angel, the other is a fallen angel. Neither Watcher may directly assist any Horseman’s efforts to either start or stop Armageddon, but they can lend a hand behind the scenes. Doing so, however, may have them walking a fine line that, to cross, could prove worse than fatal.
Ufelskala––A scoring system for demons, based on their degree of evil. All supernatural creatures and evil humans can be categorized into the five Tiers, with the Fifth Tier comprising of the worst of the wicked.
Chapter One
The road to Hades is easiest to travel. ––Diogenes Laertius
Enjoy the trip, because the stay is going to be hell. ––Hades
If Cataclysm had to clean one more toilet in this demon purgatory known as Sheoul-gra, she was going to jump in and flush herself down.
She’d always assumed that when angels got kicked out of Heaven they got to do fun fallen angel stuff. Like terrorize religious people and drink foamy mugs of Pestilence ale with demons. But no, she’d gotten stuck wiping the Grim Reaper’s ass.
Okay, she didn’t actually wipe Azagoth’s ass. And if she did, his mate, Lilliana, would have had something to say about it. And by “say,” Lilliana meant “behead.”
Cat reconsidered that. Lilliana, who was still, technically, a fully-haloed angel, wouldn’t do anything quite so drastic. Most likely. But Cat still wouldn’t want to get on the female’s shit list. Anyone who pissed off Lilliana pissed off the Grim Reaper, and that...well, Cat could think of nothing worse.
Except maybe cleaning toilets.
Stop whining. You took the job willingly.
Yes, that was true, but she’d only agreed to serve Azagoth because she wanted to earn her way back into Heaven, and doing that required her to A) keep her nose clean, B) avoid entering Sheoul, the demon realm humans often referred to as Hell, and C) do something heroic to save the world.
Easy peasy.
She snorted to herself as she carried a tray of dirty dishes from Azagoth and Lilliana’s bedroom, her bare feet slapping on the cold stone floor that covered every inch of the ancient Greek-style mansion. He’d surprised Lilliana with breakfast in bed this morning, which was something Cat would have been shocked by a few months ago. Who would have thought that the Grim Reaper was such a softie?
She supposed she should have known better after he gave her a job and a place to live so she didn’t have to worry about some jerk dragging her, against her will, into Sheoul for fun or profit.
No, Sheoul was off limits to her. Entering the demon realm would complete her fall from grace and turn her into a True Fallen, a fallen angel with no hope of redemption. As an Unfallen, she had a little wiggle room, but even so, very few angels had ever been given their wings back. In fact, she knew of only two
One of those two, Reaver, was now not only an angel, but one of the most powerful angels to have ever existed. His mate, Harvester, had also spent time as a fallen angel, but her circumstances were unique, and while Cat didn’t know the whole story, she knew that Harvester had saved Heaven and Earth, and she deserved every one of her feathers she got back.
The thought of being made whole again made Cat’s useless wing anchors in her back itch. Her luxurious mink-brown wings were gone, sliced off in a brutal ceremony, and with them, her source of power. She totally understood why an Unfallen would cross the barrier between the human and demon realms to turn themselves into True Fallen and gain new wings and new powers. But was the evil upgrade worth it? Cat didn’t think so.
“Cat!” Azagoth’s voice startled her out of her thoughts, and she nearly dropped the tray of dirty dishes as she looked up to see him striding down the hallway from his office.
In the flickering light cast by the iron wall sconces, he didn’t look happy. He also wasn’t alone.
Hades, Azagoth’s second-in-command and the designated Jailor of the Dead, was walking next to him. No, not walking. With the way his thigh muscles flexed in those form-fitting black pants with every silent step, it was more like prowling. His body sang with barely-leashed power, and she shivered in primal, feminine response.
Son of a bitch, Hades was hot. Hard-cut cheekbones and a firm, square jaw gave him a rugged appearance that bordered on sinister, especially when paired with a blue Mohawk she’d kill to run her palm over. But then, she’d kill to run her palms over all of him, and she’d start with his muscular chest, which was usually, temptingly, bare. Not that she’d complain about what he was wearing now, a sleeveless, color-shifting top that clung to his rock-hard abs.
She tried not to stare, but really, even if she’d stood in the middle of the hall with her tongue hanging out, it wouldn’t have mattered. He never looked her way. He never noticed her. She was nothing to him. Not even worth a glance. Those cold, ice-blue eyes looked right through her. And yet, this was a guy who laughed with Lilliana, pulled pranks on the other Unfallen who lived here, and played with hellhounds as if they were giant puppies. Giant, man-eating puppies.
Azagoth stopped in front of her. “Cat? You okay?”
She blinked, realized she’d been lost in a world of Hades. “Ah, yes. Sorry, sir. What is it?”
“Have you seen Zhubaal?”
She nodded. “He was heading toward the dorms about half an hour ago. I think he said he was going to be teaching some of the new Unfallen how to be an asshole or something.”
Hades barked out a laugh, and she caught a glimpse of two pearly-white fangs. She used to think fangs were repulsive, but if Hades wanted to sink his canines into her, she’d gladly bare her throat and invite him in. She tapped her tongue against her own tiny fangs, the smaller versions that Unfallen grew a few days after being de-winged. For the most part, she’d gotten used to them. She didn’t even bite her lip anymore.
“Z is finally teaching them something he knows all about,” Hades said.
There was no love lost between those two, but Cat had no idea why. She did, however, know why she thought Zhubaal was an ass. Not that she wanted to think about it, let alone talk about it. She just had to hope that no one else knew.
Because humiliating.
“Thank you, Cataclysm,” Azagoth said, dipping his dark head in acknowledgment. “I hear you’ve been helping out with the Unfallen, as well. Lilliana says you advised them to use their Heavenly names instead of their Fallen names. You know that’s forbidden, right?”
Anxiety flared, but she lifted her chin and boldly met his gaze. “Not in Sheoul-gra. The rules are different in your realm. I figured that if they use their Heavenly names here, it’ll remind them to stay on the right track if they want to earn their way back into Heaven.”
Hades’s gaze bored into her, the intelligence in his eyes sparking. No doubt he was wondering why she hadn’t taken her own advice, but thankfully he didn’t have a chance to ask.
“Very smart.” Azagoth’s approval gave her a secret thrill, and then it was back to minion-chores as usual when he said, “By the way, my office could use some attention. It’s a little...messy.”
Azagoth brushed past her, and was it her imagination or did Hades linger for just a moment? Every inch of skin exposed by her blue and black corset tingled, and she could have sworn his gaze swept over her, appreciative and hot. But then he was as cold as ever, walking next to Azagoth as if she didn’t exist and never had.
With a sigh, she dropped off the dishes in the kitchen and grabbed her bucket of cleaning supplies before heading to Azagoth’s office. Once inside...well, he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d left a mess.
She ran a cloth over the stone and wood walls, wiping down the blood mist from whatever demon Azagoth had vaporized. And it must have been a big demon.
Apparently, he didn’t obliterate demons often; there was a price to pay for destroying souls.
But when he did, the mess was considerable.
She went through two bottles of cleaner and dozens of rags before the office no longer resembled a slaughterhouse, and man, she was going to need a long shower. Relieved to finally be done, she started to gather her supplies when a dark spot on the wall behind Azagoth’s desk caught her eye. Cursing, she swept her cloth over the stain, scrubbing to make sure she got every sticky bit of gore. But dammit, blood had gotten into a crack, and...she frowned.
Putting down the rag, she traced the crack with her finger, squinting at what appeared to be a round recess in the wall. What the heck was it? Driven by curiosity, she pushed slightly. There was a click, followed by a flood of light coming from behind her.
Oh...shit.
She turned slowly, and her gut plummeted to her feet.
A huge chunk of wall had disappeared, revealing a portal from the human and demon planes. A stream of griminions filed through, their short, stocky forms escorting the souls of demons and evil humans into the realm of Sheoul-gra. The creepy little griminions chittered from under their black, monk-like hooded robes as they marched the souls, whose bodies in Sheoul-gra were as corporeal as her own, through the cross-sectioned tunnel, only to disappear into another portal that would take the demons to their final destination—Hades’s Inner Sanctum.
“No!” she shouted. “Stop! Azagoth hasn’t approved the transfers!”
But they didn’t stop. They kept emerging from the right side of the tunnel and disappearing through the shimmering barrier of darkness to the left. Panicked, she pushed on the lever again, but the griminions kept marching. She wiggled it, pushed harder, punched it, and finally, with a whoosh, the portal closed, leaving only a solid wall in its place.
Cat swallowed dryly, her heart pounding, her pulse throbbing in her ears. Maybe she hadn’t screwed up badly enough for anyone to know. Maybe no one would notice the souls that got through to the Inner Sanctum without Azagoth’s approval.
And maybe she’d just earned herself a place in the Grim Reaper’s hall of horrors, the Hall of Souls at the mansion’s entrance, where statues made out of the bodies of his enemies were on display for the world to see.
What made it all worse was that the people encased in those statues weren’t dead.
On the verge of hyperventilating, she slumped against Azagoth’s behemoth of a desk and forced herself to breathe slowly. How did she keep screwing up? And not just screwing up, but royally screwing up. Just last week she’d broken one of Azagoth’s centuries-old Japanese swords. And a month before that, she’d spilled pineapple soda all over a priceless rug woven from demon sheep wool by Oni craftsmen.
“Did you know that, unlike pineapple soda, fallen angel blood doesn’t stain demon wool?” he’d asked in a dark, ominous voice as she’d scrubbed the rug. And no, as a matter of fact, she hadn’t known that.
When she’d said as much, he’d merely smiled, which was far, far worse than if he’d just come out and said that if she fucked up again, her blood would definitely not stain that damned carpet.
Soda, however, did stain, just like he’d said.
It seemed to take hours before she stopped trembling enough to gather her crap and flee the office, and thankfully she didn’t run into Azagoth on her way to her quarters. She did manage to catch another glimpse of Hades as he rounded a corner though, the hard globes of his ass flexing under the tight, midnight black pants.
Maybe she could try talking to him someday. Try saying something more coherent than, “Hi, Mr., um, Hades. Or do you prefer Jailor? Or Lord? Or...?”
He’d looked at her as if she’d crawled out of a viper pit. “Hades,” he rumbled. “Easy enough.”
And that had been the sum of their conversation. Their only conversation. Ever.
Did he think she had freaking halo pox or demonic measles? And why was she dwelling on this anyway? He was clearly not interested in her, and she had more important things to worry about.
Like whether or not Azagoth was going to not stain his carpet with her blood when he found out that she’d allowed unauthorized souls to enter the Inner Sanctum.
Chapter Two
Hades had a lot of names. Lord of the Dead. Keeper of Souls. Jailor of the Baddies. Asshole.
He owned them all. Ruled his piece of the underworld with an iron fist. Feared nothing.
Correction. He feared nothing except the Grim Reaper. Azagoth was the one person who had proven time and time again that he could turn Hades’s underworld upside down and shake it like a snow globe.
So Hades generally despised the monthly meetings between him and Azagoth, but thankfully, this latest one had been refreshingly brief and light on fault-finding. Which was good, because Hades’s brain had been occupied with images of Cat.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her when she came to work for Azagoth a few months ago, remembered how drawn he’d been to her energy. She was new to life on this side of the Pearly Gates, and while most newly fallen angels were either terrified or bitter, she was neither. According to Lilliana, Cat was curious. Eager to learn. Enthusiastic to experience new things.
Hades could teach her a new thing or two.
Except he couldn’t, could he? Nope, because the curvy redhead was off-limits to him, and panting after her like a hellhound on the trail of a hellbitch in heat would only end in pain.
Pain that would likely come at the end of Azagoth’s hand, and Hades had long ago learned that pissing off his boss was stupid beyond stupid...beyond stupid.
Still, it grated on him that he’d been read the riot act about Cat when he was about ninety-nine percent sure Zhubaal had bedded her. So what was up with that? Z was a cranky sonofabitch with a short fuse and a stick up his ass, but somehow that mongrel was good enough for Cat?
So fucked up.
Hades took one of three portals dedicated to travel between Azagoth’s realm and the Inner Sanctum back to his residence, and as he materialized inside his living space a tingle of mayhem skittered over his skin. How...odd. Sure, hell was all about mayhem, but this was different, and it had been different for a few months now. Before, there had always been a balanced mix of order and chaos. Organized chaos. Chaotic organization.
Even here, in Sheoul-gra’s Inner Sanctum, where the souls of dead demons came to play until they were born again, there was order. Rarely, there was chaos.
At least, chaos used to be rare. But now that Satan had been imprisoned and Sheoul was no longer under his rule, all hell had broken loose––literally. Sheoul was now operating under a new regime, with a dark angel named Revenant as its overlord, and not everyone was happy about the new leadership situation. Just as with humans, demons didn’t accept change easily, and the tension surrounding Revenant’s takeover had bled over into Sheoul-gra.
Completely unacceptable.
The tingle began to sting, as if Hades was crawling with hornets. Resisting the urge to rip off his own skin, he stepped into his personal portal next to the fireplace. Like Harrowgates that transported demons around Sheoul and the human realm, some of the portals inside the Inner Sanctum had been built to travel only between two locations, while others could transport a person to one of multiple places by manipulation of the symbols inside the portal’s four walls. But Hades could also operate them with his mind, allowing any portal to take him anyplace within the Inner Sanctum he wished to be. Or, like now, to get where he needed to be, he merely had to concentrate on the sensation of mayhem wracking his body, and a moment later, the portal opened up.
He wasn’t at all surprised to find himself in a burned-out sector of the 5th Ring, a vast, dreary realm of fog, heat, and despair that contained the evilest of the evil. Before him, demons scattered into the mist the moment they recognized him.
Most demons, anyway. A few stood their ground, their defiance admirable, if not foolish.
A demon who had been a professional torturer before he was killed several years ago by Aegis demon slayers blocked his path. Here, demons could c
hoose their appearance, and this bastard had chosen his former skeletal Soulshredder form, his grotesque, serrated claws extending from long fingers.
“Move.” Hades slowed, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t have time for this shit. His skin burned and his insides vibrated, alerting him to some sort of violent disturbance nearby. And it had to be a whopper for him to have felt it from inside his home on the other side of the Inner Sanctum...which was roughly the distance from one earthly pole to the other.
“Fuck you, Soul Keeper.”
Surprise jolted him; few were brave––or stupid––enough to challenge him. But Hades kept his expression carefully schooled. Tension was running high right now, and he couldn’t afford to let anyone think he was losing control of the Gra.
From two-dozen feet away and without breaking his stride, Hades flayed the demon with a mere thought. Stripped him of his skin like a banana. The demon screamed in agony, and Hades let him. That noise would carry for miles, warning everyone within earshot of the consequences of fucking with him. Sure, Hades could have “killed” him, but the demon’s soul would simply have fled the old, broken body and taken a new form. Handing down pain was much more satisfying.
Hades continued on his way, his boots crunching down on charred bone and wood, and as he strode by the Soulshredder, the demon stopped his annoying screaming long enough to croak, “You...will...fail.”
Hades ignored him. Because really? Fail at what? His job was pretty simple and straightforward. All he had to do was keep demon and evil human souls inside the Inner Sanctum until the time came when, or if, they were born again. How he kept them was entirely up to him. He could leave them in peace, he could torture them, he could do whatever he wanted. Failure? That was ridiculous. There was nothing to fail at.