1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Five

by Julie Kenner

  And if that didn’t work, dropping them into one of the graves in the cemetery for a couple of decades would.

  “Of course.” Silth shifted his balance nervously, making his chain mail rattle, and Hades stiffened. “A situation requires your attention.”

  A dark, slithery sensation unfurled in Hades’s gut at both Silth’s words and the grim tone. “Tell me.”

  “The entire 5th Ring is becoming unstable, and the violence is spreading into the 4th Ring. Intelligence indicates that a large-scale escape from Sheoul-gra is in the works.”

  “Bullshit.” Hades kicked at the straw on the floor and watched a hellrat scurry into another filthy pile. “There’s no way they could gather enough power to accomplish something like that.”

  Silth, who Hades had personally chosen as the 5th Ring’s warden because he was an evil sonofabitch who liked pain and feared nothing, suddenly looked as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. He even took a step back from Hades, as if he expected to be slaughtered.

  Which meant the guy had some fucking bad news.

  “Somehow,” he growled, “they got hold of an Unfallen.”

  Hades blinked. “An Unfallen? Like, a living, breathing fallen angel? How? Azagoth wouldn’t have allowed anyone inside without telling me.” No way. Any living being who was given access to the Inner Sanctum had to be escorted and contained to prevent exactly what appeared to be going on right now in the 5th Ring.

  “I saw her myself,” Silth said.

  “Her?” Hades frowned. “Who?”

  “I know not. I caught but a glimpse,” Silth said, reverting back to what Hades like to call his “medieval speak.” The dude had fallen from Heaven in the late 900’s and had spent way too much time messing in human affairs and picking up their annoying habits. “When I captured one of the rebels, he admitted that she was an Unfallen being used in a ritual that would break down the Inner Sanctum’s walls.”

  The hellrat poked its head out of the straw and took a bite out of the unconscious demon on the floor. They were cute little buggers.

  “Something’s still not right.” Hades tore his gaze away from the rodent. “It would take more than a single Unfallen to unleash the kind of magic that would destroy the Inner Sanctum’s boundaries. What else do they have?”

  “Unknown. But I fear that if we don’t act now, it won’t matter if the walls fall or not. The uprising is spreading, and if it reaches all of the levels...” He trailed off, knowing full well that Hades understood the seriousness of the situation.

  A large-scale rebellion might not result in the destruction of the Inner Sanctum’s walls, but it would force Azagoth to halt the admission of new souls into the Inner Sanctum, resulting in a backup that would affect both the human and demon realms. Azagoth had even theorized that a large enough riot could blow out the inner barriers that separated Azagoth’s realm from the Inner Sanctum, resulting in a wave of chaos that would destroy everything Azagoth held dear.

  Not that Hades gave a shit what Azagoth held dear, but any threat to Azagoth was a threat to Hades, as well. If Azagoth fell, so would Hades, no matter how connected he might be to the Biblical prophecy laid out for Thanatos, the Horseman known as Death.

  And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and he who sat on it was named Death, and Hades followed with him.

  Yeah. That.

  Hades had already helped out the Four Horsemen on several occasions, but he had no idea what was in store for him down the road. No doubt, it wouldn’t be good. The Horsemen had a way of getting themselves into trouble.

  Hades brushed past Silth and started down the narrow, torch-lit hall, the fallen angel on his flank. “Where are the insurgents holding the Unfallen?”

  “My boys and I battled them on the 5th Ring’s Broken Claw Mountain.” Silth paused as they stopped at the armory, where Hades grabbed a leather harness loaded with blades fashioned from materials found in the Inner Sanctum. Anything from outside was strictly forbidden except inside Hades’s home. “The survivors fled into the canyon with the female. I believe they’re holed up there.”

  Hades snorted. “You think they’re what, cornered? Waiting to be slaughtered?” Testing the edge of a bone blade, he shook his head. “They have a plan.”

  “You think it’s a trap?”

  “Hell, yeah, it’s a trap.” He grinned because as shitty as the turmoil in the Inner Sanctum was, there was a bright side. Thousands of years of monotony had worn thin, but now there was a little excitement. Something to challenge him, to make him feel alive.

  He thought of Cat and how, when she’d run into him in Azagoth’s Hall of Souls, he’d had a moment where he’d felt more alive than he had in centuries. It had been enough to make him forget, just for a few minutes, that she was off-limits to him. His pulse had picked up, his body had hardened, and he’d wanted so badly to wrap himself around her and revel in skin-on-skin contact.

  But that wasn’t going to happen, so he’d have to settle for the next best thing.

  A good old-fashioned fight.

  Chapter Six

  It turned out that Silth hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that the 5th Ring was in chaos. In the canyon where the Unfallen was supposedly being held, Hades found himself having to fight his way through hordes of demons simply to get within sight of the staging area where the leaders were chanting and dancing and sacrificing demon critters for their blood.

  As Hades and his team of fallen angels battled an endless stream of demons, he kept an eye out for the idiot Unfallen who had somehow landed herself in a shit-ton of trouble. Because even if the demons didn’t kill her, Hades would.

  And he was going to have fun doing it.

  He threw out his hand, sending a wave of disruptive power into the crowd of demons in front of him. They blew apart as if they’d been nuked, leaving a path of meat and blood ahead of him. Hellhounds rushed in to feast and snap at the souls rising from the ruined bodies. It wouldn’t be long before they reoriented themselves and generated new flesh-and-blood bodies again, so Hades had to hurry. Although only Hades and his fallen angel wardens possessed supernatural powers down here, the demons still had size, strength, teeth, and claws in their arsenals, not to mention sheer numbers. If Hades and his team were overwhelmed, things could get bad. Real bad.

  Worse, he’d gone back to his place to contact Azagoth only to find that communications were down, and they must have been for hours. Azagoth always sent a message for a status update at precisely midnight, but for the first time in thousands of years, there was nothing. He probably should have popped into Azagoth’s office to see what was up before charging into battle, but dammit, the Grim Reaper’s Darth Vader-ish warning to not fail him again was still sitting on his mind like a bruise, and he didn’t feel like poking it. Still, it might have been helpful to know how the hell an Unfallen had gotten into the Inner Sanctum.

  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 gruffl
y. “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.