Z

by Larissa Ione

  And what the hell? He never fantasized about females like this. His focus had been on no one but Laura since before he fell, and even the one foray into experimentation he’d taken with Cat last year had been more about seeing if he was still functional than anything.

  Or maybe he’d just been lonely. A hundred years without so much as a kiss was a long freaking time.

  “You like what you see?” She sauntered toward him with slow, deliberate steps. Somehow, her spiked heels didn’t wobble on the uneven ground no matter how hard her hips popped with each step. “Do you?”

  Why, yes. Yes, he did like what he saw. But she hadn’t chosen such a sexy outfit for Z’s benefit and he knew it. “You’re wasting your time with me, and if you’re planning to seduce Azagoth, you should know he has a mate. And Lilliana does not share.”

  She stopped a couple of feet away, her fingers still fondling the blade. Which shouldn’t be erotic but somehow was. “I’m not here for that.”

  No doubt seducing Azagoth wasn’t her primary goal, but he knew her kind, knew her racy clothes were tools she’d use if she needed to. And something about Azagoth got all the females––and males, for that matter––worked up. Once she laid eyes on him, she’d try to seduce him. They all did.

  “What’s your name? And what is your business with Azagoth?” Stepping closer, he lowered his voice and looked down at her from his extra foot of height. “And keep in mind that I’m his gatekeeper. You will tell me or you won’t get off this platform.”

  She coyly fingered the plunging neckline of her top and batted her jewel-toned eyes. “I’m Vex, and I have a proposition for your boss.”

  “I’m Zhubaal, and I need a little more than that.” He narrowed his eyes, refusing to be charmed or seduced. But damn, she really did have nice breasts. “What kind of proposition?”

  For a long moment she stared up at him, her ruby lips pressed together in a stubborn line of silence. Just as he was about to send her back to whatever realm she’d come from, she gave up the seductress BS and held out her right arm.

  “See these glyphs?” She traced the outline of one of five squiggly black circles with the tip of one amethyst-painted fingernail. “Touch one.”

  “If this is a trick––”

  “How stupid do you think I am?” she snapped. “If Azagoth is really the Grim Reaper, he’s one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Do you honestly think I’m here to piss him off by screwing with one of his griminions?”

  Well, that was insulting. “I’m not a griminion,” he ground out. “Griminions are ugly little freaks who collect souls when a demon or evil human dies. I’m just your standard everyday minion.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know. I was being funny. You’re the Grim Reaper’s minion. Griminion.” She nudged him with her arm. “Come on. Touch me.”

  Anxious to be rid of this obnoxious female, he gripped her wrist and pressed his fingers against two––or maybe three––of the circles.

  He had no idea how many of the things he touched because the moment his skin came into contact with them, the powerful burn of sheer evil shot through him and knocked the breath from his lungs. Holy hell, what were those glyphs? Malevolence seared his skin and forced superheated blood to flow like lava through his veins as he released her and stumbled backward, his head spinning.

  “They’re souls,” Vex said, her voice cutting through his agony. “That’s what you’re feeling. They attached themselves to me, and I think Azagoth might want to take them off my hands.”

  The overwhelming evil drained rapidly away now that he was no longer touching the glyphs, but another sensation remained, one that once again took away his breath and left him shaken.

  Familiarity. Comfort. Love.

  Was it...possible? He knew the warmth of this, the desperate need to hold onto it, but the sensation was fading with every spastic beat of his heart.

  Laura.

  His fingers cramped, and he looked down to see that he was clutching his chest as if he could dig through his ribs to his racing heart.

  He licked his dry lips and tried to summon enough moisture in his mouth to speak. He was afraid to hope, afraid to ask the question that sat on the tip of his parched tongue. But he had to. This was why he’d willingly fallen from grace all those decades ago. The reason he’d begged the Archangel Uriel to slice off his coveted maroon wings, coveted not so much for the color as for what they represented.

  The best of the best.

  Now he lived among the worst of the worst.

  “Do you know who the souls belonged to?” he asked, deliberately spacing out his words so he didn’t run his tongue like a kid hopped up on Halloween candy. “When they were in physical form, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “They don’t speak to me.” Pained shadows flickered in Vex’s eyes, and he wondered what the souls were doing to her. He’d barely touched them and they’d given him a body migraine, but they were melded into her flesh. “Not with words.”

  He didn’t need words. He stared at Vex’s arm, at the thin, swirly lines that marked her skin, and he knew.

  One of the souls in Vex’s body belonged to his beloved. One of the souls was Laura.

  Chapter Three

  Vex stared at Zhubaal, but only because he was staring at her. Staring like she’d suddenly sprouted a halo.

  But during the stare-off, she discovered that the blond, dark-eyed fallen angel was outrageously hot. Absolutely delicious in black jeans, combat boots, and a navy T-shirt that clung to a hard, muscular body. If she’d met him anyplace other than the Grim Reaper’s freaking realm, she’d be testing the sexual promise that wrapped around him like a second skin.

  But as it was, he not only seemed uninterested, he seemed shocked, or maybe horrified, by her.

  “What’s your deal?” she finally snapped. “What is it humans say? Take a picture, it’ll last longer?”

  “The souls,” he said roughly. “You claim they speak to you, but not with words.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said, but that’s the gist.” The souls vibrated, as if reminding her why she was here. They were probably as anxious to be free of her as she was of them. “Now, do I get to see the Grim Reaper or not?”

  And if so, how could she work this to her advantage? She needed to sell these souls, but meeting the Grim Reaper was also a once-in-a-lifetime chance she couldn’t let slip by. She was tired of being treated like a scavenger. Collecting souls paid well, but in the demon world, she was considered as loathsome as humans considered drug dealers. Working with the Grim Reaper would give her legitimacy as well as protection from the people who were destroying the underworld soul trade.

  Zhubaal hesitated, but after a moment he jerked his head in a “follow me” motion and started toward one of the big buildings at the edge of what appeared to an ancient Greek city. She held back for a few heartbeats to get a good look at how well those jeans fit. Niiice.

  “How do they communicate with you?” he called back to her. “The souls, I mean.”

  She caught up to him, her heels clacking on the cobblestones. “Um, they don’t. I sense them. Like, I can feel how evil they are.” She held up her arm. “Four of these feel like Tier Ones and Twos on the Ufelskala. But the other one...the newest one...” She shuddered. “The evil is as strong as anything I’ve ever felt.”

  It was stronger even than the soul that had possessed her years ago, that had sent her on a rampage through regions of Sheoul where she was no longer welcome. The nightmares from those two weeks of hell left her exhausted and emotionally drained far too often, but it was nothing compared to the guilt that ate at her every day.

  She had to get rid of this soul and fast. She couldn’t go through that again. She wouldn’t. She’d kill herself before she allowed another evil being to use her body for slaughter and mayhem.

  Zhubaal stopped so suddenly she whacked her shoulder against his arm. It was like running into a wall. A hard, tall, do-me-against-it wall.
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  “Do the souls interact?” he asked. “Can the strong ones torment the weaker ones?”

  What an odd question. “Yes. Why? How is this relevant to my meeting with Azagoth?”

  “Everything is relevant when it comes to Azagoth.” He started walking again, taking her past a perfectly trimmed hedgerow separating the mansion’s grounds from the other buildings, a sparkling fountain, and several Greek statues and seemingly random pillars that didn’t support anything.

  This was not what she’d expected to see in a realm run by the Grim Reaper.

  Zhubaal led her up a stone staircase that ran the entire width of the building. “How is it that you collect the souls?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” As they approached the giant doors, they swung open. “I’m a sort of magnet. They call people like me daemani, but if your boss deals in souls, he’ll probably know that. If there’s a nonhuman, supernatural soul in the area, it will find me.”

  “How? Griminions appear within seconds of a demon’s death.”

  “They’re too late if I’m the one who killed the demon or a demon dies near me.” She made a habit out of not killing demons if she didn’t have to, but shit happened because demons were assholes, and a lot of them deserved to die. “Once I visited a friend at Underworld General, and in the hour I was there, two demon souls got sucked inside me. Two! Those doctors must be terrible if they can’t keep anyone alive. But now, if I need some fast cash, I take a stroll through the hospital.” Well, not anymore. Not since the soul market crashed.

  He gave her a judgey sideways glance. “I would keep that to yourself. Azagoth considers all souls to be his. If he knows you intentionally stole them out from under him, you’ll pay with your own soul.”

  Azagoth was a greedy bastard, wasn’t he? She’d keep that opinion to herself, too.

  Zhubaal led her inside the building. She squinted in the torch-lit darkness, and holy freak show, they’d walked into a nightmare museum of statues. This was what she’d expected to see in a realm run by the Grim Reaper.

  In a room that was seemingly endless, rows of life-sized stone figures of demons of all species were on display, all in various states of agony. Skulls and weapons lined the walls, some of the weapons buried in the skulls. Vex had been inside some seriously creepy and haunting places, many filled with bloody horrors she couldn’t even describe. But something about this room was more disturbing than a room full of blatant gore.

  Maybe the creep-factor came from the feeling that she was being watched.

  “These are living statues.” Zhubaal’s boots thundered as he strode through the cavernous room. “Sometimes Azagoth doesn’t kill his enemies.”

  Horror slithered down her spine as what Zhubaal said sank in. She gave a wide berth to an eyeless Silas demon that seemed to be reaching for her, its face twisted in misery.

  “How long have they been like this?” Her voice sounded small in this place, and she didn’t know if it was a trick of the space or if she really sounded like she wanted to be anywhere but here.

  Zhubaal high-fived an elf-like Neethul statue as they walked past, and she wondered how aware the demons were of the world around them. “Some are new, within the last few decades, but most are hundreds, if not thousands of years old.”

  They’d been trapped for thousands of years?

  The souls on her arm began to tingle as if frightened, growing into a violent vibration that became more intense the farther inside they went. The super evil soul, which she would now dub SuperEvil, began to claw at her. The souls always got antsy when she was near another soul magnet, but this seemed more like fear than the usual eagerness to get out of her body, even though the next host could enslave it, eat it, use it for spells...souls were all-purpose items that used to net a fortune.

  She did the whole Lamaze thing through the psychic assault, but when Zhubaal narrowed his eyes, she stopped breathing like she was giving birth and smiled as if nothing was wrong. Once he turned away, she went back to Lamaze...just more quietly.

  They finally exited the statue room, and just as they turned down a long, dimly lit hallway, the douche-bro angels brushed past them on their way out, barely sparing a scornful glance at them. Steps behind, a bald guy in a shapeless brown monk robe followed, presumably the angels’ escort.

  A dark-haired male in black slacks and a button-down shirt the color of dried blood emerged from a doorway at the end of the hall. The souls inside her freaked the hell out, vibrating so hard she thought her skin might come right off her body. They wanted her to run, to get away from here, and frankly, it was tempting.

  Breathe. Don’t let them see you as anything less than someone in perfect control.

  “Z,” the guy said, his deep voice as intensely captivating as his emerald eyes. This was Azagoth. No doubt about it. “I’m heading to the Inner Sanctum. You’re in charge until I get back.” He scowled, and his head whipped around to her so fast it was a blur. “Who are you?”

  The souls screamed. They screamed so loud that for the first time, she heard them. Actually heard them and felt their fear. Not that she could blame them. Azagoth was terrifying, made all the more worse by his beauty. He was tall, dark, handsome, and he exuded danger that left her cold inside. Not even Tier Five demons could match this kind of soul-sucking cold.

  “I’m Vex.” Somehow she managed to not sound like a cornered mouse.

  He turned back to Zhubaal as if he hadn’t spoken to her at all. “I’ll see her when I return.”

  Zhubaal’s hand snapped out to catch Azagoth’s arm as he started past him. “But my Lord––”

  Azagoth turned his gaze on her once again, and her blood froze. “When. I. Return.”

  No! Run away! Escape! The souls shrieked, clawed, tore at her mind, even as Azagoth strode away. And it was then that she realized that this was the first time it had ever happened.

  The souls didn’t want out. They wanted to stay in.

  * * * *

  Dammit. Z hadn’t been able to talk to Azagoth about his suspicion regarding Vex and the souls she carried. One soul in particular.

  Oh, he could have tried, but he knew Azagoth, and the guy had been on the edge of an explosion. About what, Z had no idea. All he knew was that you didn’t want to get caught in one of the Grim Reaper’s concussive blasts. When that guy detonated, he went nuclear.

  “What now?” Vex asked, and he wasn’t surprised to hear the slightest tremor in her voice. But her violet eyes were hard, the eyes of a warrior, and if Azagoth frightened her, it didn’t show. Impressive, especially for an emim, most of whom wielded very few of the abilities their more powerful fallen angel parents possessed. “I can’t leave. One of the souls inside me is dangerous.”

  He lowered his voice as a resident Unfallen walked past on his way to the kitchens. “Dangerous how?”

  “If a soul is powerful enough, and evil enough, it can possess me.” Vex spoke with a flippant wave of her hand that didn’t match up with the way her fingers trembled. “It’s not a pleasant experience. Weaker souls generally team up to keep more sinister ones at bay, but this one is crazy strong. Its malevolence is…I dunno, pure, I guess. I don’t know how long I can last against it.”

  A chill crawled up Z’s spine at the thought that Laura was trapped inside Vex with a malevolent demon. He’d met a handful of daemani in his life, but he’d never asked them questions about their abilities, let alone if the souls they packed around hung out together.

  “What do you mean, pure?” He started back through the statue room to leave the building, and he got a kick at how she walked so fast he had to pick up his pace to keep up.

  “The souls all have different...vibes. I can get a general sense of how old they are and how many lives they’ve lived.” She grimaced at the statue of a genocidal Darquethoth scumbag Azagoth had impaled before encasing him in stone to suffer death pangs for all eternity. “Each life seems to mellow them out, for lack of a better word. But those who spend a long time livin
g a single life...they tend to be really fucking strong. I’d bet that whoever I picked up today is either ancient or infected with great evil, and they definitely have a thirst for pain and death.” She cast him a brief, impish smile. “And sex. So it’s not all bad. But this soul is very, very angry.”

  He wondered if Laura’s second life had “mellowed” her, although he couldn’t see how. As an angel, she’d been the epitome of serenity, preferring to listen rather than talk, to negotiate for peace rather than fight. Those were the very qualities that had gotten her banished from their angelic warrior Order and led to her fall from Heaven.

  Holy shit, after all these years of looking, was it really possible that he was this close to finally seeing his betrothed again? Did she know he was close? Or was she too busy trying to escape the evil soul inside Vex?

  He slowed while the doors swung open. “Can the angry soul harm the others?”

  Please say no.

  “Yes.” She practically ran outside, and he swore she breathed a sigh of relief when the doors closed behind them. “I can feel their pain even now.”

  The Ipsylum warrior in him rose up in eagerness to destroy whoever was hurting Laura, followed by frustration that there was no enemy to fight. “Can you stop it from happening?”

  She paused on a step to look at him like he was crazy. “Um, no. Why? Don’t tell me a big, bad fallen angel is worried about some poor little demon souls being bullied.”

  He couldn’t care less about any souls but one. Laura had been so kind and gentle before her fall from grace, and even after, as a fallen angel, she hadn’t changed much. But, as Azagoth had pointed out, she’d been killed before her soul could become too corrupted by evil. She’d also been Unfallen, an angel who had lost her wings but hadn’t entered Hell in order to complete her fall and allow darkness to flood her soul. She’d been decent, even until the end, and it made him sick to think that she could, right now, be suffering in ways he couldn’t even comprehend.

  He ignored Vex’s ridiculous question and walked her around the hedgerow. “This way.”