Z

by Larissa Ione

  “Where are we going? You didn’t answer me about what we’re doing now.”

  They turned down a cobblestone path that bisected a vast, grassy lawn that used to be nothing but scorched wasteland before Azagoth’s mate, Lilliana, worked some kind of voodoo on his shriveled, blackened, Grinchy heart.

  “Now,” he said, “you get to check in to Sheoul-gra’s finest luxury hotel.”

  One black brow arched. “Sheoul-gra’s finest what?”

  He gestured ahead, toward the buildings that spread out like wings behind Azagoth’s great mansion, all laid out in replica of ancient Athens. “The one with the gargoyle pillars and the skull carved above the entry. I call it Motel 666.”

  “Clever. And just begging to be the site of a massacre.” She rubbed her arm absently, and he wondered which of the glyphs belonged to Laura. She was so close, and it killed him to not be able to touch her. “So you’re serious? You have a hotel?”

  “They’re more like what humans call dormitories.”

  “Dormitories?” A breeze ruffled her spiky locks as she glanced around. “For who?”

  “I’ll show you.” He led her to the back of the building, which opened up into a courtyard where several dozen people sparred with various weapons under the barked instruction of fallen angels. “Unfallen and Memitim.”

  She frowned. “Unfallen are fallen angels who haven’t entered Sheoul, right? They can still be redeemed. But what’s a Memitim?”

  Lilliana waved from across the courtyard where she was talking to three of their newest Unfallen arrivals. Ever since Azagoth turned Sheoul-gra into a sanctuary for Unfallen looking for a chance to redeem themselves and earn their way back into Heaven, they’d seen a steady stream of new faces.

  “They’re all Azagoth’s children,” he said. “They’re a special class of earthbound angel born to protect certain humans and earn their wings.”

  “Unfallen and Memitim,” she mused. “Two sides of the same coin. One group was born with everything to gain, and the other was born with everything to lose.”

  His head whipped around to her. That was something Laura would have said. She always looked for the commonalities in people rather than the differences. It was another of the traits that had led to her being shunned by their Ipsylum Order. The thought irritated the twin scars where his luxurious wings that marked him as an elite warrior class had been sliced off. It had taken two years after his fall to grow his fallen angel wings which, while studier and more resistant to fire than his old wings, were inferior and uglier in every other way.

  “What is your deal?” Vex rounded on him, one of those lethal heels grinding on the stone path. “Why do you keep staring at me?” She batted her eyes. “It’s because I’m so hot, isn’t it?”

  He wanted to say it was because Laura was inside her somewhere, but the truth was that Vex was easy to stare at. Everything about her was the opposite of Laura. Tall, blonde, willowy, and conservative compared to short, dark, curvy, and dangerously sexy.

  But was this the real Vex, or did the souls influence her? “I’m not staring,” he lied. “I’m trying to figure you out. Do the souls affect your personality, even if they aren’t trying to possess you?”

  She laughed at a young Memitim who tripped over his own sword while practicing with it. “Sometimes.” She turned to him, her big violet eyes still sparkling with amusement. “Like, once I killed this Alu demon asshole, and his soul got sucked into me. Do you know what they eat? Rotting flesh. Seriously. The more rotten the better. Until I was able to get rid of him, my mouth would water every time I drove past a dead animal on the side of the road.” She stuck out her tongue and made a face that was so Laura-like that a wave of longing crashed over him. “So gross. And another time, I absorbed the soul of an incubus. I didn’t realize it at the time, but damn, I was horny. For like, a month. Couldn’t get enough, you know?”

  No, he didn’t know. But now he was picturing her trying to get enough, and it made him uncomfortably warm. And a little hard.

  “So the souls inside you now could be influencing you?” Earlier, she’d mentioned the evil soul wanted things. Like sex.

  His cock twitched, and he bit his tongue, welcoming the pain. Anything to keep from having thoughts he shouldn’t be having. Laura might be influencing Vex, but it didn’t matter. Vex was not Laura.

  She shrugged. “The weaker ones might be having some minor effect, but when there’s more than one, they tend to spend so much time fighting each other that they don’t mess with me.” She held up her hand. “Fingers crossed that SuperEvil holds to that.”

  Just in case, he was going to make sure Vex had a constant babysitter.

  He took her to an unoccupied Motel 666 room on the second floor and sent a passing Memitim to fetch a guard. The space was small, with only the most basic of furniture, but this room had recently been vacated by an Unfallen who had given into the seduction of Sheoul, and he’d left a nice flat-screen TV behind.

  She tossed her backpack to the cot. “This is it, huh? No pool? No coffee maker? No continental breakfast? I’m going to destroy you on Yelp.” She jammed her fists on her hips in faux outrage, and his gaze automatically fell to the marks on her arm. “What is it? Why do you keep looking at them?”

  He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to explain why he kept staring at her and the glyphs. She was probably starting to think he was some sort of obsessive creeper.

  “Because one of them is familiar,” he said, his heart thumping excitedly at the reason for the familiarity. “It was something I felt when I touched you.”

  She donned a wicked grin that probably got her anything she wanted from males. “Was that ‘something’ horny? Because if you want to touch me again, I’m okay with that.” Her tone was as flirty as her smile as she dragged her fingernail over the glyphs on her arm. “So are at least two of the souls.”

  “No,” he ground out. “That ‘something’ wasn’t horny.”

  “You sure?” The sultry gleam in her eyes nearly made him groan. “Do you want to touch me again to see?”

  Yes. Hell, yes. He’d kill to experience that feeling again, was desperate to connect with Laura in any way he could. And what if she could feel him, too? If he caressed Vex’s smooth, tan skin, would Laura know it was his touch?

  Without thinking, he reached for her, but before he made contact, Suman, a burly Memitim with more muscles than brains, jogged into the room like there was a fire.

  “I was told I was needed,” he said stiffly, a soldier through and through.

  It was probably good that he’d shown up, because as much as Zhubaal wanted to feel Laura, he wasn’t sure he wanted to experience the loss of the connection with her again.

  “Thank you, Suman,” Z said, snapping himself into job mode. “I need you to watch Vex for a while. I’ll send someone to relieve you soon.” He turned back to Vex. “There’s a communal bathroom down the hall, and I’ll have food sent over. Stay put.” As an afterthought, he added, “And be good.”

  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to hear her laughter all the way out of the building, and damn if it didn’t make him smile, too.

  Chapter Four

  Vex was going crazy. How could anyone stand being trapped in such a tiny room? She needed space. Freedom to move.

  It wasn’t that she wanted to escape from Sheoul-gra. She wanted to explore it. She’d just had to figure out how to get past the babysitter. First, she’d attempted to leap out of one of the glassless windows, but apparently, some sort of invisible barrier allowed for airflow but not for solid objects to pass through.

  Plan B proved to be a better idea because, as it turned out, her new guard, Vane, was one of the Unfallen who lived here, and he was extremely vulnerable to seduction.

  All it had taken was a little flirty chatting while she nibbled from the bowl of fruit a perky redhead named Cat had brought her. The horny bastard had been practically drooling by the time she licked juice from the second strawberry off her upper lip.<
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  Now, as she teased him toward the bed, she pretended to untie her leggings. The moment his eager gaze focused on her hands, she kicked upward and flipped into the air, catching him under the jaw with her boot hard enough to knock him the hell out.

  He hit the floor with a satisfying thud. She did feel a little bad, though. He was going to have one monster of a headache when he woke up.

  After that, it was an easy walk down to the grounds, which, like everything else, was much less...well, hellish...than she’d originally expected. Surely there was more here than pristine white buildings, lush grass and palm-like trees, and a well-kept cobblestone path that led to a sparkling pond. The landscape went on and on in all directions, and she wondered about boundaries. Were there any? Or was this realm as endless as its blue-gray, featureless sky?

  A dove flew overhead, startling her and once again blowing away expectations. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see a raven or a vulture, or even an evisceraptor hunting for a spiny hellrat. But a dove?

  She wandered down to the pond edge and propped herself against a tree trunk. The peacefulness was surreal here, in a place everyone associated with pain, death, and horror. Even the souls, who had been buzzing like bees under her skin, had settled down. Really, the Grim Reaper should be ashamed of himself. He wasn’t so scary, was he? Maybe his reputation was all based on a big act, while in reality he was a big wuss. She’d encountered demons like that, who were all tough talk and very little action.

  The Azagoth you met was no inferior being, and you know it.

  Well, she could hope. Yes, she needed him to be willing to buy the souls inside her, but she’d also like to get out of this situation alive and with a monetary agreement that would secure her future, so if she had to fantasize that he was a big wuss, then that’s what she’d do.

  Heck, this entire realm was probably full of big wusses. The distant sounds of the Memitim and Unfallen in their training, mostly shouts, thuds, and screams of pain, didn’t do much to back up her wishful thinking. And neither did the sound of angry, thudding footsteps coming up the trail behind her. She was busted.

  And she knew without looking that it was Zhubaal.

  Deep beneath Vex’s breast, SuperEvil’s buzz turned into a purr of delight, desire, and wickedness.

  But, to be fair, when she turned around and saw Zhubaal standing there, his muscular arms folded across his broad chest, she experienced the same damned feelings, and she definitely couldn’t blame her lust on any one of the souls inside her.

  Except her own.

  * * * *

  Zhubaal glared at Vex as she stood next to the pond that, not long ago, had been filled with bubbling blood and aquatic demons and beasts, all a reflection of the evil that had consumed Azagoth. Now, thanks to his happiness with Lilliana, the pond was as clear as the crystal waters off Corfu in the Ionian Sea, its glassy surface catching the shapely reflection of Vex’s perfect ass. She might not be what he’d always considered to be his “type,” but he found himself admiring her more than he should, especially since Laura was basically right there with them.

  Harnessing his frustration and guilt to use against Vex, he barked, “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Her half-hearted, dismissive shrug didn’t help his mood. “I wanted to look around. I was tired of being cooped up in that little room with nothing to do except watch the History Channel, horror movies, or reruns of Gilligan’s Island.” She looked at him as if he was at fault for the programming choices. “That’s all that’s on TV. Gore fests, history I don’t care about, and a goofy old comedy. What’s up with that? And how do you have TV down here, anyway?”

  His beloved’s soul was at stake here and she was worried about TV? “Who the hell cares? I could have lost her.” The very thought made his chest constrict. “Don’t leave your room again, or I swear, I’ll chain you in it.”

  “Ooh, promise?”

  “Yes.” And he’d enjoy doing it. He could picture himself holding her against the wall as he snapped the cuffs around her slender wrists, and his groin tightened. So…yeah, he’d enjoy it. Too much.

  Snorting, Vex kicked at a stick that was half-buried in the pebbles surrounding the pond. “I’m surprised you don’t have a dungeon.”

  “We do. Several, including the ones Hades runs in the Inner Sanctum.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Dungeons are...wait. Hades? He’s real?”

  Z nodded, because Hades was real, all right. A real dick.

  “Huh.” She jammed her fists on her hips and glanced around the landscape. “I’m learning all kinds of new shit today.” Cocking her head, she studied him. “You said you could have lost her. Lost who?”

  Damn. This chick could change a subject faster than an angel could flap his wings. “No one,” he ground out. “And you could have asked Vane to show you around instead of knocking him out. You aren’t a prisoner.” Well, technically, she was, since he wouldn’t allow her to leave until she released Laura’s spirit. Small details.

  “Oh. Well, how was I supposed to know?” She bent to pick a daisy growing at the water’s edge, which allowed him a stellar view of her leather-wrapped backside until he forced himself to avert his gaze. “You told me to stay put.”

  “And look how well that worked,” he muttered.

  She straightened, her nose buried in the flower. “Is Azagoth back?”

  “Nope.”

  She frowned, nose still in the daisy, and he couldn’t help but admire the juxtaposition of this heavily armed warrior woman taking pleasure in a delicate flower. “When?”

  “He’ll be back when he’s back.” Azagoth rarely gave timeframes for anything, which was especially strange because he was usually an annoyingly structured person.

  “That’s very helpful,” she said so brightly that he almost missed the sarcasm. “Where did he go? I heard him say he was going to…what was that place you just mentioned? The Inner Sanctum? What’s that?”

  He didn’t see any point in lying or denying her information, and besides, he didn’t have anything better to do. Razr was monitoring the portal, Lilliana was managing the Unfallen, and Z had made sure the kitchens, laundry, and groundskeepers were all on track. The rest of the day was his.

  “The Inner Sanctum is where the souls go after Azagoth gets done with them,” he said. “Some call it Purgatory, some call it a prison, but it’s really just a big holding tank.”

  “I wondered where all the souls were.” Curiosity glinted in Vex’s remarkable eyes. Laura’s interest had been easily piqued, as well, and he wondered if she was listening. “So, what’s it like inside the Inner Sanctum? Is it...hell? The kind humans preach about? Or is it like this?” She made an expansive gesture with her hand. “Because this isn’t very terrifying.”

  “You didn’t see Sheoul-gra back before Azagoth found a mate.” He watched her slender fingers tuck the daisy behind her ear, and he was once again struck by the stark contrast of the fragile daisy against her tough exterior. It fascinated him and left him conflicted because he couldn’t figure out if he was attracted to her...or if he was attracted to her because Laura was in there somewhere. “But the Inner Sanctum is still mostly the stuff of nightmares.”

  “Mostly?”

  He scooped a smooth round stone off the ground and skipped it across the pond, enjoying the tiny thrill it brought. He hadn’t skipped stones since his youth, when Ipsylum drill sergeants took trainees to lakes in the human realm so they could learn aquatic combat techniques where the water was denser and colder than in Heaven. He and his friends––and Laura––would have rock-skipping contests during their breaks.

  She’d always won.

  “There are different levels, or rings, where the demons go, depending on how inherently evil they are,” he said as the tiny ripples in the water died down. “They match up with the Ufelskala tiers you mentioned. Level one isn’t much different than life here, really.” According to Azagoth, Laura had been assigned to the first level after sh
e’d been slaughtered, but she’d been reborn before Z had a chance to find her there. “The other levels get progressively more violent and miserable.”

  “Ah.” She nodded as if she’d come to a great realization. “So that’s why.”

  “That’s why what?”

  She smiled, and he cursed how easily she stirred his blood. It was wrong to be aroused by Vex when Laura was so close. And when he couldn’t do anything about it anyway. His virginity belonged to Laura and always had.

  “Why you aren’t a total evil asshole,” she said. “I mean, you might be an asshole, I kind of think you are, but you aren’t eeeevil. Not super evil, the way fallen angels usually are. You know what’s inside the Inner Sanctum, so you’re trying to stay...I dunno, decent, I guess. That way, when you meet whatever horrible end you’re destined to suffer, you don’t get assigned to a lower level.”

  Whatever horrible end he was destined to suffer? He’d bet her horrible end came before his. But otherwise, what she’d said was true. He did struggle to keep evil from darkening his soul, something that was far easier now that Azagoth and his realm weren’t steeped in hatred and malevolence.

  Zhubaal had suffered like everything else in Sheoul-gra while the Grim Reaper’s soul grew more and more sinister and corrupt. But now that much of the darkness had been lifted, and knowing what life was like in the Inner Sanctum, Zhubaal had sworn to never let himself sink too deeply into evil temptations. The Inner Sanctum’s first level was absolutely his goal.

  They had beer there.

  “So...you have a girlfriend?”

  Once again, the change of topic gave him whiplash, but he managed to shake his head.

  She picked up a rock and skipped it like he had, except her stone went farther. “Then who is the ‘her’ you mentioned when you were yelling at me?”

  “I wasn’t yelling.” He looked around for another rock. He couldn’t let her win. “And it’s complicated.”