Z

by Larissa Ione

  It didn’t feel real, more like a memory. And as the darkness took her, all she could think was that if she had to die, dying with Zhubaal might not be that bad.

  * * * *

  Zhubaal was used to hearing sounds of agony coming from inside Azagoth’s office. He’d learned to tune it out. But this was different. He felt Vex’s raw, heart-wrenching screams all the way to his marrow. Azagoth had told him to stay out, but every cell in his body demanded that he do something besides stand in a dark hallway while his female was suffering.

  Except Vex wasn’t his female. Laura was.

  She screamed again, and after what seemed like hours but was probably a couple of minutes, he hit his limit.

  Heart racing in a panicked, spastic rhythm, he threw open the door. Instantly, the door ripped out of his hand and tore off its hinges, caught up in a whirlwind of evil spinning around the office like a tornado, with Azagoth and Vex at the center. The air pressure increased a hundredfold, becoming a crushing entity that sucked the air from Z’s lungs and turned his eardrums into throbbing instruments of pain.

  “Azagoth,” he croaked, trying to see through the wall of malevolent wind. Long, skeletal hands reached for him and demonic faces snarled at him as they flew by the doorway, only to be stretched into more streams of spinning evil. “Azagoth, stop!”

  Azagoth, morphed into a demon twice his usual size with massive horns jutting out of his dragon-like head, stood over Vex’s unconscious, naked body. His gore-coated fist clenched the throat of a male Bedim demon whose dark skin had paled with terror. Azagoth’s great head swiveled around to Zhubaal. He bared his teeth and snarled, but the wind died down.

  Zhubaal had seen him like this before, his inner demon released by anger or contact with pure evil. Usually it was wise to leave him alone and let him come down by himself. Even Lilliana would sometimes back out of a room if he’d taken his demon out to play.

  Zhubaal wasn’t backing out.

  In a blur of motion, Azagoth hurled the demon to the floor where two waiting griminions shackled him and dragged him over to where two females, a gray-skinned Umber and a big-eyed Daeva, stood against the wall.

  He stared, desperate for clues, any sense that one of those demons was Laura. Would she recognize him? Would she remember that before she was a demon, she’d been an angel?

  A moan pulled his gaze back to Azagoth and Vex. His heart shot into his throat now that he could see her clearly, her body lying limp in a pool of blood. Her sternum had been torn open, ribs and mangled flesh spilling out of her chest cavity.

  Memories of finding Laura’s body flashed through his mind, and he broke out in a cold sweat. Her killers had left her on the floor of the shitty apartment she’d rented in Poland where, as an Unfallen, she’d tried to fit in with humans and avoid fallen angels who would try to drag her into Sheoul.

  They’d killed her instead. He’d hunted them for decades, and when he’d caught them, he’d gone full-bore eye-for-an-eye on the bastards. But he couldn’t forget finding Laura lying in a dried pool of blood, her chest laid open like Vex’s.

  Even though he knew Vex’s injury was of more a psychic nature than a physical one, and even though it was already stitching itself together, all he could see was Laura lying there.

  He ran toward her as Azagoth shifted into his normal form, sans clothes and splashed in blood.

  “She’ll be fine.” Azagoth stepped away from her, leaving bloody footprints on the stone floor. He was careful to avoid stepping on his favorite Slogthu-crafted rug, though. “She’s stronger than I expected.”

  Z dropped to his knees next to Vex, more shaken than he’d like and unsure why Azagoth would have expected anything other than strength from her. “And the souls?”

  Azagoth jerked his head toward the demons. “I was only able to extract three.” His voice lowered to a deadly rumble. “The bitch inside Vex is holding onto the weaker soul and I can’t do anything about it. She’s taunting me.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Zhubaal took Vex’s hand the way he’d done with Laura. It was cold. Not two-days-dead cold, but still, too cold. “Why can’t you get them out?”

  “I can,” he growled, anger at his failure putting an edge on his words, “but doing so will probably kill Vex.”

  “No.” He leaped to his feet, rounding on Azagoth as if the male was going to start ripping the two remaining souls from Vex right now. “No,” he said, more calmly. Why was he getting so worked up about this, anyway? “We’ll find another way.” He swallowed dryly and looked between the demons chained to the wall and Vex. “Where is Laura?”

  “She’s inside Vex.”

  Well, that explained why he’d been acting like a possessive idiot when it came to Vex. Closing his eyes, Zhubaal let out a nasty curse. “She’s still in there with the fucking evil spirit.”

  A troubled look darkened Azagoth’s already black expression. “Take Vex to her room until I decide what to do. And don’t leave her alone. The other souls had a restraining effect on the malevolent spirit. With little to hold it back, it could have a powerful influence on her. It could even possess her if she isn’t strong enough to resist.”

  Cursing again, he gathered Vex’s limp body in his arms and headed for the door. At the threshold he paused. “What kind of demon is this powerful soul, by the way?”

  Azagoth, still naked, strode over to the bar and poured a whiskey. “When she lived in the demon realm, she was a succubus.”

  Z looked down at Vex, her beautiful face surprisingly peaceful in sleep, and he groaned. She’d mentioned that she thought one of the souls was a sex demon, and it turned out that she was right. Bad enough to be stuck with an attractive female, but one who could be possessed by a succubus? Throw Laura into the mix, and he was in for an impossible exercise in self-control.

  Chapter Seven

  Vex groaned as light pierced the barely open slits of her eyelids. Where was she? She blinked, and gradually, the blur in her vision cleared. She was in her Motel 666 room, lying on the bed with nothing covering her but a blanket. Zhubaal was sitting in the wooden chair across from her bed, his face buried in a book.

  He peeked at her from over the top of the book. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” God, she sounded like she’d swallowed a frog. “What happened?” All she could remember was pain like she’d never felt before. It was as if someone had been ripping organs from her body. She could still hear the screams, but she didn’t know if they belonged to her or to the spirits as they’d been wrenched from her body.

  “Azagoth removed three of the souls. You passed out, so I brought you here and cleaned you up. Lilliana and I have been taking turns staying with you since.” Zhubaal twisted around and took a cup from the table beside him.

  He held it out to her, and she sat up, wincing at the dull ache in her chest. Azagoth had the power of a locomotive behind his punches, didn’t he?

  Gingerly, she wrapped the blanket around her and took the drink from him. The greasy yellow liquid looked like chicken broth but smelled of sweet herbs. Something told her it was going to be nasty. But then, demonic potions were rarely made of tequila and margarita mix or milk and cocoa.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” she said as she eyed some floating mystery blobs, “but what is it?”

  He hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully, which probably meant there was scary shit in the drink he didn’t want to go into detail about. “It’s a potion exorcists use to weaken souls when they’ve possessed someone.”

  “But I’m not possessed.” Not yet, anyway.

  “No, but Azagoth thinks it’ll help prevent it from happening. Or at least make it easier for you to fight.” He stretched his long legs out and crossed them at his ankles. He’d changed clothes since the last time she’d seen him, outfitted in combat boots, black military pants, and a form-fitting T-shirt. It was a good look for him, as if he was meant to be a warrior. “I consulted with a shaman physician at Underworld General to make sur
e it would be safe for emim.”

  Surprised winged through her at that. “Why? If it killed me, wouldn’t all your problems be solved? The two remaining souls would be released.” Actually, her spirit would as well. Not cool. The Inner Sanctum didn’t sound all that great, and she had no desire to be reborn as an imp or a troll or some crap.

  Some emotion she couldn’t name softened the harsh planes of his face, but not his voice, which held the powerful tone of someone speaking an oath. “I did it because you brought Laura back to me. What you endured in Azagoth’s office makes you worthy of that, at least.” He gestured to the cup. “Drink it. If you don’t, and the soul possesses you, death might be the next option.”

  Yeah...no. She glanced at the cup of hot liquid. “You’re sure this will help?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

  “How reassuring,” she said flatly. Bracing herself with a deep breath, she gulped the entire contents of the cup, and holy damn, she had to force that shit to stay down. She couldn’t decide which was worse—the slimy texture, the chewy globs, or the flavor, an unholy mix of liver, rancid fat, and cinnamon with a dollop of honey.

  “How long have I been out?” she rasped when she finally stopped gagging and swallowing bile.

  “Twenty-one hours.”

  “Wow.” She breathed deeply, enjoying the sensation of quiet inside her. She could still feel the two souls, but with three others gone, there was less buzzing in her body. “I feel so much better. I mean, I’m tired, but the cacophony of souls is gone.”

  “Can you feel the two that are left?”

  As if in answer, an oil slick of evil spread across the surface of her own soul, and with it came a wave of sexual need so powerful she nearly groaned. Closing her eyes, she inhaled slowly, concentrating on forcing the soul back into its corner. Gradually, it retreated, but it left behind the throbbing ache of arousal.

  She popped open her eyes. “Nope. Don’t feel a thing.” Except the driving need to get him into bed. “The mincemeat tea must be helping.” She stood, pulling the blanket with her. “So what now?”

  He sat forward, bracing his forearms on his spread knees. “Now we figure out how to get those souls out of you.”

  “Why couldn’t Azagoth do it?” She put aside the cup and hoped she didn’t have to drink any more of the nasty stuff.

  “He could, but not without killing you.”

  “Oh. Well, I approve of his reluctance to kill me.” She bent over to gather a spare set of clothes from her pack, and the blanket fell open in the back, exposing her to the cool air and Zhubaal’s eyes. She could feel his gaze on her skin, hot and hungry. But it wasn’t for her, was it? She’d bet her favorite blade that Laura was one of the two souls inside her. Turning back to him, she dropped the blanket. She’d never been modest and besides, if he cleaned her up after Azagoth’s gore-fest of an exorcism, he’d seen her naked already. “What about Laura?”

  Hastily, he glanced away, his gaze plummeting to the woven rug beneath her feet. How could anyone who’d spent any time at all in Sheoul be so embarrassed by nudity?

  “She, ah...she’s still inside you.”

  Bingo. She pulled on a pair of silky black underwear and her favorite pleated black and blue plaid miniskirt, and Zhubaal still didn’t look up. There was something very sweet and respectful about that, something she had never, ever expected to find in a fallen angel. Usually they were horndogs who’d perfected leering.

  Laura, you suck.

  She cleared her throat of her bitterness. It was stupid to be jealous when Zhubaal was clearly dedicated to someone else. Even if that someone else was basically a ghost.

  “So, let’s say Azagoth gets her out,” she mused. “You can’t be together anyway because she’s kind of dead, right?”

  “Not...exactly.” His gaze flickered over to her and back to the floor when he saw she still hadn’t put on her shirt. “In the Inner Sanctum and some parts of Sheoul-gra, souls are solid.”

  Yeah, she’d figured that last part out when the first soul Azagoth ripped out of her went from a transparent wisp to a big, ugly Umber demon.

  “How long have you been searching for her?” She shrugged into a silky blue, sleeveless top that hung almost to the skirt’s hem and would conceal her dagger sheathes once she was armed. As she reached next to Zhubaal for her boots, her arm brushed his leg, and she bit back a needy groan at the sexual current that sizzled through her. She shot him a furtive glance as she sank down on the mattress, but if he felt anything at all, it didn’t show.

  “I’ve been looking for her since she was kicked out of Heaven nearly a century ago.” He was still lounging like he belonged in her bedroom, and dammit, why did she have to like it? “She was killed soon after and reborn thirty years ago, but I don’t know what species.”

  “Wow, so she could have been born something gross, like a Cruentus.” She shoved her foot into a boot. “What would you have done if you found her and she was something horrible?”

  He crossed his thick arms over his chest, and her mouth watered at the way his muscles flexed under his tan skin. “She wouldn’t be.”

  Saint Laura strikes again. “Oh, and you just know that.” There was no way he could miss the sarcasm, and sure enough, he smirked.

  “Yep.”

  She zipped up her boot. “I know angels have a reputation for being faithful, but aren’t you taking it a bit far? What kind of angel were you, anyway?”

  “I was an Ipsylum.”

  “A what?” She tugged on the second boot.

  “Ipsylum.” His gaze dropped to her boot, and she zipped it up slowly, teasingly, loving how his eyes tracked her hand. He might not be hers, but she could do her best to make him regret that. “They’re a specialized class of warrior angels.”

  “Bullshit.”

  His gaze snapped up. “Bullshit?”

  “Yeah. Bullshit.” After her parents died at the hands of angels, she’d learned everything she could about them. “I studied all the classes of angels, and Ipsylum isn’t one of them.” She ticked off her fingers. “There are Cherubim, Dominions, Principalities, Thrones, Seraphim, Archangels––”

  “Whatever sources you got your information from are wrong. Over thousands of years, humans gradually learned of several Orders of angels, but they don’t know all of them. Didn’t your parents tell you about angels?”

  She shook her head as she reached for the pile of weapons lying on top of the clothes someone had brought from Azagoth’s office. “They answered my questions, but they didn’t offer information. I think they were ashamed by whatever it was that got them booted, you know?”

  Vex strapped a tiny, thin blade to the inside of her thigh, getting a kick out of Zhubaal’s furtive glances as her skirt hiked high. When she finished, she tucked her leg beneath her and sat back against the hard pillow. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to be, so she might as well get comfortable. Besides, she liked talking to Zhubaal. He was probably only humoring her because she was Laura’s genie bottle, but it had been such a long time since she’d talked to anyone on a personal level that this was kind of...refreshing.

  “I think that’s why we lived in the human realm instead of in Sheoul, and why my parents pretended to be human. Partly because they were ashamed.” She closed her eyes at the memory of her parents telling her how much danger they were in in the human realm, hated by both fallen angels who believed they should be serving Sheoul’s interests, and angels, who were just assholes. “And partly to protect me from the paranormal world.”

  And it had worked until she hit puberty and sucked in her first soul. When her parents sought answers, it had put them on the radar for a lot of enemies. Eventually, the enemies had caught up with them, and they’d been killed. She hadn’t even been close enough to catch their souls before griminions had, and worse, she’d never been able to take revenge.

  Her parents’ killers had been angels, powerful and far beyond her reach.

  “So,” sh
e said, changing the subject before she got all sappy or started crying or some shit. “What do Ipsylum do? You said they’re warriors?”

  He nodded. “Highly trained, very powerful. In some ways, they’re more powerful than Archangels. If angels are Heaven’s army, then Ipsylum are the army’s special ops team.”

  “Huh.” She idly ran her fingers down the stiletto heel of one boot to test the sharp edge of the spikes that could punch through metal, bone, and flesh during a fight. Her mother’s design. “What does Heaven need with a special ops team?”

  Zhubaal came to his feet in a graceful surge and moved to the glassless window next to her bed. A breeze ruffled his hair as he looked out over the courtyard.

  “Heaven needs specialized soldiers to assassinate powerful demons, spy in areas of Sheoul where not even Archangels can go, rescue human or angel hostages from demons...shit like that.” He clenched his hands at his sides, and she wondered if he regretted his choice to leave his angelic life.

  “That’s awesome.” Why couldn’t she have been born an angel instead of an emim with useless powers like attracting souls like flypaper or being able to walk in stiletto heels on any surface without ever loosing her balance? Sure, she had killer reflexes and was stronger than your average human or demon, but still, in a world where angels could fly and demons could shapeshift or become invisible or manipulate the weather, she had to stretch to be considered even average. “If I were an angel, I’d want to be one of those.”

  He snorted. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

  “Why?”

  Frowning, he glanced down at her arm and the remaining two glyphs. “Because you’re the polar opposite of Laura.”

  “What does she have to do with it?”

  “Laura was also an Ipsylum.”

  “No,” she blurted, seriously thrown by that. The way he’d spoken of this Laura person made her sound like a milquetoast. “Really?”

  “Really.” There was a tap at the door, and he answered it, thanking whoever was on the other side for a plate piled with sandwiches and fruit. He brought it over to her and placed it on the mattress beside her. “Eat. I have a feeling we’re going on a little trip soon.”