by Larissa Ione
Er...she didn’t think it sounded fun at all. And geez, she knew Azagoth could be terrifying, but she’d also seen his tender, caring side, and she’d never known him to be needlessly cruel. Then again, by all accounts, Lilliana had softened him considerably. Cat wouldn’t have wanted to know Azagoth pre-Lilliana.
“I’m...not sure how to respond to that.” But she was sure as hell more afraid of Azagoth than ever. “I mean, yes, I was worried about Azagoth’s reaction, but the problem is that the soul was mistakenly brought here. He’s human, but not evil. He was reaped by mistake.”
“A mistake? How do you know all of this?”
“Because Reaver paid a visit to Azagoth. He wants the human back in a bad way.”
Hades went silent, spinning around to pace, his heavy boots striking the floor with great, tomb-shaking cracks. “When did this happen? When did you send the human into my realm?”
She didn’t send the human into the realm, but she wasn’t about to quibble about terminology at the moment. “Three days ago.” She reconsidered that, since she didn’t know how long she’d been held captive by the demons. “Could be a little longer.”
Hades let out a low whistle as he ran his hand over his Mohawk. “Damn, Cat. Just...fuck.”
“I know,” she said miserably.
“No, you don’t know. It all makes sense now. The ritual I came across a few days ago. The Orphmage wielding power. The human was fueling all of it. The damned human is why all of this shit is happening, and with the comms down, Azagoth had no way to warn me.”
“What shit?”
“The riots down here. The rebellion.” He hurled the knife to the table. The tip of the blade punched into the wood and vibrated, the noise filling the small space with an eerie echo. “The magic.”
She shook her head, completely lost. “I don’t understand. There have been riots? What magic?”
“The magic that severed communication with Azagoth and sealed the exits out of the Inner Sanctum.”
“Sealed? Not just locked? Like, there’s nothing you can do?” She couldn’t believe that. How could one dead human cause so much trouble? “You’re Hades. Surely––”
“No, Cat. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The exit is sealed. We’re stuck here, and if the demons are clever enough, they can use the human to reveal the location of my home as well. And once that happens...” He trailed off, and she swallowed. Hard.
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but as the psychotic angel she used to work for once said, she was “fatally curious.” “Once that happens...what?”
“We’ll be overrun by millions of the evilest demons on the Ufelskala scale. They’ll kill us, Cat, and if we’re lucky, they’ll only spend a couple of days doing it.”
Chapter Eight
Hades could not believe this shit. In his thousands of years of presiding over the hellhole that was the Inner Sanctum, not a single soul had entered by mistake. Both he and Azagoth had been very careful about who––and what––passed through the barrier. The consequences of the smallest foreign object or unauthorized person entering the Inner Sanctum was precisely why not even his fallen angel wardens were allowed to leave once they started work here. Hades himself couldn’t bring anything in, except under certain circumstances, and only with Azagoth’s permission.
Made it tough for a guy to get a pizza.
And now, in a matter of days there had been at least two unauthorized entrances, and the full extent of the resulting damage had yet to be seen.
Cat shoved to her bare feet, which were decorated with purple nail polish. Cute. He’d been ordered not to touch her sexually, but would sucking on her toes count?
“So you’re saying that we have no recourse?” Her hands formed fists at her sides, and he wondered if she was attempting to keep from punching something. “There’s no way to contact Azagoth?”
“I’ve been trying. My phone has no signal, and even our old methods of communicating through ensorcelled parchment and blood isn’t working. I’d been wondering why Azagoth has been so quiet.”
“You have a phone down here?” She glanced around as if seeking said device. “A phone that works?”
“I know you haven’t been a Heavenly reject for long, but never underestimate the ability of demons to hijack and tweak human advancements.” He gestured to a cabinet in the corner. “I have TV, too. Do not mess with me on The Walking Dead night.”
Her delicate, ginger eyebrows cranked down in skepticism. “Are you saying that demons are smarter than humans?
“I’m saying that demons think outside the box and are a lot more creative.” He shrugged. “Plus, most of them aren’t limited by stifling moral values.”
Cat appeared to consider that, her blood-red lips pursing, her pert, freckled nose wrinkling as she thought. “Okay, so we find the human. They must be using his non-evil energy to fuel the spell that cut off the Inner Sanctum from the rest of Sheoul-gra.”
He liked that she was thinking this through without freaking out. And as stupid as her decision to enter his realm might have been, he had to admit it was bold—and brave. How many people would have done the same? And how many could have gone through what she had and still be not only mentally intact but willing to keep trying to fix their mistake?
“Maybe,” Hades said. “But what did they want with you? Do you know?”
She closed her eyes, her long lashes painting shadows on her pale skin. “I’m not sure. I thought they were going to hurt me, but if they did, I don’t remember much of it.”
Good, because Hades remembered enough for both of them. Oh, he hadn’t witnessed everything that happened to her, but he knew she’d taken a beating at some point. He still couldn’t get the bruises and welts that had marked every exposed inch of her body out of his head.
A growl threatened to break free from his throat as he thought about it. Even as he’d laid her carefully in his bed and channeled healing waves into her, he’d sworn to hunt down every one of her attackers and introduce them to his favorite knives.
“Did they say anything to you?” he ground out, still angry at the memory of what had been done to her.
She licked her lips, leaving them glossy and kissable, and he was grateful for something to concentrate on besides her now-healed injuries. “The Orphmage talked about using me to usher in a new world order. Or something crazy like that.”
“That sounds about right. Orphmages are crazy. But it’s a mad scientist kind of crazy that’s dangerous as fuck because they can make their insane ideas come to life.” Which actually sounded pretty awesome. “Man, if I ever get to be reincarnated, I want to come back as an Orphmage.”
“Fallen angels can only be reborn to other fallen angels,” she pointed out, as if he didn’t know that. “Also, you’re twisted.”
“Which doesn’t stop you from panting after me every time you see me at Azagoth’s place.” He got a kick out of the way her face went bright red, and he wondered if she was going to deny it.
He wasn’t an idiot; he’d seen the way she looked at him. The way she got all flustered when he was near. He loved it. Had come to crave the attention whenever he was visiting Azagoth. He supposed that intentionally seeking her out just so he could get a reaction he couldn’t return in kind was a form of self-torture, but hey, torture was what he did, right?
“W-what?” She sputtered with indignation. “I don’t do th––”
“You do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do.” He laughed. Felt good, but not because he didn’t laugh a lot. He just hadn’t had a laugh teased out of him by a female in a long time. “It’s okay. There’s no shame in wanting me. I am hot, after all.”
She huffed, making her breasts nearly spill out of the tight black and emerald corset she wore. “Whatever,” she mumbled. And then she smiled shyly. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
He nearly swallowed his tongue. He’d been teasing; he hadn’t expected her to be bold enough to admit to wanting h
im. Time to change the subject, and fast, because he wasn’t entirely sure he had the willpower to withstand any coy come-ons. He hadn’t been with a female in years, not since the last time Azagoth let him out of Sheoul-gra. Everyone inside the Gra, including demons, were off-limits to him, and always had been.
That’s what you get when you mess with the Grim Reaper’s family.
Yeah, he’d brought his punishment on himself, but fuck, he’d made that mistake thousands of years ago. Hadn’t he paid his debt by now? He’d asked Azagoth that very question just recently. As it turned out, Azagoth had a long memory, held a grudge, and wasn’t the forgiving type.
Shoving thoughts of past mistakes aside, he changed the topic. “So what made you think you could enter the Inner Sanctum and find the human?”
Disappointment at the subject change flashed in Cat’s jade eyes, but she covered it with a casual shrug. “I possess a particularly powerful ability to sense good and evil.”
“You still have it? Even after you lost your wings?”
She glanced around the room, and instead of answering, she asked, “You got anything to drink? You know, that isn’t made from snakes?”
“Sure thing.” With a flick of his wrist, the wall behind the TV slid open, revealing a small kitchen that looked like something straight out of The Flintstones. Except he had demon-installed electricity. Yay for refrigeration and hot stovetops.
“Huh,” Cat said. “I did not expect that. You got a secret bathroom, too?”
“Other wall.” As he walked to the kitchen, he heard the wall behind him slide open, heard her murmur of approval.
“Happy to see the shower. Not so happy to see a...what is that, a toilet trough?” Her dismayed tone amused him. “That looks like something pigs would eat out of.”
“I’m old-fashioned.” His amusement veered quickly to shame as he reached into the cupboard for his only two cups. As he plopped them onto the pitted stone counter, he cursed his stark living conditions. They’d never truly bothered him before, but now, seeing how he lived through Cat’s eyes had lifted the veil a little, and he didn’t like it at all. So instead of going for the rotgut moonshine made right here in the Inner Sanctum, he reached for his prized bottle of rum that Limos, one of the Four Horsemen, had given him three decades ago. “Rum okay? And you haven’t answered my question.”
“What question? Oh, right. Um, yes, rum is fine, and as far as my ability, it’s not as strong as it was before I lost my wings, but I can still feel the difference between good and evil from a greater distance than most haloed angels or True Fallen.”
As he splashed a couple of fingers of rum into each cup, he realized that for all of the times he’d seen Cat and asked questions about her during his visits to Azagoth, he knew very little about her. Oh, he’d heard the story of how she fell from grace, how she’d associated with Gethel, the turncoat angel who sold her soul to have Satan’s child. He also knew Cat had been brave enough to admit to her mistakes instead of trying to cover them up.
Admirable. Not the route he’d have gone in her situation, but hey, he’d never been a shining beacon of light even when he’d still rocked a halo.
Swiping up the cups, he turned back to her. Damn, she was beautiful, standing in the middle of his living room, barefoot, her jeans ripped in several places, a narrow strip of flat belly peeking between her waistband and her top. But the real showstopper was her hair, that glorious, wavy ginger mane that flowed over her shoulders and breasts in a tangle of wild curls. She looked like a warrior woman plucked from Earth’s past, and all she was missing was a sword and shield.
And all he was missing was a brain because those were thoughts he shouldn’t be having. He strode back to her and handed her a cup.
“So, with that kind of specialized ability,” he began, “what did you do in Heaven?”
“You mean, what did I do before I started working for a traitor who got me booted out of Heaven?” Her voice was light, sarcastic, but there was definitely a bitter note souring the soup.
Of course, if he’d been tricked into nearly starting an apocalypse, he’d be bitter, too.
“Yeah.” He raised his sad little bone cup in toast. “That.”
She gave him an annoyed look. “I’m a Seraphim. What do you think I did?”
As a Seraphim, who Hades knew was one of the lower angel classes despite what human scholars thought, she would have been required to work closely with humans. “Guardian angel stuff?”
She snorted. “Seraphim don’t work in the Earthly realm. We mainly do administrative work for humans who are newly crossed over.”
He hoped it wasn’t too rude to cringe, because he did. “Sounds boring as shit.”
“It is,” she admitted. “But because my ability to distinguish good and evil was so strong, my work was a little more interesting.”
She was interesting. “How so?”
“Well, all humans are a blend of good and evil, but they’re mostly good. They almost immediately cross over to Heaven when their Earthly bodies die.” She sank down in the chair again, gingerly, as if it would splinter. It might. Hades had made it himself, discovering in the process that he was a better Lord of Souls than he was Lord of Furniture. “The evil ones are collected by Azagoth’s griminions and brought here. But if there’s any question at all about their level of evil, griminions are supposed to leave them alone so they can either remain in the human realm as ghosts or cross over to Heaven on their own. People like that are a very specific mix of equal amounts of good and bad. And others, the ones humans call sociopaths, are even more complicated.”
Huh. Hades had never really thought about that. Yes, he knew there were more shades of good and evil than there were stars in the sky, but it never occurred to him that there would be those who walked such a fine line that they would be difficult to place in either Heaven or Sheoul.
“So you worked with the oddballs?”
“We called them Neutrals. Or Shuns.” She sipped her rum, her freckled nose wrinkling delicately at that first swallow. “And yes, my job was to feel them out, I guess you’d call it.”
He’d like to feel her out. It was probably best not to say as much. “How did you do that?”
She smiled and gestured to her bare arms and feet. “Our skin is our power. We can’t discern good and evil the way animals, some humans, and other angels do, like a sixth sense. For us, awareness settles on our skin. That’s why I cover as little of myself as I can get away with, and what clothes I do wear need to be tight, or sensation can’t get through and I feel like I’m suffocating.”
Now that was interesting. He’d never met anyone who shared his affection for form-fitting clothing. Most people thought tight clothes were binding, but Hades had long ago found that garments that fit like a second skin were more freeing and allowed him to feel the world around him. The air. The heat or cold. The touch of a female...when he could get it.
He took a swig of his rum. “So did you perform your job naked?”
Her eyes caught his, held them boldly, and damn if he didn’t stop breathing. He’d been teasing; she was not. “Some of my colleagues did.” She reached up and twirled a strand of hair around her finger, and he swore it was almost...playful. “I preferred our standard uniform of what humans would call a tube top and miniskirt.”
He pictured that and got instantly hard. But then, he liked her in the ripped jeans and belly-revealing corset she was wearing now, too. He watched her lift the cup to her lips almost in slow motion, watched her throat work as she swallowed.
Damn. He threw back the entire contents of his cup, desperate to get some moisture in his mouth. “And what does good and evil feel like?” he rasped. “On your skin, I mean?”
“I’ll show you.” She moved toward him, every step popping out her hips and making her breasts bounce in a smooth, seductive rhythm. His mouth went dry again, but then it began to water as she reached out and placed her palm in the center of his chest.
Very slow
ly, she dragged her hand along the contours of his pecs, her touch so featherlike that he barely felt it, and yet, he was hyper-aware of every move her hand made, every centimeter of skin her palm passed over.
“Goodness and light,” she said softly, “is like bathing in Champagne. It’s tingly and effervescent. It wakes you up even as it relaxes you.”
“Like sex,” he murmured. “With someone you like.”
“With someone you like?” She blinked. “Why would you have sex with someone you didn’t like?”
A rumbling purr vibrated his chest. “Baby, it’s like fighting, but with orgasms.”
“And less blood, I suppose.”
“Not if you’re doing it right.” He waggled his brows, and she rolled her eyes. “So what does evil feel like to you? If good feels good, then does evil feel bad?”
“That’s the funny thing.” She inched closer, adding another palm to his chest, and he gripped the cup so hard he heard it crack. More. He needed more. And damn her for making him crave it when he’d been perfectly fine being alone for all these years. “It’s as seductive as good, but in a different way.” She shivered delicately. “It’s hot. If good is like bathing in Champagne, evil is like bathing in whiskey. There’s a burn, but it’s almost always a lovely burn.”
Yeah, he felt that lovely burn where she was touching him. As she talked, it spread across his chest and into his abdomen, then lower, to his pelvis and groin. Everything tightened and grew feverish with lust.
“Seems to me,” he said in a humiliatingly rough voice, “that bumping up against evil would be an incredible temptation for angels like you.”