by Larissa_Ion
“Then his soul is trapped.” Shade dashed away a tear. “He must be in so much pain.”
A soft, gentle hand came down on Eidolon’s shoulder. It was Lilliana.
“We can take him to Azagoth.” She crouched, aided by Journey, and took Eidolon’s and Shade’s hands. “He can release Wraith’s soul. After Maddox and Journey drop me off on Ares’ island, they can take him straight to Azagoth.”
Eidolon didn’t want to make this decision. He didn’t want this to be happening at all. So, he was grateful when Shade nodded.
“We need him back when it’s done,” he rasped.
“Of course.” She gave them both a brief hug. “I’m so sorry.”
With that, Journey helped her up, and she left Eidolon and Shade to say goodbye to Wraith, something Eidolon used to think he’d have to do every single day.
Now that day was here, and he wasn’t ready.
“Uh…sir?” Eidolon focused on Man Bun, who stood nearby, wringing his trembling hands. “I’m sorry. He…was a great…inspiration,” he choked out, and Eidolon nearly bit out a bitter laugh. Wraith would have eaten that shit up. “And, ah…the Harrowgate is working.”
It was time for Lilliana to go. Which meant it was time for Wraith to go.
Eidolon looked down at his brother once more.
No, he wasn’t ready at all.
Chapter 8
Lilliana’s heart was heavy as she stood inside the Harrowgate and punched in the code to Ares’ personal island gate. She hadn’t known Eidolon’s brother, had only met him in passing a couple of times when he’d come to the island during her stay, but Ares and Cara had spoken highly of him—between the jabs. Seeing the devastation in not only Eidolon and Shade but also in the expressions of every Underworld General staffer had been truly heart-rending.
Journey held Wraith as he would a brother, his head bowed from hunched shoulders as he cradled the demon’s big body in his arms. Even Maddox looked as if he were trying to keep his emotions in check—his jaw tight, his gaze distant.
The gate opened and, zombielike, they all stepped out.
Hot, humid air engulfed Lilliana in a welcoming embrace. After the events of the last twelve hours, this was exactly what she needed. Well, she needed Azagoth, but if she couldn’t be in Sheoul-gra, then this was where she wanted to be. She loved it here. The warmth, the rhythmic, lulling pattern of the waves, the earthy scent of the olive groves, and the fragrant citrus air from the lemon trees Cara had planted a couple of years ago.
Lilliana inhaled, frowning when she didn’t smell the lemons or the olives. Weird. She glanced around for the familiar landscape and mansion, but all she saw was pristine white sand, some scrub brush, and a few swaying palms stretching along a craggy coastline.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “Uh…guys? This isn’t Ares’ island.”
The very air around them charged with deadly electricity as Maddox armed up, twin scythes appearing in his fists.
Journey went on instant alert and swung around. “Shit. The island is warded. We can’t flash out.” He shouldered her like a ram, shoving her backward. “Into the Harrowgate! Hur—”
He broke off with a grunt. Something warm splashed her face and arms.
Blood.
Journey’s blood.
Wraith’s body fell from his arms and landed with a thud in the sand. Blood poured from Journey’s neck, flowing between his fingers as he clutched at it. Shock and terror shone in his eyes as his mouth worked soundlessly.
“Journey!” she screamed, instinctively moving toward him instead of the Harrowgate.
“Run,” he rasped as he dropped to his knees. “Run.”
His brilliant eyes grew cloudy, and then he collapsed next to Wraith.
As if a veil had been lifted, the island came alive with demons. They were everywhere. Darquethoths, with their razor-sharp teeth and onyx skin slashed with fluorescent orange. Screechers, their eyeless, pale faces consisting mostly of six-inch fangs. Others, things she didn’t recognize and were too horrific to look at, formed a wall around her, blocking her from the Harrowgate.
“Lilliana!” Maddox’s urgent voice was drenched with pain. She caught flashes of him slashing at the demons, blood splattering the white sand.
Terror became the air she breathed as she drew on her rusty angelic gifts and lit up the sky with lightning. Demons screamed as bolts charred them to a crisp or exploded them into raw chunks of gore.
“Maddox!”
She sent a spear of ultra-hot angel glass through a half-dozen demons, knocking them back…and that was when she saw him, one scythe still slashing even as he fell under an onslaught of monsters.
A moment of sadness turned into a renewed desire to live as she swung around, taking down a giant Ramreel demon with a summoned sword.
She could make it to the Harrowgate. She could clear a path and then—
Pain exploded inside her skull, and that was the last thing she knew.
Chapter 9
Patience was not something Azagoth claimed to possess. At all. In any measure known to the human, angelic, or demon realms.
When he wanted something, he wanted it now. Instant gratification.
And right now, he wanted his mate to call.
Where the hell was she?
“It’s only been half an hour since she texted that she was leaving her room and heading to the Harrowgate.” Hawkyn, one of Azagoth’s most trusted sons and the Memitim liaison to Heaven, looked out over the newly installed playground where two of the youngest children from the human realm played. This was where Azagoth’s child with Lilliana would play. Dammit. Where is she? “She probably got hung up talking to someone.”
“Or she’s at Ares’ place and got busy catching up with Cara and forgot to let you know,” Cat said. She’d been strolling down the cobblestone path toward the pond where Lilliana liked to spend hours reading when she spotted Azagoth with Hawk and Suzanne.
“See?” Hawkyn said. “Simple explanations.”
Nothing was ever that simple. “If either of those things is true, then why hasn’t Maddox or Journey answered your texts?”
Hawk shrugged. “If they’re still at Underworld General, they’re busy. If they’re in Greece, Ares is probably grilling the shit out of them before he lets them roam around his island.”
Probably? Definitely. Ares was as cautious as Azagoth when it came to newcomers. Mad and Journey might be Azagoth’s sons, but Ares had lived long enough to know not to trust anyone based solely on his or her relationship to another.
Suzanne, still holding the basket of treats she’d brought for Lilliana, gestured to Azagoth’s phone. “Why don’t you text her?”
“Because I don’t want her to think I’m obsessing.” Azagoth’s cheeks heated at the admission. “She already says I’m being overprotective and that I worry too much.”
“I don’t think a text would hurt.” Hawkyn looked up from his own phone. “Just tell her you were thinking about her. When she gets the text, she’ll realize she forgot to let you know she was safely at Ares’ place.”
Maybe Hawk was right. Dammit, Azagoth wasn’t used to doubting himself or second-guessing his actions. But Lilliana was so important to him that he didn’t want to screw up in any way. He’d lost her once; he couldn’t lose her again.
Ulrike, her long, platinum blond hair brushing the grass as she hung upside down from the monkey bars, smiled shyly and waved. He hadn’t spent much time with his ten-year-old daughter or his eleven-year-old son, Obasi, since they’d arrived a couple of weeks ago, but they were starting to warm up to him. Obasi, small for his age and severely malnourished, had even taken Azagoth’s hand for a moment. He hadn’t spoken a single word yet, the trauma of being raised in a brutal Boko Haram camp still haunting him.
It was shit like that that had made Azagoth lose himself for a while. Lilliana had given him the ability to feel again, and he’d been unable to cope with the onslaught of pain, sorrow, and
guilt for his role in the horrors his children experienced while growing up in the worst conditions the human realm had to offer.
It was why, despite objections from Heaven, he’d sent his adult offspring to find every last one of his children left in the care of humans, and instructed that they be brought back here to be raised by their real family.
This hell realm wasn’t nearly as bad as the hell realm the human world had become.
Hawkyn’s phone buzzed. A heartbeat later, Suzanne’s did, as well. Hawkyn looked down, and his mouth fell open.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, his face losing every drop of color.
“Oh, no.” Suzanne slapped her hand over her mouth and let out a muffled sob. “Not Wraith.”
Already jacked up with anxiety over Lilliana, Azagoth wheeled around with an impatient grunt. “What happened?”
Hawkyn looked up. “It’s Eidolon’s brother, Wraith. He’s dead.”
Wraith was dead? Unease centered in Azagoth’s chest as the shock wore off. The demon had sent Azagoth a lot of powerful, evil souls over the years, and he’d made a lot of enemies. Hell, he’d pissed off half the demon population by helping prevent at least two apocalypses. This was going to send shockwaves through both Heaven and Sheoul, and there was no way his death wasn’t connected to something bigger.
“Declan says…” Suzanne swallowed over and over again as if trying to hold back tears. “The family is devastated, and there’s an issue with Wraith’s…soul? I don’t know what that means. Journey and Maddox are supposed to be bringing the body here.”
“Father!” Jasmine topped the hill at a dead run, her jogging shoes tearing up the grass. She was freaked out and holding her wrist as though it hurt as she stopped in front of them. “Look.”
She gestured to the angry red circular symbol pulsing on her forearm, a heraldi that linked her to the Primori she was assigned to protect. Yesterday, she’d had three heraldis.
Today, she had four.
“So…you don’t want another Primori?” Hawkyn asked, as confused as Azagoth.
The more Primori a Memitim watched over, the closer they got to earning their wings and gaining admittance into Heaven. It was a good thing. The goal of every Memitim.
Well, almost every Memitim. Suzanne and Idess had both given up their chances to Ascend to Heaven in exchange for a life with their mates in the human realm.
“Of course, I want another Primori,” Jasmine insisted.
“But?” Azagoth prompted.
Jasmine’s eyes grew liquid, and a teardrop fell onto her arm as she looked down at the new heraldi. “It’s Declan.”
“Declan? That can’t be,” Suzanne said. “Journey is Declan’s guardian.”
Azagoth’s heart seized in his chest. Declan had been reassigned. Which meant, Journey was dead.
One of his favorite sons was dead.
He stared at the heraldi. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Journey had earned his wings. There were any number of reasons the Memitim Council would reassign Declan to Jasmine.
Journey was with Lilliana.
The realization, piled on top of the pain of Journey’s probable death, nearly brought Azagoth to his knees.
Still, he clung to hope, something he used to laugh at others for doing, as he fumbled around in his pocket for his phone.
It rang in his palm.
The caller was Ares.
Everyone went utterly still. Even the air became heavy and oppressive as if a storm were bearing down.
Heart pounding again, this time too fast, Azagoth answered, his voice clipped with barely controlled fear. “Ares. Tell me she’s there. Tell me my sons are there.” There was a pause. A long fucking pause. “Are they there?”
“That’s what I was calling to ask you,” Ares said, his voice tight as if he were trying to keep his emotions in check. “They haven’t shown up. We thought maybe…maybe since they had Wraith with them, Lilliana changed her mind and went to Sheoul-gra. I assume you know about Wraith.”
“Yeah.” Azagoth scrubbed his hand over his face. His skin felt uncomfortable, itchy, stretched thin, and he wanted to break out of it. “Lilliana’s not here.” Stay calm. Stay…calm. “She must still be at the hospital.”
“I called. They left fifteen minutes ago,” Ares said gruffly, and fear made Azagoth’s skin shrink. “There’s more. Eidolon said Journey and Maddox couldn’t flash Lilliana from the hospital parking lot because a bunch of fallen angels had taken up positions outside. They killed Wraith when he tried to get rid of them.”
Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes was an eternity when something bad was happening. And fallen angels? What did they, or Wraith’s death, have to do with any of this?
“How did they leave?”
“E said they used the Harrowgate.”
If they used the Harrowgate, they could be anywhere in the human or demon realms. “I’m sending someone to the hospital,” he said, hating the emotion in his voice. “Let me know if any of them show up.”
“Cara will call you. I’m going to UG, too. We’ll find your mate.”
His mind barely functioning at this point, Azagoth mumbled some sort of thanks and disconnected.
“Hawkyn.” He cleared his throat of the lump that had formed there. “Get to the hospital. Find Lilliana.” His voice broke, the obstruction growing like cancer. “Please, son. Please find her.”
Underworld General was a strange place, kind of human but mostly…not. Hawkyn didn’t think he’d ever get used to seeing demons in scrubs.
It was never the happiest of places—hospitals generally weren’t—but right now, a pall of sorrow hung over it like a shroud. Even the patients in the triage room, some of them sporting gruesome wounds or cradling broken limbs, were quiet as if they felt grateful to feel only physical pain.
“I can’t wait to get out of here. This place feels like a crypt,” Cipher said, which was accurate, if not especially sympathetic.
“You’re all heart.”
Cipher grunted. “I’m a fallen angel. Hearts are for you Heavenly types.”
Hawkyn rolled his eyes. Yeah, Hawkyn had earned his wings, but as a Memitim liaison, he was still earthbound. And Cipher had recently—and forcibly—gone from being a neutral Unfallen with the potential to regain his wings to a True Fallen with no hope of redemption. And while evil would eventually work its way into his very DNA, he hadn’t gone dark yet, so Hawkyn didn’t accept his I’m-a-fallen-angel-with-no-heart bullshit.
“I know you’re as worried about Lilliana and my brothers as I am,” Hawkyn said. “So, drop the evil-tough-guy act.” Hawkyn didn’t wait for a response, grabbing the first demon in scrubs he saw—a gray-skinned Umber demon. “I’m here to see Eidolon. Know where I can find him?”
“He’s…indisposed right now.” The demon averted his gaze and looked down at his enormous boots, his massive shoulders slumping. “A death in the family.”
“I know,” he said, with as much sympathy as he could while still trying to impart a sense of urgency. “But this is important. I’m here on behalf of Azagoth.”
The guy’s gunmetal eyes flew wide. “The Grim Reaper? For real?” He shrugged. “Well, why the hell not?” He gestured at the hallway near the parking lot entrance. “He’s over there with War.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that still rumbled loudly enough for people in Guam to hear. “He’s an actual Horseman of the Apocalypse.”
“Is that so?” He clapped the guy on the back. “Thanks, man.”
He and Cipher found the Seminus doctor standing near a drinking fountain with the big Horseman whose reddish-brown hair was grooved from the rake of his fingers. Hawkyn had met the guy a couple of times and had yet to see him without his leather armor, the breastplate embossed with the same horse symbol as the one on his skin. Except the warhorse on his forearm could come to life and crush your skull with a single blow from one of his dinner-plate-sized hooves.
Eidolon waved Hawk and Cipher over when he saw them. “I
was just telling Ares what I know.”
“I’m sorry about Wraith,” Hawkyn said. “He was…unique. I wish I’d gotten a chance to know him better.” He bowed his head in respect. “My father sends his condolences.”
Eidolon offered a jerky nod of acknowledgment. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face was ashen, but his voice was as steady and authoritative as ever.
“The Harrowgate malfunctioned this afternoon,” he said. “And while it was being repaired, fallen angels showed up and blocked the parking lot exit. They wanted Lilliana. I…refused.” The linked ring of glyphs around his throat that signified a mated Seminus male undulated as he cleared his throat of the rawness in his voice. “They killed Wraith in response.”
Cipher swore softly, and Hawkyn echoed the sentiment. He’d be devastated if he were Eidolon. And once he got over his devastation, he’d hunt down those responsible and gut them with their own teeth. As a bonus, their souls would go straight to Azagoth, and he’d make them pay all over again. And again. And again.
For all eternity.
“My father said Lilliana used the Harrowgate,” Hawkyn said after an appropriate pause. “But you said it was broken.”
Eidolon nodded. “Technicians said it was a coding error or something, and they repaired the problem. Or so we thought. I was unaware that Lilliana didn’t arrive in Greece until Ares showed up.” He gestured to where the gate stood between two pillars, a shimmering curtain invisible to humans and inoperable in their presence. “As far as I know, she’s the only person who’s been reported missing after using it, but as a precaution, we’re not letting anyone leave through it.”
Ares gestured down the hall at the parking lot doors. “Are the angels gone?”
At Eidolon’s clipped nod, Cipher turned to Hawkyn. “Sounds like we need to check out the gate.”
Eidolon’s phone rang, and he gave them the universal go-ahead-without-me gesture. As Hawkyn, Cipher, and Ares headed toward the Harrowgate, Hawk heard him answer the phone in an emotional rumble.
“Serena...I’m so sorry…”