Reaper

by Larissa_Ion

  He launched, the powerful flaps of his wings carrying him drunkenly upward. He hit a formidable downdraft, probably designed to prevent exactly what he was doing, but he punched through it and burst through the entrance. A sudden loss of lift made him drop like a bomb, and he hit the floor of the temple in a tumble of limbs and feathers.

  As he shoved to his feet, shadowy, wispy creatures squeezed from out of the mouths of the stone effigies. He didn’t know the species, but the evil literally oozed from them in strings of black goo. It was some seriously fucked-up shit.

  “You’re here for the female?” the entities whispered in a single voice that made him think of a knife slicing through meat.

  He summoned an elemental sword. Its blade burst into flame as it took on the character of the surroundings. “Where is she?” he growled.

  “If you want her, you’ll find her.”

  The things chattered, an eerie, ear-shattering sound that ended abruptly when they wisped themselves back into the statues.

  “No! You bastards! Come back!” He wheeled around the room, looking for them, searching for anyone or anything. There was nothing here but tiled walls, mosaics of pain and suffering.

  Releasing the sword, he raced along the walls, feeling for openings. He searched the floor for trap doors. He launched upward, high into the rafters made of some sort of smooth stone, but there was no way out from there, either.

  Okay, he’d blast his way out.

  Bringing the entire force of his power to bear, he hurled a personal creation, a boulder of what he affectionately called gutenbad, at the ceiling. A ball of pulsing, blackened evil surrounding a core of Heavenly goodness hit the structure with an ear-shattering boom. The mountain shook, and boulders—real ones weighing tons—came crashing down.

  Shit! Flapping his wings as hard as he could, he slammed a force field overhead, and the stones were deflected and sent down the side of the mountain. When the rumbling finally stopped, he blasted away all the debris.

  But nothing had changed. He could get out, but to go where? He was already at the entrance to the temple.

  If you love your female enough, you’ll find her.

  Okay, well…he loved her. He loved her so much that if he didn’t find her, he’d die trying. And if he found her dead, he’d die at her side.

  If you want her, you’ll find her.

  “Of course, I want her!” he shouted to whoever was listening. “Blaspheme! Blaspheme, baby, where are you?”

  He brought himself to a clumsy landing and ran around the room again. He must have missed something.

  “Blaspheme!”

  He had to have missed something!

  “Blaspheme!”

  He threw himself against the tiles, dug at them with his fingers until the walls were streaked with his blood. Finally, he wasn’t sure how much later, he fell to his knees with a scream. He pitched forward, cracking his forehead against the floor.

  “Please, Blaspheme,” he croaked. “Please help me find you.” Rage, terror, and despair all collided, and he threw back his head and screamed. “Anyone…please!”

  Darkness overwhelmed him, and he collapsed.

  When the lights came back on in his head, he blinked, disoriented. The room…still the same. But…no.

  He scrambled to his knees. Over there…a doorway. He gave one flap of his wings, bringing him to his feet. The doorway, pulsing like bloody flesh, beckoned him with the sound of a beating heart.

  Blaspheme’s heart.

  He didn’t know how he knew that. He just did.

  He paused at the doorway and reached out with his mind, hoping to connect with her, desperate to get to her. When he was met with nothing but the cold emptiness of his own mind, he went solid fuck it and stepped through the gaping maw.

  Inside…inside was a fucking nightmare. What the everliving…what was going on? The cavernous area, awash in white and ivory, stretched endlessly, its high ceilings braced by glittering columns of crystal. The spongy ground could have been made of marshmallow, and as Revenant walked, he half-expected unicorns to greet him.

  Seriously. What. The. Fuck?

  “Revenant?”

  He spun around at the sound of Blaspheme’s voice, and when he saw her standing near an obelisk that appeared to have been carved from quartz, he nearly collapsed with relief. She was still wearing the pink scrubs she’d been abducted in, her blond hair falling in tangled ropes over her face.

  He launched at her, had her in his arms in half a heartbeat.

  “I’m so happy to see you,” he breathed as he peppered her with kisses. Her cheeks, her forehead, her jaw. “Are you okay?” Her mouth. He kissed her over and over. “Did he hurt you?”

  She gave him a reassuring smile that did little to actually assuage him. “Moloch didn’t do anything I couldn’t handle.”

  He growled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means his goons threw me around a little,” she said. “But no one really wanted to mess with the King of Hell’s mate, you know? Not even Moloch.”

  They were still going to die horribly. Everyone who had dared to touch her. Revenant held her close as he looked around at the bizarre Cinderella Stay Puft mashup happening here.

  “What is this place? And how are you here if it can’t be found without great need?”

  “Skimmer devils brought me upriver on a boat and then hauled me up the stairs. Took forever.” She paused. “Is that how you got here?”

  “Moloch destroyed them and their boats. So, no.”

  She looked genuinely troubled by that. “The Skimmers were actually kind of nice. They put padding under my shackles to keep me from bleeding.” She shook her head in disgust. “Anyway, they left me inside the temple. I needed a way out, and at some point, a weird, fleshy door opened. And…here I am.”

  She pulled away from him and placed her hand on the crystal obelisk. Under her palm, golden light bloomed, spreading upward in tendrils that snaked their way to the top.

  “Moloch said it was designed a long time ago as a secret prison for Satan.”

  Revenant ogled the weirdness. “This? Whoever built it really believed that a room built from what, a child’s imagination, could hold Satan?”

  “It was built using materials mined from the purest parts of Heaven.” She removed her hand and replaced it with his. Instead of golden light, dark, inky clouds formed under his palm, but even as they tried to spread, they were swallowed by the crystal. “My mom used to tell me stories about a mysterious prison that used Heavenly energy to render evil inert. I guess this is it.” She shrugged. “My mom’s a conspiracy theorist, but she got this one right.”

  Blaspheme’s fallen angel mother, Deva, was a whack job. But, obviously, whack jobs got lucky with their conspiracies now and then. He’d have to ask his mother-in-law what she thought about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

  “According to both Moloch and my mother, Satan got wind of it, and no one ever tricked him into coming here. Thanks to prophecies, he knew that he’d be imprisoned someday, and he thought this was the one that would spell his doom.” She looked up at the crystal ceiling, the graceful arches twisted in places as if the builders hadn’t been able to tame the materials. “He even tried to have the entire temple destroyed, but it was built inside a morabuble.”

  Morabubles, spaces where the barrier between realms weakened and allowed one realm to push slightly inside the other like a hernia, caused bizarre anomalies where normal rules and natural laws didn’t apply. If this one shared a border with Heaven, the materials could have been passed through the barricade, and the barrier could, theoretically, prevent evil, even some as powerful as Satan’s, from destroying it.

  Instantly, Revenant checked his power. Reached deep. Not a spark. It was like reaching around in empty pockets for a dime.

  So, it was a prison, all right. Just not Satan’s.

  It was Revenant’s.

  Chapter 25

  Lilliana wanted to sleep.

&
nbsp; It was all she wanted to do. She wanted to escape this literal hell for just a little while, and she wanted to see Azagoth again. But every time she curled up on the cold floor and started to drift off, a squeezing sensation wrapped around her abdomen, and the baby started kicking up a storm.

  Stay in there a little longer, kiddo.

  She talked to the baby as she lay there, rubbing her belly, trying to keep him or her inside for as long as she could.

  She couldn’t give birth here. She couldn’t.

  Your daddy will get us out of here soon. Just…hold on.

  But what if Azagoth couldn’t rescue them in time? What if she gave birth early?

  Oh, God.

  She blinked back tears. She had a plan, but it was a long shot.

  The door to her cell opened, and before she could even sit up, a hulking demon that smelled like raw sewage grabbed her chain and hauled her to the courtyard outside the castle. In the human world, there would be grass inside the stone walls.

  Here in Moloch’s territory, there was mud and ash.

  Sewer Demon chained her on a gallows platform so she could watch the horrifying things the demons did, and where they could do horrifying things to her.

  Usually, they just threw things, thanks to Moloch’s orders to not completely destroy her. Had to leave her alive, or Azagoth wasn’t going to cooperate, of course.

  She spotted Flail standing near a firepit where Moloch’s goons were roasting something humanoid over the flames. Azagoth had said that she was Maddox’s aunt. So far, Lilliana hadn’t found Flail’s weakness, but if she had one, it might be her nephew.

  Her family, who had died at Moloch’s command.

  Lilliana’s belly tightened again, and she sucked in a harsh breath.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She jumped at the sound of Flail’s voice right next to her ear.

  “You shouldn’t scare pregnant females like that,” Lilliana muttered.

  “I brought you this.” She held out a burned hunk of meat on a charred bone.

  “Ah…” Lilliana glanced over at the roasting dude. “No thanks…”

  Flail lowered her voice. “This is labrynix. It’s kind of a demon goat.” She pointed to another pit fire on the other side of the courtyard. “Take it, or you’ll end up with a bowl of leftovers, and I can’t guarantee they won’t belong to that human.”

  Lilliana’s gut lurched, but she took the hunk of meat from Flail. The fallen angel hadn’t brought her anything that had made her sick, and what she delivered was far better than the unidentifiable grotesqueness that her guards always offered.

  “Thank you.” Damn, she hated feeling grateful to Flail. Though maybe that’s what the fallen’s game was about: Stockholm Syndrome.

  Lilliana wasn’t going to fall for it. She would never feel compassion for her captors. Not Flail, not any of these scum.

  Flail gestured to Lilliana’s swollen belly with the mug of ale in her hand. “It won’t be long now.”

  She looked down at the outline of the little foot pushing up at her through her hornet-weave stinging nettle frock. “What makes you say that?” she asked, encouraging a conversation instead of what she really wanted to say, which was closer to, “No shit, you evil skank.”

  “I was with my sister before she gave birth.”

  “Your sister…Maddox’s mother?”

  Flail’s lashes fluttered with mild surprise. “You know about that?”

  Now it was Lilliana’s turn to be surprised. “Do you really think Azagoth doesn’t do background checks on everyone that visits Sheoul-gra?”

  Flail took a gulp of ale and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “So, my sister fucked your husband, yet you allowed me there?”

  I didn’t know. Lilliana played it off as though she had. “I never liked you, Flail, but my allowing you there had nothing to do with your sister. I got over my insecurities about all the females Azagoth took to his bed a long time ago. The past is the past.”

  Although, really, she might have said no to Flail had she known the truth. From now on, she would be the final say in who got to spend time in Sheoul-gra. Azagoth would just have to deal.

  Assuming she got out of here alive, of course. A shiver of terror spread over her skin in the form of goosebumps, but then Flail started talking again, and annoyance replaced her fear.

  “Huh. I don’t think I’d be as gracious.” Flail sniffed. “Or stupid.”

  “See, that’s why I don’t like you,” Lilliana muttered.

  Flail laughed. “What’s Azagoth like? As a lover, I mean.”

  Lilliana nearly choked on her spit. “What the hell kind of question is that? Do you honestly expect me to answer?”

  “My sister was terrified of him.” She held out the mug of ale to Lilliana, who waved it away. “So terrified that she ran away the first time she went to Sheoul-gra.”

  Well, that was interesting. “The first time?”

  “She went back,” Flail said with a shrug. “It’s considered both a sacrifice and a divine duty if you’re chosen to bed the Grim Reaper and make Memitim. Well, it used to be until you came along.”

  Now, Lilliana was genuinely curious about Flail’s sister. “How many times did she go back?”

  A shadow passed across Flail’s expression, and for a moment, Lilliana feared she’d lost control of the conversation. But after another gulp of ale, Flail spoke.

  “Just the once. She was only pregnant one time.” She inhaled a ragged breath, clearly still troubled by wherever this story led. “And she loved the baby. Loved it so much that she refused to give it up to vile humans.” Angry crimson blotches bloomed on Flail’s cheeks. “The Memitim Council forcibly took him away. She never recovered.”

  “I wouldn’t either.” Lilliana couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. Moloch would take her child when it was born. Maybe she could exploit Flail’s pain a little, prep her for what Lilliana was about to propose. “To know you couldn’t protect your baby, to know it would likely suffer…” She shuddered, and it was absolutely genuine. “Is that why your sister walked into the Abyss?”

  Flail hissed, baring wicked, sharp fangs. “How the hell do you know about that?”

  “Azagoth knows more than you might think.”

  Her abdomen squeezed hard, and she dropped her meat-club to the ground without having taken a bite. Spiny hellrats snatched it up before it even had a chance to roll to a stop.

  “Shit,” she breathed. This baby wanted out, and it wouldn’t be long. She had to put her plan into motion.

  She looked up at Flail in desperation. “Flail…I think this baby can help get Moloch what he wants.”

  Flail cocked a dark eyebrow. “How?”

  Here we go. “When this baby is born, send her or him to Azagoth as an offering of good faith.”

  “Good faith? Good faith for what?” Snorting into her mug, Flail took a chug of ale. “No, I’m sure Moloch has plans for the brat. Imagine what Azagoth will do to ensure the safety of his precious mate and child. Seeing you in pain is one thing. Seeing an innocent infant—”

  “No!” Lilliana grabbed Flail’s arm in a frantic attempt to convince her. “Listen to me. That will guarantee Azagoth won’t help Moloch. I can’t even begin to tell you how nuclear Azagoth will go if you hurt his newborn child. But if Moloch makes a two-part deal with Azagoth, giving him the baby as a down payment, and me as the full payment, Azagoth will do it. He’s a dealmaker, and he’s a stickler for the terms of an agreement. It’s Moloch’s only chance.”

  Flail looked at her with pity. “Do you really think Azagoth believes Moloch will release you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Now, Flail was looking at her with pity and skepticism. “Really?”

  The baby kicked, and nausea bubbled up in Lilliana’s throat at her inability to protect it. “No.”

  “You know you’re not getting out of here alive, right?” Flail ran a slender finger around the rim of her mug, toy
ing with it. Toying with Lilliana. “If Azagoth doesn’t release the Dark Lord, Moloch will kill you. If Azagoth does release Satan, Moloch will offer you to him as a plaything. You’re dead either way.”

  Lilliana looked at her. “But my baby can live.” She swallowed dryly, then went for a shameless manipulation. “Wouldn’t you have wanted someone to help your sister?”

  “Nice,” Flail said, raising her mug in salute. “That was so subtle.”

  “I can’t afford to be subtle,” Lilliana snapped. “This baby is going to be here any minute, and I don’t want him or her to suffer for Moloch’s twisted pleasure. I mean, the bastard killed your nephew. Your sister’s beloved son. Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want revenge?”

  With a roar, Flail backhanded Lilliana so hard she fell backward, hitting her head on a stool meant for the unlucky hanging victims to stand on before having it kicked out from beneath their feet. All around, demons broke out in laughter.

  “You don’t get to question my anger,” Flail yelled. Then, just as quickly as she went ballistic, she calmed down, squatting next to Lilliana and lowering her voice. “I’ll see what I can do. But don’t get your hopes up. Ever since Moloc’s and Bael’s souls merged, Moloch’s had a real hard-on for torture.” She patted Lilliana on the head as if she were a pet. “Try to get some rest. You’re going to need to be strong for whatever comes next.”

  Lilliana had told Azagoth the same thing. Now it seemed like such a stupid thing to say.

  Flail was seriously ready for the End of Days. She was sick of the fucking humans, and she was ready to be done with angels, as well. It was time for the Dark Lord to lead the charge and take the earthly realm from the Creator’s dumbest experiments.

  Humans were so damned stupid.

  Not as stupid as you are.

  Her random thought, as annoying as it was, might be accurate. She was actually considering asking Moloch for something she shouldn’t care about at all. No, that wasn’t entirely true. She did care, not for the child, but for the cause. If she asked him to deliver Lilliana’s child to Azagoth, it would be because she truly believed her proposal would be the best way to get him to comply with Moloch’s wishes.