“But you said you can go outside now. How often?”
“I’ve left Sheoul-gra five times in the last hundred years, and it cost me each time.” Even when the Four Horsemen had gotten him sprung to help with a massive battle a few years ago, he’d paid dearly despite the fact that he’d fought for the good guys. For that, Azagoth had taken away Hades’s only real friend, a demon who had been living in the 1st Ring for two thousand years. Azagoth had reincarnated him, leaving Hades with only his asshole wardens for company.
“So I’m guessing you don’t do much dating if you can’t leave, huh? You said females in Sheoul-gra are off limits, but what about here in the Inner Sanctum?”
He laughed. But it was a bitter, hard sound, even to his own ears. “Everyone is off limits to me, Cat. My wardens can screw whoever they want in the Inner Sanctum, but me? Remember the peeling thing I told you about? Yeah. Celibacy and me became really fucking intimate.”
“You must have been so lonely,” she said softly.
He blinked. Lonely? That thought hadn’t occurred to him, and he didn’t think it would occur to anyone else, either.
Although, now that he thought about it, yeah, there had always been a strange tension inside him that he couldn’t identify. That he’d always written off as being sexual in nature. But now that he’d spent time with Cat, it was killing him to know that it was only a matter of time before he lost her company and her soothing touch. Fuck, he couldn’t think about it, because if he did, he’d lose it.
Redirecting his thoughts, he flipped back to his default setting of deflection. “I don’t know if I was lonely, really, but I was definitely horny.”
She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “I know the feeling.”
A scream from outside jolted them both to their feet. He rushed to the window and signaled for Cat to stay back, out of sight of anyone who might have a ranged weapon.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
Awesomeness, that’s what. Turning to her, he grinned. “Ever seen The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit? You know how the giant eagles always turn up to save the day?”
She jammed her hands on her hips. “Are you going to tell me that big birds are helping to search for the human?”
Outside, people were still screaming. “Better. The hellhounds have arrived.”
“Hellhounds eat people,” she pointed out.
“Hilarious, right?” He held out his hand. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
“To the hellhounds?”
“Not just the hellhounds,” he said, grasping her hand in his. “To the king himself. Let’s go say hi to Cerberus.”
Chapter Fourteen
Cataclysm had seen a lot of scary shit in her life––most of it in the last few days––but the massive, two-headed beast standing outside, surrounded by hounds that were as large as bison but still half his size, was one of the most intimidating creatures she’d ever come across.
Black as night, with glowing crimson eyes and teeth that would make a shark jealous, Cerberus used one massive paw to rake deep grooves in the grass. Steam rose up from the damaged earth, turning everything around it to ash.
“Hey, buddy,” Hades said. “’Sup?”
The two heads snapped at each other before the left one put its ears back and lowered to eye level. A deep, smoky growl curled up from deep in the beast’s chest.
Hades turned to her. “He said his brethren are sweeping the Rings for the human, and he apologizes in advance for any accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“Most hellhounds hate angels, fallen or otherwise. Ol’ Cerb here barely tolerates me. So we can expect some casualties among my warden ranks.” He picked up a stick and threw it, and two of the hellhounds took off in a blur of black fur. “Also, he didn’t really apologize. It was more of a description of how he thinks they’ll taste.”
She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, and frankly, she didn’t want to know.
Cerberus’s other head made some snarling noises, and Hades snarled back. The two of them went back and forth, until finally, Hades held up his hand and turned to her again.
“I...uh...I failed to mention something earlier.”
She glared at Hades. She hated being kept in the dark about anything. “Dammit, Hades, what did you not tell me?”
“The Orphmage who captured you is using your life force to fuel the spell that will open the Inner Sanctum’s barriers. He did the same thing to the human. Cerberus thinks that if we can get you close enough to the human, you’ll be able to detect him. It should also unlock the doors between the Inner Sanctum and Azagoth’s realm. Basically, the mutt wants to use you to track the human. Funny, yes? How it’s the opposite of in the human realm, when humans use dogs––”
“I get it,” she blurted. And criminy, could this situation get any worse? “But I can’t believe you were keeping this from me. My life force? Seriously?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound very contrite. “I didn’t want to worry you. Especially not after I was such a dick to you earlier.”
Well, at least he admitted to being a dick. “I’m not worried,” she explained. “I’m mad. We need to be out looking for the human. I have to fix this so the world isn’t overrun by demon spirits and so Azagoth won’t expel me from Sheoul-gra.” She watched the hellhounds grab the stick and start a game of tug-of-war. “And fixing this could go a long way toward earning my way back to Heaven.”
Hades’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “Why the everloving fuck do you want to go back to people who kicked you to the curb?”
“Heaven is my home,” she said simply.
Even with the growls and snarls coming from the hellhounds and the shouts of people yelling at the beasts from a safe distance, Hades’s silence was deafening.
Finally, he said quietly, “Seems to me that home is where the people who want you are.”
For some reason, his words knocked the breath out of her. “And who would that be?” she asked. “Azagoth? I clean his house. And not very well. Anyone can do that. He’s probably going to fire me anyway, once he learns that I was the one who got the human sent here in the first place. Lilliana? I consider her a friend, and I hope she feels the same about me, but she’d be fine without me. The other Unfallen living in the dorms? Sometimes I cook for them. They’d miss my brown butter vanilla bean cake, but aside from that...”
She shrugged as if it was all no big deal, but the realization that she was so insignificant hurt. Making matters worse was her status as an Unfallen. She had no powers, no status, no identity. Maybe she should have entered Sheoul and turned herself into a True Fallen. At least then she’d have wings and power.
But the cost would have been her soul.
Suddenly, Hades’s hands came down on her shoulders. “I want you, Cat. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything since I fell.”
Her heart pounded with joy, but a blanket of sadness wrapped around it, muffling the happiness. “And what good does that do either of us if Azagoth is so bent on revenge?”
“Cat––”
She pulled away from him. “Don’t make things worse. We need to find the human, and I need to get back to Heaven. Can we do that, please? Before all of my life is drained?”
A chill settled in the air, so noticeable that even the hellhounds looked around to see where the cold front was coming from. Cat didn’t bother searching.
An icy glaze turned Hades’s eyes cloudy and his expression stony. Blue veins rose to the surface of his skin, which had lost a few shades of color, the way it had back at Azagoth’s mansion when he’d shown her his wings. A darkness emanated from him, making her skin burn, and it struck her that this was the Hades who came out to play when things went to hell. This was the Jailor of the Dead. The Keeper of Souls. The Master of Torture.
“Tell me, Cataclysm.” His voice had gone deep, scraping the craggy bottoms of Hell’s fiery pits. “How did you get yo
ur name?”
Oh, God. He knew. Humiliation shrunk her skin. “It doesn’t matter. We should go.” She spun around. The door to the hut was just a few steps away––
A hellhound blocked the path, drool dripping from its bared teeth. Clearly, Hades wasn’t done with this conversation, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of turning around to face him.
“Did you choose your name?” She jumped at the sound of his voice, so close to her right ear that she felt his breath on her lobe.
“You know I didn’t,” she ground out, her humiliation veering sharply to anger that he’d chosen to go there. But then, he was the Master of Torture, wasn’t he? He’d proven earlier that he knew where to strike in order to extract the most pain from a victim, and names could be an extremely sensitive subject for fallen angels.
When an angel lost his or her wings, they usually got to choose their new names. Heck, a fallen angel could rename themselves over and over, although they were never to use their angel names again…except inside Sheoul-gra.
But sometimes, the archangels chose a person’s fallen angel name. As a punishment, or an insult, or a lesson...whatever their motivations, when they selected a name for a disgraced angel, it forever rendered one unable to refer to oneself as anything but the name the archangels chose. If they’d wanted Cat’s new name to be Poopalufagus, she would be compelled to use it. Hell, she couldn’t even speak her angelic name if she tried...and she had. The name always got clogged in her throat.
“Why did the archangels choose to call you Cataclysm?” His lips grazed her ear as he spoke.
“Because I was a disaster.” Her voice cracked, and she hated herself for it. Hated Hades for making her revisit the worst moment of her life. Hated him more for forcing her to confront a truth she wasn’t ready to face yet. “I helped nearly end the world, and they wanted to remind me of it forever.”
Silence stretched, and she sensed Hades withdraw. When he finally spoke, his voice was back to normal, but somehow, she knew that nothing would be normal ever again.
“And those are the people you want to go home to.” He brushed past her and shooed the hound out of the way. As he threw open the door to the hut and gestured for her to enter, he smiled coldly. “Then, by all means, let’s not waste any time getting you back there.”
* * * *
Hades spent over twelve hours with a pack of ravenous hellhounds and one fiercely silent female as they searched the 5th Ring for the damned human. Granted, he hadn’t felt like talking, either, because ultimately, what did he and Cat have to talk about? Her desire to go back to Heaven, to people who saddled her with a name that would haunt her forever? His selfish desire to prevent that?
Ultimately, there was nothing he could do to convince her not to go back to Heaven if she was given the chance. She didn’t want to be here, and even if she did, they couldn’t be together. Not if Azagoth was still determined to punish him.
He looked over at Cat, who was standing about thirty yards away on a cliff above a river of lava. In the distance, a blackened volcano spewed smoke and steam as reddish-orange veins of molten rock flowed down its sides. She was dressed in her jeans and corset, and when Hades made clear they were going to be dealing with scorching terrain, she’d agreed to wear a pair of boots loaned to her by a the demons whose hut they’d stayed in.
Hellhounds surrounded her, keeping her safe. The demon canines were unabashed killers, but when given something to protect, they took their job seriously. There was nothing on the planet more loyal than a hellhound. There was also nothing more ravenous, as the half-dozen hellhounds tearing apart some hapless demon nearby proved.
Hades signaled to Silth, and the guy jogged over from where he’d been using a divining rod, fashioned from the thighbone of the Orphmage who had captured Cat, to locate the human. The stupid mage had refused to talk, so they’d gone with Plan B. Or, as Hades called it, Plan Bone.
“My Lord?” Silth asked as he climbed the jagged lava rock hill to get to him.
“The hounds want to phase us to another region.” Which was awesome because Hades hated this one, despised the heat and the smell. The only upside was that few demons lived here. Which made it a potentially great place to store a human. “But I want you and a few hounds to stay.”
“You suspect something?”
Hades couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was a sense of wrongness here that went beyond simply not liking the area. They hadn’t found anything suspicious, but––
“Hades!” Cat came running toward him, hellhounds on her heels. “I think I can feel the human.”
One of the hellhounds with her had something in its mouth, and as she drew to a halt in front of Hades, the hound playfully tossed it at her. She caught it, yelped, and dropped it.
“Hey,” Hades said, “he likes you. He just gave you the finger.” Of some kind of demon.
She gave him a look of disgust. “How can you joke about that? It’s not funny.”
“Nah,” he said. “It kind of is.”
“Gross.” She kicked at the digit, and the hound snatched it up, swallowing it in short order. She grimaced and then rubbed her arms. “Like I was saying, I’m sensing something nearby. It’s a feeling of good, which shouldn’t be here, right?”
“In the 5th Ring? No way.” His pulse picked up as the idea that they might be close sank in. “It’s gotta be the human. Can you narrow it down to a direction?”
She shook her head. “It’s weird, like a thread of good woven into a massive evil cloth. There’s too much evil around it to get a bead on it.”
“Uh...boss?” Silth held up the wobbling divining bone. “Got something.”
As Hades watched, the thing went from barely moving to vibrating so intensely that Silth had to use two hands to hold on.
“Shit.” Hades wheeled to the hounds. “Call for backup! Now––”
An arrow punched through his chest. Agony tore through him, but as a hail of arrows fell on them, all he could think about was getting Cat to safety. A fierce, protective instinct surged through him as he took her to the ground and covered her with his body while the hellhounds charged an army of demons pouring out of fissures in the ground that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Son of a bitch!” Silth, pincushioned by a half a dozen arrows, shouted in anger and pain, but he didn’t go down. Palming his sword, he leaped into the fray.
“Let me up,” Cat yelled against Hades’s chest. “The human is close now. If I can get to him––”
“They’re trying to draw you out.” He held her tight, cocooning them both in his wings as he peeked between hellhound legs. “They need to behead you both simultaneously to open the holes in the barrier.”
“Behead me?” she screeched. “Maybe you could have shared that little factoid sooner?”
“Maybe,” he said, keeping it light to hide how fucking terrified he was for her. “But nah.” He signaled to one of the hounds who had arrived at the hut with Cerberus, a scarred son of the hellhound king Hades knew only as Crush. “Take her to the graveyard. If I’m not there in ten minutes, take her back to the hut.”
“What?” Cat punched him in the arm and struggled to her feet. “No. I can help!”
He didn’t have time for this, but he gripped her shoulders and shook her. “There are thousands of demons coming at us, all with one goal; to behead you.”
“But what about you? If you’re not there in ten minutes––”
“Then I’m dead.” Before she could say another word, he kissed her. Hard. And he poured as much emotion into it as he could. Because whether they won the battle or not, this would be the last kiss they shared.
Quickly, he stepped back and signaled to the hound. A heartbeat later, the beast was gone, and with him, Cat.
Even above the sounds of battle, he heard her scream, “Noooooo,” as she faded away.
Chapter Fifteen
Cat and the hellhound materialized in the weird graveyard where sh
e’d started this bizarre journey.
Damn Hades! She eyed the mausoleums that corresponded with the five Rings, but even as she zeroed in on the one she’d originally entered that went to the 5th Ring where the battle was going down, the stupid hellhound got in her way. It even snarled at her.
“You’re an asshole,” she snapped.
It cocked its big head, raised its pointy ears, and looked at her as if it was expecting her to throw a stick or something. Then it burped. And dear God, what had the thing eaten today? She tried not to gag as she turned around and searched the wall for the opening to Azagoth’s realm. Yes, she knew it was locked, but it couldn’t hurt to try. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do, since clearly, the gassy hellhound wasn’t going to let her go back to the 5th Ring.
Hurry, Hades.
His kiss still felt warm on her lips. Her skin still burned from his touch. She missed him, and they’d only been apart for a couple of minutes. What would happen when––and if––she finally got out of here? How could she deal with knowing he was just a doorway away?
Maybe it would be better if she got to go back to Heaven. He wouldn’t be a temptation to her anymore. And besides, being accepted back into Heaven meant her family would take her back, right? Her friends would forgive her. She could forget the terrible things they’d said as she’d been dragged to the chopping block.
Traitor.
Satan’s whore.
You’re no daughter of mine.
You sicken me.
Yes, she could forget. With enough demon bloodwine, anyway.
An electric tingle charged the air, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She pivoted around as Cerberus materialized, his black fur shiny from blood, one of his massive jaws clenched around a broken, bleeding human.
And dangling limply from the second set of jaws was Hades.
Oh, shit! She sprinted to the giant hellhound, who dropped both bodies to the ground. Sinking to her knees, she gathered Hades’s lifeless body in her arms.
“Hades? Hades!” She shook him, but there was nothing. He wasn’t even breathing. How could this be? How could he be dead? He couldn’t be, right?