“Even if they’d made that mistake, I’d have caught it,” Azagoth said, and a knot formed in Cat’s stomach.
“You missed this one.”
“Impossible.”
A bird chirped in the distance, its cheery song so out of place in the growing tension surrounding Azagoth and Reaver. Cat couldn’t help but think that the old, lifeless Sheoul-gra might have been a better setting for the confrontation happening right now between these two powerful males.
Reaver stared at Azagoth, his expression darkening with anger. “Seriously? You think Heaven would make that kind of error?”
“You think I would?” Azagoth shot back. “In thousands of years, have I ever allowed a non-evil human soul into Sheoul-gra?”
Oh, no. The knot in Cat’s belly grew larger as her little incident three days ago filled her thoughts.
“Mistakes happen.”
As Azagoth growled, Cat started to sweat. She was responsible for the innocent soul being sent into the holding tank. It was the only explanation.
“I don’t make mistakes.” Azagoth spoke through teeth clenched so hard that Cat swore she heard one or two crack.
“Then someone else did,” Reaver said. “I don’t give a shit who’s at fault. What I do give a shit about is the fact that there’s a human soul in the Inner Sanctum who doesn’t belong there, and we want him back before he’s harmed or someone realizes he’s not evil and they use him to break out of Sheoul-gra.”
“Um...excuse me,” Cat interrupted. “But this person you’re talking about...he’s a soul, not a physical being, at least not on Earth or in Sheoul, so how could he be used to help demons escape?”
“Here, as in Heaven, his soul is solid,” Reaver said. “A soul-eating demon could absorb him, or his soul could be harvested and liquefied to use in spells.” As the horror of what could be happening to an innocent human sunk in, Reaver turned back to Azagoth. “You fucked up big time.”
Azagoth snorted. “Bite me.”
“You have one week.”
“And I repeat––”
“Reaver!” Lilliana’s voice rang out, and a moment later, she flung herself into his arms. “It’s so good to see you.”
They started to chat, giving Cat time to slink away. Holy shit, what had she done? Azagoth had given her a purpose, a home, and safety, and she’d just gotten him into some serious hot water with Heaven.
And that poor human. She’d seen firsthand how traumatic dying could be for humans. Even in Heaven it sometimes took them months to adjust, especially if their deaths were violent or sudden. But to die and then find yourself trapped in hell with no idea why or what you’d done to deserve it?
She shuddered as she shuffled along the stone path toward Azagoth’s palace. She had to fix this, but how? Maybe she could find the human herself. Her ability to differentiate between human and demon souls from great distances would be an advantage for her, so maybe, just maybe, she could fix this quickly. If she could get in and out of the Inner Sanctum before anyone noticed she was gone, surely Azagoth would forgive her. It was even possible that the archangels would consider the rescue a good enough deed to allow her back in Heaven.
No one noticed her moving away from the group, so she took the steps two at a time and hurried through the massive doors. The moment she was away from prying eyes, she could no longer maintain her cool composure. She sprinted into action, running so fast through the corridors that she skidded around one corner and nearly collided with the wall on her way to Azagoth’s office.
As expected, the office was empty. Terrified, but hopeful that what she was about to do would right a lot of wrongs, she hurried to the lever she’d accidentally opened, the one that had started this whole mess.
Next to the lever that opened the soul tunnel was a switch she’d seen Azagoth and Hades use to gain access to the Inner Sanctum. When she flipped it, a section of the wall faded out, allowing a view of a dark, shadowy graveyard set amongst blackened, leafless trees on the other side.
For a moment, she hesitated. In Heaven, she’d always been the first of her brothers and sisters to take risks, to step into the unknown. But none of them had ever faced anything like this. To them, taking risks meant speaking up at meetings or chasing a demon into a Harrowgate.
Her two brothers and two sisters would shit themselves if they ever stood where Cat was right now.
The thought gave her a measure of comfort and even made her smile a little. So, before she changed her mind, she took a deep, bracing breath, and stepped through the portal. Instantly, heat so thick and damp she could barely breathe engulfed her. Each breath of fetid air made her gag. The place smelled like rotting corpses. And the sounds...gods, it was as if people in the graves were moaning and clawing at their coffins.
Why would anyone be in the coffins?
Fear welled up, a suffocating sensation that seemed to squeeze her entire body. This was a mistake. A horrible mistake. She had to go back. Had to confess what she’d done to Azagoth. Panicked, she spun around so fast she nearly threw herself off balance.
Hurry, her mind screamed. Then it froze mid-scream.
The portal was gone.
Frantic, she searched the wall for a lever of some sort. Or a button. Or a freaking spell that would allow her to use a damned magic word.
“Open sesame?” she croaked.
Nothing.
“Let me out.”
Nada.
She pounded on the wall where the door had been. “Open the damned portal!”
The sounds coming from the graves grew louder, and her throat clogged with terror.
She was trapped.
Chapter Five
Cat spent what seemed like forever trying to find a way back to Azagoth’s realm, but the solid wall, which reached upward into a pitch-black sky as far as the eye could see, was apparently endless. So was the graveyard. Why was there a graveyard here, anyway?
Even stranger, the headstones, all different sizes, shapes, and materials, were unmarked. At least, they weren’t marked with names or dates. Some had been carved with what appeared to be graffiti, and others were scarred by writing, mainly in the universal demon language, Sheoulic. Several were warnings to not enter any of the five mausoleums that seemed to be randomly placed around the sprawling cemetery.
Unfortunately, she’d heard enough about the Inner Sanctum to know that the mausoleums were the gateways to the five levels, or Rings, as they were officially called, that housed the demons Hades watched over. She had to enter. But which one? None were marked in any way that would indicate which Ring they led to. Was she supposed to just choose randomly and hope she’d picked the right one? Ugh. Yet another reason she wanted to go back to Heaven. There, everything was clearly marked.
She eyed the five mausoleums and finally decided on the closest one. Before she entered though, she found a heavy piece of wood she could use as a club if needed. When she’d lost her wings, she’d lost all innate defensive weapons, but they wouldn’t have done her any good down here, anyway.
She really should have thought this out a little better.
Your impulsiveness is going to get you in trouble someday.
Her mother’s words rang in her ears, and so did her siblings’ echoes of, “Told you so,” uttered just before her wings had been sliced off.
Cat stared at the mausoleum’s iron grate door. Apparently, not even losing her wings had taught her a lesson.
Cursing herself—and throwing in some choice words for her siblings—she pushed open the door, cringing at the rusty creaking noise that made the things in the graves screech. The inside was dark and dusty, but anything was better than the foul dampness of the graveyard. It was also smaller than it appeared to be from the outside, about the size of a phone booth.
The door slammed shut behind her, and she nearly screamed at the clank of the metal hitting the stone. An instant later, it swung open by itself, and she stepped out into a featureless, sandy desert. There was nothing but p
ale yellow sand and gray sky. Nothing moved. There was no breeze, no sound, no smell...what the hell was this place?
Okay, this might have been a mistake. She spun around to go back to the graveyard and a different mausoleum, but like earlier when she first left Azagoth’s library, she found nothing but empty air where the doorway should have been. Panic rose up, but before she could form a coherent thought, she heard a noise behind her. A chill shot up her spine as she slowly turned.
Heart pounding, fingers digging into the wood club, she squinted into the distance, and that’s when she saw it—a shimmer in the air that slowly solidified into a number of blurry shapes. And then the shapes took form, and her heart slammed to a sudden, painful stop at the blast of evil that struck her.
At least fifty demons of several different species formed a semicircle around her, a wall of fangs, claws, and crude, handmade weapons. The crowd parted to allow one of them, a seven-foot tall, eyeless thing with tiny, sharp teeth and maggot-colored skin, to come forward. In his slender, clawed hand, he held a chain, and on the other end of that chain, crawling on all fours like a dog, was a human male, his hair matted with blood, his skin bruised and bleeding, one ear missing.
This was the very human she’d come for. Relief quickly gave way to guilt and horror at what had been done to him. And at what might still be done to him. To both of them.
“Aren’t you a tasty thing,” the maggot demon slurred, his voice mushy and sifted through sharp teeth.
Terror, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, clogged her throat. Oh, she’d been afraid before, plenty of times. But this was different. She’d never faced so many demons, and she’d certainly never done it while holding only a stick of wood as a weapon.
Raising her club, she found her voice, shaky and squeaky as it was. “Demon, I am a fallen angel on a mission from Azagoth himself,” she lied. “You are to hand over the human immediately.”
Maggot-man laughed. “Foolish kunsac.” Her Sheoulic was rusty, but she was pretty sure he’d just called her a rather nasty slang term for a demon’s anus. “You bluff. And you will die.” He grinned, flashing those horrid teeth at her. “But not before we get what we want from you.”
Another demon stepped forward and made a sweeping gesture toward the others. “What we all want from you.”
What they wanted from her? How had they even found her?
They came at her in a rush. She swung her club, catching one in the jaw hard enough to knock a few teeth out, but as she swung again, something struck her in the head. She tasted blood and heard a scream, but only later did she realize that the scream was hers.
* * * *
“My lord.”
Inside one of the hundreds of tiny cells in the Rot’s lowest dungeon levels, Hades turned away from the broken body of one of the two demons he’d captured three days ago. Silth, the fallen angel commander in charge of the 5th Ring, stood in the doorway. “Tell me you’ve located the rest of the insurgents.”
Silth inclined his blond head in a brief nod. “Yes, but––”
“I trust you’ve dumped them into the Rot’s acid pit?” That was one of Hades’s favorite punishments. The demons would splash around as their bodies were dissolved slowly and painfully, until only their souls remained.
That was when things got fun. Exposed souls were delicate, and the acid was even more agonizing on their raw, tender forms. The demons would take another physical body, and then the acid went right back to work, starting the cycle again. It usually didn’t take more than a few days before the bastards started talking.
And if that didn’t work, dropping them into one of the graves in the cemetery for a couple of decades would.
“Of course.” Silth shifted his balance nervously, making his chain mail rattle, and Hades stiffened. “A situation requires your attention.”
A dark, slithery sensation unfurled in Hades’s gut at both Silth’s words and the grim tone. “Tell me.”
“The entire 5th Ring is becoming unstable, and the violence is spreading into the 4th Ring. Intelligence indicates that a large-scale escape from Sheoul-gra is in the works.”
“Bullshit.” Hades kicked at the straw on the floor and watched a hellrat scurry into another filthy pile. “There’s no way they could gather enough power to accomplish something like that.”
Silth, who Hades had personally chosen as the 5th Ring’s warden because he was an evil sonofabitch who liked pain and feared nothing, suddenly looked as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. He even took a step back from Hades, as if he expected to be slaughtered.
Which meant the guy had some fucking bad news.
“Somehow,” he growled, “they got hold of an Unfallen.”
Hades blinked. “An Unfallen? Like, a living, breathing fallen angel? How? Azagoth wouldn’t have allowed anyone inside without telling me.” No way. Any living being who was given access to the Inner Sanctum had to be escorted and contained to prevent exactly what appeared to be going on right now in the 5th Ring.
“I saw her myself,” Silth said.
“Her?” Hades frowned. “Who?”
“I know not. I caught but a glimpse,” Silth said, reverting back to what Hades like to call his “medieval speak.” The dude had fallen from Heaven in the late 900’s and had spent way too much time messing in human affairs and picking up their annoying habits. “When I captured one of the rebels, he admitted that she was an Unfallen being used in a ritual that would break down the Inner Sanctum’s walls.”
The hellrat poked its head out of the straw and took a bite out of the unconscious demon on the floor. They were cute little buggers.
“Something’s still not right.” Hades tore his gaze away from the rodent. “It would take more than a single Unfallen to unleash the kind of magic that would destroy the Inner Sanctum’s boundaries. What else do they have?”
“Unknown. But I fear that if we don’t act now, it won’t matter if the walls fall or not. The uprising is spreading, and if it reaches all of the levels...” He trailed off, knowing full well that Hades understood the seriousness of the situation.
A large-scale rebellion might not result in the destruction of the Inner Sanctum’s walls, but it would force Azagoth to halt the admission of new souls into the Inner Sanctum, resulting in a backup that would affect both the human and demon realms. Azagoth had even theorized that a large enough riot could blow out the inner barriers that separated Azagoth’s realm from the Inner Sanctum, resulting in a wave of chaos that would destroy everything Azagoth held dear.
Not that Hades gave a shit what Azagoth held dear, but any threat to Azagoth was a threat to Hades, as well. If Azagoth fell, so would Hades, no matter how connected he might be to the Biblical prophecy laid out for Thanatos, the Horseman known as Death.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and he who sat on it was named Death, and Hades followed with him.
Yeah. That.
Hades had already helped out the Four Horsemen on several occasions, but he had no idea what was in store for him down the road. No doubt, it wouldn’t be good. The Horsemen had a way of getting themselves into trouble.
Hades brushed past Silth and started down the narrow, torch-lit hall, the fallen angel on his flank. “Where are the insurgents holding the Unfallen?”
“My boys and I battled them on the 5th Ring’s Broken Claw Mountain.” Silth paused as they stopped at the armory, where Hades grabbed a leather harness loaded with blades fashioned from materials found in the Inner Sanctum. Anything from outside was strictly forbidden except inside Hades’s home. “The survivors fled into the canyon with the female. I believe they’re holed up there.”
Hades snorted. “You think they’re what, cornered? Waiting to be slaughtered?” Testing the edge of a bone blade, he shook his head. “They have a plan.”
“You think it’s a trap?”
“Hell, yeah, it’s a trap.” He grinned because as shitty as the turmoil in the Inner Sanctum was, there was a bright side. Tho
usands of years of monotony had worn thin, but now there was a little excitement. Something to challenge him, to make him feel alive.
He thought of Cat and how, when she’d run into him in Azagoth’s Hall of Souls, he’d had a moment where he’d felt more alive than he had in centuries. It had been enough to make him forget, just for a few minutes, that she was off-limits to him. His pulse had picked up, his body had hardened, and he’d wanted so badly to wrap himself around her and revel in skin-on-skin contact.
But that wasn’t going to happen, so he’d have to settle for the next best thing.
A good old-fashioned fight.
Chapter Six
It turned out that Silth hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that the 5th Ring was in chaos. In the canyon where the Unfallen was supposedly being held, Hades found himself having to fight his way through hordes of demons simply to get within sight of the staging area where the leaders were chanting and dancing and sacrificing demon critters for their blood.
As Hades and his team of fallen angels battled an endless stream of demons, he kept an eye out for the idiot Unfallen who had somehow landed herself in a shit-ton of trouble. Because even if the demons didn’t kill her, Hades would.
And he was going to have fun doing it.
He threw out his hand, sending a wave of disruptive power into the crowd of demons in front of him. They blew apart as if they’d been nuked, leaving a path of meat and blood ahead of him. Hellhounds rushed in to feast and snap at the souls rising from the ruined bodies. It wouldn’t be long before they reoriented themselves and generated new flesh-and-blood bodies again, so Hades had to hurry. Although only Hades and his fallen angel wardens possessed supernatural powers down here, the demons still had size, strength, teeth, and claws in their arsenals, not to mention sheer numbers. If Hades and his team were overwhelmed, things could get bad. Real bad.
Worse, he’d gone back to his place to contact Azagoth only to find that communications were down, and they must have been for hours. Azagoth always sent a message for a status update at precisely midnight, but for the first time in thousands of years, there was nothing. He probably should have popped into Azagoth’s office to see what was up before charging into battle, but dammit, the Grim Reaper’s Darth Vader-ish warning to not fail him again was still sitting on his mind like a bruise, and he didn’t feel like poking it. Still, it might have been helpful to know how the hell an Unfallen had gotten into the Inner Sanctum.