Jim Bob peered into his glass as he swirled the rum around. “Those who want to see you castrated—figuratively, although I wouldn’t rule out a few who are thinking in more literal terms—is a small percentage, but the movement is growing.”
“I don’t fear them.” When Jim Bob cut him a look of dismay, he snorted. “What? You think I should?”
“No.” Jim Bob paused as if rethinking that. “But you might want to stop flexing your muscles. You aren’t invincible, Reaper. Remember that.”
Few things annoyed Azagoth more than being threatened, and he surged to his feet. “I’m not afraid of Heaven’s wrath.”
Jim Bob nodded, almost as if he approved. “You’ve never been afraid of anything, have you, Azagoth?”
“He who hasn’t known fear hasn’t faced his demons,” he mused, quoting a line from Grim Reapings: The Making of Sheoul-gra, by Zachariel, First Angel of the Apocalypse. It had been a good read, maybe a little too accurate when accounting Azagoth’s time as Asrael, but hey, it had entertained him for a couple of hours.
“And have you?” Jim Bob asked. “Faced your demons?”
Azagoth laughed. “I am a demon, and Heaven had better remember that.”
“You’re an angel tasked with storing evil souls until they can be reincarnated,” Jim Bob said as if Azagoth were unaware of his own fucking job description. “You were chosen by Heaven for a reason, but if you start breaking the terms of the agreement in order to go after Moloc, they’ll terminate it. And you.”
Yeah, well, if Moloc was behind the attack on Lilliana, there was going to be a lot of terminating going on.
Heaven could suck it.
And why the hell hadn’t Lilliana called from Ares’ place yet? He glanced at his watch. Son of a bitch. It had only been ten minutes since he’d spoken with her. She probably wasn’t even dressed yet.
“Azagoth? Did you hear me?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Yeah, yeah. I fuck up, Heaven loses its shit. I get it.” He didn’t give a hellrat’s ass right now. He had to uncover who had poisoned Lilliana.
Moloc, probably. And even if he hadn’t, it didn’t matter. Bael’s half-soul had merged with Moloc’s half-soul, and Bael had been responsible for the deaths of several of Azagoth’s children.
So, Moloc would pay. And so would whoever had actually delivered the poison to Lilliana.
But who was it?
One of the fallen angels who had served him for centuries? One of the Unfallen who lived here, trading their services for protection from True Fallen angels who would drag them to Hell to complete their fall from grace?
One of his children?
The idea that one of his progeny would betray him should have brought denial and pain, but it had happened before. More than once. And, why not? Most had never met him, and those who had barely knew him.
His children had all grown up in the human realm, believing they were as human as those who raised them. The truth about their origins and their real parents only came when they were whisked away as adults by an older Memitim sibling to begin a life of angelic duties. They trained for years, learning to use their powers and to fight. They were educated on the histories of humans, angels, and demons…and they were taught to despise him.
A few had come to him over the millennia, back when his realm was a charred, blackened ruin that reflected what Azagoth had become. But after Lilliana arrived, more of his children showed up, some of them several hundreds of years old. They’d started training with the Unfallen, and eventually, Sheoul-gra had become a thriving community. Azagoth had even brought in every remaining child from the human realm. Just two days ago, he’d ordered the construction of a pool with a waterfall, a slide, and two diving boards to help them adjust.
So as much as he loved having his children in Sheoul-gra, he also knew it was a risk. They’d all gone through hellish childhoods, abandoned by their mothers to be raised by the worst that humankind had to offer, all to give them perspective, or some crap.
What it did was teach them to despise the beings who’d fucked them into existence, only to abandon them in the shittiest conditions imaginable.
Yep, he understood why Memitim might betray him.
But what if someone close to him had? Someone like…Zhubaal. Or Razr.
He shook his head, not wanting to go down that road. Not yet. It was far more likely that the person was outside his inner circle. Close, but not wholly trusted.
Someone like…Jim Bob.
He eyed the angel speculatively. Jim Bob had never given Azagoth any reason not to trust him…but that would be the goal of anyone trying to play him. “Did you give Lilliana anything recently?”
One tawny eyebrow arched. “Yes. My condolences for being mated to you.”
“Besides that. Anything edible? A gift?”
“I’m not that nice.”
Azagoth believed him, but he wasn’t willing to risk his mate’s life on the male’s word. Jim Bob would remain a suspect until Azagoth had the person who tried to kill his child at the eviscerating end of his scythe.
And then maybe, just maybe, life could finally get back to normal.
Chapter 7
Underworld General’s emergency department was almost always in a state of chaos. Which Eidolon figured was to be expected when its patients and staff members consisted of hundreds of species of demons, were-creatures, vampires, shifters, and fallen angels.
And most of them didn’t get along. A lot of them had long-standing feuds between their kinds. Some were justifiably hated because their entire species were a bunch of dicks. Others had a predator/prey dynamic going on. Just today, Eidolon had treated a quillminder while the Dire Mantis who’d tried to eat him was being patched up one room over.
If not for the anti-violence spell, the place would be bathed in a lot more blood than it already was. But just because people couldn’t bite, stab, or gut each other, didn’t mean they couldn’t scream their bloody heads off. Right now, at least five patients, two nurses, and a physician were engaged in shouting matches.
As if that weren’t enough to make Eidolon long for a vacation, the hospital’s Harrowgate, part of the transportation system that allowed underworlders to travel instantly to millions of other Harrowgates around the human and demon realms, had stopped working. And so had the gate that connected the New York-based hospital with the London-based clinic from which Blaspheme was currently AWOL for the third day in a row now.
The only other entrance was via the parking lot’s concealed doorway that opened into a Manhattan parking garage on a busy street. And that meant demons who couldn’t pass as human couldn’t come or go unless they could teleport or make themselves invisible.
Naturally, tempers were flaring.
The hospital was going to have to start using the cover of ambulances to ferry people out of here when the vehicles weren’t being used for active calls.
Eidolon was about to hand down the order to do just that when one of the technicians working on the Harrowgate called to him. The tech, a werewolf who worked at a human software company, stepped out, the physics of the gate making it appear as if he’d walked out of thin air from between two pillars.
“I think we isolated the problem.” He rubbed his head, making his already unkempt blond man bun flop over. “Looks like there’s a bug in the coding for the European continent.”