“Moloc doesn’t want revenge,” Azagoth said. “He wants me to release Satan from the prison Revenant and Reaver put him in.” And Moloc would do anything to make it happen.
Hades laughed, his fangs glinting in the light from the flames. “Obviously, you’re not going to do that. So, why am I here?”
“I need your DNA.” Azagoth took a pinch of freshly ground Soulshredder claw powder from the container he’d brought and sprinkled it into the steaming bowl. It hissed and sparked, and a few seconds later, black, foul-smelling smoke rose in a thin tendril that snapped at Azagoth with sharp little teeth when he tried to wave it away.
“Mine? Why?”
The tendril grew longer, its blunt head slithering toward Asrael. “Because the spell calls for it.”
“It calls for my DNA.” Hades gave him a flat look dripping with skepticism. “Specifically.”
“Yes.”
Now Hades’ skepticism was practically puddling on the floor. “Where did you get this spell?”
The tendril disappeared under Asrael’s hood. “From an Orphmage I blackmailed.”
“Viscerog?”
“Yup.”
Cursing, Hades scrubbed his hand across the top of his Mohawk. “That bastard hates me.”
Azagoth snorted. “Probably why he said I needed to cut off a piece of your wing with a dull knife.” He glanced up at Hades as he moved the bowl closer to Asrael. “He was very specific about the fact that the blade had to be dull.”
“He’s full of shit, you know.”
“Maybe.” Azagoth didn’t bother to hide the amusement in his voice. “Probably. But he warned me to follow the recipe exactly. Otherwise, he said my griminions would turn into rot-toads. I definitely don’t want that.”
Asrael’s alarmed, high-pitched chatter made it pretty clear that he didn’t want that, either.
Hades cursed again, but his wings erupted from his back, knocking jars off the shelves and scraping the ceiling. “Here, you fucker. Maim away.”
Azagoth took his sample with a quick flick of the wrist.
Hades walked off the pain as he wandered around the chamber, picking up jars and checking out the items so powerful or secret that Azagoth stored them here instead of displaying them in the room where he kept most of his valuable artifacts.
“You sure you’re not going to use your enhanced griminions to go after your enemies?” he asked, pausing in front of a tray covered with a velvet cloth.
Azagoth dropped the bit of wing into the bowl. “You think I’d use them as my own private army?”
“The thought occurred to me, yes.”
Hades was right. It was definitely something he’d do. The authors of his Sheoul-gra contract had been wise to forbid it. But Azagoth no longer cared about an agreement he’d signed thousands of years ago. He had too much to protect, and arming the griminions was more about safeguarding what he had than anything else. They were going to be his firewall, not his attack dogs.
“They are a defensive weapon,” he said. “Not an offensive one.”
For now.
“I see.” Hades lifted the velvet cloth and inhaled sharply at the sight of the two feathers lying beneath it, one white and gold, the other black and silver. “Damn,” he whispered. “With these…”
“With those, I could bring down Sheoul-gra’s very foundations.”
Hades pivoted around, his eyes glowing with intensity. “Are we still talking defensive weapons here? Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re prepping for war.”
“We do have less than a thousand years before Satan is released from prison and the End of Days begins,” Azagoth pointed out, but it was a dodge, and Hades knew it.
“I’m not buying your bullshit,” he growled. “But at least tell me you aren’t going after Moloc. And that you won’t do something stupid, like destroy Sheoul-gra or try to assassinate Reaver.”
“Sheoul-gra is safe,” Azagoth assured him. “As is Moloc. For now. And Reaver’s an asshole, but he’s one of the most powerful assholes in all the realms.”
Reaver was also the only high-ranking angel to command a measure of Azagoth’s respect. The guy’s path from angel to Unfallen, then back to angel, and finally to Radiant, had given him a unique insight into the way all the realms worked. He’d proven to be immune to corruption, uninterested in politics, and willing to break the rules when needed.
Hades studied Azagoth for a heartbeat, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “You have a mate and a good life now, Azagoth. I do, too.” His words were measured, carefully spoken, and yet…there was a note of warning threaded through them. He was a male protecting what was his. But so was Azagoth. “I…hope it stays that way.”
“So do I,” Azagoth said gravely. “And that’s why I’m doing this. What’s that human bit of wisdom? Hope for the best but prepare for the worst? Well, I’m prepping.”
Suddenly, the eternal hellfire blasted hot, and Asrael screamed a gut-wrenching, pained sound that, just a few minutes ago, would have made Azagoth feel bad.
But the eternal hellfire had already done its job, smiting his empathy and filling him with the kind of evil that got off on pain.
He hated that it felt good. That it made him want more. That it made him want to step into the flames to amplify the feeling a million times.
Lilliana. Think about Lilliana.
Yes.
That was easy. So easy. Because, ultimately, Lilliana’s love felt even better than this.
Chapter 2
If a fellow angel had told Lilliana just ten years ago that she’d someday be living in an upscale subdivision of Hell and would be pregnant with the Grim Reaper’s baby, she’d have told them where to shove their halo.
And yet, here she was. Two weeks from giving birth and peering into a fountain that had been flowing with blood when she’d arrived in Sheoul-gra as what amounted to a mail-order bride.
Or a virgin sacrifice.
When Lilliana had first come here, wide-eyed and terrified, the realm Azagoth created had been a barren, cold, dead place that mirrored his heart. Evil had corrupted the former angel, twisting him into a beast. He’d been a demon wearing the face and body of a god.
But with her help and love, Azagoth’s heart had started beating again, and as a result, his realm had bloomed into a land of life, filled with animals, plants, and Unfallen angels seeking refuge from the horrors of Sheoul.
There were also Memitim here, scores of them, the offspring of Azagoth and countless angels.
Angels who weren’t Lilliana.
She’d gotten over that fact a while ago, mostly because she understood that making all those Memitim—a special class of earthbound guardian angels who had to earn their wings—had been Azagoth’s duty for thousands of years.
It also helped that he’d despised the females, and they generally felt the same about him.
Most of Azagoth’s adult sons and daughters had already earned their way into Heaven, but those who lived in the human realm or here in Sheoul-gra were still actively serving mankind as protectors of those who were meant to play crucial roles in the future of the world. And, recently, he’d brought in all the younger children from the care of their adoptive—and completely clueless—human parents. The youngsters, ranging in age from eight to twenty, had infused the realm with even more energy.