Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Azazel

“ I have a bad feeling about this,” Azmodea said.

I glanced up from the blade I was currently cleaning to where my sister lounged on a divan across from me. I’d called her as soon as I’d let Vengeance run loose and explained everything once my sister had arrived here.

True to form, she’d appeared in the finest dress and jewels galore, looking for all the world like she didn’t care about anything but luxury and pleasure, blithely following her whims.

Yet now, here with me, she let her mask slip and showed the heart that ached and bled for those she loved. Her eyes shone with anxiety, and her lips were pressed into a fine line.

“You need to be more specific,” I murmured as I steered my attention back to the sword before me. “Which part of this overall worrisome situation are you particularly worried about?”

“I don’t think this is a coincidence. Or an accident.”

“That she fell sooner than planned?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, focusing on the slow glide of the cloth over the blade, while that fucking knot in my stomach grew. “I agree,” I eventually said, my voice quiet.

The biggest clue to that was the fact that Zoe had been claimed for Hell immediately.

An angel falling from grace wasn’t something that happened a lot. Centuries might pass between two incidents of Heaven banishing one of their own. And while a fallen angel was fair game to any demon who wanted to claim them, and the demons in charge were always interested in adding to their own numbers, with how uncommon a fall from grace was, it just didn’t pay off to station a lookout underneath Angelfall to wait for the once-in-a-millennium opportunity to grab a newly fallen angel.

The way it usually went was that the banished angel ran and hid on Earth for some time until they were accidentally discovered by a demon at some point.

For Zoe to have been claimed right after her fall, someone must have been waiting underneath that gate for her. And that meant they had known Zoe would fall, and when.

Which pointed to this whole thing being orchestrated, with someone in Heaven pulling the strings and letting a contact in Hell know about it.

“Have you had any word from Naamah yet?” Azmodea asked.

“None.”

And that was the part that worried me the most. There was no way my mother would be oblivious to the fact that Zoe had fallen from grace already. Not with how much she’d been involved in the entire mission and how much of an eye she’d been keeping on Zoe. Plus, the Angelfall gate was located on Gabriel’s premises, and with how rarely an angel was exiled these days, Zoe’s sentencing would make waves enough for Naamah to hear about it even if she’d missed Zoe’s arrest at first.

She had to know about this, and yet she hadn’t sent a message through her channels.

Azmodea shifted on her seat. “There are only a few possible explanations for why that is.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed the blade a little too forcefully. “And I don’t like any of them.”

There simply wasn’t a good reason for Zoe to fall this early and without notice from Naamah. Either Zoe had been made by the authorities due to someone else’s interference, and my mother had been implicated as well, resulting in her arrest along with Zoe, which would account for the lack of communication…

Or Naamah hadn’t sent word because she’d engineered the fall against our agreement. And the only reason for that would be that she didn’t want me to be the one to claim Zoe.

My chest felt like someone had poured acid in my lungs.

I couldn’t fathom the latter possibility. Couldn’t think about how it might be true.

And yet the only other explanation would mean my mother might be in danger, her position in Heaven compromised, and the fate of the world hanging in the balance as the authorities weighed how to respond to treason from the one angel who needed to be untouchable in order for Lucifer to abide by the truce.

The rising tension inside me snapped with a roar that deafened my ears, and I shot up from my seat, the sword in my hands, and swung for the armchair to my right. I slashed and hacked and stabbed at the cushions, channeling the rage sprung from fear and frustration that threatened to burn me from the inside out unless I gave it way through violence.

Moments later, the only things left over from the armchair were splintered wood, shreds of fabric, and the soft filling of the cushions that floated down to the floor. My free hand clenched and unclenched, and my skin still felt too hot, my muscles buzzing with too much energy.

“You really need her home,” Azmodea said with incongruous calm, considering I’d decimated furniture mere feet from where she sat. “So you can work off some of that tension in a more pleasant way than destroying your own property. A proper fuck would do you good.”

I shot her a dark look and growled, “Having her home is exactly the problem, isn’t it ?”

“You always did have a temper,” she muttered and sipped on a drink she’d summoned.

I was about to give her a temper-fueled response when the flap of wings above made me snap up my head. High in the gloom of the ceiling, two yellow eyes glowed.

“Mephistopheles,” I greeted the cat, my heart ramming against my rib cage. “What news? Were you able to trace Vengeance to her destination?”

Azmodea sat up straight, her eyes shrewd.

Of course, Mephistopheles said.

I stared into the void.

The void stared back.

“Well?” I barked, my patience fraying precariously.

Well what? he asked with infuriating nonchalance.

My fingers clenched around the sword hilt. I can’t kill the cat. I can’t kill the cat. I can’t… “Where did she go?”

You will not like it. His voice sounded far too close to a purr, given that he was delivering news that would probably make me go berserk.

“Of course not! She shouldn’t be anywhere but here!”

Take a guess where she is. His tail swished in the dark.

I bared my teeth at him. “I am not in the mood to play games, cat. Tell me who claimed her.”

You are no fun , he said with an audible note of sulking in his voice.

Before I could utter any of the fun ways in which I wanted to make him tell me what he knew, Azmodea smiled at Mephistopheles and said, “But you know his mood is so shitty precisely because Zoe is not here. Do you remember how much more agreeable he was when she was living here? He even gave you more treats, right? Well, the sooner you tell us where she is, the quicker we can start getting her back home, and then dear grumpy Azazel here will cheer up and be less of a cantankerous curmudgeon and more fun again.”

I pivoted slowly and speared my sister with a properly ill-tempered look.

“What?” she asked with a shrug. “It’s perfectly true. You are much more pleasant company with Zoe in your life.”

I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her, though of course I did.

Well, Mephistopheles said with a sniff, in the interest of remedying this untenable situation, I shall tell you what I found.

“Thank you,” I bit out.

This kind of information is, of course, worth something. His tail flicked back and forth. I expect adequate compensation for my troubles.

Instead of telling him that sparing his life would be considered adequate compensation indeed, I said with the last shreds of patience available to me, “I will provide you with a year’s worth of the best cat treats from Earth.”

I accept , he purred. Then, without further ado, he dropped the bomb that dispersed all of my neatly ordered thoughts. She has been claimed by Lucifer.

Beside me, Azmodea sucked in a harsh breath.

I stared at the shadowy outline of the cat high up in the gloom. “What?”

She is at his palace, under his direct authority. I located her in her rooms. She said to tell you that Lucifer wants her to do something for him, though it will not involve torture this time. She is about to leave for Earth on a mission for him, and she will be back in three weeks. Lucifer seems to be restricting whom she can meet with, but she said she’ll work on finding a way to see you.

I slumped on the nearest sofa as if the heavy weight that had dropped on my chest physically dragged me down. “Lucifer has her?”

Is that an error in processing or an auditory ailment? Mephistopheles asked. Zoe seems to suffer from the same condition. She keeps repeating what I told her in a question. Do you need to have your hearing checked?

I ignored the feline’s sass in favor of mulling over the upsetting turn of events. Though, the storm of emotions broiling inside me made it hard to focus on pulling apart the tangles of this situation. With my skin on fire, my stomach in knots, and fear and rage fraying my nerves, I shot up from the sofa and marched toward the doors to the balcony.

“Where are you going?” Azmodea called out.

“To see her,” I growled.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“I don’t give a flying fuck.”

I reached the doors and threw them open, stepping into the hot, whirring air of Hell.

“Maybe you should strategize a bit more about this, Az,” my sister hollered from inside.

She was right. The way she usually was. But where she was able to keep a cool head when it came to Zoe, I found myself reduced to the basest instincts and impulsive behavior.

“I don’t have the mind for strategy right now,” I snapped, then extended my wings with a whoosh and launched myself into the air.