Chapter 8

Memories of his leash force my aching, shaking legs to move faster. At least until I reach the bottom of a million steps.

They didn’t seem that many from afar. But looking up now, I get inverted acrophobia.

So they’re maybe a few hundred steps—reminding me of the memorials being rebuilt in Washington DC, if on a much grander scale—but they feel countless to me. And they seem carved from a single block of a faintly-glowing material that resembles marble. Probably from some “heavenly” body. And Angelhole is waiting for me at the top.

And by me, I mean just that. Lorcan is walking away, whistling a disturbing tune that can score the monster’s approach in a horror movie. Seems appropriate for my situation.

Even so, I wish him back. But my captor’s glare must have promised him a rearrangement of his anatomy, if he didn’t stop fraternizing with the felon.

Peachy. It’s back to being alone with him. Really alone. This place seems deserted.

But I can feel a jumble of—presences elsewhere. It’s a gigantic complex, after all, could be housing thousands for all I know. Where, and who, I don’t care. Only tackling the impossible task of climbing those stairs matters now.

By the time I reach the acres-wide landing, I am ready—no, eager, to lay down and die.

He doesn’t even glance at me as I sink to the ground, gulping air like a fish thrashing out of water. He turns and strides toward the soaring portico of Ionic-like columns hundreds of feet away. It houses towering, bronze double doors embossed from top to bottom with a golden angel, clad only in loincloth, gazing heavenwards, arms and wings spread.

When I don’t recover fast enough for his liking, his leash materializes around my neck again. I try to scrabble to my feet before he tugs on it. I fail, slam on my side like a lassoed calf. Then he drags me across the mirror-polished floor.

By the time we’re halfway to the columns, I believe he has changed his mind about needing me alive.

I’m certain I’m choking on my last breath when he stops, and the leash disappears.

As I convulse on the cool, otherworldly marble, coughing and snatching at the air, his brilliant gaze coats me with his contempt.

Then that voice of his reverberates its searing iciness in my bones. “Had enough?”

“Not…really,” I rasp. “Still…alive.”

“Stall again and—”

“And…what?” I cut him off, my voice a wavering but taunting thread of sound. “You’ll almost…strangle me…again? I’ve had…much worse…Angelhole.”

He goes stock still, his gaze turning from ruthless yet fed-up to contemplative…and confused?

It’s as if he’s really seeing me for the first time. As if he’s realizing he’s underestimated me somehow, and is now recalculating his presumptions. And not liking his conclusions one bit.

I’m celebrating stymieing him when a shadow of a smile touches his spectacular lips, and my heart plummets like a bird shot down from the sky.

I’ve never seen anything scarier…or sexier.

And that’s before he murmurs a silky, “For now.”

We stare at each other for an endless moment as my flailing heart settles into a life-threatening rhythm. I realize I’m seeing him for the first time, too. I’ve also miscalculated.

He isn’t just a more dangerous, more powerful brand of angel. He’s not some officer or even executioner for that Celestial Court, either. He’s something way worse.

A grim reaper.

But worst of all? He’s not so grim.

With that ghost of smile, he’s given me a glimpse of something I thought angels were incapable of. Pure wickedness.

He may not be grim, but his humor, what he keeps buried under that military-like facade, is. Grisly, even. The kind I appreciate most.

As if to prove it, his eyes simmer with taunting and that terrifying emerald as he materializes his leash around my neck again.

For a few beats, he gives me a last chance to back down, to lower my gaze. To give him my obedience, my defeat.

I only give him my middle finger.

He starts to strangle me, oh so slowly.

I gulp down a huge breath before he cuts off my airway, delaying the inevitable. My hatred of him soars to new heights as he stands there above me, infinitely powerful and literally blessed, and watches weak, cursed me suffocate.

As he continues to hold my gaze, his explicit with savoring my helplessness, I know he knows that I lied. Suffocation is worse than anything I’ve suffered before. The terror it inflicts is unendurable. Even when I know he won’t kill me. Not now. Not that easily.

It takes strength I never knew I had to resist begging for my breath. When I know resistance is pointless. But it’s all I have. When it’s time to die, or worse, I won’t go scraping and sniveling.

But this celestial bastard knows human limitations well. He’ll push me to the brink of my survival instinct, and relish every second.

Midway through burning my air reserves, he raises an eyebrow. That perfect wing of cruelty and condescension repeats his earlier question.

Had enough?

My answer is both my middle fingers.

After a few frantic heartbeats, his eyebrow lowers, then both dip, and there’s no goading in his expression anymore. Then his eyes shift to crimson.

This time I can see his irises, clear and aflame, like burning coals. In response, something in my mind, my body lurches violently. A rip, sharp and gaping follows, and time stops.

That something unfolds within me. It yawns wider, brighter, louder. Something else rises—between us. Unfathomable, uncontrollable. And an unknown sensation takes over me.

In the span of two sluggish heartbeats, it intensifies—to desperation. Not for air. For a release of the need that floods me, hot and wild.

Is—is this arousal?

I don’t even know what that feels like. In my lousy life, I’ve always avoided any level of physical intimacy, let alone sex, like the demonic plague. It was another way I could be exploited, abused, or even murdered.

Even without self-preservation as a motive, I would have abstained anyway. I’ve never fancied any male. Not even the kinds other females go crazy for. Not buff humans, gorgeous demons, compelling vampires, or even sex-dripping incubi.

Beyond exhausted solo efforts fueled by terribly written porn, that fizzled in anti-climactic climaxes, I’ve never experienced sexual arousal.

But I don’t need experience to know what this clawing, molten emptiness is.

So this is what lust feels like.

No wonder—along with power and money—it makes the world go round.

Way to go, Wen.The perfect circumstances to discover your libido.

And for this hateful monster to be the one to ignite it. And to unearth a bondage/strangulation fetish while at it, it seems. When I hear angels have no use for humans in that way, too.

But—not according to what I see in his eyes. Those twin storms of mercilessness and destruction. They’re now blazing with the things he wants to do to me.

In these suspended moments, this grim reaper of angels, who swore never to touch me, is seething with desire—the desire to take me until he finishes me. And I’m dying for him to…

No. No. I can’t respond this way to the sadist who’s taking me to the brink of death. This raging lust must be a side-effect of oxygen deprivation.

And I can’t be reading him right. It has to be wishful thinking. So I’m not the only one suffering these depraved feelings for my enemy.

I thrash, as if this would stop them. It only makes time resume, scraping like a rusty gate that opens to my dimming vision.

A few more seconds and I will black out. I’ll slip away without giving him the satisfaction of my surrender.

But with my last spark of consciousness, I tap the ground, giving it to him.

The noose immediately disappears. Air rushes into my gasping mouth under pressure, almost bursting my shriveled lungs.

As I cough and choke, I seethe. Why did I do that? I didn’t want to give in. Unless…he made me?

Can he control my body? To what extent? Is that maddening ache between my legs even now his doing?

And why not? What’s adding mind-control to the rest of his abuse?

The idea that he might have manipulated my responses infuriates me most of all. It’s the one violation I find unforgivable.

Keeping my eyes locked with his, even when I can barely keep them open, I try to transmit my loathing and rage. He may have forced me to beg for oxygen, but I won’t back down in any other way. This feud he’s started between us is to the death.

Mine, regretfully.

“Angelhole,” I finally rasp, reaching a trembling hand to my bruised neck. “That’s my safe word for next time.”

His implacable mask falls into place with a crash I feel in my bones. It’s so deadpan, it makes me think I imagined the savage hunger I saw before. If he manipulated my mind, I probably did.

When he finally speaks, his voice is as expressionless. “There will be no next time.”

“Give it time…Angelhole. Bullies like you…are never done compensating for their deficiencies. But, newsflash, dickwad. Abusing those weaker than you…doesn’t make you dominant…it makes you pathetic.”

It’s clear my insults are going wide, since they’re so preposterous. If a male exists who’s devoid of deficiencies, that’s him right there. Rather than offense, a trace of his previous weariness enters his eyes, along with something else. Hesitation? Regret?

Yeah, right.

There’s nothing but pitilessness when he says, “After this day is done, you will never be a concern of mine again.”

“Never say never.” I scoff. “I thought this is the first thing they teach you in Immortal Kindergarten.”

“On your feet, Ms. White.”

He does that thing with his voice again. It sounds calm, controlled, yet cracks over my every nerve like a lash.

I’m blinded by a violence I’ve never experienced before, by the need to scrape my own fingers to bloody stumps clawing his invulnerable face. But I decide against defying him. I want this over. Want to meet that worse-than-death fate and be done with it.

As I stagger up to my feet, he resumes his march to the towering doors, as if he didn’t interrupt it to torture me.

He retracted his wings while he did, giving me a clear view of his daunting back. The temptation to stab him in it is brutal. He didn’t search me, not only because he wouldn’t touch me, but because he didn’t think anything I have is worth worrying about. But along with the bottle of Angelescence, I have a switchblade dipped in Kondar’s piss.

According to demonic lore, it can poison an angel. At least, give him an agonizing infection. I’d give anything to see His Perfection covered in demonic boils.

But unlike the angel I accosted yesterday, this one will retaliate. Maybe by breaking every bone in my legs this time. I’m needed alive, not ambulatory.

But now I think he played with my mind, my senses, I burn to risk it. It’s a struggle to bring these new self-destructive tendencies under control.

One thing helps. Deciding that I have better use for him. He can answer the questions he stopped me from asking Lorcan.

I stumble to fall into step with him. “So where is this place? Is this the Celestial Court? And you’re its errand boy?”

His gaze doesn’t waver from his path. “You are here to answer questions.”

“So I don’t get to make any? Are you serious?” This time, he doesn’t deem to respond. “C’mon, I’m your hostage...”

“You’re my prisoner.”

I snort, harsher than ever with the swelling his leash caused. “Big diff. So, anyway, I’m at your mercy...”

“There will be no mercy.”

“No kidding!”

Did I ever say I hated angels and demons? Hatred is nothing to what he provokes in me. He needs far stronger words than any language has. Maybe in Angelic? Surely immortals have deeper, more forceful concepts than us transient humans.

My body is still throbbing at his proximity, and his scent, now I’m this close to him. It floods me with a dozen exaggerations. If I have to pick a few, I’d say he smells like summer storms, lightning strikes and steamy nights.

Gritting my teeth against the reaction I can’t blame him for anymore, I persist, “Whatever you tell me about this place is safe with me. Because…” I point to myself. “Hostage—uh, prisoner here. It’ll only quench my curiosity.”

“There will be no quenching of any sort. Until your sentence is passed.”

“No curiosity quenching. Check. What about thirst?”

He ignores me as he flicks his hand and the massive doors swish open to the inside soundlessly, bisecting the angel.

This brute knows we humans need our hydration. I’m already dehydrated with all the sweating and vomiting, both his fault. But he will withhold even a sip of water.

A dickwad of celestial magnitude.

Seems I mutter this out loud from the way he exhales. But I forget all about him and my miserable state as soon as I step into the hangar-sized vestibule.

I’ve seen photos and documentaries of gigantic cathedrals, of the monuments of Ancient Egypt, Greece and China. This place combines their grandeur and painstaking detail, and takes them to an otherworldly level.

But while these monuments stood the test of time, yet still bear its ravages, this place, which feels far more ancient, is pristine. As if even time has no sway here. It probably doesn’t. This is the domain of immortals. It stands to reason for it to look—eternal.

And it again bombards me with those inexplicable sensations. They almost make me prostrate myself inside that intricate symbol centering the acres of marble, and await judgement.

There’s also another unstoppable need. A greed to assimilate everything I see.

Not that Divine Douche gives me a chance to cower or wonder. His leash is back, not tightening to a noose, but still leading me by the neck like cattle to the slaughter. Probably literally.

He’s now heading directly towards a wall. When it becomes clear he won’t stop, I open my mouth to object. It slams shut when the wall warps and parts at his advance.

Talk about taking a shortcut! Or in his case, making one.

As he drags me through his Moses-like passage, I struggle against his leash, tightening it myself this time. I twist barely enough to see the wall reforming behind us. Not that I should have bothered trying so hard to witness this. It happens over and over as he somehow fast-forwards us through this seemingly endless edifice.

And the deeper we wade inside, the louder it seems to be calling to me. It pulls and pushes at my every cell, until my chest feels it will cave in with the mounting dread and rapture.

My heart is all but bloodying itself against my ribs when we reach a gigantic, circular frieze. It’s surrounded by a six-foot-wide frame that seems made of molten gold, and copiously engraved with runic symbols. These are arranged like the degrees of a compass, with the largest in the cardinal directions. It emanates the indifferent coldness of eternity, a chilling contrast to the vicious scene it ensconces. About two dozen massive angels engaged in bloody battle against a couple of hundred demons.

Expecting him to warp it out of our way, too, he instead goes down on one knee before it, his hand going to his opposite side, as if to draw a sword.

Next moment, he does, out of literal thin air. A broadsword with a hilt and a blade that look forged from the heart of a white-hot star.

My jaw drops as I watch him bow his majestic head and place the blazing sword below one of the angels’ feet. He seems to be praying before he rises and spreads his arms, and the frieze starts to morph.

Before I can ask why all the pomp before dissolving this specific barrier, the angels start moving, as if coming to life. Then the tableau that looks made of plaster, flesh and light splits, releasing a slow-motion shockwave.

I don’t know how long I stand here, blind, ceased.

It could have been hours or days before images start translating in my brain. A scene right out of a Renaissance painting and another dimension at once.

Sitting fifty feet away at a long table draped in some stark-white material that hurts to look at, with ancient scrolls and tomes opened before them, are five angels.

No. Not angels. Archangels.

Their only appearance on earth was a two-minute video on YouTube, while they signed the Accords with the demons.

It garnered over half a billion views in the minutes before it was deleted. We heard everyone involved in its recording and broadcast were executed for breaching the sanctified pact—by which side is uncertain.

Though no one was able to download it before it was taken down, someone somewhere reconstructed it, and it became one of our most dangerous contraband. That was the version I saw. It was grainy and obscure, but I still recognize them.

Gabriel.

Michael.

Raphael.

Uriel.

And Azrael.

Many humans believed that archangels aren’t the top of the food chain in angelology. Those depend on popular theological sources that claim they are just a step above the generic angels. But they have been proven wrong, with the Orders we now know way below them. If there are higher beings in the angelic hierarchy, they haven’t made an appearance on earth yet. Hopefully, they never will. So far, the Archangels are the big guns.

In my stunned awareness, I note that the master artists got them all wrong. Seems even humanity’s prodigies couldn’t imagine that level of perfection. Or these attires that seem to be made of vivid serenity, the much grander version of what Lorcan wore.

Another thing no mortal could have conveyed is the mind-numbing power radiating from their collective. I feel it can bring mountains down, can prostrate the sun and skies.

Next moment I almost am, by Godric the not-so-Great’s leash.

Stupidly, I want to defy him and scramble up to my feet.

I can’t. I’m too spent. Guess I should be thankful for his suppression this time. There’s no telling what retribution would meet any act of defiance now.

On my knees, I stare at the heavenly quintet, and finally understand Lorcan’s heartless advice.

A quick death would be the best outcome here.

“Good work, my son.” That’s Azrael. Speaking in a deep yet lyrical voice that doesn’t match the chilling endings in his stare.

But—my son? As in the way a priest calls everyone in their flock my son? Or my son my son?

But as Godric dissolves the leash and approaches Azrael, I see them together in the same frame—and feel the answer lodge into my brain like an axe.

Godric is Azrael’s actual son!

The resemblance, the level of power, if not its texture, are unmistakable.

I’ve heard of this. That the offspring of angels, the Nephilim, are not myths humanity made up, that they actually exist.

And they are the stuff of nightmares.

Hybrids worse than angels and demons combined.

But because this is my shitty life, my captor isn’t any nephilim. He is the son of an archangel. The dragons to the other angels’ eagles.

Andnot any archangel. Not Michael, heaven’s chief general. Not Raphael, known for healing. Not Gabriel, famous for courier services. Not even Uriel—some kind of doorman of heaven. No. Azrael—the Archangel of Death.

At least, that’s according to the most popular scriptures and legends. For all I know, he may be the Archangel of Worse-Than-Death, the fates Lorcan cautioned me about.

Which means Godric is really the grim reaper I thought him to be.

Can this possibly get any worse?

Sure it can. And it will.

Next moment I hear a mocking voice. I only realize it’s mine when the words echo in the vast chamber in a wave of stunned silence.

Throwing a hand at Azrael, I just said, “So you’re the pompous ass who named him Godric. Figures.”