Chapter 19

“Please tell me we’re rescuing him tonight,” I said by way of greeting when I dragged myself before Naamah after my torture session shift.

By sheer, soul-clenching force of will, I’d kept myself from painting the walls in that room with the contents of my stomach. I’d never dissociated so hard from a situation before, actually managing to decouple my emotions completely from what my senses were picking up.

Naamah looked up from reading a rolled parchment, set it aside, and rose to her feet, smoothing the fabric of her sari—the pattern of which seemed familiar.

I raised my brows. “Did you actually turn one of Gabriel’s curtains into a garment?”

She halted and glanced down at her body, then back at me, a brilliant smile on her face. “Isn’t it just lovely? I was right; the turquoise matches my eyes.”

Said eyes sparkled with more mischief than was legal, I was sure.

“Aren’t you worried he’ll snap one of these days?”

“Oh,” she purred, “I’m counting on it.”

“He’s an archangel,” I said with a grimace, gesturing wildly. “Power out his wazoo, in charge of a huge part of Heaven, thousands of angels under his command, member of the Council of Seven who only bow to Metatron and Shekinah!”

“And I,” she said with a look that made me shiver, “am the daughter of an archdemon and Lucifer, King of Hell, First of the Fallen, only challenger of God’s own might. What makes you think I couldn’t take Gabriel’s place if I so wished?”

Eep. I honestly did not want Naamah as my enemy.

“Now,” she said, taking me by the elbow and steering me over to sit in an alcove beneath the huge window of her parlor, “tell me what you found out. Which stable is it?”

I took a deep breath and described the location and all the details I’d picked up, down to the number and position of the guards. I avoided mentioning how Azazel had been doing, stalwartly refusing to bring up the mental image of his plight even though it was seared into my mind as painfully as a hot iron would brand skin.

Luckily, Naamah didn’t ask about Azazel’s condition, likely because it would contribute nothing to our scheming, would only divert our attention, and detract from the plan.

“All right,” she said once I’d finished. “I’d thought that’s where he might be, but I needed the confirmation. Now that I know, I can set everything in motion. I’ve long been putting pieces into place for this, and now I just need to make a few adjustments for it all to be ready. I’ll make a few calls, send out a couple of messages, and then you can make your move.”

I hesitated. “That sounds like…you’re not coming with me?”

“No.” Her eyes held a hint of sadness. “As much as I would like to storm in there and take out a few angels to liberate my son—whom they’ve been hurting”—she bared her teeth—“I can’t risk being directly involved. I hold a lot of sway here in Heaven, it’s true, but even my power and standing have their limits. If I should be found out to have helped a demon trespasser escape from the clutches of Heaven, whether they punish me or not, it will have devastating consequences.”

I gulped. “How so?”

Naamah shook her head. “This is about more than just me and my own safety. The fate of the world rests on the status quo around me not changing. If I am charged with treason and punished according to Heaven’s laws for that, it would violate the conditions of the truce they struck with Lucifer. And knowing him, he’d lay waste to all of Earth if I am harmed.”

A shiver stole down my spine. I’d seen enough of his wrath being unleashed on the human world to know how catastrophic that would be.

“But if I am implicated for treason,” Naamah continued, “and Heaven doesn’t punish me for it, it will undermine all of their laws, all of their authority, fostering resentment and discontent among the angels. And there’s no telling the long-term consequences that would have. I am already a weird exception to a lot of the rules up here, and the authorities have been indulgent with my eccentricities. But I cannot be completely above the law. It is therefore imperative that they can’t have evidence that I freed the first and only demon prisoner in Heaven.”

Pressing my lips together, I nodded. “That makes sense.”

She touched my hand. “I won’t be there by your side, but I will pave the way for you and give you as much of an advantage as I can deliver. I’ve had years of planning for this, and I’ve got a few things up my sleeve to make sure you can get in and out with as few eyes on you as possible. Those I can’t pull away, you’ll have to deal with on your own, but I’ll give you the means to do so.”

“How? My fighting skills might have improved after training with Azazel, but I don’t think I could incapacitate half a dozen guards on my own.”

She smiled and summoned two glasses of amrit, handing me one. “Here’s how.”

And then she launched into a detailed explanation of all the steps of the plan. For what seemed like hours, we went over every facet, and while it pained me to know that Azazel continued to be tortured every second of my being here, it was too important not to spend the necessary time on making sure I understood exactly what I needed to do, and in what order.

We truly only had one shot at this, so we had to make sure I wouldn’t fail. And I had to give it to Naamah—she was deviously creative with the things she’d come up with for this plan. One part especially reminded me so much of Azmodea’s antics that I had to tell her.

In response, she grinned at me. “Where do you think I got that idea from?” At my surprised laugh, she added, “I’ve been seeing my daughter regularly ever since I ascended. We talk a lot. And I am so very, very proud of her.”

My eyes filled with warm wetness, and my chest ached sweetly. I was so, so happy that Azmodea had finally gotten her mother back, that she could reconnect with her. I remembered how sad she’d been when she’d told me that she couldn’t even recall what her mother looked like.

And thinking of mothers…

My eyes widened as it hit me, the realization of this crucial fact having been hampered by all my other concerns so far. My heart stumbled. Suddenly, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

“Zoe?” Naamah asked. “What is it?”

“My mom,” I whispered, something breaking inside me as my mind put all the pieces together. “She…she was dying. Before I was turned into an angel, back when I was in Hell. Azazel had found out that she had cancer and that she…that she wouldn’t live…past the next year.”

I blinked through the fog of tears in my eyes and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “She was slated for Heaven. And it’s been eight years.”

Naamah’s lips parted.

“That means she’s here,” I croaked. “She’s here, in Heaven. She’s been here all this time, and I didn’t know because I didn’t remember her. I could have visited her, talked to her, hugged her—” My voice broke.

“Zoe…” Naamah said gently.

I furiously wiped my tears away, my mind spinning wildly with this new realization. “What will happen to me after I rescue Azazel? What are the next steps?”

Would I be able to go see my mom?

I hadn’t really thought about the time after the rescue at all, my entire thought process revolving around freeing Azazel and making sure he got out and back to Hell. But of course, there was the question of what my future, our future, would look like.

Now that I remembered him, I wanted to be with him again—staying in Heaven while he was back in Hell wasn’t an option. Aside from the legal and official complications of an angel having a relationship with a demon, I didn’t really want to live apart from him. A whole dimension apart, to boot!

So, obviously, my getting back together with Azazel would somehow involve leaving Heaven, and while there wasn’t all that much holding me here, this new realization that my mom’s soul was in Heaven and I could find her and get the closure I hadn’t been able to have meant that I needed to think about the how and the when of me leaving Heaven…

I sucked in a breath and met Naamah’s eyes. “I’ll have to fall, won’t I?”

She nodded slowly. “If you want to be with him, there’s no way around it.”

“How...?”

She hesitated. “You’ll take the blame for the demon prisoner escaping.”

My brows shot up to my hairline, and my voice came out as a squeak. “What?”

“You’ll confess and admit to liberating the demon,” she said quietly, “and they’ll charge you with treason for it.” At my strangled protest, she raised a hand to silence me. “Your life will not be in danger. The punishment for this kind of offense is to strip an angel of their grace, take their wings, and let them fall from Heaven. You’ll plummet to Earth, but Azazel will be there to claim you for his territory immediately. He’s an archdemon now, and he has the power to recruit fallen angels for his domain.”

I stared at her in utter shock. “This was always part of the plan, wasn’t it?”

She nodded, her auburn hair glinting in the light of the eternal sunset streaming in through the window.

“So, Azazel getting caught wasn’t a coincidence? An accident?”

“It happened sooner than we’d planned,” she said, “and the way it went down wasn’t staged. He really did lose control without meaning to, and—against our intentions—before you’d regained your memory. Fortunately, you still remembered in the end. Otherwise, this all would have been for nothing. However, his being discovered at some point was not just inevitable, but—ultimately—necessary for the whole of our strategy to work.”

My mouth fell open, my chest and face flushing with heat. “I can’t believe it. You Hans Gruber’d me!”

Naamah blinked. “Pardon?”

“Like in Die Hard!” I gestured wildly, my left hand accidentally hitting the windowpane. “You know, that movie with Bruce Willis, where he’s at this Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza building, and then these bad guys show up and shoot up the place and take hostages, and everyone thinks they’re terrorists, and then the police show up and start negotiations, and one of the bad guys complains that the interference of Bruce Willis’s character has brought the cops in, but then Hans Gruber, the leader of the bad guys, says that the police stepping in is actually part of the plan, because they’ll call in the FBI if they think they’re dealing with terrorists, and the FBI will shut down the power grid for the entire city block because it’s standard procedure when handling terrorists, but that’s exactly what Hans Gruber wants, because only shutting down the power on a large scale like that will disable the last locks on the vault of the Nakatomi Corporation, which is what Hans and his gang are actually interested in because they’re not terrorists at all, they’re just thieves!”

For a long moment, Naamah just stared at me as if she wasn’t sure whether I had lost all my marbles. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Yes, it appears we Hans Gruber’d you.”

“Unbelievable,” I mumbled.

“However,” she added softly, “you won’t need to surrender yourself to the authorities right away. This has all been a lot for you, and I—probably better than anyone—understand what it’s like to change identities and home realms. When I spoke with Azazel as we made this plan, we agreed that it wouldn’t be a good choice to initiate your fall from grace immediately after the rescue, but to instead to give you time to come to terms with the incumbent change and to settle your affairs up here as much as possible. This is why we’re taking every care during the rescue to keep your identity hidden and avoid anyone recognizing you as you help him escape. That way, you’ll have time to get ready and then initiate your fall on your own terms.”

The breath I took was trembling. “So, I’ll have time to look for my mom.”

She gave me a smile tinged with sad understanding. “Yes.”

I exhaled, my chest aching a bit less, relief loosening the band constricting my throat. As much as I wanted—needed—to be with Azazel again, I also craved to see my mom one last time. Because that was what it was—the very last time I’d ever get to see her. Once I fell from grace, she’d be forever lost to me, and I was still not ready to accept that.

Not when my last interaction with her had been tainted with my trying to trick her into selling her soul just so that I could hold on to her a while longer. I hadn’t been able to tell her how incredibly sorry I was for that, how much I regretted making that request and putting her on the spot like that. I had to let her know that I had realized how selfish I’d been in that moment, and that I didn’t resent her for the choice she’d made, and that I understood that the terms of a deal like that weren’t really a choice at all, not when it robbed her of eternal peace.

I needed to tell her how much I loved her, needed to erase the soul-shredding sadness of our last interaction with one that would leave us both on good terms.

And now, with me being here in Heaven as an angel, and her being here as a soul enjoying her afterlife, I’d actually have the chance to achieve this positive closure. I didn’t really need much time to “get my affairs in order” or to “come to terms” with leaving Heaven—I knew what I was getting into when going back to Hell—but this, finding and seeing my mom, this was the one thing I absolutely needed time for before I made the move to fall from grace.

And thinking of which… I frowned. “But won’t it be strange when I show up with a confession after however much time has passed? Depending on how long it will take to find my mom, there could be quite a bit of a delay between Azazel’s rescue and my confession.”

Naamah shrugged. “That won’t be a problem. You’ll simply tell them that your guilty conscience has been eating at you and you cannot stand it any longer, and now you need to confess to clear your conscience. It happens occasionally with criminals; they’d actually get away with their crime, with the authorities none the wiser, but the part of them that still has a moral compass can’t deal with the weight of what they did, to the point where they need to turn themselves in to receive punishment in order to clear their conscience.”

I nodded. That actually made sense. I’d seen a few news reports here and there of criminals surrendering themselves without the police being anywhere close to catching on to them.

“It will all be fine, Zoe.” She patted my hand.

“Right, yeah, okay.” I rubbed my nose, nerves fluttering in my belly.

“I’ll make the necessary arrangements,” she said, “and then as soon as everything is ready to go, we can start. Let’s go over the plan one more time, just to make sure you’ve got it.”

I nodded again, and Naamah walked me through the plan once more. Sweat broke out on my body as I listened intently, my mind already playing through all the many ways this could go catastrophically wrong. So much hinged on me being able to pull this off, to play my part well and not make a single mistake. Of all the challenges I’d ever faced in my life, this was by far the most important, the most daunting, the one with the highest stakes.

If I fucked this up, Azazel would die.

No pressure, right?

“All right,” Naamah said when she’d finished. “Do you have any questions?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. So, in Twilight, if Jacob was only attracted to Bella because the egg inside Bella that would become Renesmee was ‘calling out’ to him, why wasn’t he also panting after Edward, considering the sperm that would become Renesmee was also already inside Edward?”

Naamah hung her head for a moment, her shoulders shaking. When she looked up at me again, her eyes glinted with amusement, the corners of her mouth twitching upward. “I meant, questions about the plan.”

“Ah, okay.”

She took my hand and squeezed it gently. “I know you’re nervous, Zoe, but you’ll do great.”

“How do you know I’m nervous? I’m the picture of calm,” I said, my voice trembling.

“You get randomly ramble-y when you’re stressed.” Another squeeze. “And to answer your question, we’d have to know more about Stephenie Meyer’s world-building. For example, do vampires in the Twilight universe continue to produce sperm after they are turned? If that’s the case, then the sperm that would become Renesmee would only have come into existence shortly before the actual conception, and then Jacob wouldn’t have had reason to be attracted to Edward.”

I gaped at her.

“But if sperm production ceases after a vampire is turned,” she continued matter-of-factly, “then Edward would only have had those little swimmers that he had when he was turned for the rest of his immortal life, and in this case, yes, the sperm that would make up half of Renesmee would already have been inside him all along, and it should have caused Jacob to be drawn to Edward just as much as he was to Bella.” She shrugged. “And maybe he was but didn’t show it? Who’s to say he didn’t feel an attraction, but because it was to a male and a vampire, he suppressed it?”

I stared at her in speechless bafflement for a moment. “I didn’t know you’re a Twilight fan,” I whispered.

She gave me a lopsided smile. “Oh, that fandom is one of the most self-ironically depraved ones out there. Any time I visit Earth, I make sure to browse fan groups and read their threads with some popcorn ready. It’s beyond entertaining.”

Despite the weight of the situation pressing down on me, I huffed out a laugh at that. My smile faltered a bit as I looked at her and remembered that this easy-going dynamic we had, this friendship I cherished, might have been built on subterfuge and necessity.

“What is it?” Naamah asked, tilting her head.

“Uh…” Chewing my lip, I lowered my gaze. This felt so awkward. And maybe now was not the time to broach this subject.

But just before I could open my mouth and brush her question off, she leaned forward and pinned me with a look. “Spill. What’s making you squirm like that?”

With a forceful exhale, I said, “It’s just…when we became friends, it was because it was part of your plan to help Azazel get close to me. And I understand that. But…I didn’t know. All this time, I thought you were my friend because…you like me. And now I can’t help but wonder…” I trailed off, too embarrassed to continue.

“Ah,” she said, a gentle note to her voice. “I see.” Reaching out, she took my hand. “Zoe, I do like you. All those times we spent together and had fun, it really was fun. I enjoy your company. And to be honest, even without the necessity to get close to you in order to set everything up for Azazel, I would have wanted to meet you and get to know you.” She squeezed my hand. “He loves you so. And anyone who captures the heart of my son like this is someone I want to be friends with. It is rare for our kind to fall in love this madly, to feel so deep a loyalty as Azazel does for you. You are truly special, and after getting to know you, I can say this from my own firsthand experience of spending time with you. So while the friendship we have might have been initiated under a pretense, it has long since become real for me.”

My eyes swam with tears. Sniffling, I nodded, and then she pulled me in for a hug.

“I am so glad I got to spend all this time with you,” Naamah whispered as she pressed me close.

“Same,” I said hoarsely.

After another tight squeeze, she released me. “Now, let’s get this party started.” Standing, she nodded toward the door. “Go on home, and I’ll be in touch when things are ready.”