Chapter 5

Azazel

I watchedZoe storm away from me as if she was fleeing from some unnamed horror, and each strike of her boots on the stone echoed loudly and damningly in my heart. My fingers twitched at my sides.

Never, in the tedious slog that was my existence before she’d stumbled into my life, had standing still and watching someone leave taken that much restraint.

I’d had her.

She’d been here, just now, a vision of perfection, shockingly real after I’d had to contend with only the memory of her for so long. When I’d first laid eyes on her as she’d entered the cave, the reality of seeing her again had rocked me to my core, razing all pretense of the role I’d needed to play, stripping me of any logic but the one that said I needed to yank her into my arms and never let her go.

It had taken all of my considerable control to wrestle that impulse into submission and continue with the charade I needed to keep up. Still, those barely leashed urges to close the distance between us and touch her in the ways so achingly familiar, to talk to her without the pretext of not knowing her, kept rising to the fore.

Because I did know her, and treating her as if I didn’t sliced nauseous wounds across my heart.

And so I’d given in, had ventured onto perilous ground by re-creating the scene that had, once upon a time, changed so much between us, hoping against hope that she might remember.

With the result that I now had to watch her run away from me, wrenching away that little sliver of surcease from the pain her absence had been causing me.

Damn it all to Heaven.

I was about to follow her despite her snarled warning, when a female voice coming from the back of the cave, where a tunnel led to smaller rooms and another exit, froze my muscles.

“Well, that went well.”

With a sigh, I turned toward the source of the voice. “How long have you been there?”

Naamah leaned against the curved opening to the tunnel, her lips pressed together and a twinkle in her eye. “Long enough to see that the reunion with your long-lost love went quite smashingly.”

I rubbed a hand over my face. Hell save me from maternal inquisitiveness.

“I mean, you were so very careful,” she said as she straightened from the wall and sauntered toward me, illustrating her points with lazy hand waves, sarcasm drenching her every word. “Moved slowly. Gave her time. Resisted the ill-fated idea to push the reenactment of a memory onto her at the very first meeting.” She nodded in false approval.

“Mother,” I grated.

“No, no.” She made a shushing gesture, coming to a stop next to me. “Credit where credit is due. After all our meticulous planning, you certainly made sure to play your part and ease her into this”—her hands imitated laying a sleeping baby in a crib, or maybe positioning a ticking bomb carefully onto the ground—“to lay the groundwork so you can subtly try to jog her memory over time.” At that last line, she shot me a pointed look.

I gritted my teeth so hard a muscle popped painfully in my jaw. “I fucked it up.”

She clucked her tongue. “Negligibly. Whatever happened to your infamous patience?” Those eyes of warm turquoise, now clear and cunning and without a hint of pain or mental confusion, pinned me to the spot. “You’ll have to take your time with her. Don’t rush it. You don’t know whether springing information about her past on her without preparation could cause her mind to splinter. This requires a delicate approach.”

My hands balled into fists without my conscious doing, frustration and longing and an ache that pulled at my soul scratching me bloody on the inside. “I know. It’s just—I’ve waited so long.”

“Exactly.” My mother fully turned to me, empathy softening the lines of her face. “You’ve waited eight years for her. For this. What are a few weeks more? A few months, if that’s what it takes? You’ll have eternity with her.” She laid her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

I closed my eyes, relishing the casual maternal caress that had seemed impossible only a few years ago. For millennia, I’d been deprived of this simple yet profound contact with my mother, and part of me still couldn’t believe I now had her in my life again—even if the contact had been restricted, our only chance to speak during those monthly visits of hers on Earth. It was still more than I’d thought possible not that long ago.

Not that long ago…

I scoffed, half amused and half annoyed at myself.

“What?” Naamah asked.

“Time,” I replied. “Our perception of time is a curious thing. When it comes to Zoe, those eight years I’ve been waiting to see her again seemed like forever. But having you back in my life for the same amount of time feels like it went by in the blink of an eye.”

“It’s because we measure the absence of someone we love far heavier than we do their presence.”

I scowled at her.

She winked and turned away in a swirl, humming and singing the line “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

“For the record,” I grumbled as she moved in graceful circles to the place where Zoe had dropped the dagger, “I did know what I had in her, while I had her.”

“Always so literal,” she mused and picked up the dagger, examining it closely. “You should lighten up.” She sniffed the blade and then held it to her ear as if listening to some melody worked into the metal. “You are in Heaven now, after all. The place of love and light and all things sparkly.” She made an appropriate gesture, wiggling her fingers in the air.

The stirrings of a smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. Whatever being in close proximity to God’s power had done for her shattered mind, it had not diminished the idiosyncrasies of her personality. This was who she was at her core, beautifully eccentric, delightfully peculiar. Only now without the abyss of darkness swallowing her time and time again.

“As for your dear, amnesia-plagued wife,” Naamah continued, now using the dagger to pick dirt out from under her nails, “I will make sure she’ll be back here tomorrow.”

“Good luck with that,” I muttered. “She thinks I infiltrated her mind. You saw her—she’s livid. And you don’t know her like I do. She holds a grudge better than a dragon.”

She tapped the tip of the dagger against her lips, a calculating gleam in her eyes. “Well, did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Invade her mind?”

I made a disparaging noise. “Of course not. I’d never violate her like that. And you know that’s not even possible among our kind.”

Angels and demons usually couldn’t play mind tricks on each other since our natural shields were so strong. The only being I knew of who could truly get past shields without violently shattering them was Lucifer.

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed in assent. “I know that. You know that. But does she?”

I frowned at her. “She was aware of it when she was human. I’m not sure if that knowledge made it past the transformation. You should know.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re the one who’s spent years getting to know her up here.”

Naamah cocked her head, grinned, and did a little shimmy. “So I do know her better than you do.”

I buried my face in my hands. Thousands of years of wishing for my mother’s presence in my life, only to be wholly unprepared for how much she liked to poke fun at me. At least now I knew where Azmodea got it from.

“In any case…” Naamah said, drawing my attention back to her. “She’ll come to realize that you didn’t actually read her mind, which will leave her with more questions than answers. And knowing her”—she had the audacity to send me a smug look—“she won’t be able to stop thinking about it, so she’ll decide to investigate. So, yes, she’ll be back, and if she needs a little push, I’ll give it to her.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, caught between irritated and grudgingly grateful.

“No need.” Her smile was brilliant, and I saw echoes of both mine and Azmodea’s in the flash of mirth on her face. “You know I am fully invested.”

“On that note.” I pointed a finger at her. “While I appreciate your dedication to my cause, you will be dedicated from a distance. No more lurking in the background while Zoe is here. You can check in with me later.”

Her smirk was all things unholy. “Prudish, are we?”

“You will respect my privacy,” I growled.

She gave in to outright grinning. “Too easy,” she said with a low laugh, patting me on the cheek. “Riling you up is simply too easy. Azmodea was right.”

I glared at her, but my annoyance was tempered by deep-seated gratitude for all that she’d done for me, for all that she was still doing.

Without her help, none of this would have been possible. If she hadn’t volunteered to be my inside man—or rather, inside angel—in Heaven, facilitating my sneaking in, using her network of contacts to smooth the way for hiding me up here, scouting for the perfect place for me to stay while I “trained” Zoe, and last but not least befriending her in order to keep an eye on her, help her, and, of course, set up our meeting, I wasn’t sure I could have accomplished any of it on my own.

Even before she’d agreed to help, I’d already set my mind on infiltrating Heaven, knowing it was unlikely that Zoe would be allowed on Earth as a newly made angel and I would therefore have to meet her where she was, and I’d started preparing for it—fully aware that it would take me years to get everything set up just right.

For to be able to enter Heaven, I would have to learn to turn myself inside out, to bring to the fore that which I had suppressed for thousands of years, and in turn, repress all the power that had come as naturally as breathing to me.

The idea was as simple as it was difficult. If I could enter Hell and live there among demons, even though only half of me was actually demon, shouldn’t the same be true for Heaven, with regard to my angelic half?

Once that possibility had taken root in my mind, I’d become a man obsessed. Every free hour of every day was spent on nurturing the heretofore dormant side of my angelic heritage, while at the same time relegating the dominant demonic nature of my power to the deepest depths of my being. I had to succeed in suppressing any hint of my darker energy to the point where I would pass as an angel, at least under superficial scrutiny.

And, just as important, my angel side had to be powerful enough that the gates of Heaven would allow me in.

I’d been working on my desperate plan for a while already when I’d mentioned it to Naamah during one of our stolen meetings when she’d visited Earth.

We’d been talking for almost as long as she had first been allowed to come to Earth as part of the deal between Heaven and Hell, Daevi having taken me and Azmodea along on her mission to meet with her daughter.

It had been an unforeseen kindness from Daevi, the fact that she’d insisted on being able to transfer her right to talk to Naamah to me or Azmodea. A way, perhaps, to continue making up for her complicity in keeping our mother from us for two thousand five hundred years. These meetings, then, had been the only way for either of us to catch up with Naamah, to mend old wounds and rekindle a relationship that had been torn apart by tragedy lifetimes ago.

And it had been during one of those talks, after I’d revealed to Naamah what I intended to do, that she’d hit me over the head and glared at me, asking in a reproachful tone, “And you didn’t think to ask me for help? Have you lost all brain cells to grief?”

At my careful reply that I hadn’t wanted to put her at risk, she’d scolded me, “I am your mother. I’d gladly risk my neck for you.”

“Even if it’s only to help me reunite with Zoe?” Because while I could understand her maternal instinct to throw herself between danger and her son, this was not about that. My life was not threatened. Assisting me in this endeavor went far beyond any reasonable wish to see one’s child safe.

Her warm, jeweled gaze had rested on me for a long moment. “She made you happy,” she’d said eventually, all teasing dropped from her voice. “What you’ve told me about her… When you speak of your time together, your soul lights up. And I can see that you’re suffering now that you don’t have her anymore. I don’t want you to go through eternity carrying that wound. So if I can help you get her back, I’ll do it, because your happiness means more to me than my safety.”

I’d wanted to argue, but she’d stubbornly refused to listen.

And so it had been decided. While I’d continued amassing more power in Hell, working my way up to the rank of seraph, then archdemon—so I’d be in a position to claim Zoe when she inevitably fell from grace—and honing my ability to switch between only showing my demon side or my angel side, Naamah had carefully laid the groundwork for my infiltration of Heaven. Using her vast network of favor-bound angels, capitalizing on her reputation for being eccentric and evading her “guards,” she’d managed to locate a gate where she could intermittently control security, and sourced this place in which I could hunker down while in Heaven as well as meet with Zoe.

All of this, the many moving pieces that made up this intricately planned and complex operation, was the reason it had taken years to see Zoe again. If I’d had the means to do it, I’d have stormed Heaven with an army to bring her back immediately after her ascension. Alas, I had to go for a more complicated, surgical approach.

And now I’d nearly ruined our carefully laid plans by brazenly rushing forward where measured steps were advised. As I’d just seen, confronting Zoe with her past—in her current condition—was a surefire way to alienate her. Her mind might not be human anymore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do unnecessary damage if I shoved the truth of her identity and our shared past onto her without preparation, without subtly testing to see if her memories had indeed been erased…or simply buried.

On that note, some of the darkness of my mood cleared, and I half smiled as I looked to the cave’s exit, where Zoe had vanished.

“One good thing,” I said without taking my eyes off the light shimmering at the opening, behind which the waterfall roared, “came from my ‘ill-advised idea’ to reenact that memory.”

Naamah faced me from where she’d caressed one of the glowing crystals on the walls. “Do tell.”

“Now I know that she does remember,” I said softly, reverently. “That memory, it’s there somewhere. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did, thinking I’d read her mind. Maybe she can’t put the memory into context, maybe it felt like a vague knowing or déjà vu to her, or maybe she’d dreamed of it, but it’s there. The ascension didn’t delete it entirely.”

And this was it, the big question I’d asked myself for the past years, vacillating between feral hope and abysmal despair, wondering if all that we’d had together, all that we’d been together, was irrevocably lost, its legacy lovingly held close only by me…or if it remained, buried and locked away deep inside her mind, a treasure that only needed to be uncovered, raised from the depths of oblivion.

“It’s all there,” I murmured, hope a flaring beacon in my heart.

And not just her repressed memories. The woman—or rather, angel—who’d walked into this cave to meet me was no stranger, no completely different person. The ascension hadn’t changed who she was in her heart of hearts, hadn’t altered her personality, all those facets of her character that I’d come to love.

She was still Zoe, even if she didn’t know it.

“That is a boon,” Naamah said softly, her expression weighted with gravity. “Don’t squander it.”

“I won’t.” An oath. A promise.

Her lashes lowered over eyes the color of Caribbean seas. “Of all the humans-turned-angels that I have heard of,” she said quietly, “none has ever remembered who they were before their ascension.”

I clenched my jaw, holding on to the spark of hope fueled by the fact that Zoe did remember already, albeit not consciously. “Then I will make her the first.”