Chapter 10

CHAPTER10

My eyebrows crept up. “My presence?” I echoed dully. “Where?”

“At the front. If you please?” She held her arm out to the side, indicating for me to come.

I exchanged a shocked glance with Azmodea. She shrugged, unperturbed by this development.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Okay. What’s the code phrase?”

When things had heated up with the war, Azazel had suggested to use a special word or sentence to check the trustworthiness of someone delivering a message or coming to escort me somewhere in his absence. I’d chuckled and called him paranoid, but to be honest, it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think someone might infiltrate his security at some point. His people were good, but everyone had a breaking point.

So we’d settled on a code phrase. One I had come up with. Only Azazel and I knew it, and he’d only give it personally to whomever he sent with either a message or an order to take me somewhere. After which, we’d change the code phrase to something new.

A muscle ticked in the demon’s jaw, and she shifted slightly on her feet. “Must I, my lady?” she asked quietly.

I narrowed my eyes. “I insist.”

Clearly pained, she sent her gaze to the ceiling and said, “Hocus pocus, butt full of locusts.”

Next to me, Azmodea doubled over with laughter.

I stifled some giggles of my own as I rose from the sofa. “Thank you—what’s your name again? I’m sorry I forgot.”

“Shemyaza, my lady.”

“Thank you, Shemyaza. Let’s go.”

I turned to Azmodea, who got to her feet and gave me a kiss on each cheek again.

“Say hi to him from me.” She put one hand on her hip. “Tell him that waging a war is not an excuse to skip our dinner dates.”

“Will do.”

Giving her a smile and a little wave, I then followed Shemyaza out into the hallway. My two demon bodyguards fell into step behind me, and Vengeance trotted right next to me.

Instead of going down to the ground level and leaving through the giant double door of the entrance hall, Shemyaza led me to a large balcony jutting out from a big hallway, the small windows reinforced with bars and—what I now noticed after living in Hell for a while—powerful demon magic.

On the balcony, Shemyaza stopped and turned to me. “Ready, my lady?”

I eyed the ever-stormy, gloomy sky, and then I faced Vengeance.

“You’ll need to stay,” I said, scratching her middle head under her maw. “We’ll be flying, and you can’t follow me, okay?”

Vengeance whined and pawed the floor, her massive claws raking the stone and leaving marks.

“I know,” I cooed. “I know, girl. I’ll be back soon. You just wait here.”

One of her heads tried to slobber me, and I jerked back just in time.

“No licking!” I pointed at her with a finger. “We talked about the licking.”

More whining, and three pairs of eyes looking at me with a dog’s best pleading gaze.

I covered my eyes and turned around. “You guys never agree on anything,” I groused and waved my hand toward the hellhound, “but in this, you’re suddenly all aligned? Hell save me from a triple begging look.”

Someone cleared their throat, and I peered around my fingers to see Shemyaza giving me a flat stare.

“Right,” I said. “Yes, I’m coming. Sorry.”

I stepped up to Shemyaza, self-consciousness gnawing at my composure. No one but Azazel had ever flown me anywhere. This was going to be awkward, but at least she was female. It’d feel a lot weirder to hop up into some guy demon’s arms.

Clearing my throat, I gestured between her and me. “So how do we… Do I just—”

She sent me a look mostly used on children and idiots, and then she simply swooped me up without further ado, one arm around my back, the other supporting me under my knees. Instinctively, I looped my arms around her neck.

Ugh, okay, this was hella awkward. She’d just hefted me up like I weighed nothing, and she didn’t even look strained. Meanwhile, I’d struggle to pick up a pile of ten hardcovers and lug them around.

With a whoosh, her wings appeared, shiny onyx threaded through with flames. I didn’t often get the chance to see other demons’ wings, and now I ogled hers like a feather perv. Pretty, but not as stunning as Azazel’s.

But I guess I was a bit biased in that regard.

Without a word of warning, Shemyaza took off, the kickstart jostling me in her arms. Hot air whooshed around us, tangling my loose hair, and flecks of the ever-present ash of Hell’s landscape soon sprinkled my skin. I glanced down to see the sprawling mass of Azazel’s fortress-like mansion zoom away, the distant lightning illuminating the walls and grounds around it for split seconds.

I’d never get my fill of this view, of taking in the world—even if it was the desolate scenery of Hell—from high above. The few times I’d flown anywhere in my previous life, I’d fought to get a window seat and then peered down for as long as no clouds obscured my view. It was endlessly fascinating to see everything reduced to miniature size, so small and yet so grand at the same time, to gaze out at the infinite expanse of sky and horizon. There was a feeling of freedom in that, and I’d never envied birds more than in those moments when I’d sat with my nose pressed to the cold pane of an airplane’s window.

Of course, the feeling was quite a bit different when I wasn’t perched fairly safe in a seat with walls around me, but rather exposed to the elements, having a death grip on the demon who literally held my life in their hands right now. In stark contrast to when Azazel flew my spirit form to a hellgate to visit Earth, whenever he—or now, Shemyaza—carried my actual body anywhere, I’d truly die if they dropped me.

So the amazing view and awesome feeling of being up in the air was accompanied by a very visceral fear of tumbling to my death.

Wasn’t it wonderful, living with anxiety?

We flew over the dark, craggy landscape, the random wildfires of Hell and the glowing mushroom plants the only blips of light in the gloom. Distant howls of hounds rose every once in a while, making me shiver down to my soul.

I loved Vengeance, and I’d gotten quite comfortable with her, but hearing her or one of her fellow canine’s chilling howls always reminded me just how different they all truly were from regular animals. That sound, like a thousand screams all wrapped into one, a lament of death and destruction, a symphony of blood-curdling horror, it raised all the hairs on my body and made me choke back tears.

And then there were the screams of the sinners.

Quieter than the baying and howling of the hounds, but all the more striking for the true pain and suffering they bore, the wails shifted here and there on the wind, gone one moment and hitting me the next with a sharp gust.

No matter how much I braced, I was never prepared to hear it.

On and on we flew, the distance reminding me of that time we’d gone to Lucifer’s palace for the Fall Festival. We were definitely flying out of Azazel’s territory then. Over the past months, we’d gone to some of his allies’ gatherings at their estates, flying for an extended time to get there.

Finally, Shemyaza began a descent toward a smattering of lights ahead of us. As we got closer, I could make out the confines of a large courtyard, lit by torches, a crowd of what looked like dozens of demons within.

They cleared a circular space for us to land, and Shemyaza touched down in the middle, my two bodyguards directly behind her. She set me down, and I stood on shaky legs, peering around at the demons while avoiding direct eye contact. My heart pounded something fierce, the impressions from the flight and the unnerving attention from pretty much all assembled demons jacking up my nerves. They were all clad in warriors’ clothing, leather and metal, weapons clinking as they shifted.

And contrary to the demons I’d seen in Azazel’s house, these didn’t only dress the part, they showed the signs of recent battle—nicks and scrapes in their armor, and, of course, blood.

So much blood.

It was disorienting. Staggering. The sight, the smell, the…reality of it.

I’d only ever seen “warriors” on the screen, and while some of the shows and movies did an excellent job of portraying the unvarnished, horrific truth of war and bloodshed—looking at you, Battle of the Bastards from Game of Thrones—actually standing just a few feet from a crowd of real fighters who bore the evidence of genuine battle…it made me sway on my feet with the sensory impact of it.

“Greet your lady,” Shemyaza called out from behind me.

One by one, all the demons who were on their feet bowed to me, some deep from the waist, some inclining their heads, indicating their different ranks respective to mine. In terms of unnerving, I wasn’t sure which was worse—the horribly real sights, sounds, and smells of war, or a crowd of battle-hardened, powerful demons bowing to me like I deserved it.

There was a commotion to my right, someone calling for Lord Azazel, and then the rows of demons parted. I noticed, for the first time, that many of the demons were kneeling, some bowing their heads, some looking up at me and the newcomers through blood-tangled hair and swollen eyes.

I swallowed hard, a coil pulling tight in my stomach.

When Azazel prowled down the opening in the crowd, I almost didn’t recognize him. Like that one time in our quarters, he was splattered with the crimson proof of a brutal fight, but what made my breath hitch and my heart stumble in confusion was the look on his face.

His beauty had always been like a knife’s edge, his features stunning in the way one would imagine the angels described in scriptures of old, with a sense of divine allure that was unearthly, glorious and magnificent in a terrifying way, for it was so far beyond human imperfection. It was the kind of beauty that would bring people to their knees, weeping as they beheld that which seared their eyes with its light.

I’d seen him boiling with anger, his skin cracking to reveal part of his fiery nature beneath. I’d seen him burn with barely held-back fury as he looked upon Lucifer.

Now, though, a coldness lay upon him that was carved with almost casual cruelty. He was every inch the victorious conqueror, all hard lines and cutting edges, his every step imbued with such confidence and self-assurance that it made the small, primitive parts of me want to shrink back in preemptive submission. Power writhed around him, drenching the air, glowing in his eyes, as he surveyed the kneeling demons with detached satisfaction.

His gaze found me, and I startled. Such steel in that look, no hint of the man who’d laughed with me, who’d caressed my body and kissed away my tears. He seemed like a stranger, one born of battle and blood and the rapture of raw violence.

It wasn’t that I tended to forget that he was a demon. I’d never mistake him for human, was always aware that he was something other, something far older and cut from a different cloth.

But I guess I’d gotten kind of used to that subtler sense of his other nature, even to the point I could glance at his collection of severed wings and not feel a frisson of fear anymore.

This right here, though, this moment, the way he held himself, the primal power radiating off him and the vicious gleam in his eyes, brought back the full awareness that he was so much more than my human mind could really come to terms with.

I couldn’t have kept the tremors from taking over my limbs. They came from deep within me, from a place where the collective instincts of mankind all froze in terror of a being our lore had immortalized in thousands of stories.

Azazel raised a hand and beckoned me closer. “Come here.”

Swallowing past the tight knot in my throat, I walked over to him. Stepping to the side, he revealed a demon kneeling right next to him, and it was only when Azazel lifted the other demon’s head by laying the tip of his sword under his chin that I recognized him as Inachiel.

A bloodied and beat-up Inachiel, his once beautiful face now carved with slashes and painted scarlet. His green eyes flickered to me for a second, then lowered quickly.

“Apologize.” Azazel’s voice was soft as a whisper, yet it somehow carried all across the courtyard.

The muscles in Inachiel’s throat moved as he swallowed hard. “I apologize, Lady Zoe, for all the slights and insults I have dealt you, directly and indirectly, and for treating you with ill-advised disrespect. I acknowledge your rank alongside Lord Azazel, and I ask your forgiveness for the hurt I caused you.”

I inhaled sharply. All right, as far as apologies went, that one was topnotch. I wasn’t sure of the protocol here, but it was probably a good move to nod and say that I accepted his—

“Wings out,” Azazel said with chilling calm.

I closed my mouth with an audible click, and the words on the tip of my tongue turned back around to choke me. He wouldn’t. Would he?

Inachiel’s jaw hardened, and he closed his eyes. No wings.

Azazel grabbed Inachiel by the throat, power pulsing in the air. Leaning down, he growled, “Out with them.”

Inachiel strained, clearly resisting whatever magic was flowing from Azazel to force his wings out, but he only lasted a few seconds. With a grunt, he jerked, and his wings materialized behind his back.

Azazel casually sheathed his sword and then laid one hand on Inachiel’s shoulder. With the other, he grasped the wing on that side hard around the edge where it grew out of the body, and the next moment, he tore it right off.

Inachiel screamed. Droplets of blood flew through the air, one of them hitting me right on my cheek. I reared back.

Memories of a scene just like this hurtled to the forefront of my mind—Lucifer ripping the wings off one of the demons who’d dared start an insurrection at his Fall Festival. And much like back then, when I’d been forced to witness the devil casually dismembering someone, my stomach bubbled with acid at the sight.

Azazel handed the blood-dripping wing to one of his soldiers standing by and then moved on to the other shoulder. Inachiel panted, hunched over, his scarlet-drenched hair hanging around his face like a macabre curtain.

Despite the storm brewing in my guts, the revulsion closing my throat, I couldn’t wrench my eyes away from the horror show in front of me.

Azazel grabbed Inachiel’s remaining wing, his other hand applying counter pressure on the shoulder, and with smooth efficiency, he tore off that wing as well. Inachiel’s scream curdled my stomach. Bile rose in my throat.

“Apology accepted,” Azazel said, and then signaled his attendant to take the second wing. Turning back to Inachiel, he continued, “I strip you of your rank and all of your titles. Your lands will be gifted to those loyal in my service, and your possessions will be seized, the souls in your pits added to those in my care. Your power will feed into mine.” He stared at him for a moment, dark energy coiling and uncoiling around his shoulders, down his arms. Then he said, his voice devoid of all warmth, “You may join the principalities in the outer Burning Sands.”

I flinched. Principality. The lowest rank among demons—and angels. Before, Inachiel had been a cherub, much like Azazel, enjoying the second highest rank below the archdemons themselves.

While Inachiel trembled, still kneeling, Azazel turned to his attendant and took the wings from him. Carrying them draped over both of his hands, he approached me. I startled and took an involuntary step back, my wide eyes locked onto those blood-sprinkled feathers.

A push and pop in my mind, and then Azazel’s voice echoed in my thoughts. Take them. They are your due.

My breath caught, my heart racing. I couldn’t even formulate a mental response to his prompt, what with most of my energy going into keeping the bile contained to the back of my throat. I glanced at Azazel, standing there in front of me and holding out the freshly severed wings expectantly, and then my eyes darted to the crowd around us. They all stared at me, waiting.

This was part of the power play, I realized. Part of the message Azazel was sending with this whole bloody spectacle, the reason he’d called me here. He could have simply brought those wings back home to me, or maybe just hung them up on his collection wall without ever showing them to me. Not that I cared.

But everyone else did.

That was the crux of it. Hell was all about rules, reputation, and power. Quarrels and conflicts were best settled with political maneuvering or outright violence, and both benefited from the added dose of public humiliation to underscore a win.

Handing the severed wings of a once high-ranking demon to the human he’d mocked—which had lost him his wings—and doing so not just in the presence of said demon, but also in front of dozens of others, among them his defeated warriors…that was peak Hell humiliation, in all its merciless brutality.

So I understood just fine the role I was expected to play. I understood it, even if the thought of touching those wings made my skin crawl.

And because I didn’t want to sabotage Azazel’s efforts to cement my rank and position, I stepped forward on shaking legs, raised my arms, and accepted the still blood-dripping wings.

Surprisingly not as heavy as I’d thought, they still made me stumble forward a step to keep my balance. Smooth plumage slid over my fingers, coated in warm wetness. The weight of muscles, bones, flesh and sinews, of blood and hundreds of feathers lay upon my arms, still warm, and so very, very real.

My gaze snagged on the torn-off ends of the wings—on the long string of what looked like a sinew dangling from the fleshy wound that was still bleeding.

That was it. That visual did me in.

With a heaving lurch, I emptied my nausea-stricken stomach right onto Inachiel’s severed wings.