Chapter 13

CHAPTER13

Iwas perched on a divan in our more private sitting room when my demonic nephew-by-marriage strolled in, a brilliant smile on his face. Smooth features of refined nobility, a warm brown tan accented by his dark eyes and black hair, Mammon was simply stunning to look at. I’d never seen him without a spark of humor in his eyes, or the ghost of a smirk on his lips. He was the type that drew all attention in a room by virtue of his magnetic character that shone through the allure of his physical beauty.

“Auntie!” he called out, opening his arms wide for a hug. “How lovely for you to call me over. What’s the occasion? Are we celebrating your birthday early?”

Azazel, who’d been lurking out of view beside the door, now slammed it shut without taking his eyes off his nephew. Mammon flinched at the sound and whirled around.

“Dearest uncle,” he said with a note of caution in his voice. “Lovely to see you, too. How’s that wing collection going? I hear you’ve been adding to it.”

“There’s always room for more,” Azazel drawled and prowled closer.

Mammon’s smile seemed a bit brittle, and his eyes darted between me and his uncle.

I grimaced and cleared my throat. “We have a few questions for you.”

“Uh-huh.” His sense of self-preservation apparently on high alert, Mammon surreptitiously moved so that several pieces of furniture stood between him and Azazel. Not that it would help him much should Azazel decide to charge him.

“You remember my friend Taylor?” I asked. “You met her once, didn’t you?”

“Once, yeah.” He pursed his lips.

Sure. “So, she’s been doing this thing where she summons a demon to deliver her messages to me.”

He raised both brows. “Well, I hope she didn’t sell her soul for that.”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “She didn’t make a regular deal, as far as I know. Yet she somehow acquired the knowledge to summon and command a demon to do her bidding. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Me?” Mammon laid a hand over his heart and blinked at me in a picture-perfect image of innocence. “Why, I couldn’t possibly—”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence. Azazel had him slammed against the wall with his hand around his throat the next second. The stone behind Mammon cracked and groaned with the force of the impact.

“Do not lie,” Azazel snarled, his face inches from Mammon’s.

Mammon made a choking sound and pawed at Azazel’s hand.

“Azazel,” I softly said.

He let him go and stepped back, and Mammon deflated and massaged his throat.

“Did you tell her how to summon Belial?” I asked quietly.

Mammon heaved a big sigh, still massaging his neck and now looking sheepish. “I…might have passed on some information she could use to her advantage.”

“What, exactly, did you tell her?” Azazel’s voice hummed with the same darkness that pooled around him.

Mammon shrugged. “How to summon and command a demon without making a deal.”

“She’s not a witch,” Azazel said. “She has no latent powers to speak of. How would she be able to wield the magic necessary for this?”

I listened intently. This was the first I heard about there being a way to deal with demons without the standard soul-selling involved. Were witches actually a thing?

“There is another way,” Mammon hedged. “It’s…rather obscure.”

Azazel flexed his fingers, and Mammon raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“All right, all right! No more choking necessary, I’ll tell you.” He perched on the armrest of a nearby chair. “A human, even one without vestigial powers, can summon a demon and bind them to their will…if the human knows the demon’s true name.”

True name? I glanced at Azazel, but he fixedly stared at Mammon.

“That’s the first I’ve heard about this,” Azazel muttered.

“Like I said, it’s rather obscure. That knowledge is kind of buried, and—given the potential for abuse—for good reason.” He shrugged.

“And you gave Belial’s true name to Taylor?” Azazel’s voice dropped to a dangerous level. “And taught her how to use it to summon him, bind him to her will, and order him to deliver her messages to Hell, to act them out like a recording to his unending embarrassment?”

“Whoa!” Mammon held up both hands. “I didn’t teach her that, not that last part.” He wiggled his finger to indicate the recording thing. “I just told her to use it to make him deliver her letters, and only that. In fact, I warned her not to make him do anything else.”

Ugh. Taylor and warnings. I facepalmed.

“Why?” Azazel bared his teeth.

“What do you mean, why?” Mammon frowned. “Obviously, she shouldn’t be using Belial to deep-clean her apartment. I mean, that would take things a bit too far, don’t you think?”

“Why would you give her Belial’s name,” Azazel growled, “and force him into a position where he is commanded to deliver messages?”

Mammon threw his hands up. “Because he has a stick up his ass and needs to be shaken up a bit!”

Azazel blinked at him, obviously stumped for a moment. “Let me get this straight,” he then said, hollow disbelief ringing in his voice. “This is a prank?”

My mouth fell open. I stared at Mammon with my flabber well and properly gasted.

My demon nephew had the bad form to look smug. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?”

For a long, astounding moment, Azazel stood completely stunned speechless. Then, slowly, inexorably, his power rose, building pressure until it became difficult to breathe. His face got so hard, it appeared carved from marble, his energy whispering into the corners of the room.

Mammon gulped.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Azazel spoke into the charged silence, his voice the softest of threats, “that by playing this elaborate prank on Belial, you’ve put Taylor in harm’s way?”

Mammon blinked. “Um…”

“Do I need to spell it out for you?” A muscle feathered in Azazel’s jaw.

Mammon squinted. “Maybe?”

Azazel visibly struggled to retain his composure. I couldn’t blame him. “What do you think will happen,” he ground out, “should Taylor lose control of her command over Belial?”

“Why would she lose control—”

“What do you think will happen?” Azazel thundered.

Mammon flinched. “Belial will be pissed?”

“He is already pissed.” Azazel flashed his teeth, his canines elongating as they sometimes did with demons when they got really, really angry. “And once the leash Taylor has on him is severed, and he is no longer bound by whatever provision she has worked into her summoning of him not to hurt her, he will turn his considerable wrath on her, not you.”

Mammon’s face paled.

“Taylor has had him running to and fro,” Azazel continued, “not realizing what the fuck she’s dabbling in, and he’s been forced to act as her mouthpiece for months, not just personally delivering messages to Zoe, but performing them like a live-action voice message. A demon of his rank and status, reduced to acting the fool for a human’s whims. If word of this has already leaked to other demons and damaged Belial’s standing, his wrath will be unimaginable. And the entirety of his rage will turn to find its target in Taylor the second she lets that leash slip her hand.”

Mammon let out a shaky breath. “I…I didn’t consider that.”

“YOU NEVER DO!” Azazel roared, grabbing him by the collar and hurling him against the wall once more.

I half rose from the divan, my heart in my throat. “Azazel…”

Mammon grunted and tried to say something, but Azazel shook him and leaned in with his teeth bared.

“You never consider the implications of your actions,” he snarled. “Just like when you thought you were doing Zoe a great service by teaching her how to use a sigil to escape her rooms, not considering once”—here he shook him again, this time so hard the wall at Mammon’s back gained another crack—“that she didn’t have any powers to defend herself, and by letting her loose on her own, you made her the perfect prey for the inferni. They were ripping her to shreds when Zaquiel luckily found her.”

Mammon’s eyes widened and flicked to me. “Zoe, I’m sorry—I didn’t think—”

“SHE COULD HAVE DIED!” Azazel’s roar shook the room.

I jumped and fell back on the divan, a hand on my chest, right over my racing heart. Okay, wow, somebody had a lot of pent-up emotions about that incident. Not that I didn’t sometimes have the occasional nightmare about being hunted and chewed on by those horrifying beasts, but I hadn’t realized that Azazel had so much fury and fear bottled up about it. Because that’s what it was—stark, naked fear that veered sharply into fury at the easiest target to blame for that incident.

But if Mammon hadn’t given me that sigil to use, and if I hadn’t been chased by the inferni and—luck have it—run right into Zaquiel, Azazel would have never been forced to play me off as his pet in front of his guest… It was the scene that followed that had changed our pretend relationship to something more real, paving the way for the deeper connection that grew from there. If not for all of that, I might still be locked in my rooms, ignored by my demon husband in name only, withering away one boring day at a time.

So, in a roundabout way, I owed Mammon for almost getting me killed.

Which was why I rose from the divan and approached Azazel.

Laying a hand on his shoulder, not flinching at the bite of the near electrical charge of his power, I softly said, “My darling.”

I almost never used endearments with him. The few times I did, it always got his attention.

Just like now. It snapped him out of the haze of fear-turned-fury, and his power immediately gentled, wrapping around my hand in a caress. Shoulders losing some of their tension, he released Mammon and stepped back, half turning to me. Looking up at him, I slid my hand down his arm and intertwined my fingers with his.

We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Mammon, I spoke into his mind. I know it’s scary to think I might have died, but I didn’t, it’s over, and you don’t need to vent your fear on him. In a convoluted way, we actually have his lack of concern to thank for the love we found. Don’t punish him for that.

He fully turned to me, his free hand cupping my cheek. I am not yet sure, he said after a moment, his mental voice touching a cord deep inside me, if the softness of your heart will be my ruin or my salvation.

I don’t know about salvation,I mentally replied, leaning into his caress, but I’ll settle for mitigating influence.

The hint of a smile broke through the hardness of his features, his eyes warm as he held my gaze.

Mammon cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to break up what is undoubtedly a deeply romantic moment between you two”—he wiggled his finger between us—“but I’d just like to know if I’m still in danger of being maimed or dismembered. Because if I’m going to lose a limb or two in the next few minutes, I’ll have to reschedule my plans for tonight.”

Lightning flashed in Azazel’s eyes, and he slowly turned his head to glare at his nephew.

Mammon raised his hands. “Just asking.”

“You,” Azazel growled, pointing at Mammon with his finger, “will find a way to fix the fucking mess you created, or so help me Lucifer, I will add your wings to my collection.”

Mammon grimaced and pressed his back against the wall, as if to better protect his shoulders. “I will fix it, I swear.”

Azazel’s power rose in a snarling whisper and seemed to snap at Mammon with phantom teeth. “You better, or the wings will be just the start. If Zoe’s friend comes to any harm through this, not even the blood we share will spare you from my wrath.” He summoned a dagger and threw it with a flick of his fingers so it embedded in the wall an inch from Mammon’s head. “Make sure Taylor is safe and will remain so. Should you fail, I will slice off the parts you are most fond of and feed them to you.”

Mammon swallowed thickly. “Grandpa taught you well, I see.”

“Out!” Azazel barked.

Mammon jolted and almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away.

When the door fell shut behind Mammon, Azazel blew out a heavy breath, his shoulders slumping.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Startled, I turned to him. It was so rare to hear an apology from him—for anything—that it sounded almost foreign to my ears.

“Why?” I asked, grasping his hand again. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

His stormy eyes met mine. “I know how much you care about Taylor. How much it would hurt you to see her harmed. And now Mammon put her in danger.”

My chest tightened, cold fear whispering through me. If anything happened to Taylor…it would break me. I’d already lost my home, my life on Earth, lost all contact to my mom—even though I could go see her, I wasn’t able to interact with her at all—and Tay was the one living person still on Earth whom I could talk to. Sure, I had my dad, who hung around his family’s home as a ghost, but Tay was the person closest to me from my old life.

She was so bright, so full of life and love. Just the thought of her being harmed in any way hurt me on a soul level.

“Mammon will fix it, right?” I asked in a small voice.

“I will see to it that he does.” He pulled me to him and enveloped me in a hug. Kissing the top of my head, he said, “Regardless of the measures he’ll take to remedy the situation, I’ll post a guard for her to make sure she’s protected.”

“Thank you.” I slung my arms around his waist and buried my head in his chest, breathing him in. After a few relaxing heartbeats, I said, “So, what’s up with the true name thing?”

“Ah.” He rested his chin on the crown of my head. “We have names that our parents give us, and names that are branded onto our souls. We don’t really use the latter, because it feels too personal.”

“How so?”

“In human terms, it would be akin to walking around naked. There’s a certain vulnerability in it.”

“Is it like the stuff in faerie folklore, where knowing the name gives someone power over them?”

“I didn’t think it was until just now. As far as I know, it doesn’t work that way between demons, but maybe it once did, a long time ago. It could be something left over from before the Fall, a remnant of some divine quality that used to serve a purpose.” He shrugged, his hand stroking my back. “I never gave much thought to it. It just isn’t an important factor in demon life. Unless, apparently”—here his voice turned dark—“when a human gets their hands on that information and is taught how to use it to manipulate the demon.”

I shuddered at the thought of the serious trouble Taylor got herself into. Next time I saw her, I’d make sure to shake some sense into her—metaphorically, since I couldn’t touch her on my visits. I’d just really have to drive home the point that she needed to stop summoning Belial immediately. And maybe keep an exorcism kit on standby. Would wearing holy water as perfume do any good? Could she ward her apartment somehow?

Which brought my hippity-hoppity mind back to the other thing I wanted to ask Azazel about. “Now, about those humans with powers…”

I felt his chuckle where my head rested on his torso. “Picked up on that, did you?”

I peered up at him. “You need to elaborate on that. Are witches a real thing?”

He tugged on me to follow and then pulled me on his lap as he sat on the divan. “To an extent. Humans aren’t naturally born with powers. Those who find themselves with something ‘extra,’ with abilities that could be classified as magic—telekinesis, telepathy, being able to work energy—do so because of non-human heritage they know nothing about.”

“Like having a demon somewhere down in their family line?”

Demons could mate with humans—as in, procreate—the half-bloods populating Hell being proof of that kind of inter-species breeding. It didn’t happen all too often, though, from what I’d gathered, because demons were generally less fertile than humans, no matter their gender. And apparently, the biology between the demon and the human had to be just right to make it work.

But still, there had to be quite a few humans running around on Earth who were distantly related to a demon.

“That can be the reason,” Azazel said, “though that relation would be many times removed, and any powers highly diluted. A demon who sires a child with a human mostly makes sure to bring that offspring to Hell. It’s bad form to leave them on Earth. Most demon families here take care to track their part-demon children over a few generations, and they take those who display a proper amount of powers.”

I thought of Caleb, the half-blood in Azazel’s service, who’d been taken from Earth after he’d accidentally incinerated his home—with his mom in it. His father apparently was a real piece of shit, but Azazel had soon pulled Caleb from his sire’s “care” and employed him directly here. Half-bloods generally didn’t have a choice in where they were allowed to live, being completely at the mercy of their demon family…unless a higher-ranking demon stepped in, like Azazel had done with Caleb.

Playing with a lock of my hair, Azazel said, “There’s another reason a human might be born with vestigial powers.”

There was that word again—vestigial. My years of reading on my phone’s app, with the dictionary only a long press on a word away came in handy now. “So, powers that are left over from something…before?”

“Just so.” He tugged at the lock. “What happens when a demon or angel dies?”

I blinked a few times. “Uh, no idea, but it sounds like you’re about to tell me?”

I honestly hadn’t considered that question before. It was rather rare that a demon died, seeing as they didn’t age or get sick, and as Azmodea had explained the other day, mortal combat was frowned upon among demons. That was, the real fighting kind of mortal combat. The video game was very much popular among the tech-loving demons.

“They are reincarnated as humans.”

Azazel’s casually dropped bomb made me sit up and stare at him. “What?”

“For demons and angels, to go to Heaven or Hell after their death would be ironic, wouldn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. But I thought, maybe they just…go poof.” I made a fitting explosive hand gesture.

Azazel shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. “Nothing ever just…goes poof. Energy doesn’t vanish. It has to go somewhere. Even when we destroy a wraith, their soul is simply taken apart and then repurposed. For angels and demons, our soul is our body, we are metaphysically bound to our form. So when we die, our body and mind disintegrate and reform. No one knows exactly how it happens, but our spirit is then reborn in a human body, with no memories of the previous life, and only a tiny portion of the angel’s or demon’s powers carrying over. But that’s enough to manifest as subtle ‘magic’ or supernatural abilities, like being able to move things or read thoughts. People with those powers often find themselves drawn to the occult and might dabble in the different magical arts known to humans.”

“Wow. Okay. But, they really don’t remember anything from before? It’s all just gone?”

He shrugged. “Over thousands of years, only a few reborn angels and demons have been found to have retained slivers of knowledge of their former lives. Sometimes something comes to light under hypnosis, sometimes it surfaces in dreams, sometimes it rises to the fore when the human’s mind is fractured. But it’s never a full picture. Just fragments. Enough for some of us to identify the demon if we knew them in life, but not enough to reforge any kind of connection. For all intents and purposes, that demon is gone, and all that is left is an echo of their former life in a human mind.”

I played with the buttons on his shirt. “That is kind of sad. So some of you who have recently lost someone know there is a human out there who is a reborn friend or loved one, but you can’t ever reach them. Reminds me of the folks who have family members with severe dementia.”

“It’s a bit like that, yes.”

“So, what happens when that reborn angel or demon dies? I mean, dies after living a human life.”

“Same thing that happens to humans.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Once reborn as a human, their soul is a blank slate. They can incur damnation based on their actions, or they can live a virtuous life and earn their place in Heaven.”

I raised both brows. “Kind of coming full circle, huh? Wait—how awkward would it be if a reborn demon ended up in Hell as a damned soul and then gets tortured by their former demon buddies?”

“They wouldn’t remember any of the demons, though,” he said quietly.

I squinted. “But the demons might remember their old pal? That must be hella weird to have to roast a former friend on a spit.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I can honestly say that in two thousand five hundred years, I have never once thought about this.”

“Have you ever recognized a human soul as a reborn angel or demon?”

He shook his head. “I hear that it’s not often obvious. Some of them have an aura that is distinguishable from a regular human, but I’ve never seen it. And in some, the signs are apparently so subtle that they escape notice at first.”

I chewed on my lip and then asked softly, “Is there someone you’ve lost and who would have been reborn as a human?”

His eyes met mine, and the deep anguish in them stole my breath for a moment. “You know who.”

I inhaled sharply. Oh, God, of course. His mother. Shit. He thought she’d died, still believed the lie fed to him for the past millennia, like Azmodea, and Mammon, and everyone else…well, everyone except Lucifer, Daevi, and a chosen few privy to the truth.

Including me.

For almost a whole year now, I’d been walking around with this huge, fucking secret hanging over my head, poised to strike me down at any moment like the proverbial sword of Damocles, dangling from a flimsy thread.

The flimsy thread being my not so great ability to keep a secret to myself.

Gah, I was bad enough at not blabbing about tiny, inconsequential things, but a secret as big as this one? It chafed at me. At the oddest times, I had this strong urge to just blurt it all out, to just go, “Your mother’s still alive!”

The only thing giving me the strength to resist that unholy urge was my bone-deep fear of what Lucifer would do to me if I broke my vow of silence on this matter. He’d said there would be consequences. And that I didn’t want to find out what they were.

He was damned right about that one.

But even if I’d managed not to spill the beans to Azazel yet—a feat I was half astounded by and half proud of—there were more and more moments that brought me uncomfortably close to revealing what I knew.

Like just now, when I’d put my entire foot in my mouth by asking him if he’d ever lost anyone when I should have known damn well that his mother had died when he was a young boy.

Except, I knew the truth, and I’d spoken and acted out of knowing the truth, instead of remembering to keep up the facade of believing his mother dead just like he did.

Consequently, Azazel now looked at me with a mix of suspicion and…oh God, hurt. Because to him, it looked like I’d forgotten that his mother was dead. When it was one of the most pivotal experiences that had shaped his life.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I—shit, I’m so sorry.” I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to escape the scorching heat of shame. “Sometimes, my brain malfunctions,” I said in a small voice.

“It’s all right,” he muttered, but when I opened my eyes to glance at him again, I caught the flicker of grief in his eyes, the hurt in his expression before he schooled his features.

Oh, no. Dammit, I didn’t want him to think I’d forgotten the many times he’d personally told me about his mom being dead and gone. Like I was such a shitty wife that I didn’t remember the most important details of my beloved’s life history?

I breathed past the lump in my throat, past the hot coil of shame and remorse and the pounding need to tell him the truth. I didn’t forget that your mom is dead, because she’s not actually dead, she’s just locked up in a suite in Lucifer’s palace because her mental state is fragile and she needs to be supervised so she won’t hurt herself or others.

I wanted to tell him so bad, to correct the impression he’d just gotten of me, to give him that crucial piece of knowledge about his own mother…to soothe some of the grief over losing her. It’d still hurt him to learn the truth, to find out he’d been lied to for thousands of years, and it might be difficult for him to know his mom had been struggling all these years, but he deserved to know the truth. And if Lucifer ever let him, he’d at least be able to see her. He’d know she was there, instead of thinking her irrevocably gone.

I thought of my own mom, and how much it meant to me that I was still able to visit her, even if I couldn’t talk or touch her, even if I couldn’t let her know that I was okay. Just seeing her, watching her go about her day…sometimes, that was enough.

Azazel had grieved for his mother for two thousand five hundred years, carrying a wound that had never quite healed. And here I was, with the knowledge to lift that grief, and yet I wasn’t allowed to act on it.

And now he thought I’d simply forgotten about something that was one of his core wounds, and I just had to sit there and let him believe it. Let him think less of me, just because I was sworn to keep someone else’s secret.

“There are some things I need to take care of,” Azazel said quietly, setting me on my feet and getting up from the divan.

My stomach felt like it was being eaten by acid. “Azazel…”

“I’ll see you later.” He kissed me on the top of my head, but it felt so horribly different from his kiss before. Hollow and distant.

I reached out to him, but he was already on his way to the door. And all I could do was watch him leave, knowing my blunder had just tarnished his image of me, knowing there was fuckall I could do about it.

Dammit, Lucifer. Damn you and your fucking vow of silence.