Chapter 30

CHAPTER30

Azazel went to see his mother the next day.

While he hinted that he’d appreciate having me there, we both agreed it was best for me to stay home, lest my presence provoke Lucifer. We didn’t know whether Lucifer would actually be there during the visit, but we didn’t want to chance it. The whole situation was charged enough as it was.

Daevi would accompany Azazel and Azmodea—whom Azazel had told about Lucifer’s pardon plans, swearing her to secrecy—to lend the power necessary to enforce Azazel and Azmodea’s visiting rights.

I kissed him goodbye and watched him fly out into the lightning-riven sky, regret heavy in my heart. I wanted nothing more than to be there for him during what had to be one of the most emotional and daunting moments of his life. I could only hope that everything would go smoothly, that he’d be able to reconnect with a part of himself he’d lost millennia ago.

And I wished for Naamah to be able to meet her children with a peaceful mind, far from the dark torments she’d been struggling with.

With a sigh, I turned away from the window and toward the three-headed canine that had not left my side since I brought her back to our quarters sometime during the night. Azazel had told me Vengeance had been inconsolable while I was away, whining and howling incessantly. Nothing he’d tried could pacify her. She’d pace the rooms, scratching at doors, sniffing all the spots where I’d left my scent, all the while wailing at the top of her lungs.

It had gotten to the point where Azazel had been forced to put her back into the kennels, hoping that maybe her old handler Hael could work his magic on her.

Hael, for his part, had professed his expletive-spiked thanks when I came to pick her up from the kennels. Apparently, not even the hellhound expert of Azazel’s estate had been able to soothe Vengeance in my absence. Her baleful howling had only stopped when I’d gotten close enough for her to sense me, and then there’d been no holding her back. She’d barreled right through the walls of her enclosure—the ones thick and massive enough to put a stop to a full-grown male elephant.

As Vengeance virtually ran me over in her enthusiasm to get to me, Hael looked on with awe and a gleam of excitement in his eyes.

“You have to breed her,” he’d said.

“Um, no, thanks?” I wrinkled my nose and tried my best to keep three lolling tongues from bathing my face in dog saliva. “I’m not into bestiality. Also, we’re both female, and I hate to break to it to you, but that’s not how it works.” I paused and wiped dog spit from my face, my brow scrunched in thought. “Although it did work in Jurassic Park. But only because the scientists were dumb enough to add the DNA of hermaphroditic species to the dinos, which made some of the females switch genders to male, which then led to the unplanned reproduction of the dinosaurs on those abandoned islands, but that’s not gonna be the case here, right? I mean, I don’t have hermaphroditic DNA—do hellhounds? ’Cause that might cause problems, I’m telling you. Better spay and neuter the ones you don’t want to breed.” I pointed at him with my finger.

Hael had closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Somehow, I didn’t think he appreciated my oral dissertation on reproductive issues among prehistoric reptiles in an iconic series of movies. Pfft, what a philistine.

“Vengeance,” Hael said with the long-suffering look of a beleaguered saint, “is the most powerful hellhound specimen I’ve come across in a long time. It would be a waste not to pass her genetics on to a new generation of hellhounds. So with your permission, when she is old enough, I would like to pair her with a promising male from a talented line.”

I squinted at him, my breathing a bit labored since Vengeance currently sat on me, bracing part of her several hundred pounds of weight on her front paws. “Is overpopulation a problem here in Hell? I’d hate to contribute to an issue like that with breeding my dog.”

Hael shook his head. “The hellhounds that roam the wild live and die according to the laws of nature, much like wolves on Earth. Birth numbers fluctuate depending on the resources available, and only as many hounds make it to adulthood as there is food to sustain them. The wild population is different from the hounds we keep here. We only breed as many as we can care for.”

“Okay,” I wheezed. “That sounds reasonable. If Venny wants some doggy action, she’ll get some.”

His expression sour, Hael bowed and turned away, muttering “Venny” under his breath.

After watching Azazel leave to meet with his mom, I took Vengeance on a grand tour of the grounds, catching up on playing with her. She was indefatigable. If only I could bottle that energy up and chug it down to get a boost myself, it’d be so much easier to get out of bed in the mornings.

I’d just returned to our quarters with a happily panting Vengeance in tow when I heard the door to the balcony from our bedroom—diligently restored by merihem after the firesplosion from last night—open, and a moment later, I sensed Azazel’s power in the other room.

He was home already? I checked one of the clocks in the living room. It had only been a little while since he’d left, and given the distance to Lucifer’s palace, that meant he couldn’t have spent much time there. With his mother.

My heart sinking, I rushed over into the bedroom, where Azazel sat in an armchair, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, his head hanging. His energy touched me, a note of such devastated sadness in it that I physically cringed on his behalf.

“What happened?” I whispered, sinking to my knees in front of him and brushing some hair out of his face.

He took a heavy breath, his shoulders heaving with the movement. “It was a disaster.” His voice was so, so rough. “When we walked into her rooms, and she saw us, she was lucid. I thought that maybe it would go well. She recognized us even without introductions. Said she’d always know us, even if we weren’t the children anymore that she last saw us as. Azmodea—she cried. She was so happy. But then…”

I gently stroked through his hair, waiting for him to find the words.

“It was as if someone flipped a switch in her. She changed from one moment to the next. Something…something in her eyes broke. She curled in on herself, sank to the floor, and started rocking. We tried to soothe her, but it only made it worse. She screamed and wouldn’t stop. Every time we came close, every time she looked at us, she broke down even more. When she began tearing at her head—”

Oh, God.

“Daevi called for Lucifer. He was just outside the door, waiting. He went straight for Naamah and put her under.”

“He—he knocked her out mentally?”

Azazel nodded.

“I thought you guys couldn’t do that to each other?”

He’d once explained that mind control wasn’t really feasible among demons because their natural shields were just so strong.

“Lucifer can,” was Azazel’s simple answer now. “Apparently, that’s how he’s been helping Naamah through her episodes. Nothing else would work. No one else can do it but him. And he—” He wrung his hands, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “He rounded on us when he’d made sure Naamah was safe. He was seething. Said this was why we weren’t allowed to see her. Why he’d kept us apart. Something about seeing us…triggers her.”

His words sounded like he had to press each of them through a grinder, hurting himself in the process. Tears pricking my eyes, I helplessly caressed his face.

“Daevi later explained that in the beginning, right after her decline started in the wake of our father’s leaving and after Daevi had taken us in, they were still trying to let us see her. I barely remember that part.” He shrugged, his expression bleak. “But according to Daevi, Naamah could not get through a visit with us without having an episode. Alone or with others, she’d be able to go long stretches of time without an incident, but when she’d see us…she’d break.”

His voice broke on that last word, and my heart along with it.

“So Lucifer decided it was best we shouldn’t visit her anymore,” he continued after a moment. “We weren’t really old enough to understand. We kept asking for her.”

My entire soul hurt imagining little Azazel and Azmodea, so desperately wishing for their mom.

“Daevi said…that it was easier to tell us Naamah had died. It stopped the questions.”

Hot tears tracked down my cheeks. “It wasn’t fair to you.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “None of this is.”

I threw my arms around him and pulled him close. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He let me hold him for a long, long moment, in shared silence and pain. I almost didn’t hear him when he eventually said, in a voice equal parts quiet and forlorn, “We will not go see her again.”

And it broke my heart all over.