Demon (20 page)

“Where’s Beloch?”

Edgar didn’t blink. “I presume in his rooms. He’s made it clear he doesn’t wish for visitors tonight. He’s been busy with a, er, project and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I know what his project is. How do I get to his rooms?” The rooms and hallways in this rabbit warren of a place shifted daily, and there was
never any way to tell where Beloch resided. It was part of his elaborate defense system.

“In fact, my lord, he’s not in his rooms.” Edgar hesitated, then leaned forward and said in a whisper, “He’s spent the last few hours observing the extraction room. A particularly difficult case, I gather.”

He knew the extraction room. It was where the Truth Breakers worked. Very few people had survived the extraction room. He was one of them.

“It is still on the lower level?”

“Of course, my lord,” Edgar said with a disapproving sniff. “I can’t have my guests’ meals interrupted by screaming, can I?”

Without another word Azazel turned on his heel, ignoring Edgar’s sputtered protests. He took the steps two at a time into the bowels of the building, then came to a halt. He could smell it. A thousand things. Her blood. Her fear.

He could smell the stink of death and shit, but those were older smells, not from today. He was past feeling relief. He didn’t even know why he was here.

“Hello, dear boy.” Beloch’s voice came from behind him. He was sitting in state in a high-backed chair, a jewel-encrusted goblet in one hand. “I was expecting you to show up sooner.” He waved his hand toward a less ornate chair
beside him. “Sit and tell me why you’ve come.”

As if he could. Azazel took the seat, trying to stall for time. “Have you found out her secrets?”

A smile curled Beloch’s mouth. “Of course we have. Not everything, of course. She’s resting while I decide her fate.”

The cold knot that filled his chest seemed to expand into his gut as well. “And you discovered what she knew about Lucifer?”

“We did indeed. I must say, Uriel is very pleased with you right now. You’ve almost redeemed yourself.”

Azazel froze. “What does Uriel have to do with this?”

Beloch shook his head. “Dear boy, when will you understand that Uriel is part of everything? Your actions have been very beneficial, and he’s willing to reward you for them.”

“Beneficial how?”

“He’s been looking for the Lilith for hundreds upon thousands of years, yet all he had to do was wait for you to do something about the prophecy. He knew you would lead her to me, and that he could then rid the world of her foulness. If you continue to serve the archangel well, I imagine there might be redemption for you.”

“There is no redemption for me.” He looked into Beloch’s milky eyes. There was something there,
something familiar, something
wrong
, in his calm gaze, but Azazel didn’t have the stomach to try to place it. “The Supreme Being cursed us. It could hardly be up to his minion to reverse that curse.”

Beloch glared at him. “Uriel is not his minion!” he snapped.

Azazel was past taunting him. “What did she tell you?”

“What you already know. That she was confined near Lucifer when she refused to obey the Supreme Being and lie beneath Adam.”

“But he released her.”

“To rain terror on mankind. To seduce men and take their life essence so their seed is barren, to smother newborn babes and steal them from their mothers’ arms.”

“And why would God do that?”

“Who are you to question the Almighty’s word?” Beloch thundered, and again Azazel had that eerie sense of recognition. He tried to remember where their enmity had started, but whatever had caused it was lost in the mists. It seemed as if it had always been there.

“I have never been afraid to question God’s word. It was for that very transgression that I was thrown out of heaven, if you remember. For falling in love and for questioning.” He sounded remarkably cool.

“If you ever want to go back, you’ll have to learn acceptance. That’s what faith is. Obedience without question,” Beloch said in a petty voice.

“And why should I want to go back?”

Beloch looked startled. “Of course you want to. Everyone does. It’s perfection, the epitome of all that is good, the pinnacle—”

“It is heaven,” Azazel said flatly. “And I prefer humanity, with all its flaws.”

A slow, secret smile twisted Beloch’s withered lips. Azazel knew full well that Beloch could take any form he wanted, and he wondered why he’d chosen the old man this time. He probably enjoyed fooling the unsuspecting into thinking he was kindly and caring. He’d managed to fool Rachel at first.

Azazel needed to get the hell away from here before he heard her crying out. “What exactly did she tell you? We knew she was imprisoned with the First. We went through all this to find out what else she knew. She holds the secret to Lucifer’s prison. What has she told you?”

“You’ll have to apply to his holiness, the archangel Uriel, to discover those answers. In the meantime, there’s cleanup to complete. We will make certain there’s nothing else locked in the recesses of her memory, and then the Truth Breakers will finish her.”

He was going to throw up. He should have known that Uriel would find a way to trick them. He stared into Beloch’s oddly familiar face, and knew demands or pleas would be useless. “They will be merciful, I presume?” It wouldn’t help the way his gut was twisting inside him, but it would be easier on her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The words of the dying are often their most interesting. The Truth Breakers will continue in a few hours.”

Everything roiling inside him stopped. “Why are they waiting? Is any other outcome possible?”

“Of course not. This happens quite often. When the Truth Breakers are given orders to be brutal, as Uriel has decreed, then the initiate gets so covered in blood that it’s hard to get the other information she might carry within her. And there is the question of her voice.” Beloch gave him that smug smile.

“Her voice?”

“Her screams have left her without a voice. It should return shortly, at least enough for us to glean any final information.” Beloch chuckled. “Did you wish to say good-bye to her? I’m not sure she’ll be able to respond very well, and since you were the one who brought her to us I doubt she’d welcome having your face as the last thing she sees, but it’s up to you.”

The cadence of his voice was oddly familiar as
well. The impossible suspicion was born, and even as he told himself it was insane, it grew stronger and stronger.

“I will see her,” he said.

Beloch looked startled. “I don’t think—”

“I will see her.”

He knew that disapproving huff, the narrowing of the familiar eyes. And suddenly he
knew.
And his rage was so powerful he was paralyzed as the man calling himself Beloch continued, “Enoch will take you.”

The Nightman was walking with a limp when he appeared, and his fury was palpable. Azazel knew him as well, with a certainty that shocked him. How had he been so blind before?

He cast one last look at Beloch. At the old-man disguise, the cruelty and hatred that hid inside. The last of the archangels, hidden by the ancient flesh. He was Uriel, and always had been. Just as Enoch was his most trusted soldier.

He followed the Nightman’s limping figure and rigid shoulders, down into the shadowy lowest levels of the old house, into the empty corridors, and he knew that Enoch would try for him again.

Enoch stopped outside a heavy door and turned to face him. The long dagger in his hand was no surprise. Nor was the fact that it glittered with celestial power.

“You’ve made your final mistake, Azazel,” he said, his eyes shining. “He’s ordered me to finish you. If it were up to me, I would let you see what’s left of the girl, but I am one who follows orders.”

“Of course you are, Metatron.”

The king of the angels, ruler beneath Uriel, looked startled. “You know?”

“That this is Uriel’s idea of heaven? That the charming old man is the archangel himself, playing games of pain and pleasure? Those poor, colorless people who wander these streets must be the few he considered worth saving.”

“You and the girl are the ones without color, you fool. It makes killing easier when the blood isn’t red.”

“I do not care what color your blood is. Just that it spills.”

Metatron’s mouth curved in an ugly smile. “My sentiments as well. But I have the knife and you have nothing.”

Azazel returned the smile with a calm one of his own. “You have fought me in years past, Metatron. You should know I don’t need weapons.”

“Nor do I,” he snarled, dropping the glowing blade and advancing on Azazel with the cold certainty of physical superiority.

It was over quickly. A kick to the groin brought him down, fast and in shock; a hard chop on
the back of the head and he went sprawling, unconscious. Luck and surprise had helped him, Azazel thought. Arrogance on Metatron’s part had brought his fall. He wouldn’t make that mistake the next time. And there would be a next time, Azazel knew full well.

He stepped over Metatron’s body and reached for the door. She wasn’t dead, he knew that much. He would know, he would feel it, if she ceased to exist. Uriel was never going to tell them the secrets that she’d unwittingly held. He’d put her through that torture for nothing.

The room was dark, but he could smell her blood, and for a moment he halted. It was unavoidable, instinctive, powerful. He wanted that blood flowing down his throat, coating his tongue. Almost as much as he wanted the source of that blood.

It took him a moment to get his fierce need under control. He switched on the light, and looked at the creature lying on the stretcher.

He knew her by the red hair, even though it was dark with blood. Her face was so battered and swollen she could be anyone. Her torso and legs were a mess, her wrists and ankles bleeding from the shackles. She must have struggled against them. They would have liked that.

He couldn’t help her—she was too far beyond
his meager gifts of healing. She was near death, in truth, but when he leaned over her and unfastened her shackles, she opened her eyes through the swollen bruising and looked at him.

Her mouth moved, and he put his ear to it, but the rasp was too raw to understand. He didn’t want to see the hatred in her eyes, so he concentrated on the shackles on her ankles, then undid the other restraints. There was no reason to keep her bound like that—she was too weak to fight. It must have been for their pleasure in her pain.

He slid his arms under her fragile body, and she jerked in silent agony. He had no choice—he had to get her out of there. He lifted her carefully, cradling her against his chest, and his hands were wet with her blood. He kicked open the door, stepping over Metatron’s body, and headed toward the street.

He could sense it, a door to the outside that few used. He could carry her up the stairs, out past Uriel-Beloch and the other angels, but he could not kill them all without putting her down, and that he wouldn’t do.

And he couldn’t kill the archangel. In a battle he could hurt him, but only temporarily. Assuaging his vengeful fury and his crushing guilt wasn’t important. What mattered was getting Rachel out
of there. To someplace where they could find help. To Sheol.

The hallways were more like dark tunnels, but his sense of direction was infallible, and he followed the twisting path toward the exit, almost there when a shadow crossed his path. More than one. Truth Breakers.

“You think you can ignore Uriel’s commands,” one of them said in its hollow voice. “You are foolish. Put her down.”

He didn’t tighten his grip on her. He had hoped to avoid them. Beloch must have been waiting. “I’m not accountable to Uriel anymore,” he said evenly. “I refuse to bow to his tyrannies. Get out of my way if you wish to live.”

“You are mistaken,” the Truth Breaker said. “You are the one who is going to die. Set her down, or she will die with you right now.”

The Truth Breakers were gifted bringers of pain and death. But they were neutral, unfeeling. They didn’t have his fury. “Gladly,” he said, setting her down carefully. He had no choice. She must have lost consciousness, a small blessing for her.

Despite his fury, something had held him back from killing Metatron. He felt nothing for the shadowy torturers surrounding him, and it was over far too quickly for his taste. He was fast, brutal, and efficient; their surprise at his
strength was their downfall. He refused to think about what he was doing, the rending of flesh and bone, the carnage caused by him alone. Perhaps it would haunt him late at night, perhaps it wouldn’t. Within moments the six of them lay at his feet, whatever strange form of life they’d possessed now gone.

He moved back to Rachel’s body and froze. Her eyes were open, and she’d watched everything, the horrific savagery he was capable of. And then she closed her eyes again, as if even looking at him was seeing an unspeakable monster.

He held her carefully. Her life force wasn’t strong; she’d lost a great deal of blood, and if he didn’t get her help soon she would die. And much too late, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t bear it if she did.

He kicked open the door into the moonless night. The rain had stopped, but the gloom remained. How fitting that this was Uriel’s idea of the perfect afterlife. Heaven, Paradise, Valhalla. The Dark City, with no sunshine, no joy, no light.

He looked down at Rachel. Yes, she was Rachel, not the demon, not the Lilith, no matter what darkness hid inside her. She was Rachel, and he’d betrayed her.

There was only one person who could save her. He would have to take her to the woman he
hated, the woman who’d taken Sarah’s place. He would have to take Rachel to Sheol, to Raziel’s wife, the new Source. And pray to the God who had abandoned them that Allie could save her.

He spread his wings wide and surged upward, into the dark, threatening sky that surrounded this cursed place. Up toward the brilliant sun, leaving the Dark City and the archangel Uriel far behind.