Larissa Ione - Azagoth - A Demonica Novella

Suddenly, his hand was clamped around her throat, almost of its own volition. Angels did that to him, made his body parts act independently of his brain. He felt her reach for her angelic ability to strike at him, but this was his realm, and here he controlled the use of power.

“Send someone willing.” He bared his fangs, giving the angel an up-close-and-personal look at one of the things that made them so very different despite their angelic origins. “I’m warning you. Because the next angel who steps through that doorway won’t be leaving. Ever.”

Lilliana scurried through the pristine white halls of the massive Archangel Complex, her heart beating like a hummingbird’s. She’d only been here once, several hundred years ago, and it had merely been to deliver a message from her superiors in the Time Travel Operations Department.

This time, she was here because she’d been summoned, and that could only be bad news. Her direct supervisor, an angel humans would describe as nerdy and shy, had warned her that after her latest screw-up, she might earn more than just a suspension from TTO.

She broke out in a sweat at the thought. Her work was her life. The only connection she had with her dead mother. If the archangels took that away from her...she shuddered. Sure, she’d committed a grievous offense, but there had been extenuating circumstances. She’d been kidnapped, held captive, and forced to do things she hadn’t wanted to do. Her nerdy supervisor understood...but he didn’t think the head honchos would. Besides, rules were rules, and Heaven’s tolerance for rule breakers was notoriously nonexistent.

Stomach churning, she entered the garishly maroon and gold offices of Raphael. The Raphael. She might vomit on his robes.

A petite, flaxen-haired female looked up from her crystal tablet, a device that was the human equivalent of an electronic tablet device...if human tablets had advanced by about ten billion years. She gave Lilliana a bored once-over, pausing to wrinkle her nose at Lilliana’s unfashionably loose brown hair. Lilliana could change it with a mere thought, maybe piling it on top of her head like a giant ostrich egg the way the other female wore it, but she’d never cared about current fashion. She did, however, care about looking stupid.

“To your left.” Egghead went back to tapping on her tablet.

Lilliana turned down the hall, which ended inside a room with walls that seemed to be made of white smoke. A marble fountain, an extinct palm tree, bronze statues...the room was filled with the most eclectic mix of objects from different time periods.

An angel appeared before her from out of nowhere, and although she’d never seen Raphael before, she knew him instantly. He stood a full foot above her five foot eleven inches, and his golden hair fell in a shiny curtain around broad shoulders draped by a lush, purple velvet mantle. Jewel-encrusted rings circled every finger, and a gold sun-shaped pendant hung halfway down his chest, standing out starkly against his snowy white suit.

If she had to describe the style of his outfit, she’d go with royal-retro-pimp.

“You’re late.” His deep, dark voice rumbled through her, jangling her already unsteady nerves. “Late to a meeting with an archangel.”

She was most certainly not late, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to argue. “Ah...I got lost—”

He cut her off with a savage sweep of his bejeweled hand. “Your excuses don’t interest me. I have a proposition for you.”

Wow. What everyone said about archangels was true.

They were giant douchebags. With terrible fashion sense and taste in decor.

“What kind of proposition?”

“I understand that you’re curious about the underworld.”

Her pulse picked up a notch. Most angels nursed a deep hatred for anything related to demons and their realm, Sheoul, and one never knew how much trouble you could get into by being too inquisitive. Plus, too much curiosity threw up a red flag for those who watched for signs of potential defection to Satan’s camp.

“I wouldn’t say I’m overly curious,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “but I do find it interesting that many ancient human structures are replicated in Sheoul and vice versa, and I’d love to study the links between them.”

“What if I said I could give you that opportunity?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “I’d say...what’s the catch?”

“The catch is a big one.” He gave an ominous pause she suspected was calculated to make her lungs seize. It worked. “You’ll have to take a mate.”

What little air she had in her lungs whooshed out in a rush. “A mate?” she choked out. “Why?”

“Because this particular male wants a mate, and we need him, so he gets what he wants.”

In other words, this particular male, clearly a standup guy, was using blackmail to get what he wanted. She licked her dry lips, buying herself time to speak without sounding as if she’d run a marathon. “And what about what I want?”

The archangel regarded her with disdain, as if what she wanted was of no consequence. “How about we go over all of the terms of this deal before you decide what you want.”

“Of course,” she said tightly. She had a feeling the terms were going to be pretty one-sided, and that side wouldn’t be hers. “Who is he?”

“Azagoth, collector of souls.”

Her heart stopped. Just quit beating. “The Forgotten One? The Grim Reaper?” Holy shit. He had to be kidding. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“I have no sense of humor.”

She’d heard that about Raphael. About most of the archangels, actually. “But you want me to mate Azagoth?”

Raphael inclined his head in an impatient, curt nod, as if this wasn’t something to get all worked up about. How could he be so calm?

Because it’s not his head on the chopping block, that’s how.

The ex-angel, sometimes known by those in Heaven as The Forgotten One, was occasionally spoken about with respect, but most often, contempt. He’d been a hero in Heaven, the person who first identified Satan as a rotten apple who was planning a coup against his angelic brethren. Because of Azagoth, Satan had been stripped of his wings and cast out of Heaven to create his own realm known as Sheoul, where he’d set up shop breeding evil minions.

Too late Heaven realized they should have put Satan down when they had the chance, because centuries later, his demonic creations began to die, and with nowhere to go, their disembodied souls wreaked havoc on the Earth. Azagoth volunteered to create Sheoul-gra, a holding tank for the souls, but why he volunteered was the topic of hot debates and wild conspiracy theories.

The only thing anyone agreed on was that he’d been corrupted by evil and was one of the most dangerous and powerful beings outside of Heaven. Fortunately, he was contained inside his own realm...but his reach extended far beyond it, and that had always been a concern for The Powers That Be in Heaven.

Raphael let her stew in her thoughts for a moment before adding, “And full disclosure; you can never leave his realm once you get there.”

Her jaw dropped. Closed. Dropped again. Unable to leave Sheoul-gra? She’d be trapped. Imprisoned, just like she’d been when she was kidnapped by a crazy angel bent on getting revenge on an archangel, a situation that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

Finally, she managed a squeaky, “Never?”

“Not...in the traditional sense.” Raphael produced a cup of nectar from out of thin air and held it out to her, but she refused. She doubted her stomach could hold anything down right now. Plus, refusing something offered by an archangel gave her a sinful feeling of satisfaction. “But according to my intel, he possesses a chronoglass .”