Chapter One
“Hello, sister.”
Horror caught her voice in her throat as she looked up at Octavian. At the man—at the thing—that was perched on top of her, straddling her thighs. On each of his arms was etched an archaic and ceremonial magic circle. Each was a combination of two names—an archangel’s merged with one of their fallen brethren’s. She knew them on sight. She wore identical ones, after all.
Only instead of ink like hers, the marks on his arms were carved into his flesh, oozing and bleeding. They didn’t look fresh, but instead like they had never healed.
It was impossible.
He was impossible.
He’s just like me.
She yanked on her restraints, but the leather straps were etched with symbols she knew rendered them unbreakable no matter how hard she tugged. And even worse, the magic on the table made it inescapable even for someone with her talents. The writing held her soul as skillfully as the leather held her body.
The smile on his beautiful features was beaming, proud, and jubilant, like he had just won the lottery. Like he’d dreamed of this moment, and now it was real. Blond curls fell in front of his crimson eyes. It was clear he was having a blast. At least one of them was.
“I know, I know, it’s not fair to call you my sister. We’re not really anything, you and me. We’re just puppets of flesh and clay, homunculi made for the amusement of others. We’re no more related than two dolls on a shelf. I just wanted to be dramatic, I suppose.”
“Who…who the fuck are you?” It was a stupid question, but she didn’t know what else to say.
He chuckled and let out a long sigh as he sat back on her thighs. He was lithe and thin, and his weight on her felt like next to nothing. “The doll that sat on the shelf before you until I was much more trouble than I was worth, and I went in the trash. I’m just the prototype. Your prototype.”
She shook her head dumbly, not understanding. No, she understood, but she couldn’t process what she was hearing. “Asmodeus…made you?”
“Mmm, see, I don’t know if I should give you that one for free or not.”
“For free?”
“I wanna play a game with you, darling.” His crimson eyes trailed from her face down to her collarbone. He reached out and placed his fingertips there then drifted up her throat, and she realized he was tracing a vein underneath her skin. “A game you won’t want to play, so I’ll pay you in information.”
She didn’t want to ask. She figured she already knew the answer. But he was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to ask with an overeager, excited look on his thin features. “Okay. I’ll bite. What kind of game?”
“It’s easy! You ask me a question, and if I think it’s valuable enough…I’ll tell you the truth, but I get to kill you after. In whatever way I want.” He shivered, as if overcome with some sort of thrill.
Oh. Yeah. He was insane. A special kind of nuts. “Octavian, I hate to break it to you, but that’s a shitty game.”
“Oh, come on!” he whined. “You get to know all the details about my evil scheme, and I get to play with you the way I want to. And then, you can’t be mad at me for it. Because we had a deal.”
“I don’t think that’s how this works,” she shot him a narrow glare, “seeing as I’m your prisoner.”
“Mmh, details.” He sighed and leaned back again, still perched atop her thighs. The man had to weigh maybe a hundred pounds total. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you this bit for free. Asmodeus made me.”
They paused. Him, smiling expectantly, and her, looking up at him wondering where on the scale from one to Hannibal Lecter this guy registered. “Am I allowed to ask follow-up questions? Or are you going to start stabbing me if I do?”
He gave her an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to pay up. Come on.” He poked her in the ribs, and she jolted. “I’m trying to be friendly.”
“Right. Sure. This is friendly.” She avoided rolling her eyes. But, man, she wanted to. At least his weird, childlike joy and bizarre friendliness with her was dulling down her shock at what he really was. “When did Asmodeus make you?”
He grinned, glad she was playing along for now. “On November first, 1860. Fifty years to the day before he made you. That makes you my little sister.” He giggled—actually giggled. “Sorry. There I go again. Can I call you my sister, though?”
She blanched. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“You’re no fun.” He pouted and slid down until he was lying half next to her and half on top of her. She went stiff, frozen still, as he nuzzled his head into her neck, and let out a long, contented sigh. He was cuddling her. Honest-to-God cuddling her. “You smell so nice. I smell like blood, no matter how hard I try to scrub it off.”
Octavian had been a six on the Hannibal Lecter Scale of Crazy. Now he was pushing up toward an eight. Maybe eight and a half.
“Are you cold?” There was genuine concern in his voice. “I turned the heaters up for you, but this place doesn’t really have central heating.” He giggled. “Doesn’t really have heating at all.”
“Where are we?”
“Oh! Oh, that’s a good one. Maybe that’s the first one to trade for.” He pushed back up to sit on top of her again. The man seemed to be too excited to sit still. “Yes. I think I’ll trade you for that. It’s a good one. Let me kill you, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I’d hate to point this out, um…but you could just kill me anyway.” She yanked on her wrists. “Kinda stuck.”
He laughed. “Oh, I know. I can, could, probably would if you didn’t agree. But…this way it’s much more fun. I’ll tell you where we are. But it means you won’t beg me to stop when I kill you.”
“One small problem in your sick plan. The first time you kill me, Azrael will know where I am. They’ll be here in a heartbeat to stop you.”
“Ah, no, they won’t. Telling the others where you are means getting involved in saving someone from a life or death scenario. Even if you don’t stay dead, it still counts as suffering. It would break his sacred vow.” He poked her on the end of the nose. “Right?”
Veil swallowed thickly. He was right. No matter how bad things got, Azrael would keep his mouth shut about where she was. He wouldn’t do anything to save her. Damn it. Octavian was right. This definitely counted as “suffering,” and Azrael never stepped in to stop it. She let out a long growl and shut her eyes. This was going to suck.
“But! It is a useless piece of information, I suppose. Since Azrael will know in a few minutes anyway. So, I’ll tell you what. I’ll make it a quick death. Small piece of information? Small death.”
“How utterly magnanimous of you.” She couldn’t keep her sarcasm out of her voice.
He laughed. “Fair. That’s fair. So, darling, do we have a deal?”
She looked up at him narrowly. “Let me get this straight. Let me just…recap. You’re going to start trading me information for murdering me over and over again. Which you could technically do anyway.” She snorted. “No. How about no? If I say no, do I get to not take a trip on the U.S.S. Stabby?”
He grinned at her joke but then tried to school his features into something more businesslike. It was a sad attempt. “Now, before you get to be too hasty, think about this. Azrael won’t come to save you, but what about the rest of what I have to say? The rest of all that I know? Oh, he’ll be happy to relay what I’m willing to tell you. Can you imagine what Michael and the others will do when they learn I’m a homunculus? Don’t you want to warn them about Asmodeus’s deceit? All it takes is one little death, and then they know what kind of freak I really am.”
Damn it.
Shit!
She really hated it when insane people made sense.
She sighed heavily. Damn it all! Yes. They really did need to learn what they were up against, and this was the only way it was going to happen. She growled and thrashed uselessly on the table in a last bid to get free. Octavian let it happen, still smiling above her, seeing that he was winning. “Fuck! Fine. Fine!”
He made a happy and excited squeak and clapped his hands. “Oh, thank you, darling. Thank you. This is going to be so much fun!”
“For you.”
“Yeah. That’s fair.” He chuckled and ran his hands through his chin-length, blond, and curly hair. Some of it was stained a little red with crimson. “Well. Here it is. Where are we? We haven’t gone far at all. We’re still here in Mount Auburn Cemetery.” He spread his arms out at his sides in his big reveal. “We’re in a crypt I took over for my headquarters. This one is particularly stupid. I’m not sure why anybody ever needed a crypt this huge and lavish. An over-extravagant final home for a bunch of over-extravagant corpses, I guess.”
Octavian pointed. Following his gesture, she saw the walls were etched with names. She hadn’t noticed at first, having been too distracted by the knife in her lungs and the madman on top of her.
“It’s a rather uncomfortable home, but it’ll do for now. No one thinks to look in a crypt for the living, do they? Not to mention, they won’t think to look anywhere close to where I took you. The best hiding spot is often right underfoot. No pun intended.” Again, he flashed her that beaming smile. “There we go! Was it worth it?”
“Clever, I’ll give you that.” She sighed. “Now you’re going to kill me?”
“Are you cold?”
“I—” she stammered, unsure of how to respond to that. He had just changed topics like a hummingbird changes direction. “What?”
“You never did tell me if you were cold.”
He said he was going to cut her limbs off. Told her he was a homunculus like her. And he was concerned that she was cold? Holy shit. Now he was an eight and a half on the Hannibal scale, officially. “I’m…I’m fine, thanks.”
“Good.” He suddenly lay down on her again and snuggled closer to her. He let out a long, contented sigh. “I do get to kill you. Doesn’t have to be now, does it?” He seemed so…sad, suddenly. So lonely. “I want to talk some more first. Okay?”
“Sure.” Not like she was going to rush to the front of the line to get stabbed to death.
“I’m just so happy to meet you. To really meet you. I’ve waited for this day for so long.” He tucked his head up against her neck. She could see the blood on his back, soaked into the gauze in three circular patches, hiding the symbols she knew were there. “I was there when he made you, you know. I helped design you.”
She cringed. This was just going from creepy to worse. If she thought trying to reconcile Azrael as her dad and Asmodeus as her lover was bad, trying to figure out what the hell Octavian was in her life was another giant can of worms she didn’t need.
“I didn’t know you existed. I thought…” She paused. He was right; he smelled like blood and cologne. It was an odd combination.
“That you were the only one? I don’t blame you. I hate to tell you, but I wasn’t his first attempt. Just the first one that lived.” He leaned up on his elbow next to her, smiling warmly down at her. There was friendliness there, a tenderness that shocked her. It was more terrifying than if he had been cruel. He ran his fingertips gently along her chin. “You and I come from a long line of failures. A pile of corpses that were all made by him. His little human dolls.”
She cringed and looked away, but he turned her head back to look up at him with a press of his bloodstained fingers against her chin. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to react to him. She wanted to know why Asmodeus had done all this. Why he had lied to her again.
The sting of his betrayal must have made her wince. She really was too much of an open book sometimes. Reading her correctly, Octavian let out a small hum. “Don’t be too angry. He feels too much. That’s his curse. They call his twin the archangel of love, but I don’t think that’s quite true.” He tilted his head thoughtfully down at her. “I bet that’s why he didn’t interrupt us in the bar when he saw me.”
“Why?”
He grinned and answered her question with two more. “Do you know why he made us? Why he made you in particular?”
“For some hot sex that won’t up and die on him.” She couldn’t help but grin. “I mean, I don’t mean to presume or anything.”
Octavian burst out laughing. Not derisively, not cruelly, but honest-to-God laughter. He smiled down at her and poked her in the ribs lightly. The action still made her jolt. “No, silly. We were never like that. Besides, if he wanted immortal sex, he has plenty of that at home. Incubi and succubae ready and happy to do his every whim, not to mention the rest of the population of Hell. No. He loves humanity. But he hates mortality. He wanted a human, immortal family. You, his bride. And me? Well…” He trailed off thoughtfully. “A son, I suppose.”
“A family,” she repeated dumbly, trying to sort it all out.
“You were his goal in all this. You were clearly his only desired outcome. Me? Just the prototype that hung on.” He shrugged. “But that’s why he didn’t barge in on us at the bar at first, I think. He saw us together, saw his family, and just couldn’t ruin it. He had a chance to kill me a long time ago. He couldn’t do it. He loves me, and I him, even still. Not to mention, he’d have to ’fess up to you that I was your sketch model.”
Something wasn’t quite adding up. “How did he make you, though? Azrael had nothing to do with you.”
“You want another freebie?” he teased.
She sighed, disgruntled.
He chuckled. “Okay, okay. I guess since I told you I’m a homunculus, I might as well give you all the details with that. I’ll play fair. Did Death make me? No.” Octavian wheezed and turned his head away to cough. She could hear the rattle in his lungs. He spat onto the ground. She didn’t need to see it to know it was blood. He dug in his pocket for his handkerchief and cleaned his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was disgusting.”
Of all the things to apologize for.
He turned back to her and smiled again, his teeth tinged red. “No. I am the sole creation of our favorite archdemon. He realized after I turned out, well, broken, to put it nicely, that he needed help. It was my being a failure that sent him to his brother.” He wheezed again and coughed. “I haven’t eaten in a while. Forgive me.”
“What do you mean, you haven’t eaten in a while?” He’d threatened to eat her, after all. She assumed he was just a sicko. But the way he said it implied it had a connection to his illness.
“I eat human flesh to survive.” He smiled sweetly again like it was a perfectly normal confession.
“Holy shit.” She grimaced and would have recoiled from him if she weren’t strapped to a table. “You’re just a giant pile of fucked up, aren’t you?”
“If it matters, I don’t really enjoy it.” He shrugged one thin shoulder. “Well. Not too much, anyway. I’m always hungry for more of what I am. What I was made from. I consume it, and it becomes part of me. Heals me. But it works less and less as the years go on.” At the look of nausea on her face, he chuckled. “Don’t worry. Like I said, you’re useless to me for that. We’ll have our own fun, though.”
He slung himself off the table, coughed again, and reached down to pick up his bloodstained shirt. He put it back on without any care for the wet crimson splotches. Walking to a nearby chair, he fiddled with something next to it. She watched him curiously as he lifted a clear plastic mask to his face and inhaled. An oxygen tank, maybe?
He took a series of deep breaths from it before dropping the mask back onto the top of the tank. He pulled in a long breath, seemingly experimenting to see if he would cough again, before letting it out with a puff. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was dying, Selina.”
“How, exactly, are you alive at all?”
“I wasn’t lucky enough to have Azrael take my death away, no.” He smiled at her look of surprise. “Oh, yes, I know exactly how you were created.”
None of this made any sense to her. None of it fit with anything she knew. Correction—anything she thought she knew. “So how did Asmodeus give a bunch of stitched-together human corpses the breath of life?”
Octavian walked back over to her and sat on the stool next to the table. He looked so sweet and innocent, but she knew the threats he made hadn’t been lies. She knew he was going to cut her to pieces. It was just a matter of when, with what, and how badly. He folded his arms on the table and propped his chin on top of them again, watching her. His blond curls fell around his thin, delicate features.
He picked up the surgical knife from the table and toyed with it, moving it between his fingers like somebody might play with a pen. “You know how his puppets are made?”
“Binding a living soul to a wooden puppet. When the body dies, the soul transfers over. But the soul doesn’t die.” She couldn’t help but watch the edge of the blade as he lazily moved it through his fingers. She knew it was going to be plunged into her body soon enough.
“Imagine what would happen if you bound a living soul to a living body instead of a dead lump of wood. Imagine if you used all your dark magic to take the willing, living flesh of mortals and twisted them into something new without killing it—something more pleasing. Imagine if you bound the living soul of your most devoted servant to the heap of sputtering blood and bones you made. What would you have then?”
Her eyes went wide. She watched him as he stood slowly, leaning over her, his face tilting down close to hers. His lips brushed over her cheek then hovered close to her ear.
“You think you’re a monster?” He chuckled quietly, his breath ghosting over her skin as he tilted his head. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He kissed her, his lips searing against her skin, thick with the taste of blood, as he drove the knife deep in between her ribs. She felt the slide of blade against bone, and she screamed, muffled against his lips.
***
Richard sat with his head in his hands. The driver’s side door of his best friend’s Pontiac was open, and he was sitting on the driver’s seat with his feet on the asphalt. He had taken Veil’s car and found his family by the front gate but found he couldn’t go any farther.
Not because he didn’t want to run.
Oh, he very much did.
Not just from Octavian. He could run from that madman without shame, but what he couldn’t run from was his accountability. That, he couldn’t stomach. That, he knew would eat him from the inside out like a cancer.
Chelly had oohed and aahed about the old muscle car and wanted to play with all the dials. But she was also exhausted, and sleep warred with her curiosity as she poked at the screen while rubbing at her eyes. Now, she was passed out asleep in his wife’s lap in the back bench.
He had found Veil’s phone on the passenger seat. Flicking it on, he unlocked it using her four-digit code. They knew each other’s codes—not just in case one of them had an emergency, but because they simply knew each other that well.
And I betrayed her.
He’d like to think she understood. He’d like to think she would offer herself up in trade to Octavian to save his life. He suspected that was precisely what happened. She was too smart, and had been in this business too long, to not have seen such an obvious trap coming. Which meant that she had come to the cemetery tonight fully aware of what was going to happen.
It didn’t make the sting any better.
Another text from Conrad.
Conrad: 1 min away don’t do anything stupid.
Richard didn’t bother responding. There was also a voicemail on the phone from a number he didn’t recognize. It was new, having been left in the past few minutes. Hitting it, he raised it to his ear out of curiosity. It might be important.
“Selina. This is a trap you are walking into. Do not go. Do not go near Octavian. You cannot imagine the cost. We will save your friend Richard together. Wait for me. Please, Selina. I love you.”
Asmodeus. A desperate-sounding Asmodeus.
“We should go, Richie,” Chris said from the back seat.
“No. I need to explain to them what happened.”
“But we don’t know anything. They didn’t tell us a single thing.”
“That’s not the part that needs explaining.” Richard sighed and put the phone on his friend’s dash. It was big enough to hold a lot more than a single cellphone. Old cars. They were just needlessly huge. He supposed it was part of the charm. “I’m sorry, but I need to do this.”
He glanced back at his wife and tried to offer her a faint smile, hoping she’d understand. He needed to face judgement for his crime. And if it couldn’t be through Veil, let it be through her new friends.
Chelly was out cold in his wife’s lap. At least she didn’t seem to suspect anything was wrong, only that things weren’t “right.” She knew the adults weren’t telling her something, and that was enough to put her on edge. Not enough that she stayed awake, mind you.
He hoped she didn’t wake up when the yelling began. He knew there’d be yelling. Likely at him. But his girl could sleep through a bomb blast. Here’s hoping it isn’t worse than that.
The sound of engines and wheels screeching turned his attention back to the graveyard. In that moment, six large black SUVs tore out of the darkness and through the gate, swerving onto the main road. Tires squealed, and the smell of burning rubber was thick in the air as they peeled out and took off into the distance, engines roaring.
Octavian and the rest.
Gone. Taking Veil somewhere.
He squeezed his eyes tight and lowered his head, feeling tears sting his eyes. He wanted to weep. But he wouldn’t. Not yet. Not in front of his wife and daughter. Chris’s hand settled on his shoulder, reaching through from the back seat to console him. He slipped his hand over hers and squeezed it.
“You did the right thing.”
He nodded weakly. It didn’t feel like the right thing. It felt like the coward’s choice.
Another minute or two passed before another car pulled up, the headlights sweeping over them then sending him back into darkness as the other driver stopped. The engine flicked off, and four figures climbed out of the black sedan.
His face had bloomed with heat, that strange kind of adrenaline rush one got when caught in a lie or an embarrassing situation. Like when he had accidentally sent an email he thought was a simple reply, but was a reply-all, disparaging several of the people to whom he had unwittingly sent the email.
This was far less mundane. This was serious. Now he knew what that feeling of adrenaline was really for.
He knew Gabe and Conard, who climbed out of the front of the vehicle. He didn’t know the two men who climbed out of the back. But he knew, instantly, that they weren’t exactly normal.
One of them seemed to embody every vision of danger, sexuality, and masculinity in human culture into one well-dressed and towering form. Green eyes swung to him immediately, and Richard recognized the piercing gaze, even if he didn’t know the form it wore. He had seen this creature come back from the spirit world carrying Veil. Asmodeus.
He was slightly less terrifying as a mortal. Slightly.
The other man he truly didn’t know and couldn’t guess. He was built like a quarterback. Broad shoulders, muscular, and dressed casually in a well-loved brown leather coat, a t-shirt, and jeans. Short blond hair. He was handsome—almost too much so. It made his humanity instantly suspect.
Richard stood and closed the door to the car, wanting to separate Chris and Chelly from what was going to happen, even if only a little. It was a meaningless separation, but it made him feel like they were somehow safer. He was a fool grasping at a safety blanket. He stood in the presence of two priests who were plenty dangerous, and at least one archangel, fallen or otherwise. Maybe two.
“Hello, brothers.”
Three.
The voice had come from beside Richard unexpectedly, and he would have screamed if he hadn’t also choked at the same time. He looked over at Azrael, who had appeared there without warning. Richard pressed his hand to his heart, feeling it thud painfully in its cage. “Wh—f—” was all he managed.
Azrael barely cast him a glance. There was judgement in those blue eyes that exactly matched Veil’s. Judgement, sadness, and…age. Those eyes had seen a hundred thousand years of suffering, and now they were looking at him. Judging him for adding more to the pile.
“Hello, Richard,” the archangel greeted him. It felt more like the whisper of a winter wind than a hello.
Instantly, Richard felt his face run cold. He shrank away from the archangel of death. The one whose daughter he had just betrayed. Guilt crashed through him like a runaway train. “I’m so sorry. I—I—”
“He will not harm you.” A deep voice, rumbling like thunder, distracted him. It only added to his fear. He glanced to the man who must be Alistair Solomon. The other creature whose creation he had betrayed.
Richard retreated, trying to keep the hood of the car between him and the approaching dark cloud. The “man’s” face was a schooled mask of indifference. But those green eyes of his glittered in rage.
The archdemon was stalking toward him. He had never felt more like prey in his life. Images of memories flashed into his mind. Of being trapped in that cage, in that bloody basement, listening to his mother and sister scream as they died.
“Please, I—” His voice sounded small. Weak. He was that eight-year-old boy once more.
“You have nothing to fear from the archangel of death,” Alistair assured him. But it was not a comforting promise. He sensed the razor’s edge of danger in the man’s voice. “Azrael does not interfere. He will not take revenge for your betrayal. But me? Mark me, human…” He grinned sadistically, a flash of white teeth that reminded Richard of a wolf. And then the beast struck. “I live by no such rule!”
When Alistair jumped toward him as if to grab him and do some unspeakable horror that Richard couldn’t imagine, he leapt back, tripped over his own feet, and landed painfully on the pavement. Azrael took a step back to let the scene unfold, his hands clasped behind him.
Alistair had him by the front of his coat and dragged him to his feet. Two fists twisted in his peacoat and shook him hard. “What you have done, you will pay for dearly, little mortal. You—”
“Back off.” A pair of arms separated them, pushing Richard back. A body stepped between them, facing Alistair. The other man from the car who he didn’t know. The blond in the brown leather coat. “Back the fuck off, Asmodeus.”
Alistair bared his teeth in a snarl and went to shove him off, but he saw it coming. He put his shoulder into the archdemon’s chest and shoved Alistair back, nearly sending him sprawling to the ground. “I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“And why not? Do you suddenly protect every human life?” Alistair growled at the mystery man. “How quaint.”
“Nope. But I’m gonna do it when I can.” The other man grabbed the edge of his leather coat and gave it a stiff tug to straighten it. “I’m pretty sure I’d get my angel card revoked if I let you squish some poor mortal asshole in front of me.”
“Angel card…?” Richard hadn’t realized he had spoken until it was too late.
“Oh. Hey.” The man turned to look at him and offered him a casual salute. “Michael. Nice to meet you. You must be V’s friend.”
Michael.
Michael.
He staggered back against the car and would have fallen again if the vehicle hadn’t been there to stop him. He shook his head rapidly in disbelief. “Oh, no. No, please, no,” he murmured. The world began to spin and grow fuzzy around the edges. He was getting nauseated and felt both flushed and cold at the same time.
“Aw, is he gonna faint?” Michael scratched the back of his neck. “I hate it when they get all floppy on me. Sit down, bud. Deep breaths. No big deal.” The archangel seemed almost…embarrassed. “Man, I hate being a celebrity.”
It might have been funny if Richard weren’t about to pass out. He paced farther back and leaned against the trunk of the car to try to steady himself. When a hand touched his arm, he nearly leapt out of his skin.
“Easy, easy…” Conrad and Gabe were there, looking at him in deep concern. “Just us. Just the humans.”
It was ridiculous that he found that as comforting as it was. He nodded and forced the air into his lungs to slow down and go deeper. Soon, his dizziness began to fade.
It was Gabe who asked the question Richard dreaded so profoundly. But the one he needed to answer. “What happened to Veil?”
Chapter Two
“Selina.”
A voice spoke to her in that darkness, that emptiness that was the lake before the gate of death. She floated there, feeling the souls come and go around her and knew she could never follow where they went. The freezing nothingness of the place seeped into her quickly. It was the kind of cold that burned. It hurt on a level she could not really describe, as her body wasn’t with her. It hurt in her mind. In her soul. This wasn’t a natural place to linger.
But the voice was always there. For what it was worth, she wasn’t alone.
“I’m so sorry, Selina.”
She couldn’t speak here, but it didn’t matter. He could hear her thoughts. She believed him that he was sorry. Of all the people in her life to lie to her, Azrael had never been one of them. She wanted to ask for help. She wanted him to send someone to save her. But she knew it was wrong to ask.
It wasn’t his way. She wouldn’t make him defend his choices. She knew how everybody guilted him, begged him, pleaded with him for mercy. How many billions of times people must have wept at his feet for another chance, a few more minutes, for salvation. She wouldn’t add to his burden. She refused.
Even if—since she was dead—Azrael knew exactly where they were. To tell the others would be against his vow.
“I’m sorry.”
He apologized again, and she knew it wasn’t for what she had suffered—it was for what she was going to suffer. If this was what she was supposed to endure in the name of God, then he wouldn’t stop it. She understood. She didn’t like it, but she understood.
But she could ask him for one thing.
Asmodeus can’t be trusted.
She could ask him to tell the others about what Octavian really was. Michael had to know what was happening. The priests had to know. Richard didn’t betray her—not really. Not in any way that mattered. But Asmodeus had. Again. He had lied to her. She was an idiot for letting him get close to her again.
She was an idiot for having loved him again.
She showed Azrael the image in her memory of Octavian hovering over her, showing her the bloody marks on his forearms.
Azrael’s voice was silent for a long time. She felt something strange in the darkness. Something like electricity. Something sparking under the surface of the water. She had never felt anything like it. “Octavian is a homunculus.”
Octavian was going to torture her. This wasn’t going to be the only time she would be coming here in short order. Tears stung her eyes. They weren’t real; she knew that much. It was just a part of her, trying to cry. She was afraid. She was heartbroken. For a second time, she had given Asmodeus her heart, and he had shattered it.
“Please don’t weep, Selina. Please.”
But she couldn’t help it.
***
Azrael stood at the gates of Mount Auburn Cemetery. He never came to visit the places of the mortal dead. Where their bodies reposed was not his domain. This was not his kingdom, despite what many of them might believe.
For the things that lay in the ground were dead, not dreaming.
His fists clenched at his sides. Rage filled him. So did his own guilt. The two were matched in equal breadth. And like opposite ends of a scale, they met in perfect balance. If he did not resolve them, he worried he may tear himself to pieces.
First, he examined his guilt. While his rage fueled his blood, his shame cinched a fist around his heart. For he knew what no one else did—Octavian had not left Mount Auburn Cemetery. Neither had Veil. They were only a few hundred feet away, half a mile at most, hiding below ground in a large mausoleum. The vehicles Richard reported seeing leaving had only been a very clever ploy. It would be a successful one…unless he intervened.
But he could not.
To do so would be to break the vow he’d held since he took up his post as archangel of death. Since humans began to die. He could not help Veil. He could not intervene to save her. That was the responsibility of those who stood around him, bickering and shouting at each other. Or, in the case of the mortal man Richard, shaking and nearly weeping in fear.
Then he examined his anger.
Octavian is a homunculus.
Rage surged in him, shattered the scales where they balanced in his mind. His screaming anger deafened the voice of his guilt. He took off his glasses slowly, and carefully went about cleaning the frameless things. They were a conjuration, a lie, just like his mortal form. But the simple action made him take a breath. It forced him to measure out his thoughts and his emotions. It forced him to metaphorically count to ten.
Before he flew at Asmodeus and ripped him in two.
It was not his way.
His kin accused him of being too passive. Too cold. Too mute to the world and the pain around him. It was a lie. It was very much not the case. He heard every cry, felt every ounce of love, saw every tear of sorrow and relief in the souls he ushered to the gates of death.
He knew them all like they were his own.
If he spared any single one of them a second thought, he was certain he would lose his mind. What was left of it, at any rate. Somewhere, he felt the paper beneath his fingertips. The ink on his hands as he wrote the names of all those who passed. He recorded them. Always. Never-ceasing, never-ending, until the last soul on this plane breathed their last. Until all his brothers and sisters ceased to exist, and he was the last to expire.
It would happen eventually. All things died. Someday, the end would come for them all, one way or another. Even those like he who pretended at immortality. There was no such thing.
Even him.
Even her.
Anger rushed in him again, and he bit it back, feeling his lip curl in disgust. Selina had shown him all she had learned. The face of the man—the homunculus—who had taken her. She had learned the truth from him, and in turn, she had relayed it to him. She had died at Octavian’s hands. He doubted it would be the last time she did.
Her body would survive, but what of the rest of her? Minds were just as fragile as bodies. Remarkably more so when the body could not break. There was always a weak link in the chain that bound a person together. There was always some piece that would snap first.
Asmodeus was shouting again. The sound of the archdemon’s rage brought Azrael’s attention from his thoughts and back to the moment. He had stayed to the rear of the pack to listen as Gabe and Conrad grilled the frightened mortal about what had happened. It was his way to listen, not to intervene, after all.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Asmodeus shouted. He had begun pacing the moment they arrived and after his failed attempt to kill Richard, and no matter what Michael tried to say, his fallen brother would not stand down.
“You don’t get to open your damn mouth, Asmodeus,” Michael snarled at him furiously. “You knew he was the creep at the bar. If you had come clean with us—as you said you would—with all you knew, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place!”
Asmodeus growled and bared his teeth at the shorter creature before whirling away, resuming his pacing.
If Michael only knew how right he was.
Azrael would wait for his turn. It would give his anger more chance to simmer. The conversation was wild and unfocused, filled with emotions flying in all directions. Misinformation, misdirection, and misdeeds were rampant. He would take a moment to calm himself before he exacerbated things. He stared at the proverbial boiling pot of iron in his heart and commanded the liquid metal to cool before it shattered the crucible and sent the burning substance scattering and setting the house ablaze.
“Richard. Please. Try to tell us what happened,” Gabe urged quietly, attempting to console the now-weeping history professor. The frightened mortal was trembling. His family was sitting in the back seat. The daughter was asleep and oblivious to what was happening—thank God for small favors—but the wife was watching them, wide-eyed and concerned.
Richard stammered for a moment before he could get his words out. “They took my family. They took me shortly after we left the church. They were masquerading as Alistair’s people. Octavian told me he was going to kill me. Slowly. Unless I did what he asked.”
“You were supposed to be her friend. You were supposed to be her ally. And instead, you said yes! You traded her life for yours.” Asmodeus roared in rage. “Your life is worthless, Richard. You betrayed her!”
“Don’t speak about betrayal right now, boyo.” Conrad pulled one of his guns out and pointed it at Asmodeus, clicking the safety off. “As of right now, you’re suspect number one in this whole royal fuckin’ mess.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Richard’s wife duck low in the back seat over her sleeping daughter, terrified of the sight of a gun. Azrael sighed. “Children, please. Calm yourselves. We have witnesses, remember.”
Conrad made a loud, frustrated sound, hesitated, then with a grumble, clicked the safety back on and slid his gun into his holster. “Fine. For now.”
“I know I betrayed her,” Richard said, wiping his nose with his handkerchief. “I know I did. I have to live with that. I had to think about my family. I just…I just…she can’t die. She can’t be hurt.” Mousy brown eyes found Azrael’s and searched desperately for confirmation. “Right?”
“She cannot die,” he affirmed. But as for the rest, he couldn’t speak to it. He chose to say nothing at all. He didn’t want to upset the mortal any more than he already was. The man’s constitution was shaky at best. Azrael suspected he did the deed to protect his own life, not fully that of his family—but he couldn’t judge the man for his terror. Azrael had no fear of death, after all.
“I can. I…I have a wife and a child. I have to put them first.”
“Then go!” Asmodeus snarled through his teeth. “You have done enough damage here.”
“He’s only mad because he got called out about lying. He’s not mad at you. Not really.” Michael shook his head. “But you should take your family home anyway.” Michael put a hand on Richard’s shoulder and smiled gently at him. Even if the mortal man did recoil in fear a few inches. “We’ll find her. It’ll be fine. You know how tough she is.”
Richard nodded weakly and wiped his nose again. “I’ll…I’ll hold on to her car for safe keeping. We’ll drive home. It’s a long haul, but it’ll be good for us. Tell her it’s with me, and she can come get it when this is all over.”
“I will.” Michael patted him again as Richard moved to climb into the vehicle. “Travel safe, Richard. I’ll send some of my own to watch over you.”
Richard looked at him, clearly confused, terrified, but touched. “Thank you.”
“I’m an archangel. Gotta be good for something.” Michael shrugged. “Now, go on. Console your family. They’ve had it rough too.”
Richard nodded, and without another word, climbed into the antique Pontiac and, with the rumble of an engine, drove off. It left the rest of them ample space to bicker and point guns. It gave Azrael the opportunity, without the fear of traumatizing innocent bystanders, to say his own piece.
The boiling iron in his mind could not be contained. Now that the bystanders were gone, he no longer felt the need to hide it. The crucible cracked.
He let his rage, and his wings, unfurl.
His brethren and the two priests looked to him, shocked at the sudden change. The two priests fell over themselves in surprise as he shed his mortal form.
Azrael spread his four wings wide behind him. He may not be luminescent as Michael, but he shone in his own right, beating back the darkness of the night. It reflected in his stained-glass feathers. He felt the rumble of power that swelled within as he snatched Asmodeus by the front of his shirt. He threw the archdemon unceremoniously into the graveyard and farther from the view of the street.
Azrael was airborne after him before Asmodeus contacted the ground. Scythe in hand, he meant to drive it clean through the archdemon’s ribcage. Not enough to kill, but enough to badly wound. He wanted the archdemon to feel pain. Pain like what Selina suffered now. Pain that paled in comparison to the twofold betrayal she had endured this night.
Once at the hand of her best friend. The second at the hand of her lover.
The third at mine for being unable to save her.
Not unable. Unwilling.
Asmodeus had shed his mortal form the instant he touched the ground and rolled out of the way of the blade. The sharp tip of the scythe cleaved pavement like it was butter. Azrael ripped it out, uncaring for the rocks he sent flying as he swung the blade for his brother’s midsection.
“Azrael, what mean you by this?” Asmodeus dodged, but barely. He was on the defensive, ducking around the swings of his sharp curved blade.
Rarely did he fight. Rarely did he feel the inspiration to do so. But in this instance, he needed to harm the archdemon. And when Death fought, it rarely ended well for his opponents.
“You are a cretin, Asmodeus!” he snarled, his voice deeper and more ephemeral now that he had transformed. Sometimes he barely recognized it as his own. He had so many voices.
The flash of bright light, and a shining silver blade met his scythe and took it to the ground, pinning it in mid-strike. Michael. Azrael glowered at his brother from underneath the hood of his white and black robe, although it did little good. He did not, after all, own a face with which to glare. In the moment, it mattered little.
“Stand down, Michael.”
“Happily,” came the tinny, hollow reply from the suit of armor. “I’ll even join you. I would just like to know why you’ve gone apeshit. You haven’t raised your blade since the war. What did he do?”
Azrael felt his rage run cold. “Selina was not the first he made.”
“I know he tried more than once. You knew that too.”
“She was not his first success.”
Michael’s head tilted back in surprise. He hesitated and turned to look at Asmodeus where he stood, stance taut, ready to defend himself. “What have you done, brother?”
Asmodeus snarled and flexed his wings, the shadows around him darkening and writhing, coming to life with his own matching anger. But he was no match for both Azrael and Michael, and the archdemon knew it. “Neither of you would dare to understand.”
“Answer my question. What have you done?” Michael lifted his blade from where it was pinning his scythe and turned to face Asmodeus. “It’s the cultist, isn’t it? It’s this Octavian.” When Asmodeus was silent, Michael groaned loudly and shook his head. “By God and all the stars above, you are such an immense idiot!” Michael turned back to Azrael. “You didn’t make him?”
“No. I did not know what Asmodeus had done until Selina told me.”
“How did Selina tell—” Michael grunted. “Oh. Right. Yes. That. How many times so far?”
“Just the once. She will die many more times before this is all through, I imagine.” Azrael growled low and turned to face Asmodeus. “You have done this to her. This is a catastrophe of your making. Our brothers and sisters are in chains because of you. Your creation raises an army. And now he has our creation! You are cursed. And I was a fool for ever helping you in making her!”
“You regret your choice, then?” Asmodeus laughed cruelly. “So quick you are to abandon her. When her eyes opened, when she first took breath, you ran from her in fear! You hid from what you had made. And now, you dare show yourself to her, only to turn away from her again. So soon as you deigned to enter her life, you abandon her. A hundred and nine years, you sat silently in the shadows. You could have gone to her in my absence, could have been the father you wished to be. The family she so desperately wanted. Instead, you let her wander alone. Why? For fear she might hate you? Or fear because you did not know if you were capable of love?”
“Do not speak to me of love—”
“No!” Asmodeus snarled loudly, the darkness around him deepening. His wings snapped wide behind him. “You do not know of what you speak, silent watcher. You do not dirty your hands with them. You do not feel love, for you are too afraid of what it might do to you. You dare speak to me with pity in your voice, archangel of death? You disgust me. If you love her now, then tell us where she is. You know her death. You know where she resides. You know from where her heart ceased to beat. Let us go now, the three of us, and end Octavian and save your precious daughter. Let us free our brothers and sisters. You have the key.”
Azrael froze. His heart stuttered in his chest, and he drew back a step. He felt hollow. Iron, boiling upon the floor of his heart, cooled. And in the absence of his rage, only the coldness of regret and shame reigned.
The archdemon’s second cruel laugh did not help. “You see? Silence. You will not break your vow. Not for us, and not even for her. Your anger is misplaced, archangel. Hate me for my misdeeds, for my creations, all you like. But it is not by my hand that she remains imprisoned. It is not by my hand that she will suffer. It is yours!”
Asmodeus beat his large black wings, kicking up a swirl of dried leaves around him. With a leap, soared quickly into the night sky and was gone.
Azrael let out a sound that was part a howl, part something else. He was not quite sure what it was. But it came from the pain that welled up in him. The frustration, the hurt, the guilt. The anger. He melted back into his mortal form. He felt smaller that way. And therefore, in some meaningless way, so did his agony.
He took several steps over to the nearest monument and leaned against it heavily.
“Azrael,” Michael said to him quietly from nearby, “you know where she is?”
“I do.”
“And you won’t tell us.”
“I cannot. You know I cannot.”
“These aren’t special circumstances?”
“There are always special circumstances.” He felt defeated. He heard it echoed in his voice. He wanted Michael to leave him be. He heard the footsteps of the mortal priests approaching him. He could vanish, but he was no coward. He chose to stand as a passive witness to all that transpired; he wouldn’t hide from the recompense that accompanied his vow.
He wished—deeply, in that moment—that he could crawl into one of these graves like all those he had shepherded home over the thousands of years of his post. But it was always to be denied to him. He had no release from his pain.
Michael’s form changed as he shifted back to his mortal body. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Octavian is a homunculus. Like Veil. Great.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Who helped make him, if not you?”
“He is a broken thing. Asmodeus made him alone. Once he learned the results were less than ideal, that must have been what drove him to seek my assistance.” Azrael shut his eyes and hung his head. Pity for others warred with pity for himself. “He is a living soul bound to living flesh that Asmodeus twisted to create a near immortal. He is a madman.”
“Oh, good!” Michael threw his hands up in frustration. “No big deal. That’s great. Just great.”
“That was…somethin’ else, I gotta admit.” Conrad, the Irish priest, spoke up. “Not every day you watch three archangels duke it out. Though I think I only followed about a third of what you all were screamin’ at each other about.”
“I’ll fill you in over food,” Michael replied. “Pretty sure we passed a twenty-four-hour IHOP somewhere back there.”
“Isn’t it an odd hour for pancakes?” Gabe asked warily. “And an odd time to want them?”
“Don’t blaspheme, priest,” Michael warned. Azrael looked up to see the other archangel wagging his finger at the Italian. “A late-night crisis is the perfect time for pancakes.”