“Orders?” Sammael made a careless gesture with a flick of his wrist. “I have none.”
“None?” The archdemon glanced at Raguel.
“My brother’s presence does not hold my tongue. This is cause for celebration, not alarm. Cain is removed from the field. Raguel has learned how little he means in the grand scheme of things.” Sammael stroked his chin thoughtfully. “However, it does me little good to keep Raguel if it is believed that he is dead. The word of his capture can be spread, of course.”
“And quickly,” Azazel added.
“Yes. But I think it might be more effective to return him to a world in which he has lost importance. I will have to consider the matter further.” Sammael’s malice-laced smile was riveting. “You can always choose to stay of your own accord, brother. I welcome you with open arms.”
“Never,” Raguel spat.
Sammael snapped his fingers and Raguel found himself contained in a cage suspended over the fiery pits of Hell. Smoke, ash, and heat billowed upward and wrapped him a cocoon of torment. But what was worse was the dead space inside him that he hadn’t noticed while consumed by fear.
For all of his life, his mind and heart had been filled with a steady influx of orders from the seraphim, reports from handlers and mentors, and the occasional comment from Jehovah himself—new assignments for his Marks, reports and receipts, commentary and encouragement. It had sounded like the faint buzzing of hundreds of flies, a steady hum that was the rhythm of his existence. The beat to which he marched, the tempo of his heart, the cadence of his life. The sudden awful silence within him was like a yawning black hole.
Discarded. Forgotten. Expendable.
Raguel sank to his knees and cried.
Azazel approached his prince, his face schooled to impassivity so as not to give away his surprise. He would not have expected his liege to act so boldly in regards to the archangel Raguel. Terror and temptation were expected. Torture and imprisonment were not.
He looked at the fallen hellhound and shook his head at the loss. “The boy is a loose cannon. He is a danger to us all.”
Sammael smiled. “He thinks he is invincible and who can blame him? He was at ground zero in an explosion that took out an entire city block, yet he lives to cause more trouble.”
“I request permission to kill him.”
“Kill him? He walks among Marks as one of them. The glamour he wears is so perfect none suspect him. If he pulls this off, he will prove that we are being too cautious.”
“He is an abomination,” Azazel said. “I would celebrate that fact, if he were not also an idiot.”
“When his time comes, you may have him.” The prince stood. “In the meantime, we have many successes to relish. Our position has not been so favorable in a very long time.”
Azazel shifted with unease. “Will you keep Raguel, then?”
“No. I will hold him only long enough to despair and doubt his faith. The rest he will do to himself, because of jealousy and resentment. It is more fun that way.”
“Cain’s advancement could be quite a coup for you,” the lieutenant agreed. “You might consider telling him the truth.”
Sammael laughed. “I am still waiting for his mother to do the honors.”
“After all these centuries? I doubt she intends to.”
“The time will come,” Sammael said, his gaze dreamy and his thoughts on some future Azazel could not see. “When it does, all Hell will break loose. What a day that will be, my friend. What a day.”
CHAPTER 16
Alec didn’t shift directly into the Grimshaw compound. Instead, he paused at the convenience store across the street and studied the main entrance from a safe distance. He breathed with concentrated steadiness, willing his system to become accustomed to his long-repressed mal’akh power to shift from one location to another.
From the exterior, the Charleston Estates gated residential community looked like many others. A fountain occupied the center of a circular drive. A guard station stood at the entrance. A tall stucco fence surrounded the entire perimeter, providing privacy for the homeowners inside. Mature trees dotted the winding streets, providing shade and an exterior appearance of tranquillity. While the developer’s brochure listed some upscale amenities—tennis courts, a helipad, and a concierge house—there was nothing to proclaim it as the domain of the Black Diamond Pack. But every single resident was a wolf under Charles’s command.
It was ingenious, actually. An ideal way to keep tabs on his subordinates . . . and to ensure that secrets stayed secret.
Like the Lebensborn-2 program.
Thanks to Giselle, he had a fairly thorough map of the community in his mind. The Mare was frightened by his transformation to archangel and equally wary of what would happen if he were to be captured with the motel room key on his person. She would not fare well if Charles found her in the possession of Cain the Archangel. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take, so he trusted that the map she drew him was as correct as she could make it.
The question now was whether he should go to the kennel first and kill the hellhound pups, or whether it would be wiser to take out Charles, then deal with the Alpha’s mess. He glanced at his watch. It was quarter after two. Forty-five minutes until the conference call. This might have to be a reconnaissance mission. Get the lay of the land. Get out. Come back later.
But he’d much prefer to strike during the day when the wolves least expected it, when they were at their laziest and most vulnerable. Maybe he would blow off the conference call instead. The other archangels weren’t expecting him. It might be better to allow them time to adjust to his new role.
The sooner he finished this task, the sooner he could return to Eve. That was still his motivation, although it was a conscious decision rather than an emotional compulsion.
He felt her. Tangibly. As if she stood beside him with her hand in his. But in reality it wasn’t his hand she was holding, it was Abel’s. He felt no personal response to that, a lack of reaction that made him feel like a stranger in his own skin. Worse yet, in lieu of his own feelings, he felt Abel’s—a brutal, covetous, consuming lust for Eve that fed off Alec’s connection to the hundreds of Infernals under Raguel’s command. The ties to the demons were thready, but what he did absorb was cool, dark, and very seductive.
Alec could only conclude that just as the Novium found a loophole around the lack of physical response, his brain was finagling around the lack of emotional reaction. It was telling him that Abel’s feelings for Eve were his, not his brother’s.
In short, he was screwed.
Instead of the peaceful disassociation archangels enjoyed, he felt the frustration and lust that were Abel’s. Mixed with the confusion and heartbreak Eve was experiencing, Alec was suffering like a teenager with a megadose of pubescent hormones.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way; archangels were serene. But Eve’s Novium was throwing a wrench into everything, along with the fraternal bond between him and Abel, her affection for both of them, their pressing desire for her, and the triumvirate of mentor/Mark/handler. The whole morass was completely unique, creating an environment that fostered an anomalous connection that had to be addressed as soon as possible. With the overwhelming influx of information pouring into him from both the seraphim and Raguel’s Infernals, Alec didn’t have the energy left over for . . . angst. He felt as he suspected schizophrenics might, with hundreds of voices in his head telling him what to do and when to do it, while his own mind was telling him that Eve was still important to him no matter how he felt. Or didn’t feel, as the case may be.
Archangels weren’t supposed to experience romantic love. With everything else they dealt with, they weren’t equipped. They were kept detached by the hand of God, which is why they were discouraged from using their powers. The restriction was the most efficient way of cultivating the sympathy for mortals and Marks they would otherwise be incapable of feeling. But they had an advantage he lacked: they didn’t know what they were missing. It was easy to turn down something when you’d never had it. Far more difficult to resist something you were addicted to. While he didn’t feel the urge for a fix any longer, he still remembered what it felt like to be high and the sensations filtering in from Abel and Eve kept the memories potent.
“Eve.”
He wanted to reach out to her, but was afraid to. The connection to the Infernals had . . . awakened something. Like a hidden coiled serpent unwinding from its den and making its presence known. Alec was forced to feel Eve’s turmoil without the ability to comfort or explain.
Until he finished here.
Alec supposed he could assign a Mark to the task of killing Charles now that he was no longer a Mark himself, but he didn’t. Charles had killed Eve because of him. He would, therefore, be the one to avenge her.
The kennel was where he decided to start. He could use the death of the pups as psychological warfare. Fear of Sammael’s retaliation would knock Charles off his game and give Alec another advantage. With luck, that would add a layer of unrest to Charles’s last day here on Earth and added torment when he returned to Hell.
Alec shifted to the far side of the building, which was built off of the red-tile-roofed community center in the very heart of the compound. Children played in the nearby Olympic-size pool. Adults basked on white plastic loungers in the sun. It was a demon’s paradise and its existence was one of the reasons why Charles’s wolves were so loyal to him. It was also a warning to Alec—everything breathing within a two-mile radius wanted him dead with a vengeance.
Reaching the rear double doors, which were made of reinforced steel, Alec attempted to shift inside and was prevented by a ward of some sort. He would have to get inside the old-fashioned way.
He tried the levered handle and found it unlocked. He was slightly surprised, despite how difficult it would be for anyone with a nefarious purpose to get this far without detection. A camera was trained at the doorway, but it wouldn’t register him. Secular technology was good, but it wasn’t capable of registering beings functioning on a different plane, such as archangels using their full powers. Which meant it was there to catch Marks and mortals. The question was—was it catching them going in, or running out?
A sense of foreboding tightened his jaw. He depressed the handle with his thumb and the lock gave way without a sound. He cracked the door to look inside and was immediately assailed by the sweet odor of Marks and the cacophony of multiple creatures protesting their confinement.
The building was soundproofed.
Peering through the narrow slit between the two doors, Alec took in a long hallway that made an uninterrupted line to the other side of the building. A stocky wolf in human form stood an arm’s distance away with his back to him. Alec waited for the guard to scent him. When the wolf pivoted and attacked in half-form with claws and canines extended, Alec jerked the door open and lunged for the guard’s throat. His fingers dug into the flesh, piercing through it. Fisting the trachea, Alec ripped it free. The wolf fell, unable to voice a sound and paralyzed, his life’s blood spurting from his carotid in thick, powerful pulses.
In full wolf form, he would have turned instantaneously to ash. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return. In half-form, the process took longer and was sometimes incomplete, leading to semiburned bodies that mortals attributed to spontaneous combustion.
Alec waited for the welcome and familiar rush of bloodlust to heat his veins and thicken his muscles. It didn’t come. The absence was excruciating, like blue balls from f**king without the resulting orgasm. Loving Eve and killing Infernals were the only things in his existence that brought him pleasure and both had been taken from him. He understood now why the archangels were so ambitious. What else did they have to live for?
Dropping the remnants of the throat onto the man’s chest, Alec stepped over him, finding a modicum of relief by siphoning his frustration through to the Infernals connected to him.
Cages lined either side of the hallway. The walls were windowless, whitewashed cement block and the ground was polished concrete liberally scarred with claw marks. Small trenches were dug into the juncture of the exterior walls and the floor, with steadily flowing water running the length like a river.
Driven into a frenzy by the scent of blood, the beasts snarled and leaped into the bars without regard for their own safety. A quick count told him there were a dozen of the creatures, each one at least five feet tall. Fleshy and lacking fur, they had thickly muscled shoulders and thighs, and tiny midsections. They panted like dogs, but ran like apes, their hands fisted and punching into the concrete floor. The more excited they became, the sweeter they smelled. Like Marks.
Alec yanked open a glass door that protected a wall-mounted display of shotguns. He would rather not use his newly acquired archangel powers, if he could help it. The force required to kill an Infernal would send out a ripple that would be easily detected by the adult wolves sunning themselves just beyond the door.
Alerted by the ruckus, another wolf in human form emerged from a room at the end of the hall. She charged Alec, growling with a fury that incited further frenzy from the caged beasts. The bitch altered to canine form midstride and leaped. Alec shifted to a position behind her and fired, severing her spinal cord at the nape. Reduced to ash that exploded outward, the bitch’s remains dusted the creatures in the nearest cells. They grew rabidlike in their mounting hysteria, slamming into the bars with such force they rattled the anchors and filled the air with clouds of debris.
Pumping another round into the chamber of the shotgun, Alec began searching the rooms of the building, looking for further threats. In the end, he didn’t find anyone else, which wasn’t a great surprise. Giselle had said the pups took decades to mature, plenty of time for security to grow lax. Since the Infernals hadn’t been caught yet, there was no reason for them to believe they would be now.