hold of the Angel of Time’s sword—if such a thing even existed—and traveled back one year to tell herself she would soon join the trickster Loki and an equally infamous angel in her living room, she would not have believed herself. But here she was, sitting on her couch beside the Jötunn himself with a watcher in the adjacent chair. The angel’s eyes darted repeatedly to the scythe, and he shivered despite the fire.
“Are you cold?” It was hardly the first question Bryony intended to ask, but she couldn’t help it. He looked pathetic, and a pathetic angel created so much dissonance in her head, she simply had to eliminate it.
Azazel shook his head.
“Then why are you shaking?”
He gripped the armrests. “I might feel better if you opened the door, darling. Even a crack.”
“So it was you.” The events of the last few days were beginning to fall into place. “You opened all the doors and windows.” And he’d probably built the fires to compensate. “Why?” The question encompassed more than just open doors and windows, but she didn’t have the words to voice it just yet. She was still flabbergasted.
The angel answered, “I fear I’m not at my best in enclosed spaces. Being bound in darkness for thousands of years is more than enough to give a body a touch of claustrophobia.”
Loki cleared his throat. “Not for all of us.”
Bryony shot him a severe look. “An unreasonable hatred of snakes does not make you superior.”
The color that crept into the shapeshifter’s cheeks gave his shame away. His voice, on the other hand, was all sarcasm and pride. “Look at you all of a sudden, siding with angels. I’m sure your mother would be proud.” He stood and strode over to open the front door.
Loki’s comment was meant to sting as much as Bryony’s had, but it didn’t. Somehow, she did think her mother would be proud. All her memories of the woman were the color of courage. And courage, no matter how misguided it was, always made her mother proud. She closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and prepared to negotiate with a watcher. “Take me to Michael.”
Azazel knit his brow in sympathy. “I truly wish I could, but I don’t know where he is. Ash is due to meet with me tonight, though. If I have Raphael’s sword in hand, he’ll return your Michael unharmed.”
Perfect. This was almost too easy. “Then it’s yours. I only ask that you bring it back.”
“As freely as you give it, darling, I won’t feel the need to keep it for myself. There’s only one person I intend to use it on.”
“Your descendant?”
The angel nodded as Loki returned to his place beside Bryony. The Jötunn did not look at all pleased. There was a flash of distrust in his eyes—anger, too, though Bryony could hardly blame him after the beating he’d just taken. He sneered. “Your descendant was never supposed to exist in the first place, so why not let nature take its course? Less angelic blood in the world is hardly a loss. Why do you care so much about your line anyway? You’re immortal. You can always try again later.”
Azazel’s eyes widened at Loki’s last comment. “You’ve misunderstood. It isn’t my bloodline I’m looking to save.” A shadow of grief passed over his expression. As quickly as it came, it was gone again, but Bryony had not missed it. Grief could never be subtle to her. It screamed, even if only for a moment. For half a breath or less, it screamed.
She suddenly understood. “It’s her bloodline.”
“What?” Loki snapped.
Bryony answered without looking away from the angel. “The mother of his children. The dying woman is also the last of her descendants.”
“Bingo,” Azazel muttered with an empty smile.
Loki scoffed.
“No, it makes sense,” Bryony said. “Angels bond too powerfully—that’s what Michael told me. Their love borders on worship. It’s obsessive, unhealthy. Sorry.” She apologized to Azazel as a matter of course.
Azazel waved a dismissive hand. “Go on, darling. You’re onto it.”
“He can’t bear the thought that the last sliver of her will disappear forever.” She hated to speak such a personal truth about someone other than herself. “He’ll do anything to protect it. He can’t help it. That’s just his nature.”
Loki leaned back and crossed his arms. “If what she says is true, then you’re at a distinct disadvantage, my angelic friend. Unfortunately for you, as soft as my companion may be, it’s me you have to deal with. See, she has no idea where the sword is. It’s no longer hers to freely give. I took it from her, and I hid it well. So if you want to get your hands on it, you’ll offer me something in return. And that snake you’ve kidnapped won’t be enough, in case you’re wondering. Tear him to shreds for all I care.”
Bryony suddenly found it difficult to breathe. How could she have been so foolish? After all he’d done, she still thought of Loki as a friend, but he was no one’s friend, not really. That was his nature. “Why?” she asked him.
“Because you have no idea how to barter, Bryony. You offer asking every time. You never even consider how much more you could get”—he grinned and shrugged—“for less.”
How could he do this? Bryony was furious. She’d never been this angry at her old crow, not even when she learned he’d been lying to her for ten years. Every limb on the Jötunn tensed when her fingers curled around the staff of her scythe.
“Hear me out, Bryony.” He scooted away from her reflexively. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to give you what you’ve always wanted.”
She glared. “What more could I want? I wouldn’t give Michael up for anything. He’s more than enough.” Her knuckles whitened, and Loki stood. A fiery, orange light flickered behind his eyes for a split second. It was the briefest glimpse of his monstrous form breaking through. He was afraid.
Good, she thought. He should be.
But Loki wasn’t about to give up. “Think back,” he said, ever so subtly backing away. “Remember who you were before you joined the armada. Remember what was stolen from you. Surely that snake hasn’t completely erased the girl I met in the graveyard, the girl I grew to—”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me you ever cared for me, you liar. You’ve never done one unselfish thing, have you? And I thought you came to help me.” She laughed a poisonous laugh. “I should have known it was just another lie.”
Loki narrowed his eyes, and she saw another flash behind them, anger this time. For a moment, she realized how stupid she was being. Just because she had the death sword did not mean she could take on a creature like him. He’s elemental. She’d seen it for herself. But then the Jötunn clenched his fists, and Bryony stared in disbelief as the unrepentant trickster—the traitor who’d lost the love of every god who took him in—actually fought to control his temper.
He breathed deep and closed his eyes. “There is something you want. You’ve just forgotten it. I’m trying to give it to you.” His voice betrayed his sincerity, but he quickly curbed it. “I don’t want to owe you anymore, and just paying a ransom for you won’t be good enough. It wasn’t only your fiancé who was stolen from you. Remember? It was your mother, your father, and your brother.”
Bryony spoke through her teeth. “Like you could bring them back.”
“You’re right, I can’t. But would you throw away the opportunity to confront one of the angels responsible for their deaths?”
“They’re all responsible.” Bitter tears welled in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them back. “My family died of influenza, and you know it.”
“But why? Why did they have to die of such a preventable disease?”
“Because the angels made it a sin to study medicine.” Was he teasing her? He knew all this. He knew it better than anyone else in her life. Why would he question her like this? Why would he torment her?
“The angels?” He laughed, and she realized his persona had finally gotten the better of his fear. He was clever always, the picture of hubris. “Do you mean the guardian angels—those weak, servile creatures who got stuck with the dirty work? Do you really think they’d be able to enforce such a decree if an archangel were there to defy it?”
Bryony opened her mouth to question him, but the faintest rustle of fabric reminded her of the watcher behind her. She turned to see him stand, tense and ready.
Encouraged, Loki went on. “Raphael is the Angel of Healing. Unlike the rest of them, his nature demands he fight for mortals. He would have sustained medicine himself if he had to, and a thousand guardians could not have stopped him. Unfortunately, he was bound. So I’ll ask you one more time, Bryony. Is your fiancé really enough? Or would you like to try for something more? Because the angel who bound Raphael is standing right behind you, and he’s more than willing to bargain.”
The river water was icy cold. Every time Michael went under, he flashed back to freediving for the Black Armada. He willed his body to still, his heart to slow, and he let himself sink. He knew his own lungs well. If he could just descend until he didn’t have enough oxygen to get back up, he could easily set his own drowning in motion. By the time instinct took over his body, it would be too late. He would be dead, Bryony would be safe at home, and the death sword would be out of Azazel’s reach.
On the other hand, if he let himself drown, he would become a demon, and a demon could be summoned. Trapped at the center of a conjuring circle, Michael would have little choice but to give up the sword. By all accounts, conjuration was the end of free will. No, it made more sense to stay alive as long as he could. He kicked his feet and resurfaced.
The demon king waited for him on the banks of the dark, underground river. “Feel better?” he asked.
Michael hoisted himself from the water onto the rocks, feeling even colder after he emerged. “I would have preferred a hotel.”
“Well, this isn’t your honeymoon. At least I allowed you to bathe.” Ashmedai’s downturned mouth quirked into a smile as he stared shamelessly at his captive’s shivering, naked body.
But Michael had become too accustomed to humiliation to let it bother him. “I doubt you’re allowing it for my sake.”
The demon sat in his characteristic way—without quite touching the ground—and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I was positively dying to see your manly physique. However could you tell?”
“I was referring to the inevitable smell.”
“Obviously.” Ashmedai winked.
It was the strangest thing in the world. Though Michael would have told anyone he’d been abducted by a fiend, this sarcastic little spat felt almost friendly. Apparently, he’d become somewhat comfortable with his demonic abductor. He picked up his shirt and began to scrub it against a stone.
Ash leaned in to watch him as though the concept of laundering one’s own clothes was completely alien to him. “Answer a question for me, if you will. Why haven’t you surrendered the sword? You’re a nephil. By all accounts, you’re madly in love with the woman I pretended to threaten. I was certain you’d crack long before she did—your nature being what it is—but you haven’t. Instead, you gambled with her life based on little more than my rather ambiguous reputation.”
Michael lifted his shirt out of the water, examined it, and decided it could do with more scrubbing. “I’d be gambling with even more lives by giving you the sword. There’s no telling what Azazel plans to do with it, and I can hardly expect you to be honest about it.”
“Who needs honesty?” Ash crossed his legs and stretched his arms. “There’s a limited amount of evil he could do with it regardless. Do you imagine he intends to corner the market and overcharge for his services?”
“Overcharge for what?” Michael stopped washing his shirt and gave all his attention to the conversation. “You mean like a godhunter for hire?”
“Godhunter? Wait . . .” The demon king’s expression shifted smoothly from confusion to amused enlightenment. “We’re not talking about the same weapon, are we? All this time. Christ, what a fiasco! My dear little brother, Azazel seeks the archangel Raphael’s weapon, which we understood was most recently in the hands of an obscure healing god in the Pacific Northwest. You were an unexpected complication, but I decided to make the best of you. Now I see I’ve wasted my opportunity most egregiously.”
Michael knelt speechless at the edge of the river, his wet shirt dangling like a dead fish from his hand. They wanted the healing sword? He’d accepted the eventual loss of his own life, made peace with the fact that he might never see Bryony again, and all for nothing. They only wanted the healing sword. Ash was absolutely right that Michael would have told him everything immediately had he understood. “Your plan really was terrible,” Michael said at last.
“I take no responsibility for it.” Ash shrugged.
“Had you been clear from the beginning, I could have told you I have no idea where Raphael’s sword wound up, and neither does Bryony. We don’t even know what it looks like anymore. Azazel won’t get much by deceiving her, but if he’d just told her what he wanted, I’m certain she would have done everything in her power to help him find it.”
The demon king dropped his shaved head into the palm of his hand and groaned. “Oh, Azza’s not one for being direct—not if he can stage an elaborate performance starring himself.”
“Says the demon who just spent days pretending to be my fiancée.”
“Don’t be ungrateful. I was trying to get the information from you gently. I don’t have to be gentle. It’s perfectly within my nature to abuse men, as you well know, and I’d have no qualms whatsoever about teaching a lesson to an insolent future-demon like yourself.” Despite the airs Ash put on, just making the threat seemed to exhaust him. He massaged his brow. “So if it wasn’t Raphael’s sword you were protecting, whose was it?”
Michael didn’t answer.
Ash stared at the ceiling in thought. “There are a number of bound angels whose weapons you might have claimed. Was it a watcher?”
Still Michael kept his mouth shut.
“But you mentioned godhunting. No watcher’s weapon could kill a god without first stripping it of its immortality.”
Abruptly, Ash stood. He snatched the end of Michael’s chain from the ground and, hand over hand, began to reel his hostage in. Michael was forced to crawl to keep from being dragged. All the while, the demon king grew in size, and Michael fought the unpleasant but pervasive urge to grovel.
“Here’s the thing,” Ash began, absentmindedly twisting the chain around one giant finger. “As little as I like Azza and as much as I would prefer to be rid of him, he doesn’t deserve to die. He’s an imbecile, but he means well. So if your woman has a weapon that can kill an immortal at her disposal, I’m going to need you to fess up.”
It was over. Michael didn’t stand a chance. Even if he didn’t answer, Ashmedai would simply go and find out for himself. Michael spoke quietly at first. “The sword is Samael’s.” Then a little louder. “It’s my father’s sword.” Own his lineage and maybe it would do him some good. The name had to count for something.
Ash wrenched the end of the chain, and Michael looked up to see a furious half cherub staring down at him. “Bullshit,” he said with all three of his mouths. “Samael is not bound, and you wouldn’t last half a second in a fight with that monster.”
The iron around Michael’s waist dug in, and he cried out involuntarily. “It’s the truth! I stole it when I was a child. I don’t know why he hasn’t come for it since. He just hasn’t.”
“And I suppose you left it at home when I took you.” The demon king was suddenly human again, curling his fingers under Michael’s chin, examining his face for lies. “So you’re telling me that my feckless employer is currently tangling with a woman who has the Angel of Death’s sword within arm’s reach and Loki at her beck and call.”
When he put it that way, Michael wondered why he’d ever worried for her at all.