I approached one of the last two centers of power in Hell, and once again I found myself in the candlelit hallway that looked out onto the bleak moor.
After I passed through a doorway, I found myself in a bedroom with red-papered walls and black wood furniture, carved to match Mephistopheles’s and Beelzebub’s. My surroundings flickered intermittently to my Spartan bedroom in the temple to Isis and my current apartment in Philadelphia, which by some strange chance had the same color curtains as the one I was in, though the ones there were thick velvet, trimmed with thick black cords.
Demons of both genders stood throughout the room, looking like jaded models on the set of some S&M advertisement. The garish makeup on their bored faces looked even more macabre in the flickering candlelight than they would have in normal lighting. The female succubi wore corsets made of wire and red lace, and their stockings were held up by black leather garters. The male incubi wore black leather harnesses that left little to the imagination.
In one corner, twin brunette succubae had a blond incubus chained to the wall with wrought iron. They took turns hitting him with sharp-tipped whips that left thin strips of blood across his bare alabaster chest. Next to them, one demon appeared to be choking another, who seemed on the verge of passing out. A brief glance at the trio to their right was enough for me to know that I didn’t want to see more of what they were doing, at least until they put some more clothes on.
A nearby demon’s eyes flicked over me in disdain, and I glanced down at myself. I had a tomato stain on my wrinkled white T-shirt, and there was a hole in the left knee of my blue sweatpants. My green socks had monkeys stitched onto them and were almost worn through at the toes. The numerous Band-Aids on my arms covered the scratches there, but they only reminded me that my face looked far worse. And, of course, I hadn’t brushed my hair in about three days.
But I refused to let a demon look down on me, so I met the eye of each incubus or succubus. In every case, it was the demon who broke eye contact.
Never good enough, the souls whispered in my head.
“Who’s there?” At the sound of the sultry female voice, the incubi and succubi sashayed aside so that I was in full view of the king-sized bed in the center of the room. The black wooden posts were topped with a red velvet canopy trimmed in black lace, and the crimson covers on the bed were made of silk and satin. Lounging on the bed, amidst a pile of plush pillows and fawning demons, lay a red-haired beauty dressed in a more elaborate version of the succubae’s garb.
The archdemon Azrael smiled, but her black eyes remained hard and cold. “Well, well, well. The little Oracle has finally come to see me.”
I stepped forward, meeting her eyes. “You talked to Mephistopheles, then?”
“Indeed. You see, Mephistopheles and I have something of an arrangement. He claims to be all about the cerebral realm, but when it comes right down to it, men are all the same.” She was trying to shock me by implying illicit relations between herself and Mephistopheles. Sex without love was forbidden among angels, but I was a human, so it took more than that to scandalize me. “I had rather expected to see you sooner, though. It’s been over a week since I heard you were looking for me.”
Too late.
The velvet hanging down from the canopy looked so soft that I couldn’t help running my fingers over it. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. I was somewhat distracted by some of your compatriots.”
“I can see that.” She eyed my injuries. “Of course, I suspect that each of my fellows took their tolls in other, less visible ways. I have wanted to meet you for some time now, Cama. It is Cama, isn’t it? That’s what Mephistopheles says, though I have heard other names. Callidora, Corinna, Khet. I do wonder which you prefer.”
No one.
I looked at her and found myself drawn in by the beauty of her features: the slant of her black eyes, the lush red of her lips, the curve of her white neck. “It makes no difference to me what you call me. I go by Carrie now, if that’s what you wish to use.”
“Carrie, hmm? Ordinary and uninspiring.” She pouted for a moment, but then her lips again turned up in a smile. “I find that, overall, seeing you is rather exciting. After all, it is not every day that one meets a human with the audacity to love an angel.”
I must have looked surprised, because she chuckled.
“Oh, yes, little Carrie. That is my special gift, you see. I can look at anyone and tell who they love. Keziel, Lilith, and the like—they can hide their feelings from themselves, but they cannot hide them from me. I wonder if you are like them. Do you need me to tell you who holds your affections?”
No love.
I pulled my gaze from her lips and forced myself to meet her eyes. “I think I know my own heart.”
“You probably do.” She pouted at my refusal to take her bait. “Now, then, I believe you sought me out for a purpose, did you not?”
“I did.” I took a deep breath. My heart beat fast, and my hands shook. “You laid claim to the soul of one Sebastian Connolly.” Much to my surprise, I managed to keep my voice steady. “I would like you to void your contract and relinquish that claim.”
She stood up and stretched, and my eyes couldn’t help but follow her cat-like movements. “Now, I obtained that soul fair and square. Why should I release it?”
No escape.
“Because he doesn’t belong here!” Such an argument would mean nothing to one such as Azrael, but I had to at least try to make it. “Because he is a good and uncorrupted person, who is willing to give up everything for someone he loves, and he doesn’t deserve to be trapped here forever.”
Azrael looked Heavenward, as if asking for strength from a divine source, then slunk over to the demon being whipped in the corner. “Darling, all those things make him more valuable to me, and me less inclined to let him go. I mean, imagine it! How impressed everyone would be! Not even Lucifer has a good soul in his possession.”
Only evil.
“What do you want in exchange?” There had to be something she wanted, or she wouldn’t have been having that discussion with me.
“Let me see.” She took a whip from one of the girls and waved both of them away. “For me to give up Sebastian, I would need to have something of even greater value. Another soul, I think, for nothing else can have quite so much value. But what soul could be worth more than that of a good man? I can only think of one, and that would be…” She paused, and her smile broadened as she met my eyes. “… yours.”
Join us.
My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t given much thought to what she would ask for—because, as she said, there wasn’t much that would have more value to a demon than a good soul. But I thought that even Azrael would be smarter than to try to claim mine. “But I can’t die.”
She snapped her whip against the chained man’s chest. “Who said that you had to die in order to give me your soul? You’re here now, aren’t you?” Clearly she had given this offer a lot of thought. “If I were to force you to stay down here, Lucifer would intervene, but God still has more power than any demon, though He seldom chooses to exercise it. He gave all humans—even aberrant ones like you—the gift that He denied His angels: free will. So if you agree to come with me of your own volition, your body will still technically be alive, and Lucifer cannot stand against it.”
Powerless.
Azrael knelt down in front of her victim as I considered her logic. I was not certain that things would play out as she described. I did know that if she was right, she was playing a dangerous game, humiliating Lucifer. But, then, she had never chosen to serve under him as the other demons had, and she had likely been seeking a way to spite him since the Fall.
She leaned forward and inhaled over the place where the incubus bled. Her eyes rolled back in her head, as if the scent of blood were intoxicating. These were hardly the environs in which I wanted to spend eternity. But I had to ask myself, if it were up to me, was my soul a price I was willing to pay? I found I didn’t even need to consider the answer. My long life could at last be over, and Sebastian could go off to law school and become a public defender and find a nice girl to marry and live a real, full life. I couldn’t say I looked forward to an eternity in the Abyss, but I hadn’t enjoyed my immortality, either. And maybe when my body was an all-but-lifeless husk, Lucifer would realize that he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain and would free the souls that had been exchanged for my eternal life.
Azrael stuck out her long tongue and licked the blood from the gash on her minion’s chest. And even as her actions disgusted me, I knew. One good soul and maybe ten more in exchange for my one? It was not even a contest.
Forever with us.
I made sure to keep my expression neutral. “I might consider it. Would I have the traditional three years left on earth?”
She laughed, and all her demons joined in her amusement. “Don’t be absurd. You would be taking over Sebastian’s contract, so I would come for you at his appointed time.”
So tomorrow night, then. “But you will let me leave here and go back to earth until that time comes?” I wanted to make sure I at least got a chance to say good-bye to Bedlam and to try to explain. To Gabriel, too, if I could find him.
“Oh, why not?” Azrael sauntered over to me waving her whip, motions that managed to be both sexy and menacing. I gulped as she leaned toward me, frightened that she was going to strike me with it. She turned and wrapped it around the neck of an incubus to my right.
I hoped she didn’t notice my sigh of relief. “And as long as I agree, Sebastian goes free? You will remove your sigil from him immediately? And as long as I am willing to go with you at the appointed time, he gets what he asked for? His sister gets to live?”
“Yes, yes, of course. You agree, and I will never come near the boy or his family again. They can live their long, happy, boring human lives. Do we have an agreement or not?”
I swallowed and took a deep breath, then nodded. “We do.”
She laughed and snapped the whip off the demon, leaving a bleeding ring around his throat. At the same time, the back of my hand began to burn. I looked down and found that I had Azrael’s sigil etched into my skin. I assumed the identical mark on Sebastian’s hand had been removed.
Azrael smirked at me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carrie.” She gestured behind me, and I saw that a door out of the bedroom had appeared.
I nodded with as much dignity as I could muster and left Hell for the last time.