by Nadine Mutas
“I said you could see them. And you will.”
“Yes, but not like—” My voice sounded awfully close to breaking. “I just thought—”
“What did you think?” Gentle, his tone was so gentle, despite the words being far too real, too raw, cutting too deep into parts I didn’t want to acknowledge. “How did you think this was going to go? You disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “How did you imagine you would come back from that for a short visit, without your family and friends asking questions you can’t answer?”
“I could have—I don’t know. I could have told them I’d gotten a job somewhere else, and I’m super busy and won’t be able to see them as often and…” I trailed off, my stomach cramping.
“And how would that have gone for you?” he asked softly. “Be honest. Run it through in your mind. You wouldn’t be able to keep up that lie, because you have no way to actually stay in touch with them. Hell is a different realm, communication with Earth isn’t possible—no phones, no email, no internet. We can only visit through the hellgates, and even if you were able to travel with your physical body, the pretense wouldn’t work. Because how would you explain to your mother that you’ll show up out of the blue every now and then, no record of you flying into the country, no calling ahead to let her know you’re coming, and you can’t even stay for a night, not to mention longer?”
My eyes prickled hot, and an uncomfortable ache built in my chest.
“In a world of instant communication and global connection, you would be completely unreachable for weeks and months, something you could not explain away even if you told them you joined a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. Even monks have cell phones and email now. No matter where you said you moved to, they’d expect you to have an address they could at least send a birthday present to. You could provide them with none of that. And when they ask about your new life, you’d have to lie to them, every time, straight to their face, for the rest of their natural lives, while you’ll outlive them, never aging, never changing. Your entire existence would have to be wrapped in one lie upon the other, and over time, it would break you.”
My throat was tight and scratchy, the burn of tears all the more threatening after he so succinctly laid out how naive I’d been.
“You didn’t think it through,” he said ever so softly, “and I understand why. But I think deep down you’ve known that you wouldn’t be able to simply stroll back into the life of those you had to leave behind as if you’re visiting from some exciting new job that took you into a faraway land out of reach of modern communication.”
I furiously swiped at the damning tears spilling from my eyes.
He was crouching in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him get up and come over, but now he was right there, his large frame taking up so much space and air even though he was at eye level with me, his power coiling about him on a tight leash. Slowly, he reached out and wiped at my cheek.
I brushed his hand away, anger like corrosive acid in my veins.
He clenched his jaw. “This is not something I have any say over. I can’t make you have a solid, physical body to visit your loved ones with. I can’t make up a new existence for you to explain your sudden absence and being incommunicado. I don’t—” He seemed to chew on something unpleasant. “I don’t have the kind of power to change human reality.”
“You could have told me,” I ground out. “You could have explained this to me before we even came down here.”
“What difference would it have made? It wouldn’t have changed your decision.”
Because the alternative would have been to burn in Hell as a damned soul. But this wasn’t about whether it would have influenced my choice at all.
“I wouldn’t have clung to false hope!” My voice rose and wobbled precariously. A fresh sheen of tears threatened to cloud my vision. “All this time, I thought I could actually, truly visit my mom, talk to her, hug her, let her know I’m okay. And yes, maybe that was fucking naive of me, but I didn’t know better and I clung to that belief, and now that it’s gone—” I broke off, swallowing the sob that wanted to choke me. “False hope is the worst,” I continued in a small voice. “Because it hurts all the more when you realize you never had a chance.”
He didn’t say anything, just regarded me with tense, quiet focus, and I turned my head, unable to hold the silent lightning of his gaze. Curling my hands to fists in my lap, I tried to blink the annoying tears away. Every breath was a shuddering ache in my chest.
His energy hovered so close, his presence a tempting lure for the irrational, small part of me that, right now, craved connection and touch and some form of reassurance despite, or maybe because of, how rawly vulnerable I felt. This nauseous cocktail of emotions inside me, this yearning for…something from him, while at the same time my anger snapped at me like a snarling beast, demanding I snap and snarl at him in turn…it made me feel caught between implosion and explosion.
The touch of his hands on mine startled me. I still didn’t look at him, too furiously stubborn, with myself, with him, with all the new, messed-up information I couldn’t yet quite put in context.
With infinite patience and gentle strength, he unfolded first one clenched fist of mine, then the other. Rubbing his thumbs over my palms, he said in a halting tone of measured calm, as if trying out a sentence in a newly learned language, “I’m sorry for the hurt this caused you.”
I looked back at him, surprise arresting my breath for a heartbeat. His expression sincere, he held my gaze as he brought my left hand up to his mouth and placed a kiss in the center of my palm, then did the same with the other.
I drew in a shaky breath. Something flipped in my stomach, my throat growing thick.
“If I could do it over,” he added, his voice an intimate murmur, “I’d do it differently.” The quicksilver in his eyes heated. “I’d do a lot of things differently.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay,” was all I had the wherewithal to get out. That cocktail of emotions in me had just gotten more complicated.
He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Are you ready to go?”
“I guess.”
“Close your eyes and lean back. I will help you separate your soul from your body.”
Anxiety clenched me in its grip. Now that I was about to do it, this whole separating-soul-from-body thing suddenly seemed a lot more dangerous.
“Will it hurt?”
He tilted his head, his expression contemplative. “Define hurt.”
“What?” I’d begun to lean back, but now I snapped upright again like a loosened catapult.
His sly smile tipped me off.
“Don’t do that again,” I snarled.
He had no business looking so boyishly charming with that grin of his. “Deep breath in, deep breath out. Close your eyes.”
I did, though not without giving him a good glower first.
“That place where you just felt anger, tap into it. Feel it. Soul is emotion. It’s the force beyond our senses—”
“If you’re telling me to search my feelings and levitate an X-wing next, I’m going to call you on your bullshit.”
He nipped at my fingers. “Focus.”
“Okay, okay.”
I leaned back and followed his instructions on how to find the core of my soul. Much like meditation or deep relaxation, it involved getting to a place of ultimate introversion with the tricky part being not to fall asleep. Instead, I had to sort of slowly peel off the purely mentally feeling aspect of myself from the physical, as if pulling a sticker from a wall without damaging either the sticker or the wall.
As he’d promised, he helped me, which was at the point of last contact of the soul with the body. A weird, dream-like feeling had taken a hold of me, the world falling away for a moment.
“Open your eyes.”
I did. I was standing in front of the armchair, my hands—looking just slightly translucent—clasped in Azazel’s...and my body was slumped in the chair. Right there. In front of me. T
he surreality of it messed with my mind.
I could see my own chest rise and fall slightly. “I’m still breathing?” I asked. My voice sounded superimposed, like a voice-over for a movie, without any of the echo or other sound interactions that would normally occur if spoken in a room.
“Your physical body is in a sort of coma right now,” Azazel replied. “It will remain functioning until either your soul returns to it and you keep on living, or the link gets severed.” He snapped his fingers. “Vengeance.”
The hellhound was awake and on her paws in the next second, all three heads focused on Azazel.
“Guard her.” He pointed at my body.
With a wag of her tail, Vengeance trotted over to the armchair and lay down at my comatose body’s feet.
“It’s highly unlikely any harm would come to your physical form here,” he said, “but your hound is extra insurance.”
I nodded and crouched in front of Vengeance. “Good girl.” I ruffled the fur on one of her heads...and felt it. Turning back to Azazel, I raised my brows. “How do I—”
“It’s because she’s part of this realm, like me. As long as you’re in Hell, you’ll feel and sense everything. Once you’re on Earth, some of the normal physical impressions will be limited, as I mentioned.”
I was so not looking forward to that part.
“Come,” he held out his hand.
I took it, marveling at the fact I could see his skin through the translucency of my own spiritual hand. This was going to be very, very weird.
“Who do you want to see first?” he asked.
“Taylor.”
He heaved a sigh. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Chapter 15
Azazel’s mighty wings beat the air as we made our descent toward the hellgate. A different one than the one he’d brought me through that fateful night of my birthday. Azmodea’s gate was close enough to San Francisco for Azazel to use it to pick me up and take me to Hell, but Taylor lived in Australia...neither Azmodea nor Azazel held control over a gate in the vicinity of Sydney.
Which meant we had to fly into another demon’s territory and use their hellgate—for a price.
Apparently Azazel had called ahead to ask permission and announce his arrival. If a high-ranking demon simply showed up in another’s lands, as he explained to me, it could be seen as an unprovoked violation of territory and might lead to an altercation. Of course, this also meant we had a welcome wagon waiting for us as we neared the gate.
Slightly translucent and mainly spiritual as my form might be, Azazel still had to carry me as if I was solid—to my disappointment, I couldn’t fly on my own—and I clutched him tighter as two winged shapes dropped to our height and flanked us on both sides.
“Our escort,” Azazel murmured in my ear. “They’re mostly for show.”
I glanced at the demons flying alongside us, clad in fighting gear that proclaimed they meant business if push came to shove.
Azazel banked, and we landed in a courtyard ringed by squat buildings reminiscent of the famous Ishtar Gate of Babylon. The blue-glazed bricks covering the walls reflected the light of the torches, the flames dancing over reliefs showing mystical beasts like dragons—although given the reality of this realm, they probably weren’t mystical.
The architecture was beautiful and intimidating all at the same time, a simultaneous statement of splendor and military might.
Our escort landed next to us, their wings rustling as they were folded in a resting position behind the demons’ backs. Azazel was about to stride for the hellgate looming in the middle of the courtyard, built in the same defensively aesthetic style as the surrounding structures, as a voice rang out behind us.
“And what’s that you’re carrying, I wonder?”
Azazel halted, his jaw locking tight. With a sigh, he turned and set me down.
Don’t speak, he told me mentally.
“Elerion,” he said out loud, and inclined his head.
The male demon he addressed stepped out of the shadows of an alcove. With his elegantly cut features, he looked like he’d be the favored model of the next New York fashion show, making designers fall over themselves to put him in their clothes. The way he moved clearly said he knew it too. He carried himself with the sure knowledge of his own beauty, used to wielding it like a blade.
His dark hair was cut short on the sides, longer on the top, some of the strands falling oh-so-carelessly over his forehead. Sharp jawline, high cheekbones, an amused smirk on his lips...but the most striking aspect of his face were his eyes, glowing orange-red like embers in a barely banked fire.
“Azazel,” he said, his tone cultured and precise. “I heard some rumors. Seems they’re true.” He tilted his head and peered around Azazel’s wings to catch a glimpse of me. “You’ve acquired an interesting pet.”
Azazel flared his wings slightly, obscuring me from Elerion’s view, and said in a voice that was dangerously nonchalant, “I would love to stay and chat, but I’m afraid my time is short. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going now, as agreed upon in our negotiations for passage.”
“Ah, yes.” Elerion clucked his tongue. “And why would you be carrying a human soul to Earth?”
“My business is my business.”
“Hm. Curious business. Very...unusual. One might even say newsworthy. And you know what they say about the speed with which news travels.” A pregnant pause. “Especially to the palace of Lucifer.”
Fire licked over Azazel’s wings. His voice was deadly quiet. “What do you want?”
“A favor.”
The muscles locked in Azazel’s back. “Nothing that will bring harm to me or anyone in my care. Nor will I expose secrets that are not mine to tell. And should whatever you require conflict with my duties for Daevi, my loyalty will trump the terms of the favor.”
“Agreed,” Elerion said silkily. “You may proceed with your charge.”
Before I could catch another look at the other demon, Azazel turned, scooped me up again and marched toward the gate. He activated it with a series of furiously drawn sigils that lit up in the air for a second and then stepped through the glowing doorway.
The same suffocating darkness as I’d experienced during our first hellgate travel enveloped us again, pressure rose around us, pushed in from all sides, then a plop and Azazel stepped out on the other side of the gate.
I squinted against the bright light—more an instinctual reaction than necessity, as I realized a second later...because the sun didn’t actually blind me. Not in the ghostly soul form I was in.
Still, it was a shock to see sunlight after so much time without it. It glittered on the dew drops collected on the grass, turning the lawn of the park rolling out in front of us into a diamond-studded sea of emerald. All those colors. The verdant green.
So much life.
I inhaled—and uttered a bitter laugh. That’s right. I didn’t have to breathe. Not just that...I couldn’t breathe. No scents tickled my nose, the aroma of the lush natural scenery beyond the reach of my sense of smell. The leaves on the trees above us stirred in a breeze I couldn’t feel, and when I crouched and put my hand on the grass, I didn’t feel the touch of the blades.
“So this is what virtual reality must be like,” I muttered. Frowning, I turned to Azazel, who watched me with an inscrutable expression on his face. “How is it that I can see and hear, but my other senses—smell, touch, taste—are disabled?”
“My best guess,” he said quietly, “is that seeing and hearing are the senses a human soul clings to the most. They are the most dominant sensations you rely on, and echoes of these perceptive qualities may be available to the soul even without the input of a physical body. But I’m not sure.” He grimaced. “Not like there’s a manual for all this.”
I blinked at him in wide-eyed innocence. “Did the mighty Azazel just admit limits to his knowledge?” I made a show of peering into the sky.
“What is it?” He sounded so resigned.
“You just missed them,” he replied in a dry voice, “but if we hurry, we might make it back to my house before Hell has completely frozen over.”
Funny how even without a body, I could have sworn I felt amusement curl in my belly.
My gaze caught on a jogger stretching his legs barely twenty yards from us, seemingly oblivious to the still glowing hellgate and the guy with huge black wings so close to him.
“They don’t see us, or the gate?”
“The gate is entirely beyond their perception or reach,” Azazel said, “and unless we choose to show ourselves, we’re invisible to them.” He tilted his head. “Where does your friend live?”
“What time is it here? And what weekday?”
“It’s early Saturday morning.”
“Okay, so she should be home.” If it were during the week, she could already be on her way to work.
I rattled off Taylor’s address in the affordable and comfy neighborhood somewhere toward the outskirts of the city. Azazel scooped me up once more and took to the skies.
It was weird how real and solid his form was to me, my fingers actually feeling his collar where I held on to him. The touch of his arms and hands where he grasped me was just like back in Hell, no strange phantom touch or missing sensation here. I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, inhaled...and his scent filled my awareness. The heat of his skin sank into me. When I licked over the pulse on his throat, I tasted him—the hint of sweat, the faint aroma of his soap, and the note that was purely Azazel.
In a world that was lost to my senses in this form, he was the one thing I could still touch, taste, and feel.
“Is it some form of compulsion?” he asked in a suspiciously light tone.
“What?”
“The licking when I’m flying you somewhere.”
I drew back, and even in this form, an echo of my face heating from embarrassment rolled through me.
“I’m not complaining,” he helpfully clarified, his voice dropping, bringing back flashbacks of what that sensual purr felt like against my inner thigh. “It’s good to know that when I want your tongue on me, all I need to do is take you flying. I’ll make sure to wear less next time.”
