Mezrael sauntered away, no doubt convinced he’d got one over on one of the Fallen, the original angels who fell with Lucifer well before any of these little bunts were more than a shimmer of fury in the Morningstar’s aura. Once he was out of sight, Azazel allowed a sliver of his rage to show. His fur shimmered as embers rose in a fiery cloud of Hell-fury, incinerating the institution-grey walls and furniture around him. The rock behind the facade melted in an instant, turning red, then white, the walls and floor liquefying around him.
His wings snapped out, black membrane beating the air, sparking a portal to a far more interesting place.
The city was dank and depressing. Fear and desperation clung to every paving slab, every streetlamp, every single damn citizen. The inhabitants lived too close to the edge to have much interest in their immortal souls. They were too busy trying to keep their mortal flesh alive in this dark and dangerous world.
Azazel wandered through the ghetto, surrounded by souls teetering on the brink of perdition. There was very little true evil here. Mostly just a will to survive which had long since trumped morality. An old woman made a clucking sound at him and tossed a scrap of something at him. He sniffed it delicately, then looked at the woman. She had a faint smile on her face, glad to benefit another living being, even in such a small way.
Whatever the scrap used to be, it wasn’t what Azazel would call edible now, but he swallowed it quickly anyway, out of politeness, and continued on his way. The old lady wasn’t worthy of punishment, even by the rejection of a kindness.
Punish the wicked. Protect the innocent.
It had been a very long time since Azazel had done the latter. There was so little true innocence left, and little point to protecting the scraps of light still flickering in the occasional kind soul one passed. Like that old woman, for example. She was struggling, but she was old. Protecting her would do little to turn the world around. Simply put, it would be a waste of his energy.
Besides, Heaven was full of angels. Let them do the protecting. Azazel and his ilk would take care of the punishment.
The blackened misery of the ghetto gave way to the sparkling shine of downtown, and he shook his head. So many tiny acts of evil here, from the people walking past the dead-eyed homeless man on the corner, to the beautifully turned out male who aimed a kick at Azazel’s beat-up form as he passed.
A moment later, the well-dressed ass tripped on thin air and stumbled, his brand new, top-of-the-range phone slipping out of his pocket to hit the pavement. The sound of smashing glass had Azazel smirking as he walked away.
A small act of punishment for a small act of evil. He’d never been a fan of the ‘tempt their souls to damnation’ school of thought, and Lucifer hadn’t been either. They were there to punish the wicked, not entrap the innocent.
He wondered where the Morningstar had disappeared to, then pushed the matter out of his mind. He didn’t blame the King for leaving. Azazel had considered it once or twice, but why bother? Even a Fallen Angel needed a purpose, a reason for existing.
Azazel hadn’t found one in a while, either above or below the Earth. It was all so dreary, so...same. Punish the wicked and watch the world slide closer to the edge. What was the point?
Unfortunately, he was now supposed to take down a soul regardless of its impact on the world. Several, in fact. Half a dozen souls deserving of eternal damnation and suffering which only the pits could inflict.
There were any number of small-minded wicked people around, but Azazel had standards. He wasn’t going to bring in just any old small-time criminal. He was one of the Fallen, for crying out loud.
No. If he was bringing in evil souls, they would be souls who truly deserved to suffer all the terribly inventive consequences of being remanded to Hell. The problem was in the numbers. One was a big ask in the timeframe. But six? Of the standard Azazel’s pride dictated? Impossible.
Then he looked up and saw a promising possibility. The top floor of the nearest skyscraper was wreathed in darkness, pulsing with a dark energy Azazel could almost taste.
He threaded his way into the building, slipping through the crowd as only a cat could, ending with a quick teleport into an elevator as the doors were closing. One of the many things no one ever seemed to appreciate about his feline form was the freedom it gave him to use almost all his powers publicly, in broad daylight, without anyone batting an eyelid.
“Where did that cat come from?” asked another well-dressed man with a dark heart. Everyone around him shrugged. He drew back a foot to kick Azazel, then clearly thought better of it and faced the door.
Teleport into a busy elevator? Cat.
Stare at someone until they feel uncomfortable? Cat.
The man’s hand slid over the backside of the woman in front of him. She tensed, and Azazel knew, as all angels, Fallen or otherwise, knew things, that this man was her manager, and she didn’t dare say a thing out of fear she’d lose her job. He stared at the back of the man’s head, who turned a few seconds later, then looked down at Azazel. He looked confused, then worried. There was a ding, the doors opened, and Handsy McButtface hurried through them.
“Judged by a cat,” he muttered, too low for anyone but Azazel to hear.
Damn right, I’m judging you, he thought. The fool was lucky he had greater prey in his sights.
He considered following him anyway, trapping him in a small room, maybe even his own office, and then exacting a price for his presumption.
Claw the crap out of evildoers? Cat.
Okay, so he was generally more restrained about that last one, but still. No one would think anything of it. He imagined few would intervene, either.
He was busy, though. On a deadline, he thought with a sniff.
He stepped out of the elevator onto the topmost-but-one floor of this particular skyscraper. The building was owned by Jeffrey Minster Roth, one of the richest men in the world. He was rarely here, but today the monster himself was in residence, as Azazel had been able to tell from the ground, a thousand feet below.
He threaded his way around the floor, following the scent of greed and narcissism to a small room concealed behind the CEO’s office. A large man stood in front of it, but he had long since sacrificed most of his morals on the altar of a regular paycheque. Most, that is, because he was still uncomfortable about what was going on in there, and was trying very hard to see as little as possible.
Which made it very easy for Azazel to teleport past him and into a shadowed corner of the room beyond.
The rattle of chips and the flip of cards immediately identified the situation as a backroom poker game, no doubt for insanely high stakes. Greed and satisfaction, frustration and anger, swirled around the five men at the table. Roth was one of them.
Beside each man stood a female human, too young to be called a woman. As Azazel watched he noticed the gilded collars, the silent orders, the smothered, barely flickering souls within bodies too young to be so crushed.
“What time?” said one man, with a smirk.
“Around ten,” said Roth. Azazel had clearly arrived in the middle of a conversation.
“Anything juicy in the pot?” asked another, and his laugh showed Azazel a highlights reel of all the ways in which this man had earned his future place in Hell.
Roth leaned back in his chair. “Oh yes,” he said, with an oily grin of satisfaction. He reached out and tapped the ash off his cigar. “I anticipate a very satisfactory night.”
Azazel couldn’t see the future. That was a very specific power he didn’t have. He could, however, see inside Roth’s heart. Whatever was happening tonight at ten would not be good by any angel’s definition.
Warm satisfaction curled in his belly. This was the kind of soul worthy of a Fallen Angel’s attention. It was only one soul, not six, but he’d still take satisfaction in a job well done.
Something pulsed in the air beside him and he turned to see Mezrael standing next to him.
“I believe I still have eleven
hours,” said Azazel, his calm tone belying the anger boiling inside. He didn’t need a Hells-blessed chaperone!
“Oh, indeed,” said Mezrael. “That’s not why I’m here. You can’t have this one. He’s mine.”
Azazel’s eyes narrowed. “Which one is yours?”
Like surfers, demons had rules about dropping in on someone else’s marked soul.
“You know which one,” snapped Mezrael. “Roth. I’ve been working on him for a long time.”
“You’re punishing him?” Azazel focused on the billionaire oil slick sitting at the table in front of them. Roth flicked a finger at the girl next to him and she hurried to refill his whisky glass. He didn’t look like he was suffering the agonies of the damned.
“I will,” said Mezrael. “Eventually. In the meantime, he shines a light on weak sinners. He’s providing a valuable service.”
Azazel took a moment to calm the embers threatening to set the carpet around his paws on fire. “He corrupts souls for you to drag down to Hell and you meet your quota.”
Maintaining a level tone had never been so hard.
“By a Hell mile,” agreed Mezrael. “It’s a mutually beneficial agreement. Now bog off.”
Azazel was about to turn away, then a thought occurred to him. “I’m surprised the Morningstar signed off on that.”
Mezrael rolled his eyes. “He didn’t. Belial did.”
He released a blast of power, taking Azazel by surprise. As a Fallen Angel, there was a limit to how much a lesser demon could physically push him around, but he hadn’t expected the attack at all. Mezrael’s punch shoved him not just out of the room, but out of the entire building. Azazel found himself tumbling through the air three streets over. He managed to reorient himself just in time to land on his feet in a grimy back alley.
Appear in mid-air, forty feet above the ground, and still land on your feet?
Cat.
Rage boiled, flared, spilled into the air and the ground, the very fabric of reality twisting with the fury of a Fallen Angel.
Out on the street stood a man with a healthy salary who’d just kicked his elderly mother out of her home so he could sell it to developers. He was chatting up a pretty girl at a news kiosk when his wallet burst into flames, destroying his eyebrows and the brand new, and very expensive, suit he’d just bought in celebration of his epic deal.
Half a block down Papa Giuseppe, owner of Papa Giuseppe’s Pizza Parlour, had just fired his youngest waitress for standing up to a rude customer. Thirteen seconds later, every pipe in the building exploded.
A dirty cop on the corner opposite frowned at the pocket he’d just put protection money into, then screamed as snakes emerged from the fabric and fell to the ground, writhing around his feet.
And three blocks in the opposite direction, a corrupt investment banker’s computer spontaneously emailed his private banking records to his biggest clients, all of whom he’d recently apologised to for much lower-than-anticipated returns this quarter.
Azazel took a deep breath.
Sometimes you just needed to get things off your chest.
He felt better now.
He returned to the skyscraper and watched the billionaire leave, accompanied by the shadow of Mezrael, and Belial’s darker shroud wrapped around them both. Azazel hopped in a cab and the driver would only much later question why he’d driven to the port district and back to downtown with an empty cab, and why he’d ended up with four times his normal takings. It would help with his wife’s physiotherapy, so he decided not to worry too much about it.
Roth and Mezrael entered Warehouse Nine, and Azazel watched from the shadows of a building opposite. It was nearly ten o’clock when a desperate-looking man and a girl just old enough to be in high school approached the building.
The man was obsessed with numbers, one number in particular. It was a debt, something he owed to a very bad man. He didn’t want to have his daughter with him, but she was the price of entry to the game tonight. He told himself he hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t like he was handing her over to anyone. His orders were simply to bring her or he couldn’t play.
It was fine, though. Everything would be fine. She’d be his little good luck charm. He’d win, pay off the debt, and then they’d finally be free of Jeffrey Minster Roth.
The girl was also obsessing, but she was focussed on a complex equation which made no sense to Azazel at all. She seemed to find it utterly engrossing, though. Something about a power source that would change the world. She’d finally perfected it. Now she just needed to test it.
He was about to teleport inside the warehouse after them when he sensed a faint shimmer, right at the tips of his whiskers. He sniffed, then looked, with feline senses heightened by his divine origins.
Ah. Clever Belial.
A forcefield around the inside of the warehouse, all but undetectable outside it. Azazel would have teleported into a very fine lattice, designed to reduce him to ash.
He would survive, but it would take a while, and Belial would take his wings before he was healed enough to do anything about it.
“I really do despise deadlines,” Azazel muttered to himself as he sat down outside the door to the warehouse, assuming his best ‘I’m not actually here’ expression and hoping someone would open the door.
Sure enough, a guard with a smoking habit opened it up a few minutes later and Azazel slipped inside.
The game was in session. Azazel recognised the men around the table. The father. Roth. And two of the men from Roth’s earlier game behind his office.
The father was winning. He was happy, confident. The amount on the table was more than enough to pay off his debt. But now he was out of money, nothing left even to ante up. If he couldn’t throw into the pot, he’d have to fold, and it would all have been for nothing. He had nothing left to play with, no other way to pay the debt. There’d be no coming back from this.
He steeled himself, turned to Roth. “I-I need more.”
Roth’s eyebrows climbed in badly feigned shock. “Timothy, you’re already into me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I’m sorry, but from where I’m sitting, you’re a bad risk.”
Timothy wasn’t surprised by this at all, but Azazel saw the desperation mounting on his face as he checked his cards again. He knew he had a winning hand. He just needed a little more…
He turned to the others around the table in turn, to no avail. They were only here to help Roth’s business, and Roth’s business had nothing to do with money.
“There is one more asset you have in your possession that you haven’t leveraged yet,” said Roth, and Azazel’s fur fluffed out at the sheer naked greed on the billionaire’s face. He had everything he could possibly want and he still wanted more.
“Wh-what?”
Roth looked over at the girl sitting by the wall. No words were needed. Azazel had thought Timothy couldn’t get any paler. He was wrong.
“I can’t. That’s…that’s ridiculous. No! It’s insane! I won’t!”
In the shadows around the room, heavy men shifted their weight, their postures changing from bored to ready.
Roth spread his hands in a calming gesture. “Nobody’s forcing you, Timothy. But you are running out of time to pay that debt.” He considered the amount of chips on the table. “There’s enough here to pay me off twice over, isn’t there? Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
Muted sniggers around the table told their own story. Poker wasn’t the only game being played here tonight. Roth wanted something, and he always got what he wanted.
Timothy checked his cards. They were good cards, but to Azazel’s trained eye something was off about them, the faintest shimmer of something which shouldn’t be there. Belial’s influence. He’d probably brought the deck up from Hell.
Timothy didn’t know that, though. Didn’t know there were far more dangerous forces at work here than a corrupt, greedy billionaire, and Satan knew those were dangerous enough.
�
��Angela, honey,” he said, over his shoulder, and Azazel saw the last remaining brightness in Timothy’s soul flicker, dimming under the weight of what he was doing. “Come over here a minute?”
“Okay, Daddy.” She hopped off her chair and came to stand next to her father, who swallowed.
“I…” He looked at her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her close. “I’m doing this for us, honey. I’m doing it for you.”
She looked down at him, and her eyes showed she understood far more than he thought. Far more than a child her age should.
He let go of her and straightened in his chair. “I raise you…my daughter.”
She took a little breath, eyeing his cards before looking at the floor.
Roth looked at her, then at his cards, then back at her. “What’s your favourite colour, Angela?”
She looked him straight in the eye, and Azazel was pleased to see the man slightly thrown off by it.
“Blue,” she said. “It’s the colour of stars that are moving toward Earth.”
His eyebrows twitched. She’d surprised him, for real this time.
“I see.”
Once more, Azazel saw that insanely complex equation scrolling through her head, dancing, and twisting. He memorised it in an instant and extended his wings, whipping through a minute portal back to Hell.
He raced along a corridor and when he reached the door he was looking for, he didn’t bother opening it, just teleported straight inside. The demon currently doing his job looked up as Azazel appeared in front of the soul’s face and scrawled the equation across the wall, letters flaring with fire across the stone.
“What’s this?”
“Uh, er, I…” The soul screamed as the demon picked up where he’d left off.
“Can you give us a minute?” Azazel snapped at him.
“I’m on the clock,” he said, nodding at the clock on the wall. It was an in-joke. None of the clocks in Hell told the time accurately. Somewhere in a sub-basement, a lot of lesser demons had great fun randomly spinning the hands.
“Take. A. Break,” snarled Azazel, fire erupting along his spine.
Hellcats: Anthology Page 59
