Azazel glanced up at me, giving a quick nod of agreement. “Far more. The dragon had brute force and size on his side, but his mind will slowly adapt to fit the shell. He will eventually be capable of more rational thought than before, like he was in the days before he stole that body. The problem with exchanging the essence of a god is that they will take on the capabilities of the vessel. In the dragon body, he was at least somewhat predictable, more simple of thought. Now he’ll regain the intelligence he lost in those millennia.”
“Not just that.” I absently rubbed the mark on my chest. “He’ll be faster, able to use weapons. I would’ve taken a dragon before a man, when it comes to him.”
Without Lucifer to stop me, I would’ve had the Dragon when he was fleeing. Now he’d be capable of walking anywhere, sneaking in, just like his puppet-bodies he used to abduct Vyra and sneak into my arena. Only he’d be solid flesh and bone this time.
The Dragon had been slow despite his strength, and I’d been prepared to become the world’s most murderous gnat. Now I’d need every skill I had to wield the Sword to its full potential.
“Azazel, why did he run to Irkalla?” I caught my mate’s eye, refusing to look away. “What’s the draw of that place, when he could’ve gone anywhere else in Hell? He didn’t even need to run. I was already taken down and the Sword destroyed by Lucifer when he fled.”
He looked down at the floor, his brows drawn together. “Irkalla is… a terrible place. A place where he likely believes he’ll find a sympathetic ally.”
“What ally?” I stood up, determined to poke and prod him into telling me what the Hell was there in that wasteland that might appeal to Satan. “Azazel, I know you don’t like to share your thoughts with people. But… please. I can’t help but feel like there’s something connecting us to that place, and that was before we knew where he was.”
Azazel finally met my eyes. There was an ancient sadness there, and something else.
My heart thumped unevenly. Was that fear? There was nothing Azazel needed to be afraid of.
“Irkalla is where I was born.” He pressed his lips flat, jaw tightening as he looked away. “That’s all we’ll discuss of it now.”
My fists balled at my sides. “Does this have to do with your so-called ‘dreaded bloodline’? Who are you, Azazel?”
His eyes flashed when he looked back at me. “What does it matter? You knew what I was when you accepted the mate mark.”
So that’s what this was about.
Just like Tascius believed he was doomed to repeat Gabriel’s evil, Azazel knew perfectly well what he was and where he came from.
He was the monster that lurked in the darkness. And there might always be that fear in him that he’d be pushed away for it.
“I did. And I wouldn’t give it up for anything.” I took a step forward, holding out my hands. He didn’t try to move away when I touched him, reaching up to stroke the sharp line of his cheekbone. “I don’t care what you are, Azazel, but please don’t do what Lucifer did. Tell us before everything goes to Hell. There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me hate you.”
He let his head rest against the palm of my hand, his lashes fluttering shut. “The last thing I want is to start a panic. I could be completely wrong. But if my suspicions are correct… he means to travel to Kur, a sister city to Dis. The Queen of the Dead, Ereshkigal, rules there, and she was once quite enamored with Satan.”
“So he does have an ally.” I cursed under my breath. And she was a Queen. Lovely.
“Not just any ally, Melisande. The worst one he could’ve chosen.”
I searched for some tiny thread of optimism. “But it’ll take him some time to get there, right? Let’s search now. Head him off before he can meet with this Ereshkigal.”
A smile that was all bitterness, no amusement, crept onto his face. “We’ll search. But Ereshkigal is no laughing matter.”
“I’m not laughing.” I rose up on my toes and kissed him. “You can look for him more clearly now. Let me help you.”
He broke away, glancing at the massive orb behind him. “This isn’t the sort of art you should be present for.”
I leaned to the side, getting in one tiny, full-on look at the orb before he covered my eyes with his hand.
“Don’t look into it,” he said, not ungently. “What’s in there is not for you to see.”
I frowned. “I’m not waiting outside. This involves me, too.”
Azazel’s exasperated sigh ruffled my hair. “You don’t have to sit outside. Just keep your distance, and don’t look directly into it. Try to keep it out of your peripherals, even. I’m going to search Irkalla for his power signature, and you sit over there.”
He took his hand off my eyes and pointed to the chair the library had helpfully procured for me. Doing my best not to grumble like a thwarted child, I sat down in the chair.
It spun around of its own accord, forcing me to face a wall of books instead of looking directly at Azazel. I had only the vaguest sense of him moving around, but the emotions coming through our mate bond were more than a little troubling.
He was worried. Very worried, and there was a tinge of fear in there, the same look I’d seen in his eyes.
My skin prickled as magic began to rise in the air, a cloud of pure energy that reached out and touched me, dancing against the fire inside me.
It took every last drop of willpower not to turn and watch him, even when the magic in the room reached an uncomfortable degree. I felt like ants were crawling all over my skin, biting and stinging, even though Azazel’s magic was usually friendly towards me.
Many long minutes passed in silence, only the sound of shuffling pages and my own breathing reaching my ears. My legs were starting to get stiff from sitting so still when the magic around me popped, sending a sharp pain through my ears.
I spun around. It was impossible to sit still through this.
Azazel was bent over the orb once more, his fingertips pressed to the dark stone, but his eyes were completely devoid of life.
Shadows rose from him, curling around his arms and legs and vanishing into the air. Even as I watched, a thin film of ice spread from his fingertips and began to grow over the surface of the orb like a lacy spider’s web, holding his hands in place.
“Azazel!” I took a step forward and stopped myself in my tracks. What if I looked into it, and I was caught too?
But he wasn’t coming back or breaking away. The shadows grew denser, forming shapes like dark hands that twined around him, tugging on his clothes, running over his face. He exhaled shadows on his breath.
And his eyes. They were no longer violet, becoming the pits of electricity they only became when he unleashed the monster within.
I stepped forward, trying to keep the orb out of my line of sight, but it was impossible if I wanted to see Azazel, too. I tried as hard as I could to keep my eyes on his face, but the reflection in the orb wasn’t what stood in front of me…
I glanced at it for only a second. I could’ve sworn it was only a second.
But when I tugged my gaze away from the creature in the orb, the several pairs of electric eyes and the mouth full of fangs, the dark feathered wings studded with eyes that blinked in a frenetic pattern, I felt like I’d been standing there for a hundred years.