Holy hell, he wanted to do so many things to her right now, things he hadn’t been able to do since she’d gotten back. Pregnancy and all that.
But in dreams, they could do anything.
Anything.
Abruptly, there was terror etched on her face, and the nettle tunic was hanging limply from her shoulders.
“I…shit, I think I’m waking—”
“Lilliana?” He reached for her as if holding her would keep her with him. “Lilliana!”
His hands closed on empty air.
Wretched, miserable grief heaved out of his chest in a massive sob as he came awake, alone in his chair. The impact of her loss hit him harder than before, like a kick into a bruise, and he lurched to his feet.
It felt so real. Her presence. Her scent. His pain.
It was real.
He could prove it.
Desperate to confirm that he’d been with Lilliana, that she was just a dream away, he yanked open her lingerie drawer and pawed through the neatly folded layers of panties and camisoles. In the very back, beneath a pair of lacy purple underwear he’d bought her to replace the ones he’d torn with his fangs, was a little red velvet box.
Exactly as she’d said.
Holding his breath, he opened it.
Inside was a pendant shaped like a scythe. His hand shook as he took it out of the box. It was exquisite, a gold blade with an emerald staff. Very carefully, he turned it over, and his eyes stung at the inscription.
Father of Souls.
Father of Angels.
Father.
It was real. The dream had been real.
Closing his eyes, Azagoth clutched the pendant to his chest.
He knew for a fact that the universe used signs to warn and to guide. He’d created one himself. Every angel had to weave a sign of some sort into a human’s life as part of their final non-Order-specific training. But universal signs were bigger than that, woven into the fabric of existence at the moment of creation, their patterns constantly being reworked with the fluidity of time and history-altering events.
Lilliana’s visit had been a sign. His hope hadn’t been for nothing.
He was going to get her back.
Chapter 15
“You look like you went a dozen rounds with a hellhound. And lost.”
If that was the case, then Reaver felt like he looked, but he still gave Metatron a weary glare as he approached the highest-ranking angel in Heaven. “We’ve got trouble, Uncle.”
Reaver had once thought the ebony-haired archangel was his father, but a memory restoration had changed that. It had changed a lot of things. Fortunately, most of those things had been for the better.
Dressed in jeans and a crisp white, untucked dress shirt, Metatron stood on his palace’s spacious deck and looked out over the Sea of Tranquility, a Heavenly body of crystalline water where every sea animal to have ever existed in the human realm swam in peace and harmony with all others.
“I feel it,” he said. “A disturbance.”
Reaver couldn’t resist saying something Wraith would say. Seemed appropriate right now. “In the Force?”
“No. What?” Metatron shook his head in that exasperated way he always did when Reaver baffled him with human pop culture references. Which was a lot, and something Reaver had only become aware of since he’d gotten his memory back. “In the underworld. I thought we were finally past this. I thought we had a thousand years of peace ahead of us.”
That had been the general assumption when Reaver and Revenant had trapped Satan and ended a decade of near-apocalypses and instability in the realms.
Reaver should have known it was too good to be true.
“It’s Azagoth. Moloch abducted Lilliana and killed two of Azagoth’s sons.” Reaver moved to the very edge of the clear deck and looked down at the pink dolphins playing just beneath the surface of the water. As awful as the news was that his friend Lilliana had been kidnapped by a sadistic monster, it got worse, and he had to take a deep breath to say the rest. “And Wraith is dead.”
Metatron swore, an indication of how stunned he was by the news. Met rarely cursed. “I’m sorry, my son. I know you cared for the demon. He was one of the few decent ones. A legend even among angels.” A muscle in Metatron’s strong jawline twitched as he clapped Reaver on the shoulder with a firm, reassuring grip. “Tell me everything.”
It took a minute for Reaver to gain his composure, and a few more to fill Metatron in on all the upheaval. His uncle listened, his expression as neutral as a stone. After Reaver had finished, Metatron considered the news in silence for a little while.
“Do you believe Moloch will kill Lilliana if Azagoth doesn’t release Satan?” Metatron finally asked. “Is he truly that stupid?”
“I wondered that, as well,” Reaver said. “I asked Harvester. She knew Bael and Moloc better than anyone.” As Satan’s daughter and a former fallen angel, Reaver’s mate was a gold mine of information and sure to be one of Heaven’s greatest weapons against him in the Final Battle. “She said Bael was an unpredictable, reckless moron, but Moloc was smart and shrewd. Now that the two are merged as one, it’s hard to say how stable Moloch is, but she thinks he won’t hesitate to kill Lilliana. Azagoth will assume the same thing.”
“Even so,” Metatron said, “Azagoth swore he wouldn’t release Satan.”
“He did,” Reaver acknowledged. “And Azagoth has always abided by the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter.” Kind of like Reaver. No, not even close. Reaver didn’t even abide by the spirit. “But this is his mate and child.”
“It’s Satan,” Metatron snapped, wheeling around to Reaver. “I’d sacrifice anyone to stop his release from happening.”
Reaver cocked an eyebrow. “Aunt Caila?”
“She’d understand,” Metatron said bluntly, and yeah, any angel would. According to prophecy, Satan’s release from prison would trigger a cascading series of events leading Reaver to break the seals of the Four Horsemen and usher in Armageddon. But no one knew why he’d do it, and it wasn’t supposed to happen for almost a thousand years. “Have you talked to Azagoth?”
That was the first thing Reaver had tried after he got off the phone with Hawkyn. “He’s not taking my calls, and he’s sealed off Sheoul-gra.”
Metatron swore again. “What’s he up to?”
“Apparently, he’s trying to break out.”
Metatron paled. “We can’t let that happen.” A communication portal the size of a dinner plate opened out of thin air in front of him. “We need to assign a legion of battle angels to guard the containment stone.”
Reaver waved the portal away. This needed to stay between him and Metatron. “I’ve already done that.” Covertly. “Azagoth’s not going to escape by breaking the spell that contains him. But he won’t stop looking for a way out. And in the meantime, he has a lot of weapons at his disposal.”
Hawkyn hadn’t said what weapons, exactly, but he didn’t have to. Azagoth could blackmail anyone he wanted, simply by threatening their eternal soul. If that didn’t work, he had other kinds of blackmail material on an alarming number of powerful humans and almost every demon alive—provided by the souls he interrogated when they arrived in Sheoul-gra.