“You think it’s a trap?”
“Hell, yeah, it’s a trap.” He grinned because as shitty as the turmoil in the Inner Sanctum was, there was a bright side. Thousands of years of monotony had worn thin, but now there was a little excitement. Something to challenge him, to make him feel alive.
He thought of Cat and how, when she’d run into him in Azagoth’s Hall of Souls, he’d had a moment where he’d felt more alive than he had in centuries. It had been enough to make him forget, just for a few minutes, that she was off-limits to him. His pulse had picked up, his body had hardened, and he’d wanted so badly to wrap himself around her and revel in skin-on-skin contact.
But that wasn’t going to happen, so he’d have to settle for the next best thing.
A good old-fashioned fight.
Chapter Six
It turned out that Silth hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that the 5th Ring was in chaos. In the canyon where the Unfallen was supposedly being held, Hades found himself having to fight his way through hordes of demons simply to get within sight of the staging area where the leaders were chanting and dancing and sacrificing demon critters for their blood.
As Hades and his team of fallen angels battled an endless stream of demons, he kept an eye out for the idiot Unfallen who had somehow landed herself in a shit-ton of trouble. Because even if the demons didn’t kill her, Hades would.
And he was going to have fun doing it.
He threw out his hand, sending a wave of disruptive power into the crowd of demons in front of him. They blew apart as if they’d been nuked, leaving a path of meat and blood ahead of him. Hellhounds rushed in to feast and snap at the souls rising from the ruined bodies. It wouldn’t be long before they reoriented themselves and generated new flesh-and-blood bodies again, so Hades had to hurry. Although only Hades and his fallen angel wardens possessed supernatural powers down here, the demons still had size, strength, teeth, and claws in their arsenals, not to mention sheer numbers. If Hades and his team were overwhelmed, things could get bad. Real bad.
Worse, he’d gone back to his place to contact Azagoth only to find that communications were down, and they must have been for hours. Azagoth always sent a message for a status update at precisely midnight, but for the first time in thousands of years, there was nothing. He probably should have popped into Azagoth’s office to see what was up before charging into battle, but dammit, the Grim Reaper’s Darth Vader-ish warning to not fail him again was still sitting on his mind like a bruise, and he didn’t feel like poking it. Still, it might have been helpful to know how the hell an Unfallen had gotten into the Inner Sanctum.
Whatever. Regrets were for douchebags.
“There!” Silth pointed to a crude wooden crucifix near the site where animal blood ran thick from a stone outcrop in the cliffs. “The Unfallen.”
Hades sprinted toward the crucifix, dodging a volley of spears raining down from demons perched on the rock outcroppings of the canyon’s walls. He wished he could use his wings, but flying would make him more of a target. For now, he was safer in the enemy crowd.
He kept his eye on the crucifix as he ran. From this angle, he could make out the slim body of a female hanging limp from the crucifix, arms tied to the cross-board, her head falling forward, her face hidden by a mop of bright red hair. A spark of recognition flared, but it snuffed like a squashed firefly as an axe struck him in the head. Pain screamed through him as shards of bone from his own skull drove into his brain.
“Bastard” he snarled as he wheeled around to his attacker, a burly Ramreel with a black snout and glowing red eyes. “You fucked up my Mohawk.” At least, that’s what he thought he’d said. The words were garbled. Clearly, the bone shards had also fucked up the part of his brain that controlled speech.
One eye wasn’t working, either, but his ability to draw and quarter a demon with a single thought was still intact, as he proved a heartbeat later.
Head throbbing as flesh and bone knit back together, Hades made a run for the Unfallen female. Lightning flashed overhead, and electric heat sizzled over his skin. That lightning wasn’t natural. He looked past the giant wooden crucifix, and his hackles raised.
An Orphmage, one of the most powerful sorcerer-class demons that existed, was moving toward the female, a bone staff in his hand. And from the staff, tiny bolts of lightning surged.
Impossible. Im-fucking-possible. No one but Azagoth, Hades, and his wardens could wield power here. No one. Not without a source from outside the realm. He supposed the demon could be drawing energy from the Unfallen, but she wouldn’t have enough for the kind of magic he was brandishing.