“So you traveled to the 5th Ring?” he asked, incredulous. “What kind of dumbass move was that? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I needed to find the human,” she shot back, feeling a little defensive. She might be impulsive, and she might not have made the best decision ever, but she had been trying to make things right. “But I swear, I’d barely stepped out when demons surrounded me.”
“That’s because you’re different. You are, for lack of a better word, alive. They can sense your life-force in a way my wardens and I can’t.” He scowled. “Wait. Human?” He moved a little closer, and she suddenly felt crowded. “What human?”
Ah, yeah, this was where things got really sticky. And bad. “One of the souls that got through...it was human.”
“So?” He picked up another of his wicked knives off the table and ran his thumb over the blade. “Evil humans are admitted to the Inner Sanctum every day. The souls you allowed through would have made their way to one of the five Rings...which isn’t a catastrophe. Eventually we’d have figured out that they were in the wrong place. If they were in the wrong place. So why did you worry about it? Because you were afraid of Azagoth’s wrath? Not that you shouldn’t be afraid,” he threw in. “He peeled me once. Peeled me. Do you know what it feels like to be fucking peeled? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not as fun as it sounds.”
Er...she didn’t think it sounded fun at all. And geez, she knew Azagoth could be terrifying, but she’d also seen his tender, caring side, and she’d never known him to be needlessly cruel. Then again, by all accounts, Lilliana had softened him considerably. Cat wouldn’t have wanted to know Azagoth pre-Lilliana.
“I’m...not sure how to respond to that.” But she was sure as hell more afraid of Azagoth than ever. “I mean, yes, I was worried about Azagoth’s reaction, but the problem is that the soul was mistakenly brought here. He’s human, but not evil. He was reaped by mistake.”
“A mistake? How do you know all of this?”
“Because Reaver paid a visit to Azagoth. He wants the human back in a bad way.”
Hades went silent, spinning around to pace, his heavy boots striking the floor with great, tomb-shaking cracks. “When did this happen? When did you send the human into my realm?”
She didn’t send the human into the realm, but she wasn’t about to quibble about terminology at the moment. “Three days ago.” She reconsidered that, since she didn’t know how long she’d been held captive by the demons. “Could be a little longer.”
Hades let out a low whistle as he ran his hand over his Mohawk. “Damn, Cat. Just...fuck.”
“I know,” she said miserably.
“No, you don’t know. It all makes sense now. The ritual I came across a few days ago. The Orphmage wielding power. The human was fueling all of it. The damned human is why all of this shit is happening, and with the comms down, Azagoth had no way to warn me.”
“What shit?”
“The riots down here. The rebellion.” He hurled the knife to the table. The tip of the blade punched into the wood and vibrated, the noise filling the small space with an eerie echo. “The magic.”
She shook her head, completely lost. “I don’t understand. There have been riots? What magic?”
“The magic that severed communication with Azagoth and sealed the exits out of the Inner Sanctum.”
“Sealed? Not just locked? Like, there’s nothing you can do?” She couldn’t believe that. How could one dead human cause so much trouble? “You’re Hades. Surely––”
“No, Cat. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The exit is sealed. We’re stuck here, and if the demons are clever enough, they can use the human to reveal the location of my home as well. And once that happens...” He trailed off, and she swallowed. Hard.
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but as the psychotic angel she used to work for once said, she was “fatally curious.” “Once that happens...what?”
“We’ll be overrun by millions of the evilest demons on the Ufelskala scale. They’ll kill us, Cat, and if we’re lucky, they’ll only spend a couple of days doing it.”
Chapter Eight
Hades could not believe this shit. In his thousands of years of presiding over the hellhole that was the Inner Sanctum, not a single soul had entered by mistake. Both he and Azagoth had been very careful about who––and what––passed through the barrier. The consequences of the smallest foreign object or unauthorized person entering the Inner Sanctum was precisely why not even his fallen angel wardens were allowed to leave once they started work here. Hades himself couldn’t bring anything in, except under certain circumstances, and only with Azagoth’s permission.
Made it tough for a guy to get a pizza.
And now, in a matter of days there had been at least two unauthorized entrances, and the full extent of the resulting damage had yet to be seen.