He snorted. “And Seminus demons hate sex.”
She snatched the jug from him and took a swig. He had to hide an amused smile when she coughed. “So you own your fall?” she wheezed as she sat down at the kitchen table.
“Yup.” He took back the jug. “I fucked up royally.” He brought the container to his lips, pausing to say, “You really want to hear this? You want to know how I got here?”
At her nod, he lowered the jug. He hadn’t told anyone this. It wasn’t that he gave a crap who knew. It was just that he never really talked to anyone. Not about himself or his life. This was new, and he wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
Finally, he propped his hip on the table edge. “When I was still an angel, my job was to process new humans arriving in Heaven after they died on Earth. It was boring as shit, and every time someone came through who had been slaughtered by another human, it pissed me off. So I started spending my time in the human realm, stopping sinners before they committed sins.”
“Stopping them? How?”
“At first, I caused distractions. Earthquakes, sudden rainstorms, swarms of mosquitoes, whatever it took. Then I came across some vile bastard in the act of raping a young woman. I didn’t think, didn’t pause. I flash-fried him with a lightning bolt. And the weird thing is, I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. I knew I was going to be punished because, with very few exceptions, angels aren’t supposed to kill humans.”
He expected her to show some revulsion, but she merely propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward like a kid hearing a bedtime story. “Did you? Get punished, I mean?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Guess no one was paying attention. So the next time I found an evil human committing an atrocity, I whacked him. Damn, it felt good.” So. Fucking. Good. “And that’s where it all went wrong.”
“Ah,” she murmured. “You liked to kill.”
Damn straight, he had. “It didn’t take long before I wasn’t just killing evil humans, but bad humans.” There was a difference, a very important difference. Evil couldn’t be repaired. Couldn’t be forgiven. But bad could. “I made no distinction between those who were evil and those who were just assholes. I felt the need to punish, and I was made bolder by the fact that I didn’t get caught. Not until I went after a son of a bitch who was famous for his torture methods. Turned out that he was Primori.”
“Primori are people whose existence is crucial in some way,” she mused, and then her eyes shot wide. “Which means he had a Memitim angel to protect him. And all Memitim...”
“Are Azagoth’s children,” he finished.
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.” He took another healthy swig from the jug. “The Memitim dude came out of nowhere, and we got into a nasty fight that ended with him dead.”
“What did you do?”
Despite the fact that this had taken place over five thousand years ago, Hades’s gut sank the way it had way back then when he’d realized what he’d done. He’d killed a fellow angel. Nearly killed a Primori. And worse, he hadn’t cared all that much. His concern had been for himself, and for thousands of years, nothing had changed.
Until now. Now his greatest concern was making sure Cat was safe. His own fate was unimportant.
“I knew I’d get caught,” he said, “so I ran for a while. Lost myself in the human population. But my parents were both professors of Angelic Ethics, and I’d had their teachings drilled into me since birth, so when the angels started closing in, I figured I’d earn points for turning myself in voluntarily.” He curled his lip. “Turns out, not so much. I was relieved of my wings, but instead of being given a new name and booted out of Heaven, I was handed over to Azagoth.”
At first, he’d thought the archangels’s decision to let him keep his name and send him to Azagoth had been done purely to make the Grim Reaper happy, but once the Biblical prophecy tying him to the Four Horsemen appeared, he understood that he was meant for more than just being Azagoth’s plaything.
Not that being a Biblical legend had helped him avoid pain. At all.
“Wow.” Cat’s already pale skin went a shade paler, making her freckles stand out on her nose and cheeks. “I’m shocked that he didn’t kill you.”
“Azagoth doesn’t kill people.” Hades reconsidered that. “Mostly. He’s a big fan of eternal torment.” No, Azagoth didn’t take the easy way when it came to revenge. Or justice. He definitely wasn’t the forgiving sort. “He needed someone to run the Inner Sanctum, so he gave me wings and power, making me the only Unfallen in history to be able to enter Sheoul without becoming a True Fallen.” He smiled bitterly. “But he also made it his mission to make my life a living hell. And for thousands of years, he did.”