When an angel lost his or her wings, they usually got to choose their new names. Heck, a fallen angel could rename themselves over and over, although they were never to use their angel names again…except inside Sheoul-gra.
But sometimes, the archangels chose a person’s fallen angel name. As a punishment, or an insult, or a lesson...whatever their motivations, when they selected a name for a disgraced angel, it forever rendered one unable to refer to oneself as anything but the name the archangels chose. If they’d wanted Cat’s new name to be Poopalufagus, she would be compelled to use it. Hell, she couldn’t even speak her angelic name if she tried...and she had. The name always got clogged in her throat.
“Why did the archangels choose to call you Cataclysm?” His lips grazed her ear as he spoke.
“Because I was a disaster.” Her voice cracked, and she hated herself for it. Hated Hades for making her revisit the worst moment of her life. Hated him more for forcing her to confront a truth she wasn’t ready to face yet. “I helped nearly end the world, and they wanted to remind me of it forever.”
Silence stretched, and she sensed Hades withdraw. When he finally spoke, his voice was back to normal, but somehow, she knew that nothing would be normal ever again.
“And those are the people you want to go home to.” He brushed past her and shooed the hound out of the way. As he threw open the door to the hut and gestured for her to enter, he smiled coldly. “Then, by all means, let’s not waste any time getting you back there.”
Hades spent over twelve hours with a pack of ravenous hellhounds and one fiercely silent female as they searched the 5th Ring for the damned human. Granted, he hadn’t felt like talking, either, because ultimately, what did he and Cat have to talk about? Her desire to go back to Heaven, to people who saddled her with a name that would haunt her forever? His selfish desire to prevent that?
Ultimately, there was nothing he could do to convince her not to go back to Heaven if she was given the chance. She didn’t want to be here, and even if she did, they couldn’t be together. Not if Azagoth was still determined to punish him.
He looked over at Cat, who was standing about thirty yards away on a cliff above a river of lava. In the distance, a blackened volcano spewed smoke and steam as reddish-orange veins of molten rock flowed down its sides. She was dressed in her jeans and corset, and when Hades made clear they were going to be dealing with scorching terrain, she’d agreed to wear a pair of boots loaned to her by a the demons whose hut they’d stayed in.
Hellhounds surrounded her, keeping her safe. The demon canines were unabashed killers, but when given something to protect, they took their job seriously. There was nothing on the planet more loyal than a hellhound. There was also nothing more ravenous, as the half-dozen hellhounds tearing apart some hapless demon nearby proved.
Hades signaled to Silth, and the guy jogged over from where he’d been using a divining rod, fashioned from the thighbone of the Orphmage who had captured Cat, to locate the human. The stupid mage had refused to talk, so they’d gone with Plan B. Or, as Hades called it, Plan Bone.
“My Lord?” Silth asked as he climbed the jagged lava rock hill to get to him.
“The hounds want to phase us to another region.” Which was awesome because Hades hated this one, despised the heat and the smell. The only upside was that few demons lived here. Which made it a potentially great place to store a human. “But I want you and a few hounds to stay.”
“You suspect something?”
Hades couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was a sense of wrongness here that went beyond simply not liking the area. They hadn’t found anything suspicious, but––
“Hades!” Cat came running toward him, hellhounds on her heels. “I think I can feel the human.”
One of the hellhounds with her had something in its mouth, and as she drew to a halt in front of Hades, the hound playfully tossed it at her. She caught it, yelped, and dropped it.
“Hey,” Hades said, “he likes you. He just gave you the finger.” Of some kind of demon.
She gave him a look of disgust. “How can you joke about that? It’s not funny.”
“Nah,” he said. “It kind of is.”
“Gross.” She kicked at the digit, and the hound snatched it up, swallowing it in short order. She grimaced and then rubbed her arms. “Like I was saying, I’m sensing something nearby. It’s a feeling of good, which shouldn’t be here, right?”
“In the 5th Ring? No way.” His pulse picked up as the idea that they might be close sank in. “It’s gotta be the human. Can you narrow it down to a direction?”
She shook her head. “It’s weird, like a thread of good woven into a massive evil cloth. There’s too much evil around it to get a bead on it.”
“Uh...boss?” Silth held up the wobbling divining bone. “Got something.”
As Hades watched, the thing went from barely moving to vibrating so intensely that Silth had to use two hands to hold on.