Chapter Twenty-Six
Anya
I’d gone to Xander’s place in Chelsea, finding no one home. By now, Uriel was awake and speaking very little. He’d asked about Dommiel and had remained silent when I told him what happened. But he was alert enough, crystal eyes sharp, to walk on his own. He’d insisted on coming with me to search for Xander. Without my cell, I had no way of reaching him. We scoured the streets. I’d even returned to the place of the last battle, right outside Dommiel’s basement apartment. In that time, Uriel seemed to strengthen by slow degrees. His body still bore the healing bruises and wounds inflicted upon him in Estonia, the gash in the arch of his wing where the feathers had been scraped away somehow the ugliest visible wound. Even so, he recovered quickly. Much quicker than I expected.
As we stared down the empty street toward the spot where the red priests had circled the humans, I remembered.
“Wait. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I bet Cooper will know how to find him.”
I sifted us to the high school where we’d taken the Twelvers that day we saved them from the demon princes.
Uriel eyed the raven circling the sky above us. Puck landed on a scraggly tree in the children’s weather-beaten garden, which was nothing more than a patch of grass and this leafless elm.
“Is that his raven?”
“Yes.”
I was surprised he knew about Dommiel’s raven, but I had to remember Uriel had spent thousands of years on earth, leading his demon hunters whereas other archangels had remained apart in Elysium. Surely, he’d bumped into Dommiel now and then. I wanted to ask him more, but my anxiety had amped my nerves. Now wasn’t the time.
We were almost to the back entrance now. Uriel said nothing, his somber gaze having gone flinty since we’d landed in London. I felt the wards as we crossed over them, having the vibrant signature that reminded me of that aura always dancing around Xander. He’d protected these people with his own enchantments.
I flung open the back door, my agitated energy making me move too fast. Uriel followed as I led us down a short hallway toward the open doorway of the library where voices could be heard. From what I gathered on our last visit, the library was the hub of this Twelver station.
I recognized the lilting, sensual timbre of Xander before we rounded the corner. Barreling into the auditorium, Xander stood next to the resistance leader Cooper and three people I didn’t know. Nor did I care. I had one goal in mind and one alone.
All of them froze in shock at the sudden and unexpected entrance of two angels. Then Xander cursed and was striding across the room.
“Bloody hell.” He grabbed Uriel by the shoulders, obviously taking in the bruises and gashes in various stages of healing on every inch of his exposed torso and arms. Interestingly, his face had not a blemish.
“Uriel. Christ. Are you all right?”
The somber archangel was not the one I knew before. His quiet rage simmered beneath his cloak of gloom.
“I need rest.” He looked at me. “But Anya needs your help at once.”
I hadn’t told Uriel what I planned to do. He knew anyway.
Xander peered between us and beyond our wings. “Where’s Captain Blackheart?”
He used his ridiculous nickname while wearing a grave expression.
“That’s why I’m here. I need help getting into hell to get him out.”
The humans behind them—who’d been murmuring low since we walked in—stopped talking altogether. I think they might’ve even stopped breathing.
“Okay, darling,” said Xander as if I’d asked him to do some minor favor like hold his gun. “So, perhaps you tell us exactly what’s happened before we go off to never-neverland.”
Heaving a sigh, my eyes pricking with the irritation of unshed tears, I spilled all, starting from when we’d left this place, to our journey to Nadya in Elzeberge to Odin Shans in Moscow where I killed Crusalla to Lisabette’s palace in Estonia, and then finally the run-in with Bellock and Simian’s red priests on the verge of escape.
Nearly out of breath, having said all in one speedy tumble of words, I added, “Dommiel chose to go with Bellock. He sacrificed himself.”
For me.
“I’m going back to get him. But I need help.”
“You haven’t spoken to George?”
George was the leader of the Dominus Daemonum, second to Uriel, and one of the few hunters who bore the kind of compassion Uriel did. He was also Xander’s ancestor, his only family. Centuries older than Xander, but family all the same.
“No.”
Xander swiftly pulled his phone from his back pocket, dialed, and waited.
Cooper had stepped forward to me, speaking low but steady. “If there’s anything we can do to help, Dommiel has been a friend to us.”
Why this shocked me, I wasn’t sure. The devil in me wanted to prod. “Wasn’t he just a merc for hire for you guys?”
Cooper’s wide mouth slanted into a semi-smile. I’d noticed his tall intensity before—a rugged, goal-driven man—but this was the first time I realized he was handsome. His close-cropped beard made him look fiercer, but his smile softened the hard edges.
“He was. But he risked himself far more than he ever needed for our sake. Whatever his motives, we owe him.”
“George.”
Xander’s voice snapped my attention back to him.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something? Afternoon tea? Romp with the missus?”
I couldn’t believe Xander’s casual talk. Why wasn’t he screaming into the phone? I was on the brink of madness, needing to move, to run, to fly, to get to Dommiel now.
“Well, we have a bit of a situation.”
Though Xander sounded calm and charming as ever, there was an undercurrent of ferocity in his ice-blue eyes. He had the kind of unguarded smile, casual elegance, and handsome face that put one at ease. But his eyes were where one could see the true nature of the man.
“Seems we have a rendezvous in the Black Keep.”
His hard gaze met mine.
“No. Anya and Uriel are”—he paused, glancing at Uriel—“fine. I’m staring at them at this very moment.”
Uriel remained motionless, and while someone else might think his stoic, flat demeanor was his norm, I knew otherwise. Uriel had always radiated three things. Power, control, compassion. It might seem an odd mix, but it wasn’t. It was exactly who he was—a potent archangel who defied the naysayers of Elysium and made his demon hunters out of lost human souls at near-death. He transformed them into an army of immortal hunters to protect humans on earth. With his superior power, he didn’t ignore the plight of humans or those souls doomed to hell, he found a way to save them all. But Lisabette had broken something inside him. My heart splintered at the things she must’ve done, but I couldn’t endure that now. For somewhere in the bowels of Simian’s lair, Dommiel was enduring unfathomable tortures as well. Pain burned behind my sternum, threatening to overwhelm me.
Xander had been made in the 1800s by Uriel, but I didn’t know his story. Though seemingly an open book with his charming nature, Xander was more closed off than anyone I knew.
“It’s Dommiel,” he said into the cell. “Yes.” Another pause as George rattled something off to him, then finally, “Agreed. Quickly, then.”
Xander slid his cell back into his pocket. “He’ll be here in a minute.” He crossed his arms, tilting his model-hot face. “So. Our demon friend has a heart after all.”
I said nothing, swallowing hard, remembering Dommiel’s whispers of affection, his hands on my body, his parting words. We always knew our story would be a tragedy.
It was Uriel who broke the silence. “We’ve always known that.”
Uriel and Xander shared some information with nothing more than a look.
“Hey—” I started but then George and Jude rounded the corner into the library with long strides. That was fast.
George’s expression registered the shock of seeing Uriel in this state. Jude’s did not. His dark eyes glinted with fury and the storm that always seemed to be brewing just below the surface. George gripped Uriel by the shoulder in greeting, careful that he placed his hand where he had no bruises or wounds. Jude’s jaw tightened as he glanced over Uriel.
George didn’t ask how he was or where he’d been or what had happened to him. These angels and hunters knew each other on an intimate level I could feel resonating between them.
“You can rest at the Isle of Arran at Jude’s place. You know where. The wards are strong.”
Something akin to vengeance flitted over Uriel’s face, but it was an expression I’d never seen him make. “I won’t be sitting this one out.”
Jude rumbled low. “You should rest. And heal.”
Uriel cut a look to both of them, power rippling off of him in a static charge, reminding me why he was their fearless leader. “No need.”
An awkward bit of silence stretched. Cooper whispered something to Xander and ushered his people from the library. Though it was evident to all of us, Uriel wasn’t nearly 100 percent healed. But he was also an archangel, strong enough to crush a few demons into dust, even wounded.
“Where’s Genevieve?” I asked.
She had the ability to kill demon princes—body and soul. We might be able to maim and incapacitate, but even if we destroyed their bodies, and cast their souls to Erebus, they’d sprout somewhere else and find their way to the surface eventually.
Jude’s scowl deepened. “She’s at our home. I’m not letting her in that fucking hellhole ever again.”
Again? She’d been to the underworld before? Jude’s attention shifted to Uriel.
“She’s waiting for you on Arran.”
Uriel nodded. “I’ll see her when we’re done.”
“And Kat?” I asked. Kat was George’s wife, only recently married since this apocalypse began. They were rarely ever apart.
George piped up. “She’s staying with Genevieve.” He glanced at Jude. “I convinced her to stay behind with Gen.”
I almost laughed. Kat never steered away from a fight. I could imagine their conversation on “staying behind” was loud and boisterous.
“Right.” Xander clapped his hands together, his voice light. “So, it’s a party of four for the Black Keep?”
“But we need a way in.” I knew children of Elysium could not cross the plane into the netherworld, unless taken by a being of darkness.
Xander sighed. “Yes. That is the dilemma, isn’t it?”
“You all seemed to have been there before,” I remarked, ignoring their secretive glances between one another. “So how did you all get into hell the last time?”
In unison, Jude, George, and Xander said, “Dommiel.”
It startled me. My demon lover’s betrayal of his own kind had apparently gone much deeper than the help he’d given Genevieve. My heart fractured a little more.
A raucous caw echoed from the hallway, then Puck flew into the room and winged to the shelving section labeled “Horror.” Appropriate.
“What the devil?” murmured Xander.
Right behind him strode in a huge black-winged angel in full armor, his midnight-blue gaze sweeping the room. For a split second, I just stared in shock at Maximus. Then I remembered.
“You!” I shouted accusingly.
He actually flinched, his darkened frown deepening at the sight of me. “Anya.”
I stormed closer, my wings twitching to fly and knock him to the ground with a swift kick to the gut, which he probably wouldn’t even feel with the amount of steel covering his body.
“You,” I repeated, low and menacing, hand-heel punching him in the chest. “Why the hell are you here?”
In his dry monotone, he nodded in Puck’s direction. “It is precisely because of hell that I’m here.” He took note of the others behind me. “His raven summoned me.”
I snorted in disbelief. “Have you ever helped him when he’s summoned you?”
Maximus stared intently at me, realizing I knew his dirty little secret. That his brother was a high demon, the traitor to his own kind, which meant he was on our side. The brother he’d personally cast out of Elysium and disowned. I realized that Dommiel may have deserved his fall from grace, but he’d proven since then and much more recently that he deserved a second chance. Still, his own brother had kept him in low regard, categorizing him as scum like the rest of the creatures of hell.
“Yes. I know who he is to you.”
Maximus winced.
“I know everything,” I assured him. “So why did you follow his raven here?”
With a quick glance at our party and a sigh of deep resignation, he replied, “Because the compulsion to follow guided me.” His tone dipped into a deeper register. “I had to.” As if it was against his will. It probably was.
The only compulsion that pulls an angel in such a way is prayer. Specifically, someone’s desperate prayer. I’d known it all my immortal life. When children were in danger or desperate and alone, I’d not just hear their cries, I’d feel it in my bones, the wisp of entreaty pulling and guiding me to the one who needed my help.
I wanted to laugh, for fate had decided of all angels and archangels to assist us, his brother would be the one to hear the call. The one who cast him out of heaven would help us get him out of hell.
“Though I don’t know exactly why I’m here if Dommiel isn’t even here to aid,” he practically growled, glancing around the room. “In whatever way I’m supposed to offer aid.”
The compulsion to answer that call was on him strong. I almost smiled. It was cut short when I realized that the prayer that had guided him here must’ve been shot up from the bowels of hell by only one person. Tears stung behind my eyes, but I inhaled a deep breath and swallowed my fear.
“He saved Uriel from the witch Lisabette’s lair in Vladek’s territory.” That certainly shocked him. “Then he sacrificed himself so that Uriel and I could go free. We”—I pointed to those behind me and myself—“are going to Simian and Rook’s Black Keep in the underworld and we’re bringing Dommiel back.”
Maximus was not unlike Uriel in that his expression rarely changed. Whereas Uriel usually wore a mask of serenity and superiority, an archangel who knows his power, Maximus always wore his battle-ready gaze. In the five seconds following my explanation, his expression transformed from surprise, regret, fury, then finally settled into his typical veneer of grave determination.
“What are we waiting for, then?”
Xander piped up in his jovial manner. “Aren’t we a motley crew? Two archangels, an angel, and three hunters.” Puck cawed. “Oh, and one demon-spawned raven.” He smiled brightly. “Against two demon princes and their horde of infernal priests. Good odds, I’d say.”
“And Bellock,” I added. “He was the one who took Dommiel away.”
Jude grinned, and though he wasn’t a demon, it reminded me of Dommiel when he smiled with his mouth full of fangs. “Excellent,” he growled, his eyes swirling darker.
Xander ignored him. “Still, we have no way of entry without a demon escort. Any thoughts, lady and gentlemen?”
It hit me quickly who we needed to call upon.
“I know someone.”
All of them stared, incredulous, then expectant. I shrugged.
“Dommiel introduced us. I know a few demons we can ask, actually. But one in particular.”
Xander belted out a laugh and walked over, throwing an arm around my shoulders, then guided us toward the exit. Puck lifted off and flew ahead of us, the rest following. Xander bent low to my ear and whispered conspiratorially.
“I’m liking you more and more, darling. Are you sure you won’t consider a hunter and forego your demon lover?”
He toyed with me, merriment dancing on his perfect face. Of course, he knew all along what was going on between Dommiel and I. The damn man.
“No.” I smiled. “Though your charms are tempting, there is only one man for me.”
“Aye, love. I can see that.” He winked. “Let’s go get him, then.”