Concentrating to keep from saying it aloud, I sent a message to Rahim to go when he thought best just as the skies rumbled overhead and the wind started to sputter, the gusts petering out. Lightning flashed above and cast a purple shadow over the ground. It was an ominous warning of the fall to come.
My attention jumped back to Grawwl before he tore me a new one. He came at me and swung both of his claws out to his side, expecting me to leap away. Instead, I threw the shirt at him and ducked and rolled between his legs-doing my damndest not to look up-and popped out behind him. He earned a couple more bullets for his effort.
Just as he got himself turned around, I suddenly felt the oozing presence of Azrael. It rolled over me like fresh tar, a moist and sickening creep of energy that enveloped me as though I had slid into a pool of quicksand. A flutter at my neck told me he had appeared right behind me.
Then the pain came.
Struck in the upper back, the blow slammed me into the ground face first. A crash test dummy, I bounced a couple of times before coming to rest in the grass, my ears ringing. Through the whistling, I heard Grawwl’s gravelly roar of triumph, the sound growing closer.
“Enough!” The power of Azrael’s voice rattled my skull. “You fool.”
Not sure who he was talking to, I rolled over to see sparks of fury flying from Azrael’s eyes. He was looking past me, his bony finger crooked toward the battle.
“The demon’s friends are going after Lilith’s rib.”
Grawwl and I both turned our heads to see Katon and Rahim tearing into the weres with abandon. Aided by his magic, the wizard was a force to be reckoned with. Were-bits were exploding all around him and his blackened body was soaked with blood, wet red trailers following in the wake of his claws. He had a vicious grin on his face, pieces of fur and flesh caught up in his teeth.
Katon flittered around Rahim, his sword lashing out at anything that moved. Silver sweeps left dead or rigid werewolves falling left and right. Playing wingman, anything that even dared go for Rahim met its end at the furious tip of Katon’s sword.
“Get them!” Azrael screamed to Grawwl, who stood there indecisive.
Finally, Grumpy saddled up and stormed off to join the fight. Azrael growled and turned his attention back to me.
“I had hoped you would be repentant when I returned, but I see stubborn has won out as the dominant trait.” He floated toward me, the flames in his eyes throwing up black smoke.
Not looking to antagonize him, I stayed down, inching back along the ground slowly. Through my peripheral vision, I saw Grawwl entering the fray, his bellows rallying handfuls of weres and vamps to his side. Rahim and Katon met him head on.
“Just like my father, right?”
He laughed, the fire easing back. “So, now you wish to speak of your sire here as you prepare to die?” The whirling obsidian cloud beneath him melted away, black tendrils fading out of sight, and he stood before me with a skeletal grin. “I’ll entertain your sudden curiosity, not because your ploy to delay me worked, but because it suits me.” He glanced over at the fight, and seeming satisfied for some strange reason, he looked back to me. “Your father was a murderer and a rapist, and quite masterful at both. In fact, that was how you came to be.”
My face warmed as his implication hit me. I’d engaged him to allow DRAC time to operate, but I was beginning to regret it.
Azrael’s grin grew wider, obviously feeding off my discomfort. “Does it bother you to think of your mother being raped, grunting into the sod like a common whore being rowed?”
Without even realizing I’d done it, I fired on him, the gun barking fury in my white-knuckled grip.
Azrael batted my bullets away as though they were nothing, closing the distance in an instant. My gun flew from my hand and he struck me in the chest, the blow reverberating all the way through to my back.
Lightning bolts of white pain exploded in my torso and radiated out, searing a path along my extremities, ending at my fingers and toes. A tingling numbness followed in the aftershock. My body twitched and flopped as my nerves reacted, then relaxed, dropping me flat. My eyes whirled and my vision tunneled for a moment, before widening and returning to focus.
Azrael stood over me, his toothy smile splitting his face wide, a macabre Jack-o’-lantern.
“The best part of it was she liked every moment of it; the moist dirt of the field pressed cool against her face, the smell of her sex as it mingled with the morning air. Her scent was an aphrodisiac, Triggaltheron, sweet and tempting like a ripened fruit plucked straight from the tree.”
Numb, I did my best to ignore his words and get to my feet. Azrael laughed and pinned me down by holding my arms, his cadaverous face moving in closer. “I know all this because I was there, demon. I watched as your mother squirmed beneath your father’s strident ministrations, her hands clawing at the dirt. She screamed and thrashed about like a banshee, yet ever pushed back to meet his every thrust like the wanton little cunt she truly was.”
Napalm tore through my veins and I fought against his hold. His bony fingers cut into my arms as I struggled to rise. My clutching hands sought his heart, falling just short.
“She cried when he released his seed, but they were tears of joy, Triggaltheron. They were tears for you, little demon. She knew right then she was special, that she’d been honored by the rutting she’d received; that she would soon be with child.”
“I’ll fucking kill you,” I screamed, frothy spittle flying. Everything was hazy, my fury screaming inside me, shrieking to be released.
“Will you? Is that what you’d like to do to me? Carve me up over the course of days and feed my remains to the fire?”
I screamed again, feeling something pop in my back as I strained against his grip. Thrashing about, I flailed and struck at him, but Azrael just laughed as my pitiful blows.
“Let me tell you another secret, Triggaltheron.” He leaned in close and pressed his clammy lips against my ear, his grip tightening. “Long have you lived a lie, an illusion fed to you to keep you docile, to keep you in your place. Lies perpetuated to steer you from your rightful rewards.” His words wormed inside my head, slithering cold and harsh. “Your friends lie to you because they fear you. They use you to go against your own, to defy the wishes of your father.”
“My father is dead.” Thunder rumbled overhead as if in sympathy.
A cold, bitter laugh tickled my ear. “Of all the lies you’ve swallowed like the lonely whore desperate to find love in a mouthful of bitter seed, that’s the greatest of them.”
The words sunk into my mind like hammered railroad spikes. My anger bled away through the holes and I went still to hear what he had to say.
Azrael kept his grip tight, but his smile warmed at my sullen compliance. “Aah, you’re listening with our mind at last. Well then, listen close. The man you killed with such passion, with such glorious brutality, for which you paid Baalth so dearly for the pleasure, was not your father. He wasn’t even the man who murdered your mother.”
My stomach clenched into a solid knot and I stared into his flickering eyes, into his soul, desperate to see the lie there, to know his words were false. The truth stared back at me. It wasn’t what I wanted to see.
Bile roiled inside me, flicking serpent-like at the back of my throat. Azrael nodded as the sickening reality sunk in. The man I’d killed for murdering my mother was not who I had been led to believe. I’d been deceived.
My heart sank and I went limp, the truth draining everything from me. I’d traded my innocence for the power to kill the man I thought was my father, the man who murdered my mother. It was all a lie. My soul mortgaged to Baalth for years, the cost of my freedom something that still haunts my dreams, had been for nothing. Though I knew the man I’d killed was no innocent, he was of the crime I’d so horribly torn him to pieces over. The image of his dying face came to life in my mind’s eye, his horror so clear.