Methicore stopped a few feet inside the doorway, but Zhubaal remained outside, his hand hovering over a blade at his hip. Was this male truly such a threat? Or had Azagoth taken a page from her father’s playbook? The moment her father had realized who she was, he’d summoned two underlings to flank her, as if she’d come to murder him instead of beg for acceptance.
“Father,” Methicore drawled. “Did you take out your horns on my account? How special.” He resembled his sire in height and coloring, but he was slimmer, and where Azagoth’s eyes had glazed over with icy indifference, Methicore’s burned with hatred.
She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Why are you here?” Azagoth’s expression gave nothing away, as usual. “I told you to never return.”
Oh, gee, Lilliana thought sourly. That sounded familiar. Azagoth and her father should get together for drinks and bond over woeful tales of their inconvenient bastard offspring.
“I wanted to tell you the news in person,” Methicore practically spat.
Azagoth might as well have yawned, he looked so bored. Even his horns had disappeared. And he was still hoofless. “What news?”
“The kind that makes you fucking irrelevant.” Methicore smiled darkly, the resemblance to his father becoming uncanny. “All Memitim are Ascending to full angel status as of today...and we’ve been given the ability to reproduce. You’re done, asshole. No longer needed.”
Surprise flickered in Azagoth’s eyes, but it quickly snuffed out. “Is that all?”
“No.” Methicore’s grin widened. “Also as of today, as of the second I leave, access to your realm will forever be cut off to Memitim.” He tapped his chest with pride. “My doing, of course. You’ll never see any of your sons or daughters again.”
Lilliana gasped in horror, but there was absolutely no reaction from Azagoth. Did he not care about his children at all? Slowly, as if this was all just so very ho-hum to him, he turned his back on his son and stared into the fire.
“I have no use for you,” he said softly. “Begone.”
Lilliana’s heart crumpled like aluminum foil as a flicker of hurt flashed across Methicore’s face. It was quickly smothered by a triumphant smirk, but she wasn’t sure what he had to feel good about. Revenge was far more poisonous to the giver than the receiver. Besides, Azagoth didn’t seem to be disturbed by the fact that he’d never see his offspring again, so Methicore’s victory was hollow. She actually felt sorry for him.
Methicore shot Azagoth the bird and moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. “Female.” His eyes locked on her, and the calculation in them left her feeling more exposed than anything Azagoth had done so far. “You’ll get nothing from him but a cock that’s as frozen as his heart. Come with me, and I’ll give you what he can’t.”
“Have a care, son.” Azagoth’s quiet voice held an ominous edge that seemed to make even the flames in the hearth shrink back. “For some species devour their young.”
Methicore swept out of the office with a snarl. The moment the door slammed shut, Lilliana rounded on Azagoth.
“You bastard.” She spat out the word with all the contempt she could muster. “How can you be so cruel to your own son?”
“Me? Cruel?” His hands formed fists at his sides. “I’m not the one cutting off access to my children.”
“As if you give a shit.”
“Do not,” he growled, “presume to know me after a few hours of prancing around my realm.”
Prancing? She’d never pranced in her life. “I don’t have to know you to know your kind.”
He swung around, his jaw tight and unforgiving. “My kind?”
“A breeder.” The very word pissed her off. “A stud for hire who doesn’t give a damn about the lives he creates.”
He jerked as if she’d shot him with an arrow. She’d struck a nerve, hadn’t she? “Shut. Up.”
“Fuck you,” she shot back. She hated being so crude, but something about this male and this realm brought out her bitchy side.
“Shut up,” he ground out, “or I’ll make you shut up.”
He clearly had no idea how stubborn she was, something that had driven her kidnapper nuts. “You can’t make me do anything.”
He came at her, his gait loose yet predatory. “I can make you do everything.”
Unbelievable. “Are you aware on any level whatsoever how arrogant you are?”
“This is my realm, angel. I am this realm. My reach extends beyond Sheoul-gra’s boundaries to the deepest pits of Hell and the highest levels of Heaven. So yes, I’m aware of my self-confidence, and when I tell you that I can make you do something, I mean it.”
You can’t make me stay here. Oh, she couldn’t wait to get out of this depressing place. “What will you do? Beat me into compliance? Torture me?”
He stopped in front of her, his gaze roving boldly over her, lingering on her breasts and bare skin of her belly. “Only a fool and a coward would harm his mate, especially if they have to co-exist for eternity.” He bared his teeth in what she assumed was a smile. “I have other ways of getting what I want.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but short of torture, you can’t make me do anything.”
His smile became downright wicked. “I can make you beg for the mere whisper of my breath on your skin. I can do things with my tongue that will make you scream with the exquisite intensity of it. And I can make you come so hard, for so long, that you’ll pass out from pleasure.”
“Sex,” she said bitterly. “Typical male, thinking that’s all females want.” Never mind that she did want it. Lord help her, to experience an orgasm like that...oh, yes, please.
“Sex,” he said huskily, “is only the beginning. I can make you a queen. I can give you an entire realm.”
She snorted. “You mean this?” She made an encompassing sweep of her arm. “This cold, dreary realm full of death and griminions and fallen angels? Yeah, it’s what every girl dreams of.”
A tense black silence hung like a pall in the air, and she had a feeling she’d pushed him too far. Despite what he’d said about not harming his mate, she braced herself for a blow.
And one blow was all he’d get. Her power was muted down here, but she’d fight him until her last breath. Or she’d get the hell out of here and happily submit to the dissection team that would extract her time traveling ability.
But Azagoth didn’t raise a finger. Instead, he dematerialized, leaving her alone. Again.
Chapter Seven
Azagoth materialized in his library, wishing he could scream in fury and agony. But all the emotion that had nearly crippled him earlier had found its way back into the desolate, frozen wasteland he called a soul. Although he supposed his soul had been sucked out of him a long time ago.
Snarling, he swiped a soda-bottle sized crystal chess piece off his desk and crushed it under his boot. Methicore had given it to him, a reminder that Azagoth was a king, and the world was his chess board.
Methicore should have remembered that.
Azagoth ground the heel of his boot on top of the piece, relishing the sound of destruction.
His son had betrayed him yet again. Not only betrayed, but destroyed every relationship Azagoth had forged with his sons and daughters. Not that he’d ever had much in the way of relationships, but at least he’d been able to visit with some of his offspring now and then. The ones who hadn’t abandoned him when Methicore led the rebellion against him, anyway.
Funny how Azagoth had seen Satan’s insurrection coming from a mile away, but he’d been utterly blind to Methicore’s machinations. Then again, by the time his son had risen up against him, Azagoth’s ability to sense deception had been dulled like a blade that had sawed too much bone.