By the time we reached the side door of the mansion, almost all the tents were ablaze, and several soldiers lay dead behind us.
The door was open since so many soldiers and demons were coming and going from the house to the tent city. Several more soldiers were emerging in response to the cries for help from outside.
Samiel led the charge through the door, blasting whatever was in front of him. Nathaniel followed, and I came behind them, slashing with the sword. Jude galloped in behind me, blood on his muzzle.
Nathaniel and Samiel had engaged fighting the soldiers in the room, but I didn’t care about them. If we got caught here, we would be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Azazel’s men.
“Forget about them!” I shouted. “Keep going! Jude, can you sniff out Chloe?”
Jude barked and dashed through the room, pausing only to tear the throat out of a charcarion demon that made the mistake of getting in his way.
I expected Jude to lead us toward the top of the house and Azazel’s labs. After all, he already had cages ready for new prisoners there.
But instead Jude led us through a large kitchen I had never seen before. We shocked the hell out of one of Azazel’s soldiers making a sandwich. I slit his throat so he wouldn’t raise an alarm.
“Wow, that was cold,” Beezle said.
I felt a pang of regret. He hadn’t threatened me or mine, and maybe he didn’t deserve to die in a pool of his own blood while doing something as mundane as making a sandwich. For a moment I wondered where my humanity had gone.
Then I remembered that the soldier was willingly serving Azazel, and that innocents would die if we didn’t stop my father.
After that I decided I wouldn’t feel guilty about anything I had to do while I was in Azazel’s mansion. Or at least I would save my guilt for later, when it wouldn’t risk my life or my friends’ lives. Because I was sure that any of these soldiers would kill me without hesitating if Azazel said so.
Jude pushed through a swinging door at the far end of the kitchen and led us down a set of stone steps. The sound of running feet clattered on the floor above but nobody pursued us. They didn’t seem to have realized where we’d gone yet.
It got quieter and quieter as we descended, like we were falling into the heart of the earth.
“He’s leading us toward the cells,” Nathaniel whispered. “The ones that Azazel reserved for his worst offenders.”
“And they’re guarded by mute soldiers,” I remembered.
“Yes, so that they could never reveal what they may have overheard from the prisoners.”
“So Azazel could protect his own butt,” I said. “I’m sure that at least some of those prisoners were not offenders but people who’d discovered facts that Azazel would prefer to keep hidden.”
“You have so much disgust for him,” Nathaniel said, and something about the tone in his voice made me think this was the first time he’d really noticed.
“Of course I do,” I said. “He’s killed innocents for his own purpose. He tried to use me, bend me to his will. He’s the kind of creature that would cut out the tongues of his loyal soldiers just to make sure they’d never cross him. Of course I have disgust for him.”
“And so these feelings encompass your feelings toward me, as well,” he said. “Because I have long been associated with Azazel. Because I participated in acts which you find repugnant.”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling flustered. “But you’ve done some good things, too.”
“But not enough to overcome my past,” Nathaniel said.
“This really isn’t the time to discuss this,” I said. I wanted to stay focused on the mission, not get distracted by the confusing feelings I had about Nathaniel.
“Very well,” he said, and fell silent.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. Finally, we reached the bottom. A stone passage stretched away from us, set at intervals with candles encased in glass. The air was dry and smelled like rotten meat.
“Another tunnel,” Beezle observed.
“Another tunnel.” I sighed. “Stolen from a Vincent Price movie, no less.”
It was wide enough that Samiel, Nathaniel and I could walk comfortably abreast. Jude trotted ahead, his nose to the ground. He seemed to be working harder now to follow Chloe’s scent. The rotten-meat smell was getting stronger.
The passage came to a T-junction, and we all looked expectantly at Jude. He went down each side of the junction a little ways, circling and coming back over the same ground a few times. He looked up at me and whined.
“You can’t tell which way she’s gone?” I asked.
He barked in reply.
I looked down each passage. Nothing seemed to distinguish these stone tunnels from the one we’d just come through.
“Maybe we should…” I began.
Don’t you dare say that we should split up, Samiel said.
“It would be more efficient,” I pointed out.
“We are not dividing the group,” Nathaniel said.
I heaved a sigh. They were both right. Dividing our forces was not a good idea. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that.
“What do you think?” I asked Beezle, who was peering down each passage with interest.
He clapped his claws over his eyes and pointed with his other hand. “Eenie-meenie-minie-moe. That way.”
He pointed right.
Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at me.
“We don’t have anything better to go on,” I said. “Maybe Jude will pick up something as we go farther along.”
After several moments the rotting smell intensified to the point where my eyes were watering. I pulled the neck of my sweater over my mouth and nose. Beezle hid inside my coat with his claws over his mouth, breathing shallowly. Nathaniel coughed every few minutes in a way that told me he was trying to keep from heaving.
Jude, especially, looked miserable. I think the stench was starting to dull his sense of smell.
We all suspected what was causing the smell, but nobody wanted to say it out loud.
The passage came to an abrupt end at a wooden door. There was no lock, key or doorknob, and no window to see what was behind it.
I touched my hand to the door, and it swung open. A blast of stinking air hit me in the face, and I turned away, gagging.
I wished I’d never seen what was behind the door.
The room was long and narrow, and there was another doorway at the far end. Bodies were everywhere in between, tossed like dirty laundry. Most of the bodies were not intact. There were arms and legs, fingers and ears, random bits that used to be people. No matter where I looked I saw exposed bone and ragged flesh.
“Azazel’s been feeding the nephilim,” Beezle said quietly.
“There’s no point in going in,” I said, reaching to close the door.
Jude sniffed the ground outside the door and barked, pointing his nose inside the room.
“She’s in there?” I asked in dread. I did not want to search through the piles of corpses looking for Chloe.
Jude ran into the room and stopped at the far door. He barked again and disappeared through the doorway.
“I thought we didn’t want to divide our forces,” I mumbled as we jogged after him.
The next room was about the same size and shape as the previous one, but it was empty. There were copper-red stains on the stone floor.
Jude had already gone ahead to the next room. I heard him bark, and the sound of a sword clashing against stone.
I ran ahead and through the doorway, my own sword drawn. I needn’t have worried. Jude had already killed the soldier there and left him on the ground. The wolf turned around, his face covered in blood, his tongue hanging out in a macabre doggy grin.