Azagoth by Larissa Ione
Chapter Eleven
Azagoth didn’t know how long they laid on his couch, bodies tangled together as they caught their breath, but eventually, Lilliana, her head on his chest, began to trace lazy circles on his abs. The intimacy of it—of all of this—left him in a state of awe and, truth be told, anxiety. Somehow, she was drawing emotion out of him, and he couldn’t help but wonder how damaging that could be.
“Azagoth?”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you volunteer for this job?” Postcoital drowsiness permeated her voice, and he experienced a flicker of male pride that he was responsible. “To lose your angelic status and live among demons?”
He shrugged, knocking one of the pillows off the sofa. “Someone had to do it.”
“Bullshit.” Her fingers skated over his rib cage in an almost playful sweep. “I might be young, but I know that no one sacrifices freedom without a good reason.”
He tucked one arm behind his head and gazed up at the wood-beamed ceiling. “Didn’t you read everything you could find about me before you decided to become my mate? Surely you had an entire term devoted to me in history class.”
“Three terms, actually.” She drew the number 3 on his sternum. “You’re quite the historical figure. The first term was devoted to your life as an angel known as Azrael and the events leading up to your expulsion, and the second and third terms were devoted to your life as Azagoth.”
“I got three terms?” He grinned. “Nice.”
But damn, the name Azrael brought back memories. And how odd was it that he preferred the memories he’d made as Azagoth over those that went with his Heavenly name?
“Yes, well,” she said, “the history I learned painted you as an entitled playboy who chose to lose his wings because he’d rather rule an empty kingdom than follow others in paradise.”
It figured that historians would twist the facts to fit whatever agenda they had. Angels were no more scrupulous than humans when it came to molding the truth into fact-based fiction.
“Then what’s the point of asking why I chose this life if you already know?”
“Because only a fool believes everything they read or are told.” She dragged the backs of her fingers up his sternum, and pleasant tingles followed in their wake. “So what’s the real story?”
He supposed he owed her the truth, given what she was committing to. It was just so strange to owe anyone. He was the one who usually held all the I.O.U.s.
“I did it because I was tired of feeling,” he said simply, because that’s what his long-ass story boiled down to in the end.
Pushing up onto one elbow, she frowned down at him. “Feeling what?”
“Everything.” He kept his gaze glued to a rough-cut beam overhead. “Did your history classes teach you that I was an empath?”
Her brow shot up. “But you were an interrogator with the Internal Corruption Investigation unit. Empaths aren’t allowed. How can you torture people if you can feel everything your subject feels?”
“At the time, no one knew I was an empath. And it wasn’t all torture,” he said, maybe a little defensively. “Most of what I did for the ICI was ask questions. Being an empath gave me an edge when it came to detecting lies.”
“Which is why you were the most successful ICI interrogator in history,” she mused. “It was you who uncovered Satan’s plot. You were unstoppable. Until you mysteriously quit and disappeared for a few centuries before returning to volunteer for the Grim Reaper gig.”
Those few centuries had been the worst years of his life, so full of loneliness and regret. Funny how when you had no one to talk to, you relived everything you ever said and did, and when most of it wasn’t pretty, you learned to hate yourself real fast.
“I quit because I was a cocky, spoiled, arrogant playboy, just like you said. I kicked ass at my job and I knew it, and then one day I got it wrong. I was so sure of myself that I mistook a young angel’s fear for a family member for fear he’d get caught lying. Long story short, he was innocent, and he lost his wings because of me.” He glanced over at her, expecting to see disgust on her face, but all he saw was curiosity. “Naturally, at the time I didn’t blame my bad judgment on my arrogance. I blamed it on the fact that I wasn’t a powerful enough empath. You know, if only I’d been even more empathic, I wouldn’t have screwed up. So I did something stupid, a mystical spell went wrong, and one day I was the most empathic angel the world had ever seen.”
She cocked her head, and her hair tickled his chest. “So what happened? You don’t seem to be all that empathic to me.”
“No kidding.” There was a crack in the ceiling beam. He should get that fixed. “What happened is that my world went to shit. I couldn’t be within a mile of a human or I’d feel everything they were feeling. Being within a hundred yards of an angel would drive their emotions and thoughts into my head like a knife. So I left ICI and isolated myself for two hundred years. It wasn’t until a call was put out for volunteers to oversee Sheoul-gra that I realized I could do something useful again. The benefit being that here in the demon realm, my empathic ability doesn’t work.”
“I’ll say,” she muttered.
“What I didn’t anticipate,” he continued, “was that I’d lose more than my ability to feel what others feel. I’ve lost my ability to feel almost everything.”
“You’re saying you don’t feel pain? Or anger? Or joy?”
“Anger stirs, but barely and not often. Otherwise...” He shrugged. “I’ve even lost my ability to feel heat. Only the ever-present biting cold. If not for the fire, I think my flesh would turn to ice.”
“That’s why the fire doesn’t produce heat, isn’t it? Because you absorb it all.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give to be warm. Even when you took me to the desert, I could barely feel the sun on my skin.” He took her hand and dragged it to his right pec, directly over the skull engulfed in flames tattoo. “These tattoos were designed to contain pain and emotion. I took them from one of the Four Horsemen, Thanatos, in hopes that I could access the pain. And for a while, I did.” He sighed. “It was...glorious.”
“Pain was glorious?”
He took a strand of her hair between his fingers. It was so soft, so different from the hard, cold texture of the world he’d created around him.
“I was happy to feel something...anything.” Bringing the curl of hair to his nose, he inhaled her fresh scent. “But it didn’t take long to drain the tats. Now they’re as empty as I am.”
“I’m sorry, Azagoth.” Her pity put an end to this party, and he sat up with a curse. “Oh, no,” she said, grasping his wrist. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t need—or want—her sympathy. He’d made his bed and he’d lie in it. With her, preferably. But he did want her to understand that it wasn’t her job to make him happy. Nothing and no one could do that.
“What’s wrong is that none of this is fair to you,” he said, breaking her hold so he could swing his legs over the side of the sofa and stare into the fire. “I wanted a mate. I didn’t expect complications.”
“So I’m a complication?”
He winced. “Not...you. This situation. I’m not usually impulsive, but I asked for a mate before considering what life down here would be like for her. A dark, creepy realm and a mate who can’t feel anything. What a catch I am.”
Oh, look, the pity party had started up again. Rock on.
“You’re wrong,” she said fiercely. “You can feel. I watched you in the sand and the snow, and I promise that what I felt coming off of you was sheer happiness. You felt that. I saw you. I felt you.”
“And trust me,” he said, “those were the best two hours of my life. Then we came back.” He caught a glimpse of the chronoglass out of the corner of his eye, and he swore the thing mocked him. “When I was with you in the desert and Arctic, it felt as if the chains holding my emotions at bay broke. But the moment we return, all that emotion shifts to pain, like my body can’t handle it.”
“Maybe it can’t. Your emotions have been bottled up for a long time. Maybe they’re starting to break free.” She shifted on the sofa so she was sitting cross-legged and facing him, the blanket tugged up to cover her all the way to her breasts. Shame, that. “You’re empathic, but not down here, right?”
“Right. Except...”
“Except what?” She poked him in the thigh, startling him with her playfulness. “Tell me. I can handle it.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face, knowing it probably wasn’t wise to talk about other females when you were with the one you just made come.
Just spit it out.
“The only time I feel anything is when I’m fucking,” he blurted. “And it’s not even my emotions I’m feeling. It’s the female’s. So imagine how awesome it is to be servicing an angel who doesn’t even want to be here. Who loathes me or is terrified. Yeah, it’s great. But you know what the worst part of it is? Some small part of me is grateful even to feel their disgust and fear, because at least it’s something.”
Damn, that was some nice babbling, wasn’t it?
He risked a brief peek at her, expecting to see revulsion, but all he saw was more pity. Which was somehow worse.
“Okay,” she breathed. “So you can’t feel your own emotions. But you used to have them down here, right?”
“Yes, thanks for the recap.”
She huffed. “What I’m trying to say is that maybe this is the beginning of you starting to feel again. It started happening after the first time travel session, right?” At his nod, she continued. “So the time travel must be triggering it. Was it worse the first time or today?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Today, but you were a good distraction.”
A shy smile turned up one corner of her mouth. “You’re welcome.” The blanket had fallen to expose deep cleavage and the delicate swells of her breasts, but sadly, she tugged it up to her throat. “But I was afraid I was going to lose you again for a minute there.”
“When?”
She turned as red as a Sora demon’s ass. “When you, ah...when your finger discovered...” She cursed and blurted, “Why was my virginity such an issue for you?”
It was his turn to curse. He’d done so many stupid things in his life, and the virginity thing was one of them. She was going to think he was a serious idiot.
That’s because you’re an idiot.
“Remember I told you about how I did something stupid and became a stronger empath?” At her nod, he scrubbed his face again. If he had any emotions, he’d be embarrassed. “That something I did was a female. A succubus. A virgin succubus.”
“Oh...shit.” Angels weren’t supposed to fornicate with humans, let alone demons, but of all the demons, succubi were the most forbidden. Virgin succubi were the worst of the worst, and if caught, the offending angel would pay dearly—perhaps even with his wings.
“Shit doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he said gruffly. “And I didn’t know she was a demon at the time.”
Lilliana smiled wryly. “Isn’t that what they all say?”
Probably. But he’d prided himself on being too smart to fall for any demon tricks, especially those coming from succubi.
“I thought she was a human sorceress,” he explained. “I’d made a few, let’s say shady, inquiries through underground networks about a spell or a token that could increase empathic powers. She said she could help. She was the perfect mix of vixen and maiden, and I fell for it.”
“Wait...if you were an empath, why didn’t you sense the fact that she wasn’t human?”
“Because most breeds of succubi can project false emotion and mask their true identities with aphrodisiac magic. Virgin succubi, in particular, are impossible to detect as demons.”
Lilliana shifted, and the sound of the blanket rasping against her naked body made his sex stir again. Quickly, he swiped his pants off the floor and threw them on.
“A succubus’s virginity is priceless,” she said as she watched him dress. “The moment her barrier is broken, a massive wave of power is released. People pay outrageous sums to deflower a virgin succubus and reap the benefits of that power. So why would she just give it to you when you didn’t even know what she was?”
He sank back down on the couch. “Because when an angel deflowers a virgin succubus, she absorbs a huge amount of his power in return. Now, picture a succubus who possesses abilities generally available to angels.” At her expression of horror, he laughed bitterly. Yeah, she got the picture. “Thanatos once accused me of being the Horsemen’s father. I played it off like he was way off base, but the truth is that I did fuck Lilith.” He remembered how sweet she’d been. How delicate. How fucking good she was at deception. “It was Lilith who granted me my wish to be more empathic. She was the virgin.”
Lilliana sat back hard against the back of the couch, as if her body would no longer support her.
“Oh...wow.” Her hand clutched the blanket so tightly that her knuckles were white. “So that’s how she became so powerful...powerful enough to trick Reaver into sleeping with her and fathering the Horsemen.”
“Everything comes with a consequence. I took her virginity and got what I wanted, but I also set into motion the events that almost led to the Apocalypse. She absorbed many of my powers, turning her into the most powerful succubus to ever live. Then she seduced Reaver, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were born.”
“Holy crap.” Lilliana flopped onto her back, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling. “You know, my life has been very boring compared to yours.”
Unexpectedly, he laughed, a flat-out, genuine laugh as he stretched out beside her once again.
It was then that he noticed it. His lungs seized and his body trembled, and it took forever for his brain to process the reality as he stared into the fire.
For the first time in thousands of years, he felt the warmth from the flames.