And maybe she’d just earned herself a place in the Grim Reaper’s hall of horrors, the Hall of Souls at the mansion’s entrance, where statues made out of the bodies of his enemies were on display for the world to see.
What made it all worse was that the people encased in those statues weren’t dead.
On the verge of hyperventilating, she slumped against Azagoth’s behemoth of a desk and forced herself to breathe slowly. How did she keep screwing up? And not just screwing up, but royally screwing up. Just last week she’d broken one of Azagoth’s centuries-old Japanese swords. And a month before that, she’d spilled pineapple soda all over a priceless rug woven from demon sheep wool by Oni craftsmen.
“Did you know that, unlike pineapple soda, fallen angel blood doesn’t stain demon wool?” he’d asked in a dark, ominous voice as she’d scrubbed the rug. And no, as a matter of fact, she hadn’t known that.
When she’d said as much, he’d merely smiled, which was far, far worse than if he’d just come out and said that if she fucked up again, her blood would definitely not stain that damned carpet.
Soda, however, did stain, just like he’d said.
It seemed to take hours before she stopped trembling enough to gather her crap and flee the office, and thankfully she didn’t run into Azagoth on her way to her quarters. She did manage to catch another glimpse of Hades as he rounded a corner though, the hard globes of his ass flexing under the tight, midnight black pants.
Maybe she could try talking to him someday. Try saying something more coherent than, “Hi, Mr., um, Hades. Or do you prefer Jailor? Or Lord? Or...?”
He’d looked at her as if she’d crawled out of a viper pit. “Hades,” he rumbled. “Easy enough.”
And that had been the sum of their conversation. Their only conversation. Ever.
Did he think she had freaking halo pox or demonic measles? And why was she dwelling on this anyway? He was clearly not interested in her, and she had more important things to worry about.
Like whether or not Azagoth was going to not stain his carpet with her blood when he found out that she’d allowed unauthorized souls to enter the Inner Sanctum.
Chapter Two
Hades had a lot of names. Lord of the Dead. Keeper of Souls. Jailor of the Baddies. Asshole.
He owned them all. Ruled his piece of the underworld with an iron fist. Feared nothing.
Correction. He feared nothing except the Grim Reaper. Azagoth was the one person who had proven time and time again that he could turn Hades’s underworld upside down and shake it like a snow globe.
So Hades generally despised the monthly meetings between him and Azagoth, but thankfully, this latest one had been refreshingly brief and light on fault-finding. Which was good, because Hades’s brain had been occupied with images of Cat.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her when she came to work for Azagoth a few months ago, remembered how drawn he’d been to her energy. She was new to life on this side of the Pearly Gates, and while most newly fallen angels were either terrified or bitter, she was neither. According to Lilliana, Cat was curious. Eager to learn. Enthusiastic to experience new things.
Hades could teach her a new thing or two.
Except he couldn’t? could he? Nope, because the curvy redhead was off-limits to him, and panting after her like a hellhound on the trail of a hellbitch in heat would only end in pain.
Pain that would likely come at the end of Azagoth’s hand, and Hades had long ago learned that pissing off his boss was stupid beyond stupid...beyond stupid.
Still, it grated on him that he’d been read the riot act about Cat when he was about ninety-nine percent sure Zhubaal had bedded her. So what was up with that? Z was a cranky sonofabitch with a short fuse and a stick up his ass, but somehow that mongrel was good enough for Cat?
So fucked up.
Hades took one of three portals dedicated to travel between Azagoth’s realm and the Inner Sanctum back to his residence, and as he materialized inside his living space a tingle of mayhem skittered over his skin. How...odd. Sure, hell was all about mayhem, but this was different, and it had been different for a few months now. Before, there had always been a balanced mix of order and chaos. Organized chaos. Chaotic organization.
Even here, in Sheoul-gra’s Inner Sanctum, where the souls of dead demons came to play until they were born again, there was order. Rarely, there was chaos.
At least, chaos used to be rare. But now that Satan had been imprisoned and Sheoul was no longer under his rule, all hell had broken loose––literally. Sheoul was now operating under a new regime, with a dark angel named Revenant as its overlord, and not everyone was happy about the new leadership situation. Just as with humans, demons didn’t accept change easily, and the tension surrounding Revenant’s takeover had bled over into Sheoul-gra.