Azagoth: A Demonica Novella (1001 Dark Nights) Read Free

that away from her...she shuddered. Sure, she’d committed a grievous offense, but there had been extenuating circumstances. She’d been kidnapped, held captive, and forced to do things she hadn’t wanted to do. Her nerdy supervisor understood...but he didn’t think the head honchos would. Besides, rules were rules, and Heaven’s tolerance for rule breakers was notoriously nonexistent.
    Stomach churning, she entered the garishly maroon and gold offices of Raphael. The Raphael. She might vomit on his robes.
    A petite, flaxen-haired female looked up from her crystal tablet, a device that was the human equivalent of an electronic tablet device...if human tablets had advanced by about ten billion years. She gave Lilliana a bored once-over, pausing to wrinkle her nose at Lilliana’s unfashionably loose brown hair. Lilliana could change it with a mere thought, maybe piling it on top of her head like a giant ostrich egg the way the other female wore it, but she’d never cared about current fashion. She did, however, care about looking stupid.
    “To your left.” Egghead went back to tapping on her tablet.
    Lilliana turned down the hall, which ended inside a room with walls that seemed to be made of white smoke. A marble fountain, an extinct palm tree, bronze statues...the room was filled with the most eclectic mix of objects from different time periods.
    An angel appeared before her from out of nowhere, and although she’d never seen Raphael before, she knew him instantly. He stood a full foot above her five foot eleven inches, and his golden hair fell in a shiny curtain around broad shoulders draped by a lush, purple velvet mantle. Jewel-encrusted rings circled every finger, and a gold sun-shaped pendant hung halfway down his chest, standing out starkly against his snowy white suit.
    If she had to describe the style of his outfit, she’d go with royal-retro-pimp.
    “You’re late.” His deep, dark voice rumbled through her, jangling her already unsteady nerves. “Late to a meeting with an archangel.”
    She was most certainly not late, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to argue. “Ah...I got lost—”
    He cut her off with a savage sweep of his bejeweled hand. “Your excuses don’t interest me. I have a proposition for you.”
    Wow. What everyone said about archangels was true.
    They were giant douchebags. With terrible fashion sense and taste in decor.
    “What kind of proposition?”
    “I understand that you’re curious about the underworld.”
    Her pulse picked up a notch. Most angels nursed a deep hatred for anything related to demons and their realm, Sheoul, and one never knew how much trouble you could get into by being too inquisitive. Plus, too much curiosity threw up a red flag for those who watched for signs of potential defection to Satan’s camp.
    “I wouldn’t say I’m overly curious,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “but I do find it interesting that many ancient human structures are replicated in Sheoul and vice versa, and I’d love to study the links between them.”
    “What if I said I could give you that opportunity?”
    She cocked an eyebrow. “I’d say...what’s the catch?”
    “The catch is a big one.” He gave an ominous pause she suspected was calculated to make her lungs seize. It worked. “You’ll have to take a mate.”
    What little air she had in her lungs whooshed out in a rush. “A mate?” she choked out. “Why?”
    “Because this particular male wants a mate, and we need him, so he gets what he wants.”
    In other words, this particular male, clearly a standup guy, was using blackmail to get what he wanted. She licked her dry lips, buying herself time to speak without sounding as if she’d run a marathon. “And what about what I want?”
    The archangel regarded her with disdain, as if what she wanted was of no consequence. “How about we go over all of the terms of this deal before you decide what you want.”
    “Of course,” she said tightly. She