There But For The Grace (19 page)

My muttering must have made a point, because she went dark in my head, contrite. She hated it when I was cleverer than her, and it struck me that with all the time she’d been with Tab, she’d never really bothered to learn anything from him. Instead, she’d always relied on her visions, which was a scary thought. I mean, we’d already proven them to be fallible. How the hell she’d managed to make it this long was beyond me, and the short answer was, she hadn’t. If she’d really truly made it, she wouldn’t have been trapped in my head.

It was a moment of doubt that I honestly didn’t need to dwell on, so I huffed out a breath and twisted my body out from around the corner of the building between gusts making for the nearest doorway. I dove into it, just as the wailing, screaming, and shrieking wind blew past and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Getting battered by the souls tormented by lust was no picnic. As they passed over and around me, I felt violated and like I wanted to live in a damn shower. I guess, if I had to imagine, it was probably what a victim of sexual assault felt like. An instance I had thankfully managed to sidestep completely and avoid up until this point. I gripped the butt of one of my guns. I’d be avoiding it a lot longer than just
up to this point
if I had anything to say about it.

I caught my breath and turned to the thick, wooden door set in the brick alcove I’d ducked into and taken cover in. I reached for the latch, one hand at the ready to draw if I had to. My fingers went around the iron handle, my thumb ready to depress the catch, and I paused, took a deep breath, and made the breach. I depressed the catch, gave the door a push, and was surprised to find it unlocked.

The door swung open, and my mouth almost dropped open with it. The inside of the building was warm and cheery. Gas lamps and fireplaces, the wood aglow with warmth and polish, the rugs a deep crimson. It looked like I had just stepped into a high-class rendition of a Victorian hotel.
Or brothel.
Iaoel shot me some really un-PC and bawdy images that were kind of funny given the circumstances, but they got the point across just fine.
Stay alert. Don’t let the shiny digs throw you off your game. Nothing is what it seems down here.

I quickly stepped across the threshold and slammed the door on the screaming and wailing outside.
“God,
that shit can get on your nerves,” I muttered.

“Hmm, sounds like you’ve been spending too much time on Earth,” a disapproving masculine voice said from behind me. Fuck. I hope I didn’t just blow my cover to hell and gone. I turned around slowly and tried to find something wrong with the guy that’d spoken.

“Yeah, I have. It’s good to be home, but I picked up some bad habits up there in order to fit in better.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“I used the name Addy while I was on Earth. I kind of like it. You can call me that.”

“Ahh, clever, clever girl. Didn’t spend so long up there to forget that names hold power. I like it.”

I arched an eyebrow, interesting bit of info. I filed it away for later and thanked Iaoel for cluing me in about this guy. She was giving me the rundown as best she could, what little info she had, but what she did give me was useful. He was Fallen, which explained the good looks, and his real name was Azael, somehow I doubted he was going to give it to me but I asked anyways.

“And what should I call you?” Rapid fire images played out behind my eyes; the short version: Azael had Fallen because of his, eh hem, cohabitation with women. The father of more than a couple of Nephilim, a word which Iaoel kindly superimposed over an image of the giant thing that had grabbed Tab and drug him down here in the first place, Azael liked the ladies. Specifically, he liked sex and a lot of it, and he was pretty much all about himself.
Big surprise there.
He was a narcissist. What’s more, according to Iaoel, was he wasn’t only a narcissistic bastard; he was also super fucking sadistic. He couldn’t and
wouldn’t
get off if the woman or man beneath him wasn’t bleeding and screaming, in that order. She also recalled that he preferred women most of the time, especially brunettes.

Well, fuck.

Fuckity – fuck – fuck – fuck.
I should have probably stayed outside, but there was no going back now.

“You may call me Sobel,” he smiled, and I was at least relieved to see he’d had no special dental work a la Rahab. That seemed to be Rahab’s own special thing. I still didn’t know why that creeped me out as bad as it did, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it now. I needed to get into character, and Iaoel was trying to get me to make said character some kind of mercenary type. I was dressed the part, so I went with it.

I nodded carefully. “Sobel it is.”

I couldn’t help myself: I kept looking for any physical malfunction on him, but he was beautiful. Long light brown hair, gathered into a loose ponytail, trailing down his back in a silken wash. Muscular, but trim chest, with that delicious little happy trail of hair leading from his navel down to the black satin skirt-thing he wore that fell to the tops of his feet. His nails were manicured, which was weird but not completely out of place. Almost all the Fallen I’d encountered, even Rahab, were a little metrosexual. Almost all of them were impeccably dressed. The skirt thing
Sobel
had on was odd, and reminiscent of Greek or Roman loungewear, but it
fit
him, like he belonged in it; that was the best way to describe it. Not just that he seemed perfectly comfortable and at ease in it, so he wore it well, but more like he’d belonged in the time period it’d come from, and so he wore it like a second skin.

“So, where are you headed, Addy?” I flicked my gaze back up to his cognac-colored eyes. Warm like the beverage with those beautiful golden caramel undertones. Iaoel flashed the number five in front of my eyes, which made me blink and disrupt the magnetized hold his gaze had held on mine. I smiled, “I do a lot of work with anger and angry people, so I’m headed back to five. I just wanted to take the long way down.”

“I see, and you’re at my door because?”

“Storm got seriously annoying, I can’t listen to those miserable motherfuckers all the way through the Second. It’s seriously dry-humping my last good nerve. I suppose that’s the point, though eh?” I flashed a grin that I hoped was wicked enough to satisfy him and shut the fuck up. I was talking too much, and it was a good way to give myself away.

I prayed that Hadad’s amulet was holding true and that as a result, Sobel thought I belonged here in Hell. Finally he flashed a smile that was charming as fuck, and giving me one more lingering look, said “Lucky for me then, that you’ve arrived here, rather than one of the other houses. Please, come in. Be my guest.” He crooked out an arm and turned so that I might take it.

“I like what you’ve done with the place so far and would love to see more,” I replied, slipping my arm through his. I was hoping like hell that I would get through this without incident. Especially seeing as I had no idea where the fuck to go to get further towards the Third through this massive sprawling multilevel building. I could get lost really easily in here, and starting a fight or having to fight my way out didn’t seem like the best option ever. I smiled up at Sobel, because let’s face it, even at five foot nine or ten, everything Angelic, Fallen or otherwise, had been taller than me up to this point, like six feet or above. The good news was that I was in the range of the height of
female
Angels, Fallen or otherwise, which surprisingly, weren’t common. The dude to chick ratio when it came to both the infernal and heavenly hosts were woefully imbalanced. Maybe that’s what caused some of the problem in the first place when it came to some of the Angels pairing off with mortal women. I’d say
falling for
, but Haziel had set me straight on that. That had been the difference and the deciding factor when it’d come to their fall and why the Nephilim were so monstrous… No love had been involved, everything had been purely, selfishly physical on the Angel’s side of things, and that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

Sobel led me deeper into the… house? Building?
I didn’t really know what to call it. It was furnished lavishly and looked like a million different mansions or hotels back on Earth touted as a ‘romantic getaway’ or ‘honeymoon destination,’ which, this being the circle of Lust, only made sense. The fun was just beginning, so it seemed, because the further we got into the place, the more the sexy times picked up. It started with a glance into a room that looked like a den or office: a woman was riding a man on a fur rug in front of a fire, next to a desk. We paused to admire the live porn for a moment, and everything seemed normal on the surface, except for the line of scales running down the temptress’ back. That got my attention.

Sobel chuckled, and I glanced up at him, maintaining my tough and unflappable exterior while Iaoel had red warning lights flashing in my head. She kept alternating the red flashes with images of herself in front of the mirror, passing her hand over her face, expression stoic. The message was crystal fucking clear:
whatever you see, don’t react. Keep your game face on.
I thought it hard, back at her over and over again until she was satisfied that I had the picture. She kept the red light strobing though. Ironic, that. Red light district, red warning light… It was all the same here.

The woman riding the oblivious soul turned to look at her impromptu audience over her shoulder. She smiled at us, and a forked black tongue, much longer than it should have been, flicked from between her crimson-painted lips. Her smile quirked even higher, and the man let out a scream. He jerked, and my first thought was that he was coming, but then the screaming took on a much more terrified cadence, and I looked at him. Blood poured down his hip, out from around the woman’s thigh, and I think I flinched.

“Lamia has teeth,” Sobel explained blithely, and I blinked.
Oh hell no!
Even Iaoel was cringing after that one, and we let Sobel lead us away from the awful scene. Lamia had her head thrown back, laughing, as her hoo-ha chowed down on its hapless screaming victim, and I felt ill.

“I must say, you chose the right boudoir to travel through. Our back door lets out right into the Third,” Sobel was saying, and all I could think was
lucky me
in the most sarcastic way possible.

I saw a lot of exceedingly fucked up shit as we passed through the building’s halls and started down some stairwells. Sobel chatted amicably about his work punishing the lustful souls, and he was a dude who
clearly
loved his work. The more he talked, the more I wanted a shower—and to blow his head off. Instead I managed to divert his boasting to the size of his building, and I mean that literally, not figuratively. The building was huge, and the further toward the back we got, the more obvious it was that it was built with the incline of the impact crater. It had been a few stories tall in the front, but as we neared the back, I noticed an increase in stairs and elevators that led
down
, which is precisely what I needed.

Iaoel sent me visions of the building from the side. Where I’d entered was the ground floor of a four-story building, but those four stories multiplied to eight in the back. If I had to guess, the back ground floor let out into the Third Circle, and where I needed to go. Sobel had other ideas though, stopping at a stairwell that could go either up or down, he put a foot on the first riser to
ascend
.

“Well, thank you for an eye-opening and most informative stroll,” I said lightly.

He smiled, and it was cruel. “Oh come now, don’t be coy.”

“I’m not being coy. I’ve really got to go. It was nice to meet you, Sobel, but I have business I need to get to.”

“It can wait.” His tone brooked no argument. He stepped down to my level and into my personal space.

“Actually, it can’t.” I held my ground, and he snarled. Before I knew it, I was up against the wall, his thigh between mine, knee raised into me so I was forced to stand on tiptoe. His mouth came perilously close to mine.

“I’ve shown you hospitality, and as you know, nothing is free down here. I want to play. I find you very attractive,
Addy,
and I don’t tend to let pretty things leave my house until I have had my fill of playing with them.”

I smiled and felt that its cruelty was a near match for Sobel’s. I needed to catch him off guard and to do that, I needed to distract him and to do
that…
I was really going to need a whole lot of mouthwash after this, but I forced myself to kiss him. He kissed back, and it wasn’t
entirely
unpleasant. I closed my eyes and pictured Gabriel. Hell, I even pictured Tab, even though I didn’t think that was going to happen.

I did not come here to date you, or fall in love with you, or have any part in your life. I came here to pull the Grace from your being and send you back to your life. I came here to stop Heaven or Hell from spilling out on your world…

I rolled my eyes and focused on giving Sobel as good as I got, and what do you know? It was working. His arm slid around my waist, and he pulled me up tight against his body. It was so very hard not to notice just how happy he was to be there, but I needed him engaged if I was going to do this right. I rested my hand on the swell of one bicep, and leaned into the kiss while my other hand sank downward, carefully so as not to tip him off. I wanted him to think I was relaxing into it when really…

Jackpot!

I got my gun out and pressed it under his chin. He drew back, just enough to look me in the eyes, and chuckled.