I knew him so well, and yet he was so different. Primal and savage, not the clipped, neat man I knew.
Tribal marks decorated Azazel’s face. His dark hair hung down his back in tangled locks, and a pair of black feathered wings rose behind him.
He reached out and caught a wisp of shadow rising from the dove’s corpse, then closed his hand. The shadow was gone when he opened it again.
The present Azazel pulled us toward the stone gate. As we passed the memory of the ancient Azazel, the memory looked at me, cocking his head.
I looked back, my heart hammering in my chest.
He stared, then turned back to the sacrificial dove, and I could suddenly breathe again.
Of course he hadn’t seen me. It was ridiculous to think a memory would be able to see us now, but his gaze had felt so knowing.
Before I could look back, the real Azazel pulled me through the stone arch. I had the slightest glimpse of a black-haired woman rising from a puddle of moonlight near the memory-Azazel, and then they were gone.
We were no longer in the desert, but in yet another corridor, this one lined with thousands of mirrors.
Haru finally snapped. “How many fucking hallways are there?”
I was rooted in place, still shaking from the feral look the ancient Azazel had given me. He’d been almost animalistic himself.
“Did you think this would be easy?” Azazel rounded on him. “We would walk right in, and out into Irkalla?”
Haru bared his sharp teeth. “We’ve been walking through this shit for hours. I’m tired of watching people get sacrificed and eaten.”
Azazel chuckled, the sound bouncing off the walls in an eerie way. “This is the territory of the gods, idiot fox. You’ll see what they saw, and what they wanted the most- which was usually sacrifices.”
Michael made a low, pained noise in his throat.
We all stepped aside as a beautiful female archangel walked out of thin air, striding down the corridor with her snowy wings held high… and into the waiting arms of a demon god of pure night. They wrapped around each other, kissing almost violently and whispering desperate words of love.
“Lailah,” Michael said, looking after her sadly. “Gabriel never forgave her for that.”
Dark claws wove through Lailah’s long gold hair, stroked through her white feathers, and as her demon lover pressed her against a wall, they faded out of existence.
“Did he kill her?” I asked hollowly, still staring at the spot where they’d been. She’d looked like she’d loved her dark god as much as I loved mine, and kissed him like she knew it was the last time she’d ever get to be in his arms.
Michael nodded grimly, meeting Azazel’s eyes for only a brief moment before looking away. “She was the first archangel, made from the stars. Of course she loved the night. It’s what she was made for.”
“He killed Lailah.” Azazel’s voice was short. “Not Nakir. That was someone else.”
It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that some of these memories were eons old, but they also belonged to the same people I was here with now.
I’d never felt so young and inexperienced before, just a tiny blip on the cosmic scale. There were millennia of memories stored in this awful place.
“Let’s go. The longer we remain in one spot, the more active the memories will become.” Azazel stared at Haru. “You will see many more terrible things, but you can’t stop now. Just think of Irkalla.”
Haru was looking where I was, at the place where Lailah and Nakir had vanished. “I won’t stop.” He sounded cool and collected now, straightening his shoulders.
I wondered if he was thinking of Vyra when he saw the two dead lovers, and had realized there were far worse things than old memories to contend with.
None of the mirrors we passed reflected us or the corridor. After looking into several of them, I quickly learned to keep my eyes straight ahead.
Until one of them, so familiar, caught my eye.
I knew his silver hair and blue eyes by heart, because they were etched there with hatred. Gabriel stepped through a smoking battlefield, the fighting over, and loomed over a beautiful Nephilim woman.
She had horns and dark hair, with blood spattered across her dress. She looked back up at him hopefully.
I gritted my teeth, wanting to kill Gabriel all over again. She’d looked at him like he was her savior, and he’d abandoned her to a terrible life.