time around I had the courage and leisure to actually try a few of the closed doors.
Rooms, rooms upon rooms, many of them empty of people—or rather, demons—and I just wondered what one could possibly want with that much space. Not all of them seemed to serve a specific purpose, although some did have a theme, like a game room, or what looked like a mini museum of sculptures. Most, however, were just fancy living rooms with places to lounge. Demons really liked their comfort, apparently.
While we walked the hallways, things still stirred high up in the gloom of the ceiling, and every now and then something would make a slithering or scuffing noise behind us. With my lion-sized, three-headed guard hound at my side, though, any creatures lurking in the shadows didn’t dare approach. Here and there Vengeance would let loose a half-threatening growl at something, and whatever had come too close to our path skittered away faster than I could spot it.
“Good girl,” I crooned and patted the wiry black fur on her flank.
Vengeance preened and wagged her tail.
I’d pictured running into the inferni again, was half-prepared to draw the dagger from its sheath at my hip while crouching behind my hound.
What I actually ran into, I wasn’t prepared for at all.
Or rather, whom.
I should have figured I’d see other demons milling about Azazel’s house. It was a large estate, after all, and his apparent rank and standing would mean he’d have a veritable army of employees and underlings. I did kind of figure this, sure, and I expected to maybe see Hekesha or Caleb crossing my path.
But no, of course the first demon I chanced upon was one from the room where we’d met with Zaquiel.
I rounded the corner and almost collided with a massive chest. Stumbling back, Vengeance pressing into my side and putting her heads in front of me, I peered up at the demon—the bartender I’d gotten drinks from.
“Well, hello,” he said, leaning against the wall with one shoulder. “Out for a stroll?”
Temporarily speechless, I nodded.
The demon studied Vengeance, whose muscles tensed under my hand. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a hound inside.”
“Bodyguard,” I said stupidly.
“Makes sense.”
I tried. I really tried. But it was like if someone told you not to think of a pink rhinoceros, and, of course, all you could picture from then on was a damn pink rhinoceros.
And my brain, that unruly, misbehaving, could-never-even-get-it-to-meditate set of synapses and wayward electronic impulses, dutifully conjured up the way I’d rubbed myself all over Azazel in that room.
In excruciating detail.
The demon bartender blinked, raised a brow, and drawled, “Yeah, that was...delicious.”
Fucking hell.
My face aflame, I mumbled some horrible mashup of “I need to go” and “Excuse me,” shoved past him and speed-walked down the hallway in search of a hole to fling my embarrassed ass into.
Vengeance bounded after me, tongues lolling out her mouths. At least someone had fun.
First door I tried led me into a large circular room with soaring ceilings and bookshelves running along the rounded walls, stacked several stories high, with a gallery walk circling up from the ground. Several couches and armchairs sat in the center of the mosaic-inlaid floor, and I spotted more interspersed along the gallery.
I stopped and stared, the door falling shut behind Vengeance trotting into the room after me.
Gaze tracking the shelves, I let out a sound of helpless awe. There had to be thousands of books here. The only other time I’d seen that many in one place had been at my college library.
I turned in a circle, inhaled the distinct scent of old bindings and well-worn pages, and reveled in this surreal Beauty and the Beast moment.
I spent the next hour exploring the shelves, perusing the books—most of them in other languages, even other scripts—letting my fingers run over aged spines and pulling out a volume to leaf through its pages here and there, while Vengeance snored on one of the sofas.
Each shelf had a fancy, honest-to-God—honest-to-Lucifer?—ladder on wheels attached to it in order to reach the higher levels of that particular gallery floor, and I was perched on one of them, balancing to grab a book with a gold-inlaid spine, when a prickling sensation of dark, seductive energy ran up my back and tightened my nipples.
“Pity you’re not wearing a dress,” Azazel said from his spot at the bottom of the ladder, peering up at me.
Seeing him again was like a full-on sexual punch to my senses. How he’d gotten even more