room without saying anything. The gate ramped up and I felt her presence fade away.
Once she was gone, I ordered the fiends to fix the door, without being seen, and to stay on guard duty. If anyone popped in for a visit while I was gone, there wouldn’t be a body left to identify. I then made a quick call and snatched up a couple of guns and some extra ammo, collected the vial Karra had left on the table, and said goodbye to Chatterbox before I headed out.
I wanted to know more about the relationship between Lucifer and my mother, and if Baalth wasn’t in the mood to talk, I knew someone who would.
Chapter Nine
A mile or two outside of town, the sun was creeping over the horizon. The abnormally green desert surrounded me as I parked my confiscated Impala and waited for my cousin to show up. She clearly wasn’t in anything resembling a rush. I’d already paced a furrow in the wet dirt and contemplated asking the Chinese for help since I was damn near halfway to their country by the time she finally arrived.
Leaving behind a trail of shimmering light, she dropped from the sky and landed gracefully before me. She still looked battered, but I guess that made sense seeing how I’d just seen her at Abe’s funeral that morning. The inter-dimensional time change was still screwing me up. She’d exchanged her dress and sunglasses for her usual leather outfit. Everto Trucido hung in its place at her hip with a brand new scabbard.
Her bruised face was grim. “Frank,” She said, her voice was barely a whisper.
I bit back a snarky comment about her tardiness as another streak followed just a second later, the angel Raguel joining us. It wouldn’t do me any good to ruffle Scarlett’s feathers seeing how I called her. I needed a favor.
“Hi, Raguel.” I greeted the other angel with nod. Unlike when I’d first encountered him, there was a sense of his power drifting off him this time. He was no longer incorporeal, a being of nothing more than willpower and memories. Still dressed in his bronzed battle armor, his own runic sword was at his side. His wild gray hair was tied into a long tail behind his head. It made his sharp features even more so, seeming to pull the wrinkles of his face into deeper lines.
“Triggaltheron.” He gave a curt bow, his icy blues eyes appraising me. “Scarlett has told me what you seek. Why should I do this for you?”
He was all business, but it’s not like I expected rainbows and fluffy kittens. That was okay, though. I had a pretty good idea he would help, seeing how he wouldn’t have come all the way from Heaven just to tell me no. There’s a card for that. “No reason at all, but I’m still asking for your help. Before he was shut down, Azrael spoke to me of my mother and a relationship with Lucifer. I need to learn more about that.” I had no interest in divulging all of the details, but I had to offer Raguel something or he’d have no reason to help.
Scarlett’s lips pulled back into an unconscious sneer at the mention of my uncle’s name. I could relate.
“I need to know whether he was just yanking my chain out of some sick desire to torment me, or if he really knows something about my family history; my past.”
“Do you think he was telling you the truth?” Scarlett asked. Her eyes were narrow and sparkled with doubt.
I looked at her and shrugged. “I hope not, but if he was, then the whole of who I am is nothing more than a lie. I have to know.”
Raguel stared at me, the cold chill of his eyes making me feel as though he were peering inside me. After a long moment, he nodded. “I will grant your wish, Triggaltheron, only because of what you’ve done for the Kingdom, but beware Azrael. He has long lived apart from Heaven and is no longer an angel in any sense of the word. Trust only that he serves himself, and no other.”
He turned away and I felt the sudden buildup of power. Immediately, the dimensional wall was torn open, a glistening shimmer of golden energy bridging the gap between two realities: Earth and Limbo.
“I have warded the passage so no one but you may enter or leave Limbo. It will remain open for two hours only. Be sure you are through it before then or you will be trapped inside.”
“Thank you,” I told him after he’d recited the steps that would lead me to Azrael.
Raguel said his farewells and streaked into the sky, leaving me alone with my cousin.
“Are you sure about this, Frank? Our bloodlines are tangled enough as it is. I can’t imagine anything you’d learn from Azrael would be good news, even if he could be bothered to tell you the truth.”
“Probably not, but there are too many lies to ignore. I doubt the truth can be much worse than what I’ve been led to believe.”
She shook her head. “You’re lying to yourself now, but do what you must.” Scarlett came over and hugged me tight. It caught me off guard, and I scrambled to return the embrace. When she pulled away, she smiled. It was a genuine, honest smile. “Thank you for saving my home, Frank. No matter what you find in there, she gestured to the portal, “you shall always be in my heart, as family.”
A second later, she was in the air, nothing but the trail of her power still visible. The awkward moment over, I turned to the look at the dimensional rift. I didn’t have much faith Azrael would open up and tell me the truth if I just asked him, so I’d come prepared to do more. That wasn’t something I wanted to let Scarlett or Raguel know. For all their reasons to kill Azrael, they’d simply turn the other cheek seeing how he was already beaten. Down and out, he was just another soul who had to worry about a redemption that was never gonna come. For me, down and out was exactly how I wanted him.
No time to waste, I stepped into the portal and felt myself transported to Limbo. Its gray emptiness was a shock to the system after being on Earth. Made entirely of swirling clouds that obscured everything, Limbo was a colorless void designed to stash the spirits of the dead on the way to their final destination. With no landmarks or buildings, absolutely nothing to judge direction or distance by, you had to know exactly where you were going or you wouldn’t get there. Worse still, lose your way and you wouldn’t be able to leave. It was like having a TV with only PBS-mind-numbing.
Fortunately, I knew where I was going and had a trick for finding my way back. I slipped one of the DA slayer bullets out of one of the extra cartridges and dropped it at the portal. Since the bullet was made out of the essence of an angel and a demon, it gave off a tiny flicker of their combined power. It wouldn’t be a lighthouse, but it would provide me with a distinct enough distinct signal for me to catch my bearings should I get turned around. Better still, someone would have to be almost looking for a ping that small to notice it, so I didn’t have to worry about coming back to a horde of trapped creatures trying to use me to get out of Limbo.
Bullet in place, I headed off, keeping count of the steps I took. Raguel had set the meet close to an area that lined up with Azrael’s dump point in Limbo, so it wasn’t long before I arrived. I expected to have to hunt him down a bit, figuring he would have wandered off, but I was surprised to see him hunched over and sitting at the location I’d been given, to the exact step.
He looked up as soon as the clouds parted between us. “Come to gloat, have you?” His voice was quiet, soft, carrying none of its usual forcefulness.
I pulled another bullet out and dropped it into the clouds, just in case. “I only came to talk.” I didn’t see the point in kicking him when he was down…not yet, at least. There was nothing to lose by playing nice. I had time for Plan B. C through Z were all the same.
Azrael stood. He wore the same black robes as he had the last time I’d seen him, but now they hung loosely across his emaciated frame. Pale, his skin stretched taut across his sharp features, he still looked like death warmed over, but there was none of the intimidation that had been such an integral part of his being. He looked like an old man, counting the minutes until the end came.
Bereft of his powers, which Raguel had inherited, Azrael looked so…normal. There were none of the obsidian clouds that whirled about his feet or any of the fire in his gaze. He stood on the cloudy surface of Limbo and his eyes were a murky brown. I let my senses loose and felt the barest hint of his essence, little more than a pittance to keep him among the living. The cold wash of the tomb had been replaced by a numb emptiness of a disconnected soul. He had truly been forsaken. He was nothing more than skin and bones with an immortal spirit.
“I’ve nothing to tell you, Triggaltheron.” Azrael shook his head. “You were given the opportunity for answers, but you chose to stand against me. Leave me to my banishment.” He dismissed me with a casual wave. “At least I
