He moved to the head of the table. “Dear child,” he murmured, stroking my wet hair, “I’m the one who’s told them to do this. I would tell you I’m sorry, but it’s simply the wages of sin.” He leaned forward and kissed me gently on my forehead. And then he was gone.
I stopped feeling then. Stopped hoping. They would hurt me, they would kill me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I would simply endure, until they ended me. I had no other choice. I wouldn’t beg, plead, and God knew I couldn’t cry. I would endure in dignified, reproachful silence. One of the Truth Breakers raised his arm, and I saw what he was holding.
And I started to scream.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AZAZEL DIDN’T GO BACK TO THE house. Instead he walked through the city in the rain. He was soaked through to his skin but he didn’t care. He simply kept his mind a blank as he walked and walked. He couldn’t leave yet. Not until he had the information he’d come to retrieve. Damn Beloch for putting him through this torture. Why hadn’t the old man simply taken her that first night and been done with it?
The answer was simple. He’d seen that Azazel wasn’t ready to let her go. And Beloch knew he had found fertile ground for the cruel games he loved.
He should have known he’d end up here at Beloch’s headquarters below the innocuous old restaurant. More proof of her insidious power, he tried to tell himself as he entered through the lower door, but the words weren’t making any sense. His mind was a deliberate blank, because his thoughts were too vicious, too harmful. Her fault, he thought again, and knew he was making excuses. He had done what he had to do. He had no regrets.
So why was he here?
He saw Enoch first, playing dice with some of his men in the foyer. He looked up at Azazel’s approach, and grinned. There was blood on his uniform, and Azazel took a deep breath. He could smell it. Rachel’s blood.
“I knew you’d show up sooner or later,” Enoch drawled. “You look like you swam here. Didn’t you notice it was raining?”
Azazel didn’t bother answering him, heading toward the hallway.
Enoch moved quickly to block his path. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
“Get out of my way.”
“You can’t change your mind, you know. It’s not your decision to make, it’s Beloch’s. It’s always been Beloch’s, and you know it.”
“Get—out—of—my—way.” He bit the words off.
“It’s too late. The Truth Breakers have had her for a long time. She stopped screaming hours ago.”
Enoch stood even taller than Azazel’s six feet two and outweighed him by forty pounds of muscle. Azazel didn’t even hesitate. He went for him, rage filling his body with such strength that Enoch fell back in astonishment. He tried to rise, but Azazel hit him again, so hard that Enoch skidded across the room, landing in a crumpled heap against one wall, and stayed down, dazed. Azazel walked on into the building.
There was no noise, apart from the usual sound of the diners overhead, politely stuffing themselves. As he made his way down the corridor purposefully, Edgar appeared, unruffled as always.
“Were you wishing to dine with us upstairs, my lord? I’m afraid we cannot seat you dressed as you are,” he murmured, unctuous as ever. “But I am certain I can find you some dry clothes to make you more presentable, and then we can most assuredly—”
“Where’s Beloch?”
Edgar didn’t blink. “I presume in his rooms. He’s made it clear he doesn’t wish for visitors tonight. He’s been busy with a, er, project and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“I know what his project is. How do I get to his rooms?” The rooms and hallways in this rabbit warren of a place shifted daily, and there was never any way to tell where Beloch resided. It was part of his elaborate defense system.
“In fact, my lord, he’s not in his rooms.” Edgar hesitated, then leaned forward and said in a whisper, “He’s spent the last few hours observing the extraction room. A particularly difficult case, I gather.”
He knew the extraction room. It was where the Truth Breakers worked. Very few people had survived the extraction room. He was one of them.
“It is still on the lower level?”
“Of course, my lord,” Edgar said with a disapproving sniff. “I can’t have my guests’ meals interrupted by screaming, can I?”
Without another word Azazel turned on his heel, ignoring Edgar’s sputtered protests. He took the steps two at a time into the bowels of the building, then came to a halt. He could smell it. A thousand things. Her blood. Her fear.
He could smell the stink of death and shit, but those were older smells, not from today. He was past feeling relief. He didn’t even know why he was here.
“Hello, dear boy.” Beloch’s voice came from behind him. He was sitting in state in a high-backed chair, a jewel-encrusted goblet in one hand. “I was expecting you to show up sooner.” He waved his hand toward a less ornate chair beside him. “Sit and tell me why you’ve come.”
As if he could. Azazel took the seat, trying to stall for time. “Have you found out her secrets?”
A smile curled Beloch’s mouth. “Of course we have. Not everything, of course. She’s resting while I decide her fate.”
The cold knot that filled his chest seemed to expand into his gut as well. “And you discovered what she knew about Lucifer?”
