Azrael shivered as Love seeped into him, and then he eased out of our kiss to set me back on my feet and stare into my eyes. His eyes were glowing—nearly diamonds—as was the angelic script on his cheek, and his lips were softly smiling. He ran a hand through my hair; playing with the sparkling stripe of starlight near my left ear.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn't have said those things.”
“I'm sorry too,” I said. “I know you need Macaria's guidance right now.”
“But you were right; she shouldn't have brought that goddess here with her,” he admitted. “I hate that she hurt Kirill.”
“Kirill had the chance to confront a woman who's been haunting him for years,” I pointed out. “It was therapeutic. But you know that he wasn't asking you to leave the territory when he told you to go. Why did you; when you knew the risks?”
“It simply didn't occur to me that I could be tracked so quickly.” Azrael closed his eyes briefly. “That the Principalities would come after me is both ludicrous and something I should have expected. They govern the world; of course they would be angered by my retirement. But that they would try to punish me—an archangel and the son of Lucifer—is idiotic.”
“Someone drove them to it,” I said. “They said that Jerry ordained your punishment. So, they must have received a parchment like the Virtues.”
“But Jerry swore that he'd stop any future attacks.”
“Could he have missed the Principalities?”
Azrael blinked into an expression of revelation. “The Principalities live among the people they guard. If Jerry didn't specifically send word to each of them, then they wouldn't have heard his decree.”
“Shish kebabs!” I cursed as I grabbed his hand. “Come on; the others need to hear this.”
We hurried back into the dining hall. Everyone looked up expectantly at our entrance.
“Whomever is behind this knew that there was a chance the Principalities on Earth hadn't been notified of Jerry's decree,” I declared. “Which also means that they'd have to know about the decree in the first place.”
My men looked at each other in consideration while the angels—Azrael included—swore violently.
“It looks as if we're back to the archangel theory,” Odin concluded. “In a way, it's a good thing. It narrows the possibilities.”
“You know who is technically an angel of death, right?” Ira asked Azrael gently.
“Don't be an asshole, Ira,” Azrael huffed as he took a seat. “Michael isn't behind this.”
“Michael is an angel of death?” I asked.
“He is considered the 'good' Angel of Death while Samael is the 'bad' one,” Ted explained. “Azrael is the purest form; he is simply Death.”
“Who else is there?” I asked.
“As far as Death Angels?” Ted lifted a blond brow.
I nodded.
Ted looked at the other angels before answering, “Well, it depends on how loosely you want to go with the definition.”
“Loose,” I said blandly.
“Okay, so there are the Memitim; they are Jerry's executioners,” Ted said. “Those are the guys who took over after the Grigori were chained.”
“Doing Jerry's dirty work can make anyone crazy.” Ira grimaced. “We know that better than most.”
“How many Memitim are there?” Toby asked.
“Let's just say that there's a lot and leave it at that,” Ira said. “I don't think it's the Memitim, if for no other reason than none of them are powerful enough to have pulled off that parchment trick.”
“Okay, so who else is there?” I asked. “Who else with power, that is?”
“There's Abaddon,” Ted said with a wary look at the other angels.
“Abaddon hasn't shown his face in ages,” Sam said. “He's like a hermit; living on the edge of the Abyss, waiting for his locusts to be released.”
“Whoa.” I held up my hands. “Explain that; all of it.”
“After the war in Heaven, when Luke made Hell and went to live there, the humans wrote about the break,” Ira explained. “Things got a bit confusing—the war really threw humans into a tizzy—and one of the myths they created was that of the Abyss. They wanted a place where Jerry could punish Lucifer. So, they came up with the idea of a bottomless pit inside the Earth. Ridiculous really; a bottomless pit could not be contained in a finite item.”
“Ira,” Ted said with a pointed look.
“Anyway,” Ira went on, “the humans believed it, and so it was brought into existence.”
“You're saying that there's a bottomless pit somewhere on Earth?” Trevor asked skeptically.
“Not bottomless exactly, but it's very deep, and it's full of nasty things,” Ira said.
“Like locusts,” Sam added with a shiver.
“Locusts can be destructive, but they're not exactly shiver-worthy,” I huffed. “I'd be far more afraid if you told me the Abyss was full of cockroaches.”
“These aren't normal locusts,” Azrael explained. “They are the size of horses, with human faces, a carapace so strong it's like armor, lion's teeth, wings, and a scorpion tail that can put a normal human into a coma for five months.”
“That's some serious vermin,” I whispered.
“They are monsters; true monsters with no emotions and no will except that which their king gives them,” Azrael said. “They cannot be reasoned with and they do not stop until they finish their master's bidding.”
“Their master is Abaddon?” I asked.
The angels nodded.
“And this Abyss is a prison?” I asked.
“It's supposed to remain sealed until the Apocalypse; when Jerry will open it and send Abaddon across the world
