“Ah… is there something you want to tell me?”
“Not really,” she muttered, and amused herself by hissing at the creepy things milling around the arch and making them skitter away in terror.
“Idess? Who is Azagoth?”
Oh, hell. “You’ve never heard of him?”
“I’ve heard the name, but I figured he was some regional baddie warlord in Sheoul.”
She snorted. “Hardly. He was once an angel. Back before there was such a thing as death.” She hissed at the creepy things again when they inched too close. “But then that idiot, Cain, killed Abel, and because humans could die, demons had to lose their immortality as well. Some species, anyway. So after that, human and demon souls were running around all willy-nilly and wreaking havoc. Angels were assigned to escort human souls to Heaven, but someone needed to be in charge of the other souls.”
“So, what… this Azagoth guy volunteered?”
“Apparently,” she replied, keeping an eye on the Crest Gel Archway. “Better an angel than a demon to handle the work. So, according to legend, Azagoth willingly fell. He created the holding tank, Sheoul-gra, and all the while, he tried to maintain his goodness, but eventually, he was corrupted. Maybe because he started feeding on demons, or maybe because dealing with demon souls and seeing everything they’d done in their lives chipped away his purity. In any case, he presides over souls his griminions escort to Sheoul-gra.”
“Griminions? As in, the Grim Reaper’s little helpers? Those griminions?”
“Yes. Azagoth is the being humans know as the Grim Reaper.” She glanced at the portal, which began to shimmer. “He’s also my father.”
Lore made a strangled sound, but he didn’t have a chance to say anything, because a seven-foot-tall male Neethul squeezed through the gate and came straight at them.
The Neethulum were a beautiful race, elven in appearance, which made them all the more terrifying. They were proof that evil was not always ugly. This one had emerald eyes and long white hair, with several jagged facial scars that marred his perfection.
“If you are lying about who you are,” he said pleasantly, “you will be skinned and disemboweled while still alive and hung from the rafters until you die.”
Lore casually peeled off his glove, exposing his killing hand, and his cold smile matched the Neethul’s. Except that on Lore, it was sexy. Sexier than it should be, but she was rapidly realizing that Lore was a lot of things he shouldn’t be.
“Follow. And know that you cannot summon weapons inside the Guild Hall.” The Neethul led them to the portal, kicking one of the slithering demon things on his way through.
The gate flashed them to something that resembled a small, underground medieval village. Spiny hellrats scurried under the feet of various species of demons, some of whom appeared to be there against their will. Actual balls and chains dragged behind them, and near a hovel next to a black, steaming pool, an imp in stocks was being whipped.
“See?” Lore whispered. “We’re healed.”
Sure enough, Lore’s injuries no longer bled, and when she touched her cheek, where the scale had sliced it, her skin wasn’t even tender. Neat. But her back itched like crazy.
Lore took her hand in his left one and followed the Neethul into the largest of the buildings, a keeplike structure made of bone-colored stone that bled a black substance. Inside, everything was gray, from the hard-baked clay floor to the ceiling, from which hundreds of heads hung, some fresh, some so old they’d rotted to nothing but yellowed skulls.
Idess’s stomach lurched as the Neethul led them through rooms that seemed to have no purpose except to display the heads and a few other choice body parts, until they reached a long, dark hallway. At the end, a rolling vertical door opened into the largest room yet. In the center was a crude wooden trestle table, at which at least a hundred demons sat, some drinking from ale tankards, and others gnawing on bloody hunks of meat. The Neethul took a chair near the middle.
A lizardlike demon of unknown species stood at the far end. “Why do you request this audience?” he asked, his voice booming with an unnatural resonance, a trick of the room’s architecture, Idess was sure.
“I come for information about one of your clients. I must speak with the master known as Detharu.”
There was an explosion of talk, and the lizard-man gestured for silence. “Your request is ridiculous. You will therefore be killed.”
“I will speak with Detharu, or you will face my father’s wrath.” She locked gazes with the demon.
Lizard-man’s ominous growl vibrated the air. “I do not think you understand. No master can reveal the name of the one who entered into a contract with him.”