32 MEAT AND GREET
MEAT AND GREET
S UNSHINE REARRANGED HER ROBE AS R AUM TUCKED himself back into his pants. His release poured out of her, sliding down the inside of her thighs.
“What in the hell happened here?” Daniel gripped his hair in his hands, staring in horror at the scene before him. It seemed he was too preoccupied with the gruesome butchery of Raphael to pay much attention to what Sunshine and Raum had been doing, which was a good thing.
As Sunshine approached him, she took in the scene in a new light and grimaced. At the time, her actions had seemed perfectly sensible, and she hadn’t understood why Raum was so cautiously trying to make her stop.
Now she realized she’d been in shock. She’d probably looked like an unhinged madwoman.
“Who—What is that?” Daniel croaked.
“It’s Raphael,” she said.
Daniel’s eyes appeared in danger of falling out of his head. He also looked a little green. “How did he end up like … that?”
She hesitated, twisting her hands together. “Well—”
“I chopped him up,” Raum said, coming to stand beside her. He crossed scaled arms over his scaled chest and pinned Daniel with a piercing look as if daring him to question his words.
Daniel looked shellshocked. Appalled. All the appropriate words for someone witnessing such savagery.
Sunshine sighed. She appreciated Raum trying to protect her, but she couldn’t let him take the blame for her actions. Because of what he was, he was constantly having to prove himself, and it wasn’t fair.
“No,” she began.
“Sunshine—”
“It’s okay.” She smiled at him and then looked at Daniel. “I did it.”
Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “You. Did this.”
“Yes.”
“… Why?”
She wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “I assume you’re here because Eva told you to come. I instructed her to find you after Raum freed her from the sigil.”
Daniel nodded. “She filled me in on what happened. I can’t even—I’m just glad you were here or I might have lost her.
” His voice broke on the last word, and he swallowed hard.
Then he shook his head roughly. “She’s on her way with the demons right now, by the way.
What she told me was brief, but I think she would’ve mentioned if it looked like Raphael had been through a meat grinder. ”
Sunshine nodded. “I did it after she left.”
“Again … why?”
“He needs to die.”
Daniel dragged a hand through his hair.
“He knows about Eva, Daniel. He knows where Raum and his brothers are. He knows about me and what happened in my past.”
“What happened in your past?” He looked between her and Raum as if already sensing their connection.
“It’s a long story, but both Raum and I had our memories erased. Of each other.”
Daniel looked in danger of spontaneous combustion, so she quickly moved on. “Raphael is a threat to all of us, and I can say with certainty that there is no reasoning with him.”
“I believe that after what Eva told me,” Daniel said. “But you’re talking about destroying an archangel .”
“We don’t have to kill him,” Raum said. “I have an idea.”
Sunshine started to ask but was interrupted by the arrival of Eva and Ash. Eva took one look at the room and screamed. The other demons entered behind them, and when they saw the carnage, they froze, their faces taking on expressions of shock similar to Daniel’s.
Sunshine winced at their reactions. “I’ll admit I may have gone too far.”
Belial turned his piercing blue gaze on her. “ You did this?”
She nodded weakly. “I needed to ensure he wouldn’t regenerate any time soon. And I was a little … stressed.”
“Remind me not to piss you off,” Meph said. Even Mist looked wary.
But Belial was studying her with narrowed eyes, and when she met his gaze, he gave her a look of … approval? Goodness. If she’d known chopping an angel into pieces was all she had to do to earn that from him, well …
Then it was a good thing this had occurred, because she’d never have gotten it otherwise.
“Let’s kill him,” Belial announced with a little too much enthusiasm.
The look on Asmodeus’s face told Sunshine he wasn’t averse to the idea either. After that mural she’d seen in Heaven, she didn’t blame him.
“You can’t,” Daniel said.
“Why not?” Belial growled. “He knows too much, and he’s a threat. He would have killed Eva and my brother if he’d had the chance. I can’t let that stand.”
“The death of an archangel would immediately be sensed in Heaven. You’d been starting a war.”
“We’re already at war.”
“Not like this. They’d stop at nothing to find you, and when they did, they would show no mercy.”
Belial looked bored. “Sounds like the same old shit to me.”
But Daniel shook his head. “There are powers in Heaven that generally don’t concern themselves with Earth affairs. But if something like this occurred, I can guarantee it would spur them into action. There’d be nowhere you could hide and no way to fight. You’d be signing your own death warrant.”
Belial’s eyes flashed. “I’m getting sick of angels underestimating me.”
“This isn’t a pissing contest,” Daniel said through gritted teeth. “I’m telling you—”
“And I’m telling you, I’m fed up with these white-winged fucks thinking they’re the masters of the universe.
It’d do them some good to be taken down a notch.
And this fucker”—he actually kicked a lump of severed Raphael-flesh, which shot across the room and hit the wall with a squelch—“has fucked with me enough.”
“I’m not talking about archangels coming after you,” Daniel said. “I’m talking about angels of even higher ranks who can find anyone on Earth just by concentrating. I’m talking about angels who—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck who you’re talking about.”
“You should! Especially when you’re putting my daughter at risk—”
“Everybody shut up!” Raum snapped suddenly, and miraculously, they did. “We don’t have to kill Raphael to get rid of him. I have a better idea.”
Deep in the bowels of Hell, Murmur massaged his temples, purposefully digging his claws into his skin, hoping the pain would detract from the headache throbbing behind his skull.
It didn’t.
His book lay open on the desk in front of him. He hadn’t let it out of his sight since the angel had trespassed on his territory intending to steal it.
He still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to escape a confrontation, and his paranoia had skyrocketed since. He expected her to return for a second attempt at any moment.
The slightest noise had his body going rigid with tension and venom collecting in his tail, ready for a strike. His eyes were so bloodshot from lack of sleep, the whites had turned completely red.
Or maybe they’d already been that way for years?
He didn’t remember. Nor did he particularly care. He avoided his reflection because the crazed look in his eyes reminded him of the tenuous grasp he had on his sanity.
Flattening his palms on the desk, he curled his fingers and dug his claws into the surface. Outside, the sky had darkened to maroon. In the distance, he could hear the moans of the gargoyle guards he’d impaled on the tower spike above him.
He honestly hadn’t given a fuck that Raum had escaped. If anything, it was a relief. He couldn’t handle any more problems right now. But he had to keep up appearances. His minions had failed him, so they had to face punishment.
That was the way in Hell. Kill or be killed.
Or rather, obey or be impaled.
Murmur looked down at the page in front of him, blinking his tired eyes until the scrawling text slid into focus. Damn you, Gamigin. You couldn’t have taken a little time to write neater?
Then he smiled faintly. After what he was about to do, he was sure Gamigin would’ve been the one cursing him … if he’d been alive to see it. Shouldn’t have written it in your book then.
Sometimes Murmur wished Gamigin was still alive.
He didn’t care either way about the demon himself, but it would have been so much easier to simply chain him down and torture him until he explained everything rather than trying to interpret his half-mad ramblings.
How much time had Murmur wasted deciphering this cursed book?
But he was close. And it was in Gamigin’s ramblings that Murmur had finally discovered what he believed to be the missing link in his experiments. The missing ingredient . The time was fast approaching for him to collect that ingredient and test his theory.
But he had to finish his study of the book first. The paranoia forced him to, reminding him that at any moment, someone could trespass onto his territory and try to steal it from him again.
It had happened once. It would happen again.
His claws dug deeper into the wood.
In a cruel twist of fate, it was at that moment that the souls patrolling his boundary wards alerted him to a breach.
Murmur lurched to his feet, sending his chair crashing backward. His fingers curled into his palms, claws digging into his flesh. Venom dripped from his tail barb.
Trespassers. They were everywhere.
Did everyone know of his plan? Would someone beat him to his final objective? Was he a step behind some other competitor? Were they watching him even now?
He spun around with narrowed eyes, scanning the familiar sight of his dark library. Every shadow seemed to taunt him. Every flicker of light looked like eyes watching him.
He shook his head roughly. Deal with the problem at hand. Do not succumb to the madness.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated and issued a command to his souls, sending them out to intercept his guest, immobilizing the intruder until he could greet them himself and discover their intent.
Scooping up his precious book, he crossed the library to one of the bookshelves. Puncturing the end of his finger with a claw, he pressed the bloodied tip to the spine of a nondescript volume. The hidden door released and he dragged it open, the entire shelf rotating with it.
He set his book upon the stand inside and then backed out, closing the door behind him. He touched his bloodied finger back to the stained spine, sealing the ward once more.