Page 36 of Eternal Mate

My heart constricted weirdly at the sight. This was definitely Azazel, but he just… he just looked so different from the one in my memories.

Azazel had been an arrogant asshole with a god complex. His hair had been as red as mine, and he’d always been done up like the rich mafia boss he wanted to be.

But Azazel had never been real, apparently. All this time, he’d just been Lucifer—or some distant extension of him, as Barimuz had said.

I still didn’t know how to react to that. Would I ever know? What was the protocol for finding out that your ‘father’ was technically the Devil himself piloting around a meat puppet?

Nausea filled my stomach again.

It didn’t matter, though. Whether ‘Azazel’ was just an angel’s stolen husk or not, he would have to be put down for everyone else’s sake.

And if there was any scrap of the real Azazel’s soul left in there, trapped against its will, this would be a final mercy.

I hoped that he was long dead—for both his sake and my sanity.

“Hey.”

I jumped a little when a hand landed on my shoulder. I turned to see Auren on my left, his lips set in a grim frown. “You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to,” he said softly.

I shook my head. Deep inside my gut, I knew that I needed to do this. I needed to see Azazel dead myself, so that I would know for certain that I’d be free of him forever. Lucifer would have to get a new agent to torment us all with.

“Let’s do this,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t need more time to think?” Barimuz said dryly. “Come over here, then. Demons are hard to kill, and the most efficient way to do it is also the most specific.”

He traipsed down to the rough center of the magic circle, hands behind his back. I somewhat reluctantly followed, and Auren was at my heels.

We formed a triangle around Azazel’s head and sides. I tried my best to ignore the way the black ooze squelched under my shoes; it definitely wasn’t helping the sick feeling in my gut.

“The core of the demon must be destroyed at the same time as the head, and then the bones need to be reduced to fragments. Do it too slowly, and they’ll start regenerating. It’s a shame that we don’t have swords, so you’ll have to focus your powers and smash him to pieces.”

I exchanged a look with Auren, and then we both nodded.

He took the head while I took the chest. I had to peer between the former angel’s ribs to see the core Barimuz was talking about; it was a black, pulsing orb where the heart should have been, partially submerged in the goop. I wondered if it normally just floated there.

“Ready when you are,” Auren said.

“Right.” I sighed. I began to gather angelic power in one fist. “On the count of one, two, three…”

We slammed our fists down at the same time into Azazel’s body. The bone gave away easily under my blow, and the core split apart like shattered glass, spitting its remaining energy into the air.

The empty bones twitched but didn’t otherwise move.

With that done, we let off bursts of angelic energy, and the bones shattered into too many pieces to be put together again.

Almost immediately, the ooze began to deflate and soak into the ground, leaving dark patches on it that quickly faded away. Those abandoned spidery limbs set themselves ablaze, then soon burned into nothing, as did the bone fragments.

In under a minute’s time, there was no trace that Azazel had ever been here at all.

The magic circle deactivated. Its red glow died completely, making the cave a little darker.

I looked up at the sun through the holes in the ceiling. Shining brightly, it definitely didn’t care about the horrors that had just gone on underneath it.

I felt weird. Floaty. Sounds were getting more distant. I wasn’t sure why.

A clap on my shoulder snapped me out of it. I turned towards Auren, who seemed to be sending me a sympathetic look. “Come on, brother,” he whispered.

I followed him back. I barely registered Barimuz saying behind me, “Well, now I don’t have to clean my feet.”

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