Page 35 of Fate and Fury

17

GADREEL

The demon Gadreel didn’t know whether to curse his Darkforsaken luck or raise a glass to the Dimi witch who might be his salvation.

He stood on the road to Drezna among his slaughtered people, the single lieutenant who’d managed to survive by his side. The demon was babbling, like he’d been ever since he’d fled the devastation that the Dimi and her accursed black dog had wreaked on Gadreel’s army. He’d arrived back in the Underworld smelling unpleasantly of rowan-fire, with a tale of fleeing through the forest and flinging himself through the crater in the middle of Drezna—the last of which Gadreel could attest to, as the demon had landed at his feet.

“You see, sir,” he blathered now, pointing a finger at the charred corpses of his brethren. “She…she incinerated them. We had a hundred foot soldiers, set to do your bidding. Drezna should have been a delectable feast, but that…that…” He gestured in the direction of the crater. “It took them all! When the animals fled the forest, it froze them where they stood. We regrouped, pleased to find a Dimi and Shadow on the road, butthen the…thing…swept onward, until the witch and her black dog did the impossible. And now…now your loyal soldiers…”

“Shut up,” Gadreel said absently, and snapped his fingers. The demon—what was his name? Azagrel? Benatroyd?—fell mercifully silent, his lips sewn together by the force of Gadreel’s will. Honestly, the creature was useless. Why couldn’t it have been Gremory by his side—a grand duke of Hell, commanding twenty-six legions? But no. Gremory was under Sammael’s dominion, and Gadreel was forced to deal with this fool, who was no more than an expendable minion. Unfortunately, Azagrel/Benatroyd was also the only witness to one of the few fascinating events that Gadreel had encountered in thousands of years, since he had been cast out of the skies and sentenced to roam the earth and rule in the Underworld.

Well, that blind human scribe Milton, who’d lived and died in a world far beyond Iriska’s borders, had been correct. It was, indeed, better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Sammael aside, Gadreel had a huge territory in the Underworld, far more than he’d ever been granted back when he had wings of white and was expected to kowtow to the Almighty.Don’t think for yourself. Don’t fornicate with human women. Don’t teach humankind how to defend themselves from threats.Truly, Gadreel had had enough. He was far more of a doer than a Watcher, after all. When he’d fallen, along with the rest of the Grigori, it had not been long before he’d realized his good fortune.

But he hadn’t been the only one. Happy to serve whoever would provide enough hedonism and bloodshed to keep them satisfied, demons weren’t leaders by nature. As long as there was a steady flow of souls to devour, pain to inflict, and bodies to debauch, they did just fine. The exception was Gadreel’s archrival: the fallen Archangel Sammael, Venom of God.

The demon was an annoyance, especially because he had his eye set on Gadreel’s corner of the Underworld. In the beginning, they’d divided Hell up neatly, with a minimum of battles to the death. Everyone had been pleased. Even the minor Watchers, who didn’t want the responsibility that came with managing a large realm, had ceased complaining.

Then came Sammael, with his protestations that he needed more land, more demons to command, more souls to devour. More, more, more, that was Sammael. No matter how many minions and commanders Gadreel won over, no matter how many souls fell beneath his foot soldiers’ swords, Sammael was always there: a thorn in his side, a threat to his realm.

The Dark Angel of War Gadreel, Scourge of Humankind, Slayer of Dimi and Devourer of Souls, would not be lesser than the Venom of God. It was insupportable.

Gadreel had spent centuries seething. And then, at last, it came to him.

The Underworld was fueled by human souls; the more that perished at the hands of Gadreel’s Grigori, the stronger his territory became. The same was true of Sammael, as well as the lesser demon lords—but those hardly counted. Brooding on this, Gadreel had concluded that if he could command the source of the Darkness, he would be stronger than Sammael had ever dreamed of. With this unshakable conviction in mind, he had unleashed the Darkness, known to Dimis and demons alike by the same name.

Once the idea had entered his mind, it had become, Gadreel was not embarrassed to admit, an obsession. He began to brood, reading all he could in the demonic scrolls, hunting out forgotten, half-faded spirits in the corners of realms that did not belong to him. It was not like he had much else to do, other than defend his realm against Sammael’s insistent onslaught. It was getting, quite frankly, rather boring.

Then came the moment when Gadreel had found the answers he’d sought for so long. He’d made the necessary sacrifices, laying souls aplenty and even his own body at the feet of the Darkness. He’d had intimate congress with all sorts of creatures over the years, including Sammael’s Lilith—ah, cuckolding his nemesis had been so sweet—but he’d never experienced anything like that before: an icy greed that devoured him from the inside out, always seeking, never satisfied. It had been most unpleasant, and coming from Gadreel, who had once shared a tent with a hydra that hadn’t brushed its nine sets of teeth in three centuries, that was really saying something.

But what he’d freed in return was far more than he’d bargained for: a conscienceless, unadulterated hunger for human souls, with no thought for moderation or consequence. He’d thought he could contain it or command it, but he’d been terribly wrong.

Much as it pained Gadreel to admit, he’d lost control over the thing that he’d let loose on the world. It had chewed its way straight through the center of Drezna, sucking humans, Dimis, Shadows, and Vila alike into the Underworld, along with the village itself. Splintered wood and frozen fruit, human and animal corpses, half-forged Shadow blades and half-eaten meals…it had all come thundering straight into Gadreel’s throne room, when he was in the middle of dinner. To say it had been unappetizing was the understatement of the millennium.

He’d ordered his minions to clean up the wreckage, threatening to remove their limbs should they so much as question how it had appeared. It had been pure luck that he’d dispatched a small detachment to perform reconnaissance on the path to Rivki, staging an attack on Drezna in an effort to keep the Darkness fed. They’d arrived mere moments before the Darkness had grown impatient and decided to show Gadreel up by boring a hole into the center of the town itself, devouring allof the living souls within. His army had fled—some soldiers they were—whereupon they’d encountered the Dimi and her Shadow on the road to Drezna. And now look at this mess. Corpses everywhere, a hundred ten soldiers wasted, and a witch who could stand against an army of minor demons, flanked only by a single Shadow.

Well, one thing was certain. Gadreel had to lay claim to what had happened, to use it to bolster his power. Sammael and the minor Grigori had to believe it had been his army that had blasted a hole in the middle of Drezna—for there was no way to contain an event of that magnitude, any more than there was a way to contain what the Dimi and her Shadow had done.

Neither should have been possible. Yet here he stood, in the aftermath of both.

There was only one witness to what had transpired in the village that day, and to what had happened afterward, on the road. That was a loose end, and Gadreel hated loose ends.

“I regret this,” he said, and snapped his fingers again. The unfortunate minion who stood beside him—Azatroyd, that was it—fell to the ground, his throat pouring blood. A glance, and he burst into flame.

Gadreel gazed down at his soldier’s sizzling body, satisfied that at least he would no longer have to listen to the demon’s babbling. He would lie here, indistinguishable from the rest. But next time, Gadreel might not be so lucky.

He had to get control of the Darkness. If he could not, it would destroy all of humanity. He personally had no fondness for the creatures, but human souls fueled the Underworld. If the Darkness ate all of them, his realm would collapse and so would the others. His millennia of battles against Sammael would amount to nothing, a mere footnote in history. He would disintegrate into the Void—the nameless, shapeless, lightless space from which new demons originated and into whichdemons went when they were slaughtered—taking all of his people with him. Sammael would follow, and there they would be, at each other’s throats for all of eternity.

It was a nightmare.

He needed an ally in his battle against the Darkness, someone with enough power to put the Dark back where it belonged. But there was no way he could tell Sammael how, in plotting against him, Gadreel had fatally overshot. That would be the end of thousands of years of work; the bastard would finally have the ammunition he needed to unite the minor realms against Gadreel and rise up against him. Andstillthe Darkness would rage uncontained.

No, there was only one thing to do. He would have to ally himself with the Light, repellent as the notion might be. Together they could drive the Darkness back into the Void. He would have to get his hands on this terrifyingly powerful Dimi, for she and she alone might have the power to aid him.

But if what his minion had told him was true, her black dog was no ordinary Shadow. The man had blazed up with a Light that had illuminated the entire road, driving the Darkness back. And when he and his Dimi had fought side by side, they had defeated Gadreel’s army, which was an impressive inconvenience. His soldiers were replaceable, but still.

He would have to capture the Dimi and bend her will to his own—for she would never believe they were on the same side of this fight—but to get to her, he would have to kill her Shadow. Then he would force her to help him re-quarantine the Darkness. After that…well, perhaps he would keep her by his side, as entertainment. Why not? Surely she would be amusing, and he did so hate being bored.

It was no small series of events to put in motion. But if there was one thing he loved, it was a challenge.

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