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It would all wear off eventually. The angels would wake up once someone removed the daggers from their chests, and they might have one hell of a headache, but the effects of the concentrated amrit would be gone.
My heart was drumming like a wild rabbit was trapped in my chest as I came up on the next landing, the guard on duty here already facing me with narrowed eyes—she’d probably heard the bit of commotion from downstairs.
“Who are—” was all she got out before I whipped up the pistol and shot her right in the face.
She grunted and pulled out the dart, but by the time she’d drawn her sword, she was already swaying.
I moved in and planted a dagger in her chest.
With a wheeze, she collapsed to the floor.
Two down, two more to go, and then it was only the angel who was currently torturing Azazel inside the room.
Adrenaline coursed through my body, the rush of it making me alert and solely focused on finishing this, on getting him out. Too much fucking rested on me not being my clumsy-ass self for once, and I really, really hoped I could channel some of Vengeance’s unique ability to shed all traces of clumsiness when it mattered.
I remembered that I’d managed to stab a hellrat to death the first time I’d been in Lucifer’s palace, saving my own damn self from ending up as a rodent’s dinner. I also recalled how I’d sawed off Destatur’s head while she was knocked out from being blasted with Lilith’s power, in order to save my life and Azazel’s. Not to mention I’d managed to use Lilith’s magic inside me to blast my way out of the box Inachiel had stuffed me into. I could do this. I could rise to the challenge. I would do my fucking part to get the man I loved out of harm’s way.
With that short internal pep talk steeling my nerves, I made quick work of the next guard at the top of the stairs, and then I walked into the corridor leading to Azazel’s room with all the confidence of belonging there. Part of pulling off a stunt like this was to act as nonchalantly self-assured as possible, up until you had to use force to get further.
The guard keeping watch in front of the door to the room saw me coming. But because I didn’t rush him and instead moved with the calm attitude of someone who was supposed to be there as part of their job, just coming to check on something, he didn’t suspect anything was amiss until I raised my pistol when I was a few feet from him.
Another dart met another face, and a few seconds later, he slid down the wall with a dagger in his chest.
I guessed the fact that no angel expected to have someone draw a pistol on them, let alone shoot them with a dart, played in my favor here. It was simply not a standard weapon among angels. Our kind just didn’t fight each other like that.
Plus, these guards here were more meant to keep the demon prisoner from escaping, each of them another step of security he’d have to overcome on his way out. The guards weren’t really prepared to look for an angel as an opponent, someone who came in from the outside to free the demon held here. That was unthinkable. Even with the case from a few years ago of the rogue angels working with demons to kill Lilith, it hadn’t quite sunk in that there might be angels who could turn traitor.
Metatron and Shekinah might be cautious enough to have Naamah protected from any other angels who could be harboring treasonous thoughts and want to harm her, but as far as I could tell, that attitude of suspicion hadn’t truly permeated the rest of Heaven and its command structure.
It made it all the easier to take these guards here unawares.
I stood in front of the door for a moment, gathering my nerves once more. For one thing, so that I’d be able to withstand the impact of seeing Azazel in chains, bleeding and hurting, but also to prepare myself for how to handle whoever was in there with him.
Holding the pistol—with another dart loaded—concealed behind my back, I opened the door and stepped inside.
“What’s going on?” the angel on torture duty asked, lifting her head and half turning toward the door from her position right in front of Azazel. “Who are you?”
I recognized her from when Ithuriel had introduced me to some of the team members. Eloa, if I remembered correctly. A short angel with brown hair currently pulled back in a tight braid, her fair skin flecked with tiny red dots.
The kinds of marks made by spraying blood.
Azazel’s blood.
A calm like I’d never known before settled over me like an exhaled breath. Despite not recognizing me as a member of the team due to Naamah’s illusion, Eloa wasn’t on high alert, likely because of the fact that I’d made it past several guards uncontested. For someone to show up in here should mean they were authorized to be in this room, and Eloa’s lack of vigilance was her doom.
“Ithuriel sent me,” I said in a voice projecting bored nonchalance—and at the same time, I raised my pistol and shot her.
The dart landed in her neck, she grunted and jerked, and then she staggered to the side.
“Whaddd—” she slurred, but I didn’t really hear her.
Couldn’t hear her, not with my blood roaring through my head at the sight in front of me, now made visible by Eloa stumbling aside.
An eye.
He was missing an eye.
His face fully coated in scarlet, his hair drenched, he strained against the collar biting into his neck as he struggled to hold himself upright enough not to strangle himself. And there, blood dripping out of the fresh wound, was a gory, gaping hole where his left eye should be.
