There was no noise, apart from the usual sound of the diners overhead, politely stuffing themselves. As he made his way down the corridor purposefully, Edgar appeared, unruffled as always.

“Were you wishing to dine with us upstairs, my lord? I’m afraid we cannot seat you dressed as you are,” he murmured, unctuous as ever. “But I am certain I can find you some dry clothes to make you more presentable, and then we can most assuredly—”

“Where’s Beloch?”

Edgar didn’t blink. “I presume in his rooms. He’s made it clear he doesn’t wish for visitors tonight. He’s been busy with a, er, project and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I know what his project is. How do I get to his rooms?” The rooms and hallways in this rabbit warren of a place shifted daily, and there was never any way to tell where Beloch resided. It was part of his elaborate defense system.

“In fact, my lord, he’s not in his rooms.” Edgar hesitated, then leaned forward and said in a whisper, “He’s spent the last few hours observing the extraction room. A particularly difficult case, I gather.”

He knew the extraction room. It was where the Truth Breakers worked. Very few people had survived the extraction room. He was one of them.

“It is still on the lower level?”

“Of course, my lord,” Edgar said with a disapproving sniff. “I can’t have my guests’ meals interrupted by screaming, can I?”

Without another word Azazel turned on his heel, ignoring Edgar’s sputtered protests. He took the steps two at a time into the bowels of the building, then came to a halt. He could smell it. A thousand things. Her blood. Her fear.

He could smell the stink of death and shit, but those were older smells, not from today. He was past feeling relief. He didn’t even know why he was here.

“Hello, dear boy.” Beloch’s voice came from behind him. He was sitting in state in a high-backed chair, a jewel-encrusted goblet in one hand. “I was expecting you to show up sooner.” He waved his hand toward a less ornate chair beside him. “Sit and tell me why you’ve come.”

As if he could. Azazel took the seat, trying to stall for time. “Have you found out her secrets?”

A smile curled Beloch’s mouth. “Of course we have. Not everything, of course. She’s resting while I decide her fate.”

The cold knot that filled his chest seemed to expand into his gut as well. “And you discovered what she knew about Lucifer?”

“We did indeed. I must say, Uriel is very pleased with you right now. You’ve almost redeemed yourself.”

Azazel froze. “What does Uriel have to do with this?”

Beloch shook his head. “Dear boy, when will you understand that Uriel is part of everything? Your actions have been very beneficial, and he’s willing to reward you for them.”

“Beneficial how?”

“He’s been looking for the Lilith for hundreds upon thousands of years, yet all he had to do was wait for you to do something about the prophecy. He knew you would lead her to me, and that he could then rid the world of her foulness. If you continue to serve the archangel well, I imagine there might be redemption for you.”

“There is no redemption for me.” He looked into Beloch’s milky eyes. There was something there, something familiar, something wrong, in his calm gaze, but Azazel didn’t have the stomach to try to place it. “The Supreme Being cursed us. It could hardly be up to his minion to reverse that curse.”

Beloch glared at him. “Uriel is not his minion!” he snapped.

Azazel was past taunting him. “What did she tell you?”

“What you already know. That she was confined near Lucifer when she refused to obey the Supreme Being and lie beneath Adam.”

“But he released her.”

“To rain terror on mankind. To seduce men and take their life essence so their seed is barren, to smother newborn babes and steal them from their mothers’ arms.”

“And why would God do that?”

“Who are you to question the Almighty’s word?” Beloch thundered, and again Azazel had that eerie sense of recognition. He tried to remember where their enmity had started, but whatever had caused it was lost in the mists. It seemed as if it had always been there.

“I have never been afraid to question God’s word. It was for that very transgression that I was thrown out of heaven, if you remember. For falling in love and for questioning.” He sounded remarkably cool.

“If you ever want to go back, you’ll have to learn acceptance. That’s what faith is. Obedience without question,” Beloch said in a petty voice.

“And why should I want to go back?”

Beloch looked startled. “Of course you want to. Everyone does. It’s perfection, the epitome of all that is good, the pinnacle—”

“It is heaven,” Azazel said flatly. “And I prefer humanity, with all its flaws.”

A slow, secret smile twisted Beloch’s withered lips. Azazel knew full well that Beloch could take any form he wanted, and he wondered why he’d chosen the old man this time. He probably enjoyed fooling the unsuspecting into thinking he was kindly and caring. He’d managed to fool Rachel at first.

Azazel needed to get the hell away from here before he heard her crying out. “What exactly did she tell you? We knew she was imprisoned with the First. We went through all this to find out what else she knew. She holds the secret to Lucifer’s prison. What has she told you?”

“You’ll have to apply to his holiness, the archangel Uriel, to discover those answers. In the meantime, there’s cleanup to complete. We will make certain there’s nothing else locked in the recesses of her memory, and then the Truth Breakers will finish her.”

He was going to throw up. He should have known that Uriel would find a way to trick them. He stared into Beloch’s oddly familiar face, and knew demands or pleas would be useless. “They will be merciful, I presume?” It wouldn’t help the way his gut was twisting inside him, but it would be easier on her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The words of the dying are often their most interesting. The Truth Breakers will continue in a few hours.”

Everything roiling inside him stopped. “Why are they waiting? Is any other outcome possible?”

“Of course not. This happens quite often. When the Truth Breakers are given orders to be brutal, as Uriel has decreed, then the initiate gets so covered in blood that it’s hard to get the other information she might carry within her. And there is the question of her voice.” Beloch gave him that smug smile.

“Her voice?”

“Her screams have left her without a voice. It should return shortly, at least enough for us to glean any final information.” Beloch chuckled. “Did you wish to say good-bye to her? I’m not sure she’ll be able to respond very well, and since you were the one who brought her to us I doubt she’d welcome having your face as the last thing she sees, but it’s up to you.”

The cadence of his voice was oddly familiar as well. The impossible suspicion was born, and even as he told himself it was insane, it grew stronger and stronger.

“I will see her,” he said.

Beloch looked startled. “I don’t think—”

“I will see her.”

He knew that disapproving huff, the narrowing of the familiar eyes. And suddenly he knew. And his rage was so powerful he was paralyzed as the man calling himself Beloch continued, “Enoch will take you.”

The Nightman was walking with a limp when he appeared, and his fury was palpable. Azazel knew him as well, with a certainty that shocked him. How had he been so blind before?

He cast one last look at Beloch. At the old-man disguise, the cruelty and hatred that hid inside. The last of the archangels, hidden by the ancient flesh. He was Uriel, and always had been. Just as Enoch was his most trusted soldier.

He followed the Nightman’s limping figure and rigid shoulders, down into the shadowy lowest levels of the old house, into the empty corridors, and he knew that Enoch would try for him again.