Entice: An Ignite Novella (6 page)

Halfway across the cavernous hall, we spot Naamah and Botis. They’re sitting together, heads bent over a series of carvings on the large, wooden table. When Az and I step up to them, Naamah slides her dark hand over the mahogany, erasing the etched words and smoothing over the wood.

“Secrets, secrets are no fun...” Azael tsks as he slides into the bench across from them. I join him without a word.

“How can we help you two?” Botis asks.

I study him. He’s a shapeshifter—one of the most famous—and his appearance is subtly serpentine, even in his regular form. His skin is the palest shade of red, as if he’d been too close to the sun and it scorched him scarlet. Across his scalp is a shadow of cropped hair. The most unsettling of all, though, are his eyes. They’re a flat purple with vertical slits in the centers that look like thin, black pits.

From what I’ve read of shapeshifters like Botis, his strange eyes are able to detect heat. I look around us at the icy walls and the warm bodies of demons, imagining the blues, greens, yellows, and reds he must see everyone in.

If you don’t look closely at him, you might miss the fact that he’s a shapeshifter. The most obviously serpentine thing about him is his tongue. It is forked, split in two, and black. When he talks, it peeks out from his lips, tasting the air to sense our reaction.

I wonder what my temper tastes like. Probably bitter or smoky. Azael’s probably tastes like decay, pungent and putrid.

Botis watches us, distantly amused and calculating. I want him to choke on my darker emotions and not dwell on the skittishness that skips below my skin. I conjure up as many loathsome things I can imagine. He twists his mouth and straightens his back, as if he swallowed something revolting. I grin.

Not the most handsome devil
, Azael mocks him in my mind.
The red clashes with his eyes.

He smells like sulfur. And that damn tongue of his is repulsive.

I should rip it out of his skull, maybe make a nice necklace for Naamah.

Very fashionable. She’d be the envy of every siren this side of stupid.

Naamah leans into Botis and whispers. His split tongue peeks out again to smooth over his lips. It’s disgusting. When he sits up again, he lowers his chin and unleashes the full force of his unsettling countenance on us.

I’ve seen Botis talk to other people before and noticed he uses his appearance to intimidate others. His sharp teeth are always out on display, and he has a way of staring people down until they wilt before him. I lean forward, making a point that I am unafraid. “Actually, I believe it is you two who need the help.”

He smiles. “Is that so?”

“Eden,” Azael says under his breath. “We’ve been told that we are teaming up to take down Adam.”

“I heard differently.” Naamah shapes her words around a sly grin.

Her eyes slide over to me and she takes in my appearance with disdain. I want to claw that look off her stupid, smug face.

She is intimidatingly beautiful, with dark, smooth skin and sleek brown hair that falls past her waist. Her chest swells beneath her shirt, and her waist is the exact shape of an hourglass. Self-consciously, I worry my hand through the tangled knots of my hair and try to sit up a little straighter.

“And what did you hear?” Az’s words are short and clipped, verging on angry.

“That we were in competition for top tier ranking,” she says.

Botis tips his head to one side in amusement. “Whichever team can corrupt Adam first is crowned the winner.”

A deformed crown at that,
I think bitterly.

Doesn’t matter, Pen. I could make even the most broken crown look formidable.

There’s a few beats of uncomfortable silence—both sides waiting for the other to speak first—before I decide to shove my words into the space between us.

“So you’re not planning on working with us then?” I ask them.

Naamah purses her lips. With one of her nails, she carves a pattern into the table again. For a flash, the words they had hidden from us appear, and I quickly devour the information before it disappears again.

Got it,
I tell Azael.
I know what they’re going to do.

“I think not,” she finally answers me. “Who would choose friendly over fierce competition?”

“If that’s what you both believe is best,” Az says, a sharp smirk cutting across his face. “Have it your way. See you in Eden.”

We stand together and exit the hall, leaving everyone inside staring at our backs curiously.

What’s their plan?

I wait a beat before turning to him with a dangerous smile of my own.
An apple.

––––––––

“A
N APPLE
. L
IKE THE WAXY
red fruit?”

I scrunch my nose. “Is there any other kind?”

“Do you think it’s a code? Maybe like...to throw us off?” He kicks out at the wall, sending a shower of ice scattering ahead. “Let’s see. Apple could be code for Adam. Ass—”

“Ass?”

“It’s kind of shaped like one,” he explains in complete seriousness. “Or fruit could be more like...money. Like ‘reaping the fruits of our labor.’ They could be planning to bribe him. Offer him a sweet, juicy stack of gold. Or piggyback off of us, ride our coattails. I’m betting it’s a code.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t think it’s a code. It’d be unnecessary.”

He looks over at me with raised eyebrows.

“She’s already speaking in a kind of code by using the symbols.”

“Because no one else in Hell can read?” he asks sarcastically.

“They were hieroglyphs.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Exactly. Hieroglyphs—they’re these symbols, pictographs and images, that represent a word, syllable, or sound. The one she drew, it was unique, rarely used. And it only has one meaning, so there was no room for misinterpretation.” I smile, glad to have my linguistics studies finally paying off. Knowledge of language opens many doors.

Azael stares at me, one skeptical eyebrow raised. “Hiero-what?”

“Hieroglyphs. It’ll be big for a couple of centuries, trust me.”

“Characters. Little tiny
pictures
for words. Wow, I am not looking forward to that phase.”

“The
point
is that they wouldn’t know I could see the carving, let alone decipher it. Most scribes haven’t studied all of the languages. We’re usually assigned to one or two hundred. There’d be a one in 10,000 chance an angel would know that one. Well,
most
angels.”

“Right.”

“But I’ve learned almost all of them. At least to some proficiency.”

“Of couuuurse you have.” He shakes his head. “Didn’t you have any better way to spend your time?”

“Absolutely not.” I grin. “Because now we have an advantage over them. They’ve shown us their cards, but we haven’t shown them ours.”

“Do we even have cards?”

We round the corner and press against the wall, walking single file as a flurry of leather creatures passes by us. They puff humid breaths that evaporate in the cold air and smell like sulfur. I hear Azael grumble in front of me something about presentation. When their hulking forms squeeze down another corridor, I move back next to Az.

“Not yet.” I skip a few steps to keep pace with him as he slides around another corner. “I should mention—it’s not just
any
apple. It’s...special. Forbidden, apparently. Not quite sure why.”

“Angels forbidding an apple? What, are they making particularly precious pie?”

“I thought you hated alliterations.”

“Only when they’re forced.” He smiles. “Okay, so this apple. What are they planning on doing with it? Force feed it to him and hope the Heavens take that as a sign he’s over their rules?”

I shake my head no. “Too obvious. Naamah would be more understated, don’t you think? Keep their presence low key so as to not stir up any angry white wings with ideas of vengeance. It would have to be his choice to eat the apple.”

He considers this, chewing on the side of his thumb at a hangnail. “Mmh,” he mutters noncommittally.

A scream curls its way down the hall to us, pricking my skin like a shiver. Azael smiles and rolls his head back and forth, obviously enjoying the tormented howl, but I cross my arms against the noise and the feeling it brings. A few unwise sentiments fight for a voice on my tongue and I do my best to ignore them, crushing the words on the roof of my mouth.
Wrong
creeps into my veins and clouds my head.

Az probably knows the source of the scream, the information being tortured out of one of the few angels captured during battle. I’m sure he’s tried his hand at torturing a few of his own, but I tuck that suspicion into the deep recesses of my mind where I’ll have a harder time finding it. I wear denial like armor nowadays.

Luckily, I don’t have to prompt Azael to speak again. His voice rises over the scream, pulling my attention back into focus. “She’s teamed with Botis. Why would they choose him?”

“It’s a garden,” I answer, grateful for a distraction from the fading scream. It sounds muffled now, farther away, and I can almost pretend I imagined it.
Almost
. “Snakes and gardens go very well together. It’s like you and derision.”

“Ah, derision. My sweet midnight lover.”

“You’re really a piece of work, you know that?”

“I believe the phrase is ‘work of art.’”

We pass by a few more crowded dining halls before we come to one of the weapons rooms. Surprisingly, it’s empty. I grab Azael’s hand and tug him inside just as a pair of catlike shapeshifters slink around the corner.

It seems I’ve spent so little time with Azael, and when we are together, we’re only fighting or scheming. I think hitting or slicing something apart could calm him down. It’s never a good sign when violence changes from something that was once avoided and feared to a source of comfort. The
wrong
moves from my veins to coil around my spine, tying taut and forcing my posture straight.

“Feel like sparring?” I ask him, running from the door to the racks of weapons that line the walls.

I push aside bows and arrows, maces, axes, swords, and unhook two identical spears. The tips are slightly dull from use, but they’re sharp enough to cause significant damage.

Azael talks to my back. “So how about this for a plan: the opposite of whatever Naamah and Botis are doing.”

“Sounds fantastic.” I turn around, spinning the long handles in my hands. The staff of the spear is smooth and light, but the end is heavy with the blade. I toss one out to Az and he catches it plainly as he steps deeper into the room. “They zig, we zag. They’re brute, we’re brains.”

Azael weighs the weapon in his hands and cocks an eyebrow up at me. “You sure you want to do this, Pen?”

“Zag?”

“Spar.”

“Oh.” Bending my knees, I lean toward him. I whip the weapon around my back, grab it with my other hand, and spin it again. It’s very showy, with no real weight or muscle behind the move, but it looks impressive. Azael is easily goaded by flair. I nod my head. “Are you sure
you
want to do this?”

He chuckles. “I’m the one who’s been training every day since the war. When’s the last time you picked up anything besides a book?”

I shift my weight on my feet, bending just slightly at the knees and waist to lower my center of gravity. The spear feels good in my hands, but I can’t forget how many lives I saw ended with this same weapon. Friends cut down, enemies (allies) stopped short. I place my right hand at the base of the staff, ready to throw my weight behind my stabs, and the other rests about halfway to the blade.

Azael doesn’t move into position. He just watches me with a stupid grin on his face. “Very textbook posture you have there.”

I roll my shoulders back. “Come on, let’s—”

Without warning, he pivots his body and pulls the weapon to his waist. He steps out and jabs once, twice, three times. I block all of them. But he’s surprised me and forced me to move backward. I’m trapped between him and the wall, and when he goes to strike me again, I spin out of his way, rolling my back across the armory that lines the wall like ivy in an untended garden. His blow misses me and his blade clatters into a series of small daggers. They sing like dangerous wind chimes, underscoring his profanity.

I circle around him and hit him on the side of his ribs with the flat of the spear. He grunts, raises his arms above his head, and whips his spear around. It slices the air and connects with my jaw in a sickening crack, sending me to the ground. I recover quickly, scrambling to my knees and hauling myself to my feet just as he swings the blade down. It splits the ice where I fell.

“Relax, Az! We’re just sparring.”

He raises his chin to me and I notice a burning anger in his eyes. They’re glazed over with fury, slightly unfocused, but still determined. I shuffle my feet back as he rushes me again. A blunt hit, a deflect. He slices out at me with the spear over and over again, and I block as many of the hits I can. Twice he catches me on the jaw with the blade and once on my forearm. It cuts deep enough that I’m sure it will scar over.

He swings down the spear and I block it at the very last second. The staff pushes against my throat and I have to fight to move him away from me, each inch burning in my arms as I push him back.

“AZ!”

“
Pen
.” His voice doesn’t belong to him anymore. It belongs to that of a solider with one purpose, one directive: kill.

He steps forward and strikes me on my shoulder, cutting deep into my muscle. With that one unexpected move, he disarms me. Kicking out at my weakly gripped spear, he sends it soaring across the room, skittering across the icy ground. I look at my traitorous spear and then back at Az. Spear, Az. Spear, Az. Az’s spear—

The blade is less than a foot away from my heart. Then he raises it to my throat and I stop breathing, fear snatching the air from my lungs. My heart hammers away at my ribs defiantly.
Still alive, still alive.

“Az, I’m disarmed. You win.”