Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

twirled my hand, let’s get it over with .
    Cassius sighed long and deep, hefted his glass and killed another shot, then nodded toward the guard tower on the left. A moment later, there was a rumble and a groan as the chain-link fence retracted, pulling left, wheels crunching over gravel.
    “Fine,” he said once the gate came to a screechy halt, “but I’m going on record. This is a bad idea.” With that, he set off, clomping forward in his riot gear, making for a hulking door, nearly invisible, set into the side of the dome.
    To be honest, the entryway looked less like a standard door and more like the cover to a bank vault: a giant sewer lid flipped on its side and jammed into the prison wall. A ginormous fifty-ton monstrosity with a hand wheel protruding from the center. Steel bolts, thick as my arm, jutted out in every direction—each covered with ever more containment wards. To the left of the hand wheel was a steel plate the size of a pizza box, which opened a window into the dome’s interior.
    After I fiddled with the elaborate locks and wards securing the window cover in place, the steel plate swung out on silent hinges. Inside was black, dark as the bottom of the ocean at midnight, but words drifted to my ears in a heartbeat.
    “I knew you couldn’t stay away forever.” The voice was deep, primal. The rumble of an earthquake. A voice built for solitude and unaccustomed to speech of any kind. “It isn’t in your nature.” A pause. “Too curious.” Light bloomed in the window, a brilliant pulse of deep purple, which momentarily blinded me, before finally fading to a dull amber stained with streaks of violet, offering me a clear view of my unwelcome visitor:
    A hulking figure, lounging against the far wall.
    I’ve heard some fallen angels are beautiful, swoon-worthy even—the stuff of romantic dreams. Azazel? Yeah, not so much. Red skin like the blistered flesh of a burn victim covered a frame deformed with thick muscle. Splashed across his body were profane tattoos, deep gouges that bit through the skin and bled light the color of a toxic waste spill. All those markings hurt to look at—they seemed to slither and writhe when seen from the corner of the eye. Made me queasy.
    I’ve studied damned near every arcane text on the market—the Liber Juatus , the Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh Liber Razielis Archangeli , the Picatrix , the Book of Abra-Melin the Mage , the Clavis Salomonis —but none of those glyphs made sense to me. Except for the one glowing on his forehead: A strange diamond, slashed through its center with a jagged line. That one, at least, I knew.
    Azazel’s demonic sigil.
    These days, when I looked in the mirror, I’d occasionally see the ghostly outline of that mark burning on my own forehead.
    Azazel stared at me with purple eyes set into a flat, disfigured face—his mouth a cruel gash filled with ripping teeth. Huge curling horns jutted from his brow, bobbing up and down as he absently nodded his head like he was listening to some unheard song. His feet—black hooves, attached to double-jointed knees—stretched out before him as though he were relaxing at the beach instead of stuck in some dank cell, locked in the back of my mind.
    “The curious ones never make it long.” He grunted and casually held up one hand, examining the obsidian talons tipping each finger.
    “Aren’t you supposed to seduce me or something?” I asked. “I thought demons were supposed to trick you into giving up control.”
    “Some,” he replied with an indifferent shrug, “but not me. Vetis or Asmodeus, maybe. Balban, Mammon, Naamah—all tempters in their own right.” He shook his head, horns whooshing through the air. “But not me.” He looked away from me, up toward the ceiling as though there were answers contained in the dark. “You mortals assume demons are the same, but, in our way, we are as different as one human from another. Some idealists. Others greedy. Greedy for power or sex or money.