Death's bedchamber was trashed. It wasn't the rubble of his bed and walls alone that made his brow furrow, but the evidence of a small massacre in the wake of the destruction. With a deep frown, he took in everything then decided not even the bizarre scene before him was going to deter him.
Gabriel strode to the door in the corner and balled up his fists. His heart raced, his emotions flickering between regret and resolve.
If I have to give up what it means to be human to protect everyone, I will. But it was hard. So hard. He'd held onto his soul for tens of thousands of years and managed to keep the piece of him that made him empathize with those whose lives he took. It wasn't easy. He'd almost lost himself a few times, only for his best friend, Rhyn, to bring him back and remind him why a world filled with emotionless gods and goddesses was wrong.
Human life was sacred - and so was human death. The Immortals and deities never understood either as such, but humans were special. Delicate. With the shortest life spans of all the creatures in all the realms, they were also capable of so much: of love and loss, of great accomplishments and harrowing disappointments, of beauty, no matter what their circumstances. They did more in their short years than a member of any other race of creatures did in millennia.
He wasn't ready to lose that connection, but if he didn't accept his fate fully, the underworld and everyone he cared about would suffer. The souls would suffer, too, the selfish decision of one man plunging billions of innocents into eternal despair.
Whatever lay behind the door before him, it was the key to stopping the underworld from its downward spiral, the key to establishing control.
Gabriel drew a calming breath, opened the door to his future - and froze in surprise.
Staring back at him from the middle of the most sacred place in the underworld was a demon.
"What the fuck?"
"Before you -" The demon started.
Gabriel had whipped out a knife and snatched the familiar demon before it finished. He slammed him into the ceiling, blade biting into the skin of the creature.
"-do that." The demon squirmed.
"Gabriel!" It was past-Death's voice. "Stop!"
More surprises every day. Unable to explain what was going on, he went perfectly still, ready to snap the demon's neck or release him, depending on how well he understood the explanation that came next.
"We're helping each other escape," his mate said. "He got us out of the dungeon. I promised him neither you nor I would hurt him. So put him down now."