When it stalked toward the man, he threw a knife at it, which embedded in its throat. The thing didn’t hesitate before it seized the guy by the throat, lifted him, and flung him away.
No! My heart lodged in my throat as I watched the man fly thirty feet through the air before crashing into a tent. He disappeared when the material collapsed around him. He was a demon, that wouldn’t kill him, but he’d flown further than anyone ever should fly outside of an airplane.
It hadn’t killed him, but was he wounded?
I had no idea why the possibility of such a thing infuriated and scared me as much as it did. When the beast started stalking after the man, I knew I couldn’t let anything more happen to him.
I ran in low as I raced at the beast. It turned and swung its claw at me; I avoided the blow and sliced my knife across the back of its knee. The creature howled like a dog, and its legs buckled, but it didn’t go down. A breeze blew against my cheeks when its other hand, the size of a sledgehammer, arced toward my head.
Throwing myself to the ground, I managed to avoid having my skull bashed in, but when its hand kissed the top of my head, I saw stars. I tried to rise, but I couldn’t get my legs to cooperate. With no other choice, I rolled across the ground. Vibrations quaked the earth as it stalked after me.
Shit!
My back came up against a tent, and I looked up to discover the beast towering over me with its claw raised to smash me to pieces.
Turning on my side, I sliced a hole in the canvas of the tent as the man leapt onto its back, and I breathed a small sigh that he was okay. He cinched one arm around the beast’s throat and yanked backward before driving a knife into the creature’s ear and brain—if it had a brain.
When the thing’s yellow eyes focused on me again, I realized it wasn’t done with me. I yanked back the pieces of the tent I’d sliced open as it lifted its claw high. I squirmed into the tent and pulled my feet inside as its falling claw dented the earth.
I stared at the indent before jumping to my feet and pulling my other knife free. With the armor plating on this thing’s chest, a knife wouldn’t do much good, but neither would a bullet, and my knives wouldn’t ricochet and hit me instead.
The man stuck his finger in one of the beast’s eyes as I lunged forward and sliced its Achilles tendon. The creature howled again as its leg bowed out to the side, but unlike when I cut it before, it couldn’t hold itself up as it tilted to the side before falling to one knee.
The man yanked his knife out of the demon’s ear and drew the blade across its throat while he pulled back on its black hair. I slashed my knife across its other Achilles tendon before rising. The man succeeded in sawing the demon’s head off and tossed it aside as its body slumped forward and hit the ground. I gazed at the hole where its head was with grim satisfaction; the head was the only body part a demon couldn’t regenerate.
I didn’t know if I was fortunate enough to have this regenerating ability too. I was immortal, but I wasn’t a full demon, which was why I still occasionally used the bathroom, ate, and drank things. However, there wasn’t one part of me that I was willing to cut off to see if it would regrow.
“Are you okay?” the man demanded.
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
He didn’t reply as he stalked toward me and grasped my arm. “We have to go.”
As much as I appreciated his help with that thing, and as relieved as I was to see him unharmed after his unscheduled flight, I had training to follow. “I have to find my team. They’re expecting me.”
“They’ll be on the field.”
He was right, but I had to get to them. We broke free of the tents, and my mouth dropped when the field outside the town came into view. At this time of year, it was normally a sea of grass where we trained and ran drills, but now it was awash in fire and bodies littered the ground.
Troops poured out of the town and away from the wall to clash with those still emerging from the woods. They’d met each other closer to the wall than the woods. The flames of the drakón illuminated the thousands of fighters and bathed them in a blue light as they slashed, stabbed, and shot their way through the enemies.
My team was somewhere down there, but I’d never find them. In this chaos, all our training had been tossed out, and only a battle for survival was left. If we lost, these things would get past the wall, into the towns, and destroy what little remained of the world that existed before the gateway opened.
My body felt encased in ice as the screams of the injured and dying echoed over the land. Death was marching toward us, and there was a good possibility I wouldn’t see the sunrise today. It was so strange that I’d passed out last night with the knowledge I would wake up, go to training, wash my clothes, and take my turn at nightshift on the wall.
Instead, I’d woken to a different world, and all those things might never matter again. Somehow, I found my hand in the man’s as we ran down the hill and toward the battle.
If we somehow won this, would someone let my parents know if I died here today? My poor mom would take it the hardest. Before I learned what I was, she was already questioning why she hadn’t aged a day in fifteen years. My father had gray hairs, laugh lines, and put on a few pounds, but my mom still looked like she did at thirty-four.
When I also stopped aging at twenty-three, and my ability to create small balls of fire awakened, the demons told me what I was. Upon this discovery, they also brought my parents to the wall in Virginia, where it became clear my demon heritage came from my mom. She never manifested any physical abilities, as I did, but it was clear she’d stopped aging.
To say she was stunned was an understatement, but her sadness was the worst part. My parents loved each other deeply; they’d expected to grow old and die together, but now my mom would watch my father become an old man while she remained the same. And she would stay on this earth for centuries after he passed. Her only consolation was that I would stay with her, but if she lost me too…
A lump clogged my throat, and I shut down all thoughts of my parents. They were strong; they would get through this, and they were the reason I fought these things. If we didn’t win tonight, none of it would matter, because these things would destroy everything in their path as they swept across the rest of the wall and the country.
The screams intensified, and smoke from the fires clogged the air as both drakóns turned and soared low over the land. Chunks of dirt and flaming bodies flew into the air as they released more blue fire and wiped out a row of attackers, yet they didn’t make a dent in the army spilling from the woods.
“What’s your name?” I panted as we ran.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t important, but if I was going to die tonight, then I’d like to know his name.
“Hawk!” he shouted over his shoulder
The name tickled something in my memory, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was making sure this army from Hell didn’t make it beyond the wall.
Chapter Eight
Hawk
I kept hold of Aisling’s wrist as we raced toward the battle. I couldn’t let her go; I’d just found her, and I would not lose her. Some of the smoke cleared enough to reveal Corson and Wren slicing their way through a horde of lower-level demons. I bent to scavenge a sword from the headless body of a fallen demon. I rose and plunged the blade into the belly of the next one who lunged at me.
With no other choice, I released Aisling’s hand to yank the blade from the demon’s belly. I glanced back at Aisling as she ducked a demon lunging at her before plunging her knife into the eye of another.
“Stay close to me!” I shouted as I reclaimed her hand and carved my way toward Corson and Wren.
All around us, steel clashed against steel and demons and humans fell. Blood already stained the ground and ran in rivulets over the land as the bodies piled up. But as the dead fell, more rose to take their place.
My hand tightened on Aisling’s when she tugged on mine before pulling me to
a stop. I turned when she released my hand to pry a dead demon’s hand away from its spear. When a demon lunged at her, I swung my sword out and sliced its head off. Aisling pulled the spear away and rose beside me.
“Thank you,” she said.
When her haunted eyes met mine, I saw she was far paler than she’d been earlier in the night. I wanted to draw her into my arms, kiss her forehead, and shelter her from all this, but that would only get us both killed. I wished she’d gone to the hall, but I’d known she would refuse when I suggested it. Demons and soldiers didn’t walk away from a fight, and they especially didn’t leave their friends behind.
I would keep her safe; it was the only option. I kept Aisling at my back while I hacked my way through more demons to reach Corson and Wren.
“Where have you been?” Corson demanded as he sliced the head off a lower-level demon with his talons.
He scowled when I pulled Aisling in front of me, but his scowl vanished when he saw the bite on her neck. His gaze flew to me, and his mouth closed.
Aisling’s forehead furrowed as she studied Corson, but a squealing shout drew everyone’s attention to the horde of gobalinus rushing toward us. I’d seen the two-foot-tall, hideous creatures while in Hell, but I’d hoped to never see the flesh-eating monsters with their yellow eyes, warts, piranha-like teeth, and leathery skin again.
One of them launched itself at Aisling, but I snagged it out of the air and snapped its neck before tearing its head away. She lunged forward to spear three of them while Corson and Wren took out a few more. Three of them leapt at me. I caught one and threw it aside and stabbed the other, but the third grasped my leg and started clawing its way toward my thigh.
I grabbed it as Aisling tossed her spear aside, pulled out a knife, and stabbed it. I kicked it back before cutting its head off. I took down another demon before throwing Aisling my sword and claiming the sword of the demon I killed.
“Where are River and Kobal?” I shouted to Corson.
Before Corson could reply, a pack of hellhounds burst through the fighters. The two at the front of the pack were Crux and Phenex, the hounds that resided within Kobal. The hellhounds looked like wolves with their vivid amber eyes, but they were easily twice the size of a wolf, and their claws could eviscerate someone with a single swipe of their paw.
When I kicked another gobalinus, it soared over the heads of the crowd as I stabbed the next little monster. A sudden breeze ruffled my hair, and I glanced up as three repulsive creatures swooped overhead.
“What are those?” Aisling asked.
“Don’t you know?” I asked her.
“No.”
I’d assumed all demons knew what the other types of demons were, but I must have been wrong. Maybe she was young for a demon, or maybe because a seal locked the erinyes away for thousands of years, she’d never learned about them.
“They’re erinyes.” I recognized the ugly women from when I first entered Hell with River. These things were fleeing Hell as River and I headed deeper into it. “They’re better known to humans as furies.”
Aisling gulped as one of the erinyes dove into the crowd and rose out again. Two humans dangled from her hands as she streaked upward. The snakes of her hair waved about her face when she stopped to hover over the crowd before releasing the humans.
The erinyes dove for another victim when a drakón snatched her out of the air and swallowed her whole. “I’m getting so I like those things a lot more,” Corson said.
I was too, and I was really glad they’d decided to throw their loyalty River’s way instead of toward what remained of the fallen angels. More erinyes swept overhead, but when they went to dive toward the crowd, a brilliant blast of golden light slammed into their chests and tore them apart.
The crowd parted to reveal the golden angel, Raphael, with his feet braced apart. The energy he created as he absorbed life from the earth reflected off his silver breastplate and caused his white-blond hair to dance around his shoulders. His violet eyes were bright in the glow of the golden light as he wielded his extraordinary, lethal ability.
Raphael turned his attention to the remaining two erinyes. They turned and tried to fly away, but the lifeforce Raphael wielded erupted from his palms and shredded them before they could get away.
“That ability is amazing,” Aisling said.
“It is,” I agreed. “But with so many of our own on the ground, he won’t be able to use it much against the craetons on the ground.”
“But he can take out more of those things.”
“That was the last of the erinyes,” I said.
“How do you know?” Aisling asked.
“Because I was there when they broke out of Hell; I know how many of them remained.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but a gobalinus plowed into her leg and knocked her off balance. She pulled out a knife and plunged it into the creature’s temple. When she lifted the kicking, screaming creature away from her, I cut off its head.
“I hate those things,” she said as she kicked its body away.
More lower-level demons broke through the front line, and the drakóns swept over the land to unleash more fire. One of them was fully engulfed in blue flames as it remained low. The other had extinguished its fire and was soaring higher. When it turned to the side to come back toward us, I spotted River on its back.
The drakón plunged and turned sideways until its wing nearly skimmed the ground. Lower-level demons and enemy troops scattered to get out of its way before it barreled them over, but it still took out a good number of them.
I drove my sword through another demon as I watched the drakón rise higher into the sky again. Considering there was no flesh to pierce on the drakón, I didn’t know if it was possible to kill them, but if the craetons saw River on its back, they would do everything in their power to destroy the beast. The second drakón blasted another wave of fire that tore up the ground as it swept toward the woods.
The flames burst high into the air before dying back as they consumed what little fuel there was to keep them burning. When they died back, I was able to see the fresh wave of craetons pouring from the woods in a never-ending parade of malicious intent.
Where were all these things coming from? We’d cleared so much of the Wilds; of course, there was still so much more to cover, but to keep this many enemy troops hidden would have been a near impossible feat.
Except, it was entirely possible as they were here and coming at us. I kept one eye on Aisling as we continued to hack and carve our way through the demons climbing over the dead bodies to get at us. When she stumbled and almost went down, I lunged to the side and pulled her out of the way of a demon flinging itself at her.
I was so focused on destroying the demon that I didn’t see the other one coming at me until Aisling buried her sword under its chin. She screamed as she planted her foot in its chest and tore it away from her sword; Corson severed its head.
The drakón River rode first swept low over our heads before settling in the center of the crowd. When demons rushed toward it, its head curled up like a cobra. In one strike, it consumed most of the demons. The others turned to flee, but it used its tail to swipe them off their feet.
Kobal’s followers, the palitons, surged forward to destroy our enemy while they were down. The drakón rose into the air, and blue fire erupted over its body as it turned and flew back over the land.
“Kobal must be over there,” Corson said. “Let’s go!”
“Come on.” I grasped Aisling’s arm and started pulling her toward the drakón.
The stench of death permeated the air, as did human waste and blood. The heat of so many together and the bursts of fire made the once cool night feel like it was a part of Hell. After becoming a demon, I could tolerate extreme heat and barely break a sweat, but none of this was tolerable.
We carved our way through more of our enemies as screams mixed in with whimpers and pleas for mercy. I’d never hated our enemies more than I did then. The
y could have broken free of Hell and lived in peace. Some of the other demons had chosen to do this and remained in the Wilds; they stayed out of it all and lived their lives.
The craetons didn’t have to do any of this, but for some of those locked behind the seals, thousands of years of hatred against Kobal’s ancestors had left them unable to move on. The fallen angels wanted to destroy everything in their way.
They were twisted monstrosities of what they’d once been, and they thrived on their madness and hatred against the humans, angels, and demons. With Lucifer dead, they’d taken to following Astaroth, who was said to be more vicious, and surrounded by this massacre, I agreed with the assessment.
We broke free of the battle to find River standing before Kobal. Bale, Caim, Lix, and a group of skelleins stood by her side. The skellein Lix wore a pink tie with cartoonish unicorns and donuts on it. After the jinn destroyed a lot of his skellein friends, Lix became more reserved, but as time passed, he started wearing ridiculous things again and smiling more often.
Now, though he had no eyes in the empty sockets of his skull, I sensed Lix’s displeasure in the set of his jaw. Most of the skelleins were about four and a half feet tall, but Lix was slightly taller. While in Hell, the skeletal creatures hadn’t bothered to differentiate themselves from each other, but on Earth, they’d all taken to wearing clothes that emphasized their sex and personalities.
In the glow of the fire, Bale’s red hair was the color of blood, and the reddish hue to her skin was more pronounced. Her lime green eyes were cold when they met mine; ruthless determination filled her face. Bale and Corson were Kobal’s two most trusted advisors, and they would fight to the death to make sure Kobal and River survived.
Kiss of Death: Hell on Earth Series, Book 3 Page 5