by Susan Ee
“Well, that was an unexpected choice for a second,” says Josiah, watching Raffe with his red eyes.
Raffe gives him a grim expression. “What are the chances that we can recruit a decent team?”
“Very low,” says Josiah. “Whether they back him or not, too many are convinced Uriel will win. If he does, he’ll make sure that anyone who opposes him will fall, and no one wants to risk that.”
Raffe’s shoulders slump. He must be exhausted after the operation.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Like I flew on my wings a month before I should have.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”
“How many will Uriel have on his team?” I ask.
“A hundred maybe?” says Josiah.
“A hundred?” I ask. “Against the two of us?”
“You’re not actually going to be fighting,” says Raffe. “No one expects it.”
“Oh, so a hundred against just you. Why do you have a second if you’re supposed to have a team with you?”
“It’s traditionally meant to make sure that no one stands alone,” says Josiah.
He glances at Raffe with sympathy. “No one declines the honor of being second, but it’s completely optional as to whether someone joins a team for a trial by contest.”
Seeing pity in Josiah’s eyes makes me want to kick something. Raffe helped me, but now I can’t help him. A girl who can’t fly can’t play in angel games.
I look at the cages on the field. The two remaining hellions are attacking each other and fighting around Beliel. They probably would have shoved me in there too if Raffe hadn’t named me his second. How long would I last in there?
“Uriel’s right,” says Raffe. “I don’t have my Watchers anymore. I can’t count on anyone stepping into their duties.”
“The warriors still talk about them, you know,” says Josiah. “No group has come close to being the elite fighting team that the Watchers were. They’ve become legend.” He shakes his head. “What a waste. And all because of—” He looks at me with some hostility in his eyes and bites off whatever insult he was going to call Daughters of Men.
“Don’t blame the women for the angels breaking your own stupid rules. Their women didn’t even break any rules, but they got punished anyway.”
“The Watchers would still be here if it weren’t for the Daughters of Men,” says Josiah. “We lost our most elite group of warriors because they married your kind. The least you can do is have the decency to—”
“Enough,” says Raffe. “The Watchers are gone and arguing about whose fault it is won’t bring them back. The only question left is, can we find a substitute?”
“Where are they now?” I suspect they’re still in the Pit, but who knows? I think what I saw in Beliel’s memory was from a long time ago.
They both glance at Beliel. He’s swatting at the hellions who are squabbling near his shoulder. They fly away from him to hang on to the bars and stare at us.
No, not at us.
At my sword.
The Pit hellions want to go home. However bad it was there, it had to have been better than being caged, waiting to be killed.
Home.
“What if we could go into the Pit and get the Watchers?” I ask.
It’s an insane thought, one I wouldn’t consider if the entire human race didn’t depend on it. If Raffe could dethrone Uriel, then no more war, right?
The guys glance at each other as if wondering whether I’ve lost my mind. “No one voluntarily goes into the Pit,” says Raffe, scowling at me.
“And once you’re in, you don’t get out without being let out by the Pit lords,” says Josiah. “That’s the problem with the Pit. Otherwise, newly Fallen angels would be rescued left and right.”
“Besides,” says Raffe, looking at Beliel. “The Watchers aren’t what they used to be.”
“What if we could get the Watchers you remember?” I ask. I nod toward Beliel. “The Watchers he remembers?”
Raffe looks back at me, and I see a spark of interest.
WE HALF DRAG, half fly Beliel’s cage off the torn grass toward an outer building that’s out of sight of the main hotel.
“Do we have any reason to believe it’ll work both ways?” asks Josiah.
“I was hoping you guys would know,” I say.
“There are ancient stories of hellions jumping out through very powerful swords,” says Raffe. “But there’s never been a reason to jump into the Pit.”
“You mean to tell me that I discovered a talent of your beloved swords that even you guys didn’t know about?” I pull as hard as I can on the cage bars.
“You seem to bring out new and unimagined dimensions from both me and Kooky Bear.”
“Pooky Bear.”
“Right.”
I step over a hole that someone must have crawled out of.
“Come on. Say it, Raffe.” I give him a half smile. “I love it when you say Pooky Bear. It’s just so perfect when it comes out of your mouth.”
“She might kill you in your sleep one of these days just so she can get rid of that name.”
“Can’t she have a new name now that she can be with you again?”
“You were her last solo wielder, so she’s stuck with the name until she gets a new solo wielder.”
I keep expecting him to ask for his sword now that he has his angel wings back, but he hasn’t. I wonder if he’s still annoyed with her for showing me his private moments. I can feel Pooky Bear’s yearning to be held by him, but I don’t say anything. This is one fight I should stay out of.
We set the cage down behind the outer building. It’s quiet and deserted here.
Josiah shakes his head but is no longer arguing against the idea. He’s right. We all agree that it’s a terrible plan. But when Raffe asked him to come up with a less terrible idea, he didn’t have one.
Now that it’s time, my hands tremble as I pull out the sword.
My mind searches frantically for a better plan, but I can’t think of one. We could run away now that Raffe has his wings. But he’s on trial as much as I am. They won’t just let us fly out of here.
If Raffe loses this trial, I die. I’m not sure what will happen to him, but it’s clear what will happen to me. But if Raffe could win this trial by contest and take control of the angels, he’ll take them away. And it’ll all end.
Is it worth the risk of losing Raffe to the Pit and having him trapped there?
I bite my lip, not willing to answer that question. I’ll probably pace a ten-foot-deep trench in front of this cage while waiting for him to come back.
“Do it,” says Raffe. His wings are closed tightly along his back, and he stands rigid, ready for the worst.
Before I can get sappy, I nod to Josiah. He unlocks the cage door, and it swings open with a creak. The two hellions from the Pit back as far away from Josiah as they can.
Hopefully, they know how to use the sword to get back to their world. We just need to catch one for Raffe to ride on.
Beliel also backs away to the far end of the cage, looking like a shriveled zombie. “What are you doing?” He watches us suspiciously.
“Come on, creepy hellions. You want to go home, don’t you?” I croon, sticking my sword into the cage.
The Pit hellions creep slowly toward me. They watch the sword greedily, sniffing as if trying to sense a trap.
As soon as Raffe moves toward them, though, they bolt back into the farthest corners of the cage, hissing. I don’t know how to make the creatures travel through the sword if they don’t want to.
“They’re afraid of you.” I put out my free arm in front of him. “Get behind me.”
I step into the cage. I raise my voice and make myself sound like I’m talking to puppies. “Come on, ugly sq
uat-faced things. You want to go home, don’t you? Mmm, home.”
They creep cautiously toward me, watching Raffe carefully.
“I’ll open the doorway to your home as soon as you let me hold your hand.” I have to keep myself from cringing away at that thought.
“No!” says Beliel. His eyes are fierce, like he’s just realized he’s in a nightmare that he can’t wake up from. “Get away—”
I grab the nearest hellion.
It grabs my forearm back, sinking its claws in. Pain pierces through my arm, but I hang on.
At the same time, Raffe jumps in and grabs the other hellion.
Then total chaos breaks out.
With an intensity bordering on panic, Beliel shoves Josiah out of the way and tries to leap out of the cage. Raffe’s hellion freaks and tries to rush the cage door, flapping madly.
I instinctively swing my blade to stop Beliel’s escape and end up skewering Beliel’s side.
As he roars, Raffe’s hellion leaps onto my sword.
It slides down the blade with Raffe gripping its leg. It disappears into Beliel.
And Raffe, still hanging on to its leg, disappears right after it.
Before I can blink, the hellion I’m holding dives down the sword as well, dragging me with it.
At first, I try to let go—Raffe’s the only one who’s supposed to go into the Pit—but the hellion still has a grip on my arm. In the split second before the hellion lets go of me, my hand slips into Beliel, and I’m falling.
I clench so tightly that I almost pull the hellion’s arm off.
We slam through Beliel’s body, and the breath gets knocked out of me. For a painful split second, the shock of going through the barrier almost tears me off my ride. But I hang on, tortured by the idea that if I’m jarred loose, I could end up in an even worse place than I might be going.
We fall through a darkness that seems endless.
I turn to see Josiah’s stunned face staring down at me through a fast-closing tunnel.
I shut my eyes, convinced that there are some things we humans aren’t meant to see. Josiah’s shocked face burns out of my mind as only one thought begins to dominate.
We are going into hell.
THIS ISN’T THE same as the last time I went into Beliel’s memory. This time, it hurts.
Every cell in my body cries from the pain of it. Hopefully, it’s because my physical body is actually going on the trip along with my mind.
Just when I think my eyes are going to pop from squeezing them shut so tightly, we slam onto the ground.
My stomach clenches, and my chin and chest sting where they hit the ground.
No wonder the hellions were so disoriented when they landed on Angel Island. I feel like I just got rolled as flat as pizza dough and slapped onto the ground.
I also feel like I’m baking in an oven. A very stinky oven cooking rotten eggs.
I force myself to roll over and open my eyes. There’s really no time for recovery when you’ve just landed in hell.
The sky—if it is a sky—is a cracked purple black with darker blotches. The weak light throws a purple cast over the hulking shadows above me.
Edging my vision, there are faces looking down at me.
I’m not really sure what I’m looking at. They remind me of angels, but I don’t think they are. They also remind me of demons, but I don’t think they’re those either.
Their open wings look mangy, and what’s left of their feathers look like dried leaves on a dead tree. The exposed parts of the wings look cracked and leathery. The wing bones are splintered, sticking out painfully through the edges of the wings. Many of the bone splinters have curled into a sickle shape, not entirely unlike Raffe’s demon wing blades.
The thing that shocks me the most, even though it probably shouldn’t, is that one of these guys is Beliel. It shouldn’t surprise me since I did jump into his memory—or a world in which he has a memory—or whatever. So of course, Beliel would be here.
But he looks different. For one thing, his wings are neither the demon wings I’m familiar with nor his original feathered wings. They’re half dark and half still covered with tufts of sunset feathers.
I guess since I’m physically here, I might have jumped in time and space, but that’s too much for my brain to handle without exploding. Besides, I don’t have time to think about it.
When my eyes adjust to the purple light, I see that Beliel stares in my direction with empty sockets.
Beliel is blind.
It takes me a second to convince myself that it really is him. He has deep lash marks across his cheeks and nose. He’s been whipped in the face. He also has gouge marks around his eye sockets.
The others don’t look much better. One of them has half a perfect Greek-god face and another half that looks like it’s been chewed off. Without their injuries, I can tell that they would have been perfect specimens, just like any other angel.
Between their damaged bodies, I can see we’re in a war zone or, at least, what’s left of one. The buildings are burned out, the broken trees are charred, and the vehicles are smashed and gutted. At least, I’m assuming these were buildings, trees, and vehicles. They don’t look like ours, but the hulking shapes look like they used to be inhabited a long time ago. Like a village of some kind. Something that looks like stunted cacti that have been stomped and twisted sits rooted into the ground. And there are debris strewn around that look vaguely like wagon wheels.
A nonangel with canary-yellow feathers reaches for me. His skin has been ripped right off his arm, leaving only the glistening muscles beneath. I cringe, but he grabs me by the hair and yanks me up to my feet.
“What is it?” asks Beliel. “Can we eat it?” I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more disturbing than empty eye sockets, especially on someone I know, even if it’s Beliel.
He puts a pointy ear in his mouth and chews on it. It looks a lot like a hellion’s ear. I wonder what happened to the hellion I rode.
Then I see what’s left of it on the ground, all smashed and torn apart. It’s hardly recognizable anymore.
Where’s Raffe?
“It’s a Daughter of Man,” says my captor. His voice is ominous, like those words have some deep meaning.
There’s a long silence as everyone stares at me.
“Which one?” Beliel finally asks.
The one holding me looks around at the others. He doesn’t ease up on my hair. “Is this one of yours? She’s not mine.”
“There’s no reason to believe she would be one of ours, Cyclone,” says Beliel. His voice is raspy as if he’d either been screaming himself raw or someone had choked him.
“I’m through with them,” says one. “The thought of them makes me ill.”
“Yeah, maybe Big B’s right,” says another. “Maybe we’re better off eating her. We could use some meat to help us heal.”
I squirm trying to get out of the nonangel’s grip. Where is Raffe?
“Let her go,” says another. This one has blue-tinged feathers.
“Thermo, if we let her go, she’ll wish we had cooked her up and eaten her. Setting her free here is not a mercy.”
That’s not what I wanted to hear.
“And is that a sword?” Several of them lean down to look at my sword, which lies on the ground just out of reach.
One of them tries to lift it and grunts at the weight. He lets it go.
They all stare at me, scrutinizing.
“What are you?” asks Cyclone.
“She’s a Daughter of Man, can’t you see that?” says Thermo.
“If she’s a Daughter of Man, where’s her pack of hellions?” says a guy with black feathers and sharp eyes. “Where are her chains? Why does she look so healthy and whole?”
“And how does she have an angel sword?” asks
one who has brown wings streaked with yellow.
“It can’t be hers. Somehow, it got here. And somehow, she got here. But that doesn’t mean it’s her sword. We haven’t been here long enough to believe things that are that crazy.” They all look at Pooky Bear with longing, but none of them tries to pick her up.
“So whose is it?” They all look at me.
I shrug. “I’m just a Daughter of Man. I don’t know anything.”
No one argues with that.
“Where am I?” I ask. The pull on my hair is becoming unbearable. Two of them have their scalps partly torn off, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is why.
“In the Pit,” says Thermo. “Welcome to the hunting district.”
“Is this the same as hell?” I ask.
The one with black feathers shrugs. “Does it matter? It’s hellish. Why do you care if it matches your primitive myth?”
“What do you hunt here?” I ask.
The angel with the brown-and-yellow wings snorts. “We don’t. We’re the prey.”
That doesn’t sound good. “What are you?” I ask. I’m assuming they’re Raffe’s Watchers, but better to be sure. “You don’t look like angels, and you don’t look like . . .” What do I really know about what demons look like?
“Oh, do excuse us for not introducing ourselves,” says the one with the brown-and-yellow wings. He emphasizes his sarcasm by bowing to me. “We are the newly Fallen. The Watchers, to be precise. And probably your executioners. Not that it’ll take more than one of us to do the deed. But you get the point. I’m Howler.”
Howler points to the one with black feathers and brown skin. “That’s Hawk.” He points to the one with blue-tinged feathers, then to several others. “Thermo. Flyer. Big B. Little B. And the one holding you is Cyclone.” He looks around at the others. There are too many to introduce them all, not that I’d remember their names. “Do we care who she is?”
“Sure,” says Flyer. “Maybe it’ll give us something to think about when we’re bored out of our minds for the next millennium. Who are you?”
“I’m . . .” I’m hesitant to give them my name. Raffe said names have power. “I’m the angel slayer.”