by Erin Hayes
She gives me a chaste kiss on my lips. “Now, go.”
Tears drip on my cheeks like raindrops, and for a crazed moment, I wonder if I’ve woken up in a part of the world where rain falls from the sky. It rains in Turkmenistan but so rarely and sparsely, the earth drinks it up the instant it falls.
Maybe I’m far away from the pain of being stabbed through with a sword.
Jennet’s face swims above mine, her eyes red-rimmed. Like she’s been crying.
“Oh my god,” she exclaims, holding my head in her lap. “Rahym! You’re alive!”
I grimace, but my body aches so much, I don’t even bother trying to sit up. I know it will hurt too much. Instead, I just blink up at her, assessing my injuries as they come to me.
My chest aches where Abaddon drove a sword through it. Holy shit, I was dead. I had the Demon Lord run me through. Just like Nakir. His body flashes in my mind, the sword hacked through his chest.
“What happened?” I croak.
A mix of emotions washes over Jennet’s face. She’s afraid to tell me everything at once, which means that it must be bad. Which means that she’s worried about exacerbating whatever’s left of my wounds.
“Abaddon…nearly killed you,” Jennet whispers, starting from the top. The easiest one.
“How didn’t he?”
“It’s because you’re a lucky son of a bitch,” Kerem scoffs under his breath. I hadn’t even noticed that he was nearby. I twist my head to look at him curiously. He rubs at his face. “I had only had just enough energy for you not to die.”
That explains why I feel like I’ve been run over by a wagon. Or a horde of demonlings, which is probably the case.
“What happened?” I demand. “Where’s Nakir?”
Jennet and Kerem exchange wary glances. “They took him. They took the sword and him,” Jennet says softly. “Probably to the Watchtower.”
Fuck. The angel and the angel sword. Gone.
I try to look around to see what else is happening. “Where’s Nury? And Fatma?”
At those two names, I hear a sob to my left, and I see Fatma sitting by herself, her arms wrapped around her legs. She’s alive, but based on her expression…
“Nury’s dead,” she sobs, angrily pawing at her eyes. “He’s dead and I…and I…” She cries even harder, her entire body shaking in the moonlight. “I lost him. I lost Nury!”
Kerem scoots over to her and wraps her up in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers to her. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”
She cries into his shoulder, inconsolable in her grief. “If only I had been able to sense the demonlings. I could have…I could have…”
“I told you,” Kerem tells her softly, “Abaddon must have been masking them somehow. Keeping them from us. There’s no way we could have done anything different.”
I hope it’s some bad dream, that this isn’t real. That maybe what I saw with Maysa and Beste is the real world and this is a nightmare that I’ll wake up from.
Surely he’s alive now.
Jennet’s face is fearsome as she watches Kerem console Fatma. “His injuries were too extensive for Kerem,” she murmurs softly. “He had been…badly hurt.”
Even more so than being stabbed through the chest. I know better than to ask for more clarification. Not with Fatma so close by.
Jennet wets her lips, and I feel her arms tighten around me protectively. I wonder if she’s thinking about me being killed like Nury.
“Why did they leave us?” I muse. “Abaddon had us. Why didn’t he just kill us?”
Jennet stills, considering her answer. “It’s arrogance. He got everything he needed when he killed Nakir,” she whispers. “He got the sword. He killed the only person who could stop him. He’s won.”
I place my hand over hers and give it a squeeze. “No.” I grit my teeth. “No, he hasn’t.”
I groan as I force myself to sit up. I wave away Jennet’s hands as she tries to help me—friends of ours just died; I can sit up my own damn self. It takes a lot out of me, and I huff with pained breaths.
“Rahym—” Jennet starts.
I wince as I get to my feet. “We need to head to the Watchtower.”
Jennet’s expression goes from surprised to incredulous as she looks up at me. “What? Now?”
Fatma and Kerem both watch us, too, like they don’t understand what we’re saying.
I close my eyes and stagger under the wave of pain that wipes over me. I comb a hand through my hair, tugging at it so it stands straight up. My chest burns, feeling like it will pull apart if I move too much. However Kerem knitted me back together, it feels like only a temporary thing. I rub at it, just to make sure that I’m still in one piece.
“Abaddon won’t expect us to be coming after him so quickly,” I reason. “If we leave now, we have a better shot at catching him by surprise.”
Jennet frowns. “But the Watchtower…”
“He made it over there.”
“He flew.”
“And we have Akhal-Teke horses,” I say, gesturing to the Door Stop where I hope our horses are still alive. No one contradicts me, so I take that as confirmation that I’m correct. “They’re legendary for their speed. We’ve been conserving our energy during our journey because we’ve always had supplies, and we’ve been careful not to overextend it.”
“And you want us to overextend it?” Kerem asks tiredly.
I gesture helplessly. “If we catch him by surprise—”
“There is no surprise!” Fatma shouts, her anger coloring her cheeks. “You’re going up against a Demon Lord! He’s more powerful and smarter than any of us! And he will kill us!”
I look to Jennet. “That’s why we do something incredibly stupid, then.”
Even my comment is stupid, but the corner of her mouth quirks up as she reaches out and takes my hand. My crazy lover, ready to fight with me to the ends of the earth.
We have to do this. There’s no other choice.
“Okay.” She nods. “Okay.”
Chapter 27
Alion looks none too impressed as I saddle him up for the journey. A few days of relaxation has made him more belligerent than ever, but I’m glad the bastard is still alive.
“Yeah, you’re still stuck with me. Sorry.”
He flicks his ear in irritation.
The demonlings didn’t kill any of the horses, much to my relief.
We have seven horses among the four of us. I know that we’ll be pushing the horses we’re riding harder than those that don’t have riders, so we can alternate for fresher horses if ours slow down.
How far away is the Watchtower? How much more strength do we have after this?
I glance back at Jennet, Kerem, and Fatma. Jennet is the only one with any light in her eyes. Fatma remains silent, her expression understandably in a scowl, her eyes red with tears that keep falling over her cheeks. I clear my throat, wondering if there’s anything I can say to her to ease her pain. I feel like a complete ass because we don’t have the time nor the spare energy to bury Nury’s body. I marked the Door Stop’s spot on the map. When we come back through here—if we survive—I’ll give Nury a proper burial.
Nury and Rabia both. Two Halos who deserve the best for everything they’ve worked towards.
I make that silent promise to myself. I don’t say it to Fatma, as I’m sure she hates me. And pretty much all of life at the moment. My heart aches for her. I’ve been in her situation before. I know what it’s like to lose those you love.
Kerem seems shell-shocked as well, but he just clenches his jaw and moves with the mechanical efficiency of a man who isn’t sure where his life is going. Again, another trait I recognize in myself. I don’t have time to give him any encouraging words. I tried thanking him, but the man brushed it off.
He saved me when he couldn’t save Nury. I can’t imagine how much that must weigh on him.
“We ride at full-speed to the Watchtower,” I tell Jennet as she swings herself up into her s
addle. “I’ll lead.”
Jennet nods, making sure that her second horse is tethered correctly to her saddle. “All right.” Her skin is pallid, her anxieties playing across her face.
I give her thigh a squeeze. “Hey,” I tell her, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She looks stricken for a moment. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispers.
Her horse paws impatiently at the ground. Unlike Alion, her mount is ready and anxious to get a move on.
Makes me wonder if Alion is a purebred Akhal-Teke, because I have to coax him away from the wall. He’d rather just eat feed than go out into the darkness.
I guess I’m the same way, too, I muse as I swing a leg up into Alion’s saddle. He huffs angrily and sidesteps until I get him under control. I give his hindquarter a playful slap, and he swishes his tail angrily.
Some things never change.
“Are you two ready?” I ask, looking over to Kerem and Fatma, who have already mounted their horses. Everyone except Fatma has a spare horse tethered to their saddles, for a grand total of seven horses. Seven horses who were bred for speed.
We can make it.
The animals look ready to run and gallop, but the two witches look like they’re barely holding themselves together.
“Yes,” Kerem says softly.
I clack the reins as I drive Alion to the edge of the Door Stop. I pass by our tent rolls, our camp gear, our rugs.
We’re traveling as light as possible, which may be a suicide mission, but at this point, we’re too far to head back and too far not to keep going for the Watchtower. All nonessentials are left behind.
If we succeed, we can pick them up on our way back.
If we fail, well, then it won’t matter anyway.
Maybe the next group of Halos will find it and it will help them in their quest.
I almost laugh out loud at the crazed thought. Nakir is the lifeblood of Halos. If we don’t save him, there won’t be any more resistance groups. There won’t be any more angels to fight Abaddon.
As we steer our horses down the bank, heading toward the Watchtower in the distance, I take out one of the two pieces that I made sure to bring along with me: Nakir’s telescope. As I peer through it to get a better look at the tower, I fully understand why he wanted it.
Through it, I’m able to get a clear picture of the location of our final stand. Dark, obsidian walls at least a hundred feet high with fires sprouting all around it. I see how the earth around the Watchtower opens up into a pit of fiery innards, like I’m looking at the maw of a great fire beast.
The Watchtower, I realize, isn’t just at the edge of the Door to Hell. It is smack dab at the gates, in a crater that is inaccessible to anyone without wings. Perfect for Demon Lords who still have their wings to fly to and from places, but not for three witches and a human that have no way of making that distance, especially with the proximity to the crater.
We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.
And hopefully there’s a bridge.
Wordlessly, I put away the telescope into my near-empty saddlebags, and I snap the reins and dig my heels into Alion. He must get the seriousness of the situation, because he doesn’t fight me. He just breaks out into a run and, bit by bit, increases his speed to a gallop.
I glare at the Watchtower, using it as my beacon as we head closer.
I’m coming for you, I promise Abaddon.
I’m going to kill you.
And I’m going to break the curse.
So what if we’ve been told this entire time that an angel has to kill the Demon Lord with an angel sword? We’re at the end of our rope, and there’s no other choice.
And I’m pretty damn sure that not even a Demon Lord can keep me from my goal.
“There’s no way across,” I mutter in frustration from our vantage point. “At least not that I can see.”
We’re really only about a mile away, just as the sun has started peeking out over the horizon. Luck was on our side, as we hadn’t encountered any more demonlings on our way to the Watchtower. Just us, our horses, and the hostile terrain. We alternated horses when we felt them get tired, and that seemed to do the trick.
All in about two hours of energy. Which means that we can get in there, get Nakir, and save the world.
Seems easy enough.
Except there’s no way into the damn Watchtower.
“Let me see,” Jennet asks desperately, taking the telescope from my hands. She sweeps it around to get a better look at the place, but I see from the pull of her mouth that she doesn’t see anything different than I do.
A tall tower, a hundred feet high with windows that burn amber and red, like the core of it is made out of fire. The entire structure is flared at the bottom and rises to a point, like there’s been a stake driven into the very earth by the heavens above.
The heat here is worse than anywhere else in the Door, from the fires that spew out of the crater before us, like lava. It’s twice as wide as the tower is tall, effectively creating a moat out of the hot spots. The Watchtower sits in the middle of it, impossibly close to the heat, but that’s what makes it such a great stronghold for a Demon Lord like Abaddon.
If this entire godforsaken desert is the Door to Hell, we just landed at its Door Step.
Jennet lowers the telescope and curses under her breath.
“Told you,” I say blithely.
“That’s impossible, though,” Fatma says with a frown, speaking for the first time in a long while.
“What?” I ask.
She chews on her bottom lip, still appearing to be too frail to join us on this quest. “Abaddon must not be shielding the demonlings there,” she says softly. “Because I can sense so many of them in there.”
“Like, they’re hiding out in there?”
She nods. “And demonlings don’t have wings. I doubt Abaddon would fly all of them individually there.”
She’s making sense.
I look back at the Watchtower with renewed interest. There’s another way, somewhere we aren’t seeing. On the other side, perhaps, which would make sense, considering that humans would be coming from our side. With energy in short supply as it is, it’s hard to justify checking all around the Watchtower.
But it’s worth a shot.
I lead Alion around the lip of the crater. We try to stick to the shadows, but there’s really not a whole lot we can do to hide. All we can do is move quickly.
Suddenly, I spot it.
“There!” I say, pointing as the other three follow my lead. “I see a bridge.”
Bridge may be generous, considering that it consists of merely a narrow strip of land connecting us to an open Door where I see a few demonlings guarding the entrance. There’s barely enough room for one person to travel across it, and we certainly wouldn’t be able to bring our horses on it.
Fatma gives a sad smile, looking physically ill. “Told you.”
Maybe she’s not completely lost.
“Okay,” Jennet says. “Now what?”
“We tie up our horses,” I say, dismounting and taking the reins to find a place to keep them while we go into the tower.
Unfortunately, this close to the Watchtower, there’s really nothing here to tie them to. I pace around for a few moments, gritting my teeth.
I don’t have the energy to look around too much. There has to be something that works. I don’t want to leave the horses loose, because they are our only way back to Derweze. But I can’t spend all morning looking for a rock or something that can hold them.
“Fatma can stay here,” Kerem offers, and the young witch whips her head his way. His gaze is soft as he looks at her. “Your gift allowed us to find this spot,” he tells her gently. “And with so many demonlings there, you’ll be more of a hindrance than anything.”
Fatma’s lips part, but I can tell that the fight left her before we went on this last leg. She doesn’t want to contradict him. She doesn’t want to say that
she can do it, regardless. She knows she’s at her very end.
“That’s a good idea,” Jennet agrees. She drops to the ground and hands Fatma the reins. “You’ll do far better out here with the horses.” She offers the younger woman a smile, giving her an encouraging pat. She presses a sword into Fatma’s hand. “You’ll be safer out here. Just keep an eye on everything to make sure that you aren’t ambushed.”
“Okay,” Fatma replies, her voice tiny.
“Works for me.” I sigh as I hand her my reins. I grab my yataghan and make sure that I have every available weapon that I can manage.
There’s a lot, and I can’t help but feel ridiculous as I signal to Kerem and Jennet to follow me as I run down the hill to the bridge. With every step, the heat from the crater gets more and more intense, and my body immediately becomes slick with sweat. The air itself becomes too hot and unbearable, and I wonder if we’ll suffocate long before we make it.
A demonling roars, alerting its buddies that there are intruders on the bridge. Muscular, ugly creatures stream out of the building, running along the bridge to intercept us halfway.
The good news is, while they are counting on the bridge being a bottleneck for invaders, it’s also one for them as well. Only one demonling can move forward at a time, and I use that to my advantage.
I hold my yataghan out, feeling its familiar weight, and I just start hacking, letting that now-familiar rage descend upon me. It’s gotten me out of situations like this in the past—I need it more than ever now.
Blood flies, most of it not mine, and I find that the easiest way of getting them out of the way is to physically push them off the bridge and into the fires below. Charred demonlings smell like burned shit, and the scent makes my eyes water, which is a bigger deterrent than the fight on the bridge. My watery eyesight makes it hard for me to see them attack.
Jennet and Kerem are behind me, letting me do my work, knowing that if they try to help, they’ll just get in the way and possibly hurt both of us.