Goat edged closer next to me and stared down at the madness unfolding before us. “Whatever it takes to earn their trust. To make them believe he is strong enough to lead them.”
My eyes widened. “Lead them?”
“Yes.”
“What about Satan?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“Is he real? Isn’t he—”
“A figurehead.”
This was insane. “He just said Lucifer—”
“Lucifer did exist. Long ago,” Goat sighed, making me wonder if it was out of deep depression or adoration.
Down in the pit, Camael still crooned his propaganda to thirsty ears. Monkey see, monkey do. But unlike the rest, Adam’s gaze had not left my face.
Was he angry that I had come to Hell for him? He had spent countless centuries, millennia even, by my side; he had been thrown from Heaven then tortured in Hell for God knows how long. It was the least I could do.
“What happened to him?” I dared to ask.
“Who?”
“Satan. Lucifer. Whatever you call him.”
“No one really knows truthfully,” he said. “None of us anyways. Your feather-heads might know, but there’s been so many regime changes over the last several thousand years that I doubt any of these younglings would know anything.”
I looked up to see that Adam had sunk down against his prison, and I wondered if he had finally passed out. I wouldn’t blame him even if he did. No one deserved this.
“I’ve got to get him out of there,” I said simply, my resolve strengthening as my grip tightened on the railing. “It’s why we’re here.”
I struggled to keep my mind blank. I doubted that I could hide anything from Goat. Shielding my thoughts became easy when there were no thoughts to begin with.
I had the sinking feeling that things would unveil themselves below us. Camael stalked amongst the crowd, furthering his own ends while my mind ran in circles. What was he going to do with Adam? Did my wings now resemble his? I didn’t even know how to extend them. Even now, it was as if I had imagined them. I couldn’t feel their presence, ethereal or not.
Unlike at the beach and the warehouse, there was no inkling of their weight, no tugging between my shoulder blades. Even if I could somehow unfold them, what good would they be here? Last thing I knew, Camael had turned them into little more than tar and acid, like some prehistoric monstrosity dating back to the Jurassic period.
Did angels even heal? I scoured Camael for any sign of scars, anything indicative of previous wounds, injuries, or battles, anything that proved his angelic form did not regenerate limitlessly.
I think someone had mentioned that already, but I couldn’t even remember anymore. My mind was a jumbled mess, like a ball of yarn so disheveled that I could hardly follow a train of thought long enough before something else vied for my attention.
A bright red-orange glow illuminated the entire arena, solving our attention problem immediately. Or at least mine.
Goat had not looked away once. He was expecting this.
“To prove my loyalty to you, brothers,” Camael said, stepping back up onto the platform where Adam was held, “I have taken something in parting that will give us a great edge in this war.”
War? What war? Obviously I had missed something in transit.
Someone on the ground echoed my confusion. “War? We haven’t seen any war from the White Wings in several centuries now.”
Camael nodded and tapped his chin. An actor through and through. He was trying to egg them on. “Then why do they seek to eradicate you? To rid the planes of your existence once and for all?”
No arguments. To them, it was obvious he knew something they didn’t. Camael held up the same flaming sword he had stabbed Adam with once already. “I give to you, Lamafuere!”
And then a cacophony of madness ensued. Noise reverberated off every wall, in every nook and cranny. I had never seen such excitement, if excitement was even the right word for it. Bloodlust seemed more appropriate.
Without warning, demons flooded around me, coming out of every dark hole, with the lack of light probably my greatest enemy. I glanced at Goat who had disappeared into the crowd, into the flux of horned faces and scaled flesh, his bulbous and grotesque features making him nearly indistinguishable. But even in the chaos, I could see that his eyes were deadlocked on mine.
At the point where claws began to dig into my flesh, tearing and tugging at me from all directions, I screamed enough obscenities that smiles and grins erupted all around me. “Goat, you fucking bastard!” I writhed as those unfamiliar hands latched onto me and dragged me into their madness. “I trusted you, you piece of shit!”
But could I even be angry? I mean, really?
I had been warned.
I had been warned and didn’t listen.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A brute of a demon, an unbalanced, strapping creature comparable to the size of a Mack truck, marched ahead of me, dragging me like a piece of meat ready for the butcher. Goat walked behind the two of us, ignoring my endless kicking and screaming. Even if the room were completely empty, I doubt he would have paid me any attention. He had gotten what he wanted.
Camael waited with hungry eyes on top of the platform, already aware of us being in his presence. Adam remained on the other side of him, drowning somewhere in his own consciousness.
I wanted to tell him that I loved him, that everything would be okay. But did I? Would it?
The two of us were stuck in Hell and about to be assassinated.
Michael’s sword. I seized in place, my heels locking into the ground. It didn’t kill him but instead sent him here. Was Raphael wrong, or was there more to him, more to us? It gave me the fraction of hope I needed though it was faint.
I had no recollections of the Seraphim, from this lifetime or any other. My trip into Vilon had done nothing to jog my memory. I was still running in the dark, praying that it would all come back, and with it I would gain angelic abilities. In a place where one stray thought could lead to a century’s worth of torment, my disadvantages were mounting by the minute.
Camael held out a hand toward me as I began the trek up the stairs. “So good of you to join us, my dear. I have to say I’m surprised you made it this far.”
The creature tugged on my chains, the steel bonds continuing to eat away at my flesh as he did. There were no words exchanged, only the guttural voices that it made as it led me the rest of the way until I stood face to face with the insurgent angel.
“What are you doing here, Camael?” I demanded, losing any politeness I had left. Everything that I had ever considered to be mine no longer mattered or existed. All that mattered was Adam.
Camael’s brows flexed. “I think you, above anyone else, know why, my darling Eve. We’re going to raze the Heavens back to where they belong, issuing in a new era.”
“So now that you’re one of the Fallen, you’re going to lead them?”
The insurgent angel bared his teeth wide. “Oh no, my dear, absolutely not. You are.”
I turned around to face thousands of beady eyes glistening in the faint light of the surrounding torches. He couldn’t be serious, wanting me to lead the Damned.
To kill God. Goat had said it. Raphael had said it.
Did they both know that I would end up here as the only one who could save Adam? Who was I to lead an army against God?
Raphael, an ally. Camael, an enemy. Adam, my lover. And me, Eve D’Angeline.
Whatever humility my human life had given me now served me. “No,” I told the greedy angel standing before me as I tugged sharply on my chains. “I will have none of this. You can fight your own battles. Release Adam and me, and I’ll pretend like none of this ever happened.”
Camael finally pulled his hand from his mouth with a discerning nod, a maniacal grin turning to laughter before he began to applaud. “My darling Eve, you truly are a gem.”
His grin only widened even more, making me remembe
r that wild animals bared their teeth as a sign of aggression. I had only a second to react before his bony hand clutched me by the throat, my hands chained together so that the only thing to do was try to keep my windpipe in one piece.
“I think you’re misunderstanding how this works. You are one of the Nephilim. You are one of us now.”
“And what about you?” I pitted back. “You’re just as black as the rest of us.”
“Indeed, I am.” He tightened his grasp, leaving me to claw at his hands as he lifted my shorter frame from the ground.
“Tell me, Amelia,” he said simply. “You’ve already lost everything. What reason do you have not to ally yourself with me?”
“I think the obvious fact that you’re completely insane has something to do with it!” I rasped between the clenches of his fist. “Or the fact that you tried to kill Adam—”
The sound that emitted from the angel’s throat said otherwise. “I can’t kill him that easily. Angels are very resilient beings. Immortality isn’t called that for nothing,” he mused and stood eye to eye with me, his long-fingered hand latching onto me like claws.
“No,” I said again.
Camael sighed and exchanged a look with Goat who threw the free end of my metal chains to the wraith beside Adam. Their expert knot work soon had me chained next to Adam’s half-conscious body.
“I tried to be cordial, Eve, to make amends for our previous interludes, but you just slapped my hand away like I was a leper. So I’m going to teach you what being a leper’s all about, and then there will be no homecoming for the Seraph’s precious Eve D’Angeline. You will be truly one of us. Damned with no means of escape.” He stared at me expectantly as if he were waiting for me to break.
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.
“You think you’re playing for the right side when you don’t even know who the sides are. I really hoped you would’ve reconsidered before it was too late.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The pain raked down my sides and along my spine, a deep scraping sensation that flooded my bones. I couldn’t scream. Not when Adam hung next to me. I had to do better than before. This time, I had to find a way out of this. And in one piece.
No amount of struggling would free me. I hung above them all like a piñata waiting to be broken and defiled. Goat and the wraith had taken my chains and tethered them to two pillars at the edges of the platform, raising me inches above the rough-hewn floor that served as my only link to reality. Each time the restraints dug into my flesh, the pain threatened to overwhelm me until the endorphins flooded my system in a vain attempt to keep me from passing out.
“I want you to be awake for this,” Camael said as he held a crimson glass vial to my lips, quenching me with a liquid I had never tasted before.
Some sort of hallucinogen, my mind flared open like the petals of a flower. My vision fought to make sense of what I saw. Each sense that remained intact flooded over me each time another wave of pain ricocheted through my spine, making everything from the waist down so uncomfortably numb.
It took me a second to realize the situation for what it was.
Knowing full well that I could not be killed so easily, his brutality had settled on the next best thing. They were stripping me of my wings, making me human. Making me powerless.
“Once wasn’t enough for you?” I said through gritted teeth. “You’d think picking wings off little, white, fluffy things would get old after a while.”
He straightened the black leather gloves around his wrists. “Not at all. In fact, I quite like it.”
“You’re sick.”
He cocked his head sideways for a moment, as if sizing me up in his mind. “Perhaps, but things aren’t always what they seem.”
The weight of a few dozen pounds clamped down on either shoulder blade, locking me even further in place as something jarred into me. Before I could even react, Camael was already beside me, pouring the bitter nectar into my mouth as he grasped my face.
This time I didn’t swallow it but spit it back in his face. “I won’t give you what you want.”
He snorted and clutched me by the chin. “I don’t need you to. I take everything I want, and I want you to experience the New Golden Era of the Fallen starting with seventy-six lashes to teach you that obedience doesn’t have to be earned. It can be taken.” He motioned to someone standing behind me.
Soon my body was crying without my permission. I finally broke down and asked for help. Could it be misconstrued as prayer? I had no idea, but the only thing that mattered was that it worked.
At first it was the sonorous blaring of a horn echoing in the distance, a vacant sound without an owner. It wasn’t until it continued on, louder and more insistent that I realized it was both a warning and a rally. In between the searing vies for my attention, three figures I had never seen before flooded my line of sight. Dressed similar to Raphael, I knew instantly that he had sent them. Two of the angels immediately barred Camael and the others from approaching Adam and me from every direction while the third struggled to get us down.
The chains popped and sizzled as they fell to the ground in pieces and out slipped what was left of Adam into the arms of a green-eyed female with long, dark hair. She slung Adam’s limp arm around her shoulder as the man in front of me reached into the scabbard at his waist and drew out an iridescent rapier.
“Danielle, get them out of here,” he said as he raised the blade in Camael’s direction.
“I’m trying, Emil,” the female growled. “But it’s not as easy as you think. Look at him. He’s already starting to transmute.”
“Just get them out of here.” There were no further arguments, no questions. Only progress.
I didn’t know what help three lone angels could possibly be until the first swarm of demons charged at us on the platform.
The third angel, the one who guarded my back with a longbow, butted up against me so that I was entirely shielded. “I’m David,” he said calmly when I noticed our bodies touching.
“Um, Amelia,” I replied.
He nodded. “I know who you are. All of Assiyah and Araboth are in an uproar over you, and it looks like this place isn’t far behind. You sure know how to party!” He laughed as he released the first wave of arrows, not once taking his eyes off the swarming crowd in front of him.
“Oh, come now,” Camael tutted as he took notice of those crashing his event. “You don’t actually expect to get her out of here, do you?”
Emil raised the crystalline sword higher, steadying his resolve as he balanced himself. “I expect to accomplish exactly what we came to do, Lord Camael.” He stepped back toward me as the insurgent angel snaked ever closer.
“I’m Lord of nothing. Deus saw to that,” Camael scoffed, pulled Lamafuere from the crystal scabbard at his waist, and poised it nonchalantly at Emil. “Tell me, youngling, what could you hope to achieve against one of the fabled Seven? I doubt you and your friends could cause me much harm.”
One of David’s arrows flew angrily toward Camael’s head, followed by a fierce amount of expletives. By the look on the two angels’ faces, Emil and David were used to Camael’s games of cat and mouse. With the two distracted and Adam out of commission, it left only Danielle and me. By the time I looked up at her, Danielle’s piercing green eyes were already locked on my face. She had heard me.
Can you get me down? I asked, my body still as night, my voice still as stone.
I can try.
Even from such a distance, I could tell this woman would be a venerable enemy should our paths ever differ. Her gaze was icy steel that concentrated on the metal braces holding my chains in place on the pillar in front of her.
We had maybe ten more seconds before David ran out of arrows.
“Dani, you’d better hurry,” David hissed between shots.
Emil now guarded me even more intensely, his left arm extended around me, his right still clutching the crystal blade. “Lord Camael, whatever your quarrel is with t
hese two, I ask you to let it go.”
The repetitive flicking of his wrist downward drew my attention. It took a second to realize that it wasn’t a nervous movement but more specifically a pattern. A word. Below.
Below what? I thought Hell was as low as it got.
My gaze lifted to see if Danielle had noticed Emil’s message too, but as far as I could tell, she was still engrossed with the metal pulley system tethering me in place.
This was a disaster. Why hadn’t Raphael sent in more reinforcements?
And then I remembered: Camael and the Nephilim, Adam and myself included, were now enemies of Heaven.
So much for reincarnation. Some things you just couldn’t redeem yourself from. I knew that Dr. Willard had risked much in sending the enemy assistance in the middle of a war, but it wasn’t like Dr. Wil— Raphael—to deny the aid of a person in need. It wasn’t in his nature.
The thought of him in his doctor’s robes made me smile even now. An angel doctor, it suited him.
And in the end, he had found three volunteers, three willing to follow his lead when so many others went the other way. It said much for his character. Emil, Danielle and David too had risked much in coming here, even if they were angels. Raphael had said Michael’s sword, Lamafuere, was the only way to kill an immortal, yet Adam and I were still alive. We should have been dead so many times over, and yet here we were.
Below.
The platform was below us, with the arena of demons below it. The ground below them and God knows what the rest of Hell consisted of. We had teleported into the entrance, only to land smack in the middle of Camael’s plan.
I should have expected it.
Below.
My eyes ran the length of Emil’s body, following his frame much like a line leading to the fabled X. His shirt was a well-fitted, cream tunic etched with gold brocade; his pants, dark muslin, durable and meant for movement. I couldn’t help but wonder if the seamstresses that had created such garments had taken war into account when she had pieced together these fabrics. Celestial seamstresses, it seemed almost comical.
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