by Sadie Moss
“Yes!” Trin exclaims, twisting around to look up at Flynn. “Please draw it. Thank you.”
“What do you want in exchange?” I put in, stepping forward.
I fully expect him to demand twice the original sum, or maybe even three times as much now that he can see how badly we want it. But the demon just shakes his head, muttering something to himself. Then he speaks louder to address me.
“No extra charge. You’ll still have to track down the mark and the demon it belongs to in order to make this information useful, so I’m not giving you much. And besides,” he adds, stepping over to a small desk set against one wall, “maybe this will teach demons they can’t just go around destroying beautiful things. Maybe there should be consequences for cruelty and violence.”
My eyebrows flicker upward, but I restrain the open surprise from showing on my face. I’ve heard few corrupted talk like this, and I’m surprised to hear him speaking so forcefully against his own kind.
If that’s truly how he feels, no wonder he decided to take our deal and try to get out of here.
Flynn pulls a thick scrap of paper and a pencil from the desk drawer and returns to Trinity. She’s got her back to him, but I suddenly regret buying her such delicate, lacy underthings when I had clothing delivered to the penthouse for her. It leaves far too little to the imagination.
The demon doesn’t even try to sneak a look though, instead getting to work sketching out the mark that none of us can see. Trinity shifts a little, looking over her shoulder at me with a hopeful expression.
Something in my chest aches at the sight.
I want her to always look hopeful.
Happy.
Alive.
I don’t know when it happened, but the idea of Trinity in any kind of distress causes me an almost physical pain.
Because I don’t know what to do with the feelings churning inside me, I shift my attention to Flynn and growl, “Hurry up.”
His pencil flies across the page a little faster, and a few moments later, he hands the scrap of paper to Trinity. “There. Search for that mark on the side of a building, on a sign, sewn into clothing. High demons are territorial. Whoever it is, they’ll have put it somewhere visible. Probably more than one place. Find it, and you’ll find the person you seek.”
“Thank you.” She smiles at him, peering at the paper before tucking it into her pocket.
“Now then.” The demon tucks the pencil behind his ear and rubs his hands together. “Let’s see about removing that mark, shall we?”
“Yes, please.” Her smile widens.
He places his hands on her back, this time I do see something as his fingertips move over her flesh, the tips of his claws dragging over her mocha skin. Little pieces of the mark seem to flare into visibility before vanishing, and I get the sense that when they disappear, they’re gone for good.
My brothers and I stand in a cluster around them, watching Flynn work with wary gazes. He’s helped us more than he needs to, and he wants the money we’re offering, but that doesn’t mean we trust him.
Suddenly, Knight stiffens beside me. He cocks his head, his gaze flicking toward the door. Then he signs something quickly, his fingers flying in deft movements.
Demons coming. They’re close.
Chapter Eleven
TRINITY
“Fuck,” Beckett mutters.
There’s something in his voice that makes my stomach clench in alarm, and I look over my shoulder to see him turn toward me and Flynn.
“How close are you?” he demands, his eyes gleaming.
Flynn shakes his head, still focused on my back. “Just… need a few more… minutes.”
“Well, you may not have a few more minutes, so hurry up.”
“What is it?” I do my best to stay still, even though I want to leap up and join the men. Beckett’s voice is as controlled as always, but I know him well enough by now to hear that concern that lurks beneath the surface.
“Demons.” He catches my gaze. “I don’t know how many, but they’re coming. They must’ve sensed your mark.”
“Ah, shit.” Nix makes a face, like he was really hoping we’d manage to escape Hell without having to fight for our lives. Honestly, I was too.
“Keep working,” Sawyer tells the corrupted who’s currently erasing the demon mark on my shoulder. “We’ll go outside and meet them—try to hold them off so you can finish.”
“What?” I screech, craning my neck as my heart lurches in my chest. Flynn curses under his breath, restarting on the section he was just erasing. Shit, I must’ve screwed him up.
But still…
“No! You guys can’t just go out there and make yourselves into demon target practice just to protect me!”
“Angel, I’ve never been anyone’s target practice,” Ford promises darkly, cracking his knuckles.
“But you—”
Whatever compelling argument I was about to make, I never get a chance to finish. Knight’s eyes flare wide, and he starts to gesture, but he’s interrupted too as the door flies off its hinges.
Nearly a dozen corrupted pour into the space. They’re all low level, by the look of it. There’s almost nothing humanoid about them, except for the fact that most of them are walking on two legs. Some have bright red skin and slitted black eyes, and others are a milky white color that makes them look like living corpses.
Ford shouts a battle cry, hurling himself at two demons who spot me and try to attack. The other men form a perimeter around us, holding off the demons as yells and grunts fill the air.
I move to help them, fear rising in my throat, but a calloused hand clamps tightly around my upper arm.
“Don’t move,” Flynn hisses, his other hand still tracing the demon mark on my skin. “The longer it takes me the do this, the greater the chance that we all die. Let me finish.”
It’s torture, staying still while the men battle bloodthirsty corrupted around me—especially considering that all the demons are trying to get to me. If any of the sins get hurt, it’ll be because they stood between these monsters and their prize.
My entire body is rigid as a block of ice, and I suck in breaths through my nose, trying to keep myself from panicking entirely as I listen to the sounds of battle all around. I can’t even see half of what’s going on since my back is to the action, but the glimpses I catch make my blood run cold.
More corrupted are pouring into the shop. Maybe they’ve sense my mark, or maybe they just heard the commotion and smelled the blood and decided to join the party.
“Almost there…” A slight tremble in Flynn’s finger is the only indication that he’s feeling the strain just like I am. “Hold still. Almost… there!”
He crows triumphantly, and a shiver of cold works through me—one I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with my fear. It’s the spell dissolving, the demon mark being lifted.
I glance back over my shoulder. “It’s done? It’s gone?”
“Yes. Now—”
He’s interrupted by a hairy body hurtling past us. Whatever the thing is, it hits the wall with a thud before leaping up and growling at us. I think maybe one of the sins threw it, but I don’t have time to ask before the demon leaps forward, claws outstretched.
“Fuck!” Flynn ducks, grabbing up the pencil he used to sketch the demon mark earlier and jamming it into the creature’s eye. The thing howls and veers away.
Flynn grimaces, his gray skin wrinkling as he turns to take in the chaos that’s exploded inside his meager shop. He glances at me, and my stomach drops out. I get the feeling he’s debating whether to throw me to the demons just like one of my men threw that corrupted earlier. Maybe he hopes if he offers me up to them, they’ll stop tearing apart his shop.
But then he sighs, an irritated sound. “Come on. Dammit all.”
He grabs my wrist, then darts over to the wall, pressing on a spot where two cracks in the stone meet up. I don’t see anything there, but as soon as he puts his finger on the spot, a
staircase begins to emerge from the wall, as if the rock itself is changing shape.
Holy… wow.
“What the fuck is that?” Ford bellows. He’s practically covered in fallen, fighting them off madly even as more leap on him.
“Your way out of here!” Flynn calls back. He drags me up the stairs as soon as they’re fully formed, and I realize a door has appeared at the top of them.
Clever. There’s a whole second floor to this place that no one would ever know about unless Flynn summoned the staircase.
Ford roars, renewing his efforts as Nix and Sawyer leap forward to help him, pulling demons off him as they make their way toward the stairs. Flynn and I are already almost at the top, and I’m dragging my feet. I sure hope he knows I can’t pay him—he needs to keep the men alive for that. There’s no freaking way I’m letting him drag me away from the fight and abandon them.
The entire first floor is packed with demon bodies, some dead and far too many still living, but the sins manage to make their way through the chaos toward the stairs, fighting off the corrupted who try to follow.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Flynn urges, and now that I can tell the men are right behind us, I stop dragging my feet. We race through the door at the top of the stairs, and the seven sins pour through after us.
“This way!” Flynn tugs me toward the back of the building as Sawyer kicks the door shut. The space up here is obviously where Flynn lives, although it’s almost as sparse as the big empty workshop downstairs.
Man, Hell really does suck.
That fleeting thought passes through my mind, but it’s quickly eclipsed by worry about where we’re supposed to go from here. Demons are howling at the door, rattling it on its hinges, and now we’re trapped on the second floor of a building. I’ve got wings, but I really shouldn’t be flying unless I have to—and that still leaves the guys with no way down.
“Hurry!” Waving the rest of the guys over, Flynn lets go of my arm to press another small notch on the wall at the back of the room. A new door appears, and when he opens it, I see a staircase leading down the back of the building on the outside. Warm air wafts into the room, and Flynn practically pushes me through the door as the one behind us bursts open.
Fuck. Those fallen may be low-level, but they’re vicious and determined.
We race down the stairs, moving so fast that I nearly fall twice. The second my feet touch solid ground, we’re sprinting, running through a narrow alleyway between buildings as the monsters on our tails howl.
But when we dart into the street, my heart nearly stops.
“Shit.” Ryland’s lips curl around the word.
More corrupted are waiting for us out here.
I wouldn’t have thought they’d work together like this, and maybe it was just blind luck, but the ones waiting at the front of the building and the ones pursuing us from behind have managed to box us in.
For a second, everyone freezes.
Us. The demons. Flynn.
We all stare at each other as time seems to stand still.
Then a small movement beside me catches my eye. I glance sideways and see the gray-skinned demon pulling a small orb from the pocket of his tattered pants. He sees me looking at him and jerks his head to the right in a tiny movement.
“On my signal, run,” he murmurs.
“What?”
He gives me a look like I might be dim and gestures to the right with his head a little more emphatically. “On my signal, run.”
I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about. We can’t run that way. There’s a wall, and then there’s a bunch of demons—neither of which are a barrier we’re likely to get through.
But before I can ask him what he means, he gives a savage yell and throws the glass orb in the direction he indicated earlier. It hits the ground in the midst of the demons on the street and explodes, sending bodies flying. The force of the explosion makes my ears ring, and I stagger back.
Flynn yells something, gesturing wildly to the sudden opening as the demons behind us swarm forward.
He wants us to go through. He wants us to run.
“What about you?” I scream.
He shakes his head, then shoves me in the direction of the cleared path. Will the other demons not hurt him? Do they not attack their own kind?
“Trin, we gotta go!” Remi’s hand latches on to mine, and then we’re all running, the men surrounding me in a loose circle as our feet pound against the stone.
I look back over my shoulder as we leap over the prone bodies of demons. Flynn is brandishing another orb as the remaining corrupted snap and snarl at him. Then Remi is pulling me around a corner, and I lose sight of them all.
My heart pounds as we run, darting between buildings and sprinting down dark alleyways where the lights of the fire don’t reach and we can be safe in shadow.
There seem to be slums here, just like in cities on Earth, and after sprinting flat out for so long that it feels like my legs might give out, we reach an area of buildings that are barely standing upright that seem to be unoccupied. Probably because nobody wants to be inside them when they inevitably fall down.
But it’ll do for us, for now.
It’ll keep us hidden.
Finally, we slow our pace, all of us gasping for breath.
We get inside one of the buildings that looks like it’s still in fairly good condition, finding there’s still some furniture inside. Or, well, sort of furniture. There’s a kitchen area with a large table that looks like it’s made out of a slab of rock, and a hallway with several doors leading off of it.
I can’t hear the sound of the corrupted chasing us anymore. In fact, it’s pretty quiet—almost silent. I can hear the hum of the bustling city in the distance, but nothing too close.
Sawyer slips an arm around my waist, pulling me close to his body as Ryland takes stock of our situation. “We should be safe here. Without the mark on Trin, the demons will have no way to track us. We can rest and recoup.”
“Should we go back to Earth?” I ask. “Use Isaac’s portal again?”
“We could. We accomplished what we set out to do,” Beckett says thoughtfully. “But I think it’s worth the risk to stay another day and try to track down that mark Flynn drew for us.”
My chest tightens at the mention of Flynn. Is he still alive? He never even got his promised payment. I privately vow that no matter what happens, if we live through this, I’ll make sure he gets his money. I can see why he wants to get out of Hell—I would too.
“Agreed.” Ryland nods. “We can stay here overnight. But we’ll need food.”
“I’m afraid whipping up a culinary feast here is beyond even my abilities,” Remi says, half joking, half genuinely apologetic.
Knight signs something, and Ryland nods. The tall, silent man slips away out the front door. My heart lurches in my chest.
“Where’s he going?” I don’t want Knight to get hurt. I’d never forgive myself. He can’t be going out there to fight the corrupted on his own, can he?
“He’s going to get us something to eat, love,” Sawyer replies.
Oh, right. As part of his sin, Knight has an uncanny ability to avoid being seen. It’s what makes him such a good thief. So I guess it makes sense that he’d be the best one to go find us some food, although it doesn’t make me worry any less.
Nix walks down a hallway, poking his head into a few rooms. “Eh. It’s not much, but it’ll work. Doesn’t look like any critters made a home in here before we arrived. There are beds to sleep on, even. Well, more like slabs of rock with blankets over them, but they’ll have to do.”
Luckily it’s warm here, so we won’t have to worry about freezing overnight while we sleep.
Knight returns shortly with some food—it’s pretty basic, but it works—and perhaps more importantly, some water for all of us. We eat in silence. All of us are tired and, at least in my case, reeling.
I don’t want to say anything because I’ll probably sound horrib
ly naïve, yet again, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve been a bit lied to my whole life. I understand that there are some of my brethren who are… well, rather uptight in their determination to stick to the rules above all. Sometimes that strict adherence to rules feels like it comes at the cost of doing what is genuinely the right thing.
But that’s completely different from what I just learned.
Demons aren’t what I thought they were. Or at least, not all of them are.
I didn’t think that any demon could possibly be capable of anything except wanting to inflict pain and suffering on others. Sure, maybe the one who helped us wasn’t the best of creatures, by overall standards, but he still helped us. He made sure that the mark was taken off me and gave us a necessary clue to find out who put this bounty on me.
And that means a lot.
He had to have known what he was risking, that he was possibly giving up his life—that other demons wouldn’t be pleased at what he’d done. But he did it anyway.
And what about Anderson, telling me that he and the other higher-ups didn’t care about the portals? That it was fine if people on Earth died since many of them would go Upstairs anyway, and that individual lives didn’t matter so much as winning the war?
That’s not really a good or kind stance to take, is it? The demon who helped us seems to have acted more selflessly than some angels I know, putting our needs before his own life and safety.
It makes me wonder what really makes someone good or bad. Earth is full of people who are so complicated, who aren’t fully one thing or the other. A person will do something selfless and compassionate one day and then do something malicious and hurtful the next. It’s crazy.
But I know what being good is. It’s putting others before yourself, it’s doing things to help others, it’s being firm in your beliefs and having courage. Things like that. And I know what being bad is. It’s making decisions based on fear, it’s hurting others, it’s putting yourself before everything else.