Waltzing into Damnation

by Rita Stradling

  “I’ll take the leaving option, Cassidy. You ready?” I don’t look back.

  “You do know I read secrets, right?” Barbas laughs. “So of course I know right now you’re signaling Cassidy, who is pretending to be unconscious, and you two plan to run to Stephen and teleport through the kleis tou thanatou kai tou adou. Well, that’s Cassidy’s plan. You’re also going to try to save Andras because you have so many conflicted feelings about him.” Turning away, Barbas walks toward his throne and leans against it, yawning into his hand like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Holding up a finger, he says, “Except . . . I’ve found threatening to torture a person to death as an incentive is quite a bit less effective than actually doing it. Eeny, meeny, miny . . .” he points to Andras, Stephen, and then Cassidy, “moe, catch a lion by the toe. . . “

  “Everyone, run to me!” I scream, even knowing it’s too late.

  Demons charge us from all sides, like a wave of claws and teeth, but somehow I hear Barbas over their cacophony.

  “If he hollers, let him go, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” Barbas’ finger lands on Andras.

  Without a second of hesitation, the crocodile-polar-bear pounces. Andras disappears under a body of ivory fur.

  “Stop it!” I yell as tears streak down my face. My breath hitching, I raise my hand with the shard of obsidian.

  Demonic animals cut me off from everyone but Barbas. There’s no making plans or plotting. He’ll know every secret I make. So, I just act. Running at Barbas, I tackle him. And then, without thinking about it anymore, I pull him into the darkness within me.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Day Four

  I’m pretty sure flying upward toward a light at the end of the tunnel has never been so painful. Barbas scratches and pushes against me, screaming and roaring into my ear until all I hear is a ringing.

  My body feels like a network of pain, barely held together by sinew. Pain sears up my side. It ricochets through me as he punches my face with his demonic strength. My bones shatter, but I hold on to him. We soar upward toward a warm, colorful light, and I know this impulsive move is the wrong one.

  What am I even fighting for? I’m either delivering Barbas to Heaven or Earth, both the very wrong choice.

  “Let go,” a very familiar voice whispers in my ear. Something touches my cheek with cold fingers, and the ice spreads over my skin.

  Knowing if I consider the instruction for even a moment, Barbas will know, so I just do it. Throwing my arms up, I let go.

  Claws scratch me but then fall away as the ice spreads to encase my entire body. Pain eases everywhere the ice touches. I taste honey and feel only light.

  As my body heals, tears fall over my cheeks, cracking the ice there.

  Angels.

  The angels found me, I know it with my every honeysuckle-tasting breath.

  It’s over.

  Soft fingers brush away my tears and the lingering ice clinging to my skin.

  I look up into the familiar kind eyes of Father Dixon. Like the few times I saw him after death, colorful light radiates from his dark complexion.

  “I failed,” I whisper to him.

  “You saved your sister. You returned a kidnapped child to his mother. You helped good people who were wrongly imprisoned. You taught a demon how to love,” he says back, and even as an angel, he has his thick English accent. “None of that is failing to me.”

  “A lot of those things were probably considered evil,” I say, thinking of Madeline.

  “All humans are on a journey, and many are in a place where they judge others so they do not need to look at themselves. Did any of those acts feel wrong as you did them?” he asks.

  “No, but leaving my friends down there in hell right now does. They’re still trapped down there, being tortured to death. You’re here for the key, and I’ve lost all chance of saving them.” Even though my body is healing, I’ve never felt so shattered. It’s like reaching the finish line, only to realize all the other racers and audience members are dead.

  Father Dixon smiles wide as wrinkles form around his eyes. “I am here for the kleis tou thanatou kai tou adou, but who’s to say we can’t take a small detour first? You were never meant to fight all these demons alone, Raven. That was always a job for angels.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  Wings of colorful light erupt from his back, illuminating the expanse of darkness around us in reds, purples, and blues.

  “I can hold them off for a while, but you have to pull your friends through. Okay?” Father Dixon releases me, and for the first time, I realize we’ve been floating here just under the light.

  Father Dixon nods solemnly. “Now go down there, and I will follow just behind you.”

  Descending is as simple as looking down again, and I’m hurtling away from the multicolored light and into the darkness below. A few times, I look up to slow my pace, careful not to shatter my newly healed ribs again. But most of me feels so desperate to get down there, I’d almost be willing to shatter a few bones. But I don’t.

  Once I fall through the fiery sky, there’s no slowing. The stone comes rushing up at me, and I do my best to bend my knees. My feet slam down, and the impact ricochets through my legs and into my joints.

  The scene before me is absolute chaos. Demons surround the dais, and three figures stand on Satan’s great throne, fighting off the army that attacks from all sides.

  Cassidy still wears her lion form. Andras and Stephen flank her. Claw marks rip through their clothing and drip with blood. Cassidy fights with her claws while Andras and Stephen hold rocks.

  Blinding colorful light erupts from above, and I look up just in time to see Father Dixon descend. In his hand, he wields a mammoth flaming sword. Behind him, four more giant angels emerge from the fire.

  As they descend on the demon army, swords and spears held at the ready, the demonic horde blasts away as if they’re tumbleweeds rolling over each other in a gale. Bodies build up to either side, parting like the Red Sea.

  The demons fight against each other, climbing for the top of the pile and lunging for the angels.

  Knowing what I have to do, I run as fast as I can toward the throne as serpents, animals, and demonic men fly past me like leaves in the wind.

  The angels fall upon the demons, slashing through them with burning swords. Battle cries of fury fill the air as thick sulfurous gas overwhelms my senses, but I keep running.

  Like me, Andras and Stephen seem unaffected by the tornado that sweeps up the demons. I reach up toward them as they reach down to me.

  “Raven!” Andras shouts, and I duck just in time as Barbas flies at me.

  He grabs for me, but he can’t reach far enough.

  I wave at him and call out, “You lose.”

  He bares his teeth at me one more time as his golden gaze burns, and then Father Dixon’s flaming sword swings down and cleaves Barbas in two. The golden pieces separate, falling away into the demon detritus.

  At the throne, I grab both Andras and Stephen’s hand. They each pull as I step the toes of my tennis shoes up the rough stone the best I can.

  When I climb over the ledge and onto the stone, both Andras and Stephen stand before me. They breathe heavily, staring at me like they’re not sure if I’m real or not. Blood drips from cuts, as well as their noses and mouths.

  Stephen is so achingly familiar to me, from head to toe, his lean physique, lopsided smile, ocean-blue eyes—everything about him.

  And even though I’ve never seen Andras’ face before, it’s strangely familiar too.

  It feels so bizarre to see them together.

  And . . . how weird it is that I’m holding both of their hands and gripping them to my chest. Letting go, I drop my hands to my sides. “We need to go right now.”

  Cassidy peeks her head around Stephen’s legs, whimpers and then collapses to the ground.

  “Cassidy,” I say as I lunge toward her.

  With a low whine, her eyelids slip shut.
Her limbs go rigid before she starts to convulse. Blood bursts from her mouth, splattering across the stone.

  “W-we need to pick her up, and somehow everyone needs to hold on tight to me. And I mean tight,” I yell.

  Andras’ green eyes burn into mine before he goes to Cassidy’s side. He nods. “On three.”

  Stephen runs around to her other side. They heft her up between them, but she’s twitching so much, neither has a good hold.

  “I don’t know if this is going to work,” I say as I put my arms around all three of them. I grip onto both men’s forearms. “But here goes!”

  Closing my eyes, I pull them into the vast emptiness within me.

  We slog upward as Cassidy’s body convulses against mine. Hot liquid sprays over me, and I know it’s blood and she’s dying, but I can’t force us to move any faster.

  “There’s a light,” Stephen says.

  I see it too, but it’s so far away, and she’s dying now.

  “We need to move faster,” I grit out as Cassidy collides with my cheek again and again. “Grip me tighter.”

  They do, but it doesn’t make any difference.

  Colorful light bursts under us, and suddenly we’re not alone in the abyss. Angels fly beside us as light cascades around them. They look like giant glowing butterflies circling around us, trailing color.

  “Help us!” I cry out to them. “She’s dying.”

  They don’t make any move to help, but they sing, “We will deliver you to a place where you can say your goodbyes. We come for the kleis tou thanatou kai tou adou at the first light of dawn.”

  As soon as their words finish, the colorful light in the distance speeds at us, growing with its proximity. We burst through into daylight.

  More accurately, the air spits us out, and all four of us fall onto a crowd of bedraggled people. I collide into a couple, knocking them both over and into a table.

  The table collapses, upending three large pots of soup, splattering the hot liquid on the line of soldiers standing behind it.

  People scream and shout, and I’m pretty sure it’s in Swedish.

  Cassidy falls onto a group of people who frantically push her convulsing body aside.

  Soldiers in tactical gear surround us within seconds, guns aiming at our heads as men sight us down their rifles.

  “Don’t shoot!” Stephen shouts as he raises his hands. They continue to shout at Stephen as all guns point his way.

  “Andras,” they say to each other through a long stream of shouted words.

  “Obviously, he’s not Andras!” I yell. “We don’t have time for this. Cassidy Dixon is dying!”

  They ignore me as more soldiers surround Stephen.

  Holding up his hands, Stephen talks to them calmly in a stream of Swedish.

  I climb to my feet, and two guns swerve to point at me.

  When the soldiers shout back in Swedish, Andras looks over to me and says, “You need to show your wrist, Raven.”

  “Tell them Cassidy is injured and needs to get to a hospital right away,” I say as I hold up my wrists toward the men. Looking up past them, I see a very familiar sight.

  Leijonskjöld Slott.

  “Get her to the medical facility,” I yell at them, but the soldiers move their guns to point at Andras, who slowly raises his own bare wrists.

  “Nej,” the soldiers say, but they redirect their weapons back at Stephen.

  “Do you know where the medical facility is?” Andras asks in a low voice as he stands beside me.

  I nod quickly.

  “Then run and find a healer. I’ll watch over her for you,” he says.

  I’m running before he’s finished, and I’m halfway between the makeshift outdoor soup kitchen and the guesthouse turned hospital I’d frequented so many times before when I hear Andras raise his voice above the crowd.

  “The one you are all pointing your guns at is Stephen Tapper,” he announces. “He’s not Andras. I am.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Day Five

  My sister’s fingers run through my hair, pulling it taut into a braid as we sit next to Cassidy’s bed. Machines beep all around us, telling us that though Cassidy is still unconscious, her heart is at least beating.

  Sometime in the process of blood transfusions, Cassidy shifted back into her human form. Linnie and I did our best to dress her in a hospital gown before allowing the guys in.

  On Linnie’s other side, Richard Jones stares off toward the windows while his hand absently rubs my sister’s back.

  I bet he’s thinking the same thoughts I am. When will that star-dusted sky brighten? When will this all be over?

  Across the bed from us, Nicholas sleeps, his head sharing Cassidy’s pillow.

  A tear drops onto my cheek as I realize these two will never get their chance.

  “Hell no. Freaking Albert,” I whisper as I scrub the tear away. “What is the hold up?” I yell at the door, but no one answers . . . again.

  Hours ago, directly after I saw Cassidy safely into a hospital bed, I’d been called in to be debriefed by Albert. All of the Leijonskjöld operatives in Guatemala returned as soon as we’d been taken into hell for an ‘immediate regrouping.’

  The debriefing consisted of me repeating again and again about how Barbas told us if we closed the remaining seal of Solomon, the angels wouldn’t bring the end of days. I told them about the vision I had with the sigils—that if Andras could find a way back into hell without using the key inside of me, maybe we could stop the last judgement.

  Albert watched on with tired eyes as Tobias paced behind him. Then they’d told me they’d get back to me as soon as they had a plan and imprisoned me in here.

  “Raven Smith?” a somewhat familiar male voice calls from the door.

  Spinning, I tug my hair from Linnie’s fingers and again cross to the doors of the makeshift hospital room.

  A guard in a full body-armor suit pokes his head in. The only part of his face his helmet and shield reveals is his chin. He holds his space-age gun down at his side. “Albert will see you now,” he says in an oddly familiar but very gruff voice.

  “Finally,” I say as I rush through the door. Passing the two Leijonskjöld guards who’ve been—imprisoning me—or as they claimed, ‘keeping me safe’ these last hours, I try my best to avoid eye contact.

  The new guard in full tactical armor heads down the hallway of the medical facility Linnie and I stayed in as guests so long ago.

  The soldier doesn’t talk to me as we pass by the many closed doors. He presses his thumb into a panel in the wall, and the door at the end of the hall releases its lock with a click. Outside, lit by giant football stadium lights all over the grounds, uniformed soldiers and bedraggled citizens stand about. People hug, others weep, some in the distance sing. A huge group of people pray in a language I don’t know. Some meditate.

  Children sleep in their parents’ arms or laps.

  “This way,” the soldier leading me says as he gestures toward the training facility.

  But this time I know his voice, even though he’s trying to lower and roughen it.

  I close the distance and grab his hand. “Stephen. What’s--?”

  He squeezes my fingers but releases them almost immediately. Leaning in a little, he whispers, “I’m taking you to Andras. Pretend you don’t know me.”

  Now that I know who he is, I can’t help noticing he’s limping on his right side as he steps up to the full hand panel on the door of the training facility.

  I want to grab him and help him—maybe I just want to hug him, but with all the people around, it’s a really bad idea.

  He presses his thumb to the scanner, and as the blue lights trace his finger, I hold my breath. The door beeps and slides open. No one stands in the entrance hall of the training center, but Stephen still doesn’t talk to me as he presses his whole hand to the scanner and the wall slides open to reveal the shining white elevator.

  The door slides closed behind us, and S
tephen immediately slides up his visor and turns to me.

  “Raven.” He whispers the word as if I’m something amazing to him. Red rings his eyes, and dark shadows are cast under them. He’s washed clean the blood that crusted on his face and hair, but somehow he looks even more sick and tired than the last time I saw him. He opens his arms, almost tenuously, and I fall into them.

  “What’s going on?” I ask as I press my face into the hard ridges of his black bulletproof vest. “I told them what Barbas said about the seals. They said they were making a plan—”

  “They’re not, Raven. I told them, too. They think both of us are compromised by Andras and he’s trying to escape to bring the keys to Satan.” Stephen’s fingers thread through my hair. “They’re planning to kill him.”

  My heart drops in my chest as heat immediately pricks my eyes. “What’s wrong with them?” I lean back, looking into Stephen’s beautiful, familiar yet unfamiliar features. “Of all the uselessly nasty things to do on the last night on Earth. Can we stop it?”

  Stephen rakes in a labored breath. “There’s a lot of anger towards Andras, but I think we can save him if we move right now.” He shakes his head. “If we should save Andras’ life after all he’s done—I’m probably not the right judge of that. It doesn’t matter though. If there’s a chance he can lead us to hell without the Angels intercepting us, then it’s worth it to chance freeing him.”

  Guilt hits me in the chest, and I bury my face against Stephen’s vest again.

  I want to save Andras. I want to save Andras at all costs. I want him to live and love and have a full life. But how could I ever admit that after what he did to Stephen? Even thinking it feels wrong as if maybe I have lost sight of what’s right.

  I want to just lean up and run my hands over his face, prove he’s real—but I’m affectionate, he might reciprocate. And I can’t let Stephen be tender toward me, not until I admit everything about what happened with Andras. That knowledge turns the stone my guilt is forming in my gut into a boulder.