So focused on the rising flames, I tripped over a gobalinus that went screeching past me. Righting my balance, I tore my attention away from the destruction and back to escaping.
Fifty feet, it was all we had until we made it to the top. It felt like a million miles as my legs trembled, my lungs burned for air, and my throat felt as parched as a desert. The throne room had strengthened me further, but I hadn’t completely recovered from the effects of the wraiths or the outburst of power that had destroyed the seals, and I felt myself flagging now.
A flap of wings drew my attention overhead as Caim soared into view. He landed soundlessly beside me. “It’s time we get you out of here.”
Before I knew what he intended, he locked me against his side. My feet continued to run, kicking through the air when he lifted me off the ground. “Wait! Not without my friends!” I shouted.
“Take her out of here!” Corson commanded.
“No!”
My protests were ignored as Caim rose further away from them. His wings beat against the air while he propelled us upwards. I gazed down at the seething fires and the thousands of creatures seeking to escape them. Though the flames still snapped at the air and made me feel as if I’d sweat off about thirty pounds, the fires had stopped rising.
Caim shot out of the gateway like a torpedo. He rose until he became a backdrop against the sun as he held me aloft for a minute. For all I knew, it could be a hundred degrees on Earth right now, yet I felt as if I’d been plunged into a cool lake.
My eyes closed and my head tilted back to absorb the power of the sun’s rays and the flow of life on Earth. I’d forgotten how much stronger the energy was here than in Hell, how effortlessly I pulled it into me, and it became easier for me to do so the further from the gateway we traveled.
The energy of the air and the rays of the sun flooded my cells and strengthened me. Particles of the sky brushed against my cheeks. The sway of the trees below caused me to sway with them. The fresh scent of the nearby stream flooded my nostrils and my pulse beat in rhythm with its flow. My fingers dug deeper into Caim’s arm as tears pricked my eyes. It was all so beautiful and wondrous.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
My eyes flew open when Lucifer’s words slid insidiously through my mind again. I met Caim’s wide eyes. The look of reverence on his face stole my breath.
“I can feel the connection in you,” he murmured before shaking his head. “So empty.”
I knew he spoke of the emptiness within himself from the severing of his bond to life.
“I’m sorry.” Those two words felt completely inadequate for the loss he’d endured. However, he’d made his choice when he followed Lucifer. The choices he made now had saved me from Lucifer, but his connection to life could never be reestablished.
He didn’t respond as he lowered us to the ground. The clang of steel against steel, the retort of gunfire, and the screams of the wounded and dying pierced the silence that had enveloped me when we’d first broken free of Hell.
Now, all I could smell was blood, gunpowder, and the acrid stench of burning rubber. Caim’s feet touched on the edge of the gateway as all around us more died. I spotted Erin and Vargas through the haze of smoke wafting from the inferno consuming one of the trucks. At least half a dozen skelleins were swinging their swords through the air and cutting down anything that got too close.
“It’s an angel!”
The bellow came from my right, and Shax charged at us. He swung a broadsword over his head with lethal intent. “Wait!” I cried.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Corson shouted as he leapt out of the gateway to land in front of me. He held his hands up to keep Shax back. Shax skidded to a halt in front of him. “You can’t kill this one… yet.”
“Thanks,” Caim said from beside me.
Corson glanced at Caim over his shoulder as Hawk emerged from the gateway to stand beside him. “Still not sure about you,” Corson said to Caim before focusing on Shax. “He claims to be on our side. He saved River and turned against Lucifer in front of all of us. He stays alive unless he tries something, and then have at him.”
Shax scowled at Caim before turning to plunge back into the battle. Hawk and Corson assumed defensive postures before me as they battled back some of the escapees from Hell. Caim fought against my back as a horde of gobalinus poured toward us.
I could see and hear the others, but I felt an odd sense of detachment from the world around me as Lucifer’s words ran on a loop through my head.
A look within the gateway revealed that the fires had receded further. The shadows were creeping back in to reclaim the roadway once more. However, those shadows couldn’t hide what continued to pour out of Hell. I didn’t know what most of those creatures were, but they caused the hair on my nape to rise as they savagely attacked anything in their way.
Screams filled the air as some of them toppled off the road and into the fires. The stench of blood increased as more humans, demons, and escapees were struck down. A breeze blew strands of my hair forward to tickle my cheeks. It was such a normal sensation in a world that had become anything but normal as time slowed around me.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
He probably lied, I told myself, but what if he didn’t?
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
I gazed around the blood and body-covered field. This is what the future held for Earth and humans.
There would never be undoing the damage already done, but what if I could stop more of it from happening?
Then, through the demons and Hell creatures battling on the field, a shimmer of radiance caught my attention. My breath sucked in and my heart kicked against my ribs when Angela materialized fifty feet away from me. Unaware she stood there, the fighters moved through her, but she was as clear as day to me. She stared at me with an expression of such sadness that tears burned my eyes in response to it.
The human Angela had died at seven, but the knowledge in her kelly green eyes made her appear far older. Caim had said the angels were using her to try to communicate with me, and gazing at her now I knew he was right.
Her wheat blonde hair took on a golden hue that burned my eyes as it spread over her. Whatever the angels were trying to tell me, they were going to make sure I understood it this time.
The battle faded away from my view as Angela steadily approached me. When she stopped beside the gateway, she lifted her hand over it. She mimicked the gesture she’d made when I sliced my hand open and held my palm over the gateway before entering Hell. At that time, all my blood had succeeded in doing was chasing back the Hell shadows.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
Angela was ten feet away from me when Hawk staggered away from the lower-level demon he’d been fighting. “Holy shit!” he shouted. His head turned to follow Angela as she strolled unerringly through the battle. “Where the fuck did the kid come from?”
They could see her too? I’d been the only one capable of seeing Angela on Earth, but this Angela was vastly different than the last time I’d seen her. She stopped five feet away from me. Corson lifted his arm and planted it against my chest as he shoved me back a step. His shoulders and chest heaved, blood dripped from his blue-black hair as he sneered at her.
“It’s okay, Corson,” I whispered to him. “It’s Angela, and it’s okay.”
“I know what she is, and she’s not coming anywhere near you,” he snarled.
“Oh,” Caim breathed from beside me. “Brother.” Then his eyes turned toward me while Angela kept her hand over the gateway.
All around us, the fighters stopped to watch the ethereal child who was as terrifying in her sudden arrival as she was aweing in her beauty. Her golden aura grew stronger until her eyes burned away and light blazed from them.
CHAPTER 31
Kobal
I watched as the last of my followers slipped through the gateway before turning to those who remained
with me. “After you,” I said.
I waved my hand at the gateway as the dais at the far end of the room collapsed into the fires. Sparks and flames shot upward in a deafening roar. The hounds crouched; their hackles lifted. The colorful stones of the pathway fell steadily away as the ground crumpled toward us.
The flames devoured more and more of the throne room until the hounds were flattened against my legs and only five feet separated them from death.
“Gallha,” I commanded them when Bale stepped into the gateway behind everyone else.
The hounds slid away from me and bounded into the gateway as they followed my command to go. My gaze ran over what remained of the throne room, a room built specifically for me to rule from.
No longer my world. And it wasn’t. My world was Earth now. My life was with River, and I had to get to her.
Turning, I watched as the last of the hounds slipped into the gateway before I followed them. I made my way unerringly through the darkness until I stepped out and into the chaos of those fleeing Hell. Glancing into the fiery pit below, I noted the scorch marks left on the walls by the receding flames. Below me, surviving creatures and demons poked their heads out of the side tunnels they’d taken refuge in.
An echoing roar issued from within the flames. The force of the bellow fanned the fires upward as the ground quaked beneath my feet.
“What is that?” Bale asked.
“The one-hundred-first seal has fallen,” I replied. “The drakón are free.”
“I think that’s our cue to get out,” Magnus said.
“Yes, it is,” Bale agreed.
Turning away from the fires, I ran up the pathway behind the others. The hounds carved a line through the lower-level demons and Hell creatures by tearing them in half or knocking them over the side of the cliff. A lower-level demon lunged at me from behind. Its razor-sharp talons sliced down my back before I turned to seize its throat.
I walked it to the edge and tossed it over as another bellow issued from below and the flames shot higher. Morax, Verin, and Calah stopped beside me to peer into the inferno.
“I think continued fleeing would be best,” Lopan said and patted Calah on his head.
Calah scowled, but before he could respond, a manticore tail whipped out of a tunnel the shadows had obscured beneath us. The scorpion stinger struck Morax in the center of his chest.
“No!” Verin shrieked.
Blood spurted from Morax’s mouth and his body jerked before he froze. Leaping forward, my hand caught in the waistband of Morax’s pants as the manticore pulled away. The tearing of cloth filled the air as his pants ripped away from him and the manticore rose away from me.
“Fuck!” I tossed the ruined fabric away as another manticore soared out of the tunnel and pierced Morax’s thigh. The creatures snarled at each other as they dipped toward us while they brawled over their catch.
“Closer,” I grated through my teeth.
Bracing my legs apart, my muscles bunched as I prepared to leap off the pathway and grab Morax the second they came within reach. They didn’t fly closer, but rose higher with Morax’s frozen form between them. My claws dug into my palms as I watched them. Morax was one of my strongest fighters, closest allies, and one of the few I considered a friend. I would get him back.
The manticores were almost to the edge of the gateway when they tore Morax in half. He can still regenerate…
Each manticore lifted their stingers to their mouths and gulped down their half.
“Nooooo!” Verin’s heartbroken wail drowned out the triumphant cries of the manticores and the roar of the drakón. Calah snatched Verin back and clasped her against his side when she almost tumbled over the edge.
The inferno below rolled apart to reveal the first drakón rising toward freedom. The gigantic beast released a wall of blue fire from its mouth, its wings fanned the flames below as it soared upward. Opening its skeletal jaws, the drakón swallowed both the manticores whole.
Calah held Verin up when her legs gave out. Lopan shifted to the side when Calah lifted Verin and tossed her over his shoulder. Her sobs were the only noise punctuating the strange hush that descended after the drakón’s emergence. And then another drakón roared from below and the fires surged higher once more.
***
River
“The angels are using a lot of power for this,” Caim murmured as he stared at Angela.
“I know they are,” I whispered.
Closing my eyes, I became completely still as the warmth of the sun’s rays flooded me. For one second in time, it was just me and this powerful world that had helped to forge me into the person I was.
Opening my eyes, I blinked against the sun before returning my attention to the pit. I searched for Kobal amongst the fleeing horde, but he was still nowhere to be seen. He was alive, but I wanted to see him.
I looked back to Angela now encased in a vibrant white light that caused others to stumble out of her way. Corson lifted his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes as he turned his head away from her.
“What are the angels trying to say?” Corson asked as Angela kept her hand over the gateway.
“I don’t know,” Caim murmured.
I knew, but I couldn’t tell Corson. Like Kobal, he would stop me from doing what needed to be done.
The demons and creatures who had fled Hell turned tail and bolted for the woods when the aura surrounding Angela grew stronger. The ones that weren’t struck down by Kobal’s followers fled into the trees, but no one pursued them. They remained where they were, waiting to see what would happen, and waiting for their king to arrive.
“Is it an angel?” Vargas breathed.
I realized he and Erin had edged closer to us. A pretty blonde woman I didn’t recognize stood beside them with her rifle aimed at Angela. I didn’t tell her to put it down; bullets wouldn’t do anything to the child. If the woman fired her weapon, she would learn that soon enough.
“No,” Caim answered. “It’s a guide, and it’s trying to direct River.”
“To do what?” Corson demanded.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath as my thoughts turned to my brothers. Everything I’d done since childhood was for them. I’d fought to keep them safe and give them a better life than the one I’d had with our mother. Their lives could never go back to what they’d been before Hell opened, no one’s could, but Gage and Bailey could still be safer and have better lives, if I succeeded in closing the gateway.
Everyone on Earth would be safer and happier if I succeeded in that.
Sorrow tore at my heart as I recalled the last time I’d seen my brothers. It had been right before I left the wall behind to come here. Gage had grown to become a stoic young man. Bailey cried when I embraced them both.
“They told me I have to let you go, but I don’t wanna!” Bailey had sobbed, his tiny face flushed with his distress.
“I know, B, but I have to go. I promise to do everything I can to see you again as soon as possible. I love you,” I’d whispered to him.
I loved them so much that there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them. And then there was Kobal. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him either. He may never rule Hell now that it was collapsing, but he would rule Earth. He would gather the demons and he would work to establish control over the annihilation being leveled against this plane. He would succeed in killing Lucifer.
However, if all the creatures of Hell and from the seals continued to pour onto Earth, not even Kobal, the most powerful being I’d ever encountered, would be able to destroy or control them all.
I opened my eyes to gaze into Hell once more. My breath sucked in when I spotted the monstrosity soaring toward us. What…?
“Is that… a fucking… dragon?” Hawk asked.
Yes, yes it was, if dragons were skeletal creatures with a fiery blue glow crackling over all the bones making up their easily hundred-foot-long frame. Holes w
ere interwoven throughout the black, leathery flesh connecting the bones of its wings.
A bright blue flame formed a ball at the end of its tail as it released a bellow. Everyone near the edge of the gateway scrambled away from the creature rising toward them. Its eyes were also made up of blue fire, but I felt it when the creature’s gaze settled on me. My heart leapt into my throat as the dragon burst free and soared high into the sky, leaving a trail of blue fire in its wake.
As it rose to be silhouetted against the sun, I couldn’t help but think how beautiful it would be if it wasn’t so freaking terrifying.
“It’s the one-hundred-first seal,” Corson murmured.
If the gateway wasn’t closed, and if the creatures caged within the seals could survive fire, there were still over a hundred more seals that could crumple and release their prisoners onto Earth. The fires of Hell were receding too. Soon enough it might not matter if the creatures could survive the flames or not when they were set free.
“Fall back!” Corson shouted as the dragon craned its head to look down at all of us and blue fire spiraled out of its nostrils.
“No,” I breathed as another loud roar reverberated from Hell.
This could not be allowed to continue, not when I might be able to stop it. My gaze fell to Angela as her aura swelled.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter? Would you like to know why I never attempted to stop you from trying to close the gateway? I’ll tell you and only you the secret.”
The joy Lucifer took in spinning me within his web of evil brushed over my skin once more.
“I never tried to stop you, because even if you did figure out how to close the gateway, Kobal never would have allowed you to do it,” he had murmured with glee. “Because to close the gateway—” He’d taken a deep breath, his smile growing as he spoke. “—you have to die.”
When he uttered those words, I’d been unable to stop myself from looking at him. His onyx eyes burned into the fiber of my being while he continued speaking. “Life’s blood, that is what the gateway requires, the sacrifice it needs. Along with a little extra… life,” he purred the word life like he was a cat getting scratched behind the ears. “I was mortal when I sacrificed myself to open the gateway. I used the last of my connection to the Earth and my angel blood to open it. I became immortal again upon entering Hell, but you will stay the mortal you are now and simply die.”
Into Hell (The Road to Hell Series, Book 4) Page 18
