A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series)

by Lisa M Basso

  Kade tugged my sleeve, signaling that Lazy was on the move again. At the same time, our tunnel began to shift, the ceiling shrinking down, the walls closing in. Under the cover of the shifting noise, Kade and I scrambled out with only a small tear in Kade’s robe to show for it. Neither of us mentioned how close we’d come to being crushed to death.

  Every tunnel after dripped in several places. Eventually we had to pass through entire waterfalls to keep up with our leader. The final set of passages were made entirely of rock and shifted so fast we had to run through them, straight into the back of the lazy Fallen.

  It turned out he wasn’t so lazy after all, at least not with his short sword. He had it out and ready before Kade fell on top of me.

  “I thought you might be back there.”

  Kade swept his wing out, knocking the not-so-lazy Fallen’s feet together. Kade was on him the second he hit the ground, twisting his neck and incapacitating him. I held onto one arm and helped Kade drag him through the long rock cavern beyond.

  We walked, then rested. Walked, broke the Fallen’s neck a few more times, then kept walking, dragging him behind us.

  Soon, I feared we’d been tricked and led through an endless maze. As I’d become accustomed, I kept those fears to myself.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing could have been worse than the silence that followed, except for the screams bouncing off every wall the farther we walked. The horror in those screams must have lasted hours. Hours, days, whatever.

  We pushed on until finally reaching an area I recognized. The staircase.

  Oh, God.

  I’d been so hung up on escaping this circle of Hell, that I’d forgotten the Hell we’d lived on our way down the first eight circles. Eternities of Hell, replaying over and over. I’d blocked them out for a reason. It was worse than any torture Lucien had put me through.

  “We have to go up,” I said, more to solidify for myself that there was no other option.

  “There’s another way.”

  They were the first words Kade had spoken since our disagreement. Funny how he didn’t sound so bothered by it anymore.

  He walked around me, dropping the Fallen we’d dragged here, and set both palms against the wall across from the stairwell.

  He must have felt up the entire wall twice before giving up and sliding down next to our very heavy, very unconscious Fallen companion. As long as we might not have to climb those stairs, I was on board with whatever crazy he unleashed. Unless it got us caught.

  “So what now?” I asked, plopping down next to him. I kept my eyes on the stairs that seemed to be pulsing, and were definitely screaming.

  “We wait.”

  I drained all the water from my MRE packet long before our companion came to again. Nothing would ever get me used to the suction sound of muscle reforming and the snap-pop of bone just before the light flicked on inside those dead eyes. Reanimation was not for the faint of heart.

  “Brother.” Kade shook the Fallen’s shoulders and pulled him into a seated position, not-so-lazy’s back upright against the wall. “Brother, you did it. You got her.”

  “Her?” The Fallen’s healing vocal chords grated his voice.

  I slumped against the wall, hoping to play my part convincingly.

  “We have to hurry. Lucien wants her brought to the gateway. We have to use the elevator.”

  An elevator sounded a whole hell of a lot better—and faster than climbing sixty-six days’ worth of stairs.

  “The elevator?” The Fallen might have lost a few marbles after getting his neck snapped a couple dozen times.

  I sure hoped Kade knew what he was doing.

  Kade went on, “I don’t have clearance, but you know the tunnels like no one else. You must be able to access it. Otherwise we have to carry her.” Kade pulled the Fallen to his feet and pointed him toward the spiraling, screaming stairwell.

  The Fallen stared down at me, then back to the stairs. “Of … of course I have access.” He felt along the wall to the far left, away from the stairs until a latch gave way to a complicated set of pressure switches.

  “Lucien is going to Knight you for this.” Kade picked me up and threw me over his shoulder fireman style, with me bent at the waist and draped over his back.

  Kade patted the Fallen on the back and followed him inside, so close that my legs knocked against his back. The elevator was narrow, even from my upside-down view. Before he turned us around, Kade dropped me—on my head. When I recovered, I saw Kade standing in the elevator’s entryway, his hand wrapped around the Fallen’s own short sword, stabbing it through not-so-lazy’s neck.

  Something moved behind me, trying to close the latch on Kade. I jumped up and blocked the movement, stretching my wings out as far as I could get them. The thing that met me chest-on was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Now I wished I’d kept Kade’s blade, because being toe-to-toe with Big Foot wasn’t a good time to be weaponless.

  The sound of Kade finishing the Fallen off did little to comfort me. The beast in the shadows had a chest the size of three tree trunks. His legs, covered in black fur, rippled with muscles. His yellow toenails clawed the elevator floor. I looked up and up and up, and finally caught a glimpse of his face, a snarling ugly mug with tangled teeth, too many nostrils, and pointed ears.

  From behind, Kade shoved me to the side and latched the front of the elevator shut. The wall in the cavern slid closed by itself, darkening the elevator he’d trapped us in.

  The beast huffed, like a giant, angry animal. Through a sliver of light streaming down from the shaft above us, I watched Kade lift his hands in surrender.

  “That makes two you’ve killed,” the beast rumbled, the sound humming beneath our feet.

  “Two you watched me kill,” Kade corrected. “We’re in this together now.”

  The single breath I took quaked in the small confines.

  “You live these hells,” Kade went on. “You know what Lucien is capable of. If you turn us in, what’s to stop him from unleashing the same fate on you?” He gave the monster time to think on it, and then added, “All we want is out. No one has to know you had any hand in this. And if we’re caught, I give my word this never comes back to you.”

  The beast grunted. “Trust is expensive. Costly for me if you lie. Why should I believe you?”

  “I was once an angel. My word is all I have.”

  “Please,” I begged, maybe overstepping my boundaries. “I’m human, I don’t belong here.”

  “Hell has seen few humans. None looked as you do.”

  “My wings are a gift of torture from Lucien. A debt I paid back by killing him.” Saying it aloud to his beast, his creation, was maybe the biggest risk I’d taken in all my life. But if he knew Lucien the way I did, maybe it was no risk at all.

  “Lucien is dead?” The monster was impossible to read, dark, alien, utterly inhuman.

  I strengthened my voice. “Yes. If you’d like, when we’re done here, I can tell you where his head is.”

  The monster turned a crank, and the elevator started to ascend. “I would rather not know.”

  I fell to my knees, shaking from the relief flooding my body. “Thank you,” I said, but heard no reply.

  In a single breath, I regained my composure and stood—no need to show more weakness to the beast than I already had. Beside me, Kade gripped the front of the strange elevator doors and watched as the eighth circle approached.

  Without glancing at Kade, I asked something that was still eating at me inside.

  “How did Lucifer get his hands on an angel? It should have been impossible.”

  Kade turned his head away from the oncoming light of the eighth circle. “It could have been anything. They probably recognized him above and brought him down.”

  “I sure hope so. Because if the game’s changed, then we don’t know the rules anymore. I might not be as valuable a piece.”

  “Don’t kid yourself on that one. I’ve seen that look before, that fire in h
is eyes, after he killed that angel. Lucifer will tear Hell apart to find you. Which is exactly why we need to get out.”

  Out. Good plan. Only we had to get there first.

  The screams pitched louder as red light bounced off the planes of Kade’s face. He watched the eighth circle play out while I was too scared. Instead, I focused on him.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, closing my eyes against the threat of looking. This would go so much smoother if I could keep my dark thoughts together. “Lucifer. Why didn’t he tell them?”

  “Tell them what?”

  “That I killed Lucien.”

  Kade reached for my arm. I shot him a look that could burn flesh. He pulled back.

  “Best not to poke our tour guide,” I reminded him.

  Demon tour guide. On our trip down the nine circles the only thing I’d witnessed demons being good at was torture of the most devious kind.

  The elevator jerked, knocking Kade and I to the side. We exchanged wary looks, but the elevator continued its ascent.

  A sliver of deep red illuminated the top of the elevator, growing as we moved.

  “Don’t look,” Kade instructed.

  But the sounds were hard to ignore. Screaming, coughing, choking, dying breaths. I closed my eyes, fighting to keep the memory of our first trip to the infamous eighth circle from resurfacing. The worst of the worst were experiencing their flesh burning from the outside in. The screaming on this level, and the fear, was more intense than anywhere else.

  “Ray?” Kade’s voice was unbelievably close.

  I nodded without opening my eyes.

  “We’ll be out soon. No matter what it takes, I’ll get you out of here.” Almost a whisper. For our ears only. Just like when we lay together in our cell. He’d never stopped trying to save me.

  Fighting against the hate still swimming inside my head, I wrapped a pinkie around the belt of his robe.

  This exchange quieted the screams and the crackle of flames, but nothing could dull the stench of burned flesh invading every inch of the elevator. I held tighter to my humanity, to Kade, to my eyes never opening in Hell again if I could manage it.

  “How are we going to open the gate without Lucien?” I asked to further distract myself from the ear-shattering noises.

  “Not sure yet. Any ideas back there, little buddy?” Kade asked over his shoulder to no reply. “How did Azriel do it at the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “He tore his wings off, sacrificed them to the opening, did some chanting, cut into his chest so he could return.” Lucien hadn’t needed any of those things. “I might be able to open it, with so much of his essence in me, but if I screw it up … ” Any number of things could happen—chiefly, our bodies exploding in fiery pain.

  “We’ll figure something out,” he replied, his voice calculating.

  The red light piercing my eyelids began to darken.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Kade reminded.

  What he didn’t say was why. The seventh circle had been the worst for me when we’d descended it so long ago. This level had no rhyme or reason. It served simply to induce madness. Who—or what—ever ran this level could seep into the subconscious. It played with what I saw, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted. It penetrated my mind. It showed me my greatest fears, played out with Hollywood-style Big Budget special effects. Nothing, not even life, had felt this real. Not before, and not since.

  My hands were already shaking, the backs of my knees coated in sweat.

  I barely survived this level the first time.

  “Raaaaaaaayna,” the ghost of a voice whispered, flying not from one ear around to the other, but from one ear through to the other, sweeping like a touch inside my brain.

  I suppressed a whimper.

  “Rayna, I need you.”

  A voice.

  One that belonged to more than a ghost.

  Long since dead.

  “No, no, no.” I begged through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t listen,” Kade said, moving closer. “You hear me, you don’t hear them.”

  I nodded, shaking out my shoulders, winding back my wings.

  Getting through this wouldn’t be easy. Refusing to trust anything until we were out of here was the only way we’d be safe.

  Another round of voices. Two girls and one boy. Both girls I placed right away. Allison and Cassie. Two of Azriel’s conquests on Earth. The boy took longer. Tony DiMeeko. Az’s other stolen life.

  “Help us, Rayna. You can’t leave us here!”

  Cassie Waters. I had stroked her blood-soaked hair in my hands, felt the weight of her lifeless body curled in my lap.

  Even though it went against everything I told myself I wouldn’t do, I opened my eyes.

  Tony DiMeeko hung by a rope inches in front of our elevator. His eyes were open, wide and coated with a white-blue sheen. His jaw hung open, blackness swirling within. I jerked back, a scream ripping from between my fingers hovering over my mouth.

  Allison Woodward lay splayed on the ground beneath him, blood seeping from two cuts on her wrists and every other orifice in her mangled body.

  Cassie Waters rose beside her, her body untouched. A revolver twitched in her hand. The ghostly, possessed look that had haunted my dreams for weeks after her death had taken hold of her eyes. She smiled a skeleton’s grin and pointed the gun at our elevator. Not at me, but at Kade.

  “NO!” I cried and lunged at Kade, smacking him into the side of the woven bones that made up the elevator’s cage. The lift shook and creaked.

  Kade remained on his feet, and, looking down at me, he said, “It’s a trick. All of it.”

  He made no move to help me up. Which was good. I scooted into the corner, awkwardly bumping his legs, almost knocking him down again, and placed my back against the front of the elevator.

  “Raaaaaaayna.” The ghost of a voice returned. The color of the scene changed from dark to metallic blue. The constant shift of light being reflected caught my eye, bouncing off the rear of the elevator, but I didn’t turn, didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

  “Not real. Not real. Not. Real.” I cupped my hands over my ears.

  Beside me, Kade gripped the bars, his head low and eyes closed. A growl reverberated low in his throat. He was battling his own demons.

  I lowered my hands. “What do you see?” I asked, immediately regretting the question.

  “A battle—no, a slaughter. You?”

  “Not sure right now. Something blue. Before, nothing good. Ghosts.”

  Ghosts of the dead I should have saved. People I could have saved … and hadn’t.

  “What about you?” I asked the demon’s shadowed corner now illuminated by blue ripples.

  It grunted.

  I left it at that.

  “Rayna! Sweetie!”

  Mom?

  I twisted around. The blue room rippled with water. A giant tank. My mother slamming against the glass wall separating us. Air bubbles escaping from her lips too fast. Her face frozen in fear, the knowledge of her imminent death.

  “Mom!” I threw myself against the bars. Some of them cracked.

  Kade slid in front of me, his hands on either side of my hips. “It’s not her,” he said as calmly as if it were one of his enemies drowning.

  “She’s in there, she’s drowning!” I leaped as far over him as I could get, pulling at the bars above us for leverage. Tricks. This level had tricked me once before, but not this realistically. Every angle of Mom was right; the scent of her floral perfume, the sound of her voice.

  They hadn’t killed her. They had taken her down here and were torturing her.

  Kade tightened his hold on me. “Get a hold of yourself.”

  A dark figure swam toward her. “Mom, behind you!” I pointed wildly, stretching over, trying to reach the front of the human tank.

  The figure slinked in, wiggling in the water like a seal or a snake. The figure ducked below her, swimming right up to the front of the tank. It was Lucien. He grinned at me ar
ound the small knife in his mouth. In the sunlit ripples his skin gleamed purple and gold, scales appearing and disappearing the same way they had in the graveyard in Arizona. The last place Kade and I had stood on Earth.

  He slid the knife from between his teeth and slashed at the back of Mom’s ankle.

  Mom screamed. Red began to cloud the tank.

  “Mom, no!” I kicked Kade and tried to lunge over him again.

  He turned to get a better grip on me. He said something, words that didn’t matter, that couldn’t when my mom was being attacked.

  Lucien swam up behind Mom, running the blade along her shoulder crease, the way he used to do to me. The sensitive skin there puckered, releasing another bright gush of red into the water.

  Hate and heat crept up inside me. The urge to kill him right this time. To keep him from hurting anyone else ever again.

  Mom’s eyes rolled back in her head before the red clouded the water so I could no longer see her.

  “MOM!” I pushed Kade and lunged again, the white-hot need to escape and end everything in a half-mile radius vibrating through me. Including Kade. But it didn’t matter. I had to save Mom.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kade

  I held fast to Ray with all the strength I had left. But she was damn stronger than she looked.

  “Ray, you have to calm down!”

  Screaming, especially in this elevator, on this floor, on any floor, was the worst-case scenario. Lucien wasn’t the only one that knew about this passageway.

  But Ray wasn’t just losing it; she was already gone.

  “Mom!” she shrieked again and again.

  I didn’t take my eyes off her. She kicked me and tried to lunge over me. I held fast.

  “No way I’m letting you out of here,” I told her, though there was no chance she heard me over her own screams.

  “Can you move this thing any faster?” I grunted to the demon turning the medieval wheel.

  The demon said nothing. Our pace remained the same.