I tried to avoid him but fell to my back. As his dark shadow covered me, I reached up and dusted the salt particles, breaking the circle.
Belial’s lips curled into a smile. On all fours, he crawled to the open window and leapt out.
I scrambled to my feet and rushed to the window, thinking I might find him in a mess of broken bones, but nothing but tall grass and overgrown bushes rested below.
The woman on the bed screamed a shrill, long scream. She chanted in words I couldn’t understand. The bed rattled, the legs thudding on the floor in an off-beat rhythm. My feet lifted from the ground. I tried to grip the windowsill, but that didn’t stop my body from hitting the ceiling.
I looked around the room, panicked. Alex, Malcolm, and Chip floated near the ceiling beside me. We were dropped. My body hit the floor with a loud thud. My elbow hit the wooden baseboards, and pain screamed up my arm. My sword clattered beside me.
“Open the goddamn portal,” Malcolm screamed.
Alex scrambled to his feet. His fingers were spread, hand out to the empty space. But before he could open the portal, an unseen force slammed him against the wall.
The old woman continued to chant. Malcolm unsheathed his dagger and aimed for the woman.
“No,” I screamed.
The dagger flew towards her. But right before the blade sank into her chest, the dagger stopped in mid-air, turned, the tip pointing away from her, and shot towards Malcolm.
The blade sank deep into Malcolm’s red chest. Blood oozed from around the dagger and onto the floor.
The old woman stopped chanting. She sniffed the air. She was on her hands and knees on the bed like a cat. She crawled from the bed to the floor where Malcolm’s blood soaked the floorboards. She started lapping it up with her tongue, scooping it up into her hands and sipping it.
I dry-heaved as the blood ran down her face and over her white, loose nightgown. She searched the ground for more.
While the woman was distracted, Alex opened the portal. Malcolm held a hand to his chest. We rushed through and returned to Sheol without Belial.
WE climbed out to the street in front of Nash’s house. Distances in Sheol didn’t match the distances on Earth, but I hadn’t quite figured out the ratio.
“We don’t hunt demons,” Malcolm grunted. He pulled the dagger out of his chest, and more of his blood spilled onto the street. I was a little sick as I thought about the woman kneeling in the gore and feeding it into her mouth.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But if we can’t work as a team to hunt demons, then we’ll die if we go against an angel. Nash—”
“Nash isn’t here,” said Malcolm. “You can’t run things as if you’re saving his place. Lucifer wants us to hunt angels, not demons. Demons and angels are completely different. They don’t have the same fighting styles, the same weaknesses. Who would think killing demons is good practice for hunting angels?”
“Nash did,” I said. “And he’s coming back. You’re just warming his seat and not doing a very good job of it.” I found it easy to be mean to Malcolm. He didn’t look human.
I walked back to the house and climbed the stairs to my room.
Sim sat at the edge of the bed, and stared at the corner of the wall near the ceiling.
“What are you doing, silly cat?” I scratched her behind the ears and dove into bed. Everything hurt, and I’m sure I earned a few bruises from falling from the ceiling. I was lucky I didn’t have any broken bones.
Sim yawned, jumped onto the bed, and strode over to me. She laid down on my chest, and I stroked her fur. “You miss Mom and Dad, don’t you?”
Sim meowed and purred as I scratched under her chin. Sim liked to follow Mom around the house and curl up at her feet wherever she stopped. I think Mom loved Sim the most. I was glad she found her way to me. Mom wouldn’t have trusted Jonah to take care of her.
Neither Mom nor Dad trusted Jonah to do anything, and now I understood why. When I was younger, I stayed after school to try out for the school play. Jonah was supposed to pick me up. Mom worked late, and Dad had the flu. He could barely get up to use the bathroom. Night fell when Dad’s car pulled up. Jonah wasn’t answering his calls, and I hadn’t gotten home, so Dad dragged himself out of bed and came to get me.
His face lit up with relief when he saw me. He cursed Jonah, the first time he’d done that in front of me. He tried to shelter me from all that was bad in the world. I think that was the day things changed between him and my uncle.
Now, I hated him too.
I opened my locket and gazed at the pictures of Mom and Dad. They both looked so happy.
I turned over onto my side, and Sim leapt off the bed to wander around the room. I stared at the blank, white wall. I had been in Sheol for two and a half months, I missed Christmas and New Year’s. If I stayed much longer, I’d miss Mardi Gras and Easter too. But I didn’t have anyone to spend them with anyway, and I had nowhere to go once I left.
I didn’t like the twisted way Belial interpreted what my birth mom did to me. She saved me? She turned me into a horrid tool.
Goose bumps peppered my skin. I blinked as I tried not to cry.
FIFTEEN
I strummed my guitar. I didn’t have anything to amplify the sound, but I didn’t want to lose my calluses. While I played, I listened to music on the MP3 player Bob gave me.
I hadn’t spoken to Malcolm, Alex, Chip, or Tom since we found Belial. I didn’t come down for training or dinner but snuck downstairs late at night to eat leftovers cold from the fridge. Tom didn’t look for me. He was probably happy to have the library all to himself.
Bob’s car was in the driveway a few times. I dared him to come upstairs and tell me what Lucifer expected of me. I’d tell him where to shove it.
A knock came to my door. I had the same feeling I get when I’m presenting something to the class for a school project, an edgy nervousness that I hadn’t expected in a situation so familiar. I answered the door.
Tom stood in the hall. Dark circles colored the areas under his eyes. “I’m going to be gone for a couple of days. I know you probably wouldn’t have even known I was gone, but I thought I’d be nice and tell you anyway. Just in case you come looking for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To track a demon.” He yawned the words.
“You don’t look like you’re up for that?”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“It won’t matter anyway,” I said. “You’ll never convince Malcolm to hunt it.”
“No, but it’s still my job.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I could go with you.”
“That’s alright. Someone should stay in case Nash comes back.”
I squinted. “But you don’t think Nash is coming back.”
“Look, Alex is going with me. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. Part of me was a little relieved he didn’t want me to go.
That evening, I went to the library and pulled any books that might be useful and piled them near the armchair. I read or skimmed most of them. I drank a cup of coffee as I read and tried to stay awake. I blared the rock music on my MP3 player to full blast. Midnight neared when I picked up the last book. I reread the same sentence three times.
I slammed the book closed. I wasn’t getting anywhere with these books. I hadn’t come across any loopholes or shortcuts. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.
Maybe Tom was right. What choice did I have anymore?
Wait!
I was the only one who could stop Raphael. I refused to go up against anymore angels without my friends, but Lucifer forced my hand on that. Tom and I couldn’t do much to help them if we went alone, but if I went, Lucifer would come after me. She’d send all her generals too. Maybe a few fallen angels.
Bob’s threat was empty, and I knew that. The war for Heaven would go on with or without me. If Lucifer thought throwing me into the Pit could stop Raphael, she w
ould have done that already. I was her prized possession, her ticket to making Raphael kneel. All I needed to do was enter the Circles and survive.
I didn’t tell Tom what I was up to. He would try to stop me.
I pet Sim and wrote a letter to Tom. He’d be away for two days and wouldn’t find it until I was gone. The First Circle was several miles beyond the Pit, and each Circle was a thousand miles wide.
No amount of planning would prepare me for what I was about to do. I might die, and, if I did, no more deals could be made. Lucifer would have only one place for me—the Pit.
I grabbed a small bag from the closet and packed some food. After I secured my dagger and sword to my side, I grabbed the keys to Nash’s car.
I never drove before, but it couldn’t be too hard.
As I raced down the stairs, the door opened, and my heart stilled. I would be discovered. My plan to save Nash and the others would be dashed.
My hand gripped the bannister as the door crept open, and Nash stood with his back to the dull gray sky of Sheol.
I cleaned the cut above Nash’s eye with gauze from the first aid kit. Bruises patterned his face and neck.
Nash’s eyes were distant as if he imagined something terrible. What awful things had he experienced in the Circles? Would he ever be the same?
“Adrianna?” I asked.
“She’s okay,” said Nash. “Her wounds sealed up. Though, like the rest of us, she got a few new ones along the way. Kiran is with her.”
I didn’t ask about Chandra. I felt guilty for that later.
I was surprised to see cuts and bruises on Nash. He didn’t even bruise when he trained with Kiran.
I taped a bandage to the cut. “Okay, all done.”
“One more,” he said.
He pulled up his shirt and revealed a long, angry slash across his chest. Blood seeped from the wound. The blood was dark because of the amber light of the living room.
“I think you might need stitches for that one,” I said.
“In the kit.” He gestured with his head as he removed his shirt.
“You want me to stitch you up?”
“Who else is going to?”
“There aren’t any hospitals in Hell?”
He laughed. “You can do it. Just pinch the skin together as you thread the needle through. It heals on its own, but it’ll take time. I don’t want to ruin another shirt while I wait. I also don’t want to go through the pain of dried blood sticking to the bandage.”
I picked up the needle and thread. Felicia’s mom taught me the lost art of hand stitching. She was a little bit of a hippy. Felicia’s lack of enthusiasm about sewing seemed to bother her so she was happy to get me involved. My fingers were deft and capable from years of playing the guitar.
Nash cringed as I pinched the skin back together and eased the hooked needle through. I sewed from one end of the cut to the other. The wound closed as I sewed.
Nash gritted his teeth until I finished.
I wrapped the bandages around his torso and taped the loose end. As I wrapped, I noticed large round wounds on Nash’s back near his shoulder blades.
“Do you need me to look at your back?” I asked.
“No, just minor cuts, but nothing too terrible. Most of my injuries healed before I got back.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You were gone for a long time. I thought you might be gone forever.”
A couple weeks passed, and I told Bob that I didn’t need my new team anymore. He was surprised that Nash made it out of the Ninth Circle and through the other eight on the way out.
As Nash’s wounds healed, he sat out on training as did Chandra, Adrianna, and Kiran. I practiced my stances under Nash’s instruction.
Adrianna and Kiran showed up for dinner a couple nights later. Adrianna looked like she was never in the fight at all. I was sure the cut along her cheek would scar, but her skin was clear and white as always. She wore a shirt that cut off right above the waist, no gouges, no bleeding. All was healed as if she received the most advanced plastic surgery on the planet.
She knocked the breath out of my lungs when she gathered me into a hug. “You saved my life. I’ll spend an eternity repaying you.”
I patted her shoulders, but was more comfortable once she released me from the embrace.
“You look…great,” I said.
“Don’t act too surprised,” said Adrianna.
“No, it’s just, I thought you were going to die out there. But now, it’s like I should have never thought that in the first place.”
“I could have died,” said Adrianna. “I would be in the Pit if not for you. The way you ran at Andromeda like that after seeing what she did to me, that was amazing. You set that bitch on fire to save me.”
I smiled, thin-lipped. I couldn’t let her die. She fought Andromeda because of me.
A week later, we were back to talks about angel weapons.
I heard so many names back and forth that I stopped listening. All I needed to know was when we were leaving and where we were going.
No angel that we encountered since was as bad as Andromeda. I didn’t know if that was because they were weaker or we were getting stronger.
We managed to trap a few angels in conversation while I crept up behind them. It seemed wrong to trick them like that. But I wanted to get this done and go home.
Nash hadn’t been open with me since he returned from the Circles. He retired to his room for days on end and only came out for training.
When I told him about Belial and how he mentioned the Redeemer, Nash seemed concerned, but he didn’t say anything to the others. Maybe he thought he could figure it out himself. This Redeemer guy was bad news. He might be the same guy who let those flesh-eating demons out of the Circles.
I cooked for myself, which proved a disaster every time. One day, I thought I would set Nash’s house on fire. Sim watched me from the kitchen doorway as smoke rose to the ceiling, and I coughed enough to make my throat hoarse.
Sim’s eyes followed me as I turned on the faucet, grabbed the sprayer, and doused the flames. She was like a gazelle watching a lion devour a zebra.
Since I spent more time downstairs in the hopes that Nash would come talk to me, I moved Sim’s bowls down to the kitchen. She roamed around the entire house, rubbed against my legs more, and purred every time I petted her.
So far, my efforts to make myself available were in vain. I thought that Nash kept himself so locked up because I started to explore the house. Maybe he regretted our one-on-one dinner in the Galapagos Islands. The Ninth Circle changed him.
Whatever happened, I wondered when Nash would go back to his old self—the guy who had started to show interest in me.
As I read on the couch, Tom appeared in front of me through the portal. His hands were on his knees. His breaths came out in a sharp, rapid rhythm. Seconds later, Alex appeared behind him, equally winded.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “Nash was worried about you. He said you’d never taken so long to scout.”
I looked from Tom to Alex. Alex had a wry smile on his face.
Tom looked puzzled. When he summoned enough air to speak, he said, “Did you say Nash?”
“Yes, Nash. They’re back.”
“Safe?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“How long?”
“A couple weeks. Right after you left actually.”
Tom looked confused. “We found a colony,” he said breathlessly. “A colony of Cambions. I need to talk to Nash. He needs to go now.”
“Tom?” Nash walked into the living room.
Tom’s mouth hung open like he didn’t believe me until then. He approached Nash and pulled him into a hug. I’d never seen them show such affection before. I forgave Tom then. He had wanted Nash to return, he just thought it was impossible.
They released each other, and Nash patted Tom’s shoulder.
“How did you…”
“They threw me out,” said Nash, “whe
n I started instructing Hades on how to torture people.”
Tom shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw it.”
“And not even then,” said Nash.
Tom smirked.
“What’s going on?” asked Nash.
“Cambions,” said Tom. “We found a bunch of them in an abandoned hospital near Mumbai. Cambions move around a lot, so it’s a goldmine we have to bank on.”
“I’ll get the others,” said Nash.
“I’ll get my sword.” I started towards the stairs.
“No.” Nash turned around to face me. “You can’t come.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Cambions are strong, and it’s a colony.”
“Lots of demons are strong. I’ve fought them before. They’ve talked to me. I—”
“We won’t be talking to them,” said Nash. “Cambions are half-demons. Lucifer wants them exterminated.”
I folded my arms.
“Let’s go.” Nash marched away with Tom and Alex.
I raced to my room to grab my sword. I glanced out the hallway windows. Nash opened the portal, and Chandra was the first to step through. I quickened my steps and took the stairs two at a time.
The portal was still open, but the field was empty. I ran toward the glowing tear and leaped through. Heavy, humid air hit me. The street was deserted. Behind a black, iron gate was a hospital. The sign on the gate was so faded, it was unreadable.
The warm breeze, disturbed the dead leaves beneath a branchy tree. No street lamps lit the way. Who builds a hospital in the middle of nowhere? Maybe that’s why the place shut down.
I jogged through the gate and into the courtyard. The others stood in front of the hospital.
Nash turned to face me. “What are you doing? I told you to stay behind.”
The Wings of Heaven and Hell (The Arcadian Steel Sequence Book 1) Page 17
