Chapter 22

~~David~~

Hell was an endless maze of mountains, or at least Death’s Grip was. The name made sense in a weird way, as if the mountains had a grip on the land and kept it dead, barren, and lifeless. Did the other provinces even have foliage? All Death’s Grip had were bloodgrip vines, the occasional black metal growth of a skull brazier, or maybe a statue, and some burning bushes, eternally covered in small, dancing flames.

It was beautiful, in a post-apocalyptic, oh-god-everything-sucks kinda way. They came across a tiny lava river, deep in a wide crack in the stone, and David spent a little time admiring how it flowed. It wasn’t as hot as real lava, or his face would have burned off just peeking over the crack’s edge with how close the flowing liquid was, but that only made it easier to admire.

Supposedly, the amber veins in the tunnels and caves, and occasionally on the ground and outer slopes of the mountains, were filled with the lava. And supposedly, a lot of demons thought maybe the lava was the blood of Hell herself, and that demons strong enough to breathe fire — hellfire — summoned that power. No way to prove any of it, and with how weird and wonky the rules of Hell were, probably the rules of all the afterlife, did it matter?

It mattered to him. It mattered to the weird runes floating around inside his mind. Hell was in the runes, swirling around another rune that represented the ‘Great Tower’, and the lava was in there, too. Liquid fire, heat, destruction, and power. And opposite of it: water, soothing coolness, creation, and ... and ... something. The opposite of power? Not weakness. Not submission.

He couldn’t read the symbol completely, not the lava one or the water one, no matter how hard he tried.

“David,” Jes said, “you’ve been staring at lava for five minutes.”

He almost jumped. “Fuck, have I?”

“You have,” Caera said. “Stuck in your head?”

“Y-Yeah. Just ... yeah.” He shook his head out, adjusted his half breastplate and straps, his leather skirt, and fell in behind Caera as they resumed the march. They were up in the mountains again, and following along routes where the mountains connected, like arms connecting at the hands. Which meant the lava had come up into the mountain. A volcano, waiting to explode? Not a big deal in the grand scheme of Hell.

Daoka clicked a few times as she hopped up beside David, and patted him on the shoulder.

“He better be fine,” Jes said. “How much longer, Caera?”

“Last I met Renato, he was deep in these mountain tunnels. A couple days, maybe?”

The gargoyle hopped down from her boulder and landed beside the tiger lady.

“And you’re sure we need to talk to him?”

“We don’t need to, but he’s a friend. A lot of the demons in this area listen to him.”

“I’ve never run into him,” Jes said.

“He stays deep in the mountain, deep enough the horde call can’t reach him. He probably doesn’t even know Zel’s dead.”

Acelina licked her shark teeth as she stepped ahead, and peeked out at the oncoming path. High as they were, they rarely had cover on both sides of them, and instead had to walk paths along mountainsides. At least that way, if the invisible monster attacked again, it might fall off again, and hopefully without triggering an avalanche. But the main reason was, it was just so damn easier to avoid getting ambushed, and maybe spot a potential meal from the vantage point. That was no excuse to do something stupid like get hypnotized by a lava river and forget they weren’t hiding in a cave, though.

“I have heard of this Renato,” Acelina said. “Zelandariel mentioned him, once. She did not like a tetrad in Death’s Grip that did not obey her, but she also recognized there was little sense in having him killed, when he is too passive to challenge her.”

Caera laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like Renato. We’ll find him sitting around, doing absolutely nothing but getting his dick sucked by a succubus or two.”

Dao chirped a few times, smiled deviously, and kissed David on the neck.

“I doubt David will agree to that,” Caera said.

“Agree to...?”

“Suck tetrad dick,” Jes said, licking her lips.

“Um. No.” He frowned at Dao, earning some pouting and shoulder slumping from her, but he stood strong and dug his heels in. “Nope. Not happening.”

“Shame,” Jes said. “I bet that aura—”

All five of them snapped their heads up. Up? They were most of the way up a mountainside. The only things above them were the jagged tops of the mountains, and the fire sky. And movement, something that didn’t match the swirling maelstrom and pouring flames. Three pairs of triangle-like shapes, white against the backdrop of the fire sky, and flapping in tandem.

Nostalgia hit him, and his heart caught in his throat. It was like seeing pigeons again, except white, like doves.

“Angels,” he whispered.

Caera hissed. “Hide!”

“Hide where?” Acelina hissed back, crouching as best she could. “You chose the mountaintops! Now we are exposed!”

Dao clicked fast, grabbed David, and jumped.

The sensation of free falling wasn’t entirely new, not since coming to Hell, but the sudden stops that came with hopping onto big boulders very much was. New and painful. Dao held him under her arm, and much as she was strong enough to hold him, her arm didn’t make for the most comfy cushion. Each time her hooves met a boulder or rock outcropping on the way down the mountain wall, inertia hit him in the guts and he flopped around like a rag doll.

“Dao—” The wind rushed out of his lungs as another harsh landing drove Dao’s arm up into his gut. He tried to lift his head, but the satyr was too fast, hopping down and down as fast as gravity let her. But between violent head bobs that threatened to break his neck, he spotted Caera pouncing down rocks beside them, and a pair of wings that glided past them, big black and red. Easy to forget that it wasn’t only Jeskura who could glide, and the much bigger demon woman glided past them all.

David glanced up long enough to get eyes on the fire sky. The white wings above were getting closer.

The ground came at them too fast, and David clenched every muscle he had and then some as Dao’s hooves met a large, flat section of the mountainside. With an exhausted squeak, Dao set him down, and he clutched his stomach as he looked around. They’d scaled down a huge chunk of the mountain in moments, and now Caera and Dao both panted, exhausted.

“This way!” Caera said. Panting or not, she dashed forward into a tunnel.

It was not a nice-looking tunnel. Bloodgrip grew around its edges, it wasn’t very tall or wide, and even from the outside, there were visible, sharp rocks sitting inside it. The lack of amber veins made it dark. A dark, spooky tunnel, spookier than other tunnels in Hell. Not good not good.

But his legs didn’t hesitate. He took Dao’s wrist and pulled her toward the tunnel. It wasn’t long before she caught up and moved under her own power, but both had to slow down as they came to the tunnel’s entrance.

“This is definitely not good,” he said, hand to his gut. The inside of the tunnel proved worse than the outside, more bloodgrip vines and sharp rocks waiting for them, and what amber veins he spotted were few and far between.

“No choice,” Jes said, and she pushed him in.

“Such a path is suicide,” Acelina said. Standing at the tunnel entrance, she bared her shark teeth, eyeless face aimed at the dark path ahead.

“Stay here, then.” Jes shrugged, saluted, and disappeared into the darkness.

“Come on!” Caera’s voice called from ahead.

“My wings will tear!”

Daoka clicked desperately at Acelina, but, of course, the big demon refused to budge. So, David did the first thing that came to his mind. He gave Dao a push deeper into the tunnel, dashed back out toward Acelina, and grabbed her closer hand. With how tall she was, her hand hung at chest level, and he had to borderline reach up to grab it.

She tried to back away, but he yanked and yanked hard. Before he knew it, Dao was right beside him, doing the same thing to her other hand and clicking up a storm.

“Just pull your wings in tight!” David yelled. “Come on. The chance the angels aren’t going to kill me — and you — is next to none, and you know it! Get in here!”

“I will not be—”

Daoka hopped behind her, and headbutt the huge demon in her huge ass, literally. Acelina did not appreciate that, cursing and hissing, but she had no choice but to duck low to keep her horns from hitting the ceiling as she stumbled in. With her leaning forward, it was easier to pull her and keep her half running, half stumbling forward into the tunnel.

Bloodgrip vines were cruel, with sharp thorns almost as sturdy as metal, and they ripped and tore into David’s ankles and shins. No matter how good he’d gotten at navigating Hell’s environment, this was too much, and he bit down his own curses and hisses as blood trickled down his skin until he felt it between the toes. From the way Acelina mirrored the noises, she was suffering just as much as he was. Demon skin was tougher than human skin, but she was so much bigger than him.

Daoka hopped ahead, took David’s hand, and guided him. The eyeless couldn’t see in pitch black, but they could still see better than him or other demons. Even so, Daoka slowed her pace to a hurried walk, and made tiny, high-pitched chirps of pain every so often.

“Halt,” a voice said from behind. They sounded human, and perfect. And they did not sound like the two angels he’d run into before.

David did not look back. Acelina did, and it cost her a nasty gash somewhere on her body, and a heavy thunk told him she hit her horns against a rock jutting from the ceiling.

“Come on,” Caera said. He almost tripped over her tail. “Careful here. We have to go down.”

“Down?”

“Down.” She grabbed his hand and threw him over her shoulder. Only his familiarity with her back spikes kept him from getting skewered, and he held on as the tiger lady started down a shade of shadow a little darker than others. A vertical tunnel, something they’d have to climb down, with sharp rocks and bloodgrip everywhere and who the fuck knew what at the bottom.

“Come on!” Jes’s voice, from below.

Caera went down the hole backward, and Daoka and Acelina stood at the edge. Poor Acelina. The giant demon hissed almost without pause, and no matter how hard she pulled her wings tight to her shoulders, they didn’t have the same snap and tightness to them Jes’s did. They were long, too, and the membrane flowed almost like a loose silk dress, including snagging on any and every sharp protrusion nearby.

Daoka waited and clicked furiously as Acelina looked down the hole.

“This is absurd,” Acelina said. “We are going—”

Daoka pulled on the much bigger demon’s hand, chirping Morse code fast, head aimed back the way they came. Whatever she said, it earned a sigh from Acelina, and the giant woman began the descent. Of all of them, she was the least built for this. As long as the demons had something to get their claws on, they could climb pretty much any surface. But each foot down the tunnel, a relatively small hole, was agony for the spire mother.

It wasn’t dark for long. Just as Acelina’s huge horns slipped past the edge of the hole, the tunnel lit with a blinding flash, and all four demons shrieked. The only thing stopping David from yelling, was the paralyzing awe that ripped through him, as the strange, gold light crashed into the cave wall above the hole, straight through the tunnel. The sound hit them a moment later, a thunderous crash that shook the walls.

David should have looked away. He didn’t. He stared into the gold light until his eyes burned and water dripped down his cheeks. If it weren’t for Caera, he would have stayed there, staring, even as the rocks ripped off the wall and fell upon them.

The angels were attacking them. David and the girls had known that would happen, after the warning they’d received, and Caera had talked about the stories of angels and some of the crazy things they could do. But seeing the gold beam of light, almost as wide as the tunnel they’d just gotten through, tear holes into the wall it crashed against? That wasn’t what he thought. They’d just barely dodged a death beam!

Acelina shrieked some more. David’s eyes adjusted long enough to see some larger, jagged rocks rip holes in her wings, before one of them blocked out his field of vision as it came at him. Yeap, that was going to hurt.

~~Mia~~

They ducked low into the ravine, but no matter where they looked, they couldn’t find a tunnel. Go back, climb the mountain, and go to the tunnel Vin had pointed out earlier? Too dangerous going up and exposing themselves. They had to go down.

She almost called out to the angels, almost waved her hands like she was stranded on a desert island and trying to get a passing plane’s attention. But the moment she’d raised her hands, the memory of the other girl hit her hard. The angel, a cold and ruthless instrument, had stabbed the girl through the heart. And as much as the idea of it sickened her, she couldn’t deny that the girl in the dream had probably been unmarked, and the angels flying around were out to kill people like Mia and David.

Zel had been right. The angels were on a mission. Back then, Mia thought they might have been her ticket to freedom. Not anymore.

There were at least three pairs of wings up there, and they moved ridiculously fast in a big circle, a little too similar to vultures for her liking.

“They’re searching for us,” she whispered. On Vin’s back, body pressed to it, fingers holding spikes and head peeking up over his shoulder, it was easy to whisper right into his small ear.

Demons had slightly pointed ears, but they were usually hard to see or notice with their big black horns or black dreadlocks in the way. Vin had the horns, but no dreadlocks, and with her lips only a foot from his head, whispering to him was no problem. Good, because each time she glanced up, the angels were closer, and with how uncharacteristically quiet her giant bodyguard prowled along, she was afraid to so much as breathe too loudly.

“Searching for you,” he whispered back. Hearing the colossus use the whisper voice without vibrating his vocal cords was interesting. And terrifying. He was concerned.

“Just me? Not you, a child of Belial?”

He clicked for yes and ducked low around a boulder. Boulder turned into steep cliff face, and Vin crawled on all ... sixes, as he looked up at the fire sky while keeping the cliff to his side.

“Angels do not care about me or battles between demons. Now be quiet.”

They were being quiet. Not like the angels could hear them whisper all the way up in the sky. Oh god, could they? She gulped hard and squeezed Vinicius’s spikes harder. Her fear could have been unjustified, but the vision stuck out in her mind like an infected wound, painful and screaming at her to notice it. Do not trust the angels.

If the angels didn’t care about demons doing demon things, though, then why did they show up here, now? Vinicius was a big boy, and with the angels soaring the skies so high everyone below must have been a tiny dot, Vinicius and his size stood out. Maybe they were looking for him, specifically. Maybe they knew she and Vin were on the run together, and knew if they found him, they found her?

Chills ran down her spine. The stories Vin had told her about angels being dangerous had felt so distant at the time, but now that the white-winged agents of Heaven soared above, all she could think about was the vision. That angel had stabbed her, executed her. And now they were looking for Mia.

Vin rumbled, trying his best to stay quiet, but as they drifted through the ravine, the lack of tunnel or cave was quickly proving ridiculous. Death’s Grip had plenty of both, but Hell was a cruel bitch and kept either from making an appearance. With nowhere to go, Vin stayed as low as he could and crawled along the stone, to the point he was horizontal and Mia was lying on top of him as she held on.

Sound drew her eyes up. An angel had stopped overhead and was descending straight toward them. But instead of doing a dive bomb, the angel held their sword in both hands, and was coming at them feet first, letting gravity do the work while pointing the sword at them. A man. And his sword and wings both glowed gold.

“Vin...”

Vin clicked once, rumbled a heavy growl, and burst forward. Only Mia’s feet pressed to some spikes underneath her kept her from falling off, because the demon broke into a sprint nothing that size should have been capable of. Harsh cracks announced the shattering and falling of rocks as the giant monster’s talons ripped up the stone underneath him, and a warm gust of wind hit her face with the onslaught of speed. Vin stood up but remained leaning forward.

She was riding the back of a fucking T-Rex.

The sound of Vin’s panting and the hammering of his talons against rock disappeared under the explosion that detonated behind them. Mia screamed, but her voice did little better, a quiet ringing in her ears compared to the roaring of destruction.

She looked behind her. God was attacking.

A giant beam of gold hit the rock and stone, ripped it apart, and didn’t stop. It had to be at least five, maybe ten feet wide, and it zig-zagged over the ground, trying to swerve and hit Vin as the demon bounced off the ground onto the walls of the ravine that trapped them, and then back down only to do it on the other side. It was like a satellite laser of doom was chasing them, and lagging behind.

“Vin!”

Vin roared and kept moving, each breath coming in hard like a panting animal. He didn’t look behind him. This wasn’t the first time he’d fought angels, and he had to know what to do, had dealt with giant laser beams of doom before, but each step he drove into the stone as he ran sent a hard jolt of terror up through Mia’s body.

He was running. Vinicius was running.

She looked up at the angel. The laser satellite comparison was too apt. The angel floated there in the sky, not even flapping his wings as the force of the beam coming out of his sword drove his large body upward, armor and all. He was shaking, almost as much as the ground underneath Vin shook, and the roar of the beam drove the mountains to vibrate. Boulders in the distance fell, each announcing their impact with a thunder crack and echo.

Vin bled. Wounds reopened. It’d only been four days since the fight, and he’d only just finally gotten a full belly. He needed more time. But even as his reckless pace tore his own body with its insane mass, he kept running, occasionally leaning forward and putting weight onto his hands to get over a boulder or out of a ditch. The ravine continued on, giant flat walls of stone on both sides. The angels had waited for them to enter it before attacking. The angels were herding them.

The laser beam stopped. Mia looked behind her and sucked in a hard breath. A new ravine followed them, freshly carved, smoking and smoldering in some places, and chunks of the mountainside on both sides of it fell into the new crack in the ground. Bits of Vinicius’s blood littered the stones, smoking from the heat of the beam.

The angel above held his sword at his side, wings flapping, and while the armor covered him head to toe, the posture said exhausted.

“Vin, I think he’s—”

Movement, from ahead. Another pair of wings appeared, dropping in from above and crashing onto the stone in front of them.

Vinicius did not slow down.

The angel held his spear out to the side and slammed his giant shield into the ground in front of him. Again, the ground shook, and rocks splintered underneath the slab of shiny, reflective metal outward as if it weighed ten thousand pounds.

Vinicius did not slow down.

“Vin, be careful! We—”

Vin unleashed a roar, a real roar, a roar she hadn’t heard from him yet. She went deaf. Noises stopped ringing in her ear, and instead vibrated through her body. Was the angel in front of them saying anything? It was one of the angels with the big shields she’d seen on the steps to Heaven, and the helmet covered their face completely.

The angel stood his ground and braced his entire body behind the shield with spear pointed in front of him toward the demon. With a jagged mountain on each side of him, the angel was the wall Vin wanted to break through. If he ran up on the sides of the wall, he’d leave himself exposed to getting stabbed by a spear, so in typical man fashion, his brain settled on one conclusion: going through the problem.

Mia couldn’t see any other option, either. The angels had attacked first, full intent to kill, so it wasn’t like she could talk to them and use her amazing people skills to save their butts.

The giant shield ahead of them glowed gold, and the ravine trembled. Vinicius did not slow down. The angel, almost eight feet tall in their armor, was nothing but a child compared to the enormous demon charging straight at him, but the angel did not move, with massive white wings spread white and glowing. Their armor was beautiful, gold and silver, and the t-slit opening of their helmet showed only a tiny sliver of their face.

There were eyes in there, angel eyes, lit by the glowing of the shield.

“Move! Please!” Mia screamed.

The angel disappeared into the shadow of Vinicius, but the shield erupted in a larger glow that shot upward until it nearly matched Vin’s height. A wall of light. And Vin crashed into it full on with every bit of his weight.

Mia’s weight slammed forward, too, but Vin was upright enough most of it squashed against his back, and she kept a hard grip on his spikes so she didn’t flip forward. Vin hadn’t just hit it with four fists, but his giant horns as well, and the impact shook Mia hard enough her brain rattled in her skull.

For a moment, the world froze, until the familiar sound of glass breaking filled the void as her hearing came back. A giant crack erupted through the gold barrier, from top to bottom, and flakes of gold fell from the semi-transparent wall. Little by little, pieces crumbled away, and the angel beneath them bunkered underneath his huge shield as the gold wall finally shattered.

Vin didn’t run past him. He could have. The angel was brought to a knee, far as Mia could see over Vin’s shoulder, but Vin roared down at the angel and punched down straight at the shield.

Mia half squeaked, half screamed as the angel’s spear stabbed through one of Vin’s fists and out through the back of his hand. Blood splattered, and Vin unleashed another roar that had Mia’s ears ringing, but he didn’t stop. He yanked the hand away, and the spear with it, as he spun around and slammed his tail into the side of the angel.

The huge man crashed into the mountain wall, wings spread, and fell to his knees. Giant, rectangular shield still on his arm, he held out his empty hand, and a small puff of gold filled his armored palm. The spear lodged in Vinicius’s hand disappeared in a tiny flash, and a new spear formed in the angel’s hand.

“Vin!” she yelled, straight into his ear. “There’s going to be more! We have to leave!”

Vin didn’t listen. He charged the recovering angel and slashed down at them with his bleeding hand. The angel blocked it, but Vin grabbed the shield with the same hand and yanked hard, sending the angel toward the opposite wall of the ravine. Only the flap of their wings kept them from crashing into it, and they brought up their spear in time to stop Vin from charging straight into them again. At least Vin had enough presence of mind to stop, this time.

Another pair of white wings cut across the fire sky.

“Vin! Up!”

He listened enough for that, at least. The first angel with the sword and smaller shield still hovered in the sky, probably recovering, but a third angel swooped in almost straight down. Their sword glowed, and they held it to their side with their shield directly in front of them.

Vinicius dodged.

The world exploded with light.

Motion sickness hit Mia hard as the giant underneath her moved fast, and her body swung hard and into the sides of his spikes. She clung tight and bit down another scream as her legs swung out from under her as Vin bounced off the ravine wall and literally spun around as he jumped off it and landed back in the ravine. Two sets of gash marks ran along the ground underneath where Vinicius’s dug his talons in to bring himself to a stop.

The gash marks were tiny compared to the black scorch mark left in the ground where they’d been a second before.

“Child of Belial,” the angel with the sword said. A woman. “Leave the unmarked and you may live.” Slowly, she got up from her knee — she’d superhero landed for the sword slash — and turned to face them. The sword continued to glow with gold energy, but eventually faded as she pointed the weapon at Vin, exposing the mirror sword blade and its gold and silver hilt and guard.

Vinicius rumbled, heavy enough the angels probably felt it, and he tilted his head up enough to look at the angel still above them. Above them no longer. The man who’d tried to laser them descended into the ravine and landed behind them, maybe fifty feet away.

“Vinicius,” the man said.

Every muscle in the giant demon’s back tensed, going from wood to steel under Mia’s skin, as he turned his head enough to get the male angel in view of one eye.

“Noah,” Vin said, whole body vibrating with enough deep bass Mia’s teeth buzzed in her jaw. “You took my advice.”

Noah? Advice? Oh god, they knew each other. Everyone in Hell was perfectly happy trying to kill Vin, apparently.

“Attacking first?” Noah said, and he took a step closer. “Deplorable behavior, but I had no choice. I knew you wouldn’t listen to reason.” Eight feet tall in his armor at least, his massive wings spread wide, and he pointed his mirror sword at Vin, shield at his side. The shield was half the size of the angel with the spear’s shield, but it seemed to match his sword better. “As Shir said, leave the unmarked, and you may go.”

Vinicius said nothing. He thumped his giant tail on the ground, glanced around, and half growled, half chuckled. Were there other angels? It didn’t look like it, an empty sky save for its unending maelstrom of flame.

Vin wanted to fight. Vin thought he could take on three angels by himself, surrounded, injured, and with a passenger.

Mia stood up on his back spikes enough to wave her hands in the air.

“Wait! Why’re you attacking me? I haven’t done anything!”

“The unmarked must die,” the woman angel said, and she came closer. The angel with the big shield followed beside her, and each step of his boots make a loud clink clank, like he was wearing a couple hundred kilos of metal. The woman’s armor wasn’t so ridiculously thick or heavy, and her helmet left her face exposed enough for her emerald eyes to shine through.

Noah wore the same sort of armor as the woman, slightly lighter, with face exposed, revealing his silver eyes. No, not silver, some other shade and mix of whites and grays, some mineral Mia didn’t know the name of. The color had subtle dark lines cutting through it, mesmerizing, and she stared into the angel’s eyes, lost, as the man came closer with full intent to kill her.

“But, why? Please, tell me!”

“It is the will of the council,” Noah said, and he winced as he met Mia’s eyes. “I am sorry.”

He winced! That was a hundred times more than the angel in the vision had done. But before Mia could so much as comment, beg, say anything more, Noah’s face hardened into a cold, ruthless mask just like the angel in the vision.

“How did you escape Zelandariel’s prison?” Noah asked.

Of course, Vinicius didn’t answer. He slowly turned in place, tail dragging lightly behind him, and he did a slow pan of Noah before doing the same of the angel Shir and her big-shielded friend. Blood dripped from his hand, but also neck and shoulder, deep wounds that would have killed any other human and probably any other demon. And Vin had only just gotten enough food to really get back on his feet earlier today. He needed more time to heal.

But that didn’t register in the damn demon’s skull. He wanted to fight.

“You cannot defeat me with a single scouting party,” Vinicius said.

Shir scoffed and came closer. “You are injured.”

With a deep, hearty chuckle, and a sinister smile on his short, demony dragon snout, Vinicius stood up straighter, and dragged a hand’s claws down from his bleeding shoulder, across his chest, and down his stomach. Mia couldn’t see, not able to stick her head out far enough to look down at her bodyguard’s chest, but from the look Shir gave him, he’d just painted a challenge across his chest.

Vinicius dug his talons into the ground and unleashed his aura. Heat poured over Mia, unfelt but all too real, and her blood boiled in her chest and out into her limbs. She squeezed her guard’s back spikes until her fingers ached, and glared out at the angels as adrenaline — or the Hell equivalent — shot through her. The music in her soul didn’t play. This wasn’t her song. This was Vinicius’s battle song, his war cry, and it flooded the ravine.