39
As soon as we land, I start sweating from the heat. I can’t help but cover my nose even though it does nothing against the rotten-egg stench.
The Pit lord has landed and rolled. The fire in his wings has sputtered out, leaving dead-looking wings that are burned to leathery husks. He’s bleeding from both wings.
He yells a command, and the hellions and Consumed gather near him. The hellions watch their master fearfully, looking ready to bolt any minute, while the Consumed seem insanely excited at the prospect of bodies.
Watchers land all around us, forming a protective circle.
They have no weapons, and most of them have ugly wounds, some of them severe, but that doesn’t stop them from looking fierce. To my surprise, Beliel is one of them. He stares blindly ahead, ready to battle for Raffe.
I look at our crew and compare them to the Pit lord’s gang. I give us a good chance of beating the Pit lord, assuming none of his friends are heading our way to join the fight.
‘Oh, I miss my blade,’ says Cyclone, looking at mine with longing. ‘The damage we could do here if we’d only been able to keep our swords.’
‘That’s exactly why the swords have to reject us, my brother,’ says Howler. ‘Nobody wants Pit lords wreaking havoc with an army of Fallen armed with their swords.’
‘You may think you’re stronger, Archangel,’ says the Pit lord. ‘But my Pit lord brethren are on their way right now. They all saw us fighting in the sky.’
‘They won’t be here in time to save you,’ says Cyclone.
The Pit lord makes a noise like a thousand snakes slithering over dead leaves. ‘But if you take the time to fight me instead of flying away, the other lords will kill you,’ says the Pit lord. ‘So we have a deadlock.’
He sweeps his burned and sputtering wings forward, then back, as if trying them out. The cut sections bleed all over the ground. ‘I find that I’m in need of a new pair of wings.’
He looks over at Raffe’s wings, which are magnificent beside the Watchers’ mangy ones. ‘Yours are quite nice. A Pit lord with a set of archangel wings would be both respected and feared. There would be much speculation about how he came to possess them. Care to make a deal?’
Raffe laughs.
‘Think on it. No angel becomes an archangel without ambition. Ambition sometimes requires deceit. Sometimes, it requires an army. I can offer both.’
‘Deceit can be found everywhere,’ says Raffe. ‘And it’s freely given.’
‘But an army – now that’s worth something. I have several for rent. For the right price. Interested?’
‘Not for my wings. No one’s ever taking those from me.’ He doesn’t say again.
‘Perhaps you’ll have something else I might want one day.’ The Pit lord looks pointedly at me. ‘If you’re ever interested in something I can provide in exchange for . . .’ – he shrugs – ‘something I want, just bite into this.’
He tosses a small, round item strung on a thong. Raffe doesn’t bother to catch it, and it lands at his feet. It looks like a strung-up dried apple. Dark and wrinkly. I’m not sure I’d eat it if I were dying of starvation.
‘When you bite into it, it’ll bring me to wherever you are so we can talk details,’ says the Pit lord as he climbs onto his chariot.
Cyclone takes a step toward the chariot. The Pit lord’s hellions and Consumed bare their teeth at him.
Raffe puts out a hand to stop him. ‘We’re not here to fight.’
‘He’s only offering a bargain to save face,’ says Cyclone. ‘He won’t win this, and he knows it.’
‘Neither will we.’ Raffe nods to the sky. Three chariots fly toward us. Behind them is a cloud of hellions.
The Pit lord in front of us cracks his whip at the angels harnessed to his chariot. The Consumed whip heads cut into the angels, who are drenched with bloody sweat trickling down their hard bodies. They take off into the air.
As soon as the chariot is on its way, the Watchers circle Flyer, who is lying on the ground. His back is clearly broken, by the look of the unnatural bend of his body.
His head shifts back and forth on the ground, so I assume he’s alive. But as we lean over him, the shifting motion of his head becomes more and more wrong.
His neck tears, bubbling blood.
I jump back.
Teeth gnaw out from the inside of Flyer’s neck, quickly chewing through. A Consumed whip head covered in blood emerges from Flyer’s neck.
I look away, wishing I could wipe out what I just saw. From the edge of my vision, I see Cyclone grab a rock and hoist it above his head. Then I hear a wet crunch.
Everyone’s shoulders seem to slump at the same time.
‘You have to get us out of here, Commander,’ says Hawk with heavy sadness in his voice. ‘This isn’t how we were meant to die.’