River

Within the gateway, the gloom was so absolute that I couldn’t see the demons who had entered before me, or Corson behind me. When we’d entered, only inches had separated me from the ones ahead of me, yet it felt as if they had ceased to exist.

I was completely alone in this place and time, something oddly fitting right now. The idea of Kobal back there, still in danger while I traveled away from him, made my teeth grind together. However, standing next to him, I’d realized it was better if we were separated now.

Lucifer’s insidious words whispered through my mind. I tried to deny them, but the more I contemplated them, the more I believed that he’d been telling the truth—a truth Kobal would deny. If he was with me, he would never let me do what was necessary to stop the outflux of creatures escaping Hell.

There was no hot, no cold in the gateway. It was a comfortable, warm temperature like a perfect spring day. No sound penetrated the gateway either, not even when I snapped my fingers to create some noise in the vortex did anything penetrate this nothing.

Had I somehow lost my way? No, impossible. Kobal would never risk such a thing. But once the idea took hold, I couldn’t shake it. Sweat beaded my brow as I lifted my hands to feel in front of me, but they came up with nothing. They didn’t create a breeze as no air flowed through here, but I could still breathe.

A pinpoint of light pierced the night before me. The back of a demon materialized, then his head, followed by his legs. The hair on my arms rose at the disconcerting spectacle of the demon coming together in pieces.

I jumped when a hand encased my elbow, and glanced back at Corson. His citrine eyes were filled with concern as he propelled me forward. Behind him, Hawk appeared and then Caim.

Stepping out of the gateway, my back flattened against the craggy wall when I realized we’d emerged on the road leading out of Hell. However, it was a lot different than the last time I’d traveled it.

Before, shadows had concealed the road. Now, it was illuminated by the fires burning below. Sweat dripped down my forehead and cleaved my clothes to my body. The Hell shadows writhed across the walls as they tried to escape the light. Tilting my head back, I gazed at the gateway leading out of Hell only a hundred feet above us. So close, yet so far.

I had to make it there. I couldn’t completely fix this mess, but I might be able to staunch the flow of nightmares pouring out of Hell.

Corson tugged me onward as Lucifer’s words replayed in my mind. “Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”

I shuddered as I recalled the warmth of his breath against my cheek and the humor with which he’d tormented me. “Would you like to know why I never attempted to stop you from trying to close the gateway?”

I’d assumed it was because he’d been too cowardly to come out and face those above, especially Kobal. That instead he’d hidden away while he plotted and grew his army, but his whispered words revealed a different reason to me.

Debris crunched beneath my feet as I ran beside Corson. We traveled higher as more seal creatures flew out of the flames or followed along the roadway behind us. Some of those creatures also ran ahead of us, and I knew more were already on Earth.

Glancing back, I searched for Kobal amid the crush of demons and creatures fleeing the demise of Hell, but I saw no sign of him.

He’ll be okay. He can survive fire. He’s the only one who can help everyone else escape if the gateway above is closed.

My arms and legs pumped faster. If I died in here, there would be no stopping the outflow of Hell, and if I made it out alive…

“I’ll tell you and only you my secret,” Lucifer whispered through my memories.

I didn’t know why he’d told me his secret. Maybe because he believed there was nothing I could do to close the gateway. Maybe because he believed it would inflict more suffering on me and Kobal if I escaped and I revealed Lucifer’s secret to him. Or maybe Lucifer had simply believed it impossible that I would get away from him. He was arrogant and crazy enough to believe that anyway. And he’d never seen Caim’s betrayal coming.

Either way, he had spilled the beans, but was it all a lie?

Most likely, he was a psychotic lunatic after all.

“Must go faster!” Hawk panted from behind me.

My heart sank when I chanced a look back and saw the fires rising higher and still no sign of Kobal. The flames seemed to be chasing us, determined not to let us get away. A few hundred feet below, more demons and seal creatures fled, but others were consumed by the fire as it continued relentlessly onward.

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.