They had been so quick to rush through that portal, so eager to enact the universe’s greatest prison break, they hadn’t realized what they were getting into. It didn’t help that Lucifer placed the portal’s exit point in the middle of a desert—he probably thought it would be amusing.

  As my eyes adjusted, all I could see was sand. Dunes rolled away from me, stretching far into the horizon on all sides. There was a gentle breeze in the air, and while it was hot under that blazing sun, I still felt cooler than I had been while I was in Hell.

  It was a relief being here—on Earth again.

  But my relief was cut short as I came fully back into my senses. It was as if my ears had popped, and now the screaming and the hissing was almost too loud for me to be able to bear. Worse, Abaddon was behind me somewhere, on the other side of the portal that was still very much open.

  Shuffling my way past the screeching demons, I searched for Missolis only to find her doubled over on the sand, her hands covering her head. I grabbed hold of her shoulder to try to comfort her, but she shrugged out of my grip.

  “I’m fine,” she hissed.

  “Then you know we need to get out of here,” I said. “Right?”

  Missolis turned her head up, and though she was still squinting against the sunlight, she stared at me. “Gather the others,” she barked as she pushed herself up and off the sand.

  The others, luckily, were easy enough to find. The rebels had all crossed together and stayed in a tightly knit group, even when faced with the light of the blazing sun above us. I pulled my hood down so they could all find my pink hair, then I shrugged out of the robes I was wearing and bid my wings to manifest up and out of my back.

  “Rebels!” I called out. “I know it hurts, but you must listen to me. It’s not safe here—we have to rally and leave.”

  “It burns my eyes!” someone screamed.

  “We should not have come here!” yelled someone else.

  “I know!” I yelled, “I do, but that way is Hell, and this way lies freedom. Come with me, and I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  In truth, I had no idea where to go, but I had made a promise to Malachi that I would help these rebels once we got to the other side, and I intended on making good on that promise. Upon hearing my words, some of the demons who had been affected a little less by the sunlight burning above had started helping others get to their feet. I saw Etari come trudging through a group of rebels, with Hekata still firmly in his grasp.

  She was struggling, snarling, turning her face left and right to keep any one side of her head from being exposed to the sun for too long. Many of the other demons—those most loyal to Abaddon and Lucifer—were handling the sun way worse than the rebels were. The rebels, at least, were mostly garbed in pilgrim cloaks they could use to protect themselves, the armored demons had no such luck, and the sun reflecting off their metallic gear didn’t help.

  Many of them had taken to the air almost immediately and were flying aimlessly, while others were trying to burrow their way unsuccessfully into the scalding sand just to find cover.

  There was no cover out here—not even a tree, nowhere to go but into that blazing sunlight.

  “Can you take her with you?” I asked Etari.

  With a simple nod he unfurled his massive wings and held tightly to Hekata. “We will follow you,” he said.

  “Good, and Malachi?”

  Etari gestured with his head. A small group of rebels was crowding over Malachi, who was laying on his back on the sand. I rushed over to them, and they let me through. He had looked like he was in bad shape in Hell, but out here… he looked worse. Not only was his skin ashen and pale, but he was also sweating and shaking.

  He was mortal now, that much was clear. In Hell, only a grave injury or extreme blood loss meant death, but on Earth, something as simple as an infection could kill—and in a desert, dehydration might end half of them before they even got to see civilization. None of us had prepared for this.

  “Give me some room,” I said, and I grabbed hold of the arrow in Malachi’s chest.

  Malachi grunted, tensed, and grabbed my hand. “What are you doing?!” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “I’m going to save your life.”

  “My life doesn’t need saving,” he said through quick, short breaths.

  “Shut up and don’t move.”

  “No, please. Don’t!” He was fighting me, trying to take my hand off of the arrow.

  “Somebody hold him down,” I said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t reply. Holding onto the arrow with both hands, I broke off the base that was still sticking out of Malachi’s chest, then I placed the broken shaft between his teeth. “Bite this.”

  He was about to protest, but I stuck the wood into his mouth to keep him from arguing with me. I turned him onto his side to inspect his back. The arrow had gone in through his chest and the other side of it had almost made it all the way through his body. I could feel the arrowhead in the muscle, just under the skin, which was probably luckier than it being stuck somewhere in the middle.

  I counted to three, grabbed what was left of the shaft, and pushed it through until the arrow broke through the skin of his back. Malachi cried out in pain, his cries stifled by the piece between his teeth. Thick, dark red blood poured from the wound and onto the sand, but I was able to grab the arrow and pull it all out. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t the only bit of pain he was going to have to suffer.

  “Bite harder,” I said, and after laying him on his back again, I placed my hand on his chest. “Everyone else, look away.”

  Malachi’s eyes widened. “No, no, no!” he struggled, begging me not to do what I was about to do.

  We were no longer in Hell, and between the rush of Light from Lucifer’s portal and my own reserves, I knew I had enough Light in me. I could already feel myself recharging, my connection to the Light restored, but what I was about to do to him was as likely to kill him as it was to heal him.

  Still, I had to try.

  With a bright flash from under my palm, I channeled my Light into Malachi’s wound. As I had expected, the Light seared his flesh and made it sizzle and burn under my hand. I knew it was going to hurt. Demons were not able to withstand the power of Light, but he was mortal now, so that either made him more susceptible to it, or less—there was only one way to find out.

  Malachi gritted his teeth and clamped his jaw shut around the broken arrow shaft as my Light pushed through him. His eyes widened, tears formed at their corners and spilled down the sides of his face. “I’m sorry!” I said, “I’m almost done.”

  And I was almost done. Another moment or so and I knew, the wound had sealed through. He wouldn’t die from it, but the handprint my Light had left on his chest wasn’t going to be pretty. I could only hope it would fade in time.

  “Get him up,” I said, not sparing a single second. “We need to leave, right now.”

  “And go where?” asked Missolis.

  “I don’t know yet. It doesn’t matter. But in a couple of moments, the second Abaddon is going to come through that portal and when he does it’ll be impossible for us to scatter to the four winds.”

  “They’re all doing it,” said Kainon, pointing at the demons up in the air.

  They looked like drunk flies, zipping around in the air kind of aimlessly. I felt bad for them. They were all screaming—clearly they hadn’t understood what was going to happen to them when they so eagerly rushed through that portal and made it through to the other side.

  “Alright,” said Missolis. “You heard her, everybody up—we take to the sky.”

  “Where is Lucifer?” asked Etari. “Why did he not stay behind?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “and honestly, I don’t care. The further we are away from him, the better.”

  I backed away from the portal, stretching my wings out to either side of me. It was time to get out of there, and put as much distance between myself, Abaddon, and Lucifer as I could. The thought itself was bonkers. All this time I had wanted to get back to Abaddon, but now the thought of going near him set alarm bells off in my mind.

  He had changed so much. Had he really taken up the mantle Lucifer had given him? It was only a few days ago that I adamantly told myself there was no way he would do that, and yet, there he was, Lucifer’s right hand.

  King of the Ashes.

  The Oracle’s words were hard to ignore, but maybe there was still time to stop it.

  Demons were still pouring out of the portal to Hell, but their numbers were slowing down. We didn’t have much time before the last of them—and Abaddon—came through. As soon as the rebels were ready, Missolis gave the order for them to take to the air. I shot up ahead of them and called out for them to follow me. I scanned the sand for Lucifer and endeavored to move in the opposite direction to where he was, but he was nowhere to be found.

  There were only demons, scattering, flying, running in all directions.

  “This way!” I yelled, and the rebels followed me into the air just as readily as they had followed Missolis off the edge of that mountain in Hell.

  Think, Sarakiel, I thought to myself as I soared, think. Behind and below me I saw a bright flash of Light, there was a pulse of air and sand, and a moment later the portal to Hell was gone. Nobody took flight to chase us down—nobody seemed to care about us nearly as much as the first Abaddon had.

  Good. That was one less problem to deal with, but the other problem was still pretty big. We had nowhere to go, no shelter from the sun and the sand, no food, no water. If these demons were all mortal, they were going to need the same things I needed, and I had no idea where in the world I actually was.

  The first thing I was going to have to do was find a landmark, somewhere; something that could tell me where on Earth we were.

  Food.

  Water.

  Shelter.

  All of these things would have to wait.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Our group was slowing down. They’d never needed water, food, rest, or shelter before now and they were starting to get tired—and irate. Already we’d lost some of our number, who had decided to take their chances in the desert rather than follow the angel.

  Missolis and Malachi had tried to convince them to stay with the group, but nothing they said would sway them; they thought I was purposefully leading them to their deaths because I was an angel, and why would an angel be helping demons?

  I couldn’t blame them for their mistrust. They’d trusted me once and it had ended with them in shackles at Lucifers feet. We’d been lucky that Lucifer was, well Lucifer, and not particularly interested in small potatoes like us.

  In any case, leading the rebels to their deaths would have required me to know where on Earth I was going, and looking around the hazy, endless sea of dunes around us… I had absolutely no clue. The only thing I knew with certainty was that they needed water and shelter, and soon.

  So far, I’d been mostly unaffected.

  I was as mortal as they were, but I had something they didn’t: Light. Being out of Hell, I could regenerate my Light and use it to sustain my body for long periods of flight, not needing to eat, drink, or sleep as urgently—a trick Abaddon had taught me after my grueling solo flight to Helena.

  My Light was helping with the dehydration, but the heat and exhaustion was starting to get to me. We had been flying for hours and I hadn’t spotted a single landmark, not so much as even a tree. Lucifer had picked the perfect spot to dump us, and the longer I mused over it, the more I felt I understood him.

  It didn’t matter to him how many demons died, it wasn’t a test of strength or personality, and the surviving demons weren’t going to get a prize at the end of it, it was all just a sick joke.

  He was jaded.

  Most human religions had similar stories to Lucifer’s. A deity-like entity who sacrificed themselves for the benefit of humanity, ending either nailed to a cross, or chained to a mountain, or cut in half. But, in Lucifer’s case, it had all been a lie.

  He hadn’t suffered for the sake of anyone but himself, and an eternity of watching angels being thrown into the Pit had done nothing to humble him. He pretended to be of slight temperament, but the anger and utter contempt he had for everyone and everything God had created was palpable.

  I had seen bits of the real Lucifer in the way he broke Medrion’s neck and locked his most loyal lieutenant in Hell. He had chosen to be cruel to these demons, depositing the darkness dwellers in the brightest, hottest place on Earth, just for kicks.

  Most of them would die in the desert, and the ones who survived wouldn’t likely be joining whatever army he was assembling—the angels who had been caught and thrown in the Pit were weak and not worthy of the imagined honor—but they would sow chaos amongst the humans, and that was good enough.

  The sun had started to slip down beneath the sandy waves when I finally saw the silhouettes of what could only be a human-made structures. I called to the demons at my back to follow me and picked up the pace, soaring higher into the air so we could swoop quickly towards the buildings ahead of us. I kept hoping it wasn’t an oasis, a mirage, as I was sure the rebels would mutiny if I had gotten their hopes up only to lead them into more sand.

  Fortunately, it turned out to be a small village built in the shade of a rocky outcrop that would protect the inhabitants from the worst of the midday sun. It was rudimentary, but where there were buildings there was shelter, as well as food and water. I only hoped that whatever made me invisible to the humans also extended to the demons, or we were going to have a big problem.

  I realized something was wrong as soon as we got close enough to see between the buildings; there was no foot traffic, no people fluttering from street to street or in and out of buildings. In fact, the closer we got to the city, the easier it was to see… most of the buildings looked broken.

  Shards of glass had burst from their frames and lay strewn around the ground, glittering in the light of the setting sun. Entire walls had crumbled to stone and dust, leaving many of the buildings interiors exposed to the elements. It reminded me of Heaven—the broken version of it anyway.

  Unlike Heaven though, this place was entirely uninhabited and looked like it had been that way for some time. While on the one hand I was relieved not to have to test the demons visibility, I was also concerned that we wouldn’t find any supplies to help us.

  My stomach sank.

  “Over there,” I called out to the demons behind me. “Land on the tops of those buildings.”

  I landed on one of the rooftops overlooking what I thought was the central square, Missolis landing next to me and scanning the ground below. We were four stories up, looking down at barely paved streets littered in personal belongings and debris.

  I had no idea what had happened, but it looked like everyone had left in a rush, grabbing whatever they could carry and leaving behind everything else. The doors to the buildings had been left wide open, a few swinging sadly from their broken hinges, and everything was covered in thick layers of sand.

  “What happened here?” asked Missolis.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I don’t like it.”

  Missolis ran her hand along the ledge of the building we were on. Her fingers came away covered in a mixture of sand and a strange gray dust. She rubbed her fingers together, and the powder flaked off with the breeze. “Ash,” she said.

  My gut sank further.

  “We should…” I paused, took a breath. “We should take shelter in these buildings.”

  “Where are the humans?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but it looks like they’ve been gone a while.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t want to think about it. But we can take what we need and rest before we move on.”

  “I think the next question is obvious…”

  “And if I had the answer, it would be yours. In the meantime, gather what supplies you can—look for canned food, water stored in bottles, and somewhere dark and enclosed to rest in. Temperatures will plummet once the sun goes down.”

  “Consider it done. What will you be doing?”

  “I’m going to speak with our guest,” I replied, cocking my head toward Hekata. “She was once one of the best Seekers I knew, maybe she has some idea of where we are.”

  Missolis nodded and walked toward the nearest group of rebels, barking orders as she went. It didn’t take long for them to organize into groups and start searching the nearby buildings. It was impressive, but then, she’d been an Overlord in Hell; giving orders came naturally to her, and the rebels were keen to have something to do.

  Etari approached with Hekata, bound still and sullen-faced, handing her chains to me before joining the rest of the scouts. I waited until they were all gone before sitting cross-legged in front of Hekata and inviting her to do the same, but she remained standing.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

  “Why would I kill you?”

  “You’re an angel, I’m a demon. We are at war.”

  “That may have been true once, but things have changed. I wouldn’t have rescued you if I was just going to kill you.”

  Hekata rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Rescued me? Is that what you think you did? Don’t tell me you intend on trying to get me to access my feelings again. I assure you, it will not work.””

  “No, that’s not why I wanted to speak with you.”

  “Then why have you rescued me? Why not let me take my chances in the desert like the others?”

  “Call me sentimental, but I couldn’t just let you die out there with the others—because they will die, either from thirst, or hunger, or sunburn.”

  She seemed not to understand the word sunburn. Instead of dealing with that word, she scowled like she so often did. “Lucifer brought us here to challenge us, so that only the strongest will form part of his glorious army.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that, but I’m afraid you are wrong—Lucifer brought you here because he’s a sick fuck who enjoys tormenting others.”