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“And say you get past the army, and Abaddon himself, what then? You, alone, take on Lucifer?”
“There are angels on Earth who will fight, even if you won’t. If you want to stay here, cowering at the thought of being found, be my guest, but I will not sit here and do nothing.”
I stood up, determined to hide any hint of fear or doubt in my voice. She didn’t think I could do it, but I had done so much already since falling to Earth, things I never would have thought possible… she didn’t know who she was dealing with.
“Show me where the door is,” I said. “No one is going to give us our freedom; if we want it, then we’re going to have to take it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Twice Damned. Rebels. Good demons. Just when I thought I had seen it all, existence went ahead and twisted itself in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Demons were told to be little more than instinct-driven monsters, salivating at the mere thought of inflicting harm upon humanity.
As one of Heaven’s Lightbringers, I had seen it for myself many times.
None of my tasks on Earth were ever as predictable as a demonic possession. Either it had found its way out of Hell and possessed the first unlucky person it came across, or some egotistical human had dragged it out, tried to control it—failed miserably—and inevitably ended up possessed.
It didn’t matter how the possession started, but it ended with them wreaking untold havoc on the human’s life and the lives of those around them, until we came to destroy it or send it back to Hell and fix the damage it had done.
Demons were slaves to the pain and torment they suffered in Hell, existing in a perpetual state of agony. At least, that was what the Archangels taught us. All they wanted was to proliferate their pain, inflicting it upon humanity in a selfish attempt to displace it from themselves and absolve them of their crimes against Heaven and God.
The most important thing to remember when dealing with demons, they’d said, was that they never told the truth.
Azaroth and his minions were pretty much exactly what the Archangels had warned us about, but these demons… they were nothing like that, and they challenged everything I thought I had ever known about them. They were in pain, and Hell had definitely warped them, but they had their own ideas and motivations; they laughed, made music, built cities, cultures, factions.
They were alive down here in Hell, perhaps in a way that none of us in Heaven had ever been.
I had been escorted to a small room and asked to wait until Missolis called on me again. It was spartan really—a chair, a small table, and what looked like a bed, carved straight out of the stone walls, but with no pillows or sheets. I realized that demons probably didn’t need to sleep, but, without Light to quickly repair their wounds, would still need somewhere to rest and recover from any injuries.
From inside my room, I could hear the pulse of this strange city under the mountain. The voices, the laughter, the music—it all flowed in through the small window. There wasn’t much of a view, but I didn’t need one, the smells and sounds alone painted such a beautiful, vibrant picture of life here.
The Tyrant’s bastion had been fit-for-purpose but cold, Meridian was a gilded lie, and Helena was simply a clone of Heaven itself. None of my post-fall homes had this kind of hustle and bustle.
It was a while before someone knocked at my chamber door. The noise startled me, my hackles rose, and I worried that one of the bitter demons I’d been warned about had found me. I tentatively approached the door and opened it. On the other side was Malachi, the demon who had rescued me and brought me here.
He regarded me with eyes of burning emerald. “Am I intruding?” he asked.
I stepped aside to allow him to enter. “Not at all,” I said. “Please, come in.”
Malachi bowed his head, minding he didn’t catch his white horns on the stone entryway as he stepped through. I shut the door behind him and turned to face him. “I guess you’re here to tell me what she’s decided?”
“Deliberations are still in progress.” After my meeting with Missolis, she had called in some of her lieutenants to discuss a possible battle plan and vote on whether it should be carried out or not.
I was sure Malachi would be amongst them and was surprised to find him here instead—surprised and a little wary.
“I wanted to speak to you in private, if I could, before things go any further.” He looked nervous as he spoke.
“Okay? That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
“I didn’t mean for it to come off that way, but I thought you should know the consequences of your presence, and of the request you have made of our leader.”
“I only asked her to show me the way out. I was happy to leave and never darken your door again.”
“That is not what I want.”
“What do you want then?”
“This is home,” Malachi replied. “It takes getting used to, but we have made a life for ourselves down here.”
“Missolis gave me the impression that you were all very eager to leave.”
