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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.”
