End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3) (24 page)

I try to focus on the smoldering city ahead of us, but my head is filled with the warmth of his breath and the electric tingle of his cheek against mine.

Flying is not as smooth a glide as it might look from below. There’s a subtle shifting of our bodies as his wings push against the air. I’m hanging on to him so tightly that I begin to notice that he’s rubbing against me with every whoosh of his wings.

The heat in the Pit is becoming more intense. The Sea of Hands below shifts and moves like currents of lava flowing over each other.

The rubbing is causing a warm, tingly sensation, as if all my blood is rushing to the parts of my body that are pressed against him. My head begins to feel light. My breathing comes faster.

His breath speeds up to match mine, or maybe it’s the other way around. Before I know it, he’s nuzzling his head against my cheek. A low moan escapes his lips.

I shift without thinking, tightening my legs around his hips, pressing myself against him. He strokes the curve of my back, pressing me even closer to his warmth. I marvel at the sensation as he subtly shifts his body against mine.

He lowers his head while we’re flying and touches his lips to mine. His kiss is hot and wet as it intensifies.

My head seems to be rumbling. Then I realize it’s the sky. It’s thunder. Suddenly, warm raindrops fall on us, spraying us until we’re completely wet.

Raffe ignores it and continues to kiss me. We hold each other, pressing tighter and harder together.

We fly in each other’s arms in the rain over a smoldering hell.

43

By the time we get back to the group, the Watchers have caught the rest of the hellions that we’ll need. A dozen hellions are tied up on the ground, flapping around and trying to gnaw through the thongs that tie them.

The Watchers eye us like they know what we’ve been up to. As soon as we land, I hop off and step away from Raffe. I’m glad it’s so hot that I won’t have to explain why my face is so red.

Raffe immediately gets down to business. He explains what needs to be done to ride a hellion out of the Pit and what we might find on the other side. He doesn’t seem at all embarrassed that they assume we made out.

He then talks to the hellions. ‘Take us to the other side.’ He motions along Pooky’s blade and uses his hand to show a sliding motion into the sky.

A hellion hisses at him, all sharp teeth and hate.

Cyclone steps forward. ‘They need a firm hand, Commander.’ He looms over the hellions. ‘Do what we tell you, or you die.’ He makes a tearing motion with his hands.

A hellion pisses at him, squirting a yellow-green stream of foul-smelling liquid that Cyclone barely avoids.

The other hellions seem to snicker. Cyclone leans in, looking like he’s going to strangle them, but Raffe stops him.

I step forward. Let’s see how they respond if they’re treated like I would want to be in their place.

‘Freedom,’ I say.

The hellions look sideways at me.

‘Escape.’ I crouch down to look at them at their level. They watch me with distrust, but they’re listening. ‘No more Pit lords. No more masters. Be free.’ I do the sliding motion along my sword the way Raffe did earlier.

The hellions begin chattering among themselves, as if arguing.

‘Take us with you.’ I point to me and the others. ‘Be free.’ I motion along my sword into the sky again. ‘With you.’ I point to them.

More chatter.

Then they quiet down.

The one in the center nods at us.

My eyes open wide. It worked. One by one, the Watchers nod in my direction with respect in their eyes.

Raffe doesn’t go into the details of Beliel’s involvement with Uriel or with his wings. In fact, he doesn’t even say who the gateway Watcher is. He just says that it’s one of them.

‘Think long and hard about this,’ says Raffe. ‘We’ve always taken pride in never leaving one of us behind. You can stay here together and I’ll find another way to beat Uriel. Or you can come with us, but one of you must stay behind. Isolation is the worst thing that can happen to an angel. You think it’s bad now? It’ll be a hundred times worse when you’re alone, knowing that all your fellow soldiers made it out and left you here. You’ll become twisted, angry, vindictive, vengeful. You’ll become someone you wouldn’t recognize.’

He stares at the squirming hellions tied on the ground. ‘And for that, I’m sorry. I see now my role in it.’

He looks at every Watcher around him. ‘For the rest of you, remember that your families won’t be there anymore. Your Daughter of Man, your children – they’ll all be gone. If this is successful, we’re going to a different time, a different place. We’ll land in the middle of a war. But it’ll be a war where some of the fighters might have your blood in their veins.’

The Watchers look at each other as though trying to process that. I’m having trouble with it myself. Some of us could be their descendants.

They all look at each other, understanding that the gateway Watcher could be any of them.

Beliel is the first to nod. There’s naked hope in his face. ‘I’d do anything – risk anything – for a chance to have the yellow sun on our faces again.’

I clamp down hard on the sympathy that’s blooming for him. I run through the litany of his crimes – my sister, the murders, Raffe’s wings, his part in turning humans into monsters – I list all the names and faces that I knew at Alcatraz.

One by one, the Watchers nod grimly. Each prepared to take the risk.

We don’t tell Beliel that he’s the one until the very last second.

When Beliel finds out it’s him, his face freezes. It’s disturbing to think of someone gazing out into nothing when he has no eyes. The only sign of life from him is his chest pumping in and out as his breathing gets heavier.

The Watchers are somber. Each of them touches Beliel’s shoulder until he flings Thermo’s hand off him. After that, everyone quietly grabs a hellion.

Beliel stands alone in a circle of the only friends he had in his life. He jerks when I prick him with my sword.

Raffe gives the command to the hellions to jump through.

The Watcher-ridden hellions leap at Beliel. He stands frozen, as if electrified, while the hellions fly into him.

Raffe is the first to go so he can usher the Watchers who are sure to be disoriented when they arrive on the other side. I am the last to go so that I can hold the sword and keep the gateway open until we’re all through.

By the end, Beliel is on his knees, his empty eye sockets shut tight and his teeth clenched. There’s shock, but there’s anguish too, even though he volunteered. They all volunteered.

But I’m sure that’s little comfort. Everyone else is making it out of the Pit and leaving him behind. To suffer alone for what will seem like eternity to him.

Alone and unwanted.

Probably for the first time in his life.

I run through the litany of his crimes again as I ride my hellion into the gate that is Beliel.

44

Going into the Pit was like falling. Getting out of the Pit is like being dragged through a vat of Vaseline. It’s as if the air itself is trying to push me back. I cling to my hellion as tightly as I can. I don’t even want to think about what happens if I can’t hold on.

I pop out into cramped quarters, feeling covered in goop even though there’s nothing physically on me. I should be back in my world, my time if everything went as planned. Raffe made it clear to the hellions that they would be free only if they brought us to our own where and when, but you never know.

Instead of jumping out through the portal and onto firm ground, I end up smashing against something hard. There’s enough light to see that I’m shoved against the dashboard of a truck.

The truck swerves, and I’m so disoriented that I might as well be upside down in a fish bowl. All I can see is the hellion I rode on bouncing in panic inside the truck cab. Luckily, it’s a large truck cab, but there are still far too many people and creatures crammed into it.

My disorientation settles enough for me to realize that I’m sitting on Beliel’s lap.

It’s not the same Beliel we left behind. He’s more weathered, beaten, and weary. Not to mention dried up, wingless, and bleeding. He breathes in a slow, painful rasp.

I see my surroundings in a way that my mind can’t quite comprehend right now. A white hand pushes through the open rear window. It grabs the flapping hellion and yanks it awkwardly through the window.

Behind us is an open truck bed full of confused and disoriented Watchers. Several of them look queasy as we bounce and swerve around debris.

Beyond the truck bed, a group of angels chases us through our plume of dust that spreads into the dawn sky. And is that my sister and her three scorpions flying beside us?

Shrinking in the distance is the dark shadow of the new aerie and its outer buildings. Before I can comprehend what I’m seeing, the windows of one of the outer buildings explode in a burst of fire and shattered glass.

The angels who had been chasing us stop, watching the fire. Then they circle back to the aerie to defend their home base from whatever is attacking.

The truck swerves left, then right, like the driver is drunk.

Beside me, I hear a cackling full of genuine joy. My mother is behind the wheel. She has a triumphant grin on her face as she glances over at me.

She looks back at the road just barely in time to swerve around an abandoned car. She must be going sixty miles per hour. That’s suicidal on these roads.

I push myself away from Beliel. I’d gotten used to seeing him with a fresh, hopeful face. Now he’s bleeding through his chest, ears, mouth, and nose. It’s hard to look at him, much less sit on his lap.

It’s awkward and dangerous holding my sword in such cramped quarters. I have to be careful in the swerving cab while putting the blade back into my scabbard.

‘Be careful, Mom,’ I say as she swerves again.

I crawl through the rear window and land in the standing-room-only open truck bed. There’s barely enough room for me, but I’m small enough that I can slip between two large warriors.

When I see their disoriented and drained faces, I don’t need to wonder why they’re not all airborne. Even the few who are flying hold on to the truck’s roll bar, looking like they need a little guidance. These guys clearly need a minute to adjust.

At this speed, the aerie is fast disappearing behind us.

‘Are you ready to go back and fight?’ It’s Josiah, the albino.

The Watchers answer with a general groan. It vaguely sounds like ‘yeah, okay’ if I’m being optimistic, ‘hell no’ if I’m not.

The overall impression is that they’re completely sick and in no condition to fight. I’m disoriented too but not sick to my stomach. They’ve probably never ridden with Mom before. Okay, maybe they’ve never even ridden in a car before.

‘You’ll feel better once we stop.’ I bang on the window. ‘Mom, slow down. You can stop the truck.’

She speeds up.

I bang on the window again and stick my head through to the cab. ‘Mom, it’ll be all right.’

The truck slows down and comes to a halt. Paige and her locusts fly past us, then swoop back to where we’re stopped.

The Watchers climb out of the truck, looking shaky on their legs. They unravel their wings and stretch them out, as though testing them. The rest land around us, looking not much better.

The dust settles behind us and over the Watchers. They’re quite a sight. Their partially feathered wings with their curling, splintered edges and their half-skinned bodies must be monstrous even in my mother’s imagination. I glance at Mom through the window, wondering what she thinks of all this.

My sister and her locusts do happy loop-de-loops in the air. Paige waves to me.

‘Report, Josiah.’ Raffe turns to Josiah.

Josiah stares at the Watchers with wide eyes. ‘After you left, a guard saw me, and we got into an argument about whether to put Beliel back in his cage. I couldn’t let that happen. If things went according to plan – and I can’t believe that they actually did – you would have all come out into a cage and been crushed to death.’

‘Penryn!’ The door of the truck opens, and my mother runs toward me. She enfolds me in a hug that’s too tight.

‘Hi, Mom.’

‘This ghost angel told me that you were inside that demon over there.’ She points to Beliel who seems on the verge of losing consciousness in the passenger seat. ‘He said that you might come out any minute. I didn’t believe him of course. That’s crazy talk. But still, you never know.’ She shrugs. ‘And look what happened.’ She squints at me suspiciously. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s me, Mom.’

‘How did you get us out?’ asks Raffe.

Josiah rubs his face. ‘After my little
argument
with the guard, I took Beliel. But Beliel is big and heavy even in his shriveled state. I couldn’t fly with him, but I had to get him somewhere safe until you came back. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.’ He points to my mother. ‘Or her.’ He nods to my sister, who lands in the trees with her locusts.