I took his hands, and in the next moment we were surrounded by red-toned darkness and mountains of screaming humans on the horizon. Sweat instantly beaded on my forehead, and the air I pulled into my lungs felt like it came straight from a furnace. As uncomfortable and ironic as it was, Hell was the only place to hide.
“I didn’t remember at first … but … a sacrifice,” I yelled over the hot wind. “It could be our backup plan if … I don’t know. We’d have to find a way to get her in before your father finds out.”
“You’re not making sense.” He ducked, a small, winged creature flying just overhead. It screeched, shockingly loud for its size, alerting any guards nearby of our presence.
I shook my head. “I understand Petra is strong, but she won’t survive the separation. We can’t let her leave. We can’t let her stay. But with Gehenna, we could rid her of the tag—even in a weakened state—and then she can go.”
“Go?”
“To Heaven. With a sacrifice.”
“You’re talking about letting her die.”
“I know,” I said, reaching out to him. “I know, but it’s the only way.”
Levi stared at me, confused. “You want to separate the tag from my mother and then kill it with Bex’s blade, and then she somehow makes a sacrifice and goes to Heaven.”
“Yes,” I said, hating myself.
“No!”
“Tell me another way, Levi. Tell me, and we’ll do it.”
“We’ll separate the tag with Bex’s blade. She lives. The end.”
“It’s not Bex’s blade,” I said. “It was mine.”
He took a moment to process my words. “Yours? Eden, it’s Gehenna. It’s ancient … eons old, and infamous and—”
“I created it.”
Levi was confused. “Why would you create something that could kill an immortal? Was it meant … was it meant for me?”
His question was valid. There was a time in the very beginning that we hated each other.
“I had it forged after we fell in love; after the first time they took you from me. It was for the next time they tried to separate us,” I said, a tear falling down my cheek. “You don’t remember? We agreed.”
His eyes lost focus as he tried to reach back further into his mind. “Not to kill our captors.”
“It was for us. Like Eli said… We were the first Romeo and Juliet.”
The creature screeched again.
“The title is the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, don’t forget,” Levi yelled. A stifling gust lifted his hair.
An eruption sounded in the distance. Not uncommon in Hell, but a rolling cloud of red dust kicked up and began barreling toward us like a dirt tsunami.
“We need shelter!” Levi yelled. “Now!”
The only thing close enough was an abandoned, rusted semi-truck with no glass intact. Levi grabbed my hand without speaking and sprinted for the truck.
“It will be a blast, then a sandstorm. We need to wait it out for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” I yelled.
“We’ll be safe! Nothing will be out in this.”
Fifty yards, forty, thirty…
The blast hit just as Levi lunged for the door. We hunched over to fight being blown away, locking arms while Levi gripped the handle, our feet being pushed across the ground several inches even though we dug in. Sand and soil pelted my face and skin, even under my clothes. I could feel tiny sharp edges slicing through my skin in the hundreds of billions, and then the wind changed direction, feeding the already gargantuan wall of sand and debris towering over us.
Levi yanked open the rusty door and pulled me closer so I could crawl inside. The gear shift moved when I climbed over it with a creak, and I yelled for Levi as I made myself small enough to fit in the floorboard of the passenger side.
“Levi!” I yelled again, reaching for him.
He shut the door, every exposed inch of his skin cut and bleeding. We used our shirts to cover our noses and mouths and waited. It was eerily quiet for just a few seconds, and then the truck rocked with the second wave.
“How long do they last?” I yelled, squeezing my eyes shut. “I have to move. I can’t breathe!”
It was already difficult to breathe in Hell, but the hot air mixed with dust created a panic within me that I had to talk myself down from.
I felt Levi’s hand on mine, rubbing his thumb back and forth against my skin. “We’ve survived worse, baby. Controlled breaths. It will be over soon.”
Once the truck stopped shaking, we emerged. A sand drift nearly covered the front of the truck, and my arms were covered in mud from a mixture of my blood and sand. As the haze cleared, I noticed we were within a mile of a looming mountain with cliffs and holes carved out with precision. There were no machines in Hell, so it had to have been done by hand.
“You okay?” Levi asked, his face covered like my arms.
I nodded, coughing so hard I nearly threw up. “As if Hell isn’t bad enough. Why did you ever stay here?”
He shrugged. “It was home. And these things are easily ridden out in my father’s temple.”
“What are the holes?” I asked, nodding toward the mountain.
He squinted. “Hard to tell. There are several creatures that create them.”
“That makes me uncomfortable.”
“Well … it’s supposed to. It’s Hell.” He patted my hair, and sand poured out with each stroke. “You’re a dirty blonde now.”
“Ha, ha,” I said without humor.
The ground began to rumble, the gravel bouncing like mustard seeds in hot oil. Now that the storm had passed, an army was coming.
“The plan,” I said.
“We have to keep moving,” Levi said.
“There!” I pointed at hollows in a mountain. We reached the base, but at least two hundred feet of loose gravel stood between us and the first cave.
“Can you make it?” I asked Levi.
He grimaced as if I’d insulted him.
I crouched and leaped, grabbing onto the ledge. My legs dangled beneath me, and I checked to see if Levi had left the ground. He hadn’t. A cloud of dust kicked up by the misshapen soldiers crawling toward him at top speed had caught his attention.
“Levi!” I yelled.
He crouched and sprung upward, reaching for the ledge. His fingers gripped, and he hung right beside me with a smile.
“Can you make it?” he asked, mocking me.
I smiled and then nodded toward the next dark entrance, more than five hundred feet up. “Can you make that?”
We both pulled up to stand in the mouth of the cave and stared at the next one, gauging the push off and inertia.
“Can you?” he asked, looking less confident.
I scratched the base of my head where my hair was damp from sweat. “Not sure. Can we phase there?”
Levi shook his head. “Satan’s rules. We can only phase in and out. He loves struggle.”