I frowned. “No?”
She looked at me. “You don’t know pain until you’ve been on your hands and knees begging God to heal your heart.”
“Pretty sure humans know that pain.”
“Not the kind that spans lifetimes.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead, then the wet line that spanned from the outside corner of her eye to her hairline. “We won’t need Gehenna. I promise.”
“I feel it. They’ve decided,” Eden said.
I sighed, hoping our moment of peace could last a bit longer. “We need to bounce.”
She nodded, crawling out from under me then standing next to the bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my elbows perched on my knees, looking up at her. “We don’t have to do it now.”
“Yes, we do,” she said, reaching out for me.
The second I stood, we phased, and those same platinum strands that I had combed back were now blowing wildly against her face.
Eden stood two feet away from me in her short silk baby blue nightgown, lace straps curving over her shoulders and bordering the bottom hem. Her exquisiteness was the opposite of anything I’d ever seen in Hell. It felt wrong for her to be standing there, and it also felt wrong that I was home.
“No, you’re not,” she said, reaching her hand out to mine.
“You’re reading minds now? What was the point in bouncing planes?” I asked, taking her hand.
Her bare feet navigated the dirt ground riddled with glass, broken cement, and burning refuse as if she were taking a stroll on a white sand beach.
“Not reading minds, just feelings, and that expression on your face made it pretty obvious.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We should keep moving.”
“I feel it, too.” Something big had already picked up on our presence.
“Were you here earlier with Ramiel?”
“Yes. There are traitors on both sides. In Hell and in Heaven.”
Eden’s thoughts scrolled across her face. “There are two now?”
I stopped and held up my hands. “Just hear me out.”
She glanced behind us. “Hurry.”
“My mother came to me. No, that’s inaccurate. She met me on a neutral plane … ish.”
“That was reckless!” She shook her head, disgusted. “She could’ve been cast out and negated everything we went through to get her there. Everything she went through. What were you thinking?”
“That what she had to tell me would only take a moment.”
“Where did you meet her?” she asked.
I cleared my throat. “Right outside the gates.”
Eden’s mouth fell open. “I thought she got in?”
“She did. She had help bypassing the system, though, to get inside before my father got to her.”
Eden looked around, then pulled me with her, sprinting to the next building. She leapt up broken pieces of wood, and we landed on a collapsing roof, three stories up. Her eyes scanned the horizon before we ducked behind what was once the roof access to an elevator shaft.
“Someone will be punished,” she said. “Maybe by me. Levi, what did you do?”
“She was let in through the eighth pearl.”
“The eighth pearl is small and doesn’t open for anyone.”
“It does for the Awal.”
“Do you mean AWOLL? Or awal as in first in Arabic?”
“You know the story of the first brothers?”
She was getting impatient. “Cain and Abel? Of course.”
I sighed. “Mamá was owed a favor. Cain convinced Abel to open the Eighth Pearl.”
Eden thought for half a second, then waved her hands in the air. “Way-way-way-way-wait. Why would Cain owe your mother a favor? After all this time and she hadn’t cashed it in? And how in God’s name did Cain get his brother—who he murdered—to help him satisfy that favor?”
“Uh…” I said, already knowing her reaction. “Mamá was the whisperer in Cain’s ear.”
Eden lowered her chin. “Petra convinced Cain to kill Abel?”
“She taught Abel how to fashion a knife to protect his livestock. She also told Cain to disembowel Abel with that knife.”
“What? How is it possible that your answers make less sense of all this?”
“She was playing both sides to create jealousy and piss off the Almighty, Eden, that’s what she did back then. Listen, she helped them both, so they both owed her favors.
“So they’re the two traitors.”
“Three.”
She blinked. “And Ramiel.”
Even with her infinite intellectual power, it took her a moment to put the pieces together. She nodded. “Cain is old. One of the oldest here. He got the sword for Bex?”
“He was also one of the most trusted—enough to breach Lucifer’s temple. This was their chance. They’ve been conspiring there for centuries,” I said, pointing to the gates of the dungeons. “Since the last time we found our way back to each other. They knew we were their one chance.”
“One chance for what?”
“They haven’t told me that part yet.”
“And you trust them? Levi!”
“We have to go,” I said, peeking around the elevator shaft top. “We have to go now!”
“I know. I feel them. But Ramiel and Cain are traitors. Apparently, Abel is, too. Levi, we can’t link arms with them. I definitely can’t! I—”
The ground began to tremble.
I grabbed Eden’s arm. “It’s not just minions this time.”
She frowned. “What? Who’s with them?”
“Paymon. They know we’re here. We have to go.” I pulled on her, but she seemed mesmerized by the glowing fires bringing up the rear of the herd of demons barreling over the carcasses of still-smoldering vehicles and buildings.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
“Paymon has never left a contender alive. Not once. If my brother struggles at all with both of us, he’ll keep us from reaching the dungeons. If my other brothers arrive, we’re in trouble.”
I looked past her, seeing hundreds of smaller demons crawling over the landscape toward us, and two larger ones, slogging along like trolls. Slow, but powerful. Their drool hit the ground and created holes in the sand, melting everything it touched.
“He can’t beat me. I’m a little curious, actually, to push myself … to see just how much damage I can do.”
“Eden,” I said with a sigh. “I’m more human than ever. You can’t concentrate on Paymon and…”
She turned to me. “Keep you alive?”
I frowned. I hated that thought, but it was the truth.
She shook her head, seeming frustrated with herself and a bit disoriented. “I don’t … I don’t know what I…”