“It’s Paymon. I’ll explain later. Let’s go!”
We sprinted together toward the dungeons, dodging the elephant-sized fire balls they shot at us from behind. Eden came from the side and shoved me fifty yards off course, and I rolled, narrowly missing a winged creature that had been unleashed on us. She fought with it briefly, wasting no time in bringing it to the ground. In one leap she was on its back, breaking its neck with one twist and riding it to the ground with a flurry of soot shooting in every direction.
She ran to me, sliding on her knees. “You okay?” she asked, helping me to my feet.
“Yeah… I think I rolled my ankle.” I laughed without humor. I was no longer Leviathan. I was becoming more human with each passing minute.
“Can you run?” Eden asked.
I nodded, but I could barely keep ahead of the herd before; now it was a fair chase. I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t be able to bounce back to Earth’s plane.
Horns bleated, and hundreds of marching feet vibrated the ground beneath us. War cries and shrieking could be heard over the winds of Hell.
“They didn’t bring as many this time,” Eden said, running alongside me. She could’ve reached the dungeons by now, but she held back, keeping pace.
“They don’t need to. Paymon is enough.”
We jogged to a stop in front of the doors, glowing from the fires that whipped off the old iron toward us and more violently the closer we came.
“We can’t phase,” she said. “So how do we get in?”
“They’ll open the doors.”
She glanced behind us. The herd was closing in. The crawlers had slowed, giving the larger, strong demons time to catch up.
“When?” Eden said, yelling over the grunts and shrieking.
“C’mon, Ramiel,” I said under my breath, looking up.
I glanced back again, seeing that my brother’s small army would be upon us in the next minute. I didn’t want to yell Ramiel’s name, but he wasn’t giving us much choice.
Recognition lit Eden’s face. “They’re using us as bait. We have to bounce. This is a trap.”
I grabbed her hands, but something was different. She felt it too, and her face paled. “You can’t bounce.”
I clenched my jaw, and then took a rock and threw it at the doors. It vaporized immediately. “Ramiel! You son-of-a-bitch!”
“I thought you said you trusted them!” Eden said. Her blue nightgown was covered in dirt, just like her hair and face.
“I thought you said not to!”
Eden’s mouth fell open. She was too busy worrying about me being stuck in Hell to sense our escape was seconds away. She gripped my shirt. “Maybe I can do it for the both of us. Maybe…”
The doors opened behind me. We were both yanked inside, the iron hinges red hot and whining as they closed again.
I bent over and grabbed my knees in an attempt to catch my breath, hacking at the smoke and sulfur burning my throat.
“Are you okay?” Eden said, kneeling next to me.
A loud bang rocked the dungeon doors, forcing dust to fall from the ceiling like rain.
Eden looked up at our host with vengeance in her eyes. “Why did you draw them in, Ramiel? They know we’re here, now. They won’t stop until they get inside!” she seethed.
“Exactly,” he said, oddly at ease. He turned away from us, taking a few steps before he paused. “Come with me. It has finally come to pass and knowing Paymon we don’t have much time.”
“Come to pass?” Eden said, helping me to stand. “What the hell does that even mean?”
He continued walking.
“Ramiel!” Eden yelled. “Mind letting us in on the plan we apparently helped launch?”
He didn’t stop again. “Come with me. You’ll know soon enough.”
Chapter Seventeen
Eden
I interlocked my elbow with Levi’s, helping him limp down the hall. I’d tried to scan his body to find out why his powers were waning so profoundly, but nothing was different except for how weak he’d become.
I looked around, peeking into each prison and at the pitiful creatures inside, all broken from decades of torture. The sick dread that came over me was familiar. “I remember this place,” I breathed. “You were in the back, waiting for me in a cell.”
Levi smiled. “You came to free me after we were discovered.”
“And it wasn’t even the first time.”
“No,” Levi said, breathing out a quiet laugh. “They should have learned their lesson.”
“I guess that’s why they sent you here, hoping you’d learn yours.”
Levi pulled me closer to his side. “I was born without a soul, Eden. You’re the closest thing I’ve had to one. There isn’t a being that’s ever existed who could get a taste of that and learn to stay away.”
“Is that what it is? This whole time you were in love with my soul?”
He smiled down at me. With the fires crawling up the walls and flickering on the ceiling above, his irises seemed to glow even more than normal. He touched my chin with his index finger and thumb. “No matter what form you take, which lifetime or plane we’re on, your soul will always be my map to you. Not this,” he said, gesturing to my skin and bones, hair and clothes. He touched the center of my chest, pressing his finger gently into my skin. “You.”
I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tight. His brothers were on their way, if not arriving any minute. He was injured, he couldn’t bounce, and the first of many attacks had started, rattling the huge doors.
“It’s impossible, right?” I asked.
“Not impossible,” a woman said from behind us. She was a tiny thing, bronzed skin and green eyes, and the tattered hem of her thin linen dress fell at her ankles. By her accent I could tell she was from the very early times of humans. She was beautiful, even more so than Cassia, and just as strong. A dead demon dangled from her blackened fingers. She threw it to the floor and the limp, hairless flesh and bone slid across the hall and hit the wall, catching fire and incinerating instantly. The woman gestured to its ashes. “Kershus. He’s a scavenger, a spy, and he’d slipped in through a little-known tunnel. He’ll respawn soon. We should begin.”
“You have a knack for arriving at the right time,” Ramiel said. He clearly knew her, but as familiar as she seemed, I couldn’t place her. Her long, onyx hair was braided in some places and fell in loose curls in others, the singed ends hitting the small of her back. She was barefoot like me, but like her fingers, her feet were black, caked with soot.
“It’s good to see you again, Eve,” Levi said.
My mouth fell open. “Eve. Adam’s Eve?”
She grinned. “No, he’s Eve’s Adam; lazy, passive, unambitious shit that he is.” She turned her attention to Levi. “I didn’t think you’d survive going head-to-head with your family. I’m impressed.” She looked to me, the kindness in her eyes misplaced in such a dark place. “And you. You were always bound for something astronomical. But the Keeper of the Balance? A nearly impossible task, Asuranachmineh.” She called me by name, beautiful and flowing, but not in English—or in any language on Earth. It was familiar, but so deeply embedded in my past she could’ve been speaking of someone else.