“Angels?” Romakus asked, earning some growls from the listening demons. “Galon?”
“It does… sound like it.” He winced as he looked up, as if he could see the angels above. “Oh no.”
Galon’s muted words silenced everyone more than Romakus’s roars could. Every demon held their breath and waited, and the vibration grew until the sound made itself known. Familiarity clicked in Mia’s head.
“Those are horns,” she said, and she climbed off Vin’s back. “Like… music horns.”
That was why it felt familiar. It was the feeling of being far from a concert, too far to hear anything but the deepest sounds, and the vibration they carried with them. But the louder the vibration grew, the more the upper range of the sound joined it, and the fullness of it dragged Mia’s heart down into her stomach.
“Angels!” A woman’s voice, squeaking with panic, came down the tunnel, and Yulia ran along it, half gliding as her running made her wing arms catch air. “Angels! Wings! Lots and lots of wings!” She almost tripped once she reached the group, and Mia caught her arm so she didn’t run straight into Vin’s leg. “Angels are coming!”
Well, that confirmed it. They were fucked. They were all completely, totally, utterly fucked.
Galon dashed forward, past the group, and past Vin. For a second, it looked like he was going to make a break for it; that tunnel led to the exit. But he turned around, and with a flash of gold, summoned his angel armor.
“I have to stop them,” he said.
Romakus growled deep in his chest. “They followed you?”
“No. Not me.”
Mia sucked in a breath. “Yosepha?”
Sighing, Galon leaned down over Yulia, gave her forehead a quick rub and kiss, turned around, and flew out of the tunnel toward the outside. Only Mia’s angle let her see the momentary wince he hid from the bat demon, and the poor lady’s shocked face as the angel left.
It was the tipping point for the dominoes, and everyone tore after him, weapons out, roaring, snarling, as if someone had unleashed a battle cry.
They didn’t get far. Romakus slammed his tail, flared his wings hard enough everyone got hit with a gust of air, and let out a quick snarling bark sorta sound. Everyone stopped and looked back at him. A couple dozen demons all stopping dead in their tracks was quite a sight, and Mia gulped as she stepped to the side of the tunnel so she didn’t risk getting trampled.
“Let the angel figure out what’s going on,” he said. “When Galon returns, we can act.”
Every demon stood there, claws out, faces full of bloodlust, and more than a few released traces of an aura. Heat, the visceral kind, the bad kind, tingled through the air and into Mia’s chest, and she blocked it with a thought. She was getting better at resisting auras as much as controlling her own, but it was clear the demons weren’t doing it on purpose. Some of them were just amped up, ready for a fight, and couldn’t control themselves.
“Are they playing… trumpets?” Mia asked.
Everyone looked to Romakus, but he growled in his chest as he looked up at the cavern ceiling. It had to be trumpets or something like them, and the constant noise was quickly turning into a song. Mia half expected something she’d recognize, like Ride of the Valkyries, and while it sounded similar, it was all wind instruments. Powerful, and booming.
“It’s a battalion,” Vinicius said.
Everyone looked to the child of Belial.
“A battalion?” Romakus asked.
“Nearly a thousand angels.”
Everyone froze again, breath ripped out of them, and they looked to Yulia as if she could tell them the child of the Old Ones was lying. Her somber expression was her answer.
Livian pushed past the crowd up to Vin.
“You’ve dealt with a battalion before?”
“Yes.” He snarled as he looked down, furrowing his brow. Vin always had a serious, or angry look to him, but right now he looked contemplative, and that was scarier. “Even underground, I can’t defeat such numbers.”
Only the sound of trumpets blasting a battle hymn filled the silence. And hymn it was, the distant sound soon including the singing of hundreds of angels, their voices carrying through the solid rock of the mountain the Damall hid within. Hid was the right word, too. A couple dozen demons against hundreds of angels? Maybe even a thousand? And one angel could beat a tetrad in a fight, out in the open.
They were double fucked.
“Angels have grown… burdened, over the millennia,” Vin said. “Before I was imprisoned, Heaven struggled to summon a battalion. Now…” Snarling, he thumped the ground a couple times with his tail, eyes still pointed down. “Now, it should be even more difficult for them to summon such a number.”
Slowly, everyone looked at Mia, and she gulped as she pressed her back to the tunnel wall, stroking her egg.
“Agreed. The angels have grown weaker,” Romakus said, nodding and gesturing to Vin with a wing. “Yosepha denies it, but I can tell. Angels aren’t what they used to be. But… there’s nothing we can do against that many.”
“Can we… go down into the tunnels?” Mia asked.
“They lead nowhere but a spiraling maze,” Julisa said. “A better question: how did they find out about the unmarked, and this location? Did the two angels betray us?”
“Yosepha wouldn’t,” Romakus said. “She doesn’t have it in her.”
“Galon wouldn’t!” Yulia’s voice. She stepped out from around her brute friend.
A couple biased opinions didn’t mean much to Julisa, and she walked away from the group the way Galon had gone. The demons said nothing, looking between each other until all eyes fell on Romakus.
“If the angels know about this place and are here for us,” he said, “then the tunnels are our only option. They might not lead anywhere but down, but down is better than up.” He pointed up, and as if the angels were listening, the battle hymn grew louder.
With a heavy snarl, Vin looked up as well, and everyone waited for what the child of Belial would suggest. But he suggested nothing, said nothing, and looked the way Julisa had gone. He wanted to fight. All the demons wanted to fight. But if the biggest, baddest demon they had knew it was a lost cause, the Damall were smart enough to avoid a suicidal battle. Probably why they’d survived as long as they had, considering what other demons were like.
Romakus gestured in the opposite direction.
“If you hear battle, go down the tunnel,” he said to Livian. “Take the crew.”
“The fuck are you going to do?”
“Figure out what’s going on.”
“You mean see if Yosepha is out there.”