Yulia broke into sobs and hugged the angel with her wing arms. Without looking, she lifted her arm, and gently ran two claws down his face to close his eyes.
This wasn’t happening. Not again.
Mia looked back at Adron, but his eye was pointed downward, like he couldn’t bear to look, like it reminded him of what it was reminding Mia of. But when Yulia’s sobs broke into high-pitched squeaks, Mia looked back, and stared. The fingers inside her played the strings, hit them hard again, and again, something in the ocean of vibration answered her.
She got up and walked toward the exit.
“Mia?” Adron asked after her. “Mia?”
The voice was distant, muffled. It didn’t matter. The vibration mattered. The ocean mattered. It listened to her, her emotions, and it would do what she wanted. It would dance to her song.
“I’m going to… kill them all…” That was what she wanted. A simple, direct thought that resonated inside the vibration. A perfect song. Kill them all. She was going to kill them all.
The ocean welcomed her. It soothed her, knew her pain, her sadness, echoed them, and lifted her up like a friend, hugging her as she lamented. Deep underneath the waves where no one else could feel but her, the song told her everything would be alright, and that it would help her do whatever she wanted. Home. All she had to do was step outside, call upon it, and–
A set of claws grabbed her shoulders again, and shook her until her head bounced back and forth hard enough for whiplash. Big hands, big claws. Kas’s claws.
“Mia!” he yelled.
Mia froze, again pulled up out of the vibration. It didn’t feel good, like stepping out of a hot shower into a bitterly cold room, but she couldn’t ignore the voice she knew, so familiar and intimate and… concerned?
Kas? Concerned?
“I’m… okay,” she said, slowly turning around and facing the group again. “I’m okay. I’m… okay.” Deep breaths.
They eyed her for a minute, clearly not believing her.
“Kasimiro,” Romakus said, and he chuckled with his usual chaotic smile. But the chuckle and smile both faded, far more quickly than they would have yesterday. “Faust told me you’d left the spire.”
Kas stepped to the side, stood by the tunnel wall, and crouched down into his usual squatting perch so he could put weight onto his palms on the ground. The scar on his chest was massive and had burn marks along its edges. No need to ask. The rider had done that.
In typical Kas fashion, he said nothing. He’d get along with Vinicius.
“We both left,” Adron said, and he stood beside Mia. “What’s going on? That’s Romakus, leader of the Damall. You know him?”
“I… do. Sorta. Vinicius and I are trying to get to False Gate, and then angels attacked us, and the Damall saved us.”
“Angels.” Adron looked to Yosepha, Galon’s body, Yulia, and back to Yosepha before he sucked in a breath. “You’re an angel?”
Yosepha slowly tore her gaze away from Galon, and glared up at the vrat. Her fingers were interlocked with the dead man’s.
“Yes.”
“Your wings?”
“Azoryev crucified me. They cut off my wings, and nailed me to a cross of truth.”
“Cross of truth?” Mia asked.
“It’s… a way Heaven can force angels to… speak. A relic from the time of Ramiel’s betrayal.” She shivered, and her eyes fell. “It hasn’t been used in… in… thousands of years. But Azoryev was ready. They… suspected me, and Galon. Suspected us all along, because of how often we visit Hell. They…”
Romakus growled deep in his chest and squatted down in front of Yosepha.
“Who did it to you? Which angels specifically?”
Sighing, Yosepha shook her head, and set a bloody hand on the huge demon’s shoulders.
“You will not find the specific angels, Romakus. Besides, Azoryev is–”
“Mostly dead,” Adron said, “if those angels out there were all from Azoryev. Speaking of… can someone tell me what’s going on? A horde call was sent out, a small one, but it still got its hooks in me, and before I knew it I was running toward a fucking angel army, and there was fire everywhere, and–”
Mia pat Adron on the stomach, smiled up at him, and shook her head.
“I’ll explain everything later. I’m just… I’m just so glad you’re alive.” She wrapped her arms around him, and buried her face in his stomach. Bigger than most vrats, Adron stood eight feet tall, but that was short enough she could hug him. “You saved me.”
“I… I guess I did. That horde call was telling me one thing: kill the angels. And it was coming… from you?”
She nodded, forehead rubbing against his sternum.
“Y-Yeah.”
“Though, without Kas, I’d have run right into that inferno instead.”
“Kas.” Her arms fell from Adron, half going limp as she sighed and drifted toward the big shark dinosaur. If there’d been a corner, he’d have been sitting in it, just like he did when he was her bodyguard, and she managed a weak chuckle as she came up to him.
With him in his squatting perch position, she was face to face with Kas, and she smiled at him as she reached out and set her hands on his horns.
“You lived,” she said.
“So did you,” he said, in his typical rumbly grumbly way. Unlike Vinicius, there wasn’t any sinisterness to his dark, growly voice. That wasn’t Kas. Kas was a bitter old man in a demon’s body. And she liked this bitter old man.
She walked in closer to him, and put her face into the nook of his shoulder and neck so she could hug him.
“I thought the rider might have killed you, until Faust told me you and Adron left the spire.”
He rumbled, a nice one, and he didn’t push her away, either. If she knew Kas, and she liked to think she understood him a little, he was happy to see her.
“You have a new scar,” she said.
“You have new clothes,” he said.
“Oh. Right.” She rubbed her forehead into his neck a few times before looking herself up and down. “So much has happened in just the past few weeks. I… I don’t even know where to begin.”
“You can tell them later,” Romakus said. “We’re leaving.” He scooped up Yosepha again, set her in the nook of his arm so she rested against his chest, and he made down the tunnel. “Let’s talk with the others. Livian, get Galon’s heart.”
“No,” Yosepha said. “You… You can’t.”
“You heard him, Yosepha. Respect a man’s dying wish.”
The wingless angel sighed, but didn’t argue anymore. She set her cheek on Romakus’s shoulder, went limp, and glanced back to Galon, and the bat lady still sitting beside him. Romakus didn’t let the scene drag, taking Yosepha down into the tunnel. It was better if she didn’t see this, and they both knew it.