“This is normal size.”
“No, it’s not! Normal size is as tall as the fence!”
The demons looked between each other, shrugged like he was crazy, and moved on. Jes climbed up one tombstone, perched, and Daoka jumped up after her, clearing the twelve-foot jump and landing in a squat.
“If you fall and spill your guts,” Jes said, “I’m not helping you.”
Daoka chirped at her lover, stood up tall, and scanned ahead like a meerkat. After a few seconds, she shrugged and clicked down at the rest of them. She didn’t see anything.
David couldn’t see shit, either, now that he was in the valley. The hint of fog around them didn’t stop their vision of things nearby, but they couldn’t see anymore than half a kilometer out before it grew too dark. Even the burning sky above looked darker. And with the huge tombstones everywhere, vision was definitely going to be a problem, especially with them so exposed.
Never in his life did he think he would, but damn, he missed the tunnels. Walking through the dark, avoiding bloodgrip vines, hellbeast spiders, possible remnant patches or Cainite ambushes, all of that was horrible, but better than being out in the open, with no roof or walls to hide under or behind. If another group of angels found them now, the fuck were they supposed to do?
“We stay low,” Caera said, and she thumped Dao and Jes’s tombstone with her huge tail. “Dumbasses.”
Dao and Jes groaned, but hopped down and fell in line. Like a well-oiled machine, they slipped into their usual positions, Caera at the front with Jes and Dao behind her, David in the middle with the Las around him, and Acelina in the rear. Except the Las lingered on the fence and tombstones, big eyes wide and looking the structures up and down with wonder, at least until Acelina gave them a whip crack with her thin tail.
“Never seen,” Lasca said, gesturing around at the faux graveyard.
“Never seen,” the other three said in tandem.
“Neither have I,” the giant demoness said, and she ushered the little ladies forward with her hands and wings. “But I’m not foolish enough to stop and admire. We must reach Timaeus, and he will escort us to Azailia. Then we part ways.”
“Nooo,” Laria said, and she tugged on Acelina’s hand. “Stay.”
“I will not stay. I am a zotiva and belong in a spire.”
“Nooo,” the other Las said, in tandem.
“Silence. You miscreants will get no more milk from me.”
David peeked back at the spire mother, but looked away once she realized. Much as Acelina constantly complained about her circumstances, a lot, he knew he’d miss it. Maybe it was because he was so used to being alone, and for the first time in his life — second life — he had people around him, talking to him, penetrating his anti-social bubble he’d been so attached to. He’d gotten kinda used to them, even the spire mother. The sex helped, definitely, but he also kinda liked Acelina, too. Something about her being an annoying, grumpy bitch tickled his brain.
Daoka clicked a few times, glancing back, too.
Acelina shook her head. “Do not be ridiculous. You will not miss me.”
“I won’t,” Jes said, raising a hand, only for Daoka to slap it down.
Clicking up a storm, Daoka turned around and walked backward long enough to gesture at Acelina and then out at Death’s Grip behind them.
“I did what I had to do in order to survive,” Acelina said. “Do not read more into than that.”
Dao didn’t look convinced. Shrugging, she hopped back up to join Jes, and chirped a few whispers in her ear, earning some groans from the gargoyle.
“I’ll miss you,” David said back to the spire mother. Never in a million years would old David actually say something like that, and he knew it. It sounded alien being honest like that, and forthcoming, and emotionally vulnerable, and every reflex he had told him to not say it. But he did.
The group went silent.
~~Mia~~
A week of walking across Death’s Grip sucked. She spent most of it on Vin’s back, but holding onto his spikes and making sure her egg stayed in its sling proved tiring after twelve hours. And twelve hours it was, an extreme amount of walking to do in a single day, every day. The demons hated it, but Romakus insisted. They had to get away from Death’s Grip before the bailiff Tacitus found them, and more importantly, before a thousand angels found them.
Whatever Mia had done to play her inner strings so loudly, it wasn’t working anymore. She could still feel the strings, but playing them was difficult, like someone trying a guitar for the first time. Sore fingers. She tried to play them, but even crafting a simple aura was too hard, and hurt. A tiny sex aura, or a little peace aura, or a minuscule cheerful aura, she couldn’t craft any of them, and every time she tried, hunger shot through her.
She was starving.
“Here,” Adron said, and he handed her another heart. “Eat.” He walked beside her and Vin, the group working their way up and around the last mountain between them and the Black Valley. Vin ignored him.
“I don’t want another heart,” she said. “I’ve eaten ten in the past week! That’s not normal, right?”
“It is not,” Kasimiro said, walking on Vin’s other side. Vin ignored him.
“I don’t want any more bad memories.” What few demons who’d died but hadn’t burned to ash in the firestorm, the demons had fed on, but had also made sure Mia got to eat. Romakus had ensured she’d had her fill. Problem: she couldn’t get full, and the hunger wasn’t going away.
They’d found no angel corpses, or at least not in good enough condition for a heart to eat. The ones that had been intact had either been barely alive enough to escape, or their bodies had been grabbed by their fleeing kin. Angels didn’t leave a man, or woman, behind.
“I don’t know what’s up with your appetite,” Adron said, “but I do know you’re still hungry. Eat.”
Groaning, she scooped up the heart, and glared at the warm, wet thing in her hand. The fact she knew it wasn’t a demon heart, but a human heart, with just a glance, was seriously fucked up.
“You found a human nearby?”
“Hiding in a little cave, yeah.”
“What was their number?”
“What?”
She glared down at the vratorin.
“What was their number?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention? I think I remember seeing a four?”