Jeskura made it harder. She grabbed the little lady and tossed her aside, literally, and Laara squeaked as she landed on talon and claw.
“You, Laria, and Caera are taking first watch.”
Laria stomped a hoof, but helped up her fellow La, and the two little ladies scrunched up their noses at Jes and joined Caera. Lasca rubbed her face into David’s neck, Latia climbed onto Acelina’s lap, and Jes groaned as she sat across from them, back to a tombstone. A big, happy family, ready to fall asleep now that twilight was coming.
It was the creepiest, weirdest place to sleep. He’d never felt so exposed, even with all these beautiful and deadly women protecting him. But one of the strangest things about Hell, and one of its greatest kindnesses, was how sleep became so mechanical. No dreams. No thoughts running through his mind a million kilometers an hour.
Come the night, all he had to do was think ‘sleep’, and he–
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~Day 52~~
His eyes snapped open. He swung his arms out, and they collided with something hard and warm. A demon was in his face. A demon missing an eye.
Caera?
“Shh,” she whispered, so quiet his heartbeat was louder. She lowered her hand, and crept back out around the surrounding tombstones, body low. All the demons had already woken up, and all of them were in stealth mode, prowling, wings low, tails down. Even Acelina, who looked like she’d never gotten on her hands and knees in her life, had somehow squashed herself low to the soft, black dirt.
Someone was coming.
He bit down the urge to groan. Whatever it was about the night and day cycles in Hell, his body just knew it was still the middle of the night, and he needed sleep. Why he did, considering he wasn’t made of flesh and blood anymore, who the fuck knew. Same reason he still needed to breathe. If he didn’t get sleep, he’d spend the whole day miserable, and unable to sleep because it wasn’t night.
Better that than dead. The quiet clink clink of metal told him who it was before David saw him.
The rider.
In the distance, the fog was heavy but not heavy enough to block vision of the man, riding on his giant goort, the two of them covered in bronze and red armor with gold lining its edges. His skull mask, shining and ornate, had a T-slit through it, but there was no seeing anything in the darkness within. All you could see was the skull shape of the visor, as cold and ruthless as the rider himself.
God damn, that armor looked cool, and heavy. The goort wore it, too, ridiculously heavy gear that looked like someone had taken bronze and gold plate armor, and beautifully painted sections of it blood red. And of course, two axes were hooked to the rider’s back, their edges glowing soft amber with hellfire.
Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, the rider trotted along on his goort mount, and the huge horse-like creature kept its dark eyes pointed forward, uncaring about the world around it. Just a casual stroll through a graveyard, surrounded by tombstones that made the larger man and enormous horse look small. If there were any demons or hellbeasts around, he wasn’t worried about them.
No one said a word. Everyone held perfectly still and watched the man ride by. In the dead silence, there was nothing to distract them, and the rider’s aura fell on them like hail. Burning cold, indifferent, and impossible to hide from out in the open.
The girls were right. His aura was different from David’s, and from demons’. A demon aura stabbed you through the chest. David’s aura was like vibration in the ground and air, unavoidable. The rider’s aura was like deadly weather. You could withstand it, resist it, block it, but it was constant and powerful.
David dug his fingers into the dirt, ground his teeth, and watched.
The rider stopped and looked their way. No one moved. No one breathed. It was dark, the burning sky dimmed for the night, and the mist had grown thicker, wetter, and all-around more uncomfortable. Thank god it did, because it was the only thing that let them blend well enough in the dirt, while the rider’s armor highlighted him. He wasn’t hiding.
The aura buried them in murder. Cold, heat, deadly murder, death, everything that told David’s brain he was staring at the literal Grim Reaper, and the feeling plunged straight into his guts. Icy sweat dripped down his skin, and his insides clenched until his abs ached. It made him want to fight. It made him want to die.
The rider disappeared into the fog. A minute later, the quiet clink of his armor vanished. No one so much as shifted their tail for another ten minutes.
“He followed me,” David whispered. In the silence, his voice was almost thunder, and the Las all twitched.
“Yeah,” Caera said. “But he doesn’t know where you are.”
“Or he cannot sense your exact location,” Acelina said. “He knew your sister was at the spire, but that does not mean he knew where within.”
“Maybe.”
They waited another ten minutes. Nothing. Safe.
“What do we do now?” Jes asked.
Dao clicked several times and gestured back the way they came.
“No time,” Caera said. “We got one option. We stay awake and keep going. Around the rider.”
Staying awake. They’d never done that. No matter what happened, the group had always found a way to get half a night’s sleep, and even then, they’d paid for it the following day. The afterlife was strict about its sleep schedule.
“There’s no way he’s not suffering, too,” David said. “Staying awake all night, hunting me?”
The demons all frowned, thinking the same thing he was, but no one dared say it. If the rider didn’t need to sleep, they had a problem.
Silently, everyone got their weapons, got into position, and resumed the march. Eight demons, one human, creeping ahead in the fog, and what’d once been a casual stroll speed slowed to a near crawl. They hid behind the giant tombstones, crouched low, leaned low, did everything they could to hide their bodies, but unlike Death’s Grip, they didn’t have ditches, trenches, tunnels, holes, giant boulders, or much of anything to stay hidden behind. Every step was exposed, with only the fog and occasional tombstone protecting them.