Everyone froze. Laoko slowly turned, and the Las did with her, the little critters emulating her dropped jaw. Dao and Jes did the same. Caera aimed her one eye at the angel on her back. Acelina, standing directly behind her, didn’t move a muscle.
“He’s… They’re really there?” David asked. “Imprisoned by God?”
Moriah glared at him. Was she trying to read him, see if he was lying? Because as far as David knew, and as far as everyone had told him, he was a shit liar. In this case, that was a good thing.
“I was not alive during the First War. It was billions of years ago.”
“Millions?” Caera asked.
“Billions.”
Holy shit.
“So… you’re saying you don’t know,” Jeskura said.
“I am saying the corpses of Lucifer’s kin cover Angel’s Spine, but not Lucifer’s. It is said that when God was still here, they locked Lucifer away. Even the humans and their ignorant religions say such.”
“God is here no longer?” Acelina asked.
Moriah sighed. Somehow, she looked even heavier.
“This Great Tower we exist within is… a forlorn tower.”
David looked to the girls, and they traded glances with him and each other. The angel, rage incarnate and suicidally hostile, looked destroyed, and not because of the ruined wing or burned slash across her shoulder, or even that David had killed people close to her. Something else had broken her.
Laoko turned and resumed the march.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Moriah couldn’t stay awake. Whether angels slept at night the same way David and demons did, no idea, but it was still day and the angel’s eyes closed. She fell, rolled right off Caera’s back, and landed. Seeing her fucked up shoulder hit the stone sent agony through David’s nerves like someone hit his funny bone with an ice pick.
“Of course she fell unconscious,” Acelina said, groaning as she picked the angel up. “I will carry her.”
“Thank you,” David said. “Uh… please don’t eat her.”
“I am tempted.”
“Please don’t.”
Acelina smiled. With her pure black, smooth, featureless face, seeing an array of shark teeth appear was always bone chilling. The fact he’d had sex with her, multiple times, didn’t detract from how terrifying she was sometimes. Maybe made her even scarier.
“I will not eat her. But I wonder about this party of angels she was with. If your sister truly killed hundreds of angels, and was responsible for the firestorm at the far edge of Death’s Grip, then the angels will respond with greater force. Thousands of angels should be roaming the skies.”
“They probably are. We just can’t see them. Likes birds too high up.”
“Birds.”
“I suppose Hell doesn’t have those, does it? If I had to guess, I’d say there are thousands of angels up there already, maybe hundreds of thousands, looking for me and the other unmarked.”
Acelina looked down at the angel she held horizontally in her arms.
“Then explain this one’s actions.”
“I’m guessing Moriah took a big scouting party on a hunch? If she learned that Mia and I are both trying to get to False Gate, and she knew where we last were, she took a guess where we’d be. I bet she’s been combing this area of the Grave Valley for days, looking for a sign of me.”
“Of you, but not Mia? She said your sister killed hundreds of her kind, a feat not done since the angels killed Belor. Surely your sister has earned more of her ire.”
“Maybe. But… I think this is about Shaul, the first angel I killed. The way she screamed when he died…” He looked down and ground his teeth. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have found a way to get them to listen.” The words sounded stupid and hollow. He’d had no choice, and if anything, the angels were proving less communicative than demons. They wouldn’t have listened to him. He and the girls would all be dead.
“I do not believe this angel will listen to you at all. I think she is biding her time until she can escape, or kill you and die for her efforts.”
“Fuck me, I hope not. I really… really hope not.” Wincing, he looked at the bleeding, half dead angel, and up to Acelina. “Would you do something like that for Zel? To get revenge for her?”
“If I saw the opportunity to kill the rider for killing Zelandariel, and I knew it would cost me my life, I would be tempted, little soul. I would be terribly tempted. Revenge is always worth it.”
Gulp.
He moved to walk ahead, but stopped and fell back in line with Acelina, and his eyes settled on the angel again. Touching her when she’d tried to summon her armor had shot a lightning bolt through his mind, awoke the batlam rune, and the potram rune, too, when she’d gone back to the white silk clothes.
Batlam. Armor. Weapon. Battle. Fight. Defend. Kill. Protect. Light arced from the rune and attached to the related concepts, but it was a complicated web, and just looking at the rune made him feel tired. With all the string plucking, he was already exhausted, starving, and every moment was a trial. He’d ask Caera for a ride again in a bit, but looking at Moriah in her red-soaked white silk fabric and sandals brightened the potram rune.
Potram rune. Relax. Be comfortable. Be attractive. Light, weightless even. As easy as breathing.
He put on the rune. The other runes were to be wielded in some way, drawn or cast, but the angel runes batlam, royam, and potram, were to be worn. And potram slipped on like an old glove.
Gold light enveloped him, but after a second, it changed to red. And then it was gone.
The demons looked at him, and the ones with eyebrows raised them.
“Uh, David?” Jes asked. “What the fuck?”