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“Would you rather take your chances with the lightning?”
I shook my head. “No. I really wouldn’t.”
Abaddon nodded. “Follow me, then. And stay close.”
“Shouldn’t I be leading the way? I am the Lightbringer, after all.”
“And I’m the Guardian. Do as I say,Lightbringer,” he said, lowering his tone and adding a cheeky smirk.
“Really? Heaven is in pieces around us, and you’reflirting?”
“I am trying to embrace levity.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Keep working on it,” I said, though I returned the cheeky smile.
It was stupid, the two of us sharing a moment of playfulness amidst all…this… but it had made me feel better.
The feeling was short lived.
Gusts of wind began to push past us, ruffling our hair and wings, and kicking up fingers of dirt as they swirled and danced, forming small dust devils. I watched them as we walked and noticed that more and more were forming, and they seemed to be crowding around us, almost intentionally. But surely wind didn’t have any sort of?—
“Hey,” I heard, whispered right against my ear. Not only did it scare the living daylights out of me, but it also made me spin around on the spot, searching desperately for the source.
There was no one there.
“What is it?” asked Abaddon.
“I thought I heard someone,” I said.
“There is no one here.”
I felt a cold chill tear through me, and a wail began to rise behind me. When I turned to face it, I thought I saw someone rushing in my direction—but it wasn’t a person. It was as if thewind and debris itself had taken shape, and a pillar of dust in the shape of a person were sprinting towards me, their mouth open in a wide O of anguish, pain, and terror.
“Heeeeeeeeelp!” roared the specter as it charged straight through me.
My body temperature plummeted in an instant. I felt as though I had been dumped in a bathtub full of ice. Suddenly they were all around me. What I had taken to be dust devils stretched up into humanoid, intangible, forms; they raced around me like a whirlpool, ethereal fingers reaching, trying to grab my arms, my legs, my hair.
They cried out to me, begged for help; begged me to help them find their way. They sounded lost, in pain, and so horribly afraid. One of the specters rushed at me, the visage of a woman, wailing, hair the color of smoke. She screamed at me and reached her hand deep into my chest.
I felt my heart seize and stop beating.
Breathless I stood, watching this specter as it demanded that I help her, or she would not stop until I was dead; until I joined her and all the others. At the corner of my quickly fading vision, a solid form moved, forcing its way through the swirling spirits.
Abaddon pushed his way into position in front of me, putting himself between me and the specter, disrupting her physical form by swiping at her with the back of his hand. He beat his wings powerfully, scattering the remaining ghosts.
The pressure on my heart disappeared, my chest lightened, but the experience had left me weak and gasping for breath. Abaddon picked me up in his arms and started moving toward the bridge.
“Sarakiel,” he said, “Are you alright?”
“Couldn’t… breathe…” I choked. “What… was that?”
“I do not know, and I do not care to know.”
“They sounded like… people.”
“Perhaps they were, but they are not anymore. We must move quickly; they will not be gone for long.”
“Please,” came a harsh voice from everywhere and nowhere, “Please, help us Sarakiel. Help us!”
