He’ll be okay. He can survive fire. He’s the only one who can help everyone else escape if the gateway above is closed.
My arms and legs pumped faster. If I died in here, there would be no stopping the outflow of Hell, and if I made it out alive…
“I’ll tell you and only you my secret,”Lucifer whispered through my memories.
I didn’t know why he’d told me his secret. Maybe because he believed there was nothing I could do to close the gateway. Maybe because he believed it would inflict more suffering on me and KobalifI escaped and I revealed Lucifer’s secret to him. Or maybe Lucifer had simply believed it impossible that I would get away from him. He was arrogant and crazy enough to believe that anyway. And he’d never seen Caim’s betrayal coming.
Either way, he had spilled the beans, but was it all a lie?
Most likely, he was a psychotic lunatic after all.
“Must go faster!” Hawk panted from behind me.
My heart sank when I chanced a look back and saw the fires rising higher and still no sign of Kobal. The flames seemed to be chasing us, determined not to let us get away. A few hundred feet below, more demons and seal creatures fled, but others were consumed by the fire as it continued relentlessly onward.
So focused on the rising flames, I tripped over a gobalinus that went screeching past me. Righting my balance, I tore my attention away from the destruction and back to escaping.
Fifty feet, it was all we had until we made it to the top. It felt like a million miles as my legs trembled, my lungs burned for air, and my throat felt as parched as a desert. The throne room had strengthened me further, but I hadn’t completely recovered from the effects of the wraiths or the outburst of power that had destroyed the seals, and I felt myself flagging now.
A flap of wings drew my attention overhead as Caim soared into view. He landed soundlessly beside me. “It’s time we get you out of here.”
Before I knew what he intended, he locked me against his side. My feet continued to run, kicking through the air when he lifted me off the ground. “Wait! Not without my friends!” I shouted.
“Take her out of here!” Corson commanded.
“No!”
My protests were ignored as Caim rose further away from them. His wings beat against the air while he propelled us upwards. I gazed down at the seething fires and the thousands of creatures seeking to escape them. Though the flames still snapped at the air and made me feel as if I’d sweat off about thirty pounds, the fires had stopped rising.
Caim shot out of the gateway like a torpedo. He rose until he became a backdrop against the sun as he held me aloft for a minute. For all I knew, it could be a hundred degrees on Earth right now, yet I felt as if I’d been plunged into a cool lake.
My eyes closed and my head tilted back to absorb the power of the sun’s rays and the flow of life on Earth. I’d forgotten how much stronger the energy was here than in Hell, how effortlessly I pulled it into me, and it became easier for me to do so the further from the gateway we traveled.
The energy of the air and the rays of the sun flooded my cells and strengthened me. Particles of the sky brushed against my cheeks. The sway of the trees below caused me to sway with them. The fresh scent of the nearby stream flooded my nostrils and my pulse beat in rhythm with its flow. My fingers dug deeper into Caim’s arm as tears pricked my eyes. It was all so beautiful and wondrous.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
My eyes flew open when Lucifer’s words slid insidiously through my mind again. I met Caim’s wide eyes. The look of reverence on his face stole my breath.
“I can feel the connection in you,” he murmured before shaking his head. “Soempty.”
I knew he spoke of the emptiness within himself from the severing of his bond to life.
“I’m sorry.” Those two words felt completely inadequate for the loss he’d endured. However, he’d made his choice when he followed Lucifer. The choices he made now had saved me from Lucifer, but his connection to life could never be reestablished.
He didn’t respond as he lowered us to the ground. The clang of steel against steel, the retort of gunfire, and the screams of the wounded and dying pierced the silence that had enveloped me when we’d first broken free of Hell.
Now, all I could smell was blood, gunpowder, and the acrid stench of burning rubber. Caim’s feet touched on the edge of the gateway as all around us more died. I spotted Erin and Vargas through the haze of smoke wafting from the inferno consuming one of the trucks. At least half a dozen skelleins were swinging their swords through the air and cutting down anything that got too close.
“It’s an angel!”
The bellow came from my right, and Shax charged at us. He swung a broadsword over his head with lethal intent. “Wait!” I cried.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Corson shouted as he leapt out of the gateway to land in front of me. He held his hands up to keep Shax back. Shax skidded to a halt in front of him. “You can’t kill this one… yet.”
“Thanks,” Caim said from beside me.
Corson glanced at Caim over his shoulder as Hawk emerged from the gateway to stand beside him. “Still not sure about you,” Corson said to Caim before focusing on Shax. “He claims to be on our side. He saved River and turned against Lucifer in front of all of us. He stays alive unless he tries something, and then have at him.”
