Shax scowled at Caim before turning to plunge back into the battle. Hawk and Corson assumed defensive postures before me as they battled back some of the escapees from Hell. Caim fought against my back as a horde of gobalinus poured toward us.
I could see and hear the others, but I felt an odd sense of detachment from the world around me as Lucifer’s words ran on a loop through my head.
A look within the gateway revealed that the fires had receded further. The shadows were creeping back in to reclaim the roadway once more. However, those shadows couldn’t hide what continued to pour out of Hell. I didn’t know what most of those creatures were, but they caused the hair on my nape to rise as they savagely attacked anything in their way.
Screams filled the air as some of them toppled off the road and into the fires. The stench of blood increased as more humans, demons, and escapees were struck down. A breeze blew strands of my hair forward to tickle my cheeks. It was such a normal sensation in a world that had become anything but normal as time slowed around me.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
He probably lied, I told myself, but what if he didn’t?
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
I gazed around the blood and body-covered field. This is what the future held for Earth and humans.
There would never be undoing the damage already done, but what if I could stop more of it from happening?
Then, through the demons and Hell creatures battling on the field, a shimmer of radiance caught my attention. My breath sucked in and my heart kicked against my ribs when Angela materialized fifty feet away from me. Unaware she stood there, the fighters moved through her, but she was as clear as day to me. She stared at me with an expression of such sadness that tears burned my eyes in response to it.
The human Angela had died at seven, but the knowledge in her kelly green eyes made her appearfarolder. Caim had said the angels were using her to try to communicate with me, and gazing at her now I knew he was right.
Her wheat blonde hair took on a golden hue that burned my eyes as it spread over her. Whatever the angels were trying to tell me, they were going to make sure I understood it this time.
The battle faded away from my view as Angela steadily approached me. When she stopped beside the gateway, she lifted her hand over it. She mimicked the gesture she’d made when I sliced my hand open and held my palm over the gateway before entering Hell. At that time, all my blood had succeeded in doing was chasing back the Hell shadows.
“Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
Angela was ten feet away from me when Hawk staggered away from the lower-level demon he’d been fighting. “Holy shit!” he shouted. His head turned to follow Angela as she strolled unerringly through the battle. “Where thefuckdid the kid come from?”
They could see her too? I’d been the only one capable of seeing Angela on Earth, but this Angela was vastly different than the last time I’d seen her. She stopped five feet away from me. Corson lifted his arm and planted it against my chest as he shoved me back a step. His shoulders and chest heaved, blood dripped from his blue-black hair as he sneered at her.
“It’s okay, Corson,” I whispered to him. “It’s Angela, and it’s okay.”
“I know what she is, and she’s not coming anywhere near you,” he snarled.
“Oh,” Caim breathed from beside me. “Brother.” Then his eyes turned toward me while Angela kept her hand over the gateway.
All around us, the fighters stopped to watch the ethereal child who was as terrifying in her sudden arrival as she was aweing in her beauty. Her golden aura grew stronger until her eyes burned away and light blazed from them.
CHAPTER 31
Kobal
I watched as the last of my followers slipped through the gateway before turning to those who remained with me. “After you,” I said.
I waved my hand at the gateway as the dais at the far end of the room collapsed into the fires. Sparks and flames shot upward in a deafening roar. The hounds crouched; their hackles lifted. The colorful stones of the pathway fell steadily away as the ground crumpled toward us.
The flames devoured more and more of the throne room until the hounds were flattened against my legs and only five feet separated them from death.
“Gallha,” I commanded them when Bale stepped into the gateway behind everyone else.
The hounds slid away from me and bounded into the gateway as they followed my command to go. My gaze ran over what remained of the throne room, a room built specifically for me to rule from.
No longer my world. And it wasn’t. My world was Earth now. My life was with River, and I had to get to her.
Turning, I watched as the last of the hounds slipped into the gateway before I followed them. I made my way unerringly through the darkness until I stepped out and into the chaos of those fleeing Hell. Glancing into the fiery pit below, I noted the scorch marks left on the walls by the receding flames. Below me, surviving creatures and demons poked their heads out of the side tunnels they’d taken refuge in.
An echoing roar issued from within the flames. The force of the bellow fanned the fires upward as the ground quaked beneath my feet.
