“It doesn’t work that way. I am here, the gateway will open into Hell here. On Earth or in Hell, I would have to travel to where your brothers are to open a gateway there.”
“Oh.”
“So eager to go back to Hell?”
“Not at all,” I muttered as in the distance a trumpet sounded. “Manticore.”
“Yes.”
“Will there be some kind of memorial for Morax?”
“Demons don’t do such things.”
“Maybe it would help Verin and the others to get some closure or something. I’d like to say goodbye to him. I didn’t know him well, but he was a good man.”
“He was.”
I yawned and closed my eyes as Kobal’s warmth enveloped me. “I’d like to stop at Pearl’s on the way back,” I murmured.
He tensed against me. “Why?”
“To see the ghosts or, hopefully, not see them. We can’t fix what was broken, but maybe the closing of the gateway made it possible for the ghosts to become invisible to humans again. I hope so anyway.”
CHAPTER 39
River
I woke when the truck came to a stop and lifted my chin off my chest. We’d been traveling with only a few minutes for breaks to eat and use the bathroom for the past six days. We’d managed to scrounge up a couple more vehicles and gas, but more demons and humans still walked than rode.
I hadn’t seen Jackie, Sarah, or Captain Tresden at all in the past six days. I assumed they’d been killed or else Tresden would be trying to lead the humans, and I’m sure Jackie would have complained about something by now. I knew Sarah would have launched herself onto Hawk and not left his side. She had to be dead if she wasn’t following him closer than his shadow.
I had seen Lena waving at me a few days ago from the back of the crowd. She’d been with a group of other nymphs, both male and female who had also waved at me. Verin had stopped crying on day two and mutely followed along with a broken look on her face. Calah and Lopan remained at her side, nudging her onward when she stopped walking and stood there as if she’d forgotten what she was doing.
Since I closed the gateway, the demons had become my new best friends, as had a fair amount of the humans who had mostly avoided me like I had the plague before I’d entered Hell. They all knew I’d been used to topple the seals, there was no keeping that secret in the bag when a fair amount of the demons had been there to witness it. Apparently, my willingness to die for them outweighed the fact that I’d let loose a lot of the things we heard screaming and hunting through the days and nights. I was sure the vast amount of power I’d displayed both times hadn’t hurt either.
Over the course of the journey, I kept waiting for something to jump out of the woods and eat us all. My nerves were stretched as thin as they could get, and I knew everyone else’s were too. It was only when exhaustion completely took over that any of us slept.
Most of the humans, and me, had stopped jumping at each new shriek, bellow, or garbled roar. We’d adapted to our new environment faster than I’d expected, but there was no other choice. It was adapt, turn into a neurotic mess, or die in this world.
Along the way, we’d encountered more akalia vine and other creatures that we’d destroyed. We’d been forced to take a different route because of obstacles that hadn’t been in our way before, but we’d finally made it here. Soon we would be back at the wall; soon I would have my brothers with me again.
I tried not to think about it too much. So many things could happen to them before I reached them. Now that I was so close to getting them back, I felt a growing dread that something would happen to them first. The wall didn’t offer the same protection it once had, not when there were flying monsters all over the place now.
There was nothing I could do though; we couldn’t travel any faster. Caim and Raphael had both saved me, but I didn’t trust either of them enough to fly me home, and I knew Kobal would never agree to it. I wanted my brothers back, but I couldn’t risk falling into Lucifer’s hands by rushing out to them.
I also had to know about the fate of the ghosts.
Wincing, I rubbed at my sore neck before blinking at the gas pumps. My gaze traveled to the plate glass windows of Pearl’s Truck Stop. It had been night the last time I was here, and the place had been creepier than a tomb. Now, the sun shining off the windows made it almost inviting.
“I hope I can’t see them,” I said.
“Perhaps,” Kobal said from beside the open passenger-side window. He’d been walking next to the truck, and me, when I’d dozed off.
“I hope we can’t see them either,” Hawk said from the driver’s seat.
“You’re a demon now,” Kobal said to him as he opened the door for me. “You’ll see them no matter what.”
About a mile away from us, a burst of fire from the drakón surged into the air before dying down. “They’re going to set the world on fire,” I murmured.
