“Where have you been?” Corson demanded as he sliced the head off a lower-level demon with his talons.
He scowled when I pulled Aisling in front of me, but his scowl vanished when he saw the bite on her neck. His gaze flew to me, and his mouth closed.
Aisling’s forehead furrowed as she studied Corson, but a squealing shout drew everyone’s attention to the horde of gobalinus rushing toward us. I’d seen the two-foot-tall, hideous creatures while in Hell, but I’d hoped to never see the flesh-eating monsters with their yellow eyes, warts, piranha-like teeth, and leathery skin again.
One of them launched itself at Aisling, but I snagged it out of the air and snapped its neck before tearing its head away. She lunged forward to spear three of them while Corson and Wren took out a few more. Three of them leapt at me. I caught one and threw it aside and stabbed the other, but the third grasped my leg and started clawing its way toward my thigh.
I grabbed it as Aisling tossed her spear aside, pulled out a knife, and stabbed it. I kicked it back before cutting its head off. I took down another demon before throwing Aisling my sword and claiming the sword of the demon I killed.
“Where are River and Kobal?” I shouted to Corson.
Before Corson could reply, a pack of hellhounds burst through the fighters. The two at the front of the pack were Crux and Phenex, the hounds that resided within Kobal. The hellhounds looked like wolves with their vivid amber eyes, but they were easily twice the size of a wolf, and their claws could eviscerate someone with a single swipe of their paw.
When I kicked another gobalinus, it soared over the heads of the crowd as I stabbed the next little monster. A sudden breeze ruffled my hair, and I glanced up as three repulsive creatures swooped overhead.
“What are those?” Aisling asked.
“Don’t you know?” I asked her.
“No.”
I’d assumed all demons knew what the other types of demons were, but I must have been wrong. Maybe she was young for a demon, or maybe because a seal locked the erinyes away for thousands of years, she’d never learned about them.
“They’re erinyes.” I recognized the ugly women from when I first entered Hell with River. These things were fleeing Hell as River and I headed deeper into it. “They’re better known to humans as furies.”
Aisling gulped as one of the erinyes dove into the crowd and rose out again. Two humans dangled from her hands as she streaked upward. The snakes of her hair waved about her face when she stopped to hover over the crowd before releasing the humans.
The erinyes dove for another victim when a drakónsnatched her out of the air and swallowed her whole. “I’m getting so I like those things alotmore,” Corson said.
I was too, and I wasreallyglad they’d decided to throw their loyalty River’s way instead of toward what remained of the fallen angels. More erinyes swept overhead, but when they went to dive toward the crowd, a brilliant blast of golden light slammed into their chests and tore them apart.
The crowd parted to reveal the golden angel, Raphael, with his feet braced apart. The energy he created as he absorbed life from the earth reflected off his silver breastplate and caused his white-blond hair to dance around his shoulders. His violet eyes were bright in the glow of the golden light as he wielded his extraordinary, lethal ability.
Raphael turned his attention to the remaining two erinyes. They turned and tried to fly away, but the lifeforce Raphael wielded erupted from his palms and shredded them before they could get away.
“That ability is amazing,” Aisling said.
“It is,” I agreed. “But with so many of our own on the ground, he won’t be able to use it much against the craetons on the ground.”
“But he can take out more of those things.”
“That was the last of the erinyes,” I said.
“How do you know?” Aisling asked.
“Because I was there when they broke out of Hell; I know how many of them remained.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but a gobalinus plowed into her leg and knocked her off balance. She pulled out a knife and plunged it into the creature’s temple. When she lifted the kicking, screaming creature away from her, I cut off its head.
“I hate those things,” she said as she kicked its body away.
More lower-level demons broke through the front line, and the drakóns swept over the land to unleash more fire. One of them was fully engulfed in blue flames as it remained low. The other had extinguished its fire and was soaring higher. When it turned to the side to come back toward us, I spotted River on its back.
The drakón plunged and turned sideways until its wing nearly skimmed the ground. Lower-level demons and enemy troops scattered to get out of its way before it barreled them over, but it still took out a good number of them.
I drove my sword through another demon as I watched the drakón rise higher into the sky again. Considering there was no flesh to pierce on the drakón, I didn’t know if it was possible to kill them, but if the craetons saw River on its back, they would do everything in their power to destroy the beast. The second drakón blasted another wave of fire that tore up the ground as it swept toward the woods.
The flames burst high into the air before dying back as they consumed what little fuel there was to keep them burning. When they died back, I was able to see the fresh wave of craetons pouring from the woods in a never-ending parade of malicious intent.
