“Did he lead you here on purpose?” Nadine asked.
If she’d asked that question a year ago, I would have said probably, but I knew better now. Caim was a little crazy, a whole lot annoying sometimes, but he was on our side.
“No,” Corson said. “He didn’t know we wouldn’t be able to leave this town once we entered. I want to choke him most of the time, but he’s a loyal asshole.”
“Just not loyal to Lucifer,” Aisling said.
“He wouldn’t be loyal to us either if we decided to destroy the world,” I said. “He’s loyal to life, people, and the continuation of the world. He didn’t fall far enough to rid himself of that allegiance.”
* * *
Aisling
I grasped the mug of water Lix set on the table in front of me. “There’s no alcohol in this place,” he muttered as he took the chair across from me.
“Are you going to survive not having it?” Corson asked.
“I’m not sure any of us are going to survive this,” Lix replied.
I wasn’t much of a drinker, but I suddenly wished the potent mjéod was filling my mug instead of water. Glancing around the barroom, I wasn’t surprised to find it full of demons and humans. Even without alcohol, a bar was a social place, and people and demons wanted to be where other people and demons were.
Most of them drew closer to us as their curiosity attracted them to the newcomers. The sympathetic looks on their faces set my teeth on edge. I had no idea what was going on here, but they all acted like we were as good as dead. Even the ones who sat on the barstools thirty feet away were turned with their backs to the bar so they could give us sympathetic looks.
Studying the humans, I didn’t see anything threatening about them, and their souls were what I was used to seeing. They had good, strong souls, but fear made people do crazy things and there was alotof fear in this town.
The middle of the room was filled with tables and chairs while booths lined the outer wood-paneled wall. The bar was on the wall furthest to the left, but no bottles lined the shelves, and nothing remained of the glass in the mirror frame hanging behind the shelves. The windows at the front of the building were dirty, but the sun’s rays illuminated the room as there was no electricity.
Antlers made up the lamps hanging overhead; spiders had turned them into their jungle gym. The layer of dust on the lamps was so thick it was impossible to tell if there was once any color to them. Square and rectangle patches of darker wood revealed where pictures once hung, but those pictures were all gone.
Randy sat to my right with Nadine and Wren beside him. Brushed back from his handsome face, Randy’s sandy blond hair was graying at the temples. His warm brown eyes were full of love as he spoke with Wren. The warmth and strength of his soul made me smile while Nadine’s gave me a sense of comfort.
The three of them were eagerly catching each other up on the details of their lives. Wren had revealed she was a demon now and Corson’s Chosen, she told them about something called the Abyss, the horsemen, the fallen angels, and the battle at the wall. Everyone in the room hung on her every word.
The most shock Randy and Nadine revealed was over her and Corson; they kept glancing between the two of them as if they couldn’t believe it. Wren tapped her fingers on the table, shifted in her seat, and pulled at the collar of her shirt as she revealed this detail.
Corson clasped one of her hands and held it on the table, but it did little to calm her. The glimmer in his orange eyes said he would kill Randy if he hurt Wren.
“I had no choice but to go to the demons,” Wren blurted. “I needed their help to protect us after the seals fell.”
Randy rested his hand on top of the one drumming against the table. “I would have done the same. Things have changed a lot since we last saw each other.”
Some of the tension eased from Wren’s shoulders, and when her head bowed, Corson rubbed her neck.
“You did the right thing, Wren,” Randy assured her and squeezed her hand before releasing it.
She smiled at him and relaxed further into Corson’s touch. “Did you make it all the way across the Wilds?” she asked Randy.
“We did,” Randy said as he grasped Nadine’s hand.
“And?” Wren prompted.
The sad look on his face said what he’d discovered there before he spoke. “And we mapped out more of the land and know where batches of demons have clustered, but we didn’t discover anywhere safer for the Wilders to live. We made it to the wall in California before deciding it was time to return home. That was when we got trapped here.”
“How long have you been trapped here?” Wren asked.
“Almost a month,” Nadine said.
“Whattrapped you here?” Corson asked.
