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The air shimmered again and she broke off, swallowing whatever fresh invective she’d been about to spew. I watched as she took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her dress. “Just…come and see. Come to the village, and then we can decide what to do.”
I folded my arms. “And if I refuse?”
From somewhere in the distance, I heard a low rumble, like thunder approaching. Lilin narrowed her eyes at me and pointed in the direction of the former chapel.
“Fine,” I sighed. “Just a look. But that’s it.”
“That’s all you’ll need,” Lilin said grimly. She lifted her skirt and stepped over a large branch that had fallen into the path during the explosion. “Follow me, demon.”
“I have a name,” I muttered, but I fell into step behind her. Ah, if only my colleagues could see me now, trailing behind a pissed-off angel after being kidnapped by a mortal just north of adolescence. Truly, I was actualizing my every profane potential.
“Stop complaining,” Lilin said over her shoulder.
I tripped a little over my own feet. “I’m not!”
She snorted. “Not out loud,” she said snippily. “It isn’t just humans I can Sense.”
“Excuse me?” I said, jogging a little to catch up with her. I matched her stride, spinning to walk backwards beside her. “Are you reading my mind?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I have no interest in what passes for thoughts in the mind of a demon.” She made a little face, as though she’d smelled something foul.
“My name is Abigor, you uptight—”
The pulse of energy was too fast for even a warning shimmer. There was a loud crack as a boulder to my left split in half. I bit down on the second half of my sentence and turned to face forward, stalking ahead of her. Five minutes. I would look at this ridiculous, inconsequential village for five minutes, and then I would go home, and I would never—never, not in a thousand millenia—hear the names Lilin or Julian again.
As soon as I stepped through the village gate, though, my resolve faltered.
“Oh,” I said.
Lilin stopped, too. Her hands were clasped at her waist, her eyes large and luminous in the moonlight. “See?”
I had seen my fair share of earthly disasters, of mortal bodies strewn broken across bloodstained ground. But this…
The villagers lay where they’d fallen, as still as death. But that was where the similarity ended. Their skin was still flushed, their eyes open and bright. And, horrifyingly, they all wore the same expression: not pain, not fear, just a wide-eyed bewilderment, as though in their last waking moment they’d been betrayed by someone who held their unconditional trust. The sheer vulnerability, reflected back at me from a dozen faces as I turned in a slow circle, made my stomach twist with something that felt suspiciously like shame.
“Not so easy to walk away now, is it?” Lilin said from behind me.
Hot irritation flooded my face as I turned. She was smirking, her arms folded.
“They’re only mortals,” I retorted, glaring at her.
She raised an eyebrow and pointed. I followed the direction of her arm to see, just behind a low fence, a young mother beside her infant on the ground.
I gritted my teeth. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll help you find Julian. But that’s it. Whatever happens after that is entirely your business.”
She made a satisfied little sound and nodded. “Agreed.”
