AllFreeNovel
Share Us
How the—I started to ask Sariel, only to be tackled by Reese into a hug.
“Holy shit, Aria,” she said breathlessly, arms tight around me. “You’rehere.”
“Andyou’rehere,” I said back, oh-so-smartly. “You might not want to hug me—you know I haven’t washed in a while.”
She parted from me with her hands on my shoulders, looking concerned. “What, did they not have bathrooms in Hell?”
“We weren’t there long enough to need one.”
For some reason, her expression morphed into confusion.
Before I could say anything else, Neo, Marilyn, and Johnny all exited the same building, big-eyed.
“Sariel? Aria?” Johnny asked first. “How did you get here?”
“The Devil himself teleported us,” Sariel said, mouth set in a grim line. “Where is ‘here?’ And why are you guys here, too?”
The other four exchanged looks.
“The Devil was nice enough to save you time in getting to us, then,” Neo drawled. “We’re in The Middle of Nowhere, Poland. It’s been a great time here.”
“Wait. You’re both….” Reese looked me up and down, then looked Sariel up and down. “...wearing the same outfits?”
I blinked. I turned to look at Sariel for a second—he was just as confused as me.
“You’re roughed-up and dirty, too,” Marilyn commented. “What happened to you? Did you get into a tussle with a minor demon?”
“What?” I blurted out, bewildered. Shouldn’t sheknowwhy we were scuffed up?
Actually, now that attention was called to it, I noticed that the other fourweren’tscuffed up. Not only that, but they weren’t wearing the same clothes, didn’t have exhaustion written all over them, weren’t pale with hunger, and looked like they’d showered recently…
“What, what?” she asked back. As a witch, she’d been affected the worst by the magic drain, yet she looked… fine.
“We didn’t fight with demons. We were running from Guardians,” I explained, though I felt stupid for doing so.
Johnny straightened up. “Guardians chased you? Wait… didn’t you say you were teleported in? Are there Guardians in here?”
“No, I— We wereallrunning from the Guardians. Azazel was there. Don’t you remember? It was only a few hours ago!”
They were all clearly stunned into silence. I turned to Sariel again, hoping to see that I hadn’t gone crazy and that this was weird. His brows were furrowed in bewilderment, too, which comforted me in at least that regard.
“Aria…” Reese breathed. She had let go of me, but she was still near me. “We last saw you a month ago.”
My eyes were the ones to go wide this time. “W… what? We were only in Hell for a few hours….”
Neo clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “I almost forgot about that—time moves differently in Heaven and Hell. Slower in Heaven, faster in Hell. One hour in Heaven is about one minute on Earth, while one hour in Hell is about ten days on Earth.”
Reese turned to glare at him. “Thatwould’ve been nice to know earlier, Neo. You know, when we were all worried sick about them?”
He looked a little sheepish, shrugging. “I’ve never been to Hell, so it slipped my mind. Sorry.”
“What the fuck,” I said, agape. “We lost a wholemonth?”
“Seems like it,” Marilyn said. “No wonder you didn’t come back. Also, no offense, but you two look like shit. How about we get you a room, clothes without holes, and some real food before we exchange stories?”
All at once, the sticky feeling of my unwashed skin, the emptiness of my stomach, and the fatigue weighing down my eyes hit me all at once. All of those things sounded really, really nice right about now.
“Again, where are we, exactly? What is this place?” Sariel demanded. He was eyeing our surroundings warily, tiredly—his state wasn’t any better than mine.
