Eden sat up the same time as I did, her fingers pressed against my sweat-soaked arm.
I stared at her door, breathing hard, trying to catch my breath and figure out a way to tell her what I knew.
“Was it a nightmare, or did you venture to your old stomping grounds?” she asked, squeezing my arm. “Levi?”
“Give me a sec,” I said, coughing.
That was the thing about breathing in Hell. Even if it was just a few minutes, the sulphur and heat made your throat and lungs feel seared, irritated, and scratchy. Swallowing made it that much worse. It used to annoy me that the feeling carried over, but now it came with the territory of bouncing planes.
“You went under,” she said, concerned. “It seems to affect you more than it used to. And you’re still not healed completely.”
I coughed again, and for a moment I had to suck in a few wheezing breaths to cough again, but my lungs finally settled down enough for me to form words. “I feel weaker every day. It’s alarming how much power my father gave me. Maybe I’m just Cambion after all.” That theory wasn’t something I wanted to share with my girlfriend, one of the most powerful beings in the universe, but it was proving to be right.
“Why did you go without me? You’re not in any shape to—”
“It wasn’t a choice.”
She frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I was summoned.”
“I don’t suppose you can tell me who,” she said, pulling me to the mattress with her and holding me to her chest. Her skin was so soft and warm, her fingers so strong and delicate at the same time, her lips against my temple plush, tender whispers on my skin. It was such a contradiction of where I’d just been and what I’d seen.
“Not here,” I said.
She nodded and squeezed me tight, as if she already knew what I wasn’t saying. We needed to prepare, but my body wasn’t ready for a return. As much as I hated it, I needed to rest.
“I wonder…” she said, sitting up. “I changed Morgan’s memories, his brain. I wonder if I can manipulate your healing process?”
I shrugged. “You can try.”
She held her hand against my stomach and closed her eyes. She was silent for a full minute, then grinned. “I think I…”
The pain from my wounds began to subside. Eden’s heart rate rose, her eyes flickering beneath her closed lids.
“It’s…” she began again, instead concentrating. Her eyes popped open, and she lifted her hand and pulled back the dressings to find flawless skin where my wounds were. “Holy sh…”
“Don’t…!” I raised my voice, then quieted. “Press your luck.”
Her eyes widened. “How do you feel? Do you think I just messed with The Balance?”
“I don’t think you could’ve done it if you did.”
“Right. Sit up.” She patted me. “Sit up! Stretch, move around,” she said, excited.
I did as she commanded. The pain and stiffness were gone. “Whoa. I feel better than better. It’s like it never happened.”
She covered her smile and giggled. “It was like doing surgery in my brain. I could feel your skin, your muscles, your facia, your blood individually; even your cells!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Not getting hurt again, though.”
She shook her head. “Understandable. But if you do, know I’m here for it.”
I chuckled and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, nuzzling her nose with mine. “Thank you, my love.”
She sighed, at total ease. “Any time.”
Eden’s phone pinged. It was Bex, and the text message simply read, “Stop.”
Her laughter chimed across the room. She was the happiest I’d seen her since she’d come back. I couldn’t tell her that my brothers were planning an attack that night. Not yet, anyway. I didn’t want to spoil the moment.
“What?” she asked, her smile fading.
“Not a thing,” I said, tackling her to the bed.
I swept back the nearly white strands that had fallen into her face, her ice blue eyes staring into mine, her bottom lip full and glistening from her biting it the second before.
“Except that I love you. I love you, Eden. Whatever happens next, it’s us. You and me.”
She nodded and then touched my cheek.
“I know.”
“You know?”
She nodded and then giggled when I grabbed her side. She laughed out loud, not trying at all to escape my grip. I could tell she was holding back. I wasn’t even sure if I was actually tickling her. But what I had to say next would put all this to an end, so her pretending was fine. More than fine. My black heart needed the white lie, and she likely knew it.
When I stopped, she relaxed, but the content smile I expected wasn’t there.
“We’ll make it, one way or another.”
“I’m limited,” she said, biting her lip again as she fell deep into thought. “What if … what if I can’t help you? What if I can’t help my family?”
“What-ifs don’t exist, Eden. We’ll handle what comes along.”
“If it doesn’t, though,” she said, her gaze rising to meet mine. She squeezed my shoulders with her fingers. “If it doesn’t, we still have Gehenna, to use it for what it was created for.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you remember what it was like apart? Every thought of you was painful. I felt sick. And I thought about you nearly every moment. When you were in the Oubliette it was worse.” She looked at the pastel painting the sunset outside had cast on her windows and bit on her perfect oval thumbnail. “Humans know death. They know injury, but they don’t know pain.”
I frowned. “No?”
She looked at me. “You don’t know pain until you’ve been on your hands and knees begging God to heal your heart.”
“Pretty sure humans know that pain.”
“Not the kind that spans lifetimes.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead, then the wet line that spanned from the outside corner of her eye to her hairline. “We won’t need Gehenna. I promise.”
“I feel it. They’ve decided,” Eden said.
I sighed, hoping our moment of peace could last a bit longer. “We need to bounce.”
She nodded, crawling out from under me then standing next to the bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my elbows perched on my knees, looking up at her. “We don’t have to do it now.”
“Yes, we do,” she said, reaching out for me.
The second I stood, we phased, and those same platinum strands that I had combed back were now blowing wildly against her face.
Eden stood two feet away from me in her short silk baby blue nightgown, lace straps curving over her shoulders and bordering the bottom hem. Her exquisiteness was the opposite of anything I’d ever seen in Hell. It felt wrong for her to be standing there, and it also felt wrong that I was home.
“No, you’re not,” she said, reaching her hand out to mine.
“You’re reading minds now? What was the point in bouncing planes?” I asked, taking her hand.
Her bare feet navigated the dirt ground riddled with glass, broken cement, and burning refuse as if she were taking a stroll on a white sand beach.
“Not reading minds, just feelings, and that expression on your face made it pretty obvious.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We should keep moving.”
“I feel it, too.” Something big had already picked up on our presence.
“Were you here earlier with Ramiel?”
“Yes. There are traitors on both sides. In Hell and in Heaven.”
Eden’s thoughts scrolled across her face. “There are two now?”
I stopped and held up my hands. “Just hear me out.”
She glanced behind us. “Hurry.”
“My mother came to me. No, that’s inaccurate. She met me on a neutral plane … ish.”
“That was reckless!” She shook her head, disgusted. “She could’ve been cast out and negated everything we went through to get her there. Everything she went through. What were you thinking?”
“That what she had to tell me would only take a moment.”
“Where did you meet her?” she asked.
I cleared my throat. “Right outside the gates.”
Eden’s mouth fell open. “I thought she got in?”
“She did. She had help bypassing the system, though, to get inside before my father got to her.”
Eden looked around, then pulled me with her, sprinting to the next building. She leapt up broken pieces of wood, and we landed on a collapsing roof, three stories up. Her eyes scanned the horizon before we ducked behind what was once the roof access to an elevator shaft.
“Someone will be punished,” she said. “Maybe by me. Levi, what did you do?”
“She was let in through the eighth pearl.”
“The eighth pearl is small and doesn’t open for anyone.”
“It does for the Awal.”
“Do you mean AWOLL? Or awal as in first in Arabic?”
“You know the story of the first brothers?”
She was getting impatient. “Cain and Abel? Of course.”
I sighed. “Mamá was owed a favor. Cain convinced Abel to open the Eighth Pearl.”
Eden thought for half a second, then waved her hands in the air. “Way-way-way-way-wait. Why would Cain owe your mother a favor? After all this time and she hadn’t cashed it in? And how in God’s name did Cain get his brother—who he murdered—to help him satisfy that favor?”
“Uh…” I said, already knowing her reaction. “Mamá was the whisperer in Cain’s ear.”
Eden lowered her chin. “Petra convinced Cain to kill Abel?”
“She taught Abel how to fashion a knife to protect his livestock. She also told Cain to disembowel Abel with that knife.”
“What? How is it possible that your answers make less sense of all this?”
“She was playing both sides to create jealousy and piss off the Almighty, Eden, that’s what she did back then. Listen, she helped them both, so they both owed her favors.
“So they’re the two traitors.”
“Three.”
She blinked. “And Ramiel.”
Even with her infinite intellectual power, it took her a moment to put the pieces together. She nodded. “Cain is old. One of the oldest here. He got the sword for Bex?”
“He was also one of the most trusted—enough to breach Lucifer’s temple. This was their chance. They’ve been conspiring there for centuries,” I said, pointing to the gates of the dungeons. “Since the last time we found our way back to each other. They knew we were their one chance.”
“One chance for what?”
“They haven’t told me that part yet.”
“And you trust them? Levi!”
“We have to go,” I said, peeking around the elevator shaft top. “We have to go now!”
“I know. I feel them. But Ramiel and Cain are traitors. Apparently, Abel is, too. Levi, we can’t link arms with them. I definitely can’t! I—”
The ground began to tremble.
I grabbed Eden’s arm. “It’s not just minions this time.”
She frowned. “What? Who’s with them?”
“Paymon. They know we’re here. We have to go.” I pulled on her, but she seemed mesmerized by the glowing fires bringing up the rear of the herd of demons barreling over the carcasses of still-smoldering vehicles and buildings.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
“Paymon has never left a contender alive. Not once. If my brother struggles at all with both of us, he’ll keep us from reaching the dungeons. If my other brothers arrive, we’re in trouble.”
I looked past her, seeing hundreds of smaller demons crawling over the landscape toward us, and two larger ones, slogging along like trolls. Slow, but powerful. Their drool hit the ground and created holes in the sand, melting everything it touched.
“He can’t beat me. I’m a little curious, actually, to push myself … to see just how much damage I can do.”
“Eden,” I said with a sigh. “I’m more human than ever. You can’t concentrate on Paymon and…”
She turned to me. “Keep you alive?”
I frowned. I hated that thought, but it was the truth.
She shook her head, seeming frustrated with herself and a bit disoriented. “I don’t … I don’t know what I…”
“It’s Paymon. I’ll explain later. Let’s go!”
We sprinted together toward the dungeons, dodging the elephant-sized fire balls they shot at us from behind. Eden came from the side and shoved me fifty yards off course, and I rolled, narrowly missing a winged creature that had been unleashed on us. She fought with it briefly, wasting no time in bringing it to the ground. In one leap she was on its back, breaking its neck with one twist and riding it to the ground with a flurry of soot shooting in every direction.
She ran to me, sliding on her knees. “You okay?” she asked, helping me to my feet.
“Yeah… I think I rolled my ankle.” I laughed without humor. I was no longer Leviathan. I was becoming more human with each passing minute.
“Can you run?” Eden asked.
I nodded, but I could barely keep ahead of the herd before; now it was a fair chase. I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t be able to bounce back to Earth’s plane.
Horns bleated, and hundreds of marching feet vibrated the ground beneath us. War cries and shrieking could be heard over the winds of Hell.
“They didn’t bring as many this time,” Eden said, running alongside me. She could’ve reached the dungeons by now, but she held back, keeping pace.
“They don’t need to. Paymon is enough.”
We jogged to a stop in front of the doors, glowing from the fires that whipped off the old iron toward us and more violently the closer we came.
“We can’t phase,” she said. “So how do we get in?”
“They’ll open the doors.”
She glanced behind us. The herd was closing in. The crawlers had slowed, giving the larger, strong demons time to catch up.
“When?” Eden said, yelling over the grunts and shrieking.
“C’mon, Ramiel,” I said under my breath, looking up.
I glanced back again, seeing that my brother’s small army would be upon us in the next minute. I didn’t want to yell Ramiel’s name, but he wasn’t giving us much choice.
Recognition lit Eden’s face. “They’re using us as bait. We have to bounce. This is a trap.”
I grabbed her hands, but something was different. She felt it too, and her face paled. “You can’t bounce.”
I clenched my jaw, and then took a rock and threw it at the doors. It vaporized immediately. “Ramiel! You son-of-a-bitch!”
“I thought you said you trusted them!” Eden said. Her blue nightgown was covered in dirt, just like her hair and face.
“I thought you said not to!”
Eden’s mouth fell open. She was too busy worrying about me being stuck in Hell to sense our escape was seconds away. She gripped my shirt. “Maybe I can do it for the both of us. Maybe…”
The doors opened behind me. We were both yanked inside, the iron hinges red hot and whining as they closed again.
I bent over and grabbed my knees in an attempt to catch my breath, hacking at the smoke and sulfur burning my throat.
“Are you okay?” Eden said, kneeling next to me.
A loud bang rocked the dungeon doors, forcing dust to fall from the ceiling like rain.
Eden looked up at our host with vengeance in her eyes. “Why did you draw them in, Ramiel? They know we’re here, now. They won’t stop until they get inside!” she seethed.
“Exactly,” he said, oddly at ease. He turned away from us, taking a few steps before he paused. “Come with me. It has finally come to pass and knowing Paymon we don’t have much time.”
“Come to pass?” Eden said, helping me to stand. “What the hell does that even mean?”
He continued walking.
“Ramiel!” Eden yelled. “Mind letting us in on the plan we apparently helped launch?”
He didn’t stop again. “Come with me. You’ll know soon enough.”