“COME ON! THIS WAY!”
Milo grabbed Alexa’s arm and pulled her into a run. Together they rocketed towards the only clear path away from the winged demons and the army of the dead, following the black river. The strong winds pushed against them, and Alexa kicked off hard with her legs to keep from slowing down. The fear of what was behind them propelled her forward with a new sense of strength.
Alexa clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. She swore to herself if she lived to see Sabrielle again, she’d punch the smile off the archangel’s face.
“Where are we going?” Alexa shouted as she jumped over a black boulder that could slice a person in half.
“No idea,” came Milo’s voice ahead of her. “I thought running was the best option until we figure out what to do.”
“We can’t run forever,” yelled Alexa over the roaring winds. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to stop and face them.”
“I know that,” yelled Milo, “but how do you plan on doing that? We don’t have any weapons.”
Alexa hurtled over some rocks and cursed Sabrielle again. “I don’t understand how this could be the first task. Did they expect us to fight these demons with our bare hands?”
“Looks like it.”
“Salt would work,” said Alexa, remembering how she’d vanquished her very first demon without a blade. “If we could find some.”
“I think we would be more likely to find water than salt here,” shouted Milo as he put on speed.
Alexa ran forward to catch up. “So what happens—”
By the time Alexa heard the beating of wings, it was already too late.
Claws ripped at her back. She felt searing pain in her left shoulder as talons hooked her. With a powerful force, she was heaved backwards. Her feet left solid ground, and she was airborne. The world tilted, and her scream died in her throat.
Alexa watched as Milo’s form got smaller and smaller. She heard screams, but she couldn’t tell if they were her own or Milo’s. The fear in his eyes, fear for her, kicked her into action.
Shaking out of her numbness, Alexa squirmed in the hellwing’s grasp, her cheek grazing the flesh of one of the thing’s legs. It was wet and smelled of rot and diseased flesh. She punched the creature’s underbelly over and over again, her eyes watering at the smell, but the demon never faltered. Still Milo’s shape was getting smaller. The sky fell around her, and then she saw a glimpse of Milo in a blur of ash and wings and teeth.
If the thing let her go now, she wasn’t sure she’d survive the fall. She was hundreds of feet in the air, and she’d never fallen from this height before.
Over the beating of wings and the rush of air, she heard Milo’s scream. It punctured a hole in her that wasn’t the talons’ doing.
She had to get to him. If he died, it would be her fault.
The hellwing let out a fierce cry that reverberated over every stone of purgatory, an echo of victory that it had caught its prey.
They were soaring higher and higher until Alexa couldn’t recognize anything. She couldn’t see the army of the dead, and she couldn’t see Milo.
Gritting her teeth, she grabbed hold of the hellwing’s right foot with both hands and pulled as hard as she could, tearing at her own flesh in the process. She heard the rip and nearly gagged as white-hot pain exploded on her shoulder. She felt herself drop twelve inches lower and dangle at an angle. The creature’s left leg was the only thing keeping her from plummeting to the ground.
The hellwing screeched as it hovered, snapping at her with its right leg, trying to impale her with its sharp talons.
Alexa snatched the thing’s right leg with her right hand, and then with her trembling left hand, she began yanking feverishly at the creature’s left leg. Her eyes welled with tears at the pain, as she severed her own flesh—
And then she was falling.
With her clothes and hair flapping around her, Alexa began to think maybe her escape in midair wasn’t such a good idea. Through squinted eyes she saw the ash-covered ground coming fast, incredibly fast. It appeared that gravity existed it purgatory.
Fear crawled into her stomach, twisting it, and she knew her body would never recover from such a fall. It would shatter on impact, like a tomato splattering on a concrete block.
There would be nothing left of her, nothing left to avenge herself, to stop Hades.
Alexa swung her head around trying to locate Milo, knowing that any second now she would be nothing but an angel pudding mess, but all there was ash and rock and…
Water.
She hit the black waters like a large and weighty stone into a stagnant pool, sinking to the bottom as though an invisible force was pushing her. She tried to flail her arms and legs to stop her descent, but the speed of her fall was too strong. She could barely lift her arms. Her old fears of water came back to her in a rush, filling her with an epic panic.
She was going to drown…
But she couldn’t drown, she heard that little voice inside her head. Angels couldn’t drown. She had faced this fear before and conquered it. And just as the thoughts filled her mind, she felt them strip away from her like an old layer of skin, only to be replaced by a different fear—the fear of being trapped in purgatory for all eternity.
She peeled her eyelids open to reveal darkness and nothingness. The water wasn’t clear and light but thick and dark like oil. Something was very wrong with the water. It wasn’t cold or hot but impenetrable and suffocating as it coiled around her, trying to get into her mouth. There was something evil inside the water, a familiar poison, like the one from a death blade. It was as though the very blades had been forged in these black waters.
On and on she went, pulled deeper and deeper into the bottomless lake. She felt the full weight of the collar for the first time. It felt like it had magnified its weight a hundred times, to the equivalent of a having a grown person sitting on her shoulders.
It was pulling her down on purpose.
Alexa unleashed that familiar, writhing anger. She was not about to give up.
With a burst of strength, she kicked her legs in scissor-like motions while her arms batted awkwardly by her sides. She was a terrible swimmer. Still, she kicked and kicked hoping she was going up and not deeper into the bottomless lake because she couldn’t tell up from down.
After what felt like hours of kicking, her thighs burned with the effort. Alexa slowed her kicks. She was tiring, growing clumsy—
She broke the surface of the lake. Strings of black water fell in her eyes as she blinked and looked around. She started to sink again and had to keep kicking hard to keep her head just above the water. She could feel liquid in her eardrums, clogging them and drowning her hearing.
At first all she could see was the endless black water, swollen and rising from every direction. Then through her blurred vision, she could make out a rock-lined shore of the lake. Alexa kicked through the oil-like waters, her legs still burning in protest as she swam towards the only shore in sight.
The air moved above her, and Alexa looked up to find a dozen hellwings gliding through the sky. Her insides twisted as one dove towards her, turning and dropping fast with its claws outstretched. It banked and dove straight for her, sharp talons gleaming before her eyes—and pulled up.
Over and over again, it was like watching an air show. The hellwings dove towards her head and pulled up at the very last minute, never touching her.
They never came closer than four feet to the water’s surface and her. It was almost as though they were avoiding the water. They didn’t want to touch it or come too close.
Alexa didn’t have the energy to wonder why that was. She only wanted to reach the shore before her M-suit gave out.
After a few strokes, she heard the sounds of battle clashing in the distance—the familiar sounds of fists hitting flesh, the howls of beasts, and the grunts of a male angel.
Alexa splashed around in the direction of the noise. Behind her, at a much greater distance, which would explain why she’d missed it, was another shoreline. In the midst of clouds of dust and ash and demons—was a glowing green collar. She could barely make out the tall angel, but there was a flash of pale skin and dark clothes. It was him.
Milo was alive.
Buckets of relief poured through her at the sight of the angel. He swung his arms as though he had his sabers, and that’s when Alexa noticed that he had two large shards of black rock, sharp and deadly, and was using them like knives. The dead surrounded him, thrashing their limbs and trying to get ahold of him, but they never did. Even the hellwings swooped down when his back was turned, only to screech out in surprise as he slashed their throats.
He moved like a midnight storm—punch after punch, block, lunge, duck, spin. A dead leaped at him, but he parried the attack while spinning. Black blood shot onto his hand as he stabbed the dead in the eye. He was a blur of limbs and blows and darkness.
Milo seemed to have sensed her and turned around. Their eyes locked, and even in the distance she saw the relief on his face. The black water was all over her face and she didn’t want to open her mouth and call out for fear it would go into her mouth. She wanted to wave, but it took all her strength just to keep kicking, to keep herself afloat. And she was tired… so tired… If she stopped she would sink, and this time she didn’t think she’d have the energy to keep swimming.
Suddenly Milo was running towards her, flailing his arms in the air. He was shouting something but she couldn’t make it out over the buzzing in her ears. And just when she realized he was pointing at something behind her, she saw a shadow of fear cross his features.
With great effort, Alexa kicked and splashed herself around.
But it wasn’t the hellwings fluttering overhead that froze her limbs as panic flooded her veins. It was the creature that emerged from the water.