Left to drift through the ruins of his own psyche, untethered and trapped between consciousness and unconsciousness, Aaron succumbed to the bleakness of his situation. Another attack would wipe the slate of his mind clean. There wasn’t much left as it was, just a jumble of random images and thoughts he couldn’t hang onto for more than a few seconds at a time, but that wouldn’t stop her. Once Lilith finished with Quinn, she would be back. Not that it mattered; he no longer had the strength to fight her. He was a rag doll she could play with and throw away—no feelings, no life. He wasn’t real anymore.
All he could do was wait, suspended in his torturous purgatory with no way out. Better not to worry and embrace the feeling of numb apathy instead. No need to think about that, no need to feel, it wouldn’t do any good. Just float. Float and forget. Let it go, all of it.
Billions of stars winked in and out around him, dust, fragments of his shattered mind left in the wake of Lilith’s attack. We are all made of stardust after all, even our musings.
Muse.
The word, familiar one second, foreign as ancient Sumerian the next, echoed through his empty shell of a mind and knocked something loose. Words from a long-dead language bubbled to the surface.
Sumerian. As familiar as Quinn’s face.
He shouldn’t know Sumerian from Greek, but somehow he did. This life. Another life. This time. Another time. To not know who you were, where you were, what you were. What could be worse? He was lost, a soul without a body, a body without a mind, never to be whole again.
Quinn.
Something prodded him to try to piece his mind back together while he had time, but he ignored it.
Quinn.
Retrieving all the pieces would take too much effort, he reasoned. What was the point anyway? Each thought was as intangible as a whisper of wind on his face. Once there, and then gone.
Quinn.
His thoughts looped back around to that one word. A song stuck in his head, driving him crazy.
Quinn.
Cinders of his lost mind swirled and danced, taking the shape of her face, her hair. Something awakened deep within, a part that burned as bright as the sun at noon. If he could harness it, maybe he could regain consciousness.
Focusing on that growing spark of faith, he reached for the closest particle and pulled it back into himself. Then another. Piece by piece, he rebuilt himself, exploiting the potential power growing inside him until every memory, every grain, was back in place. Evil may have taken his mind, taken his flesh, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. If he could get free, he might break Lilith’s connection with Quinn. Giving up was not an option. Rage burned through Aaron, overriding the effects of the drug. Mind clear and renewed with energy, his eyes snapped open.
Lilith, still disguised in his essence, grinned up at him and gracefully rose to meet his dagger glare. A bomb ticked at Aaron’s core, ready to explode as more flashes of a past life mixed with his present. Lilith had wanted him to remember, and remember he did. She had trapped a weak human in bonds but awakened a powerful Elite angel and all that came with it.
“Well now, that’s a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect you to ever wake up. Seems your mind is stronger than I gave you credit for, if not your body. You look positively exhausted.” With a wave of a finger, she loosed the slack of the chains that bound him. His arms dropped to his sides as the metal links pooled at his feet. Not complete freedom, but enough that he might be able to gain an advantage. “See, I can be forgiving when it suits me.”
She thought him weak, subdued. She had no idea what she’d awakened within him. Good. Playing the part, he sank to the floor and curled into the fetal position, resisting the urge to snap her neck.
“Masquerading as you was almost too easy.” Lilith’s features rippled and morphed back into her own, T-shirt and jeans replaced with tight bodice and shadowed cloak. “She didn’t expect a thing.” She circled him, watching his reaction, but Aaron refused to give her what she wanted and kept his body still and his mouth shut. He could sense her frustration growing, a tide of anger ready to devour him.
Patience, Aaron, patience.
“Did you hear me?” Lilith raised her voice, but still he gave her nothing but mute indifference. Squatting in front of him, she squeezed his cheeks and forced his jaw up to look at her.
Lilith gasped; her eyes wide silver pools as he grabbed her wrist, and twisted hard. He locked his glare on hers and rose to his feet, dragging her with him.
“Kavash,” the command seethed from her lips, and the demon around Aaron’s neck tightened its grip, ready to release more drugs to subdue her enemy.
Before it could act, Aaron let go of Lilith and wrapped his hand around the demon control collar. He suppressed a scream as a thousand needles ripped from his throat as he pulled the creature from his flesh, breaking Lilith’s hold over him and restoring him to his full senses. Venom spurted from a thousand wriggling legs, coating his hand in blood and amber slime.
Ragged breaths caught in his lungs, but he was free from her clutches. The creature writhed in Aaron’s hand, legs digging into his skin to make him let go, but Aaron tightened his grip. He couldn’t let the thing escape. It had one task: obey its master and bind Aaron to her power once again.
Narrowing his eyes, he held Lilith’s gaze and squeezed the life out of the monstrous control demon, black blood oozing between his fingers and down his arm. When the beast fell silent, he dropped it at her feet.
“I am tired of this game.” Flicking her shadow cloak, she raised her hands and began chanting. Smoke poured from the bottomless pit that surrounded his island prison. It curled and spun, the wisps taking shape into a circle of demons, each heavily muscled, blue-black veins pulsing with hate, heads of eagles, sharp spears at the ready. “Take care of him,” Lilith commanded, and the demons advanced.
Aaron twisted in his manacles, backing away as the demons approached. The only way to help Quinn was to get free and contact her himself. He couldn’t wait any longer.
Come on, Kaemon, he begged, don’t let me down now.
If he could keep Quinn from coming to the Underworld and keep her away from Lilith, he had to accept that he was part angel.
I know you loved her, too. Do it for Eve, for Quinn.
Aaron panted. It was working—he could feel the strength growing inside him, more than even the strongest man on Earth possessed.
The skin beneath his shoulder blades itched and burned as if a thousand spiders crawled below his flesh, biting, stinging, and pushing their way free. He scratched at his back, rolling on the ground and tearing his nails across skin. He clawed at the soft tissue until blood oozed from his wounds, but the itch intensified, driving him mad.
Aaron rolled onto all fours and dug his fingers into the hard stone floor as the sharp edge of his shoulder blade sliced through his scapula. Foam gathered in the corners of his mouth, and he howled, back arching as layers of tissue and muscle separated, birthing two long wings covered in golden feathers. Spanning twelve feet, Aaron stretched his golden wings to each side. Metal popped and groaned as he tugged on the chains. A few more seconds, and he would be free.
Two demons ran at him from either side, and like flicking flies, he brushed them over the edge with a swipe of his wings, and they tumbled into the abyss. Lilith shrieked commands at her army. Spears came at Aaron from all sides, but the light boiling inside him made him quick as well as strong. Twisting and turning like he’d seen a million times in the martial arts flicks he and Josh used to watch, he trapped each spear point in a section of chain, pulling them from the demons’ grasp. Aaron delighted in his new powers, grinning as he kicked an oncoming attacker in the chest. Was this what it felt like to be invincible?
Pain ripped at his left shoulder. Three demons had come up behind him. One grabbed him around the waist and pinned his wings to his sides while the other two grabbed his arms. He fought against them, their strength no match for his own, but before he could break free, three more beasts tackled him, six demons pinning him to the ground.
Aaron’s chest heaved as he pushed against them, but they held him tight. Lilith stood above him, a control demon scurrying up one of her arms, across her shoulders, and down the other. Directly above Lilith’s head, a tiny light in the domed ceiling winked at him. The control demon reared up on a thousand tiny back legs, its pincers clicking as it approached. Taking a deep breath, he focused on the light and dug deep. Power flooded through him, and the explosion of a million suns burst through his pores. Demons screamed and scattered back, and he was free. Without thinking, Aaron ran for the precipice and let his wings unfurl. Air caught beneath him, and within seconds, he soared up toward freedom and Quinn, leaving Lilith in his wake.
Aaron circled the top of the domed ceiling. A sliver of cold, blue moonlight spilled from a small crack in the stone barely big enough for a rat to fit through. If this was the only way out, he would have to exploit the natural fissure and bash his way through to the other side. Tucking his wings to his sides, he dropped, letting gravity carry him as close to the ground as he dared, the wind rushing in his ears as he fell. There were at least twelve stories between the island prison and the top of the dome, and he would need every inch of it for his plan to work. Before he hit the ground, he spread his feathers and soared over Lilith’s head, her raven hair blowing in the wake of his flight. Flying came as easy as breathing; it was as if he’d been doing it all his life.
Lilith howled in anger, stomping her foot as he darted to the right, just out of reach of her minions’ spears, and beat his powerful wings. Faster and faster, he climbed, gaining speed and altitude. Tucking his chin to his chest, Aaron angled his shoulder, aiming for a point just to the right of the crack. A loud BOOM echoed off the ceiling as he hit his mark. The crack widened as stone and rubble hailed on the demons below. Pain rippled down his shoulder, his bones rattling from the force, but two beats of his wings, and the hurt receded to nothing. Aaron tucked his wings again, ready to make another run. A few more hits like that should bring down the whole dome.
At Lilith’s command, millions of small bat-like demons erupted from the depth of the pit surrounding the platform, the whirlwind of leathery wings heading right for him. Aaron set his jaw and dove right into the middle of the storm. Talons ripped at his naked flesh above his abdomen, and he swiped the first creature away with a hand. The demon tumbled away as two more latched on to his leg, their long, razor teeth sinking into his calf. Aaron twisted onto his back trying to shake them off, but a dozen more swarmed him, ripping at his feathers, locking jaws on his naked skin as he plummeted. When one bit his forearm, he grabbed its tail and tore it loose—a lot more painful than ripping off a Band-Aid—and hurled it like a baseball into the stone wall. Stunned, the demon dropped. He plucked another off, and another, flinging them into the wall, the ground rushing closer and closer.
Inches from the stone floor, he flipped back onto his stomach. His wings spread out behind him, and he rocketed upward, tucking his chin and focusing on the widening fissure above. What was left of his attackers scattered in his wake. Nine stories, ten stories, eleven stories, he climbed.
Right before impact, a bolt of silver lightning flashed just above his head, and he had to roll right at the last minute to miss it. Unable to stop his momentum or correct his trajectory, Aaron hit the side of the dome instead of the crack he was aiming for. The stone walls shuddered at the force of his collision, and the opening widened, but it still wasn’t wide enough for him to fit through.
Another silver lightning bolt crackled across his left shoulder. The smell of burning feathers and skin made him gag. Aaron flew in a circle, trying to extinguish the flames that caught at his golden plumage, beating his wing against the stone until they finally went out.
The horde of demon bats rallied for another attack, angling upward to meet him. He would give anything for a Qeres blade. He couldn’t think of anything more satisfying than separating their heads from their bodies and watching the poison turn them to dust, but he would have to rely on Kaemon’s strength, his own wits, and their determination to get them through this together.
Lilith let off another silver explosion, this one barely missing his head. He ducked and banked left, trying to make himself a smaller target, but he couldn’t pull in his twelve-foot wingspan unless he wanted to fall to his death. Twist left, pitch right, zoom up, dive down—he dodged energy bolt after energy bolt. And then the demon bats were upon him again, a black cloud of screeching and flapping. Talons scratched at his flesh, tearing his skin until blood trickled from his wounds. He couldn’t keep this up much longer, Kaemon was strong, but even an Elite Warrior could tire.
Aaron dug deep, ignoring the beasts biting, stinging, and screaming in his ear. He tuned out the explosions of light ripping through the dark. Escaping and warning Quinn, even if it was just for a moment, was the only thing that mattered. If they killed him after that, he didn’t care. Once he broke through the ceiling, he would be free; he could contact her through their connection. Kaemon understood how it worked; he could get to her if Aaron let him. Together, they pictured her face, her body pressed against his, her soft voice calling his name. This time, when his shoulder hit the target, it yielded. A sound like a bomb exploding rebounded from the impact down to the foundations of the dungeon as the entire dome caved in.
Aaron didn’t hesitate as he shot through the hole and out into the ceaseless night of the Underworld. His prison hadn’t been in a tower, but in an underground dungeon deep within the mountain. Rubble continued to rain down on his enemy, angry screeches growing fainter as he darted up and away. The domed ceiling now stood as a gaping hole at the edge of the ridge where Lilith’s palace ended and the desolate terrain of the Underworld began.
Maybe Lilith would be crushed in the avalanche with them. Kaemon knew better; she would have blinked away before any harm came to her. Besides, she was immortal. Nothing could kill her here in her own kingdom.
Three spired towers of varying heights loomed against the stark and barren landscape, casting shadows over her entire domain. Thousands of obsidian glass windows spiraled up and around the towers, shining dark eyes in the gaunt light of twin blue-hued moons. From any vantage point, it would be easy to spot a lone angel flying in the distance, golden wings a torch in the darkness. Everything was quiet, too quiet, as if he were trapped in a bubble, no wind, no sound, only the thump of his heart and the beat of his wings.
At least there were no guards walking the ramparts, no armies gathered in the streets. Lilith had no need for defenses. Nothing could touch her here, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t watched. Demons were like roaches. Where you saw one, hundreds more were hiding and scurrying in the walls, infesting every dusky corner. As soon as Lilith regained control, she wouldn’t hesitate to send a new horde to find him. He had to find shelter, and fast.
Swerving right, he soared over Lilith’s castle, which jutted upward from a rocky cliff, and scanned the area for a safe place to land—a copse of trees, a cave, someplace he could conceal himself long enough to complete his mission—but miles of lifeless earth stretched to the horizon, reminding him of pictures he’d seen of the surface of the moon or dead lava fields of Iceland. Nothing but dust and rock under a bleak sky, nowhere to shelter, nowhere to hide. And then he spotted it, a deep crater in the distance. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.
Landing wasn’t as easy as flying, and as his feet hit the ground, he stumbled forward, stretching out his arms to take the impact, and ended up face first against the pitted, black rocks. Gulping, he tried to catch his breath. His palms stung from scraping the rough surface of the crater, but he didn’t care. He pushed up and ran under a small overhang, hoping it would provide enough cover to buy him time. With Kaemon now fully awake, he could close his eyes and see her essence, hear the whisper of her thoughts. It wouldn’t take much. Pulling his wings in against his chest, he pushed his essence up and out through his psychic link, called her name, and prayed she would answer.