Sighing, I slowed my pace. Every single hellspawn following did the same. Until, eventually, we all came to a complete stop in the middle of a barren field.
“What’s wrong?” Rathiel finally asked.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I sent my senses outward. The wasteland looked no different than it had for the last few hours. Endless charred rock, rivers of fire, smoke polluting the air, the searing heat… For all intents and purposes, everything appeared normal.
But beneath it all, there was a current. Something that didn’t feel right. And it made my skin crawl.
“Lilith?” Levi asked.
I turned and scoped the land once more, pinpointing exactly where the wrongness came from. Eventually, I spotted it. A flicker. A ripple in the distance. Perhaps it wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but I saw it, nonetheless.
“There you are,” I murmured more to myself than anyone else. Then I pointed across the field. “Does anyone see that?”
Rathiel squinted. Levi narrowed his eyes, too. Eliza just shrugged.
“Looks like heatwaves,” Calyx offered. “No different than any other day.”
“Yeah, except the heat doesn’t feel like a parasite wiggling inside my brain,” I said.
That caught everyone’s attention.
I took a couple steps away from the army and really stared at whatever I was seeing off in the distance. Calyx was right, it did look like heatwaves, but there was something else there too.
“A gate,” I mumbled. “That’s a gate.”
It rippled just like the one on Earth had. Magic encircled it, the aura pulsing and flickering.
“It’s a freaking gate,” I announced. “And it’sopen.”
“Are you sure?” Rathiel immediately asked.
“Oh, I’m sure.” It was a fucking gate. And since there weren’t many in Hell who could open one—and the majority were standing behind me—I knew exactly who had unlocked this one.
Lucifer.
So, this was his next move? Instead of harassing us with tremors and creatures from the black lagoon, he’d turned his attention to a nearby gate? But why? Logically, it made no sense. For anyone other than me, opening a gate drained their powers to near death. It required a great deal of sacrifice. And if there was one thing my father wouldn’t do, it was sacrifice his power.
Perhaps he’d ordered Gavrel to open it instead? But that didn’t line up right in my head either. Gavrel was Lucifer’s final fallen angel. His last link to creating more hellspawn. Furthermore, Gavrel was Lucifer’s strongest weapon against my army. The fallen’s ability to spark chaos had destroyed my ranks last time. I didn’t see my father throwing away his last remaining weapon at a chance to open a gate.
Unless…
Shit. Had my fatherleftHell? Was that his next grand scheme?
I had to know. I couldn’t just keep marching without knowing what he was doing. If he’d left for Earth, things were more dire than I would have liked.
Cursing under my breath, I turned to Korrak, Rathgor, and Drek’thar. “Hold our position here. Stay sharp. Do not move until I return.” Then I glanced back at my usual crew and gestured toward the gate. “You four with me.”
Rathiel gave a curt nod, already adjusting his grip on his blade. Levi stepped up wordlessly, the firelight gilding his golden hair in a way that made him look annoyingly heroic. Eliza drew her daggers, and Calyx his sword.
Together, the five of us peeled away from the horde and approached the gate. With every yard, the shimmer sharpened from a ripple into a seam. It looked as though someone had ripped through the fabric of the realm. But it wasn’t Earth I saw on the other side. In fact, I had no ideawhatI saw on the other side. It was too bright to make out anything definite.
“Do you smell that?” Eliza asked, her voice almost wistful.
I drew in a deep breath and immediately, every muscle in my body just relaxed. It smelled like warm chocolate and hugs, if hugs had a smell.
“It smells like sex and warm entrails right after a kill,” Calyx said.
Everyone stopped. Eliza blinked at him. “That’s…not normal, Calyx.”
