“Okay, shut your mouth,” Baal interjected, brow twitching.“I don’t give a shit about what you think about your stupid friends.”But then, he inched away and laughed, bitterly, meanly.“But the Watchers?The whore angels?It’s been thousands of years, and you’ve come down looking for them now?Who are you?”
“I told you,” Dina whispered, his chest stinging, his face grimacing.“My name is Dina.”
“I heard you the first time, idiot,” Baal snapped.“But whoareyou?I don’t remember you from Heaven.”He snorted.“Are you an angel of stupidity?Are you an angel of any importance?I doubt that your God has appointed a new archangel.”
“No, no, I’m not an archangel,” Dina answered softly.“And I’m an angel of...nothing.”Angel of nothing at all.“Angels do not need purposes anymore.”Uriel had once told him that.‘I miss Uriel.Without him or my star, I have no one to tell me what to say or what to feel.’When Baal raised an eyebrow, Dina tilted his head and explained, “Because us angels have no other purpose than to prepare Heaven for humans.This is how it has been for many centuries now.”
The demon behind Dina laughed, almost like a bark.“What?Prepare Heaven for humanity?What does He intend for you angels?Is He going to cast you down or are you all to be slaves?”Dina struggled with that word but understood it well enough to frown.
Baal answered: “Satan told me of this.”He lifted his arms and crossed them over his chest.“He told me that God has abandoned His host, that the angels are like shit to Him.God only cares about humans now.It has been this way since Christ.”At that, Dina nearly tilted his head.Was that true?He knew little of Christ but he could remember that this had all begun following the Flood.‘Michael tied at the center of Heaven, burning.’“But it doesn’t matter.What God thinks of His angels is no problem of our own.If He wants to burn them, then we should let them burn for their cowardice at the beginning of time.”The Fall.Had that been the beginning of time?Dina wanted to swallow and say there had been a time before then.There had been angels before Satan, and there had been angels before man.
And, surely, there would be angels after man, wouldn’t there?
Suddenly, Baal’s foot drew back, swung, and struck the kneeled angel hard against the jaw, sending him thudding against the ground with a sharp cry.“The affairs of angels,” he began before setting his sandal down over the side of Dina’s head, pressing down uncomfortably, enough to ache the area by Dina’s eyes, “is ofno importance to us.”Gritting his teeth, Dina shut his eyes but they nearly opened them again instantly when he impulsively tried to move his hands again and, oddly, he felt them inch apart.“If you want to see the Watchers, then you can see them from where you’ll be chained up with them.”
Dina’s fingers wandered, touched a finger tip against the bolt that was supposed to be screwed into place only to feel it wobble and slightly twist.Heart quickening, breath catching — he could give it a few more twists and pull the cuffs apart.But no, he shouldn’t.‘He will notice.He will hurt me.’And would it be so bad to be imprisoned beside old friends?
“Are you sure?”called the demon behind, stepping over the angel’s sprawled legs and chuckling.“Shouldn’t you wait for Satan to call that order?”
Dina felt Baal’s foot tense before he heard the duke grumble, “Are you questioning the regent of Hell?”
“I am,” replied the demon slyly.“I can do that, can’t I?You’re no devil.”
“How many times must I fucking say it?”Immediately, Baal removed himself from over Dina, turned around, grappled the demon by the throat and snarled.“He has given me the authority to command and rule Hell while he is absent.”
A clawed hand took and dug into Baal’s wrist, but however roughly the duke was choking him, the demon still managed to spit — “So you say, so you say.We can’t be certain if Satan isn’t here, can we?Why won’t you tell us where he is?How can we be certain you’re not hiding him away?”
“You have no faith in your god?”Baal hissed.
“It’syouwe have no faith in.”
‘I can only do this now,’ Dina realized, his heart thudding, up in his ears, in his mouth.‘No, no, I shouldn’t.I’m good.I will do as told.And I will see my friends.’But he had left the anti-Christ behind.‘Tadeo.’And that soldier boy.‘What is the right thing to do?’He shouldn’t listen to a demon.‘My star told me to guide Tadeo.’Before him, Baal had just sunk in his talons, a burst of blood gushing out from the mouth of the demon in his hold, but he snarled at him once more, demanded respect as the regent of Hell.‘I have to do this.’But where to find the bravery?He wanted to look inside himself, find it, but there was no time.‘I have to act.’He would find the bravery to act another time.‘I will be back for you, Azazel, Armoni.’Quick, he twisted the screw in his cuffs.
Meanwhile, Dante was tasting salt.It dribbled wet from his bottom lip, rolling down to his chin, then falling in rivulets along his throat, almost following the arteries.Weak, he blinked, fluttered his eyes, then felt a cough wretch itself out of his mouth, expelling more of the sea water with such force that it startled him back to full consciousness.“Fuck,” he said automatically.His arms were above him, though he could barely see them in the dark, and his legs were in line of sight too.Air was rushing past; he was falling.Seemingly, it was endless, in every direction; there were no walls to his left, nor to his right, and glancing down, there was mere abyss.Above, the emptiness would have continued, but there was a long, coiling creature, larger than anything Dante had ever seen, and there was another figure, a many-winged thing of several mouths and eyes, though it was blackened and crisped, burnt.In between the two, there were bright flames.A few seconds passed, then Dante realized the fire was coming from the great serpent’s open mouth.
Without thinking, the soldier padded all over himself, his damp clothing, until feeling the familiar shape of a dark pistol tucked into his waistband.Unloaded; he had kept the magazine in his pocket in case, always holding the anxiety that the gun would go off in his pants and castrate him.Now, he yanked the weapon out, held it against his chest with his handless arm before shoving his fingers into his cargo pants to free the magazine and click it into place on his pistol.The smaller creature above him bore great resemblance to the one Tadeo was, though it looked like he’d been charred on a grill as he was taken by the tail of the Leviathan, then whipped from one side to another.Against the enormous snake, Tadeo was horrifically losing what might’ve been a fight but seemed more of a homicide.It almost made Dante laugh.‘That’s for fucking up my hand,’ he thought.
But then, he watched carefully, saw how Tadeo roared out in pain in a way Dante had never heard.It was a horrific, shrill sound, and it scorched at his ears.‘Fire.’He saw how one of Tadeo’s hands was barely out of the flames, grasping helplessly.Bubbling, the beastly skin there was the only part of Tadeo not scorched into a crisp, and to heal, a trail of new skin stitching itself back together over and over climbed down Tadeo’s body from that hand.
‘Would you be able to heal,’ Dante wondered, ‘if your hand wasn’t safe?’If all of him burned?
Swallowing, Dante raised the stump of his left wrist to help him better support the pistol as he aimed.“Fucker!”he shouted.“Motherfucker!”Whether he was calling to Tadeo or the Leviathan, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter; they didn’t turn, probably couldn’t hear him.But Dante was willing to trust in the half-human above and shoot the snake if it meant stopping this eternal fall.
So, Dante pulled the trigger.The recoil was nothing new, his shoulders quite accustomed to taking the blow, but the bang was oddly muffled to him, as if the sound was soaked by the darkness around him.Squinting, he followed the trail where the bullet should’ve gone, and when he saw nothing hit the bigger monster above, he was sure he’d missed.Except there was a sudden spray of blood that poked a minuscule hole through the Leviathan that made its whole body twitch.The pain must’ve been even less than a paper cut, however, as the Leviathan didn’t turn its head, made no indication that it even noticed.Biting the inside of his cheeks, Dante aimed and shot once more.Another bleeding hole.Then, he shot a third time, fourth time.On the fifth, the Leviathan finally shuddered, its entire body rippling, before its mammoth face whipped down to Dante, eyes and mouth opening wide, a million teeth illuminated by fire-saliva.
Dante’s heart stopped; the beads of sweat on his forehead ran cold.His finger twitched anxiously over the trigger, but he bit down a swear for now.‘Fucked myself over,’ he thought gruffly.‘Ah well.’There had been nothing else to do, anyway.The Leviathan roared in his direction, rattling Dante’s eardrums but if he was good at anything, it was taking the pain, gritting his teeth.“Motherfucker,” he finally said.Above, the snake barreled toward him, loosening its hold on Tadeo.Dante fired another shot, pierced an eye; it cut right through with hardly a reaction from the beast.Instead, fire was building in its mouth, beginning to fall like drool, beginning to lap like its tongue.By one of its coils, Dante saw the beast Tadeo strike the air with wings, and though he wasn’t sure, it seemed like the charring and ash were flaking away from him, revealing a bloody but thrashing Tadeo.
Tadeo reached the Leviathan’s head in time, grappled it, then yelled with exertion as he pulled up the monster’s face, diverting the fire to a wall.Again, the flames engulfed the anti-Christ, who let out an agonized scream, but it struck, too, at the Leviathan, whose cries in pain only flooded them with greater fires.Far below, Dante was hot as Hell and shaking, but breathing, still breathing.Alive for now.
At the same time, Dina was flying.He had heard Baal yell after him the second he pulled his arms apart, still cuffed, and sprinted toward the door, but he hadn’t stopped, no matter how terribly he wanted to.His heart was screaming at him to run, to return to the surface, which had seemed so simple compared to Hell, this Hell.His heart, too, told him to duck, to slip between the open doors and lower his head to avoid the whip of Baal’s mace.He felt it tug at his hair but not tangle.The relief almost killed him, as did the fear.Hurriedly, he’d torn his wings out of his back, then struck them against the warmth around him to fling himself high, far above the stout, square buildings dribbling flesh like water from rain.As he did, Dina saw demons of all kinds turn their heads up, most smacking a hand against the shoulder of whoever stood beside them, pointing, shouting.Then, he noticed some of them hurrying for javelins, spears, a few slingshots.
“Stupid fucking angel!”Baal was snarling.“We’ll throw you into the pit of fire with your whore friends!I’ll rip you apart!We’ll grind you to pieces for the sinners to shit on!”
Dina tried to ignore his wobbling lip, swerving in every frantic direction, trying to avoid every swing of Baal’s mace, and when he heard a bang, like a gunshot, he allowed himself to fall quickly, sleepily.The first two, three, times, it worked, though his foot was pelted by a rock so hard that he felt his knee twist far too much, almost snap.The hit made Dina stagger, but he recovered just in time to see the cave that Baal had led him and two demons out of earlier.Again, Baal yelled, but the angel maintained his focus on the approaching crevice, even as some demons sprinted up the rocky steps to try to reach them.But then, Dina felt a thud through his hip, a thrown stone bursting open with an implosion of pain that blinded him, made him scream, swerve, crash into the side of the cave entrance.
He skidded against the ground, once again crying out in pain through the sudden blots of darkness in his vision.Yet, he could see the end of the channel, the darkness that he’d been falling through before Baal appeared.Behind him, he could hear him yelling out orders to seize Dina and dismember him slowly, to feed him to the sinners.Dina could hardly move his twitching legs, but he still reeled up his wings, beat them, dragged his injured body against the ground with each flap.He used his hands, as well, placing one before the other, almost as if he were crawling.His wings continued pushing him forward, fingers continued scratching at the ground.
“Angel!Stupid fuckingangel!”bellowed Baal from behind.
