Tadeo hesitated, but then he said, “I won’t look long for him.”‘Yes, I will.’“But even if he’s dead, his family deserves to have a body to bury.”‘Like my father, like maybe they should have done to me.’The memory returned to him of the beautiful devil, his smile as he spoke.‘The devil didn’t kill my father.’“Dante,” Tadeo added, shakily, “was a good man.Even if he was a soldier, he deserves to be put to rest respectfully.”After this, Tadeo promised that he would be back soon, and then he walked into the water slow, wondering if this, his mere presence, would be enough to call the Leviathan to him.He walked on, trekking through the ice-cold waters, clenching his teeth.Once he was up to his chest, he turned back, and he saw the angel still there, the light of the stars casting an eerie pale glow on him so that Dina seemed a ghost.Trickles of hands brushed on Tadeo’s legs, and he sighed shakily, prepared to be pulled under.
Dante, meanwhile, breathed out shakily, as they reached the other end of the prison.There was one olive-skinned Watcher in particular that was strung up unlike all the others, his naked body battered with swollen bruises and cuts leaking blood, eyes darkly framed by the marks of old punches, and before him, another Watcher.In stark contrast to many of the others, too, but in a different direction — this one wore clothes, a thick, pale robe with a hood over his head, where perfect braids cascaded down to his chest.When the clothed one turned to the intruders, his dark-skinned face was also painted with grieving white markings along his empty, tired eyes.Over his chest, his tunic was cut open to expose a deep, gaping wound that dug through the clavicle, through some of his spine, scratched at some exposed ribs, and the arteries still shaped around a heart that was no longer there.
“Azazel,” Rosier called, but the chained Watcher behind Azazel jerked up his head, showed wide eyes, then growled, bared his teeth, wrestled against his bindings.And to the left, other Watchers startled from sleep or the comfort of their thoughts to look over, to join their leader in spitting, barking, hissing.But not all of them — to the left, the soldier noticed one red-haired angel with a dark mess of gore where his face should be sitting still, alongside an angel with patches of paler skin and dark hair trimmed close to his head, who remained silent but nonetheless kept a cold gaze on the human.On the right, there was a Watcher, perhaps the smallest in stature, barking and fighting his restraints the hardest, trying to break free to seemingly throw himself at Dante.
When Azazel spoke, voice delicate, dead — Dante couldn’t understand, but Asmodeus, Rosier, Armoni, and Gemory heard: “Has the devil died?”
“Forgive me,” said Armoni.“Moloch was holding me hostage or else I would have come earlier, and with food?—”
“Psst,” whistled a Watcher, cutting through all the barks and shushing them abruptly, and everyone turned to the quiet one sitting beside the red-haired angel without a face; Baraqiel and Kokabiel.At their attention, Baraqiel nudged his chin in the direction of Kokabiel, who had just lifted a foot, dug a toe into the dirt, then dragged it in a few different directions, scribbling, writing.Azazel stared at the sentence Kokabiel offered, and then he flickered his gaze up at the intruders.
“Someone is coming,” Azazel said.“A beast.”
“My child?”Armoni asked.
“Your child,” Azazel answered, “is with this beast.”
The Leviathan roared as it pulled Tadeo into the cave, but this time — the anti-Christ thrashed against it, yelling back as soon as he was into the air pockets.He ripped free one arm and dug claws into the body of the enormous sea serpent.Only a dent formed across its scales but the more Tadeo shouted in exertion, the more he pressed, and the greater the pain burned along his forearms — the closer he got to piercing skin.When the cave walls began to close in around him, he forced his body to grow against it and yelled out in this pain too, burgeoning wings and limbs trying to crack the stone embracing him.
Dante, frustrated, nudged Gemory, who hastily leaned down and translated, and then the soldier blinked.‘Beast?’Tadeo?
“Kokabiel says,” Azazel whispered, “that this Beast is looking for us.”
Distantly, there were noises, and even Dante recognized one of the voices as that of Baal.
“God fucking dammit,” said Asmodeus.“We should get out of this place.”He grasped Rosier’s hand, and then he nodded at Dante and said in his language, “Well, here are the Watchers you were looking for.It’s not safe to stay here longer.You can come with us or you could deal with whatever beast is coming.”
Gemory quickly touched Dante’s arm and said, “Or I can try to bring you to the surface— We’re halfway there from here.”
“Tadeo wanted to free the Watchers,” Dante murmured to her.“But—” ‘Is that a good idea?’He glanced at them, at the beautiful one standing by the most animalistic one, then at the one without a face, the quiet one, and the small one.‘No.’Hadn’t Tadeo said these Watchers were going to save the world?It didn’t look like it.
Again, Baal’s voice sounded somewhere, closer, as well as the shouts of other demons and the clamor of their steps on the stairs.The regent of Hell must’ve been flying by the whipping noise of wings.“Fuck,” Asmodeus said, and then tugged on Rosier.
But the demon of fruit looked back and said, “Dante, go with Gemory!If we can— If Asmodeus and I return to Earth, we’ll seek you out!Good luck!You have friends in us!”The gentle, urgent kindness made Dante blink in surprise, and all he could do was watch as Asmodeus and Rosier began running opposite from Azazel and his favored Watcher.
Dante swallowed, and then he put his hand over Gemory’s on his arm, leaned up to kiss her cheek, the corner of her mouth, then promised, “Thank you for the help.I’ll stay here.I have to meet with Tadeo.”
Face scarlet, the demon jolted, then she raised a brow.“Tadeo?”
“The beast,” Dante clarified, then took a step away from her.“Good luck, miss.”
Gemory’s eyes were wide, but she soon nodded and smiled.“I hope to meet you again up there, boy.”She started running too, in the same direction Asmodeus and Rosier had gone.And though Dante was left now with nothing but Watchers he couldn’t understand, he turned to Armoni and Azazel.He saw as Armoni lifted his chin and whistled into the air briskly, and then he lowered a saddened face.Immediately, the cave around them seemed to shake, and Dante stumbled, falling nearly into a crouch.
“Kokabiel,” said Azazel softly, “has told us that we’d be freed soon.”
Armoni replied, “Don’t do it, Azazel.”
“Don’t do what?Escape?”
“Don’t hurt anyone that you don’t have to.This is no one’s fault but God’s and the devil’s.”Even the men and women who had so terribly hurt Armoni were hardly responsible, he thought; the Lord had made them desperate and weak.Humans were pitiful creatures, and how could someone blame them?Slow, Armoni turned and saw Dante there, looking at him patiently.
Azazel said, “You’ll come with us, won’t you?”
“Yes.I have no choice, but?—”
Tadeo heard, very distantly, a whistle, and then felt the Leviathan that he was wrestling in the cave halt, so violently that the anti-Christ was crushed against a cave wall hard enough that he felt muscles pop and bones shatter in his legs, his hips, and he screamed now, in pain.But, vaguely, he recognized that the Leviathan had just turned directions and was now slithering rapidly through another channel in the caves between Earth and Hell.Tadeo continued to cry out in terrible pain, but he held on tighter and tried to bear it, wondering where he was going.
There was another sound out in the staircase, another voice — Moloch.Dante cursed.How many more people were they all going to have to deal with?But he relaxed when Armoni suddenly put a gentle hand over his own and stared at him.His mouth was moving, but Dante didn’t understand, and just when Armoni seemed about to groan in irritation, Moloch’s words became a lot clearer, his teases echoing through the Watchers’ prison.Armoni’s face paled, and then he shoved Dante toward the Watchers on the ground, in between two.
