Chapter One
Erela
TWO WEEKSEARLIER
One of thebig perks of angelic existence is having a pair of wings that can take you anywhere your heart desires. Unfortunately, the universe decided thatfallenangels, on the other hand, wouldn’t be that lucky. We had to rely on our own two feet. Or human vehicles that had been outfitted to operate even through the demon apocalypse, of which there weren’t many. For example, planes weren’t exactly flying through the clouds, not with the shortages of the necessary gasoline to power them. This meant that if we needed to cross the vast ocean, we had to find a boat withsails.
Of course, that turned out to be easier than you’d think. Surprisingly. Things didn’t tend to beeasyhere in Lower Realm, the realm of the humans. Instead, things tended to ere on the side of total shitshow. But Samael, who had come over to the states from Ireland, had brought a boat along with him. Not so luckily…demons had stolen it as soon as he’d docked. At the time, he’d been alone and had just let them have at it. But now we needed to get itback.
I assumed that was where the shitshow part of this scenario would come intoplay.
So, the six of us that now made up the new and improved Order of the Fallen stood on the docks in New York City. My best and oldest friend, Lizzie, stood by my side. She’d been thrown down here to Lower Realm by the same jackass demon who had sent me here. Ramiel, our leader, stood just in front with his signature scowl and wide shoulders. Az rounded out the back with Sam and Uriel. He looked just as dangerously delicious as he always did, his dark eyes now pools of black in the darkness. Uriel was sporting his lopsided grin, his long brown hair rustling in the soft breeze. And Sam. I couldn’t even look at Sam without blushing. He and I were so much alike. We both had demon powers inside of us, and…well, we’d shared far more thanthat.
With a deep breath, I turned back toward the situation at hand to watch about a dozen demons scurrying like ants across Sam’s old boat. It was an actual yacht with a gleaming black hull, and it must have cost a million bucks back when money had been a useful currency here on earth. It could probably house twenty or more, and it was the kind of thing that woulddefinitelyrequire a crew. The demons, of course, had transformed its beauty into something much less breathtaking than it must have been once upon a time. There were splashes of red across every surface, red that was most definitely not paint. Dirt had built up over the years, and the deck was faded andpockmarked.
Sam swore underneath his breath. A rarity from the angel of fewwords.
“So, I guess the demons thought your boat could use some improvements,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. But, in fact, a kernel of disappointment had seeded in my gut. The thing was an absolute wreck. The boat bobbed in the water, but it was docked. There was no telling if it would sailanymore.
“She’ll sail,” Sam said, voicefirm.
“No matter,” Ramiel said before clapping a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We’ll have time to make some repairs if need be. We still don’t know exactly where we’re headedyet.”
“Yeah, about that,” Lizzie spoke up from beside me. “Erela and I are getting close to finding some answers. Don’t youthink?”
Her question was directed toward me. In the past few days, Lizzie and I had been appointed an important—albeit boring—task that would directly lead to our next steps as an Order. After Berith had opened the portal to hell, our little rag tag team had searched the entire eastern United States for any sign of it or the amulet that could close it. All we found was a pile of old, musty books up north by the Canadian border. A pile of old books might not sound very exciting but said books just so happened to include a full, detailed history of good old departed Berith. We figured there must be some tidbit in there that would help point us in the rightdirection.
Theproblem, of course, was that the books hadn’t been written in any modern human languageorin Celestian. It had been written in Old Enochian, a language so ancient that it was rarely ever used anymore. At the Academy, it was considered a dead language. We’d studied some Enochian, sure, but it had been the Classical Enochian. Old Enochian was something else entirely. It had been buried along with thedead.
I’d spent a lot of time studying languages at the Academy, but the manuscript had been slow to translate. We’d get there eventuallythough.
In the meantime, there was no reason why we couldn’t get ready for our inevitable trip across the ocean. We’d all come to the conclusion that Berith probably opened the portal somewhere else. He would have wanted to do it far away from the Order of the Fallen, so that it would take us much longer to close it, and he would have chosen a place that would cause the most chaos. A city, most likely. That didn’t narrow things down much though. There were hundreds of cities in the humanrealm.
Or, at least, there used to be. The old human cities were hardly more than ruinsnow.
“Good.” Ramiel gave his signature solemn nod. “We need to move out as soon as possible. The longer we wait to make our move, the worse things are going toget.”
Because an open portal to hell meant one thing and one thing only. Demons. And lots of them. They would swarm into the human realm when they realized the portal was open, partially because the thing had been shut for years. Humanity was already in crisis mode as it was. This world couldn’t take many moredemons.
“So, what’s the plan, boss?” Az asked, shifting closer so that the six of us formed a huddled circle. “How are we going to take theboat?”
“We’re going to jump into the water, scale the boat from behind, and catch them by surprise.” Ramiel looked to each of us in turn. “We don’t need to kill every last one of them in order to take the boat. Knock them out. Throw them overboard. Take them prisoner. Do whatever you deem best. We just need to get Sam a path to the wheel so he can get us out of these docks and back to RhodeIsland.”
It sounded easy enough, but…I’d quickly learned to expect that nothing would be easy in the humanrealm.
Quickly, we all slipped into the freezing water. I shivered, despite the fact that I was part fire demon and mostly immune to cold. Mostly. Not that I was a big fan of my whole cold immunity thing. In fact, it kind of sucked. Being immune was just another reminder of what I was, and I definitely didnotwant to be part demon. I didn’t want to have that evil churning inside of me. Fire demons had destroyed this world. If my Archangel father hadn’t taken me to Celestia after I’d been born? I could have been one of thosedemons.
The murderers. Thedestroyers.
Shivering, I pushed through the water. Luckily, we didn’t have to go very far. We reached the bottom of the boat within moments, and my fingers brushed up against the rough hull. Uriel popped up from below the churning water, bobbing along besideme.
His violet eyes sparkled as he shot me a wink. “You okay, Erela? Or does all this water remind you of the time you provoked aHydra?”
I scrunched up my nose in a mock scowl. “Very funny. Does it remind you of when I dropped a bucketful of ice water on top of yourhead?”
“Hmm.” He cocked his head. “Actually, no. When did thathappen?”
“Now,” I said with a laugh as I shoved my hands against the water to send a massive splash right into his grinningface.
