End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3) (20 page)

‘Where am I?’ I ask. The pull on my hair is becoming unbearable. Two of them have their scalps partly torn off, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is why.

‘In the Pit,’ says Thermo. ‘Welcome to the hunting district.’

‘Is this the same as hell?’ I ask.

The one with black feathers shrugs. ‘Does it matter? It’s hellish. Why do you care if it matches your primitive myth?’

‘What do you hunt here?’ I ask.

The angel with the brown-and-yellow wings snorts. ‘We don’t. We’re the prey.’

That doesn’t sound good. ‘What are you?’ I ask. I’m assuming they’re Raffe’s Watchers, but better to be sure. ‘You don’t look like angels, and you don’t look like . . .’ What do I really know about what demons look like?

‘Oh, do excuse us for not introducing ourselves,’ says the one with the brown-and-yellow wings. He emphasizes his sarcasm by bowing to me. ‘We are the newly Fallen. The Watchers, to be precise. And probably your executioners. Not that it’ll take more than one of us to do the deed. But you get the point. I’m Howler.’

Howler points to the one with black feathers and brown skin. ‘That’s Hawk.’ He points to the one with blue-tinged feathers, then to several others. ‘Thermo. Flyer. Big B. Little B. And the one holding you is Cyclone.’ He looks around at the others. There are too many to introduce them all, not that I’d remember their names. ‘Do we care who she is?’

‘Sure,’ says Flyer. ‘Maybe it’ll give us something to think about when we’re bored out of our minds for the next millennium. Who are you?’

‘I’m . . .’ I’m hesitant to give them my name. Raffe said names have power. ‘I’m the angel slayer.’

It sounds kind of ridiculous now that I’ve said it. It sounded better in my head, but whatever.

For a moment, they all stare at me.

Then, as if on cue, they burst out laughing.

Howler curls over his left ribs with his hands protectively covering them like they’re broken. ‘Oh, don’t make me laugh. That hurts.’

Cyclone chuckles behind me. He finally lets go of my hair, leaving my scalp tender. ‘Holy Mother of God, I didn’t realize I could laugh anymore.’

‘Yeah, it’s been a long, long time,’ says Little B.

‘The angel slayer, huh?’ asks Howler.

‘Well, that was great,’ says Beliel, who apparently is Big B. ‘Can we eat her now?’

‘He’s got a point,’ says Little B. ‘I can’t remember the last time we had a full meal. She’s scrawny, but I’m desperate for food to manage all this healing—’

Something grabs him – a tentacle? – and yanks him back. He yells and thrashes, kicking and twisting, but he can’t get loose.

It drags him behind a pile of rubble, bashing his head and shoulders on jagged fragments along the way.

The Watchers all become fully alert and ready for battle, but they’re practically hyperventilating. These guys have not fared well here.

I stand frozen. If these legendary warriors are afraid, what should I be feeling? I’m beginning to wish I had just kept my mouth shut about coming here. Being killed in a gladiator arena is starting to sound merciful now.

They all fly after Little B even though there’s more than a little stress on their faces. They kick and yank and try to pull him out of the tentacle’s grip.

Then another one of them gets sucked backward. As far as I can tell, the thing that took him was the scorching wind.

He gets yanked back through a window of a half-demolished building. Within seconds, screams erupt from inside.

The nearest Watchers rush to the window and look inside. They look away like they wish they hadn’t seen what they just saw.

Somewhere, another kind of screaming heads our way. It’s a mad shriek in the distance that sets my nerves on edge.

The Watchers back away with Little B who is kicking off the last of the tentacle that had him. They turn and begin rushing away from the building and the direction of the mad screams.

Someone grabs my arm and pulls me with him. To my surprise, it’s Beliel. ‘Stick with us. We’re your best chance.’

I notice he doesn’t say best chance at what. I bend to grab my sword off the ground, not caring if any of them see me do it. They’re too busy getting in formation and scanning for danger to pay any attention to me.

We scatter, half running with our backs to each other. These guys have worked together before. Too bad it doesn’t seem to help them much here.

Where’s Raffe?

What have I gotten myself into?

36

We run through the district, zigzagging this way and that like a pack of wolves escaping from a hunter. The place is full of broken bricks and old bones. Charred and twisted chunks of wood lie alongside rusted pieces of metal among the debris.

I try to keep up with the Watchers, some who run and some who fly low to the ground as though worried they could be seen higher up. Beliel flies with his hand on a Watcher’s ankle to guide him. It must take a lot of trust to fly blind. The Beliel I know would have a lot of trouble doing that.

They’ll probably kill me as soon as they get the chance, but I’ll deal with that after we escape from whatever it is that’s trying to kill us now. I make the mistake of turning around to see what we’re running from.

There are three pumped-up demons like the one I saw the last time I was in the Pit. They’re all enormous, with huge muscles encased in leather straps crisscrossing their bodies. Their torsos are otherwise naked, and that’s as far down as I can see.

They probably don’t have cows here in the Pit. I try not to think about what animal hide they use for their leather.

They ride on chariots pulled by a dozen newly Fallen harnessed in bloody chains. The Fallen frantically sweep their wings as their demon lords whip them. I can tell they’re newly Fallen because they still have most of their feathers, although they’re crushed and twisted. I don’t have to look to know the chariots probably have broken angels strapped to the wheels as well, just like Beliel was in my last visit.

The demons use multiheaded sticks like the one I saw back then to whip and bite the angel slaves pulling the chariots. These sticks are topped by circles of shriveled heads all with the same shade of red hair and green eyes. The hair floats as if underwater just like the ones I’d seen before. And like the others I’d seen, these are also screaming soundlessly.

When their masters whip the stick, they come shrieking toward the Fallen, biting and ripping strips of skin and feathers off them when they land.

One of the demons looks at me. I can’t help but think that it’s the same one who saw me the last time I visited the Pit. His wings are on fire, and his glistening body glows red from the reflection. He snaps his multiheaded whip at me as all the chariots charge closer.

The matching heads scream as they come at me with an intensity that’s beyond insane. All balls of teeth and eyes and writhing hair.

All I know is that I do not want one of those latching onto me. I pump my legs as fast as I can. I do a sharp turn around a corner and run behind a broken building.

There’s a hatchway in a crumbling wall. I throw it open.

I’m about to race down the stone steps into the darkness below when one of the Watchers crash-lands on the ground in front of me.

It’s Beliel. He has a whip head chewing its way into his back.

Two more of the screaming heads land on him. One latches on and rips a strip of flesh off his arm. The other catches itself on Beliel’s hair and begins whipping around, pulling part of Beliel’s scalp with it.

Beliel grabs the one off his scalp and crushes it.

I jump in and viciously kick the head off his back. Beliel is my ticket out of here, and I can’t let him get killed. My head hurts just trying to understand what it would mean if he dies here.

The last head is chewing its way up the strip of torn skin on his arm. I yank the head and rip the skin all the way off, ignoring Beliel’s bellow of pain. I stomp on it until it stops moving.

Beliel staggers up onto his feet. I shove him down the dark stairs and slam the hatch behind me.

I try not to pant too loudly as I latch the door shut.

We seem to be in a basement below a crumbled building. The only light is from the cracks of the hatch door, and it’s too dark to see whether there’s another exit.

The ground vibrates. Large, heavy chunks of debris thunk down against the hatch.

I stiffen and get ready, gripping my sword with both hands. A sense of doom vibrates off Beliel as he stands with his ear cocked toward the hatch, as though he’s been here a thousand times before and lost the battle each time. Looking at how torn and trashed he and the other Watchers are, that doesn’t seem far-fetched.

The hatch rattles and jiggles as the heads attack it with their teeth. The gnawing and bumping against the hatch goes on forever before it finally stops.

Then a great rattling and the sound of whipping moves past outside. The demons must not have seen where we disappeared to, even if their whip heads did.

The chariot rattle fades into the distance.

I cautiously let my breath out and look around. We’re in an underground hovel of some kind. Trashed bedding lies in the shadows, a raised seat made of mud, charred remains of a long-ago fireplace.

‘Do you know what they would have done to you?’ asks Beliel in a raspy whisper beside me.

I jump. I hadn’t realized he was so close.

‘Those heads,’ he says. ‘Do you know what they scream for?’

I shake my head, then remember he can’t see me.

‘A new body. They’re desperate for it.’ He leans against the wall of the hovel with his empty sockets turned to me. ‘Welcome to the Pit. Like it or not, you’ve just joined the initiations for the newly Fallen.’

‘How long do the initiations go on?’

‘Until you become Consumed or something equally horrible. Or it’s possible the Pit lords might feel like promoting you out of maggot status. I’ve heard it only happens sometime after your wings fully turn. Then the real fun begins.’

‘It gets worse after you’re promoted?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

Something thuds on the hatch outside. I stay silent until whatever it was that hit the hatch goes away.

‘What about those screaming whip heads? Are they being initiated too?’

‘They’re the Consumed. They’re the ones who didn’t make it through initiation. There’s a legendary feast that goes on with the Pit lords. The Consumed are the ones who were sacrificed for the feast.’ He shakes his head. ‘We can grow back a lot of things, but not a whole body or even major parts.’

He rubs his empty eye sockets. ‘But when you’re in the Pit, there are infinite opportunities for more misery. The Consumed cry out by the thousands to be included in a head whip for the chance to claim a new body.’

I’ve never seen Beliel so chatty. This earlier version of him is going to take some getting used to.

‘If they get their teeth into you, they’ll burrow before you can blink. They’ll work their way up to your head where they gnaw until your head falls off. Then they plant themselves in your neck. Sometimes, they fight, and two or three of them plant themselves before it’s all done. That’s a sight that makes you wish your eyes had been gouged out.’

I look at him to see if he just told a joke, but there’s no change in his expression.

‘A Fallen body is a prize, but they’ll take anything with limbs. They’ll even take rat bodies with the hope that they can move up the food chain so long as they can find the next victim. So watch your feet.’

He slides down the wall, sitting against it. ‘Rumor has it that some of the most powerful Pit lords were once Consumed. Of course, by the time they reach Pit-lord status, they’re beyond insane.’

I like to think I can handle insanity, but this is taking it to a whole new level.

‘So always be on guard,’ he says. ‘You could lose more here than you could possibly imagine.’

Is Beliel really looking out for me? There must be an ulterior motive, but I can’t think of one right now. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Maybe he’s not Beliel but just someone who looks like him. He sure doesn’t sound like him.

‘You saved me out there,’ he says. ‘I pay what’s owed, good or bad. Besides, I have a soft spot for Daughters of Men. My wife used to be one.’ His voice trails off, and I can barely hear his last sentence.

‘You’re offering to protect me?’ The disbelief clearly comes through in my voice.

‘No one can protect you, little girl, certainly not a newly Fallen whose eyes haven’t grown back yet. Anyone who says they can protect you is lying. It’s just a question of friend or foe. That’s all.’

‘And you’re telling me you’re my friend?’

‘I’m not your enemy.’

‘What the hell kind of bizarro world am I in?’ I whisper to myself.

I don’t expect Beliel to answer, but he does. ‘You’re in the ruins of the hellion world.’

I think about that for a minute. The hellion world? Not the Fallen world? The hellions and the Fallen do look very different. ‘They’re not the same species, are they?’