I approached the last cubs. Nathaniel was carrying three or four at a go and there were only these two remaining. One of them was perhaps four years old, and the other looked about eight.
As soon as I separated them from the machines the younger child began to scream like the others. The older child, however, got up and walked away from the chair, toward the cavern wall. His eyes were blank and staring but he didn’t seem to comprehend what was before him.
“Hey!” I called after him. I was cradling the little one, who had to weigh at least forty pounds, in my right arm. I touched the older child on the shoulder with my free hand and he cried out as if I’d burned him.
“Can’t stop—sorry red—gotta go!” he shouted.
I stared at him. The boy walked into the cavern wall face-first, bounced off and walked into it again. Just like the ghost I’d found. Just like all the ghosts that J.B. had told me were popping up all over the city.
“Umm, are you just going to stand there contemplating the mysteries of life or are you going to stop that kid from breaking his nose?” Beezle asked.
I shook my head, coming out of my reverie, and looked around. Nathaniel had gone to help Gabriel and Samiel, and Jude had his hands full with the cubs.
“Get those cameras,” I said to Beezle as I stepped forward and lifted the older boy away from the wall.
The younger child in my right arm was screaming in my ear and it made it hard for me to think. I flew the cubs toward Jude.
“Why?” Beezle called after me. “Don’t you think you have greater priorities right now?”
“Just do it!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Why does everything I say have to be questioned?”
I handed the last two children to Jude. The older boy was mumbling something under his breath. I leaned closer so I could hear what he said.
“I am the scream—I am the scream—I am the scream…”
My eyes widened.
“What is it?” asked Jude.
I shook my head. There was no time to explain. “Start herding the kids toward the portal as best you can. I’m going to see if we can’t close off entry to the cave on the other side.”
“What about Wade?” Jude asked.
“We don’t know for certain that he’s here. The cubs have to be our priority.”
“He was with the cubs,” Jude said stubbornly. “If you close off the entry, how will we find him?”
“We can’t let the demons chase us down when we have twenty incapacitated kids,” I snapped. “I promise you, we will come back for Wade. Let’s just get the cubs to safety.”
While I argued with Jude, Beezle had managed to carry several of the camera-things up to the mouth of the tunnel. He looked breathless and out of sorts as he turned back to get another load. I flew next to him for a moment as I crossed the cavern to the others.
“You’d better have a good reason for this,” he grumbled.
“Look at it this way—you might actually burn a calorie or two,” I said sweetly.
He dipped down to the cavern floor, cursing up a storm, and I continued on to the other entrance. The three angels stood shoulder to shoulder, and all of them looked beleaguered. When I stepped around Nathaniel and peered down the mouth of the tunnel, I could see why.
The tunnel was packed from floor to ceiling with the same kind of green demons that had been monitoring the cubs. They hung from the ceiling, crawled along the walls and ran over the floor of the cave. They were packed so densely that they appeared to be one giant pulsing mass, a many-tentacled monster with a thousand burning eyes.
Gabriel, Samiel and Nathaniel were blasting as many of the demons as they could, and it was keeping the horde back—for the moment. But for every demon that was nightfired into oblivion, it seemed there were three more.
I blasted a few of them myself from underneath Nathaniel’s shoulder and then went around to Gabriel.
His face was white with strain and his teeth gritted from the effort of trying to hold back the tide.
“Let’s close off the tunnel,” I shouted.
He didn’t look away from his task, but his left eyebrow quirked upward. I knew he was thinking of Wade. So was I.
“We have to get the cubs away,” I said, and threw some nightfire at the approaching horde. “You, Samiel and Nathaniel keep at it while I take down the wall.”
He nodded grimly and passed my message down the line. I had been practicing my spellcasting over the last month or so, since it seemed that every time I turned around I had a new enemy. The presence of Lucifer’s mark had also awakened some interesting new abilities, although those powers didn’t yet come easily to my call.
I took careful aim at a portion of the rock ceiling that was about four feet beyond the leading edge of the demon mass; then I reached inside, to the place where the source of my magic flickered, and pushed it through my heartstone.
There was a surge in my blood, a painful electricity running through my veins. My body went stiff and I threw my hands out in front of me.
Blue lightning shot from the tips of my fingers and crashed into the target I had aimed at. The effect was immediate. Huge chunks of rock rained down in front of the demons. Cracks spread from the point of impact and more debris fell. The demons hissed angrily and backed away from the falling stones. Several of them were crushed, and my companions continued to blast nightfire at any demons foolish enough or lucky enough to make it past the falling rocks.
The air quickly filled with dust but the fallen rocks only partially blocked the tunnel. I didn’t want the demons to come surging over a pile of rock, so I sent another lightning blast at a visible fault line.
The effort of pushing the spell through a second time brought me to my knees. This happens to me a lot. The angelic part of me controls powers that were normally wielded by immortals. The human part of me fatigues in the face of those powers. I could probably be one of the strongest creatures in Lucifer’s realm were it not for that tiny beating stain of mortality.
The second lightning blast did the trick. Bigger chunks of rock fell as the whole tunnel became unstable. Gabriel grabbed me under the shoulders and dragged me backward as giant boulders crashed into the mouth of the tunnel. The sight and sound of the demons were completely obscured by the crash of falling rock.
I pushed to my feet, shaking Gabriel away. The four of us stood watching the tunnel disappear. I hoped I’d done the right thing and that I hadn’t just buried Wade under a gigantic pile of rubble.
Huge clouds of dust billowed out of the hole where the exit used to be. I approached the rock pile, which still bore the sparkling remnants of electricity from my lightning bolts. Tiny blue arcs shot all over the surface, and far on the other side of the profusion of rock I heard the howls of demons. And I could hear the shifting of stone. I had blocked the tunnel, but it was a temporary measure. The demons would come for us as soon as they cleared the way.
5
“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THAT PILE COMES tumbling down,” I said.
I flew toward the upper cavern entrance, the other three following closely behind me. Beezle was huffing up there with the last couple machines. I caught up to him and took the objects out of his claws. He immediately flew up to my shoulder and landed with a grunt.
“You’d better have a realllly good reason for this,” he repeated. “And you owe me doughnuts, big-time.”