“We give you nothing.”
“Fine,” I said. “How did Kristof want this to play out? Was I supposed to sneak back here? Trick you? Fight you?”
“We do not know this Kristof.” An oni walked out. He was taller than his brethren, with wild orange hair. “You will leave now, witch. Take your angel and leave. Out of respect for your sire, we will permit that-”
“Permit?” I waved my sword. “I’ll leave when I want to. And I’m not leaving without the damned-”
Trsiel nudged me to silence and stepped forward, his own sword conjured but lowered. Respectful. When he spoke, it was with the full-on vocal treatment. “You say you do not know Kristof Nast?”
“Nast?” The oni’s ugly face crinkled. “I know that name. It is a Cabal. But this Kristof…?”
“He is hers.” Another oni pointed a bony finger at me. “I have heard of him. He helped oni.”
“But the oni he helped weren’t you,” Trsiel said. “He didn’t ask you to play a game with Eve, did he?”
More face-scrunching from the leader. “Game? The oni do not play games.”
“Sure, they do,” I said. “Hide-and-seek. And now you’re hiding-”
Another wave from Trsiel. He continued questioning them, and it didn’t take long to realize that they weren’t just trying to prolong the game. A full-blood angel’s voice truly is compelling-it makes you want to listen and to obey. For demons, it’s like a truth serum. These oni weren’t part of Kristof’s scheme. Stranz really had just stumbled into the dimensional pocket by accident, probably as he’d been heading for that “Private” door, adding a little spice to the chase.
But if Kristof didn’t set this up, then the oni really were guarding the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.
“Fine,” I said when Trsiel stopped. “It’s a misunderstanding. But we are going to need that book. So just hand it over and we’ll go. We won’t tell anyone you took it.”
The oni laughed now, cackling and yipping.
“We took nothing,” the leader said. “We found it.” He pulled himself up tall. “And so we keep it.”
“I’m afraid not,” Trsiel said. “The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are believed to be lost scriptures. As such, they would belong to the Almighty. As an agent of the Almighty, I need to ask you to relinquish them.”
Trsiel had said he didn’t believe they were real sacred texts, so he worded it carefully, to avoid lying. The oni didn’t care. They began gnashing their teeth and moving closer, clawed hands raised, fangs bared. Trsiel subtly motioned behind them-into the dark recesses of whatever dimensional pocket we were in. Presumably the book lay on the other side, as they guarded the door.
I nodded. We could hack our way through the oni, but that wasn’t fair. They had every right to guard what they’d found, and wholesale slaughter would land us in deep shit with the Fates. Contrary to popular belief, the war between the celestial and the demonic isn’t an endless bloody battle. It’s more like a cold war. Has been for eons. An uneasy stalemate, reinforced by endless treaties, including the kind that say two angels can’t massacre oni to get a book, even a sacred one.
We waited there, swords drawn, until they charged. Then we sliced through the first couple-self-defense-and barreled into the darkness. Realizing our goal, the oni leaped in from all sides. I swung behind Trsiel, covering his back as he pushed through the seething mass of imps. Tiny teeth dug into my arms and legs, and hands pummeled me. I shoved them off when I could and cut a swath with the glowing blue blade when I had to. The blade worked better. They saw it and dove out of the way.
We kept going, the blackness so complete now that our swords didn’t do more than illuminate their own metal, blue lightsabers cutting through blackness. Then…
“Shit!” Trsiel said. “Watch…!”
His voice trailed off. Falling. I hit the edge of the floor and teetered for a second. Then two oni jumped me and over I went.
It wasn’t a long drop. It helped that I landed on Trsiel. Above we could hear the oni chittering and giggling.
“Trapped!” one chortled. “Yes, the angels are trapped.”
“Oni didn’t do it,” another said. “They trapped themselves.”
“Yes, trapped themselves.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, pushing off Trsiel.
I lit a light ball and waved it around.
“Huh, not much of a trap,” I said.
We were at one end of a tunnel that, like the room above, stretched into darkness. A long, black tunnel, presumably with the book at the end.
“Find the book and teleport out,” I murmured. I turned to Trsiel. “It’s not an empty dimension, is it?”
We can’t teleport out of empty dimensions. They’re off the grid. I had to ask the question again, though. He was looking around, hand tight on his sword.
“No,” he said finally. “It’s not empty.”
I didn’t like his tone. “Is something here?”
“I’m… not sure. I think so.”
“Well, hopefully it won’t mind us taking the book.”
I swung the light ball in front of us, to illuminate the way, then I started down the corridor. Trsiel followed, walking backward, covering me now. I didn’t see the need for it. We were in a narrow corridor with nothing in sight. Just-
A growl reverberated through the hall. Trsiel swung in front of me, sword raised.
“It didn’t come from down there,” I said. “Or behind us. It seemed to come from…” I turned to the wall. Then I leaned over and cleared a peephole. “Nothing. Black-”
The wall crumbled. Just crumbled. So did the ceiling. And the wall behind us. We were standing in the darkness. Endless black on every side. I threw my light ball, but all I could see was the glowing sphere itself, going and going and going until it disappeared.
The growl came again. Then the flapping of wings. Leathery, bat-like wings, beating currents of hot air all around us.
“That sounds like…”
“Yes. That’s what it sounds like.”
“But it can’t be. Hell-beasts are only found in-”
An ear-shattering shriek as the beast dove at my head. As I ducked, I swung my sword. It made contact, fluorescent green blood spraying my face. The blood burned as it struck my skin, and I let out a yelp, so shocked at the sensation. Ghosts don’t feel pain. Angels don’t either. Not unless they’re in…
“Hell dimension!” I shouted.
“Which explains the hell-beast.” Trsiel grabbed my arm and yanked me as he stumbled backward over the uneven ground. “Hide your sword.”
I unconjured it and cast a privacy spell so we could speak without our voices being heard. “It can’t be a hell dimension. We didn’t step through a hell-gate.”
“No, we fell through one. I thought I felt it, but it happened too fast.”
“Shit!”
“Exactly,” he muttered.
We’d been in hell dimensions before. Very, very rarely, and only when we absolutely couldn’t avoid it. We got in and we got out fast, before anything found us.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll cast… Shit!”
Hell dimensions also negated teleport spells. Meaning we were trapped here, in the dark, with a hell-beast. A very pissed off, injured hell-beast.
“Just stay still,” Trsiel murmured.
Right. Hell-beasts hunted like sharks, except they sensed movement through air instead of water. So we stayed still and listened to the flap of its wings as it circled the cavern. Trsiel had found us a spot behind what felt like stalagmites, cold and wet stones soaring up all around us.
The hell-beast swung past a couple of times. I tried to gauge its size, but all I had to go on was the sound of those wings, which really didn’t help at all. There were hell-beasts small enough for us to take on… and some we’d need an army to vanquish.
“The exit,” Trsiel whispered. “We need to find the exit.”