front of the other. The tunnel was narrow enough that I could touch both sides with my arms outstretched. The walls felt like smooth rock beneath my fingers and the air inside the tree was surprisingly warm and humid. I felt all of my frozen parts thawing out rapidly. After several minutes of walking I unbuttoned my coat and folded it over my arm to carry.
The path was some kind of fine silt and felt slippery beneath my feet. It sloped downward for several feet, then leveled out. I didn’t encounter any roots or rocks to trip over, and after a while I picked up the pace. I’d lost all sense of time and wondered how long I’d been gone. I wondered if Beezle would be worried. I wondered if my father had saved Gabriel. A fist squeezed my heart when I thought of the half angel lying bloody and still. I wished that he was with me now.
Evangeline stayed several feet in front of me. She did not speak at all. There was a sense of urgency about her now that infected me. I walked more quickly even as I grew more anxious about what awaited me at the end of the tunnel.
After what felt like an hour, the path started to slope upward again. Unlike the beginning of the path, the incline wasn’t gradual. The grade steepened abruptly and I was forced to scramble for purchase several times, digging in the silt with my fingers. I fell flat on my face once and slid backward at least ten feet before I managed to dig the toes of my boots into the dirt and halt my progress downhill.
My coat fell from my arms and tumbled down to the bottom of the slope. I’d have to retrieve it on the way back. It was far too cold on the road for me to even consider going outside in nothing but a sweater.
Evangeline turned with an impatient huff.
I pushed to my knees and glared at her. “I’m not enjoying this, you know. Some of us can’t just float along.”
“Flying. Right,” I said, feeling amazingly stupid. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe because I was still unaccustomed to using my wings for any purpose other than in my role as an Agent. I was used to acting like a human, not a supernatural being.
As soon as I thought of it my wings pushed out my back. I brushed the dirt from my face and sweater and then flew to Evangeline. She turned without another word, moving faster now, and I stayed easily at her side.
We continued upward for a few more minutes; then the path abruptly leveled out again. We were in a small, round anteroom, just a few feet across. I realized that as we’d traveled, the luminescence in the walls had increased gradually. The room was not as shadowed as the rest of the path, and I could see a door with an arched top and a squared bottom in front of us.
The door gleamed in the faint light. It looked like heavy metal, warm and yellow like gold. There was no knob, but there was a series of bolts—seven in all. I fluttered to the ground and folded my wings to my back. Evangeline hovered impatiently beside me.
“What I seek, or what you seek?” I asked, but I was already pulling the first bolt free. It didn’t really matter anymore if it was my wishes or hers that had brought me here. I still had a duty to fulfill, and Evangeline was part of it.
I pulled the last bolt free and felt acid on the back of my tongue. I stepped back so that the door could swing inward. Beyond the door was an empty cavern, high and wide. The rock was gray and white and veined with silver so the walls glittered even in shadow. There was something that looked like firelight flickering around the bend just past the main room.
And there were noises. Horrible noises—squelching, grunting, screeching, metal clanging against metal.
“What is that?” I asked, suddenly afraid.
Evangeline shook her head and drifted forward, beckoning me. I wanted to turn around and run the hell down that hill and out into the desert and take my damn chances with hypothermia and radiation poisoning. Anything would be better than facing whatever was around the corner. Instead, I followed slowly, my heart pounding, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I rounded the corner, wondering if she was leading me to my death, and stopped dead.
We were in a giant cavern. It was like being inside Soldier Field and looking all the way up to the nosebleed seats. But this place wasn’t filled with beer-drinking, brat-chewing football fans. It was filled with nephilim.
The nephilim hung from metal cages in the ceiling and the walls like so many grotesque birds. Even though they were caged, their wrists were shackled and attached to chains that were bolted to the floors of their prisons. As I stood there, gaping, a nephilim brushed against the bars of its cage and shrieked in pain. It seemed that the bars were enchanted with some kind of magic. It also seemed that the cages were just small enough so that the nephilim would be unable to sit, lie down or relax in any way without touching the bars. All of the creatures moved restlessly within their prisons, seeking repose and unable to find it.
Most of the nephilim looked like Ramuell—taller than any man, red and raw-looking skin, black claws. Some of them had wings, and some didn’t. Some looked . . . squishier than others. Their forms had less substance, like the glob demon that had visited my front lawn. And two of them had yellow skin covered in green and bulging sores. When one of these nephilim would brush the bars of their cage, the sores would burst, spraying a jet of foul-smelling pus and causing the nephilim to writhe in agony.
“This is the mercy that the Grigori showed their children?” I muttered, sickened. “Why didn’t they just kill them rather than force them to suffer like this?”
Evangeline did not answer. I glanced around and realized that she had disappeared.
“Oh, wonderful,” I said. “Great-grandma abandons me just when we get to the scary part of the story.”
I wasn’t sure what else to do so I started across the cavern floor, skirting close to the wall and trying to go unnoticed by the monsters suspended high above me. That didn’t really work out. I don’t know what gave me away—the scrape of a shoe, my terrified breath, the unusual movement at the bottom of the cave. But I wasn’t incognito for long.
The first one that saw me gave a roar that nearly shattered my eardrums. It echoed throughout the cavern and the other nephilim ceased their restless pacing, growing still and silent.
“Meeeeeeaaat,” the first one crooned, and it closed its clawed fingers around the bars of the cage. It seemed unaware that its hands were smoking. The air filled with the scent of burning sulfur. Its yellow eyes were fixed on me and I just barely suppressed the urge to cover myself with my arms. I had a feeling that the nephilim was sizing me up for something a lot worse than lunch.
The nephilim directly above me couldn’t see me but I could hear them sniffing the air. The ones that had me in their sights followed the example of the first nephilim. They lunged to the bars of the cage, some of them reaching through and clawing their fingers in the air.
“Meat, meat, meat,” they chanted, first softly, then louder and louder. “Meat, meat, meat.”
“Oh, crap, crap, crap,” I said, and started to run. I had no idea how strong those cages were but I was not going to stick around for a test.
The nephilim’s chant grew louder and louder. I was soaked in sweat and terrified beyond belief. I couldn’t think of anything. I just needed to get away, just get the hell away from the monsters. I passed beneath the last of the cages and rounded another bend. The nephilim’s howls of frustration followed me, echoing into the chamber beyond.
The view that awaited me there was not much better than the one I had left. The chamber was smaller, and completely empty except for its two occupants.
Ramuell and an angel I had never seen before were, well . . . getting busy. It was disgusting beyond imagining to see a creature of light copulating willingly with the nephilim. At least, I’m pretty sure it was willing. She was making a lot of screeching noises but they seemed to be noises of pleasure. She had the same ethereal beauty as the other angels I had seen—the pale skin, the blond curls, the white, feathery wings. But her beauty was tainted by the horror that she willingly touched.
The nephilim was behind her and they both faced me, but the angel’s eyes were closed. While his skin still looked shredded and burned from our last encounter, some of Ramuell’s wounds had begun to scab over. He saw me and stopped mid-stroke, pulling out of the angel and roaring. I covered my eyes with my hands.
