Rami’s grip on his arm tightened. “Run.”
They ran. Dust-dry scrolls crumbled beneath their feet as they scrambled. Rami’s lit sword made shadows jump and frenzy around them with every step. They heard the muse’s steps lurch into a ragged run behind them. The thought hit him that they had no way of knowing whether she was alone. Hero remembered the predator behavior of the lion Furies in Elysium. Every wild flinch of dark shadows could be another one of those things springing a trap. The image hit Hero hard: a white demon launching itself at Rami, black razor teeth tearing feathers and closing around his unprotected throat.
The sick fear kicked Hero forward, pulling him ahead as the scrolls crumbled and gave way to the canyon of clay tablets again. They fled past the spot where Rami had found Hero, and were running blind.
Broken piles of shards rose around them, like menacing walls of teeth. Teeth behind them, teeth to either side. There was no time to consider their route. Hero didn’t remember this path through the slate canyon, and he worried that at any moment the terrain would drop off or close in entirely.
Almost as he thought it, the teeth on either side of them began to draw closer, closing like a maw. The path beneath them began to slope up. The clay pieces were precariously balanced, and Rami with his heavier feet and frame was slowing down. Hero had to grab his shoulder as he stumbled. Clay shards clattered down the slope and momentarily masked the sound of the muse in pursuit. Hero’s pulse wedged itself between his ribs for a nice panic attack.
“Climb, you great, dull bastard,” Hero muttered, dragging on Rami’s coat. The angel took another step and a cascade of clay dislodged beneath them, dragging them both down.
Rami arrested their slide by planting his sword. “It’s too steep.”
“Then sprout some goddamned wings and fly,” Hero growled. “I don’t think that creature behind us is coming to give us a boost.”
“I keep telling you, not—” Rami winced as he stumbled hard to one knee. “Not that kind of angel.” He pressed to his feet and glanced above them. The blade lit them from beneath and threw his eyes into complete shadow. “It narrows and levels out up ahead. Make it over the crest and there’s enough space to lose her.”
“Fantastic. After you, then—”
“It’s too steep,” Rami repeated grimly. Hero couldn’t see his eyes. Why wouldn’t Rami move so he could see his goddamned eyes? “You go up that way. I’ll find a different way around.”
Rami had never endeavored to be a believable liar, and in Hero’s opinion it was far too late to start now. He scoffed, but the sound was buried in the loud crunch of clay. The bleached muse came into view at the bottom of the rise. Hero had a moment of hope. “Perhaps she’ll have the same difficulty—”
The phantom girl scrambled again, then launched herself into the air. She cleared several meters, grabbed a ledge of clay jutting from the cliff side, and hung there like a gargoyle. A feral, hungry growl filled the air.
“. . . or not,” Hero finished.
“You should go,” Rami said. There was a cracking sound. The tablets appeared to start to disintegrate and wither everywhere the muse touched. Hero shuddered and had to suppress the memory of black ink rotting him from the inside, how it felt to melt away like that. The muse tracked him hungrily. Her perch wouldn’t hold for long, and she was already eyeing the distance between them.
First the bridge, now this. The tumult of fear in his chest boiled over into a desperate kind of anger. He grabbed the lapel of Rami’s coat and hauled him an inch from his face. “Listen here, you noble idiot, I don’t have time to argue with you. You are an angel and angels do not sacrifice themselves for shitty characters of a broken book that is a dime a dozen anyway.”
Rami’s face was close enough that Hero could feel the warmth coming off his breath as he huffed. “We can’t both make it—”
“Maybe not. But angels do not give up and die in filthy trash heaps like the Dust Wing.” Hero hesitated, and it felt like a sudden narrowing. The stories he’d let pass through him had left him hollowed, clean. Nothing mattered but the shadows of the second in focus, as if everything else had been a slow blur turning on this decision. Here. Now. Hero became aware of the breath he took, drawing in the air as it left Rami’s mouth. Even that was warm. “Angels don’t do that. But books do.”
Rami’s mouth dropped open. “What—”
Hell with it. Hero chased that breath and sealed Rami’s lips with his own. He swallowed the words, swallowed the questions, swallowed the consequences and anything but the hot relief of finally, finally feeling right outside his story. Rami’s lips were shock-stiff for half a second before turning supple, all-encompassing, and giving as infinity. Soft. Soft! Hero marveled. Such a stony, hard face, to have such soft lips.
Hero might have closed his eyes and died like this, but he caught a blur of movement as the muse launched herself at them, pale hands like claws. Hero already had Rami off-balance and by the lapels, so the turn felt natural. He waited until the last minute to shove him away, clear of the claws and teeth that descended on Hero’s shoulder.
Hero fell backward, and his ears were filled with snarls as the muse grappled with him. Teeth needled his shoulder, and something trickled under his skin, worse than blood or ink. Rami gave a hoarse cry from somewhere in the dark, but Hero and the muse creature were made of lighter things. He ducked and threw her off, leaping for an outcropping of slippery shards that led her farther and farther up the cliff wall.
Away from Ramiel.
The monster took the bait. It snarled and spurred after him until Hero ran out of
