Artemis peered at the sky, then at our surroundings. “I don’t see him. And I don’t smell him. Which is a problem, because I’d know his stench anywhere.”
Florian paused, kneeling on the ground and pressing his hand against the earth. He focused, eyes closed, then shook his head. “You guys aren’t going to like this.” He stood up again, pointing directly at Masaya Volcano. “He’s in there.”
I frowned, following the line of his finger. “What, you mean he just swan-dived right in there? Flew right back to his prime hell, and that’s it?”
“I’m afraid it’s not so simple,” Raziel said. “Prince of his own prime hell he may be, but Beelzebub is not one to hide in a fortress and cower. His actions have been too brazen, his attacks too bold. He has built his momentum. He will not let it falter.”
A slender shaft of light spiked vertically from the ground by Raziel’s foot, forming into the sharp, sturdy golden spear he favored in battle. He gripped it tight, lifting his chin at the volcano.
“Our fault was in assuming that Beelzebub was fleeing to his inner sanctum, to wait things out while his minions did the dirty work. That isn’t quite what has happened. Consider that this is indeed a gate to hell, this mouth of fire.”
The ground rumbled again. My heart thumped and thumped as I began to grasp the meaning of Raziel’s words.
“And if we accept, at last, that this is a gate, then we are all in understanding of the fact that a portal does not simply work in one direction. A door swings both ways.”
“Oh, well, fuck,” Florian mumbled. Raziel wrinkled his nose, then slammed the butt of his spear into the ground. The earth rumbled even harder.
“Beelzebub wasn’t running. He wasn’t going home.” Raziel cast his eyes across us all, his knuckles white as he readied his spear for battle. “He was merely unlocking the gate.”
24
My mind raced through all the armaments I had at my disposal, turning over the things I conjured most commonly for battle. A shield, a sword, a mace, a suit of armor. And a bomb, and a cannon, that one time. Blood pounded at my temples. Which of those things would help us against whatever was planning to shoot out of that volcano?
“They’re coming,” Florian said, his eyes on the ground, paying attention to the vibrations. “They’re here.”
A film of light shimmered across my arm as I created a shield for myself. At my side, Raziel did the same, and between the two of us we’d have at least enough surface area for protecting the others. Then the volcano excreted its payload in an awful, fiery burp of sulfur and lava. My heart fell.
We’d expected flies. What we hadn’t expected were swarms of flies lit completely on fire.
Hundreds, thousands, then millions of black and orange motes flitted out of the volcano, Beelzebub’s children risen fresh from the depths of his prime hell. They were bearing the embers of his dimension’s hellfires, or were themselves set aflame. I had very little experience with ballistics myself, but I did know well enough that invincible bullets could be made significantly more dangerous when you dipped them in demon napalm, too.
Swarms of bright, hellish flame flew directly for us. I stood my ground, fighting my instinct to run, because we needed to shield ourselves and the others. You couldn’t outrun these things, anyway, not with so many of them shrieking through the air like infernal fireflies.
“Mason,” Raziel shouted. “Your shield.”
Florian and the twins hurried behind us. I reinforced my shield with the weight of my body, planting my feet firmly in the earth, and waited. The insects crashed against my shield in massive numbers, their individual pings and zings mingling with the awful droning of their legions, buzzing and humming as they sought to break through.
Sparks flew with every collision, the heat of the insects so close I was already sweating. The vibrations ran up my arms, my muscles straining as I pushed back. How long could we keep this up? Once the flies regrouped, it would be over. All they’d need to do was attack us from multiple angles simultaneously. And then what?
“Hold, Mason,” Raziel grunted, his face wrinkled with the effort of supporting his own shield.
“I’m holding, damn it,” I grunted back. “But we can’t keep this going for long.”
“You saw what happened when we tried the flaming arrow trick,” Artemis said. “Absolutely nothing.”
I cringed, realizing that Beelzebub probably got the idea from watching the twins pull off their combined attack. He wanted fiery projectiles, too. Very funny.
“We’re fucked,” I said.
But then the ground started surging in a circle around us.
“Oh,” I yelled, my arms only moments away from giving out. “Even more of them, and they’re coming from directly beneath us? Awesome.”
Vines erupted from the earth, gleaming and wet, like spears sculpted out of the darkest jade. They rose in spires into the air, then wove together and interlocked, forming a dome so sturdy and thick that it blocked out both the buzzing of Beelzebub’s offspring and the light of the moon. We were safe. I felt at the curved walls. It was like someone had dropped a giant, wet basket over us.
Artemis grumbled. “Wow, nice, Mason. The one time we need your dumb halo to actually function and it’s barely glowing.”
I raised my eyes into the dimness, reaching for the top of my head in frustration. “Stupid doohickey. Ugh. Anyway, nice work, Florian. You really saved our butts.”
“Um. That wasn’t me.”
And then, out of the stunned silence, came a familiar, cheerful voice.
“It was me,” it said.
My jaw dropped in disbelief. “Dionysus? Is that you?”
“I have come to make amends,” he said, this time more seriously. “To show that I meant no harm despite my own negligence. I have come to aid you.”
“We saved the one nephilim they captured,” I said into the dark. “And as long as you promise
