Chapter 43

We stand in a circle, exchanging wary glances, surrounded by this state of nonexistence.

Unable to wait for someone to break the silence, I blurt out, “Now what?”

“Now we wait,” says Aela.

“For what?”

She shrugs. “You heard Astaroth. There’s no way anyone can predict what happens.”

My eyes widen incredulously. “And you believed him?”

Jinny cocks an eyebrow at me. “You’re suggesting he was lying?”

“No suggestions here.” I scoff at her. “As a fellow demon, you should know how your kind roll.”

“Why, what a racist thing to say, Nothing.” Jinny’s lips twist, but the expression lacks her usual menace. Then she waves her hand, feigning boredom. “But whatever ‘my kind’ is prone to doing, I myself never bother lying. I neither care about anyone’s opinion, nor fear the consequences of telling the truth. That’s actually why your kind are the best liars. Which sort of makes you the expert here. If you think he was lying, he probably was.”

I glare at her, chagrined that she just said what I thought earlier, about one liar recognizing another.

Before I can lob something back, Aela frowns at me. “I have to agree with the demon in this instance, human. It’s your kind who sees and spreads lies everywhere. But in this situation, I believe your instinct for catching another liar in the act is off. As much as it pains me to say this about a demon, no matter his position in the Academy, Astaroth has to be telling the truth.”

“Think whatever you like, about me or him,” I grumble. “My gut is never wrong about stuff like this.”

Aela gives a dismissing gesture. “Whatever it’s telling you, his words carry more weight. The Trials are sacred, and they’ve been a fact of the universe since the first Nephilim were born. If there were anything to learn about their specifics, it would have made its way into the Celestial Codex or Angel Lore. It would have at least spread like hellfire through the angelic grapevine.”

“Maybe it’s you who didn’t come across those facts, Princess,” I sneer, amazed at how I’ve lost my awe of this beautiful monster since I let loose on her yesterday. “They might be filling volumes not on your ‘required’—or ‘allowed’ reading lists. Or buzzing in circles you never deigned to step one uppity toe into.”

Aela scowls. “Are you calling me uninformed and elitist?”

“About the rest of the world, and with anyone you believe is beneath you?” I shoot back at her. “Absolutely!”

“But why would Astaroth lie?” Sarah says, eyes begging me not to antagonize Aela. “When you squeezed him for answers, I got the impression not all cadets survive the Trials. But if we’re to eventually join the Army of Heaven, it’s in the Academy’s best interest to prepare us with any information they have. They would want all of us to make it through if they could help it.”

“Or maybe the Trials are how they get rid of the ‘weak and the foolish’ Azazel said the Archangels don’t want in their army. Maybe it’s their way of thinning the herd without appearing responsible for anyone’s demise. Who knows?” I throw my hands up in frustration. “I only know Astaroth knows more than he let on.”

“Yeah, because your Liar Detector Gut said so,” Cara mutters.

I swing my gaze between the girls looking at me as if I dropped some mental screws crossing that Gate. “C’mon, guys! Don’t you find it suspicious—hell, unbelievable, that he knows every Trial is different, when he claims no one ever related their experiences?”

From the way they stare at me, it’s clear none of them noticed that inconsistency before. Sarah looks dismayed, and Cara unsettled. Jinny looks focused, on standing steady, and maybe not throwing up.

Aela finally shrugs. “Whatever the truth is, it doesn’t make a difference to our situation now. However he came to know this, I believe Astaroth was telling the truth about no two Unitas’s experience being the same. Therefore, he could have said nothing to prepare us.”

But the calmness in her voice belies the worry in her eyes. Arnchangelspawn Princess here is rattled. And if she is, what hope do the rest of us have?

I exhale heavily. “That brings us full circle to my original ‘what now?’ But I guess we can’t figure it out, whether it’s true or not that every Trial is unique to the trialees.”

“Trialees is not even a word.” Cara scoffs.

I toss her a belligerent glance, my least favorite inferiority complex—of being the least-educated one around—rearing its head. “Then it should be. What else do you call people undergoing a trial?”

Cara’s lips curl in disdain. “Are you sure you passed mandatory education?”

I mirror her smirk. “Give me an alternative, O Highly Educated Grammar Guru. Contest? Has contestants. Entry—entrants, competition—competitors…all words have other words. What does trial have?”

Cara’s gaze grows mock-pitying. “They’re called nouns, not ‘words.’ Abstract and concrete.”

My ears burn, since I’ve never heard of nouns having types. “You still didn’t come up with a—concrete noun for trial, wiseass.”

“Trialists,” Aela supplies haughtily.

Cara turns her ridicule on Aela. “That’s not a word, either.”

Aela sweeps her in a fed up glance. “Look it up. When and if we get out of here. Though, if this is the kind of cooperation you’re capable of, we might not. So shut up, and let’s worry about what these Trials will throw at us. I refuse to fail, or worse, because the Choosing paired me with you lot. Do you understand?”

Mumbles and grumbles answer her. She rolls her eyes and turns away.

When none of us moves to follow her, Aela tosses a glance over her shoulder. “I would say you’re welcome to stand there until you desiccate, but I need you alive, for now. It seems the forces that govern these Trials are waiting for us to make the first move. So move your useless arses!”

Then, like the celestial super-model that she is, even in our unflattering Academy-issue uniform, she prowls away as if on some other-dimensional catwalk, wading into the undefinable medium surrounding us.

“Stuck-up harpy!” Cara hisses under her breath as she starts following Aela.

“Yeah,” I grunt as I grab Sarah’s hand and rush after them, for the first time agreeing with Cara. “If a pretty spectacular one.”

Jinny, limping openly now there aren’t hundreds of fellow cadets watching her, still manages to fall into step with us, mainly because Sarah slows me down so she can catch up.

We walk in Aela’s wake in silence for a long stretch, seeing nothing new in this nowhere.

At one point, I begin to wonder if the Trials are about finding our way out, which might prove impossible in this blank canvas of a place. Then something darts in the corner of my eye.

I whip my head around, barely in time to see it disappear.

I tug Sarah to a halt. “Guys, did you see that?”

“See what?” Jinny asks as she almost bumps into me.

“If you’re asking, then you didn’t see it. It was right there.” I point to our left.

Cara looks around nervously. “What was it?”

“I don’t know. It was very fast. But I think it was something elongated and—jagged. And dark. Or maybe it looked dark because of the distance, and shadows. Though I don’t see how there are shadows, when there are no light sources. But since there aren’t, how can we see…”

“Breathe, human,” Aela commands. “Maybe you imagined it.”

I scowl up the three inches between us. “Listen, Chicken Wings, I’ve seen and done and been through stuff your posh ass can’t even imagine. I’m not some nervous kid with a hyperactive imagination. Who needs one in a world where you and your likes exist, anyway?”

Aela levels me with a glance, and I expect her to level me, at least verbally. She only ends up nodding.

She’s taken my word for it? Wonders will never cease.

Aela looks around then back at us. “We need to cover our bases. Each one of you, look in a direction. I’ll look ahead. You, demon, look back. The rest of you to the sides.”

Then she turns and continues walking.

With none of us contesting her leadership, since I feel we’re all glad she assumed it, and with each assigned a direction, we follow her.

I’m looking where I first saw the moving object when I suddenly jump.

Sarah jerks, too. “Did you see it again, Wen?”

I tear my eyes back to Jinny, who’s two steps behind us, looking back.

But I heard her voice. It felt as if it had poured right into my ear.

She said, “Why did you do it?”

I shake my head at Sarah, resume my surveillance. Maybe I am starting to see, and now hear things.

“Well?”

There it is again. Jinny’s voice. But not really Jinny’s voice. It’s not a voice at all. It’s like she’s in my head.

“Yes, I’m talking in your head. I can do that sometimes.”

“Sometimes how? You have part-time telepathy?”

I blink in surprise. I answered her, and not in the way I “hear” my own thoughts. I am actually talking, but in a soundless voice.

“I do have low-level telepathy—or more like empathy. It’s why I liked Sarah on sight.”

“Now I’ve heard it all. Jinny, The Empathic Imp.”

I did it again. And I know I’mdoing it. She’s not putting words in my head.

“You got that right. Your head is like a steel vault. It’s partially why I loathed you the moment I laid eyes on you, because I couldn’t get a read on you.”

“And it’s because I could read you loud and clear that I despised the hell out of you on sight. But you seem to have an all-access key to my mind now!”

Okay. This is officially creepy. What is this?

“This is some sort of connection we share, since I tasted your blood. It’s why I did. I wanted to get a read on you, when I couldn’t any other way.”

“Ew, Jinny. Gross.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. But even after tasting that weird blood of yours, I couldn’t read you, let alone communicate with you. Not that I wanted to communicate. All that taste did was make me feel—things within you. Things that made me want to tear you open and stomp on your every organ.”

That’s close enough to what Godric said she’d do to me if given the chance. And to think I risked everything to stop her from getting her organs stomped.

“Yeah, that’s ironic for sure.”

Ugh. She got that, too?

Peachy.

“So what happened to suddenly make you jump in my head so easily?”

“I don’t know. But since waking up in that hospital bed, I found the connection intensified. Your worry for Sarah practically dragged me out of my near-deathbed. It was probably what woke me up.”

If this so-called connection involves blood, I think I know how it happened.

In the tussle with Azazel, I sustained the wound that so incensed Godric to see, right over my Mark. I think I know which serrated part of him sliced my neck and almost killed me then and there. It would have really been a cosmic ick if I died by his chainsaw dick.

My hand shoots up to examine the injury, and I find no trace of it.

But what matters here is that I bled. Over Jinny. When his boot was deep in her cracked-open chest. He has probably ruptured her organs, and my blood must have mingled with hers directly—maybe even with her very heart’s blood—and in a copious amount. That clearly had a far more intense effect than the smear she tasted after almost poking a claw into my brain.

“Yeah, that sure as hell explains it.”

I jerk again at the way her thoughts shift so smoothly, so effortlessly between my mind’s pressed pages. The idea that she now has access to my every thought, my every secret infuriates me, terrifies me. Until an even worse thought hits me.

“But this will fade when my blood is out of your system, right?” I hear my mental voice choking. “You demons renew your blood like we do, don’t you?”

“I guess. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s blood tasting that fades. Blood mixing is forever.”

“You’re saying this connection is here to stay?” My disembodied voice rises four mental octaves. “You can jump into my mind any time you like?”

“It’s clearly a two-way thing.”

“As if I want to be in your mind. And I’d rather be a vegetable than have you in my head any time you like!”

“I don’t like! And I don’t know if I can do it any time or not. This is as new to me as it is to you. Maybe we can communicate only because we’re in Nowhere Land.” `

“I sure hope so. All the more reason to get the hell out of here.”

“Agreed. But first, answer my question.”

“What question?”

I swear I hear her huffing in aggravation, even in this soundless medium. I do see her look Hell-ward.

“I asked why you did it.”

“Why I tried to stop Azazel from killing you, you mean?”

“Yes. You’re literally the last person I expected to intervene.”

“Yeah, I’m crazy like that—a-surprise-a-minute.”

“Answer me!”

“Hey, if you’re angry I intervened, I’m sorry I did, okay?”

“I’m—I’m not angry.”

Is that hesitation I hear in her “voice”? Confusion? The archedemon daughter of Lilith hesitant and confused? Nah. Her transmission must be getting spotty or something.

“I am confused. And I must understand. Everyone else was either happy or indifferent to seeing this insane angel squishing me to death. Yet, you tried to stop him. You attacked him, for Hell’s sake. He would have killed you, too, if Godric didn’t save us both.”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself that he meant to save you. It was just an unintentional side effect of saving me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. After he enveloped your puny human ass in some forcefield and tossed you out of range, he turned and did the same for me.”

Thathe neglected to mention. But come to think of it, I didn’t even wonder how she survived, when she was at ground-zero of their annihilating battle.

So he actually saved her, on purpose. When he made it sound like he didn’t care if she died, would have even preferred it.

“Yeah, I don’t understand it either. With our history, I thought fucking Heaven’s Sword would take the chance to chop my head off, and mount it in his trophy room.”

Curiouser and curiouser. I already have about a thousand new questions to rain on his semi-celestial head. About their history, why he saved her, said trophy room—and that title! I’ll pester him for answers for the rest of my life if need be. If we get out of here alive.

“Let me know the answer, if you get one. Owing him a life debt is terrible enough, not knowing why makes it unbearable. So what about you? After I almost killed you once, and after I just threatened to maim you, why did you try to save me?”

“Because I hate bullies, okay? And even if you are one to me, you’re nice to Sarah. And she likes you.”

“Who can’t be nice to Sarah? And then, she likes everyone.”

Is that insecurity I hear, too?If it is, I should let it eat her alive. Or she can extract the truth from my mind. I won’t be the one to say it “out loud.”

But for some reason I find myself correcting her. “Sarah doesn’t like everyone like that. The way she treats you isn’t part of her amazing, and amazingly frustrating inbuilt kindness. You’re special to her.” As much as it pains and outrages me to know and admit it. “She hasn’t had much special in her life.”

I feel her digesting my declaration, before her mental voice, still tinged with incomprehension, expands in my awareness again.

“So you think I contribute to Sarah’s wellbeing, and you were basically trying to protect her quality of life?”

“Yeah, along with hating bullies.”

I can feel her shaking her proverbial head, not convinced. “Was that really what went through your mind in the moments before you hurled yourself at a fallen angel? Who’s morphed into a five-ton monstrosity that almost broke my mind with terror? You decided to risk your life for a girl you hate, for some lame moral principle, and to preserve your best friend’s newly-acquired social life?”

“Why else do you think?”

“I’m the one asking here. You tell me.”

I throw up my mental hands in exasperation at her persistence. “Because you’re alone here, okay? You’ve been abandoned by your kind, and forced to attend this angelbrat-infested Academy, just like I was. And this slime-ball Elite Fallen took you by surprise, and would have mashed you into demon puree, just because he wanted to. And no one else thought this was wrong. No one would do anything. No one but Sarah, and I wouldn’t let her near that monster. It had to be me who tried to stop him. So even when I knew I couldn’t, I just had to try.”

In the wake of my outburst, there’s total silence inside my head. For long, long moments.

Just as I think our connection has been terminated, and start to breathe a sigh of relief, I “hear” her voice again, ragged with oppressive frequencies this time.

“I hate being indebted to you.”

A dozen abusive retorts flare in my mind. But it seems she doesn’t hear them, or she would have hurled something back at me.

Good to know I may have control over what to transmit and what not to. Especially in case this is actually permanent. I wouldn’t want Jinny as a mental albatross around my frontal lobes.

Though we need to exit this place first before this can become a problem to worry about.

On our shared channel, I sneer, “Well, suck it up, Demon Douche, and live with it. At least thanks to me, you will live. But if it’ll make you feel better, I promise not to try to save you next time.”

“There won’t be a next time!”

“There better not be!”

I can just “see” us both, two girls who are like gasoline and fire, each flouncing away from the mental confrontation. The images strike me as so funny in our current situation, I huff a laugh.

“Glad to see one of us is enjoying herself.”

Aela’s voice makes me jump. It blares as if from a sound system after the strange soundlessness of my dialogue with Jinny.

So I laughed out loud. Great. They must really think I’m crazy now.

“Yeah, that is a better explanation why you did what you did!”

Jinny. Again.

Every hair on my body bristles at her intrusion. “Get. Out. Of. My. Mind!”

“As if I’d want to be in your mess of a mind!”

“And stay out, Demonspawn!”

“My absolute pleasure, Abomination!”

My head almost bursts with alarm. She read the memory when Godric called me that?

What else did she see in my mind?

“I can only see your immediate or superficial thoughts, and they are such a grimy disaster zone. Just like your corner of our dorm.”

“Excuse me if I don’t have time, or energy to clean up!”

“Sarah would do it for you, if the rules didn’t forbid her. I hate to think she spent her life cleaning after you.”

“She didn’t! I did my part, and anything else she wanted!”

“I bet she never told you what she wanted, so she wouldn’t impose on you. I really hate to think she had no one but you. With your mess of a mind and that—thing deep inside you, Abomination is right. I bet it’s Godric’s favorite endearment for you.”

Feeling somewhat reassured, I hit back at her, “At least he doesn’t want my head in a jar or on his wall!”

“Yeah, I’m special. But heads always roll anyway, when Heaven’s Sword is involved. Yours probably will, once his assignment with you is done.”

Finding no appropriate comeback, I wrench on the connection. She yanks on her side, and between us, it snaps with a recoil that sends us both stumbling.

Though there are no footfalls in this ground-free place, we both stomp our aggravation for a while.

Somehow, all through this telepathic interrogation/confrontation, my vigilance hasn’t wavered. I’m certain nothing has moved again, until I’m forced to question if I actually saw anything.

I don’t know how much longer we continue walking in silence. No, absence of sound. I can’t even hear my breathing. I hear nothing until someone speaks. It’s some noise-cancelling feature, like those earbuds Godric is so fond of. This nullifying place is starting to feel like those sensory deprivation experiments I once read about.

I’m starting to think maybe this is part of the Trials, to take away all orientation, all stimuli, and see how we fare—when it happens.

One second, there’s nothing as far as I can see in this weird distance-deficient place, the next, that thing I saw before appears again. It coalesces out of the nothingness surrounding us in between blinks.

A shout bursts from my lips as I swing around to warn the others, only for it to choke to a wheeze in my throat.

It’s no longer a thing. There are many now. Too many to count. And they are converging on us from every direction.