Chapter 10

Abaddon's Citadel loomed over Hell's horizon. It was a tall, imposing structure that could be seen from far and wide, striking onlookers with as much awe as fear. Onlookers like me. With its impossibly large towers, pointed parapets, and walls that went on for miles, it looked more like a collection of knives trying to reach up and stab the low hanging clouds than it did a fortress.

It was the kind of look someone like Abaddon would go for. It also seemed to me like this was to Hell what the Sacred City was to Heaven. Already I could see hundreds of demons flooding into the Citadel through its large, open gates. They were coming from all over the place, their heads bowed, their eyes clinging to the ground beneath their feet.

They weren't stopped on their way in.

They weren't harassed by guards trying to determine what their business was.

Anyone and everyone were welcome in Abaddon's Citadel, but none of that served to ease my heart the closer I got to it. I felt like I was willingly walking into the mouth of a lion on the promise that it would not eat me so long as I was quick enough and careful enough not to bother it. I was walking into its mouth—of course it was going to eat me!

Lacking any other choice, I nervously followed the rebels and joined the hordes of demons filing in through the Citadel's main gates. Once we passed through it, the ambient sounds of the city started to unfold around me, and it was nothing like the rebels' city under the mountain.

There had been laughter there, joy, music. The demons in Missolis' care were living happy, comfortable, and safe lives. There was laughter here, yes, but it was more of a maniacal cackle instead of a mirthful sound. There was nothing mirthful about this place. Nothing peaceful, or serene. It was all chaos, and noise, and violence.

All around me I could hear fights taking place, scuffles in the middle of the street between pairs of demons arguing over some stupid thing or other. Up on a balcony, one demon slapped another one so hard across the face, he staggered back and plummeted three stories into the ground not far from the line of pilgrims I was in.

The sudden thud forced the throng of demons to shift and move, and I felt bodies press in all around me. A howl of laughter rang out from the top of the balcony, with a few of the demons below joining in. No one was helping the demon who had been thrown off, instead they were rifling through his pockets and taking everything in them.

These demons lived up to their reputation, taking whatever they wanted from others, hurting each other for fun, and simply serving their own desires. I fought the urge to help the fallen demon up and shoo away the thieves, and I was glad that I did; as soon as he got up, he pulled a blade from somewhere and began wildly slashing at those around him before flying back up to the balcony and continuing the fight.

Things didn't get any prettier the further into the city we got.

Past the rowdy demons, in a long, narrow street lined with cages, we heard the cries. At first I thought I was hearing wounded animals wailing, but as the line of pilgrims got closer, I realized the shapes inside were humanoid. I expected to see demons in those cages… but I was wrong. They were humans, all of them. Mortal souls trapped inside of cages, battered, bleeding, and crying out for help and mercy.

My heart squeezed.

Humans… in Hell. I had heard such a thing was possible, but Hell was not a place for humans—despite what the humans themselves believed. These had arrived here either by willingly trading their soul to a demon for a boon, or being dragged back with the demon when it was exorcised from the weakened host.

It was disgustingly easy to tell which ones had traded their souls. They were not crying or huddled in the corners of their cages like the rest, but reaching out and shouting to the passing demons, promising the souls they had already given away—or worse, the souls of still living relatives—if they would only let them free. One of the first cages we passed begged and pleaded to be released, offering his newborn son in his place.

Rage bubbled up inside of me. I wanted to stop. I wanted to reach into his cage and disintegrate his soul, rapture it, and end him for even suggesting the nauseating trade. It was Malachi who noticed my anger. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I snapped him a hard glance.

He didn't speak, he only gestured down the road with a slight nod and encouraged me to keep moving.

You can't help them, Sarakiel. Abaddon's words echoed in my mind. I could no more help the lost souls in Heaven than punish those in Hell. At least in Heaven, I'd been soothed by the idea of restarting the Machinery and allowing the souls to pass peacefully, but that meant nothing down here.

There was no justice or salvation to be found in Hell, and who was I to mete it out anyway?

Reluctantly I continued to walk, trying my hardest to ignore the genuine cries for help, and blocking out the pleas for release. It wasn't until I heard the grunts and barks of some demonic officer and the ringing of steel on steel that I could peel my mind away from what I had just experienced.

The line of pilgrims went past a courtyard full of demons clad in heavy armor wielding shields, swords, polearms and every other hand-to-hand weapon imaginable. There must have been hundreds of them, standing at attention and in formation, their swords raised above their heads. A single demon, easily seven feet tall with sinewy wings and cloven, goat-like legs barked at the crowd of soldiers, and the soldiers in unison changed their stances on command.

A demon army.

It was true then; Abaddon had been building an army here, and this was just one of many, many groups of soldiers. I could hear others, more shouting, more grunting, more metal on metal. I hadn't even seen as many angels in one place on Earth in all my time there. If these demons ever got out, how would we stand a chance against them?

I was so… horrified by the display I had slowed down enough to get bumped into by a demon I didn't recognize. They had been looking down at their feet, like they were supposed to, but they turned their head up at me and with a growl bared their teeth.

"Move, whelp!" the demon hissed. "Or do you…" they paused, as if something had caught their attention. The demon then leant in a little closer, their eyes widening, nostrils flaring.

My Light.

The demon can sense my resonance.

I was about to turn and run when Etari, the muscle-bound demon assigned to protect me, barged his way between us and shoved the other demon back a few paces. "You move," barked Etari. "You're holding up the fucking line."

The other demon grumbled but, weighing up how much larger Etari was, accepted the command. Malachi came in beside me, turned me around, and urged me ahead.

"You need to keep walking," said Malachi in a low voice, "and keep your eyes on the ground."

"I'm sorry," I hissed, "there's just a lot going on."

"I'm sure it's all very upsetting, but pilgrims are meant to look at the ground the whole way to the temple. We can't attract attention to ourselves."

I nodded, then looked at my feet. "Right. I won't do it again."

It was easier said than done, of course. There was a lot going on around here. Too much, in fact. I wanted to see it all, not out of some kind of morbid curiosity, but for practical reasons. If there was an army down here getting ready to go to war on Earth—and I now knew that there was—then the more information I had about them, the better prepared we could be for when they arrived.

I was getting ahead of myself, naturally. I had to get out of here first, and that wasn't a sure thing—not by a long shot. But we had made it through the city's most populated parts, and soon we were filtering into a huge building in which every single footfall and brush seemed to echo for all of eternity.

It was disorienting and I was sure that was the intention. A quick glance up and around me revealed an absolutely massive, domed building lit entirely by green firelight. There were pews as far as the eye could see, columns that stretched all the way up into the darkest recesses of the ceiling, and murals carved into the stone walls that, supposedly, told the story of Lucifer and his rebellion.

But the details seemed a little off.

In the murals, Lucifer was depicted as a great towering beast, a gnarling, gnashing overlord who, with claw, fang, and sword, rent apart the armies of Heaven and plunged his sword deeply into God's heart.

I saw angels being marched into the Pit, Lucifer crucified above it, but not the indifferent angel I had met—he was angry and trying to free himself from his restraints, promising to rain hellfire on Heaven, on Earth, and anyone else who dared get in his way.

They venerated him as some kind of war hero, as a paragon of violence. They portrayed him as a towering beast of claws and fangs and scales when really… he was just another angel in a robe, albeit with more wings. It made me laugh out loud.

I couldn't help myself.

I had to stifle the chuckle that spilled out of my mouth, but by the time I did, the sound had reached the walls and bounced around the temple hall for all to hear. Malachi and Etari glared, though not directly at me. I was lucky there were hundreds of demons in here and no one could tell where exactly the sound had come from.

Still, the moment was tense. I had never stared at my feet so deliberately before.

When the moment passed, someone grabbed my arm, breaking me out of my silent panic. It was Missolis, and the touch of her hand on my arm made me jump. I stared at her, wide-eyed. "What's wrong?" I asked.

She gestured with her head across my shoulder. "The door to the throne room," she whispered.

It wasn't nearly as massive as the rest of this temple. The door was made of charcoal-colored stone and inlaid with carvings and runes that looked weirdly geometrical. The runes seemed reflective almost, shining and shifting with the colored flames in this place.

"Pretty uninspiring, really," I said.

"Uninspiring, and unguarded."

"I thought only the passageway was guarded. You didn't mention guards here when we were going over the plan."

"It was a minor detail I wasn't sure about."

"Minor…"

"Come on. We have a job to do. As soon as we know the coast is clear on the other side, we'll signal our rebels and rush the portal."

Missolis was already on the move as she finished her sentence. I pulled back her arm. "Are you sure about this?" I asked.

She frowned. "Sure? Why?"

"Because it seems too easy."

"You are starting to sound like Malachi. I already told you; the portal is useless to anyone without Light. Abaddon doesn't care to guard it that heavily."

"Right, but…" I shook my head, then decided against arguing. Everything about this felt wrong. Abaddon may have known that the passage was useless to others, but from the little I'd seen of the demons in the Citadel, that didn't seem to matter; they would take anything if they thought it was worth something to someone. Still, the hope in her eyes, the desperation to see this thing done, I could only trust that she knew this world better than I did.

"Let's go," I simply said.

Missolis nodded, and with a quick gesture to Kainon, Etari, and Malachi, the five of us broke away from the main group of pilgrims and made a move toward the throne room door. There were no guards anywhere up or down the temple hall, no one to stop us from approaching it. No one to stop Missolis from pushing it open, or even peering into the throne room on the other side.

The coast was, in fact, entirely clear, allowing all of us to filter into the throne room without being stopped or called out.

The room itself wasn't nearly as big as the temple, but it was just as imposing. Abaddon's throne stood alone in the center of the room, a monstrous construction easily fifteen feet tall with steps leading up to its seat. It was covered in spikes and spears, onto which skulls had been impaled. The ground beneath the throne was a gray, cold-looking stone that muted the green light from the candles and torches lining the walls.

It looked as I had expected.

What I hadn't expected was how empty it was. I had expected soldiers, Hell, I had even expected Abaddon. Any of those things was preferable to the utter silence and emptiness of this place. This was Abaddon's throne room; the seat of his power, and the mouth of one of the only portals out of Hell. I didn't care what Missolis thought—this place should have been crawling with demons.

The fact that there weren't demons all over the place made me entirely uneasy.

"Over there," whispered Missolis. "The passage lies behind his throne, against that wall."

I couldn't see anything along the wall behind the throne. It was solid, unbroken, and unlit. I had suspected a portal to Earth, or a passage, or whatever Missolis wanted to call it, would've been an obvious landmark in this room, but I couldn't see it, and that made me even more nervous.

Etari and Kainon were quick to follow Missolis as she made her dash toward the throne and past it. Malachi followed, though he stopped to look at me, frowning. With a wave of his arm, he quickly hurried me to him because I hadn't yet moved from where I was.

I shook my head.

"What?!" he mouthed. "We have to go!"

"I don't like this!" I hissed. "We shouldn't be here!"

Malachi seemed torn. On the one hand, we had reached the throne room without issue, and there were no guards barring our passage to the portal. On the other hand, he also noticed that something wasn't quite right. When Missolis reached the wall, she started patting it with her hands. She was moving up and down it, searching for something but not finding it. When she smashed her hand against the wall and hissed the word fuck, I felt my stomach drop, and all the blood rushed from my face.

"Where is it?!" asked Missolis, her harsh whisper rising above the silence.

Malachi looked over at her, then back at me. A silent arrow appeared in his chest, blood blooming on his robes from the unexpected wound. His eyes widened, his body stiffened, and he crumpled to the ground. I was about to race toward him, when I felt a blade press against the soft flesh of my throat.

There was a demon beside me. She had come from nowhere, clad in thick, darkened steel armor with swirling black holes for eyes and skin a pale alabaster. Her eyes narrowed, her blade tightened against my throat, and she leaned in closer.

Took a whiff of my hair.

Then whispered.

"I know you…"