Chapter 4: Lana

"T his is impossible!"

Ethan's whining doesn't help me concentrate on healing this tiny self-inflicted nick on my hand.

I've gotten to know my new team members a bit and Ethan is definitely the most vocal. My other teammates fall onto the other side of the spectrum: Kevin and Simone are withdrawn, Liam seems to be the quiet type, and Jessica is the shy one. We've been training together on the field every day, but we're in the keep's meeting room with Daniel now, and he's teaching us how to heal wounds. In theory, at least.

I take a break from squinting hard at my hand and look around. Another team is clustered on the other side of the long table and they seem to be having about as much success as we are – basically, none at all.

I only know the name of one of that team's members, a short- haired and stocky girl named Darla. Though I can see the boys on the team are trying to familiarize themselves with Simone, with the way they're staring.

I can't blame them, though. She has to be the prettiest girl I've ever seen outside of a billboard ad. Her hair is a gleaming chocolate brown waterfall, offsetting her pale skin and bright gray eyes. There's something elfin about her features, in the shape of her mouth and eyes which draws the gaze. But if those arresting eyes happen to meet yours, it's always only for a second before she looks away. Everything about her screams ‘Leave me alone'.

Daniel makes another round on our side of the improvised classroom, so I drop my gaze back to the drying drops of blood cupped by my palm. Any longer and this wound will heal all by itself.

We've been told that the traits our heritage afforded us will manifest themselves now that we're no longer in the human realm. One of them is faster healing. Another is veritable immortality. While we're living in the Underworld, we won't age, as if we were as dead as the majority of its residents. So long as we're here, we'll be preserved at our prime, perfect pawns for the council that ordered us to be here.

But to purposefully heal this wound, we're meant to use the ether – the intangible life force that's in and around every object and creature – to kind of nudge our blood cells to promote wound closure. It's not magic in the sense that it creates something out of nothing. We can only manipulate that which is already there.

"Hah!" Simone's exclamation interrupts my meandering thoughts and everyone turns to see why she's so excited.

"Well done, Simone." Daniel is inspecting her palm where, under a smear of blood, the wound is clearly healed. The wide smile of accomplishment on Simone's face shows off most of her pearly white teeth. It's a display that makes a guy at the other side of the table whistle loudly. Simone's smile immediately drops. Judging by the sway of her body, Darla then kicks the leering man beneath the table, making him yelp. "Bitch!"

I frown at him. That was the first time we'd seen Simone smile, at least in public, and he made her regret it.

"Arsehole." That was Ethan again and this time his outburst makes me huff out a laugh. His slight accent at least makes his grousing marginally less annoying.

We're all pretty protective of Simone – she has that wounded little bird thing going on and it makes me curious about her past. An awakening darkness within makes me want to ask her who hurt her, so I can kick the shit out of them.

"Is alienating the people who will have your back in Hell a new training method Ramel's using, Nick?"

Judging by the way his deep voice freezes the room, no one else heard Maalik enter, either. We look like a bunch of kids who got caught pilfering from the cookie jar.

I clear my throat. "Look, Maalik, Simone healed her wound." The Fallen gives me a knowing look. Drat, he's onto my deflection tactics.

"I'll be impressed when you can all summon more than just a puff of smoke. Or at the very least not trip over your own damned feet on the field." After that dry remark, Maalik turns towards Daniel, who is, as always, unruffled and vaguely amused. "Talk to you for a moment?"

As they leave the room, the whistler boy, aka Nick, immediately rounds on Darla. "Touch me again and you'll regret it."

The juvenile threat makes me roll my eyes. What is this, kindergarten? "Why?" I drawl. "Do you have scabies?"

Okay, maybe I'm not all that mature myself.

A couple of chuckles make Nick's face turn purple. "Shut up, teacher's pet. We all know why you're sleeping in the same hallway as them."

Now a couple of guys on his team laugh at my expense while the rest avoid looking at me. I can't help but blush a bit myself, though I try to stay calm. I never considered how it would look that I'm separate from everyone else, and maybe I should have. " Oh, yeah," I mutter. "Daniel's big on orgies. Schedules them right between morning and noon prayers."

Thankfully the room laughs at the image I've painted and the lingering awkwardness is dispelled. I'm clearly going to need to keep an eye on this guy.

Over the next weeks, I learn to feel comfortable in my new leathers. We've moved from hand-to-hand combat to using dull practice weapons. We still manage to get bumps and scrapes though, giving us ample opportunity to practice our healing.

I've grown close to Kevin, pairing up with him for practice whenever possible. I feel a kinship with him; neither of us has much to return to in the human realm. Of course, that doesn't mean we'd choose to be here. We practice together outside of our lessons, too, as both of us chose to learn to wield two light swords. Though using a bo staff comes naturally to me due to my life-long interest in martial arts, I perhaps chose to master a different weapon type to keep myself distracted from feeling trapped down here.

As time passes, the escape attempts become fewer. One idiot on Corson's team actually ran out of Purgatory into Hell. Not sure what he saw, but when the Fallen brought him back, he was pale and shaking.

While Daniel's lessons moved from healing to defensive uses of ether, Maalik tries to coach some destructive ether out of us, gathering the warmth from the air into fire, using wind to slice through objects – whatever we're capable of. That's how Jess discovered she can pull minerals out of the ground. One day she could possibly even make weapons. The tiny blonde doesn't exactly look like a blacksmith, but what do I know?

I managed to heal and shield, even manipulate wind, but fire's proving to be a bitch.

"Stop trying to think it into happening," Maalik chides, then taps my stomach with the back of his gloved hand. "Pull from here."

I raise an eyebrow. "My pancreas? "

Maalik grunts. One of these days I will make him laugh. "Your being, your core. Your soul, if you want to put it that way."

I purse my lips and place my hands in front of me like I'm waiting to catch a basketball. I think of the warm wind and try to get a feel for the pancreas essence that is me. A spark ignites too close to my fingers and I drop my hands with a gasp.

"Good," is all that Maalik says before walking over to a sweating Liam.

To my left, Kevin is practically playing catch with a golf ball sized flame. "Showoff," I mutter, then bring my hands back up. I have a feeling I'll be more motivated to learn once push comes to shove and we're facing those amorphous manifestations of evil human souls and the demonic minions salivating to take a bite out of us.

Corson has been teaching us about the topography of Hell and the many dangers we'll face in the realm. The living residents of Hell are sorted into hierarchies, a sort of demonarchy. Their leaders, kings, barons, and dukes are archdemons, and some of their names are familiar to me from reading about myth and lore in theology; there's Ba'al, Samael, Azeal, Belial, Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, and even Lilith is real. Above them, of course, the Devil, to whom our Fallen refer to as Sataniel, as he was once known in Heaven – Lucifer or Light Bringer being a nom de guerre chosen by the ancient peoples. We spend more time on the anatomy of lower demons, as they're the ones we're more likely to face and survive.

Soon we'll venture into Hell, like baby birds kicked out of the nest, and we'll need to be armed with as much information and fighting skill as we can muster.

Fire flutters to life between my hands, like a tiny butterfly emerging from a chrysalis to test its wings for the first time. It's beautiful, and I can't imagine using it against someone as a force of destruction.

"Congratulations," Kevin says dramatically. "You're a wizard, Lana!"

I snort and the fire extinguishes, leaving no trace of it behind. " You think I could get away with setting a fire under Nick's bed?"

"That would mean getting close to his bed."

My eyes widen and I reel back in horror. "Eww, you're right."

Kevin chuckles, then scratches the back of his head, looking around to see if anyone's within earshot. "Is he still following Simone around like a puppy?"

"He's making her uncomfortable, but she doesn't want anything said to the Fallen, to make a thing out of it." I look at the brunette who's trying (and failing) to use ether in any way that might be remotely considered offensive.

She's a very unlikely Cambion, having worked at the NICU before being brought here and mastering nothing but healing since. Kevin and I display at least some personality traits that may be attributed to our hereditary predispositions – shorter tempers and angrier reactions.

I asked Maalik about my grandfather, the demon who left Hell to be with an angel. According to him, it was a union of love and they both got killed by assassins from Hell before they got much of a happily ever after in the human realm. Would that mean I'm more prone to good than evil, or is it just a technicality, and demon blood is demon blood? It's something that's kept me up at night, wondering if I am who I'm meant to be, or just an imposter trying to conform to society's norms of right and wrong.

"We'll keep her safe," I murmur, and the vow at least feels right, like protecting anyone weaker might come naturally to me.

"Less chatting, more practicing, grandmas!" Maalik yells at us from Liam's side.

To my amusement, Kevin salutes him and shouts back, "Yes, sir!"

I giggle and lift my hands up to cradle an imaginary fireball again. Maybe I'm a bad influence. He is almost a decade younger than me and still impressionable.

When I turn my head to look at him, I see that his warm brown eyes are twinkling. He looks nothing like the solemn boy I saw in that atrium our first night here.

I decide then and there that, whether it's good or bad, I'm the right kind of company for him.