Chapter 18 #3
Dina, finally, set a foot down, then kicked off of it, falling into the abyss he’d been in before.
Folding his wings close, the plunge was fast, terrifying.
But freeing. As the air rushed past, into his mouth, his hair fluttering behind him, his blood trickling in beads upward — he almost felt good.
Free falling felt good. He could see light below him, violent and warm.
The sea serpent that had pulled him to Hell with a smaller monster strangling it, trying to hold its fire away from whatever was below even if it meant burning them both. “Tadeo!” Dina screamed. “Tadeo!”
The anti-Christ twisted his horrible face up, and he shouted back, “Dina! Help me!” His grip on the Leviathan was slipping, and soon it was thrashing again, no longer breathing fire, trying to shake off Tadeo with harsh whips of its body.
“We must go!” Dina stretched out his wings and fluttered them, feeling each feather shift. “Fly up with me! We must go!”
“Angel!”
Dina turned back, saw Baal, breath reeling in.
He put up his hands and swerved, trying to dodge the mace, succeeding again only enough that the spike of the starry sphere dragged at his forearm, yanked back to pull out a chunk of skin.
Blood, again. Pain, again. By now, the angel could only whimper in the pain, realizing how hoarse his throat was from screaming.
He kicked, trying to jerk his body away as the Regent of Hell reeled back the sphere, swung the chain around behind him.
Dina squinted frightfully, realizing he was trapped between a sea serpent beast below and the horned one above.
He had been wrong to run away. He should have listened to Baal when he could.
He shouldn’t have come here. Baal threw the star of the mace out at him again.
Then — Dina was tugged backward, behind something, and a clawed, charred hand went where his face had been.
The claws caught the sphere, each of its spikes poking through the fingers, the palm, even an eye at the back of the wrist. Almost consumed by the feathers of too many wings, Tadeo tightened his grip on it, then yanked down, pulling the suddenly-pale Baal down before he could let go of the handle of the mace.
The demon did release it, then tried to beat his ancient, featherless wings.
Mercifully, Tadeo didn’t pursue Baal before the Leviathan began screeching again, and heat began rapidly approaching from below.
“Fly,” the angel whispered, feeling one of Tadeo’s other hands gripping the back of his shirt. “Fly, Tadeo!”
Baal retreated, swerving into a crevice in the dark walls of the abyss, and the anti-Christ dropped the mace, hand bleeding until the blood dried, and instantly, the cuts sewed closed, and he breathed out to feel the burnt of him began to chip away into the darkness.
Tadeo, obediently, beat all his wings, pulling Dina up with him, who was fluttering his own wings and trying to keep up.
How far above was the place they’d fallen from?
Tadeo couldn’t think, couldn’t even guess.
Panting, panting, all the pain of what he’d suffered in the last hours was fogging his head.
Groaning, grunting, all he could do was bear it.
He would have to cry it out, like a child, but not yet, not now.
He listened to instinct, to flap all his wings faster, faster, until he was nearly dragging Dina.
Maybe the abyss would go on forever, but he would have to keep flying up to escape the flames for his own dignity if nothing else.
He was in pain. So much pain. The world was spinning.
The pain. Beat after beat of wings. He must listen to his instincts, the beast inside him that could have had a mind of its own.
It was bleeding with him. ‘Tadeo, keep flying. Up, up.’ May they arrive in Heaven.
The pain. In Heaven, there must be no pain.
“There, Tadeo!”
In the darkness, he had the angel guide him, through what must’ve been a gap in the rock ceiling, then through a narrowing channel that Dina climbed in through first. Tadeo followed, folding all his wings inside his body with a groan of pain that he couldn’t fight tears over now.
Each new mouth and eye on him shut, then began to heal over, pale like scars.
As the rock around him crushed him, he tried and tried to grow smaller.
He crawled, crawled. Without even realizing it, he was beginning to choke on water, but his lungs were already full of blood.
Just as the ocean cave eased up on him, the anti-Christ began to limp, no longer able to trudge along even when the angel called his name.
Celestial arms came over a humanizing, naked body, then Tadeo shut his eyes, feeling the angel use his wings to toughly push themselves up faster through the water.
When they finally arrived to the surface and night sky, Dina embraced Tadeo tightly, choking up on either the sea or tears — regardless, it was salty — and he rubbed his face against the boy’s drenched hair.
He kicked weakly, trying to bring the anti-Christ to the distant shore.
Calm, the tide pushed them gently, encouragingly.
Half an hour it took, so long that Tadeo was gurgling and stirring by the time Dina was finally able to pull them out of freezing water onto cold sand. “Tadeo, Tadeo,” he was crying, “Tadeo.”
The anti-Christ could feel nothing but the angel collapsing on top of him, weeping for his dear angel friends that he’d somehow abandoned by doing this.
Not understanding, Tadeo simply laid there, his body healed but aching everywhere.
It was such pain that he almost wanted to hurt himself just to feel in control of the agony for a mere second.
“Angel,” he croaked, and Dina hugged him tighter, before Tadeo blinked, began to see the crescent moon over them.
“That was… We were…” His voice was throaty, still burned.
“The Leviathan…. And…” His heart petrified, fell. “Dante.”
Dina tensed over him, then lifted his body slowly, faced him with all the fright of Heaven and Earth.
“We left Dante,” Tadeo breathed, “in Hell.”