Made in Hell 5 Chapter 2

The entire church seemed to light up as the angel stood in front of us.

A golden shimmer floated through the air, and a white light shone from the angel’s mighty, feathery wings as they folded neatly behind her back. Gold dust drifted from her hands, her blonde and golden hair fell behind her shoulders, and a powerful rage took over my body as I took in the sickeningly perfect sight of her. She wore a simple white dress that stopped just above her knees, nothing at all sinful like the outfits in Ashe’s closet, and I imagined her Holy King had a strict rule about what his angels wore.

Still, her angelic beauty was fucking blinding, and I growled deep in my chest as I took in every pristine inch of her.

The angel looked back and forth between Ashe and I, and her golden eyes lit up with deep excitement as she surveyed her surroundings. I imagined this bitch thought it was going to be an easy fight, and perhaps she thought she’d be able to return to her Holy King once my demon and I had been slaughtered.

But if that was the case, then this angel clearly knew nothing about the inner workings of a demon.

It was my mission to rid this world of scum like her. I had already saved the Port of Rengfri from the sickening Church that brainwashed the residents, and now it was time to do the same with the angels. She’d soon realize the mistake she’d made, but not before I showed her who was really in charge around here.

A vibration rumbled in the back of Ashe’s throat as she stared down the angel, and I knew from that one look alone that my Infernal Huntress was preparing to charge.

There was something incredibly feral and primal about Ashe’s actions, and I’d be sure to reward her later once we’d defeated our current threat.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Ashe darted forward as she aimed for the angel. Her venomous nails tore from the tips of her fingers, and Ashe sliced the air with her hands as she attempted to tag the angel’s holy skin. One single drop of venom was enough to kill the mightiest of men, and I wanted nothing more than to watch the angel violently shake and quiver as her holy blood became congealed beneath her skin.

But then, before Ashe could tag the angel, the white light increased with enough strength to blind us, and my Infernal Huntress halted in her movements. She was locked in place by the Holy Light alone. It was like she was standing directly under the light of the moon, and the fact that Ashe couldn’t even twitch a single finger showed me just how powerful this angel really was.

But she wasn’t as powerful as I was.

The sight of Ashe trapped within the white, Holy Light caused a dominant rage to form deep in my sinews, and a fire grew in my opened palms as I pictured the angel collapsing to the church floor in a pile of dust. I urged my Infernal Blaze to cover my entire body, but I never made it that far.

Because before I could set the fire free, the angel threw one hand in my direction, and the golden Angel Dust that sprinkled from her fingers became somewhat like a rope as it tied itself around my torso. A burning pain forced itself through my skin and clothing, and the more I moved, the tighter the rope became.

“Argh!” I yelled as a piercing sting cut through the skin of my arm.

I couldn’t raise my arms or even move them away from my sides, and I started to wonder how long it was going to take for the rope to snap me into two pieces.

The angel was immortal just like Ashe and I were. Or at least, immortal compared to the dwellers of the surface world. But up against each other, angels and demons were more vulnerable to our powers. We could certainly be fucking destroyed, and one wrong move on our side could have been the end of Ashe and I.

We needed to be careful of the light and the golden shimmer, but we also needed to be smart and strong enough to break ourselves away from the angel’s hold.

I tried to twist my body from side to side, and I used every ounce of energy in my body to free my arms, but nothing seemed to work. I glanced over to where my beautiful demon stood in the bright light, and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab her.

It looked as though Ashe’s body was limp, but also made from stone. She was slightly slumped over to one side with her head back, but she appeared fossilized in that position.

Just the sight of Ashe in such a vulnerable position caused my blood to boil, and I threw back my head as I screamed into the ceiling above me.

“Ooh, Atticus,” the angel cooed as she shot me a violent smirk. “How pleased the Holy King will be once he receives his gift.”

Her voice was high-pitched and almost musical, like one of those fucking stringed instruments they were known to play. It scratched and burned my ears, and it almost felt like her voice was a power in itself.

“You’ll have to kill me first,” I snarled. “No amount of Angel Dust will be enough to defeat me.”

The light that surrounded Ashe slowly began to dissolve as the angel paid me more attention, and that was when an idea came to mind.

If I could distract the angel for long enough, it would give Ashe the chance to break free. I had no idea what my huntress was thinking about, or if she had any plans of her own. But what I did know was that we had to work as a team in order to take down the angel, and my idea could have been the only way to do that.

Perhaps if I could mentally torture the angelic bitch. Then it would be enough for Ashe to rip herself free from the light.

“I bet your so-called Holy King is shaking in this throne at what I’ve done.” I smirked. “I killed the bishop in a beautifully violent way, and his screams will live in my mind forever. Tell me, did you hear his suffering all the way up in the Heavenly Glade? It was a glorious sound…”

The angel’s face scrunched up in anger as I taunted her with my words.

“His blood still remains on the floor, and I’ll never forget the way his skin felt beneath my hands as I squeezed the life out of him,” I continued. “His neck was so fragile that it snapped and shattered like a thin sheet of glass. You should have seen the look in his miserable eyes as I kicked down the door. He knew he was dead, and no spell or power was enough to stop me. The wrath of a demon is far too powerful a thing once it’s really been unleashed–”

“You’ll never get away with what you’ve done!” she screamed with enough force to shake the wooden beams around us. “It is my mission to take you to where you truly belong, and I won’t stop until I have your dead heart in my hands! But not until I take every sinner you love away from you. They’ll be the first to visit my almighty Lord and pay for their hideous deeds.”

Her threats didn’t scare me, and I wasn’t going to lose a minute of sleep over it, but the more she screamed and attacked me with her words, the more the Holy Light faded. Ashe had managed to free her left arm from its hold, which was when I knew my plan was working.

“Hey, I wasn’t done, it wasn’t only the bishop I killed,” I chuckled darkly. “The priests, the Blessed, and every holy follower who stood beside them became victims in my hands. They begged me to forgive them, and prayed to be saved, and I simply stood back and watched as the life slowly left their eyes. I can still taste their blood on my tongue, and I hear their cries for help every time I close my eyes…”

The angel let out another scream as she shot her second hand forward. A second golden rope partnered with the first as it constricted my body, and although I wanted to wince and writhe in pain, my distraction caused Ashe to fully break free from the cage of light.

I watched through my peripheral vision as Ashe shook out her posture, and then, seconds before the angel realized what had happened, Ashe vanished into the shadows as she allowed her Infernal Darkness to take over. It gave her the ability to create, connect to, and alter the shadows around her, and it was Ashe’s greatest power during a fight like this.

“No!” the angel yelled out as she noticed her captive had slipped free.

“Perhaps you should have paid a little more attention,” I said. “Good luck finding us now…”

I closed my eyes as my newest Hell power took over my body, and then I slipped free from the golden Angel Dust ropes as my Smoke Flight took control.

My body felt as light as a feather, and my surroundings were covered in a grim haze as I took in my distorted view. I hovered in the air in front of the angel, but she no longer had the ability to see me. So, as the torturous ropes returned to their original form and fell from her fingers as golden dust, the angel spun around on her heels and tried to locate me and Ashe.

My huntress could have been anywhere in the church. She could have been hiding in plain sight, or perhaps perched in the highest peak of the ceiling, but I knew that wherever Ashe was, she was conjuring up a plan inside her brilliant mind.

We both were.

Neither of us were going to leave before we’d either killed the angel, or made her see that demons from the Hellscape weren’t to be messed with. There was a reason why we’d fought against her kind throughout our entire existence, and today was no exception.

I had to think about the angel’s weaknesses, and if I found what made her vulnerable, our victory was going to be so much easier to obtain.

From the day I arrived in my Tempest Void in the Hellscape, we were taught about the evil, disgusting angels who had made it their mission to dispose of us. My Lord Captain had informed me of their weaknesses, and given the “beauty” they lived in, there was only one thing angels despised more than demons.

Something that thrived on violence and destruction.

Fire.

According to them, fire had been created by the Dark King himself, and it was just my luck that I had the ability to create a spark with nothing but a click of my fingers.

I knew I had to be far enough away and potentially hidden to save myself from the golden Angel Dust ropes, but I also had to have the perfect view of my target. So, as I swarmed through the remains of the building, I looked out for the right hiding spot. The church was made up of solid, stone pillars that ran right up to the roof, and I just hoped they held the right amount of strength to stand up against the angel’s powers.

As I dropped to the ground behind a pillar, I returned to my physical form and glanced around the side of the stone to get a better understanding of the angel’s whereabouts. She floated through the air as she whizzed from one side of the building to the other. The golden glitter followed her every move, and the powerful wings flapped back and forth to push her forward at an increasing speed.

The angel twisted her head from side to side like she was hunting the slipperiest prey, and as she turned to view the front of the church, I took that as my opportunity.

A singular fireball grew in the palm of my hand, and I twisted it around with my fingers to allow the flames to sparkle and pop. I eyed up the angel’s right wing, and then I held my lit hand in the air and launched the fireball straight at my target.

The hellish fire hit the angel straight in the wing, and as the gold feathers instantly began to burn and crumble, the angel let out a high-pitched cry as she batted the fire out with her hands.

The angel continued to yell and scream as a hole was created within her injured wing, but I wasted no time in creating a second fireball and added it to the blaze. The angel spun around in a flurry of light and golden sparkles, I assumed to dodge the attack, but the damage to her wing limited the angel’s movements.

Then, before I knew what was happening, a golden rope rattled through the air. It was aimed straight for me, but I threw one more fireball into the angel’s direction as I dodged the dangerous rope. Then as the rope crashed into the pillar, fragments of stone blew off and rained down on me like solid water droplets.

The rope constricted around the pillar, just like it had done with my body, and the stone cracked and chipped as the angel squeezed it with all her might. I knew part of the ceiling was going to collapse on top of us if the angel brought down the pillar, so I had to make sure that didn’t happen. I didn’t have the fucking time to get stuck underneath a mound of rubble.

I was going to throw more fireballs in her direction in order to distract her once again, but a second cry filled the musty air before I could put my plan in action.

This cry was deeper and more feral than the pained yells the angel gave out, and I knew it had to have come from Ashe. I glanced around the side of the pillar and noticed a shadow form behind the angel, and my beautiful huntress returned to her physical form as she aimed her venomous nails at the angel’s jugular.

Ashe leaped onto the angel’s back with her legs curled around her waist, and a gust of air blew through the damaged church as the angel flapped her wings back and forth. I had a feeling she was trying to use that tactic to get Ashe to let go, but my huntress would rather die than let go of the angel in her hands.

Then Ashe grabbed a handful of golden-blonde hair, and she curled her fingers into talons as she attempted to scratch and gauge at the angel’s throat. But every strike was expertly blocked. The golden rope was instantly dropped from the pillar as the angel scratched and pulled at Ashe’s pale arms in return.

The difference between their skin tone was like night and day, with the icy pale of Ashe’s arms to the warm shimmer of the angel’s, but to the untrained eye, that was the only major contrast between them.

I could clearly see the feral, wicked energy practically radiating from Ashe as she hissed out smoke, and the self-righteous vengeance of the angel stood as a stark reminder of how different our kinds truly were while she scattered Angel Dust in all directions.

But both were just as strong and agile as the other, which made Ashe’s fight just as challenging as any we’d had against other demons in the past. There was a chance Ashe could have lost that fight, and I would have put my entire existence on the line if it meant my Infernal Huntress was safe.

The angel screamed as she aimed her Holy Light at Ashe, but my demon ducked and refused to untie her legs from around the angel, and she slashed through the air with her talons at an impressive pace.

As Ashe hunched herself further over the angel’s back, our enemy rolled her body forward and threw my demon huntress straight to the ground. The white light grew like a threatening cloud over Ashe’s body, and if I hadn’t stepped forward in that split second, then I knew the angel would have had the ability to solidify Ashe’s body as the angel took the demon’s life.

I also knew that Ashe preferred to win her fights by herself, and I didn’t often want to interfere, but I didn’t even question my movements. I could have stayed hidden, or I could have saved Ashe’s life.

It was an easy decision to make.

An angered growl formed in my throat as I watched the white cloud get closer and closer toward my demon lover. Then seconds before the light touched Ashe’s skin, I dashed away from my hiding spot and raced through the church as I charged toward the angel.

I created a burning fire in my left hand that ran all the way up to my shoulder, but I kept my right hand free, with nothing but a jolt of my Infernal Tempest running from one finger to another.

I locked eyes with the angel as I came toward her, and it seemed as if she stiffened in fright for a fraction of a second, but then she recovered from her shock and continued to aim her white light at Ashe.

“What a stupid move to make,” I chuckled sarcastically under my breath.

It was two against one, and unless there was another angel hiding within the rafters, then this bitch was fucked. She shouldn’t have taken her eyes away from me, her biggest threat, but she did, which made my attack even easier.

A terrifying roar spilled free from my throat as I launched myself through the air and slammed the pathetic angel to the ground. Our combined weight was enough to crack the cold stone beneath us, and every time I forced the angel further into the ground, the slabs cracked and broke even more.

She hissed through her sparkling teeth and narrowed her golden eyes, and the Angel Dust danced around us as another rope was formed in the air. I knew I had to apply my finishing move before the rope could grab me, and that was where the tempest came in.

With the fire popping dangerously close near the angel’s wings, I grabbed her by the neck with my right hand and allowed the lightning force to flow free from my palm.

I had the power to break the hardest stone with one squeeze of my fist, so with a mortal’s neck, it would have been as easy as tearing a piece of parchment in two. But it was different with an angel. Her flesh and bones weren’t as fragile as that, and it was going to take much more effort in order to break her.

But I wasn’t going to give up.

The rope fell to the floor in golden speckles, and I felt the angel quiver and shake beneath me as she screamed and hissed from the pain that pulsed through her jugular.

“I’ll… you…” she choked.

The angel closed her glistening eyes for a split second, and at first I thought she’d passed out from the pressure and pain, but then she simply vanished into thin air, and I slammed onto the cold ground as a groan left my lips.

Damn, now I knew how annoying my Smoke Flight move must be.

I smirked at the thought, but there was a chance the angel was still around, so I wasted no time in jumping to my feet as I surveyed the building. The scent of angelic perfection was still in the air, but I realized it wasn’t as strong as it had been, so it was clear that the angel had disappeared into the night like a scared animal.

“Coward,” I snorted as I ran a hand through my black hair.

“Has she gone?” Ashe asked as she wiped the dust and stone from her silver dress.

“For now,” I mumbled, and then I turned to look at my beautiful demon. “Are you okay? Did the light hurt you at all?”

She looked to be in perfect condition, but just because she didn’t have any marks or scrapes on her body didn’t mean she wasn’t injured.

“It hurts, sure, but nothing I can’t handle.” Ashe smiled. “I’m more annoyed that we didn’t get to kill her while we had the chance.”

“Don’t worry, I imagine it won’t be long before we see here again,” I said as I ran my hand up and down Ashe’s arm. “And it was probably a good thing we didn’t kill her.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned. “That angel needs to die, right now. We’re only making her stronger, and she’ll have a better understanding of our powers next time. We’re also putting everyone else at danger every minute that pathetic angel is alive!”

“Ashe–”

“Sveila, Lux and Lixiss, the mermaids!” Ashe continued to rant into the wooden beams above. “Anyone connected to us will be on that angel’s list, and the Holy King is expecting everyone to be transported into the clouds!”

“Yes, but think about the repercussions if the angel had died,” I explained as I patiently calmed my demon lover down. “She probably has an entire army of angels waiting in the clouds. They’ll swarm Rengfri before we even return to the Grimmway, and our army isn’t big enough to take on that sort of threat yet.”

“But, I–”

“No,” I cut in. “I get how angry you are, but you saw what that angel could do. She’s not just some stooge sent to spy on us. She’s a fucking soldier, and soldiers have back up. This means we’ll need to focus on building up our army, not just killing an angel.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Ashe sighed. “I mean, you always are, of course, but I got so annoyed that I didn’t even think about what else could have happened.”

“Believe me, I want her to die just as much as you do.” I kissed Ashe’s lips gently. “And she’ll get what’s coming to her, but we have to make sure we’re also ready first. This fight worked out perfectly in my opinion. Sure, she saw our powers. But we also saw hers. We needed that intel.”

“Do you think we’ll need more orcs to take on someone like the angel?” she asked.

The two of us collapsed onto one of the wooden pews as I thought through her answer. The orcs were a great addition to the army, but I needed more than that.

“If you think about the powers the angel held, her Holy Light and Angel Dust, then we’ll need someone who can fight off that pressure like we can,” I paused for a brief moment.

“Is that possible?” Ashe questioned. “I mean, even we had issues with her powers, and it’s not like we can gather more demons to take our side.”

“Well, no,” I agreed. “They may help us kill off the angels, but then they’d aim their hands at us, too. No, we need to create an army that actually wants to fight by our side, and won’t drag us off to the Hellscape afterward.”

“Sveila?” Ashe suggested. “Maybe other witches, too? I know they won’t be as strong as the angel’s holy powers, and there was a reason why Sveila stayed inside the manor this evening, but what if the witches worked together? It’s possible that they might be able to create a spell that disables the bitch long enough for me to sink my claws into her neck?”

My powerful laugh filled the entire building, and I gave Ashe an evil grin as I replayed her words over and over in my head. There was nothing she loved more than tearing out someone’s jugular.

“The witches have potential.” I nodded. “If they all gather together then they could create enough force to wipe out a good chunk of the Holy Army, but I have another idea in mind…”

I now had the power from the Shadow Quarters and the Grimmway combined, and I knew, with every undesirable that resided there, we’d have enough to take down this angel.

It was just a matter of when and where.