will stand against them, who will fight them. The demons are sending us all in circles, making us fight one another instead of the real enemy.”
“We shall see.”
Damiel nodded at me, and I released the spell binding Colonel Spellstorm to the wall.
Damiel grabbed Colonel Spellstorm by his metal handcuffs. “I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you,” he warned him.
“I would expect nothing less of you, Dragonsire.”
“Spellstorm will identify the church ruins from the air.” Damiel spoke like being forced to play by another angel’s rules hurt. “Then we’ll go there.”
He looked up at the hole in the ceiling, our way out. Water dripped from the opening, streaming down the walls. It really looked like the stone walls were weeping.
Finally, we are doing what we should have done from the beginning: trust Colonel Spellstorm and let him help us, I said to Damiel.
Damiel glanced at Colonel Spellstorm, then told me, You are far too trusting.
I winked at him behind Colonel Spellstorm’s back. Even angels have mortal weaknesses.
He didn’t laugh, nor was there any mention of strawberry tarts. He would never do anything like that when another angel was nearby, especially not an angel who was, as far as Damiel was concerned, still a suspected traitor to the Legion of Angels, the gods, and the very Earth we stood on.
So, no, there was no delightfully irrelevant conversation or expression of any kind from the Master Interrogator. Damiel had to show he was cold. But I could hear the faint echo of his laughter inside my head. He really did have a sense of humor. He just always tried so hard to hide it, to be someone he wasn’t. Someone cold and closed off, afraid to trust anyone. Being betrayed by his friends, those early Legion defectors, had really cut him deep. He wore the hard scars of that betrayal like a suit of armor.
Damiel waved his hand toward me, indicating that I should go first.
So I jumped up through the hole, returning to the island’s surface. My boots set down on slippery rock, coated with a squishy seaweed carpet. I waved my hands around, catching myself before I slipped and fell back down the hole. Angels didn’t slip and fall. My father had taught me that. In fact, he would have chided me for nearly falling.
Had he been here, he would have said something to the effect of: You are an angel, not a chicken. Stop flapping your arms around uselessly. You’ll never fly that way.
Damiel shot out of the hole in the ground and landed beside me, Colonel Spellstorm balanced over his shoulder. He set the angel down, and not too gently. But Colonel Spellstorm didn’t fall, and he didn’t flap around his arms for balance either.
Both he and Damiel had many more years as an angel under their belts than I did.
Colonel Spellstorm looked across the bubbling sea. “The monsters are awake and hungry.” He glanced at the sword in Damiel’s hand. “Our chances of survival would increase drastically if I had a weapon.” He gave his bound hands a shake. “And if my magic weren’t silenced.”
“Your chances of escaping would also increase drastically,” replied Damiel.
Colonel Spellstorm looked at him like he wanted to say something, but instead he just turned and began walking. He must have realized there was no point in trying to sway Damiel.
As I took a step, the ground rumbled under my feet. The island began to shake violently. I could hardly stay upright. The ground was rocking so hard, I thought the island might split apart, breaking into a million tiny pieces.
I looked around, trying to find the source of the disturbance.
“It’s coming from the monsters,” Colonel Spellstorm told me. He pointed his cuffed fists at the sea.
It was bubbling. Tall jets of water, several hundred feet tall each, shot up high into the sky like gargantuan geysers.
“Your presence, the culmination of all this magic in a single place, has boosted the monsters’ appetite,” Colonel Spellstorm told us. “And that’s made them agitated.”
So it was the monsters’ mealtime, and this island was on the menu.
“We must fly,” Damiel told me. “Now.”
I glanced at Colonel Spellstorm. “What about him? He can’t fly without magic.”
“I’ll carry him.”
Colonel Spellstorm shot Damiel a wry smile. “Don’t get all sentimental on me now, Dragonsire.”
“You must have hit your head hard when you bounced off my psychic barrier,” Damiel said coolly. “I owe you nothing, least of all your life. The only reason I am bringing you with us