The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,182

that she's on her way back."

41

Sienna

The moment I felt the veil wash over me, I scrambled to cling to Gabriel. I had no idea what he was planning, but from the look on his face, it wasn't going to be good. Then he pushed. I felt the movement as the planes sped past me. Light shifted from the blue of Earth, through the lavender of Vesdar, and across the coral color of Daemin. Then it turned dark.

I never actually stopped, but my body suddenly changed direction and began tumbling. In the oppressive blackness, I had no idea where I was, or even worse, where I was going. Hurricane-force winds battered against my body, feeling like they were ripping and shredding my skin. In a panic, I did the only thing I could think of. I threw up a shield.

The tiny interlocking symbols from the center of my seal immediately diverted the winds around me. I felt my body roll to a stop, lying on what could only be described as a floor, yet it had no visible or tangible substance. It was simply the bottom of this strange place. Even more terrifying, I had no clue where this was.

For a moment, I lay there, trying to catch my breath. The sound of the wind roaring was still audible, and yet it somehow felt disturbingly silent as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Slowly, I began to notice shadows twisting against the blackness beyond. Like I had only moments before, the dark shapes tumbled, all moving in the same direction.

Which meant that this was a corridor somewhere. The real question was where. Judging by the light, I had to be on the other side of Hell. The problem was that I hadn't quite made it to Heaven. And worse, my entire body now hurt. There was a sore spot on my hip which proved I must've collided with something. An ache in my shoulder made it clear that the joint had been extended too far. Taking an inventory of my body, I felt like I’d been run over by the biggest truck I could imagine.

And this sucked.

While there wasn't much light here, it seemed one thing was very prevalent: aether. It was so thick in this space that I could almost taste it. That was also why the wind had so much power, I realized. Forcing myself to sit up, I strained my eyes for any kind of landmark to latch onto. The rule was that we could always look up. The corridor tried to mimic the world above it. That was why the angels used buildings on Earth as boundaries for things in the corridor below. Yet here, it wasn't like that.

There was no hint of Daemin. I couldn't make out anything that looked like Angelis. Although, in the distance, I could almost see faint lines of light. No, those weren't lines, they were planes. Hundreds of them, maybe more, and none of them were close. Some of them seemed stacked like pieces of paper. Others intersected, cutting through each other without seeming to touch.

And in the middle of it all was the darkest point of all. Like a black hole in the center of the universe, everything seemed to be moving toward it, creating an intricate web as it was drawn in. Whatever that void was, I knew I didn't want to be there. The real question, though, was how I was getting out of here.

Reaching out, I tried to touch the veil. On every other world, and in every other corridor, the boundary was always at the end of my arm. It was my intention to reach for it that mattered more than the distance, because it wasn't ever far away. Unfortunately, that didn't hold true here.

I reached, and grabbed only wind. A handful of aether came back with it, the fog swirling darkly around my fingers. That, I sucked up without hesitation. Using my other arm, I tried to find the boundary to Angelis but was no more successful than my first try. All I could grab was shadowy aether.

Which meant I had to think harder than that. Back when Nick had first explained the planes of existence to me, he'd drawn two different diagrams. One showed five worlds connected in a circle. The other had been a V shape caused when one of the bonds broke. The one between Daemin and Angelis. That had to be where I was, but