if we only had a handful of weeks left before the power supply to the Beyond ran out, then we couldn’t afford any delays.
The distant beat of wings drew my attention to the front doors. The world outside was gray, signaling the arrival of dawn and the return of Keon. The last couple of days he’d gone flying alone just before the sun rose. He was agitated and restless.
Here wasn’t the place he needed or wanted to be, yet he stayed to keep me safe, because if I died then Lilith would suffer.
Eve’s curse kept him here, and it was killing him not to be out there searching for his queen.
He strode in, his dark blue hair windswept and tousled, falling over his bare shoulders and pectorals. He wore a pair of black joggers loaned to him by Grayson and his feet were bare. He looked wild, feral, and dangerous.
“Another pre-dawn meeting?” He said it with derisive agitation.
“No more meetings.” I stood and pushed back my chair. “I’m done waiting. And when I get back, if we haven’t heard from Cassius, then I’m going to go find him myself.”
Keon’s jaw ticked. Yeah, he wasn’t happy about not being able to come to Purgatory with me. But only a full-blooded celestial or the wielder of a scythe could come and go from Purgatory. He might be Lilith’s son, but he was still very much a daemon.
Keon fixed his yellow cat eyes on Uri. “You will keep her alive.”
It wasn’t a question.
Uriel’s expression was sincere. “Of course.”
Keon locked gazes with him for a long beat, but whatever he saw in Uriel’s eyes must have been enough to satisfy him because his shoulders relaxed a fraction.
There was only one more thing I needed to find out. “Um…does anyone know where the entrance to Purgatory is?”
Luckily for me, Uri knew where to take us. His wings were gone, but he could still do his nifty teleport thing, and it brought us to a side street a few meters away from the entrance to an underground train station in East Necro.
It was a small station I’d never stopped at before.
“Purgatory is in there?” It was super early, but people were already up and about, ready to start the daily grind. In an hour this place would be crawling. “You can’t be serious.”
His expression was deathly serious, though. “We need to take a train three platforms along. The entrance to Purgatory is there.” He shrugged. Admittedly there was no train station here a century ago, just thick forestland and tales of monsters to keep humans at bay. Now, with the advance of technology, we’ve had to adapt. “The scythes open the way for a Dominus, and a celestial can also open the door. Humans are safe. Trust me.”
“I trust you, Uri. Let’s do this.”
We headed across the street and down the steps into the underground. It smelled musky and kinda gross, but I was damned if I breathed through my mouth and tasted the air.
Yuck.
It was strange to think that Mal came this way on a regular basis. That he came down here and rode the train. The world rumbled with the sound of said train. There was no one manning the ticket barriers, and they lay open, letting in anyone who dared venture forth. The booth where a human would have sat selling tickets was closed, glass cracked, and sprayed red and blue with graffiti.
A white sheet of paper was pasted to the wall by the booth. The words Blood Drive were written in bold red ink.
Yeah, this was one of the off-the-grid stations. The place people would get off if they wanted to avoid paying for a trip, so I was surprised to see so many suits. Uri and I stuck out like a sore thumb in our casual gear. Dean had loaned the celestial a leather jacket with a fur collar. It looked good on him.
He led the way, and I followed him past the pointless barrier and left into a tiled tunnel decorated with old posters sitting behind glass. Several Blood Drive posters were pasted to the glass, obscuring the original advertisements.
A woman sat on the ground clutching a baby to her chest, her dark eyes pits of sorrow in her face. I could see the tile through her barely corporeal form.
A ghost.
She held out her ghost baby like an offering.
I faltered. “Uri…”
His jaw tightened. “They slip through the cracks sometimes,” he said. “The ones who die alone. The ones without someone