Downtown Hell

Chapter Fifteen

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
That was all he had been hearing for hours now. The constant, slow dripping of blood, his blood, to the cold stone floor beneath the metal table he was strapped to.

Please, no more.

They never left marks on his skin, not for long. It was always like porcellain, even the scars from his childhood were gone, the one on his hip where he was run over by a motorcycle.

Yesterday, they didn't use knives. They had messed with his mind again, showed him his sister, his mother, Lucifer, dead to his feet. He saw them getting killed, they made him kill them himself, kill eachother.

"Rise and shine, sweetheart."

No. He couldn't be back yet.

"Did you miss me?" The door opened. Wings were retracted and he heard a knife being drawn from a leather sheath.

"In fact, I missed you. You're the only one in here that sometimes actually answers."

He gritted his teeth, knowing what was about to come next.

"Let's play a game, shall we?"

~~~

"Dammit, these guys are everywhere."

Ryder looked up from the map he had been studying. "We're in heaven. Who could have possibly expected this place to be swarming with angels. Especially if their number one enemy just got here for a negotiation?"

"Oh shut up, smartass! Unless you know a way in there", he pointed to the prison, "I suggest we punch our way in." He put a hand on the hilt of his sword.

"Are you insane? Their minds are directly connected to their boss, if one of them even sees us, we're dead."

"How do you know so much about them?" Wrath turned to face him, but Ryder suddenly looked incredibly busy with the map.

"Well, I sometimes attend war meetings instead of torturing souls. You should try it, it's very educational."

"Yeah, ok, shh. Look." Wrath leaned forward and pointed to the prisons entrance. "The shift change."

He was right, the guards were gone.

"Come on, hurry up."
They quickly made their way over to the building and entered a narrow corridor. Wrath noticed Ryder hesitating before going inside, but didn't say anything. He could ask him later.

"Down this hallway and the stairs at the end, that's where they keep the important prisoners."
Following Ryders instructions, Wrath sneaked past the heavy doors besides them but stopped when he came to the end of the corridor.

"These stairs?"

Ryder came up to his side and looked down the staircase decending in front of them. "I'm afraid yes."

The stairs went down into the dark deeper than they could see, large stone plates arranged along the round walls that left a hole big enough for a person to fit through in the center.

"What's that hole for?"

"So the guards don't have to walk all the way up and down. They jump and catch themselves with their wings when they're at the bottom. The stairs are for non-winged people."

Wrath rolled his eyes. "And since neither of us has wings, I suppose we should get going."

For a long time, the sound of boots on stone and their panting was all they heard, completely blind in the darkness, before Wrath summoned a tiny red flame in his palm.