Dead Moon Chapel

thirty-one

THE BLACK HOODIE NAOMI GAVE him swallowed Abel whole. It was almost like wearing his robes again. He threw the hood over his head to conceal his white hair, which had grown into a fluffy, overgrown mess by now. As he descended the dark stairwell, he kept having to brush it out of his eyes.

Where this stairwell led, Abel had no idea. It could very well have been a trap. He chose to trust Naomi, though, and pushed onward. This was his only chance at doing something, at finding a way to save Jericho. This was his only chance at fighting, like he promised he would.

All he had to light his way was a small golden dagger Naomi had tucked away in the hoodie she gave him. Its holy glow was the only thing preventing him from falling on his face every other stair. In the overbearing silence, Abel clung to the scratching of every scurrying rat. There were no other sounds, nothing that could smother his racing thoughts.

He thought of Jericho. His mind seemed to want nothing else. At first, they were pleasant thoughts, memories they created together in the past couple of months. It was quick to turn into something darker, though, the painful thoughts that took his heart and twisted it into mush.

The staircase felt endless. It was making him crazy, and the cold, damp scent was giving him a headache. He wondered if he'd be stuck here forever, if this was an endless tunnel of torture he'd never be free of.

When his feet finally hit level ground, he got his answer. Abel had expected another stair, but his ankle had to pay the price for his hasty assumption. He let out a heavy breath. He was closer to an exit.

The glowing dagger led him through a winding corridor of stone. It was so cold down here, it made him hug his own arms for warmth. How long was this meant to go on?

At long last, something changed. A fork in the tunnel split into two directions. One was a deeper, darker abyss, while the other had a set of ancient, questionable stairs.

"Great," he mumbled. "Now I've got to—"

A loud, coarse sound cut him off. Abel's heart leaped to his throat, and for a moment, he was convinced he was about to be ambushed by demons. Nothing he couldn't combat, of course, but inconvenient nonetheless.

When nothing jumped to attack him, Abel cautiously investigated the source of the sound. He held up the blade. In the dim light, a mass of shadow stared back at him from where it sat perched on the stair.

Eight red eyes reflected the gold glow back to him. The crow tilted his head to one side.

Abel's lips stretched apart into a beaming grin. "You're here!"

The crow made a trilling sound and lifted into the air, flying farther up the stairs. Abel trailed after it. His feet skipped every other unstable step in his pursuit of the bird. It was hard to see, and Abel could only judge where he was going by the sound of its flapping wings and occasional cawing.

By the time his legs were cramping and shaking from all the stairs, a thin strip of light greeted him at the end of a long tunnel. Abel all but ran toward it, ignoring his screaming muscles. He was out, he was free.

His hand found its way to a doorknob. After some struggle, Abel managed to wrestle the heavy slab open. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see.

It wasn't this.

Before the door, a set of cement stairs led up to another dark hallway. Above the stairs, a blue-tinted light flickered. A hundred flying insects covered the surface of it. The sight of it made his heart stutter. Not because it was anything particularly enticing, no. It's because he'd seen this before.

Abel's cramping legs took him up the stairs with a renewed sense of urgency. Sure enough, he was met with a hallway he knew well. The two doors were at his right this time. On one of them was a crude painting of a pentagram and three sixes in dripping red. Abel had never been so grateful to see the devil's numbers in his life.