The Angels from Hell

Lilea

Lilea stood at the bottom of the staircase, long enough for pins and needles to develop in her legs from lack of movement. Angels moved past her, not questioning the cleaner standing frozen in their way. She was a coward. That was the truth. She had abandoned Rylan, she had licked the boots of anyone in hell that would give her a modicum of power and when the man who seemed to be behind everything appeared before her, she had run away. Now, here she was, unable to move. Ala would not run from a man like Deleon.

The thought of Ala sent a coil of electricity through Lilea, enough to make one foot raise slightly off the ground. With effort the other one followed. Something had scared Deleon, but she doubted that he would stay away for long. Lilea ran up the staircase, peering down each corridor. Three flights up, she heard Ala's voice coming from a closed monitoring room. She couldn't make out the words, but she didn't sound distressed. Lilea stepped closer as Ala's voice was interrupted by another person that could have been Lethe. Cautiously, ready to run back at any moment, Lilea pressed herself against the door and managed to catch eight words by a speaker that she recognised too well.

"I will be keeping my eyes on you," Deleon said. The finality of this sentiment made Lilea duck into a cleaning cupboard, closing the door noiselessly the moment that Deleon, Josiah, Lethe, Darius, and Ala emerged from the room. There was a sliver of light where the door hinge met the wall and Lilea leaned against it.

"I will need that back." It was Deleon's voice. She couldn't see what he was referring to, but Ala placed whatever it was back in his hand.

"I will return tomorrow."

"Don't you think she should have a new room," Darius said to Deleon, respectively bending his head. "With your approval of her as a monitor, shouldn't she move into a monitors room rather than sharing cleaner's quarters?" Even from inside the cleaning cupboard, Lilea could see Deleon's eyes narrow. He knows. He must know. Deleon had found her in a cleaning cupboard, holding a mop. Lilea hands trembled as she positioned them on the door. Ala was standing too close to Deleon. He could stab her before Lilea had even burst through the door. Lilea waited but he did nothing. He didn't stab her or threaten her. Instead, his lips became a single line and he said:

"I am sure she can manage for now."

With that, Lethe, Josiah, and Darius all bent their heads and half-walked, half fled away from Deleon. Ala stayed behind for a few seconds.

"I meant it," she said, "I can do more than double supply." She smiled sweetly and followed the other angels. Lilea watched Deleon turn and head in the opposite directions. When they were gone, Lilea hesitated. She could go after Ala, tell her about Deleon and discuss a strategy to escape before he killed them all but what was the point? Ala didn't seem to even need her. She had worked her way into becoming a monitor and by the sounds of it had, not only uncovered the angel's plot but had become part of it. Sure Lilea had stumbled on Raina screaming and remembered an ideal hiding spot for illegal substances, but Ala had recognised it as M. She was useless, she used to be an angel and yet couldn't even be better than a demon who had never seen heaven. Even after last night, desperate to find something, it had only led to her under a bed and Ala saving her. Here, she wasn't Ala's superior, she wasn't a manager, she wasn't an angel, she was just a liability that ran and hid from everyone and saved herself.

Lilea opened the door and, with hands clasped tightly in her pockets and back straight, hurried after Deleon.

Down the stairs, she saw him walking smartly along another corridor. Lilea waited out of sight on the stairs, watching him standing outside a door, looking both ways and entering. A spark of recognition lit in Lilea's mind. It was hard to tell, given everything looked the same, but she was fairly sure that the room had been the office where they had first met Will. It now must have returned to Deleon's office. That would mean that the closet door a few metres in front of her was her way back to hell. Lilea snuck past it, concentrating on the room Deleon had disappeared into. She needed a plan. There must be some evidence of whatever Deleon was doing with M and damned humans in his office. Lilea ducked into a room a few doors down from Deleon's. It was full of angels clustered around a whiteboard covered in a detailed sketch of some kind of rollercoaster in a theme park.