Secrets And Sins Part 3: Happy ever after

Chapter 61

~Beatrice~

The view from the room the angel's had assigned them was impressive. They were high enough that Beatrice could see the Citadel sprawling below them. Everything was white or gold, a mixture of architecture from almost every period she could think of. Like the angels took inspiration from Human design or, maybe, it was the other way around. Not that Beatrice was particularly interested in the strange overlaps that seemed to exist between angel and human cultures. No, she was committing the Citadel's layout to memory instead, plotting their path to freedom.

Her eyes travelled to the wall, and further yet to the sentry tarasks, so far away from where she was, they looked almost like ants. It was comforting to see they were still there, unmoved, in the distance. Beyond the tarask boundary, all she could see of the demon army was a mass of black and red. That was not so comforting, they almost seemed entirely out of reach of them if things went wrong, and Beatrice had a bad feeling that things were about to go terribly, terribly wrong.

Ever since the parlay, she had been experiencing a feeling of dread, an impending doom, and her instincts had never failed her before. She lifted her hand to her neck, rubbing absentmindedly, pressing against the long-healed bruises Ava had left there earlier. Was it weird that the action made her feel closer to her fiancé? Probably, but right now she couldn't care less. All she wanted was to take Ava, and her friends, and get the fuck out of here.

Beatrice let out a quiet sigh. If only it was that easy.

"Are you all right, Beatrice?"

She turned to see Bael watching her from his seat at the small table on the far side of the room and shrugged, crossing her arms as she leaned back against the window frame. "Just a bad feeling."

"I understand," he nodded ominously. "Something is coming."

They fell into an uneasy silence, both lost in thought, and Bael went back to staring at the door, he had been since Rapheal had collected Mary to see Lilith. Beatrice tilted her head, studying the guilt she could see in his expression.

"Why didn't you tell her?"

She didn't need to explain what she meant, by the way Bael's face twisted with shame, he knew exactly what Beatrice was talking about.

"I didn't know how." Bael sighed, his shoulders slumped, the weight of his responsibilities, of his decisions, clearly crushing. "You have to understand," he looked up at her with a surprising amount of desperation, "it was never supposed to be her, we didn't know anything like her could actually happen... It was a last resort; Reya was killing us. Between her tarasks, and Adriel's rogue wraiths, there were just too many. I had to find a way to fight back."

"How did... Why...?" Beatrice wasn't really sure what she was trying to ask. From what she knew of the OCS's demonology texts, this was impossible, a human could not be turned into a demon.

"Science? Fate? Luck?" Bael chuckled bitterly. "I don't really know. We trapped a tarask, threw enough rogue wraiths at it in the hopes that maybe the process would instill some kind of power into it, a power we might harness, but before we could, it disappeared, called to Earth by the Halo...and when it came back..." he trailed off, looking like he was going to be sick.

Connecting the dots, Beatrice's eyes widened. "The one that impaled Lilith..."

Putting his head in his hands, Bael nodded. "Yes. We tried to heal her; she was unconscious and weak for a long time. And when she woke... well, she was out of her mind with fear, which was understandable. She teleported away before any of us had a chance to do anything."