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Chapter Fourteen: At Least We Won't Die Alone

Gabriel's palace was nothing like the map-which had been left behind with Shawn's body-had shown.

On the map, the palace was white and beautiful. I remembered the image had been a huge, white marble castle with trees and other greenery all around it and surrounded by the typical biblical halo of light. It had been pure, prestigious, and inviting.

Gabriel's adaptation of the holy place was terrifying. All the plant life surrounding it was burnt, blackened, or dead. The white marble had scorch marks in the randomest places, and much of the stone was crumbling. The huge, probably once beautiful drawbridge that would have bridged the moat was in pieces, replaced by a haphazardly constructed wooden bridge. The water itself was a murky green, and the occasional human bodies littered the surface. Disfigured, disgusting creatures roamed the ground, while demons like Gabriel flew above them.

Gabriel flew straight over everything, landing on the roof of the castle itself. A huge hole had been blasted in the stone just a few feet away, and he dropped through it. I closed my eyes tightly, and when I opened them again, I found myself in the throne room from my dreams.

It was very different from what I remembered. Where Gabriel stood was a mess of stone and ash, which I guessed came from the hole we'd dropped through. A few of the winged demons strolled about, and the entire place looked like it'd suffered through a recent robbery. Everything but the pillars supporting the roof and the throne at the far end of the room was destroyed in some way.

As soon as the demons spotted Gabriel, they fell to their knees in a bow. He sneered at them all and dropped me to the ground, Annie gracefully sliding off his back. I hit the stone floor with a thud, the breath flying out of my lungs. A few of the pieces of marble dug into my skin and I quickly pulled myself to my feet, but Gabriel's hands on my shoulders forced me back down on my knees.

"You and you," he called out, his voice echoing as he pointed at two of the demons. "Accompany Annie in escorting this filth-" he kicked me "-to the dungeons with her friends. We won't be needing her until tomorrow."

The two designated guards scurried forward, lifting me by the arms and dragging me to my feet. One of them, a nasty fellow with blood completely obscuring the right side of his face, jabbed me in the back with his spear. I stumbled forward and fell into step behind Annie, who had taken up the lead. Dumb and Dumber followed behind me, every now and then poking me with their pointy weapons.

Annie led us between two pillars across the room. As she pushed open a door and we began decsending a stairwell, I heard Gabriel shouting at the other demons. I tried to make out what he was saying, but the door slammed shut and we were plunged into darkness, interrupted only by a torch on the wall every few feet.

"She's the one," I heard the bloody one whisper. "I thought she'd be a little more... Intimidating."

"Yeah, well," whispered the second one, his voice slightly high-pitched. "Her soul's all we need for it, so who cares about her body?"

My soul? For what?

"Shut it!"" Annie snapped, stopping in her tracks to glare at them. I bumped into her before she started walking again. Something in my head clicked. The look on her face was intelligent, and definitely too intelligent for an autistic girl.

"So you never were stupid? You just acted it to get us, didn't you?" I found myself asking. Her shoulders visibly tensed under the cover of her red locks.

I waited for her to respond until we hit level ground. The few torches lighting the area revealed a few iron doors with metal bars in the windows at ten foot intervals on both sides of the corridors. Silence rang in the air, and the whole place smelled of damp, moldy, rotten mildew. The stones under our feet were no longer smooth marble, but they had turned to rough haphazardly placed cobblestone.