Nephilum

Chapter 20

"You ready?" Sam asked me. I nodded hesitantly. Adrenaline was the only thing running through my veins. We were all in the living room.

Sam and I were stuck together like glue. The only humans in the room. Well, I'm only part human, but you get the point.

"Elizabeth is going with me." James stated. "And Sam is going with Michael. We are going to grab Alex and only to grab Alex. As soon as we get him, we leave. Hunter, you and George are the distraction, you already know what to do. Carmen," he started listing off each individual's job.

"What's mine?" I asked after he was finished.

"Your job is to stick with me and try not to die." I huffed at his comment, but decided not to push it, in fear of him not letting me go.

"If anyone wants to back out, now's the time to do so." James said loudly, scanning everyone in the room.

No one said anything. "Let's go."

I wish I could say that I was excited and not scared at all of what we were about to do, but I would be lying. The truth is: I was scared to death. My knees wobbled ever so slightly as I made my way over to James.

"You ready?" He asked.

I nodded, too afraid that my voice would fail me if I attempted to say anything. James grasped my hand and we were thrust into the dark place. It seemed like we were there for minutes, but was probably only a couple seconds.

I stumbled and reached out for James as my feet hit the ground. The place of arrival was almost  as dark as the place we had left behind. "Where are we?" I asked him as the others started to appear next to us.

"A couple miles away from the demon's base." James replied. He seemed distant, like he was somewhere else. Then it came to me: he was thinking about his brother's death. James had said he died at the hands of the demons

I nodded. This place was creepy. It was exactly something you'd expect to see from one of those horror movies. It was nearly pitch black, the only light coming from the stars and moon that loomed above us. We were somewhere in the forest and the leafless trees' branches looked like claws reaching out for us. I suppressed a shudder.

Michael and Sam popped up a few yards away from me and I went to join them. "Hey." I whispered to her. I don't know why I felt the need to whisper, but something about this place set me on edge.

"Hey." She greeted.

"Are you as nervous as I am right now?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Definitely." We stood in silence as we waited for the others to meet us. When all the angels arrived, James started talking.

"The base is exactly two miles East. We'll walk the rest of the way, and wait for Hunter and George's distraction. Trust me, you won't miss it. When they set off the distraction, the rest of us will split up into the teams I mentioned before." he handed us all maps and started assigning everyone what their part to search.

"Who's in our group again?" I asked him once he was done talking. We had to explore the basement.

"It's us and Devin."

I gulped. "Who's with Sam?" I asked him, hoping that maybe I could trade Devin for Sam.

"Michael and Brody."

"Do you think maybe-"

He cut me off before I could finish my sentence. "No."

I glared at him. "You didn't even know what I was going to say." I spit out.

He rose an eyebrow. "Yeah I did. You were going to ask if you could trade Sam for Devin. And yes, I know about the kiss." He scowled as he said the last part.

I looked at him, mouth slightly agape. "How do you know about that?"

He shrugged. "I listen."

I rolled my eyes. Of course he'd listen when I didn't want him to.

"Let's go guys." he said.

We walked for at least twenty minutes before I gathered enough courage to speak. The only reason I didn't want to say anything was because not a single person has said anything since the trek began.

"So, what exactly are we going to do when we find Alex?" I asked. I didn't look up from the ground, trying not to trip over any of the various roots sticking up from the ground.

"The plan is to basically just grab him and run. It's not going to be that easy though. We're going to have to fight a bunch of them. Not all of them are going to go running toward the explosion."

"Explosion?" I asked curiously.

James smiled mischieviously. "That's the distraction. We're going to blow up half their base."

I whipped my head around to stare at him. "What do you mean you're going to blow up half their base? Alex could be anywhere in there!"

James held up his hands in surrender. "Calm down, we know Alex wouldn't be in there. It's where the lower class demons stay. If the demons had him, he'd be with someone with a higher rank."

I frowned, but didn't say anything. I didn't like the possibility of Alex being on that side of the base, but I decided to trust James. He hasn't given me any reason not to yet.

I was just about to open my mouth to ask James another question when my foot caught on a root I didn't see. James reached out to catch me as I fell through the air, but he was too late.

My knee crashed into a rock and the rest of my body followed closely behind. "Son of a-" I was cut off by Sam rushing over to make sure I survived.

"Lizzy, are you ok?" She asked, hoisting me up by my hands. I blushed as the majority of the angels looked back at me, a few snickering.

I nodded. "I'm fine. Really."

"You're bleeding." James said from beside me.

I looked down and sure enough, blood was starting to bloom on my skinny jeans, right where I hit my knee. I shrugged. It didn't hurt that bad and I knew it wouldn't bleed much.

Sam gasped at the sight of the blood. "Are you sure you're ok?"

I nodded again. Sam never was good with blood.

I continued to walk with Sam as James and Michael trailed behind us.

"You never told me why you were banished from heaven." I told her suddenly.

She sighed. "It's kind of a long story."

I gestured to the path we had to walk. "Looks like we've got the time."

She rolled her eyes, but started telling me the story anyway. "After my boyfriend Ian, died, I guess you could say I started to act out. He was my whole world. We were in love. I found out a few weeks after he died that he was planning on proposing to me. We were only sixteen at the time, but it didn't matter." I listened with earnest.

"I started getting reckless and let humans see my true form. I would cause as much trouble as I could. I liked the attention. But the last straw was when I tried to kill Ian's dad."

I stared at her in shock. She didn't look even remotely guilty. "You what?" I couldn't bring myself to believe that the sweet, nerdy Sam I met two years ago could try to murder someone.

"He was the reason Ian died. I was mad. I wouldn't do it now, of course. But at the time, I just wanted some justice and the only person I could blame the incident on was Jakob."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. I was shocked.

We walked the rest of the way in silence until we came upon a door in the ground that looked more like a sewage thing than anything else.