Heavy smoke swirled through the light. Azra'il’s face was a mask of fury as he stomped back toward the entrance. Her neck crackled as Jenny turned her head, lying on her side in the cratered floor, watching Azra'il’s hulking back ripple, watching his four wings bounce lightly with his every step.

  "Demon!" he shouted, his voice booming. The souls were crying out. Screaming. Flooding into the chamber where Jenny y broken to escape the heavy smoke. Orange and blue light flickered and burned through the dense smoke, and Jenny almost grinned despite the pain. The souls were covered in ash, their fancy garments dirtied.

  Iblis must've set the pce on fire. Using her tentacles, Jenny willed herself up. Parts of her armor cracked and fell away, revealing bruised skin. She winced from the pain, wanting to use valescent light to heal herself, but there was no point. Once she opened the passageway, she would heal as she fell through the light.

  She hobbled toward Susan, two of her tentacles dragging behind her, limp and hurt from Azra'il grabbing them. The others swirled, ready to attack if the souls tried anything. They stared at her in disbelief. One or two of them called her disgusting. Another called her a monster.

  "I never turned into anything like that."

  “She’s hideous.”

  Jenny colpsed on top of Susan, her breathing ragged, her tentacles swirling and swishing, keeping the souls at bay. They didn't know what to do.

  "Do we stop her?" asked one.

  "She looks broken."

  "Why isn't she healing? We always heal after Master hurts us."

  "She's not like us."

  "Susan..." whispered Jenny, looking down at her best friend. Susan had her eyes shut. Blood dribbled down from the thorns in her forehead. Jenny wanted to take rip the crown off, but she barely had the strength to move. She pressed her palm to the floor as more smoke wafted into the room, as the souls coughed and became more difficult to see. Her tentacles kept track of everything.

  "Severed spirit," she whispered, feeling a sense of relief as the heartbreak came gushing to the surface. It was easy this time. Thinking about how much pain Susan had suffered through. What Azra'il must've done to her. How much pain Jenny's body was in, and how sorry she was.

  She called mentally for Iblis. But the demon wouldn't respond. Sounds of cshing came from outside the chamber, and the souls cried out as the floor shook. As more things crashed.

  And just as Jenny opened the ugly dark wound in the floor, the darkness gushing out and spreading like liquid, as Jenny could feel the fabric between worlds, there was a loud boom, and the wall Jenny had been flung into colpsed as a burning figure burst through it.

  It nded beside Jenny in a spttering of wings, and she whipped around despite the pain to see Azra'il’s silhouette stepping through the smoke. He raised his beefy arms and cpped them together, and a furious wind smmed Jenny and Susan and Iblis in the brood mother's body against the wall.

  The smoke was forced out of the room, and even the souls had been knocked into the armor and weaponry and curtains. Azra’il’s snakes were snapping and hissing as he lunged over the rubble of the wall. Jenny reached out with a tentacle, desperately hoping, desperately urging the rainbow light to run down from her chest through the length of the tentacle and into the darkness.

  She saw Azra'il’s eyes go wide. She felt his anger. His bloodlust. Felt the bodies of everyone in the room, could taste the sweat and blood, could feel the sheer ugly wrath of Azra'il’s—and then the darkness beneath them erupted into golden light. Colors streamed out: reds and greens and oranges. She saw the souls staring wide-eyed. She saw Azra'il snarling, startled, one hand raised to block the light as he stared in disbelief. Squinting. Lips curling.

  She clutched Susan tightly, wrapped another tentacle around the cross and around Iblis, and sank into the light.

  Instantly the colors began to heal her wounds. Her broken ribs. Her bruised arms. Her face. Soothing and gentle, and she clutched tightly onto Susan and Iblis and the cross as they sank deeper and deeper...

  And just as she was feeling safe, just as she thought they got away from Azra'il, something tugged on Jenny's tentacles, wrenching her back for a second, like a parachute caught on a breeze. She screamed. Bubbles of light erupted from her mouth. Susan's body swung, and then there was a violent sense of pulling and pushing that threatened from all around. Like they all might be ripped apart.

  Jenny felt wildly around, trying to feel the worlds ahead and above. Below. Which one was the demon world? But colors streamed past her eyes. Colors swirled around her and her tentacles. And then she saw Azra'il’s face bursting into the light. Dragging himself after them. A giant. A monster. And the look on his face—he wanted her. He wanted her so badly. But—

  The rgest pull was from the material world. The center of everything. She pulled Susan close and stared at her limp form. Her brown eyes. Surprised and afraid and so full of warmth... The healing light glistening all over.

  I found you, she wanted to say. I found you.

  And then she shoved Susan away with her cross. Her mouth parted in shock. In fear. And Susan tried to swim. Tried to hold onto Jenny's tentacle, but Azra'il was closing in. This was the best move. Jenny was sure of it. There was going to be more fighting. This way... Susan wouldn't be caught in it again. No matter what happened. She couldn't let Azra'il take her again.

  She kicked backward into the world of demons. As Susan rocketed away through the light and into the material world, vanishing alongside her cross with a sparkle of blue and yellow lights. A tremor of rage as rivers of blood-red light swished around Azra'il, and then Jenny fell through the light as well. Into the demon world, falling from some height.

  Cold air stung her right away. Snow stinging her exposed skin, as she fell through the sky, her limbs and tentacles trailing behind her. Her heart hurting so much, she couldn’t breathe.

  She nded in a heap on ice and snow. She was back in the world of the demons, but the shimmering light of the passageway overhead wouldn't close. It hovered in the air, one of her tentacles reaching back into it, still stuck inside. It was lifting her slightly, keeping her from breaking free. It was Azra’il.

  He was inside the light, holding onto her tentacle as though it were a leash, refusing to let go.

  With a fsh, she summoned her hatchet and he cut through her tentacle. Blood spurted out, spraying the ice and snow, and the length of the tentacle snapped back toward the light, vanishing with a spray of blood that rained down on Jenny.

  Still, the light didn’t close. She couldn’t close it. And then Azra'il’s enormous ugly head appeared. He had the other end of Jenny's tentacle in his mouth, and, as Jenny struggled to close the passageway, hoping to cut the angel in half, he emerged fully.

  The resistance stopped all at once. The passageway closed shut. And Azar’il hovered in the air, wings beating in sequence as he chewed on the tentacle in his mouth.

  He spat it out, and it fell to the ground.

  "So, this is how you've been evading Rafael's eyes," he said loudly. He looked like a celestial object, some kind of moon or satellite, taking up too much space in the sky. “And what have you done to that soul?” He spat the words out, and Jenny could feel the waves of rage rippling through the air. “A soul in the material world? DO YOU HAVE ANY UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT YOU’VE DONE?”

  Jenny shut her eyes. Even the snow seemed to wince from Azra’il’s shouting, but Jenny felt a sense of hopeful satisfaction. I got her away from you.

  The brood mother’s body stood, fmes leaking from the hole in its cheek, and Iblis whispered something.

  Her tentacles picked up motion, vibrations in the icy ground. They weren't too far from where she'd opened the bridge to the world of the dead, where the souls were marching into this world with ghoul bodies housing demons. And Yeshua was racing across the ice toward them, his hair and beard flowing in the breeze, stuck with ice and snow, his purple robes billowing. On his face was a look of pure anger as red lightning crackled around him.

  "Azra'il!" he roared.

  "Failed one," said Azra'il with a ugh before swooping down.

  Yeshua leaped into the air, and the two of them collided—an explosion of ice and wind and red lightning crackling all around, hurtling Jenny and Iblis away.