WARFIRE

Chapter 4

Amira's head spun at all the possibilities. She felt so frustrated that she had no idea what to do. But sitting here and wondering about the possibilities wouldn't get her out of Hell. She needed to find a way to get home, back to Heaven. But how would she get out? And what would she do once she got to Heaven? They would still kick her out because they believed she was the murderer. Unless she could find the real murderer and clear her name, that was the only way for life to go back to normal. 

She hesitated. But did she want life to go back to normal? To see her and her fellow La'ziel jeered at and laughed at? To go back to the dingy dorm they lived in? To never see their efforts appreciated? Half of her said yes, the part connected to her friends. As a La'ziel, she knew she could feel no love but she liked her friends. There was a bond there between Amira, Amziel, and Ten. They were the ones that had her back during battle just like she had theirs. They were comrades. She wanted to go back for them. 

Yet she was conflicted. The other half of her said no. The selfish half that hated every sneer tossed her way. The feeling of having fought for your life for strangers who didn't give a shit about you. Who tossed you aside the moment you became useless to them. Life in Heaven wasn't good and Amira wasn't stupid enough to not see that. 

She figured that no matter what, she had to find a way out of Hell. She could decide afterward whether or not to return to Heaven. If she did, she would somehow find the murderer and clear her name. If she didn't, well, she would figure it out from there. 

She looked around. Nothing but piles of trash and marshy ground met her eyes. There was no portal in sight. They must have dropped her here and closed it. She didn't think there would be any other portals located in the inner rings and even if there were, they would probably be closed. But she did know there was the rip. After all, she and the La'ziel used it all the time to fight the demons. 

So she would find the rip. She would either go back to Heaven to clear her name or find a way to Earth from there. She was quite sure she could convince her friends to help her--if not Ilana and Asa, then definitely Amziel and Ten. What she wasn't sure was which ring she was in or what monsters and terrors laid waiting in the yawning darkness beyond. No angel in Hell knew what lay in the inner rings, perhaps only the archangels knew. A thrill of fear shivered through her. Yet at the same time, excitement sparked deep inside her. 

She wanted to fight, to feel the air sawing in and out of her lungs as she moved. To feel the bite of her steel into flesh and the adrenaline filling her as she fought for her life. If that made her evil, well, she was in Hell. Her Warfire purred in agreement.

She beat her wings experimentally and sure enough, she flew forward as if she had been propelled by a missile. The feeling of flight, of pure freedom, made her so happy that she laughed out loud, despite the situation. Whirling in circles, she flew towards the cavernous ceiling, her wings inches from the razor-sharp stalactites, before alighting back on the ground.  

The only problem was that she had no idea which direction to go. In Heaven, she was guided by the sun but there was no sun here. Angels usually had a directional instinct but hers was shit. She had never been good with directions. And maybe in Hell, normal directions didn't apply. Her instinct tugged her in a certain direction and because she had no other alternative, she flapped her wings and followed. 

--

Amira flew for what seemed like hours. So long that even her newfound strength was draining. Yet the trash piles seemed endless. There was nothing else in sight. The longer she flew, the more she worried. Was she heading in the right direction? Or was she flying deeper into Hell? 

After the sixth hour of flying, Amira couldn't handle it anymore. She needed to take a break. Her stomach was beginning to grumble and she remembered she hadn't eaten. Alighting on one of the trash piles, she was about to sit down when she heard a soft growl. It was the unmistakable growl of a demon, a sound she was all too familiar with. More growls came from all around her as red eyes blinked at her in the darkness.