*Chiara

Chiara hadn't survived this long to be taken down by a pack of disease-ridden flying demons the size of cats. She tightened her wings to let herself drop, to let them believe they had her, bringing them in closer and closer. They spiraled downwards in a dizzying drop.

With the wind in her face and feathers, she felt alive again.

No. Her existence would not end in this pit.

She passed the half-way point of the massive cavern. Lights faded. They were lower than her torture chamber of so many months with Logan.

She clenched her jaw against the memory of leaving him.

Not now.

As Pestilences crowded closer, clawing and tearing at her, she spread her wings wide, blinding them with angel's light and swung her blade. One angel with one knife didn't have much a chance against one hundred hungry lesser demons, but she would find a way out.

A male voice grunted, and a weight hit a wing.

Logan?

He fell past her, onto a thick cluster of screeching Pestilences. What the stars?

He was insane.

He clung to a dozen of the smaller creatures, using them to slow his descent, while he killed others, alternately swinging his heavy weapons. But they flocked to him. What was going on?

"Come on, you scabby pustules," he cried. "I'm here!"

This was it—her chance to escape...

Something held her back.

"Logan, there are too many. What are you doing?" she called. She didn't know why she cared. She should fly up and out of this place while she could.

The way he had attacked Lucius, though, saving her instead of cutting her wings... And how he drew the Pestilences away from her and towards himself.

By the Heavens, she had to get her head on straight—he was the enemy.

He was the enemy who was helping her.

And he was falling too fast. She had to make up her mind, and to do that, she had to know what he wanted by doing this. Gritting her teeth, she clapped her wings once to propel herself downwards, until she was directly above him.

"Your hand," she shouted, afraid to grab him while he swung a very heavy mace in every direction.

"I'm not done!"

"Your hand, now!"

The darkness grew thicker. She couldn't see the bottom of the pit, but she could sense—and smell—it getting closer. The chirruping voices of Pestilences swelled beneath them.

A thousand eyes opened in the black below, flashing green with reflected light.

"Hand, you idiot! Come on!"

He bellowed and those thousand eyes blinked. Strident cries pierced Chiara's ears and the flapping of leathery wings erupted. Countless Pestilences were rising. What in the name of all the stars above was he thinking?

His hand came up.

She grabbed his forearm, as he clasped hers, and at the same moment, she unfurled her wings flat to stop their fall.

His weight nearly tore her arm from its socket. Groaning under the strain, she beat her wings, once, twice, then quicker and quicker. Painfully, inch by inch, they began to rise. She let all her energy flow to keeping her wings moving.

Pestilences surrounded them while Logan dangled from her hand, killing anything that came too close to him. The white light of her wings blazed brighter and brighter from the onslaught.

She couldn't keep going, though. As tall as she was, her wingspan was not wide enough to take on the extra weight of warrior class demon. Daviid had warned her to never attempt to pick up an enemy demon—an attack technique her fellow male fighters often practiced. Demons were too heavy for her to try and kill that way.

Apparently, this demon was too heavy to try and save that way, too.

"I can't carry you," she hissed. The effort for her newly healed wings and muscles she hadn't used for months was burning through her energy.

He let go. His hand slipped off her arm and through her fingers before she understood what he was doing. Pestilences shrieked in triumph and swarmed tighter, making a ball around him. She hovered alone in cavern. Her chest heaved for oxygen in the thick air.

"Damn it," she muttered, shocking herself. Brandishing her knife, she dove again. Her wings lit the way, and the Pestilences swarmed her as she hacked her way through them until she saw Logan.

He clung to half a dozen of the creatures, while swinging at the others. Their claws and teeth tore into him. Underneath his bleeding skin roiled the dark flame he was known for.

When her wings' light hit him, it glinted off mottled, scales in green and purple.

A Pestilence spat acid on his face and he cried out, his face changing to the jagged-toothed, skull-like demon face she knew from the battle field.

The bottom rose up to meet them. She had only a second to glimpse sharp boulders covered in slime, broken egg shells, blackened bones, rotten corpses, and things she didn't want to recognize.

Logan hit the ground, rolled from the top of a jutting rock and slammed into another. Pestilences howled in fury, rushing him.

She closed her wings and dropped to land lightly at his side. "How do we get out of here?"

"We don't. Not while they can sound the alarm." Logan motioned to her to fight as his back as he scanned the swirling mass above them.

Her jaw dropped. So. They could either fight alone and die or stand together and have a chance at surviving. Daviid always said to use her every advantage no matter how slight or strange it might seem.

Fight. Stay alive. Those were the first, and only rules.

Except for the unspoken rule that all demons were always their enemies. The smaller demons attacked. Her knife became a blur of dark blood. Her arms were soaked. Razor sharp teeth bit into her unguarded shoulder, and she stabbed the thing. Another took its place.

Logan grunted and shouted for her to look out. She ducked. He swung his mace in a circle above them.

"Down!" he shouted. She flattened herself.

The angry shrieks from the Pestilences turned to pain, and a hollow, hissing noise whistled. Furtively, she glanced up. Fear lanced her. Logan's weapons where blazing with black flames and he shifted halfway to his daemonium.

She braced, pulling the knife in close, ready to strike. To strike him, if she had to....

"Come for me!" he shouted.

In a shrieking wave, they flew for him. He cocked his arm back and flung his spiked mace into the horde. It hit them like a stone shattering a mirror. Flames—shimmering blacks and purples—rippled outwards, engulfing the smaller demons. They fell to the ground, burned husks, one after the other. Still more flew forward, as if to overwhelm the flames with their numbers.

Chiara covered her face with her arms and wings as ashes and embers rained down. When Logan yelled again, his voice was the crackling of thunder.

She looked up.

They were dead. He eradicated every Pestilence in their own cavern.

In hell itself, the demons turned on one another. She sat up, stunned. He reached to help her stand, but she recoiled from him.

It wasn't that she was against destroying demon-kind, especially these smaller, nasty kind. There were pustules and oozing cuts on her arms and face where the things had bitten and scratched her. They'd ripped countless feathers from her wings—it itched as new feathers formed to replace broken and lost ones. Pestilences were death and disease and rot itself.

But Logan was demon-kind, and he hadn't hesitated to kill them all. There were rules here she didn't understand. No. There was chaos here, and she had to escape before it consumed her. She stood, her feet crunching on singed bone.

The voices in her head whispered.

There was only one logical explanation for Logan helping her. Zeigfel had to be in her head.

Wake up, Chiara.

*** Thank you for reading!!! Love to you all. ***