The Liberator

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Thirty seconds is longer than I thought Rector would give me. He said he’d let me leave with Charlie’s soul, but Rector is nothing if not a liar. I bet as soon as he ushered Aspen from the room and she was out of earshot, he made the order.

I’m able to move through hell faster without Aspen. I know the ins and outs and which areas to avoid, like the ones leading to Lucille. Though everything in me screams to return to Aspen’s side, I also know I’m lucky that Rector is egotistical enough to want to handle this himself. Because if Lucille knew I was down here, I’d be a human Popsicle by now.

I run faster, but the whistling sounds increase. The demons are slow, but there are so many of them. And once they’re worked into a frenzy, they crawl out of invisible cracks, calling out to one another in their terrible language.

One appears in front of me in the Hall of Mirrors. I am able to spin around it and hurry past. No harm done.

As I near the end of the mirrored room, three demons reach for my legs. The entrance to the bear’s stomach is within sight but still too far away. I fall to the floor when one of the demons grabs ahold of my shin. My heel smashes into its teeth, forcing it to release me.

I’m up, racing toward the throat without looking back. I don’t want to go into the darkness, but I don’t have a choice. So I keep running. I keep running even when the slickness causes my feet to slip. My fingers dig into the fleshy tissue for support, and the bear doesn’t like this. His throat works, the clenched muscles making it hard for me to claw up.

Halfway to the top, a demon lunges on me. I tumble backward. At the last moment, I spot the bear’s tongue and latch on. I dangle over the open throat like a rock climber, the demon clutched onto my ankle. It outweighs me, and there’s no way I can hold on for long. I raise my free leg, and with all my strength, I ram my heel into the demon’s face.

The demon falls. I move toward the bear’s teeth. I zigzag through the spaces between them and almost pierce myself on the tip of his canine. When I land outside the bear’s mouth, the creature snaps at me. He wants his meal back. I roll to the right and spring back up. Then I race toward the stairway where protruding faces will watch my ass retreat to the earth’s surface.

But when I get to the foot of the stairs, I stop cold. On every single step, blocking any possible escape, is a demon. Together, the snapping jaws and warped bodies look like an army. It’s such a devastating sight that I nearly return to the bear and ask him to swallow me back down and keep me in his gut this time. The faces protruding from the walls yell greetings to me, chattering about the demons on their stairs, but I barely hear them.

I’m so close.

Only a few hundred steps stand between remaining in hell and returning Charlie’s soul.

There are too many demons, though. Too many to attempt any kind of plan. Too many to dream of living through this.

As the demons slink toward me, I cover my chest with my palm and close my eyes.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

I savor the feeling of my lungs expanding, of my heart beating. Every nerve in my body demands an answer to this problem. But I don’t have one. It’s over. When Lucille finds out I’m here, he’ll remove my cuff. And if I’m lucky, I’ll slip into an eternity of nothingness quickly.

It’s sad, really. The end. I’ve fought so hard for life, whether it’s as a human or a collector or a liberator. I just wanted more time. But even I know when the clock is about to stop ticking.

And this is it.

I wish I could kiss Charlie one more time. I wish I could bring her to a nice restaurant for the world’s best crab cakes. I wish I could take her on a Ferris wheel ride just to hear her laugh. I wish I could buy her a Valentine’s Day card and a vase of sunflowers and a beagle puppy she picked out herself.

I wish I could slip an emerald ring onto her beautiful hand.

I wish I could lift the veil from her smiling face and kiss her soft lips and tell the whole world that she is my wife.

I wish I could feel the kick of a child in her stomach and know it is ours.

As the demons slither closer…and closer…I know I will never have these things. But I will settle for this—I will settle for giving my life for Charlie Cooper.

I open my mouth as wide as it will go and release the most bone-rattling battle cry I can summon. Then I call to my wings. They rise from my back like a black sun, the pain filling me up. With Charlie’s name on my tongue, I charge toward the demons.

I am hit and bitten and clawed so many times I lose count. The pain wraps me in a cocoon until it is everything. I hold my own for as long as I can, picking demons at random and taking them to the ground. My wings are a more powerful weapon than I anticipated, but in this closed space it’s difficult to use them.

Still, I fight like a champion. Like someone who might just defeat a horde of devils to save the girl he loves. It’s the worst part—hope. Even when I realize that I’m drowning in demons, that they are crawling over me like fire ants, I still hang onto the idea that I could make it out. I know it’s untrue. I acknowledged as much before I ever launched my attack. But it’s still there, hanging on like a loose tooth.

When a demon bites down on my shoulder, and I feel the joint separate, I know it’s over. A warm current seeps from my chest and into my limbs. It enters my mind and whispers words of reassurance. I will die a final death or suffer for eternity, but either way, it is okay. It is okay because she was mine for a little while.

Inside my head, I send her a message. One I know she’ll never hear. I love you, Charlie. I would have fought a thousand hells for any part of you. My angel.

When I open my eyes, all I see is a swirl of black and yellow, of teeth and saliva. And I know I’m losing my grip on reality, because between the demons’ bodies, I spot the ghost of the girl I love.

Her shirt is stained with red and her face is shadowed with rage and she doesn’t look like the person I remember.

She looks like an assassin.

Clenched in her palm is a knife. She tosses it to her right hand. “You want me?” she screams.

The demons turn their gruesome heads toward her.

“Come and get me!”

Charlie rushes down the stairs like a militia of angels are at her side. She slices the throat of the first demon she sees and cries out as the red-black blood washes down her hands.

It’s her. It’s truly her.

The sight of Charlie Copper, of my only love, lifts me from my agony. And even though many of my bones are broken and I can hardly see out of my left eye, I climb to my feet. I don’t understand how this is happening, how she’s really here. But I can’t question it for long because the demons are moving toward her too quickly for me to hesitate.

My pulse races as I push past one demon after another. They don’t try and stop me. They’re too curious about this small girl and her glittering knife.

I leap in front of Charlie, wanting so bad to touch her, to make sure she’s flesh and blood. Instead, I launch a new attack. I fight as best I can with my right arm, since my left swings uselessly at my side. With the motivation of keeping Charlie safe behind me, I’m able to hold them back. My girlfriend slashes at demons’ outstretched arms with her blade, and I’m impressed by how viciously she does so.

Despite the odds, Charlie and I are able to take a step toward the surface. And then another. And another. Once again, hope dances in my peripheral vision, just out of reach. But it’s there, and that’s all I care about.

“Charlie, keep moving toward the top.” They’re the first words I’ve been able to speak. I don’t know if she responds; the whistling sound is too loud. I step back and collide into her. A moment later, she moves away. We do this a step at a time, back-to-back. Charlie whips her blade across the few demons farther up the stairs, and I fight the ones below us. We don’t take any out, but we hold them back. And that’s enough.

The faces in the walls watch us retreat. Some seem happy to see our progress, others appear infuriated. We ignore them and keep battling. After what feels like hours, we near the top. Only a few dozen steps remain between us and the world above. It’s then that I realize only one of us is getting out of here—that one of us will have to hold them off while the other flees.

My heart plunges to my feet.

Charlie came here for nothing. I was never going to make it out alive. But seeing her one last time, watching her fight to save me, it reminds me who I’m dying for. It reminds me that this is the way it should be.

“Charlie,” I yell. “When I say ‘go,’ I need you to run past the demons. Don’t stop until you’ve reached the top.”

“I won’t leave you,” she cries, her back still pressed to mine.

Her words make me want to spin around and press my mouth to hers. “You’re not leaving me. I’ll go when you go.”

Charlie doesn’t respond, and I pray she’ll do as I ask.

I grab the closest demon to free the path in front of her. “Run!”

She runs.

She runs for several seconds without looking back. Just as I’d hoped, the demons don’t chase her. Instead, they turn their attention to me.

Good-bye, angel.

Charlie turns. Our eyes meet, and unadulterated sorrow crosses her face.

Then her expression changes. Her eyes widen so that she almost looks crazy, like she’s lost her mind to fear. I shove the demon in front of me aside so I can see her face one last time.

She races toward me.

“No!” I holler. “Keep going!”

But she doesn’t stop. She flies down the stairs like she has wings of her own.

My heart hammers in my chest because I feel it—I feel that something big is about to happen.

Charlie Cooper reaches the demon closest to me and lays her hands on it. She screams so loud, I’m sure my eardrums must burst.

An electric white light forms beneath her palms. “Get back!” she roars.

The demon soars through the air.

It lands a hundred feet below and doesn’t move. The other demons study Charlie for a moment. Then they retreat. They click down the stairs to get away from whatever power just came out of her hands. The faces in the walls pull back one by one and disappear from view. Pop-pop-pop!

I watch the demons’ flight for a split second, my head spinning, then grab Charlie’s hand and scramble upward, out of hell and into the afternoon sky. She gasps when my black wings spread out against the snowy backdrop, a storm of feathers arching over our bodies.

Her eyes roll back in her head.

I catch her when she falls.