Page 41 of When Monsters Fight
He took to the air cawing loudly, the sound one of pain.
The large guy leapt off the bridge, body arching as it fell toward the mist. An invisible force grabbed him by his limbs so that he was spreadeagled, looking up at the sky emotionlessly as the bird swooped down toward him.
“Move!” Kabiel ordered us.
Gabriel pulled me away from the scene just as the bird buried the tip of its beak in the man’s abdomen.
His agonized scream echoed in my ears as we ran across the bridge. The shimmering veil rushed to meet us, and we passed into a forest dotted with trees heavy with low-hanging purple fruits.
It took a moment to adjust to the sudden change of scene and for the caw of the bird and the man’s gut-wrenching screams to stop echoing in my head. But then the man standing under the fruit-heavy trees came into focus.
He held a basket filled with the fruit and was staring at us in shock.
Wait…it was the man from the bridge, the one who’d turned into a bird.
“What is this?” Gabriel demanded. “You were on the bridge just now.”
The man set his basket down and wiped his hands on his trousers, mumbling something in a language I didn’t understand.
“We can’t understand you,” Kabiel said. He looked across at Asbeel. “Can you understand?”
“No,” Asbeel said.
A figure emerged from deeper in the forest, large and golden—the other man from the bridge. But this version had life in his eyes and a smile on his face.
He didn’t look surprised to see us and raised his hands, clapping them together a couple of times.
A fuzzy sensation passed through my brain.
“What did you do?” Gabriel demanded.
“I opened your minds,” the bronze man said. “Now you’ll be able to understand the many languages of Gehenna and be understood so that you may communicate with the people who inhabit this world.”
Shit. I understood him. How the fuck had he done that?
He joined the smaller man and picked up the basket. “We’ve been expecting you for some time.”
“I still can’t believe it,” the smaller man said.
Expecting us? “How could you know we’d be coming?”
He gave me a tired yet enigmatic smile. “Join us for lunch, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
My stomach chose that moment to growl.
“We’d be delighted,” Gabriel said.
“Gabriel, we don’t know who these men are,” Kabiel reminded him.
“Ah, how remiss of me,” the larger male said. “My nameis Prometheus, and this is my mate, Lorcan. I give you my word that we mean you no harm; in fact, we may be able to facilitate the task ahead of you. You can trust us.”
My gut gave me no warning. No alarm bells. “Will your food be safe for a human?”
“Our food is safe for all.” He beamed proudly.
“In that case, we’d love to join you for lunch.”
Kabiel frowned but didn’t protest as we followed the two men deeper into the forest.
