‘Maggots are freaky hideous,’ I say, getting up. I try to salvage some dignity, but I can’t help but shiver and shake my hands in the air. It’s an instinctive impulse, one I’m not up for resisting right now.

‘You’ve fought off a gang of men twice your size, killed an angel warrior, stood up to an archangel, and wielded an angel sword.’ Raffe cocks his head. ‘But you scream like a little girl when you see a maggot?’

‘It’s not just a maggot,’ I say. ‘A hand burst out of the ground and grabbed my ankle. And maggots crawled out of it and tried to burrow into me. You would scream like a little girl too if that happened to you.’

‘They didn’t try to burrow into you. They were just crawling. It’s what maggots do. They crawl.’

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘Hard to argue with that, Commander,’ says Howler with a laugh in his voice.

‘That’s the Sea of Killing Hands,’ says Thermo. ‘You don’t want to get near it.’

I can see why they call it a sea. The sand shifts like waves. I’m assuming it’s because of the hands or whatever moving beneath it. I can’t help but see the similarities between the Pit and my world now that Uriel and his false apocalypse are creating things like the resurrected crawling out of the ground.

‘Oh, she could have handled the killing hands like the truest warrior,’ says Raffe proudly. ‘It’s the little naked worms that make her tremble.’

‘Maybe we should call her maggot slayer,’ says Howler.

The others chuckle.

I sigh. I probably deserve this, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Now I know how Pooky Bear feels.

I see a small hellion over the desert, and I point to it, excited. But it flies too close to the sand, and three hands shoot out and grab it. The arms are not the length of a regular arm. They reach up at least six feet to grab the hellion. It screeches all the way down until it gets dragged beneath the sand.

One of the guys points to an outcropping of rocks.

The small hellion that was caught by the hands must have been a scout, because a group of hellions flies toward us.

My sword is up, ready for a fight. ‘Don’t kill them. We need them alive.’

The flying creepies come at us all teeth and claws. They’re as big or bigger than the ones that came after me out of the Pit. There are four of them.

Beside me, Raffe opens his wings and takes to the air over the Sea of Killing Hands. The others do the same. Beliel and I are the only ones left on the ground.

They corral the hellions toward Hawk and Cyclone who catch them.