The heads open their mouths wide and frantically gnaw on the Fallen. One of them manages to burrow halfway into the back of an angel before the whip gets pulled back.

These Fallen angels look starved and are covered in festering wounds. I suspect even angels need their nourishment to fuel their speed healing.

Then, in the middle of all this, a pack of hellions with their bat faces and shadowy wings slink toward them. They’re bigger than the ones I saw in my sword’s memories. Beefier and with spotted wings, as if they had disease blooming on them.

These hellions have a crafty gleam in their eyes that make them look more dangerous than the ones I’ve seen before. They look around, aware, moving with purpose. The modern hellions seem to have devolved into smaller, weaker, dimmer versions of these.

Still, these hellions are nothing compared with the demon lord. They’re shadow creatures against the towering thing riding the chariot, and they’re clearly afraid of him.

Maybe they’re not the same species. They don’t look anything like him. The hellions look like toothy bat-winged animals with squashed faces while the giant looks like an angel gone ugly.

The hellions are dragging someone behind them. She was probably once pretty, with mahogany hair and gray eyes, but now she looks like a used-up doll. Her eyes are empty, her face blank, like she’s sent her inner self away somewhere.

They pull her along the rough ground by her ankles. Her arms drag behind her head, and her tangled hair gets snagged on the spiky bones that tug at her. Her dress is torn into rags, and every bit of her is filthy and bloody. I want to help her up, to kick the hellions off her, but I am just a shadow here in Beliel’s memory.

I see faint smudges of the Halloween paint that the Watchers’ wives had on that night when I saw Raffe fighting for them. I don’t recognize this girl, but she must be one of the wives that the hellions were given. Raffe managed to save some but not all. I was there to see how much he tried. Maybe she was one of the ones who ran in panic.

The hellions drag the poor girl around all of the chariot wheels, staying far away from the demon while still being close enough to see the angels. They tremble when they have to come near the demon and keep looking up at him, as though afraid that he’ll strike out.

The demon hisses at them, and the air suddenly becomes more foul. Did he just breathe a whole lot of stinky sulfur toward the hellions the way a skunk might aim its scent? No wonder the air smells like rotten eggs here.

Half of the hellions run off in terror. But the other half stays, curling up and trembling until the demon loses interest.