Free Road to Hell by J. C. Diem

ingredients together. It moved faster and faster until my eyes could no longer track it. When she stopped chanting, the whirlwind wound down. A stone bracelet sat in the center of the bowl. The color of mud, it was far from pretty. It was blank and completely devoid of markings.
    Brie picked it up and handed it to me. It was a tight squeeze, but I slid it over my right hand. Pain immediately radiated up my arm to my shoulder. It faded before I could do much more than gasp. The stone had changed to a dull shade of orange that matched the glow from my dagger exactly.
    “That is strange,” Leo said as he stared at the bracelet. “I have never seen the stone turn that color before.”
    “We have never cast the spell for a human before,” Brie pointed out and he shrugged off his misgivings.
    “Is it supposed to hurt like that?” I asked. I still felt the residual effects of the pain in my tingling fingertips.
    “Not usually,” Sophia said, “but you are not an angel. It is no surprise that the effect was different. I did not feel any pain when I first donned mine. Possibly because this vessel still contains residual traces of my grace.”
    “If you remove the bracelet, the spell will be broken until you don it again,” Leo warned me. “It is impervious to water, so you can wear it in the shower.”
    “That’s good to know,” I muttered. The bracelet fit me perfectly and I didn’t think it would take long to get used to it. “Are you sure it will work for me since I’m just a lowly human and I’ve never been possessed by an angel?”
    Brie’s response wasn’t as reassuring as I’d hoped. “It should, but we will not know for certain until you come into contact with a demon.”
    “That’s something I’d really rather avoid.” I’d already had enough brushes with them to last me a lifetime.
    “You do not have the luxury of hiding from your enemies,” she told me almost harshly. “We are counting on you to prevent a disaster that will end in catastrophe for the entire world.”
    I blew out a sigh and slumped back in the chair. I’d only known these people for a few hours and they already expected me to save humanity. “What exactly am I supposed to do? Hunt down every demon in the city and challenge them all to a duel with daggers?”
    Sophia hesitated then sat down across from me. “We are not sure how you will stop the demons from unleashing the hordes that are trapped in hell.”
    So, she basically had no idea what I’d be getting myself into. “When I first arrived, you recognized me and said you’ve been waiting for me for a long time. What did you mean by that?”
    “I was sent a vision of you when you were first born,” she explained. “I did not know who you were at the time. I only knew that you would be important.”
    “You had a vision of me when I was a baby? How could you possibly have recognized me from that?”
    She smiled a little at my confusion. “I was shown a vision of you as you appear now. I believe it was a warning that the world would soon be facing great peril.”
    “How did you get that from just seeing a vision of me?” She had a real knack for giving me explanations that just confused me even more.
    “I also saw the world engulfed in fire.”
    “Oh.” That brought to mind the dream I’d had of Fate. She’d shown me countless cities burning. Every human that I’d seen had been dead.
    “You stood before the gates of hell, holding back a tide of demons,” she continued. “I knew that if the gates opened, that fire would sweep across the planet, wiping out humanity.”
    “No pressure,” I said almost bitterly. Leo’s lips twitched in a smile that he hid from the others. For an angel, he was somehow more human than his friends.
    “So,” I summed up, “you have no idea what I’m supposed to do to stop the gates from opening. I have no fighting skills whatsoever, but I’m supposed to take on an army of demons by myself.”
    “That is not quite