by S. M. Reine
The symbols ringing the gate glowed with brilliant white light against Yatai’s shadow, which flung Nukha’il to the dais. He slid and bumped into the base of one of the columns.
At his touch, the humming intensified. Energy raced up the pillars. Elise’s palms burned.
The column of shadow descended, ready to seize Nukha’il again.
“No,” she growled, kicking free of the fiends and launching herself up the steps.
Thom got there first.
He appeared between the angel and Yatai, and he faced the darkness with no fear. Elise had never seen him angry before—she didn’t think that he could be anything but detached and, occasionally, vaguely amused. But his eyes blazed, his lips were peeled back into a growl, and he flung his arms wide with his fists clenched.
The shadow blasted into his chest and deflected. He took a single step back.
Thom roared, and white light burst from his flesh, crashing into Yatai like fire blazing over the surface of water. The smell of ozone and burning hair crackled through the air.
A shockwave blasted from the contact. It struck Elise, and her feet slipped from beneath her. The steps of the dais rose to meet her face. Pain cracked through her forehead, and stars sparked at the edges of her vision.
The power of Thom and Yatai’s clashing energies toppled the fiends and struck the walls of the cave.
The rocks groaned. Debris showered around them.
Yatai slithered back and struck again, pounding into Thom. Elise could only watch sideways, crumpled against the dais, stunned and limp.
Come now. You don’t care about the gate. Let me pass.
That silken voice was simultaneously softer and louder than the responding shudders of the cavern.
Thom didn’t respond except to take a step forward, pushing into the shadow.
Elise dragged herself over the steps, belly flat to the shuddering dais. The air grew thick as she crawled to Nukha’il, who was sprawled behind Thom’s legs. The gate responded to her proximity—it vibrated harder, and the cavern on the other side of the pillars vanished, replaced by bright gray fog.
She didn’t have to lay her palm on it to open the gate a second time. It was as though the stones remembered her touch, though it had been months since she was last there. Maybe the gate had never fully closed.
Her fingers fell on Nukha’il’s wrist. One wing was crumpled beneath him.
The angel stirred, eyes opening to slits. His blue irises had turned to gray. “Get away,” he whispered. “She’s here.”
Elise tried to drag him away from the gate. But he was immensely heavy, her bitten arm ached, the air was so thick, and Yatai spotted them.
This has been fun, she said, but I will wait no more.
“You’re lost to madness.” There was a quaver in Thom’s normally empty voice.
And when you favor the light, you are weak.
The serpent reared. Elise saw it thicken over Thom’s shoulder, becoming dragon-like and vast. It crushed the light radiating from his skin. Tendrils oozed over the back of the gate.
The white light shattered.
Yatai slammed into Nukha’il, ripped his arm from her hand, and shoved him against the gate as the gray curtain parted. Together, the serpent and the angel passed the threshold—and vanished.
A boulder dislodged from the wall and crashed into the other side of the gate. Elise rolled away from the showering detritus and slipped down the steps, thudding into the cavern floor. The floor vibrated, and a mighty crack rent the air.
A boulder the size of a train split from the ceiling. It tumbled toward her end over end, almost in slow motion.
Elise rolled, protecting her head and knowing that it wouldn’t be good enough.
Thom blinked into existence at her side long enough to fold his arms around her shoulders. She felt reality bend and realized what he was about to do.
“No!” she shouted, but her cry never reached the cave.
They disappeared an instant before the boulder crashed into the dais.
7
Elise blinked. The crumbling cavern disappeared and was replaced by white walls and wooden floors. The air turned from dusty and hot to air-conditioned cool, and the seething energy of angels disappeared, leaving her palms cold under the gloves.
Instead of being far below the city, she was suddenly in the entryway of a condo. Her mind bucked, rejecting a reality that could so easily shift.
Her cramping stomach was the only warning that she was about to vomit. Thom allowed her to fall to the floor and empty her stomach on the parquet. It burned up her throat and tasted ashen on her tongue. The puddle of bile was black, but not with blood.
Her arm throbbed, and she pushed back her sleeve to see the bite wound. She sucked in a hard breath.
What should have been nothing more than the imprint of a fiend’s dull teeth was exposed, bleeding flesh. But she was bleeding ichor—the same shadows that had dribbled from Zohak when she had stabbed him.
The same shadows that turned him to obsidian.
As soon as she saw it, the pain intensified and swept up her shoulder. She lost balance and sat back against the wall.
Elise gasped, and every time her breath wheezed out, it was with a small cry. She hated to whimper, but it was pain unlike any other. So much worse than when Death’s Hand had ripped her shoulder open, worse than having her leg shattered under falling rock, worse than getting grazed by a bullet.
Ice spiked through her heart, gripping her chest with cold fingers. Where the pain spread, so did shadow. Her skin grayed and hardened. She clenched her teeth and slammed her head back against the wall.
Thom disappeared and then reappeared in front of her a heartbeat later. White dust puffed around him, as though he brought the air with him when he phased back from the cavern. He held a sword in his hands—the falchion Elise had dropped by the gate. Shadow oozed over its blade.
“This won’t do,” he said. He peeled the darkness off of it as though it was no more than plastic, leaving her blade clear and clean.
Her instant of relief was fleeting.
“Thom—my arm—”
He set down the sword. “Is there a problem?”
Thom lifted her wrist to inspect the wound. The lightest touch shot spikes of fire into her ribcage, and her chest heaved as she fought to breathe. She couldn’t fill her lungs. Elise whined through her teeth.
“Ah, I see. You would die of this.” There was longing in his eyes, and his voice was husky. “It will turn your blood to oil and your flesh to stone. And it will hurt—oh, it will hurt.” He traced a finger around the edge of the wound, and she kicked her leg against the floor. She couldn’t wrench her limb free. His hands were gentle, but unyielding. “You should feel death marching on you now, I think.”
“James,” she panted, “take me to James, I need him—”
“Your witch cannot heal this.”
“I’m not dying from a fucking bite!”
He hummed low in his throat. “Yes, you would. If I allowed it.”
Thom lowered himself over Elise, sitting in her lap. His face loomed, beautiful even as her vision blurred and darkened. He cupped her face in both of his hands. He was so close that the tip of his nose brushed hers.
“You don’t know what a gift it is to die.” His lips tickled against her mouth. “It pains me to watch you beg for life when I would do anything—anything —for the blessing you deny.” His tongue darted out and wetted Elise’s bottom lip. “Let me drink your death, sword-woman. Let me have a taste…”
Thom’s mouth closed over hers, and there was nowhere she could go, trapped between his hands with her arm aflame and no oxygen in her lungs.
His kiss was so much more than the sensation of lips against lips. Demons held domain over the physical, and the caress of his tongue reached hands deep into her flesh, clenching her muscles and burning between her thighs.
She leaned forward despite herself, and he took it as an invitation. He d
eepened the kiss, pressing his body into hers, and it felt like melted chocolate dripping down her throat.
It was almost good enough that she forgot that her arm was turning into obsidian.
Almost.
Her struggling heart skipped a beat. She fumbled for her waist with her good arm, and every motion jolted her wound.
Her fingers closed around the hard hilt of her knife.
Thom’s hand caught her wrist before she could draw the blade. He drew back, humor sparking in his bottomless eyes. “I’ll have you know that kings have gone to war for my kiss.”
“Were they dying ?”
“All humans perpetually spiral toward oblivion.” Thom lowered his lips to the graying skin on her arm. “But I cannot die of this venom. I could draw it from you into myself.” The whisper of his breath across the wound rocked her as though he had slammed her arm into the wall. “Would you like me to heal you?”
She couldn’t speak anymore—she could barely breathe. So she only nodded.
His eyes remained fixed on hers as he lowered his mouth to the bite… and licked it.
Thom’s saliva sizzled on the flesh, but instant relief radiated through the muscle. She sucked in a hard breath.
His tongue laved over the wound, lapping up the blackened blood around the edges. It stained the spaces between his teeth. Then he opened his mouth wide and latched his lips onto the entire injury.
The suction felt as though he drew a silver thread from her toes to her groin to her heart, which stuttered mid-beat. Elise couldn’t tear her eyes away as his mouth worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyes burned as the whites swirled with shadow.
Her skin took color again. The weight lifted from her chest.
She gave a shuddering sigh as the last of the spikes drew from her ribs, receding into the wound, and then vanishing.
It only took a few minutes before he was drinking only blood, real blood, from her arm.
But Thom wasn’t done. His lips traveled from the bite, still open and raw, to her shoulder. He licked a line along her collarbone, leaving a cool trail of moisture in its wake. His teeth briefly settled on the pulse in her throat.
Even with the haze of pain lifted, it took Elise a moment to realize what he was doing. She tried to pull her arm free of his grip.
He sighed into her throat. “I want to finish you so badly. The flesh of a kopis is sweet.”
“You’re done. Stop it.” Thom released her, but didn’t move from his position straddled across her legs. Elise was suddenly very aware that he was half-naked. His bare shoulders were smooth and warm under her hands. He had left a line of thin, pink blood up her arm when he licked her. “Get off of me.”
“Suit yourself.” The leather of his trousers creaked as he stood.
Elise got to her feet, wobbling on knees that couldn’t quite seem to support her weight. She steadied herself with a hand on the wall.
He was still standing too close. “Back up,” she said.
Thom smirked and took two steps away.
She finally left the hall to examine the place where Thom had taken them. It would have been a posh condo if it had had furniture. The living room was wide open, with tall windows that stared into the face of illuminated casinos. They were across the street from the downtown parking garage. In the mirrored city, the darkest gate stood on its roof. The sight gave her chills, so she turned from the window.
The only thing in the condo aside from Thom and Elise was a clay statue. It was shaped like a petite woman with a tiny waist and wide hips that tapered into a snake’s tail, and her arms spread wide over a basin of sand.
Elise stepped around the statue to see its face. The eyes were empty, and the expression was peaceful. It was so lifelike.
Thom watched her approach the statue, like he was afraid she might break it. His steps matched hers as they circled the basin. “We have to go back,” she said. “Yatai took Nukha’il. They’re inside the city.”
“You can’t go back to the cavern.”
“Just phase us through. I can handle it.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Thom said. “The cave has collapsed. There is nowhere to go.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? Then how…?”
“You can’t save Nukha’il.” Thom broke away to saunter to the window. His eyes were lidded and his lips were swollen, as though he and Elise had shared a passionate embrace. “A noble desire, I’m sure, but futile. The angel knew what he was doing. Don’t mourn him.”
“He’s not dead,” Elise said.
“Not surely, no. But very likely.”
She clenched her fists. Nukha’il couldn’t die—not that she cared about an angel , but he was Itra’il’s only guardian; if she broke free of her long sleep, she would be dangerous.
Elise couldn’t shake the mental image of Nukha’il trapped in the city. Alone against the darkest gate.
“I have to do something .”
His eyebrow quirked. “I could take you directly into the ethereal city, if you wished it.”
“No,” she said immediately.
“Then he is subject to Yatai’s mercies.”
Elise paced, arms folded tight across her chest. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. Let’s do it.” She moved for the hallway, but stopped when she saw Thom staring at his own hands. He didn’t seem to have heard her speak. “What’s wrong?”
He ran his hands down his chest. “You have weakened me,” he said, as though this was a marvel. “I took your blood into myself and have become… less.” He caught her expression. “Granted, when you are near-infinitely powerful, as I am, it is difficult to detect a modest change. But I know. I can tell.”
“You were probably injured by the shadow.”
Thom dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. “Yatai can’t hurt me.” His eyes sharpened. “But you—you have wounded me.”
In two long strides, Thom was in front of her. She couldn’t move fast enough to get away.
He took her arm again and gazed at the wound. His pink tongue darted out to wet his lips.
“What if I ate you whole?”
Elise shook herself free. “Let’s keep it academic.”
She returned to the hallway to grab her falchion. She hadn’t imagined Thom removing the shadow from the blade; it was shiny and clear, as though recently polished. Zohak had been consumed by the darkness, and he was a king among demons—so what the hell did Thom have to be in order to remove it from a sword, much less drink it down, without being hurt?
When Elise turned, he stood at her back. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“What are you?”
His secretive smile was distinctly feline. “I am a demon. A very ancient demon. There is no word for my species, for I am almost one of a kind, and the roots from which all other demons on Earth spring. The Gray call me their father. The humans call me Satan. I am the serpent, I am temptation—and fortunately for you, I am your ally today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No,” Thom said. “I expect you wouldn’t.” He extended a hand. “Are you ready?”
Elise sheathed her sword and nodded.
Thom wrapped his arm around her and touched the red stone dangling from the choker at his throat.
Nothing happened.
He blinked. It was the barest show of surprise, but given his usual blank features, he might as well have fallen over with shock.
“What is it?” she asked.
His brow furrowed.
“I can’t phase.”
James parked his car on the roof of the hospital’s garage and checked his cell phone again. Nothing.
It had only been a couple of hours since he had picked up Stephanie’s order for lab work and had the draw performed for his karyotype test. He knew from his not-infrequent hospital stays that even rush orders moved with all the urgency of a glacier, so it wasn’t surprising. But impatience nagged at him.
James sat on the hood of his car as the
engine ticked and cooled to watch the stars and wait.
It was a cold, clear night. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The forecast said there would be snow over Thanksgiving weekend, but for now, the stars were bright, his fingers were chilly, and he was much too wired to rest.
He took the Prophecies of Flynn from his back pocket, opening to the table of contents. His fingertip trailed over the section titled “Aspis.” If there were prophecies about Elise’s aspis—about him —then everything in that section would be about his future.
Did he want to know? Really?
All he had to do was locate page two hundred and thirty-six, and that gnawing curiosity would be satisfied.
“No,” he said aloud. “That’s a terrible idea.”
He closed the cover.
Then he opened it again.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
James started on the first page of prophecies.
The text was tiny, and riddled with codes and abbreviations that made no sense to him. He flipped to the back. There was no key.
He tried to read it anyway, but without understanding their acronyms, most of the lines were gibberish. The first paragraph of the introduction was half abbreviations such as “CEV” and half of Elise’s biography, which he could tell by the dates. Her birthday was mentioned, as well as the date her parents had left her to pursue their own ambitions.
James soon found himself on page two hundred and thirty-six, which was marked with the “Aspis” header. It was the only time he was referenced in such impersonal terms. The rest of the time, his name was annotated as “JF.”
He held his future in his hands—all the information that people weren’t meant to know about themselves.
“No happiness will come of this,” he said again.
He started reading anyway.
The entire first page was a disordered biography of James, and how he came to be Elise’s aspis. Even knowing what they were talking about, it was still difficult to follow. There were massive gaps in the information, and the level of detail was, thankfully, very brief and disjointed. They had minimal information on his time with the coven in Colorado. They didn’t seem to know about his connection to Elise’s parents, either.