by S. M. Reine
“And you agreed,” Hannah said. “Why am I not surprised? You don’t listen to me. You never listen to me.”
“No, I didn’t agree. In fact, I want to move.”
That immediately cooled her fury. Her hand dropped to his leg. “Move? What’s wrong with our house?”
“Nothing,” he said without facing her. “But I would like to leave Boulder. Specifically, I would like to be much farther away from the coven.”
Silence.
Slowly, Hannah nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s move out of Boulder.”
They moved to Denver, leaving behind the house that the coven had bought for them. But they didn’t discuss getting married again, though Hannah still wore the ring. It would have required too much money to organize a ceremony, and moving had drained their savings. James apologized once for the situation, but Hannah was happy enough to have escaped the coven that she didn’t complain.
Summer came and passed. Months faded into years. James studied, he danced, he slept beside Hannah. Everything seemed exactly the way it had been before his so-called business trip, aside from the absence of the coven’s looming presence. Pamela called him once or twice, trying to get him to make good on his promise to teach Elise, who was visiting again, how to dance. James started avoiding the phone.
Landon was right. Everything had changed.
Pamela was speaking to a man. James could see her face drifting through the haze, though he wasn’t sure why—the last thing he remembered was climbing into bed with Hannah, and it had been months since he had visited his dear aunt. But the familiar smell of incense and brass meant that they must have been standing in her office. He had no clue how he had gotten there.
“She’s still so young. Barely fourteen years old,” Pamela was saying. Her gray-streaked hair was gathered into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and she was pacing, twisting her hands, frowning. “I don’t think she’s ready.”
“Her parents disagree,” said the man.
Pamela’s lips drew into a severe frown. “Those idiots also sold their morals and genetic material to a mutinous archangel in exchange for being a part of history. They don’t even see her as a daughter. They don’t care what happens to her.”
“And you do?”
“Yes. I care for all of my adepts as though they were my own children.”
“Is that why you surrendered Ariane Garin to me when I requested it?” He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to respond. “I have no patience for your human hypocrisy. Tell me where she is and we will leave for the garden immediately.”
“Ariane was Landon’s choice, and I had no control over any of that. But Elise is my responsibility now, and I say that she’s still too young to be used as—as some kind of tool. At least the other children were guaranteed some longevity, but this—this mission—there’s no way she could survive! Maybe if I could just—”
And suddenly, there was a pale hand at her throat, lifting her off of her feet. She kicked. Her toes swept just inches from the floor.
That hand was attached to a long arm, broad shoulders, a tall man with soft brown curls—Metaraon. He looked exactly the same as he had the first time that James had seen him. He was even wearing that same well-fitted pair of jeans and a t-shirt, like a very casual fashion model. And his impassive expression didn’t change as he began to squeeze.
“Where is Elise?” Metaraon asked, voice calm.
Pamela shook her head. Kicked harder. Didn’t reply.
He dropped her and said, “Ah, yes. Of course. Thank you.”
She crumpled to the floor. Metaraon turned to leave, and the witch scrambled on all fours to her desk, grabbing a huge binder off of the blotter. It was filled with thousands of spells. James knew this because he had spent years helping his aunt put them together.
Pamela flipped it open to the orange tab—the section in which they kept their experimental battle magic—and ripped out a page.
The word of power spilled from her lips. The room shook. James’s foggy perception shivered.
Metaraon faced the witch again.
He didn’t speak a word as he crushed her esophagus in one hand.
James’s eyes flew open, and he sat up in bed with a gasp.
He wasn’t in Pamela’s office. He wasn’t even anywhere near Boulder. Hannah was sleeping beside him, curled on her side with an arm flung over her head as she snored softly. The altar was undisturbed. The bookshelves were full. The paperback he had been reading was still resting facedown on the bedside table.
And Pamela’s strangled cry was echoing in his skull.
He rubbed the side of his chest as he slipped out from underneath the sheets. Hannah didn’t stir as he stuffed his feet into slippers, padded into the hallway, and shut the door behind him. James called Pamela’s phone from the kitchen. It rang six times, and the answering machine picked up. He returned his phone to the cradle without leaving a message.
James braced his hands against the counter and stared at the clock on the wall. He shouldn’t have expected her to answer. It was the middle of the night. She would have been asleep.
It was only a dream. A nightmare. And no wonder—James had been terrified of Metaraon for years.
Still, he found himself pulling on a jacket, trading his slippers for shoes, and slipping silently down to his Honda.
It was a long drive out to Pamela’s house, and the nauseating feeling from his dream didn’t fade as he traveled long stretches of highway through flat plains. Dawn was approaching by the time he arrived. All of the lights were off in the house, except for Pamela’s office. It cast a square of golden light on the grass.
The front door was ajar.
“Aunt Pamela?” James called, pushing it with a finger. The hinges whined as it swung open.
The living room stood empty. There was an unfamiliar pair of shoes on the rack by the door—a pair of girl’s sneakers, size six, unlaced and muddy and hanging upside-down to dry. It wasn’t the only new feature of the room. There were history books on the couch, the coffee table, the floor, like the living room had been converted into a disorganized school.
It was summer, so Ariane’s daughter must have been visiting. Elise . Pamela had mentioned that girl’s name in the dream.
All of the doors were closed, except for one. It used to be his bedroom when he visited. When he peeked inside, he saw that there was a safe at the foot of the bed, like the kind people used to store guns. Sweat pants and sports bras were piled on the floor. The pillows were rumpled.
Nobody in sight.
“Pamela,” he said again as he stepped back, a little louder than before.
He knocked lightly on her office door before opening it.
Everything looked the way that it had in his dream. Tidy desk. Open curtains. Pamela’s binder on the floor, opened to the orange tab.
And he saw a pair of legs protruding from behind the desk.
James let out a long line of curses under his breath as he rounded the furniture. Pamela was slumped against the wall, her eyes still open, as though she had simply decided to sit down and rest for a few minutes. A few locks of hair had escaped her bun and fallen in her face. She wasn’t moving or breathing.
So it hadn’t been just a dream.
He clapped a hand over his mouth and fought the urge to scream. To cry. To shout and beg with God and maybe throw up everything he had ever eaten on the floor of his aunt’s office.
In that silence, James heard the floorboards creak.
He wasn’t alone.
James turned. Metaraon stood in the doorway, calm and unruffled, arms folded.
“Hello, Mr. Faulkner,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
IV
Disestablishment
12
Isaac Kavanagh had been in Dis for years, but not once had he stepped foot past the border of the city without several weapons, a guard, and armored transport; to do otherwise was considered attempted suicide by the Palace. So it was with no s
mall amount of trepidation that he took one of the trucks from the Palace’s security fleet and drove into the desert alone.
He didn’t go far. Isaac drove to the nearest pit and parked a few feet from the edge, where he was fairly confident that the earth wouldn’t sink and devour his vehicle. He double-checked the letter Onoskelis had given him to make sure he was in the right place, and then strolled along the edge of the pit to the other side. Smoke stung his eyes. Screams drifted from the depths of the ground.
When he was on the north-most edge of the gash, he waited.
After twenty minutes, Belphegor appeared on the horizon, approaching him at a slow pace. His normally pristine suit was covered in dust. One of his shoes was missing, baring a foot that had no muscle, no skin—only exposed bones connected by raw yellow tendons.
He skirted the edge of the pit as calmly as though he had been going on his morning stroll, and then collapsed six feet away. A cloud of dust puffed around him.
Isaac put his hands in his pockets and examined the steward. The desert had done a number on him. His colorless skin was slimy, like he was beginning to decompose.
“Will you survive?” Isaac asked.
Belphegor responded in the infernal tongue, and it sounded like it took a lot of effort, though he should have been able to speak vo-ani as fluently as English or Swahili. He spoke every language that had ever existed. “I’m not certain.”
“Bad luck,” Isaac said. “I’m going to touch you. Fair warning.”
Belphegor nodded, so Isaac stooped and pulled the steward’s arm over his shoulder. Lifting him from the ground, they staggered together toward the truck parked on the other side of the gash in the Earth. “How did you find me?” Belphegor asked.
“The spell that flung you into the desert left residue. One of the security witches tracked it and reported it to the librarians. They record everything.”
The demon nodded. “I owe you.”
Isaac shrugged as best he could with Belphegor’s arm still over his shoulder. “It’s my job.”
“Your jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond the city’s borders. You have gone out of your way to help me, and I’m grateful.”
“Good for you.”
He helped Belphegor into the truck. The steward sat against the side of the bed, pulled his exposed foot into his lap, and began brushing dust off of the bone with delicate fingers. “Isaac Kavanagh,” he said in that strange, awkward, too-formal voice.
“Belphegor.”
“I have served the presiding judge in Dis loyally for decades. His secrets are mine. So I hope you understand that I don’t tell you this lightly.”
Isaac’s brow lowered. His hands hesitated on the door of the truck bed. “If you’re meant to keep secrets, then you’d do well to keep your mouth shut.”
“Hear me, Isaac Kavanagh. I walked into Judge Abraxas’s private rooms at the Palace of Dis, where I have been discouraged from visiting for some months now, and saw Ariane Kavanagh emerge naked. The air smelled like sex and blood.” He said it matter-of-factly. His words were flowing more smoothly now than they had before.
Isaac finished latching the gate of the pickup. He stepped back and faced the mountains.
“Interesting,” he said.
“Judge Abraxas has no interest in mortal women—as lovers or as slaves. Yet he has purchased almost every human that has crossed dimensions to enter Dis this year. The House of Abraxas is filled with mortals. They are not kept as food, or intended for any service I can identify. They are confined to kennels, fed, and exercised.”
Isaac understood that Belphegor was trying to tell him something, but he wasn’t sure what, and he couldn’t seem to think of anything other than his whore of a wife naked in the bed of the judge.
The steward went on. “I serve the presiding judge. His secrets are mine.” Belphegor gave him an impassive look. “I can’t tell you any of the presiding judge’s secrets.”
Belphegor’s intended meaning dawned on Isaac.
Onoskelis had complained of records going missing, and she claimed that they were likely being held in private rooms. Now Belphegor had said that he was not allowed in Judge Abraxas’s quarters. What was worse was that Belphegor was telling him at all—because he shouldn’t have been able to tell the judge’s secrets.
Which meant that Abraxas was no longer the judge.
“I believe my debt to you is repaid,” Belphegor said. He picked a rock out from between two bones and flicked it over the side of the truck, and then he added, “My apologies about your wife.”
“Thank you,” Isaac said. The leaden weight of certainty filled him, making it hard to step away so that he could approach the driver’s seat. His words fell flat on the air. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Isaac entered the Palace of Dis, took the hydraulic lift to the private quarters of Judge Abraxas, and walked inside.
The doors were guarded by a pair of fiends, which openly gaped at him, as though questioning whether or not they should permit someone to enter Abraxas’s rooms. Or maybe Isaac was reading too much into their dumb shock. Thinking wasn’t really a fiend’s strong suit.
He waved his wrist in front of the door. He didn’t hear it unlock.
The time it took for him to consider his options was more than enough time for the fiends to finally decide that Isaac didn’t belong there, Inquisitor or not.
Feet shuffled on the floor behind him.
Isaac evaluated the situation. Two fiends, each armed. Flanking position. No obstacles. No witnesses. Easy.
He spun and punched the nearest fiend in the eye. When it shrieked, he grasped its writhing tongue and jerked it free. It felt like trying to tear through an undercooked piece of steak with his fingertips. Ichor gushed over its jaw, and it loosened its grip on the blunt sword.
He took the blade from its hand and plunged it into the gut of the other attacking fiend. He twisted, dragged, and pulverized the heart.
Once that one was dead, he finished the first, and dropped the sword.
Isaac returned his attention to the door. His heart wasn’t even beating quickly.
He passed his wrist in front of the lock a second time, but again, there was no responding click. Isaac frowned. As Inquisitor, he should have had access to all of the private rooms—it was his privilege to arrest anyone he wanted, at any time. Even judges.
On impulse, he grabbed the handle. The door swung open.
Isaac stared into the empty foyer, eyebrows lifting. “So it’s true,” he muttered, stroking a hand down his beard. The wards would have been bound to Abraxas when he took office, so if he wasn’t living there anymore, the wards wouldn’t work properly. Easier for his whore of a wife to get inside, he supposed.
He searched the foyer, but he found no records. No surprise there. The foyer was where the judge would have met guests—he wouldn’t leave contraband so easy to find.
Isaac stepped into the bedroom. It had tall windows overlooking the courtyard, and a massive bed encased in an iron skeleton. Belphegor had said it had smelled like sex. All Isaac smelled was blood. He walked up to the bed, jaw trembling from being clenched so tightly.
It was hard to see the blood staining the sheets, but there were other, more obvious stains. It must have been a long time since the so-called judge had allowed anyone into his quarters to clean. That wasn’t the kind of mess left behind from a single tryst, or even a handful of them; they were the marks of a long, deliberate affair.
“I’ll kill her,” he told the pile of pillows. It didn’t make him feel any better to say it aloud.
He knelt and looked under the bed’s rails. The floor was empty, but when he slid his hand underneath the mattress, his fingers came up against something hard. Isaac extracted a ledger—the kind of ledger that belonged in the library—and paced to the window to read it using the light from outside.
The first page was more detail on James Faulkner’s indictment. Despite what had been said at the trial, the witch wasn�
�t being accused of being a demon. He was being accused of being ethereal Gray. A smear of blood on the next page—a thumbprint—had apparently been used as evidence to issue the arrest warrant.
James Faulkner couldn’t be ethereal Gray. The idea was ridiculous. Anyone with half a brain should have realized that the most powerful witch on Earth had to be human, through and through. It was completely impossible, by the laws of the Treaty of Dis, for anyone with angel or demon blood to perform magic.
Which meant that the ethereal blood must have come from somewhere else. Somewhere beyond Hell.
An idea dawned on him, and he shuffled through the folder to the travel itinerary he had glimpsed. Isaac skimmed the page, searching names and times. They were all from the same date, which was six months past—over four years on Earth. Humans arriving, humans leaving. Union transmissions. A visit from an overlord.
Then he read the last arrival for the day, which was marked at the end of the page.
Metaraon.
“No,” Isaac murmured, though his denial had no effect on the truth. Itineraries were automatically logged. It was impossible to forge them.
But it also should have also been impossible for an angel to enter Hell.
Footsteps echoed in the foyer. Isaac’s muscles buzzed with tension as he closed the folder again and tucked it under his arm.
He emerged to find a fiend gaping at the bodies of its dead brethren.
“Summon the rest of the security team,” Isaac barked. “We have a breach. Where’s Judge Abraxas?”
“Alok ,” it said. Flecks of spit spattered from its thin lip. That wasn’t a real word in the infernal tongue—fiends were too stupid to speak properly. But it was a shortened form of akilothika , the word for “portal.”
The rest of the touchstones should have been arriving that afternoon for James Faulkner’s trial, so it was no surprise that Metaraon was at the portal. It was the role of the judge to greet visiting touchstones, after all.