by S. M. Reine
Elise had kissed James, and he had simply stepped away from her.
They hadn’t talked about it since.
If James hadn’t tortured himself thinking about it every night for the last six months, he could have convinced himself that it had never happened at all.
Self-loathing slicked Elise’s memory in oily disgust. She hated herself for struggling to make her one and only ever gesture of affection—or at least, attraction.
Worse, Elise truly believed that James hated her for it, too.
“No,” James said aloud, startled by the realization. “I would never.”
She didn’t hear him. They were too physically distant, and Elise had broken the piggyback the instant that she realized they were sharing thoughts again. She was trying to hide the fact that she had been thinking about the kiss—constantly—ever since it had happened.
James ran a hand through his hair, mind whirling in the absence of Elise’s.
It hadn’t just been self-loathing in that memory. There had been other wisps of ugliness: an urge for revenge and punishment and endless flagellation.
Elise had begun dating Malcolm, if that was what it could be called, right after their kiss.
James felt like an idiot for failing to realize what that meant earlier.
He had pushed her toward that idiot. And she had been using Malcolm to punish both of them ever since.
“Lord, no ,” he said, quiet under the shrieking of a new wave of demons cascading up the slope.
Elise moved into the battle again.
The swift dance of demon slaying was graceful, even on her stocky form. James had been teaching her to dance, and Elise had absorbed that knowledge into her already terrifying ability to kill.
Twin falchions flashed through the night. Blood sprayed.
She leaped, she ducked, she spun.
Malcolm and McIntyre were both stronger than Elise, but that didn’t matter. She was the greatest kopis for a reason.
Elise didn’t need to be the strongest when she was utterly untouchable.
Yet she didn’t realize how beautiful she was.
James was so distracted watching her fight that he didn’t realize his protective circle was weakening until a second wave of demons struck.
Lava black bodies crashed into his circle of power.
James’s warding magic broke.
The demons flooded in.
“Look out!” Malcolm shouted.
The male kopis smashed into James, pushing him out of the way just before a half-dozen hellspawn managed to strike.
Tangled together, the men tumbled into the canyon.
All things considered, falling was a much faster way to get down the canyon than the way James and Elise had done it last time, which had been on the back of flea-riddled donkeys.
It was a hell of a lot more painful, though.
“Good Lord,” James groaned, rolling onto all fours to look around.
They had landed conveniently near the cave underneath the Tower of Set.
Convenient because it meant they wouldn’t have to walk far to reach the fissure.
Slightly less convenient because it meant they were surrounded by demons.
Malcolm had taken the brunt of the tumble. Regardless of his feelings toward James, he still had a kopis’s protective instinct, and James was a mortal with all the associated weaknesses; Malcolm had shielded the aspis automatically. He had been cut open by the rocks in several places. Blood cascaded down the side of his face.
He was on his feet again, drawing a handgun from the small of his back and firing into a mass of demons that emerged from the cave.
Malcolm’s aim was precise. Each bullet planted into a fiend’s forehead. But he didn’t merely shoot them in the heads—he shot them in a place their stony flesh was cracked and oozing blood, indicating weakness.
Each bullet killed one demon.
Not as impressive as Elise, but close.
Still, his handgun could only hold twelve bullets at best, when he started with one chambered. Twelve demons died at Malcolm’s feet and that was it.
Then he yanked James to his feet.
“Still got the moonstone artifact?” Malcolm asked.
James patted himself down. He did. It was safely swaddled in the leather-and-turquoise satchel. “Yes, but we need the Traveler because—”
“Good enough for now!” Malcolm shoved his emptied handgun at James along with a fresh magazine he’d been carrying in one of his pockets. “Reload and follow me.”
More demons were squeezing out through the tunnel leading to the cave.
Another earthquake struck.
The canyon around them groaned, rocks grinding, debris falling. The ground heaved under James. It was even more powerful than the last earthquakes, as though the fissure to Phlegethon was starting to get really angry, and he couldn’t remain standing through it.
Malcolm clamped a hand on James’s collar and dragged him toward the tunnel, unperturbed by the fact that the walls of the canyon were swaying around them.
The Tower of Set was wiggling , for the love of God.
It looked like the rocks would collapse on them.
The hidden cave wasn’t so hidden now. Each successive earthquake was grinding it open wider. The demons pushing through were helping it widen on their way, too. They were preparing a path to allow the forces of Phlegethon to invade Earth.
Malcolm cleared a path of his own with a second handgun.
“Reloading?” he asked James cheerfully.
Oh, right . James’s hands shook as he removed the first magazine and replaced it with a full one.
As soon as he popped it into place, Malcolm took it from him, swung the gun over James’s shoulder, and fired again. It exploded directly to the left of James’s ear.
There had been demons coming up on them from behind.
If the fiends were heading back this way, it could only mean that Elise and Lucas were pushing them. They wouldn’t be far. And they would have the Traveler with them.
Malcolm shoved James inside the cave. The damp air stunk of melted copper.
“What an ugly situation,” Malcolm said, reloading his second gun. “Apocalypse showing up early, just when I was getting my rocks off. Barely even had time to empty that whiskey bottle. We did, mind you, but barely . And we could have easily started on another one.”
When he shot at the demons to clear the tunnel, it was a thousand times louder than when he had been shooting in the relatively open air of the canyon. James clapped his hands over his ears.
“Don’t you have melee weapons?” he shouted.
Malcolm’s mouth moved. “Where’s the fun in that?” James could barely hear him.
James stumbled over the felled body of a demon. Its magma flesh crunched under his heel. “It’s not all about having fun! Sometimes, just sometimes , it’s about saving lives!”
“Try to be more boring, please, Jimmy.” Malcolm unloaded the clip into a string of demons, and then whipped a high kick into the jaw of a survivor. “Elise isn’t boring. Even she thought it was funny when I handed her the Hooters shirt to fight in tonight.”
Frustration clawed at James.
Hooters ? He hadn’t noticed what she was wearing up on the cliff. He’d only noticed how much pain she was in.
And Malcolm had stuck her in a Hooters shirt.
“I suppose you think that’s funny,” he hissed at Malcolm.
“You better believe I do, doggy.” That pretend Western drawl was even more irritating than the words coming out of his idiot mouth.
“Of all the disrespectful—”
“You think I could make her wear it if she didn’t want to? It seems to me like one of us has an issue respecting Elise’s choices and it’s not me.” There was a spark of possessive jealousy in Malcolm’s words.
James gathered himself to his full height, which was at least half a foot taller than Malcolm. “I’m her aspis. More fatal than friends, closer than
family—”
“Whinier than an incy wincy baby,” Malcolm said. “Oi. Duck.”
After a few months of casual warnings from the kopis, James knew to duck immediately. He ate dirt.
Malcolm fired over James’s head.
The bullet embedded in a demon’s throat.
“You’re a pig,” James said.
“A pig who just saved your life,” Malcolm said. He blew imagined smoke away from the muzzle of his gun. “Again. You’re welcome.”
And he was running down the tunnel again.
James had no choice but to follow or get eaten by demons.
They were on both sides: ahead of them, emerging from the juncture between Earth and Phlegethon; behind them, pushed into Malcolm and James’s retreating backs by Elise. James felt as though he were trapped within the closing maw of Ba’al. He was about to be devoured.
The only escape was getting the moonstone artifact to the juncture.
He followed Malcolm.
The tunnel soon widened into the cave where ancient demons had once attempted to burrow between the dimensions. The marks of infernal carving were everywhere. At another time, James would have enjoyed analyzing the specific shapes of the scorch marks on the crimson stone walls.
“There it is!” Malcolm crowed. “The fissure! Gorgeous!”
James didn’t see it at first. There were too many black-skinned boiling-blooded demons between where he stood and the fissure.
But the fiends shifted, and then it became visible.
A gash in the stone.
That sliver was so narrow, barely wider than the width of a fingernail, that it would have been utterly invisible if not for the blood it gushed—and if not for the demons somehow, impossibly, twisting to extrude themselves into a mortal dimension where they didn’t belong.
That was where the moonstone artifact needed to go.
James wedged himself between two rocks while Malcolm fought, fumbling the Book of Shadows out of his back pocket. He had known he would need offensive spells for this battle, and James had prepared a few special tricks.
He ripped the first page out of his Book of Shadows. Paper dust puffed through the air.
Demons rushed him.
He opened his mouth to speak a word of power.
It rocked the entire cavern in a silent boom, as though the entire canyon were a gong and his magic were the mallet. The demons within ten feet simply turned to a spray of blood so hot that they scorched the earth where they touched. Fragments of flesh and bone flopped to James’s feet.
Malcolm rounded on James. Demons had splattered onto his shins. “Damn it, Jimmy! Be careful! You got close to me with that!”
“Not close enough,” James muttered. He ripped the next spell free and held it between forefinger and thumb, trying to decide if it was safe to cast it back toward the tunnel that led to the surface. Elise had severed their bond. He couldn’t tell where she was.
He shoved the rune back into his pocket and scrambled to the top of a rock, trying to escape the reach of the nearest demons.
Malcolm cleared the space in front of the fissure. “Easy!” He spun his handgun end over end and holstered it. “See, there’s advantages to being the kind of bloke who shoots things instead of blows things up with magic. Nice and clean! Toss me the moonstone artifact.”
“Not a chance in all the hells,” James said. He slithered down the opposite side of the boulder and hit the ground just a few feet from the fissure. The air rippling from it was hot enough to make his hair curl.
Malcolm stepped into his path. “Come on, give it here. I’ll take care of everything.”
“I can handle it, thanks,” James bit out.
“Like you handle Elise?”
That was an open challenge if James had ever heard one.
Not the first from Malcolm, certainly. Nor the most blatant.
But James didn’t ignore it this time.
He didn’t want to.
“I’m better than you are in every way possible,” James said.
“That’s not what she seems to think,” Malcolm said. “I’m the one who she wears the Hooters shirt for, after all. All you do is follow her around the world like a pathetic puppy.”
James swung first.
Unfortunately, Malcolm was still a kopis, and his reflexes were far faster.
He ducked under James’s fist and came up with a blow of his own.
It was like taking a baseball bat to the face.
James flattened on the ground.
Sweeping a leg out, James hooked his foot behind Malcolm’s knee. He jerked hard. Brought Malcolm to the ground. Jumped on top of him before his vision could clear.
James snapped his fist across Malcolm’s face.
It was impossible to tell if the brown smears on the ground beside his head belonged to the kopis or came from the earlier fight against demons.
He was pretty certain he’d broken Malcolm’s nose, though.
Malcolm tossed James off of him, leaping to his feet. “Seems I struck a nerve in old Jimmy boy! And I do mean old . Bet you couldn’t keep it up for her even if you tried!”
James hurled the second rune into the air.
Magic thudded. The cave shook.
A ripple of air thumped into Malcolm’s chest and kept going. It bowled down the kopis and the half-dozen demons beyond him who had begun scrambling into the cave.
Just behind those demons, Elise was escorting the Traveler to the fissure.
That was what she saw.
Not Malcolm’s taunts. Not James’s attempt to hold back the demon horde.
Just James attacking her boyfriend.
And judging by her expression, she was not at all impressed.
Considering that the Traveler was only a witch—which meant that it had average strength and reflexes, similar to those any other human might have—it was a useful asset to have against the demons. It didn’t need the runic paper magic that James used. It had a quick tongue and incredible powers of observation unlike any Elise had ever seen.
“Three coming over the hill,” the Traveler said, and it was right: there were three demons cresting over the hill to Elise’s left, where she wouldn’t have noticed them without help.
McIntyre swiveled. He fired his shotgun. The demons fell.
The Traveler spoke again. “Behind you.”
Elise spun, slashing her swords in an arc that reflected moonlight on the blades like blazing cerulean fire.
Blood sprayed from the throats of two demons.
That was how they reached the floor of the canyon. The Traveler barked instructions without needing to look. It always knew where the demons were coming from. Always knew what to say. It was as though it had lived this deadly night a dozen times before.
It walked calmly between the two kopides, side-stepping attacks from the fiends, and was never touched by an enemy. Not once.
“What is it?” Elise grunted to McIntyre when their paths of battle drew one them close to each other. They had worked together frequently enough now that he understood what she was asking: why the Traveler was so strange, separate from the reality surrounding it.
“It’s a witch,” he said.
“Yeah, but what ?”
“Just a witch,” McIntyre said. “For real.”
But it was a witch who had clearly traveled this path before, because it never drew a weapon yet still never was injured.
They reached the floor of the canyon. Malcolm and James weren’t dead on the ground, though she had already known that would be the case. If James had been dead, she would have felt him cleaved out of her soul and spent the rest of her life aching for the absence.
She never should have bound to him. She never should have let anyone matter to her that much.
When she heard the echoes of fighting within the tunnel under the Tower of Set, she was afraid. Truly afraid that there would be one more cry, and then her heart would shatter with James’s death.
Elise n
ever used to fear for anyone like that.
Now she feared for him, and all he had in return for her was disdain.
She hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel—her only hesitation throughout the entire fight. Her fists were clenched around the hilts of her falchions. Blood sizzled on the blade, sending plumes of steam spiraling toward the heights of the canyon. Her gloves were soaked. The H in Hooters on her right breast was stained.
James and Malcolm were in the cavern somewhere.
“Don’t bother second guessing yourself,” the Traveler said. “You won’t remember anyway.”
She frowned at it, brow creasing.
“Don’t bother asking what it’s talking about,” McIntyre said, breaking the shotgun over his arm to reload. “Ain’t no point in that.”
Elise would take his word for that.
She leaped into the cavern.
Killing the demons was an easy thing, and if she’d had a choice, she never would have done anything else. Going through the instinctive motions of murder was easy. It warmed her muscles and made her blood flow and touched her forehead with sweat. It was the good parts of sex without any of the complications.
A blade in the chest, a demon’s wail. Knuckles connecting with Elise’s ribs. Teeth sinking into her wrist.
It was good. Very good.
“Step to the left,” the Traveler said peacefully behind her.
Elise leaped behind an outcropping in the wall. She reached cover an instant before James’s magic pulsed within the cavern, exploding from one of his runes.
She watched through the crack as his magic bowled over the demons like pins.
The demons, and Malcolm.
Hatred filled James’s pale eyes. The fissure to Phlegethon gashed the wall behind him, twice as tall as the witch but narrower than a hair.
He was still holding the page from his Book of Shadows that had knocked down Malcolm.
The way that James was looking, it was clear that the kopis had been his target—not the demons.
“Check him,” Elise barked to McIntyre.
The other kopis kneeled beside Malcolm. “He ain’t dead.”
That was something.
Elise stalked toward James, the Traveler in her wake. She didn’t need to ask James what the fuck do you think you’re doing because she communicated it in every angry line of her body.