by Elena Lawson
I raise a brow at the weathered facade of the building. It’s hardly what I imagined when they said they were taking me to a ‘secure location.’ I mean the doors are wide open. One of the stained-glass windows to the right of it is broken, and the jagged remnants are like razor sharp teeth in a dark maw.
Something about this doesn’t feel right, and I’m uneasy when the woman named Isolde gets out of the backseat before me and holds the door open for my exit without a word.
“Here?” I ask, doubtful. Trying to hide the fear clawing up my throat.
One…
Feel it.
Two…
Breathe.
Three.
Lock it up.
“Yes,” Tristane replies, shutting the door to the passenger seat after stepping out to join Isolde. “Here.”
All righty then. Here we go.
I follow them inside, avoiding the shattered glass on the overgrown pathway leading up to the door. I hadn’t had time to grab my shoes. Didn’t really think about it at all when we left.
A jacket might’ve been nice, too. The blistering heat of the day left with the sun, and my skin bristles with the lick of cool wind rushing through the open doors and broken windows.
“Down here,” Tristane beckons, and I fall into step behind him, the other three Nephilim drawing up the rear. Boxing me in.
I scan the interior for exits and find one across the building, near a rubble coated stage, just behind a tall wooden stand with a microphone perched on its edge. I store the information away and keep going, letting Tristane lead me down a narrow hall and then down a wide staircase.
It seems to get cleaner as we go. There is no rubble on the steps. No signs of decay in the corridor of the floor beneath the pew-strewn room upstairs. When we go down another flight of stairs, the cold gets to be so much that my teeth begin to chatter.
And, like I knew it would but prayed it wouldn’t, my sixth sense dulls. The spirit chatter always at a low hum in my mind all but vanishes. The spark in my blood splutters out.
The walls are too thick. We’re too deep underground.
At the bottom there is a bank of heavy metal doors in neat rows to either side. In front, there’s a pair of double doors. The kind with heavy silver locks and wire-mesh in the windows.
Tristane holds one of those open, revealing a bright space within. Steeling myself, I step inside.
There isn’t much here. Just a clean, stainless-steel table and two chairs. One on either side. The walls are a crisp white, making the off-white of the drop-ceiling look horribly dirty by comparison. There isn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Not a whisper of the decrepit building sitting two floors up.
If I hadn’t walked through it myself, I wouldn’t even believe it was the same place. And yet it is. I contemplate whether there has always existed an otherworldly prison beneath the floorboards of this old church, meant for the Diablim who escaped Hell one of the first two times, or whether it was a new addition: built only when there were enough Diablim to claim the city for their own.
Not that it matters.
“What is this place?”
Tristane smirks, and I don’t miss how the others remain outside as the white door swings closed behind him. “Some kind of interrogation room?”
It reminds me of one. At least, from what I’ve seen in films and read in books.
“Very astute observation,” he says and falls gracefully into the chair farthest away. “Please. Sit. The faster we get through these questions, the faster I can have you returned.”
“And if I give answers you don’t like?”
His gray eyes narrow, giving me all the answer I need.
They don’t intend me harm…so long as I cooperate. So long as I am not a threat, and right now, they don’t perceive me to be. I just have to keep them thinking that.
I fold myself into the chair opposite him and wrap my arms around myself to stave off the chill, wondering how the hell I’m sweating when I’m at a point near freezing.
“So, it’s Paige, right?”
He already knows that, so I don’t bother replying.
“All right. Paige, let’s begin with the basics. My orders are to find out your history. Where you came from. Why you’re here. What you are.”
“Then you’ll be disappointed,” I say, rolling my shoulders back and dropping my hands to my lap. Not wanting to appear weak. “Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know I was Diablim. I still don’t know what I am other than that I wield spirit magic.”
“So we’ve heard. You caused quite the stir at The Freakshow but that isn’t what has my superiors curious about you. What has them curious is how a Diablim new to the city, with supposedly no prior knowledge of her heritage was able to travel to Hell and back…and live.”
The way he’s watching me makes me want to squirm, and I have to suppress the urge with laced fingers and a clenched jaw.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not buying that.”
“I’m not selling it,” I snap before I can stop myself. “It’s the truth. I don’t know. If I did, I would tell you.”
I’m not sure if that last part is a lie, but I throw it in there for good measure, trying to subdue him.
Tristane leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. His pale blue button-down is rolled up to the creases of his elbows, and where his biceps lie hidden beneath, the fabric strains. With his fingers steepled at his lips, he considers me.
I’m not naive enough to think he believes me, but how far will he go to get the truth? If he meant me harm, Casper would have done something. Devereaux said it herself.
So, I have to believe he isn’t going to torture me to get answers.
…but he will keep me here until dawn.
I could almost laugh at how not scary that is. To think that a month ago I was chained to a chair and zapped with high voltage electricity over and over again for hours and now this was all I had to contend with?
It really put things into perspective.
So when he stands, nearly knocking his chair back, his face a twisted mask of fury, I don’t even flinch. He couldn’t possibly do anything to me that would be worse than the things I’d already endured.
How had I forgotten that? How had I forgotten my strength?
I snorted to myself. “So, if that’s all,” I drawl. “I guess you can just take me back to the house. I could even put in a good word for you with Asmodeus, make sure he doesn’t hunt you down and kill you for forcing me to go with you.”
“You little—” He cuts himself short verbally and physically. Half launched over the table I thought he might actually strike me, but he won’t, and it brings a smirk to my lips that only infuriates him further.
He tosses the chair back and it clatters against the wall as he strides past, shoving his way through the door.
“Get me a diviner,” he roars and there’s a flurry of hushed responses before a loud blow silences all.
“Do it.”
Two sets of footsteps leave, padding in sync up the stairs.
“What should we do with her?” I hear the Nephilim called Isolde ask and strain to listen to Tristane’s response.
“Don’t let her leave this room. She can sit there until the diviner arrives.”
“And if we can’t get one here that quickly?”
“Then you better pray Asmodeus doesn’t get back anytime soon because she isn’t leaving here until I get answers for Elijah.”
Heavy footsteps depart, and I assume he’s left Isolde to keep watch over me. To make sure I don’t leave. I like my odds against just one Nephilim, but I won’t try to escape. Not just yet.
The diviner who gleaned that I was Diablim in St. Louis was of a lower-level, and I pulled away from him too quickly for him to get any more useful information from my mind.
But whoever Tristane hires to root around in my skull might actually be able to find something useful. Information I maybe don’t want falling into the
hands of angels, but it could be more than we already know.
Maybe the answer Kincaid and I had been looking for would be dropped right into my lap. Maybe I was finally going to learn exactly where I came from, and what I am, at last.
I settle in for the wait, peeling my bracelets off and stuffing them in my pockets…just in case.
22
Hours pass.
I start counting the seconds and minutes after Tristane leaves to pass the time, but I lose track somewhere around hour three when other thoughts begin to invade my mind.
It’s amazing how easily they do that when I don’t have the incessant chatter of the dead to drone them out.
I try not to worry about Tori, Artemis, and Devereaux, and what might happen to them if Kincaid returns to find I’m gone. It would be a lie to say that he wouldn’t be furious. That he wouldn’t blame them.
Closing my eyes, I send a silent plea to whatever god or devil will hear it. Please let me get back before he’s home.
My legs are stiff from sitting in the same position, and I stretch them out, arching my back until my spine pops. A shudder runs up through the chair, vibrating in the seat, and I wonder if it’s me who was shuddering, but then it comes again, and I press my bare feet flat against the cold floor, feeling a tremor below.
I lean forward in my seat, vivid images of zombified corpses playing like a movie reel in my head.
No.
It’s not possible.
I can barely send out my mental feelers, my power is so suppressed down here. I can’t have risen anything from the dead like this.
A distinct knock hits just beneath my hand from the other side of the floor, and I jump up, a short gasp flying from my lips.
Another reverberating bang beneath my feet and the floor splits. It heaves and then dips, caving in, and taking me with it.
The air is stolen from my lungs as I fall, bits of jagged flooring and busted concrete scratching against my arms and cheeks. I mean to scream, to call for help, but no sound comes out of my gaping mouth. It’s like a sea witch stole my voice and no matter how hard I try I can’t make a sound.
I hit bottom and clammy fingers clasp onto my ankle, dragging me down deeper into the dark away from the light.
Above, there’s a barrage of sounds and then a brilliant white light as Isolde drops into the chasm with me, landing on her feet with a sword drawn.
A fucking sword.
I spin to find the face of the creature trying to drag me away and go colder than a corpse.
It isn’t a reanimated corpse at all. It’s a man. Or maybe it was once. I can’t sense its soul, but I am certain without having to be told that it’s a demon.
A sneer curls its pale thin lips and its large searching eyes glimmer in the light of the Nephilim’s flaming sword. A forked tongue slips out of its lips, as though it can taste Isolde in the air.
“Let her go,” Isolde demands, charging forward.
It’s then I realize where we are, why it smells of rot and feces. It’s a sewer, or at least, we are near to one. And judging by the gouged divots in the dirt and stone walls around us, this creature tunneled into the basement of the church.
I jerk my ankle, trying to find purchase in the hard-packed ground with my fingernails to heave myself away from the creature.
“I said let her go!” Isolde repeats, lifting her sword to swing.
But she’s thrown back, her body flung as though no more than a doll, until she crashes against the wall of the upward climbing tunnel. She chokes and starts, her sword falling from her hands so that she can grip the metal bar protruding from her middle instead.
Blood streams down the length of it, coating her fingers, dripping from her wrists. I watch in muted horror as what I can see of her soul’s light flickers and goes out.
The scream that’d been lodged in my throat echoes back to me now, the raw sound of it urging me into action.
I thrash and kick, landing a hard blow to the creature’s face. It lets out a feral cry before trapping me once more, snapping something hard and sharp around my ankle.
I flip onto my back, ready to unleash whatever dregs of my energy remain on him. Ready to throw everything I have into ripping this bastard’s soul from his bones regardless of the earth trying to block my energy.
But I don’t get to do any of that. The instant I’m face up, bulging eyes lock on mine and a shadow passes between us before something hard knocks into my skull and my eyes flutter shut.
23
The smell of rot permeates the air. Almost stronger than the acrid taste of blood lingering in my mouth. It’s hard to open my eyes. I can barely wiggle my fingers.
When I try to turn my body to get a look at what’s making the strange scratching sound above my head, something hard bites into my wrist, forcing me awake. I jerk, trying to get it off, but it’s latched on too tightly. I crane my neck to one side on the hard surface where I’m lying to find I can’t move it because it’s shackled in place with a pockmarked piece of iron.
My other hand won’t move, either. My legs are fastened just as tightly. I lift from my knees, trying to bend the binds, to break them. But I can’t. I try to draw on my power, sending out my mental feelers, but I’m met with cold resistance. I can’t do it.
Blinking rapidly to clear my eyes, I try to get a sense of my surroundings, finding hard stone walls on all sides that I can see. No windows. No air. The lack of it makes my pulse erratic. Makes it feel like there’s an elephant on my chest. No doubt I’m somewhere deep beneath the earth, where my ability can’t draw on what it needs to function.
“Come on,” I grit out, tugging forcefully on the metal binds on my wrists—so hard that a line of fresh blood drips down onto the wooden table.
“It’s no use, girl.”
The voice is hoarse. The S sounds lengthen into hisses, slithering into my ears like worms.
I jerk and twist, bucking my back and lifting onto the top of my head to see the speaker behind me.
In a view upside down, he stands hunched at a narrow wooden workbench. The scraping sound I heard was him mashing something in a mortar with a pestle. His long bony fingers grind and twirl.
“Those are celestial bonds. And only I have the key.”
“Who are you?”
Behind him, I see all manner of hammered metal objects. Hooks and blades. Flasks and a bone saw. And…I’m afraid I already know.
The Carver peers up at me from his work, showing two eyes that bulge from their sockets, one slightly askew. His thin, crooked nose seems almost to hang from his small, sharp-angled face. Little tufts of hair cling to a mostly bald scalp covered over in age spots and what looks like actual rot.
“My name is of little consequence and would only be defiled by your mortal tongue.”
“You’re the Carver, aren’t you?”
There’s a twinkle in his eye when he cocks his head at me. “So then you knew I would come for you? Why then, did you make it so simple?”
I breathe in deeply to try to quell the flutter in my chest, reminding myself that I am Paige St. Clare, and that whatever this fucker does to me, I can handle it. I’ve handled worse than him, haven’t I?
It’s that question that eats at me, because while Ford was evil down to his core, he wasn’t what the Carver is. He wasn’t a demon on Earth.
“Kincaid will find me,” I warn him, but my voice thickens with something dangerously close to tears because I’m not sure he will. I’m not even sure where I am. But I have to be inside of Elisium. This creature, the Carver, he can’t leave. He’s trapped here just like all the others.
“He’ll kill you,” I threaten.
“Will he now?”
The glimmer is gone from Carver’s eyes, he stares at me with unconcealed malice, slowly setting down his mortar atop the table before removing the pestle and scooping up whatever is inside with two of his fingers.
I’ve gotten to him. He must know that if he is found, he will die. If he’s
even a little bit worried I’m right, then I have to believe it’s possible. That Kincaid will find me.
In the meantime, though, I need to find my own way out. There’s a door near Carver’s workbench. It’s metal and has a keypad not unlike the ones on the doors at Ford’s house. I won’t be able to get out without the code. Shit.
I’ll have to pay attention to—
“What are you do—”
The demon wrenches my jaw open and stuffs his fingers down my throat, making me gag. My entire body convulses as the taste of something sickeningly sweet mixes with the bile in my throat, and I’m forced to choke it down while he seals a dirty hand over my mouth to keep me from spitting whatever it is out.
His hand comes free a moment later, and I splutter, my stomach roiling at whatever it’s just been forced to ingest. “There,” Carver says. “Much as I’d love to see you squirm on my table, that just won’t do.”
My body twitches as it goes limp. My limbs are heavy as though filled with lead instead of muscle. It’s a sedative, my mind supplies, and yet I am awake. I am painfully, fully awake. I just…can’t move.
My neck feels disconnected from my head, and I can’t be sure, but I think my mouth is open. Slow breaths wheeze in and out of the channel of my throat; they are the only sound save for the clinking of metal somewhere behind me.
I’m able to move my eyes, though my eyelids are heavy and obstruct my view. Carver reappears above me, blocking the overhead light. He peels back my right eyelid and purses his lips as he checks for something before removing his hand again.
He begins to sing a tune while wheels scrape over the uneven floor and something hits the right side of the table, reverberating into my arm. I can see the edge of a rolling table, laden with tools.
Fear is alive in my blood. It’s screaming in my head as I realize that I felt him peel back my eyelid. That I felt the rolling cart slap against the wooden table where I’m lying.
That I will feel everything he does to me.
Without being able to move.