Hell's Hinges

by S. M. Reine

  Was there anything good in the world?

  Sophie was a wreck, and Lincoln didn’t have the heart to make her focus. “Maybe there’s time to swap out for James to set the trap,” he said. “You don’t gotta do anything now.”

  “No, I do,” Sophie said. Her wrath just seemed to make her cry harder. “I have to stabilize this timeline so that a world exists for my daughter.” She whirled away to wrench open her bag, diving elbow-deep into the spell supplies.

  Elise stormed out of the hallway, swearing under her breath. “Something weird’s happening out there. The fireballs are getting denser—moving away from this part of the city. And things have gotten dark , real dark. Can’t see more than ten feet away.”

  “Darkness is a plague,” Lincoln said.

  “Great.” She cleaned blood off of her sword’s blade using the hem of her shirt. Her fingerless gloves were stained, and the cracks in her skin were crusted brown. “It’s quiet out there, too. What’s the last plague ‘feel’ like when it’s coming?”

  “I have no clue.” He tried to keep his voice casual when he asked, “Sophie, the ward on the outside of Craven’s—”

  “It’s not strong enough to protect you from a plague sent by God,” she said, her head buried in the bag.

  Nothing will protect you , sighed a feminine voice.

  Lincoln spun to search the darkness with his eyes. Elise was right—it was dark, and the dark was creeping into Eloquent Blood. He couldn’t see anyone who might have spoken.

  “Can you still do the trap?” Elise asked.

  Sophie yanked a bundle of rope out of a bag. “Yes. I can do the damn trap!” She glared at Elise, hands shaking. Her mouth opened like she wanted to say something else, but no words came out. Sophie dived into another bag. “I just need a moment more.”

  You don’t have more time , said the voice.

  Was Lincoln the only one who could hear it? Nobody else was reacting.

  He crept toward the railing, scanning the shadows for movement. “Maybe we should move everything downstairs with Junior now.” Lincoln was feeling the kind of unease that would have been quickly eliminated by standing in arm’s reach of a friendly gargoyle.

  “Yes, I just need to do an anchor point here first.” Sophie’s voice was muffled inside the bag. Her tone barely changed when she said, “You didn’t have to kill Omar.”

  “If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you and that baby,” Elise said.

  The Historian’s head popped up again. Her chin quivered. “He was a good man who swore a terrible oath.”

  “An oath he chose, right?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Lincoln said. “Sophie’s special, you see. A few guys have sworn oaths to protect her.”

  “Did you swear one of those oaths?” Her tone had gone sharp. He didn’t like the way Elise was looking at him.

  “I’m not one of her official guardians. I don’t need oaths as an excuse to protect folks.”

  “Good, because I wouldn’t trust anyone who’s sworn the kind of oath that guy did.” She lifted a bracelet, dangling off of one finger. It had beads on a leather thong. “I pulled this off of him after he died. He’s a witch hunter.”

  “That’s only a regional term for kopides.” Sophie’s chin quivered. She held out a hand. “Please give that to me.”

  “Do you want mementos from someone who wanted to cut you open?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but in this moment, I cannot bear the thought of your possession of Omar’s belongings when you have only just slaughtered him!”

  Elise’s jaw went tight. She dropped the bracelet into Sophie’s hand, then reached behind her back to draw the knife Omar had been carrying. She flipped it around to offer Sophie the hilt. “The mark of witch hunters is stamped on the butt of his seme, too. I don’t know who told you they’re a regional name for kopides, because it’s not true. People only whisper about these guys. They’re sick. Murderers. And they’ve been ‘protecting’ a little witchling like you?”

  “Step back, Elise,” Lincoln said. “She doesn’t need to hear this right now.”

  Elise’s eyes sparked with dark anger. “There’s never a good time to hear that you’ve been fostered by men who want to hurt you.”

  Sophie took the knife in hand. It looked too heavy for her, though it was a small blade. She immediately dropped it into one of the bags from the condo. She cast magic quickly, with careless gestures. Sweeps of candle flame through darkened club air, plumes of sand across the floor, and zaps of electricity dancing over her fingertips. “I think you’re quite mistaken. I’m a rare and important—”

  “I’m special too,” Elise snapped. “I’d rather die than be special.”

  You can die whenever you’re ready , hissed that feminine voice again, louder than before.

  It was coming from the dance floor.

  Lincoln leaped to the barrier to look over, down at the spot where they’d expected to lay Sophie’s trap.

  Junior was still standing there.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Yatai leaped onto Junior’s back. She was coiled around his shoulders, her thighs tight around his neck, her fingers digging into his pate. Her forefinger had punched a hole over one eye. A crack ran from Junior’s hairline to his brow. “Shit!” Lincoln hauled Sophie out of the way. It was a reflex. He didn’t think twice before doing it.

  Turned out to be a good reflex, because black smoke shot in a thick arm over the banister. It flowed over their heads and crashed like an oversized fist into the bottles of liquor behind the bar, shattering the glass. He bowed over Sophie so that the glass showered onto his jacket instead of her.

  “I’ll hold Yatai off!” Elise shouted.

  She hurdled over the railing, braid streaming behind her as she dropped.

  “But the trap,” Lincoln said.

  Sophie was already scrambling back to the bags on hands and knees, below the line of the balcony. “It’s not too late. I’ll change the Ptolomean hex from a fixed point to a target-based—”

  “Less talk, more spellcasting!” Lincoln climbed up onto the railing so he could look down before he jumped.

  The gargoyle had fallen, and Yatai stood atop his broad chest. She was swinging shadowy fists in an attempt to punch Elise, but the Godslayer was not so easily caught. She threw herself underneath repeated blows and cartwheeled with effortless grace, all without ever dropping her gaze from Yatai. She was wary, like a hawk waiting for a chance to gouge out a panther’s eyes.

  Junior was a lot less cognizant. He wasn’t moving at all, in fact.

  “Go to him,” Sophie said. “I will handle this.”

  “If you get attacked—”

  “I won’t be taken off-guard again.” She lifted Omar’s knife—what Elise had called a seme—and glared at the encroaching shadows as if daring them to attack.

  Lincoln gave her a sharp nod. “Hold tight, shortcake.”

  He leaped.

  It wasn’t that far to the dance floor. He absorbed the shock of the landing by rolling, and he came up just in time to jump out of Elise’s way and then jump again because Yatai’s shadowy arm was lashing at him. It swept tables and chairs into the wall. It screamed through the air as it changed directions to go for Elise again.

  But Lincoln’s landing had distracted Yatai, and Elise had gotten behind her. She swung her sword at Yatai’s hamstrings.

  The demon vanished.

  She reappeared atop the DJ booth, hair flowing in inky waterfalls over the floor. She was indistinguishable from the surrounding shadow. Only her ghostly white flesh shined forth, turning her smile to a bloody gash in her beautiful face. “If He would let me kill you, this wouldn’t even be a fight, Godslayer,” Yatai said. Her voice was sing-song in a lower register, vibrating the floor with its bass.

  Lincoln scrambled to Junior’s side. He could barely hear his own choppy breaths underneath the demon’s threats. “Hey! Buddy! Can you hear me? Are you all r
ight?” The crack ran all the way down his cheek. It made a mess of his nose. But when he heard Lincoln’s voice, his head rolled to the side. Junior was alive.

  Yatai was still talking, her booming voice echoing through the club. “But I can’t kill you, no matter how easy it would be. He expects to retrieve you firsthand. You must be… preserved.”

  Elise leaped, sword swinging. “I’d rather die!”

  Yatai backhanded Elise. The Godslayer hit the ground so hard that she cratered it, and the sword flew from her hand.

  Elise couldn’t seem to get up. Even when Yatai stepped down to approach, streaming wings of darkness, Elise struggled to get an elbow under her. She was bleeding from somewhere within her hairline. It blacked out her eye.

  The demon turned to Lincoln and smiled more broadly, tongue lashing from the corner of her mouth. “You, on the other hand, are my prize. The last Remnant of Inanna. I get to kill you again. I expected my brother would have hidden you away, so this is a pleasant surprise. A lamb offering himself for the slaughter. That is why you’re at the mouth of the Warrens, is it not?”

  “I was gonna be bait, yeah,” Lincoln said. He rose from Junior’s side, drawing the falhófnir dagger.

  “You can’t think to kill me,” Yatai said. “You’re not capable.”

  “I’ve pulled off a lot of impossible feats in my life. I’m getting near to enough miracles to be canonized after death. But I’m not gonna need to pull one of those off to beat you. Naw, I’ve got something else in mind.”

  She drifted toward him, gazing down her nose like an empress of Hell. “Tell me what you think to do. I’ll know if you’re lying.” Her long fingers stroked the air. He could feel them on the back of his neck even though she was far away.

  Lincoln eyed Sophie up on the balcony. She was still working hard, and she needed time.

  There was no sign of Yatam yet, either.

  “Oh, you think my brother can kill me?” She laughed. “After he’s spent all this time slumbering when I am fueled by a rage purer than any he’s ever known?”

  Lincoln’s face got all hot. She’d fished through his head for his thoughts, and he hadn’t felt anything to fight off. “What do you have to be enraged about? You’re the one who killed Anat!”

  “My brother has been telling you stories,” Yatai said. “Allow me to tell mine.”

  She waved, and the room changed.

  Darkness gave way to a lush green rainforest, dense with moss and ferns. Some of the trees were bigger in diameter than a house, and others so much bigger that Lincoln had no comparison. It wasn’t that he was tiny. The other plants were normal. It was just that the trees were huge and white-barked, and they grew a hundred smaller trees around them.

  Paths were laid with smooth white river stone, winding between the roots to a pond and beyond. A woman’s laugh drifted between the trees.

  “This was where we met,” Yatai said. “Nügua had taken me on her travels, and we crossed paths—the avatar, her daughter, and Eve.”

  A bare-fleshed figure ran gracefully between the roots. She tossed a grin over her shoulder, and her red-brown hair flowed around her shoulders as though weightless. A pair of enormous golden wings were anchored near her shoulder blades. She had the delicate form of a swift, hollow boned and lean.

  “Eve?” Lincoln echoed. “You mean—”

  “The first angel,” Yatai said. She extended her hand toward Eve.

  They linked fingers, and Eve’s nails were as warmly rose-toned as Yatai’s were matte black. They fitted together the way that a tree fitted a coffin it had grown to encompass. Yatai kissed the crook of Eve’s neck. The memory of the angel tossed her head back and sighed.

  “The Treaty of Dis came about because Adam killed her.” Yatai ran a longing hand down the line of Eve’s throat to her collarbone and then across her shoulder. She was conducting a symphony tracing the lines of the woman’s body. Remembering her, worshiping her. “Things turned poorly earlier than that. Nügua died in the Itjtawy riots. Lilith pined for the undead life she had lost, and she became… distracted. Eve was left vulnerable.”

  “So you took advantage of her?” Lincoln asked. “Seduced her, betrayed her—”

  “I loved Eve.” Yatai bit out the words like a viper spitting venom. “I would have done anything to protect her. But Adam was God and Eve’s husband, and…”

  Eve dissolved in Yatai’s arms, turning to a thousand rose petals. They scattered over her feet. They landed on the surface of a crystalline pond and drifted away.

  Ink streaked Yatai’s face—a droplet of black that stained her from the corner of her eye to the edge of her lips.

  “Lilith could have protected Eve, if she’d been in the garden when Adam came,” Yatai said. “She wasn’t there. She was fighting her war on Earth, absorbed in the petty lives of mortals because she could not stop pining for my brother!” She shimmered with the force of her anger, and the darkness squeezed tight upon Lincoln. “He took my love. I took his. I take all of his—especially his legacy.”

  Like you .

  She was in his mind. She could read and write and twist his thoughts.

  Lincoln backed away when she came closer, drawing the shadows around them like a cloak. “Can I charm you out of hurting me? I’m awful pretty to get killed.”

  “Your beauty’s nothing in comparison to mine,” she said. It was true. She was so beautiful that it hurt. She was truly Nügua’s greatest creation, and the writhing shadows of Ereshkigal within made her beauty ascend to something truly godlike.

  But Lincoln had a god of his own.

  He slid his foot sideways, catching it on Junior’s leg. “Then if I’m not pretty enough, I’ll just have to be petty enough. Why don’t you talk with your old friend?” Even though Junior was unconscious, the physical contact was enough to make Inanna appear beside Lincoln.

  Yatai’s eyes locked upon her. “You .”

  Inanna replied with a scream. She swung her blades—one in each hand—and sliced them through Yatai’s gut. Their sharp edges couldn’t cut the Mother of All Demons, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to cut.

  Yatai screamed, clutching her arms around herself as shadow ripped from her breast.

  Inanna had cut Ereshkigal free.

  He materialized quickly, and for some reason, Lincoln could see him. Ereshkigal was a man above the hips and a serpent below, much like Nügua had been. But he was Nügua after centuries of rot in a pickle jar. His hair was knotted, his stature weak, his face flat.

  That was exactly how Ereshkigal looked when he had murdered Inanna and gouged out her eye.

  At the sight of him, Lincoln relived memories that didn’t belong to him, of a life that he had never lived, a death he had never suffered. The betrayal of it all left deep scars on Inanna that cut right into her Remnant. Facing Ereshkigal once had been bad enough. This time, Lincoln’s fear strangled him like a noose.

  “Fight me!” Inanna boomed.

  Ereshkigal’s responding roar deafened Lincoln.

  They clashed, and Lincoln tore himself away. The gods were distracted. He needed to find Elise.

  She was unconscious in the crater, slumped onto one arm amid the dust of battle. The falchion rested a good six feet away. Lincoln grabbed it as he crawled close. “Elise,” he whispered. He shook her shoulder gently.

  “I’m awake,” she said, eyes still shut. “I’m just waiting to heal enough that moving doesn’t hurt.”

  They didn’t have enough time for her to wait. Yatai would realize that Lincoln had slipped away soon. “I gotta get you outside.” Lincoln pulled her arm over his shoulders. “Can you do any walking?”

  “I can run if you give me a minute. I won’t leave.” Elise struggled to get her legs under her. She leaned on him hard with her left arm. The right hand remained free—she was clinging to her falchion.

  Where are you going?

  Yatai’s voice slithered through him.

  “Shit!” He pulled Elise toward t
he stairs—or at least, where he thought the stairs should have been in the darkness.

  The Mother of All Demons materialized in front of them. She looked weaker. Less luminous, more diminutive. She had been injured by having Ereshkigal stabbed out of her, and Yatai’s anger seemed to have grown in proportion to his absence. “You should know He’s coming soon, Godslayer. He has His eye upon you, and He’s coming at dawn.” Her fingernails extended into stilettos, scraping gently through the air. “I hope He doesn’t mind that I tenderized you for Him.”

  Her hand slashed through the air.

  Lincoln jerked back with a cry, and her blow didn’t land. It shouldn’t have been fast enough. Yatai was too quick for that.

  Yatam had appeared between them.

  He deflected her arm with his, and he thrust a sword toward Yatai’s belly.

  23

  F or a brilliant, hopeful moment, Lincoln thought that Yatam had killed his sister. He saw the sword flash. He heard Yatai’s cry. But she twisted away and didn’t take the hooked edge as she should have. It glanced off her side, opening a slice over her ribcage. Fresh black blood streaked down her hip. The wound closed as quickly as it opened—that sword couldn’t kill Yatai at all.

  “You’re still helping these mortals?” Yatai phased several feet away. She pressed a hand to her hip as if searching for a wound, but she only smeared the blood over her skin. “I was certain you would have given up after I drained you.”

  “I always have energy for vengeance.” Yatam stood with the sickle-sword loose at his side. He was glowing brighter than Lincoln had ever seen him, somehow. Like a new dawn was coming up inside his skin. Eloquent Blood’s dance floor erupted with sunlight, crashing against Ereshkigal’s shadow. Yatam and Yatai were crushed between it.

  Lincoln drew Elise up the stairs, skirting the demons’ energy.

  They nearly bumped into Sophie at the top.

  The Historian was running a string of beads through her fingers, sweat slicking her forehead. “I’m done. I’m so close to done.”