Hell's Hinges

by S. M. Reine

  “You need to be done-done,” he said, navigating Elise to one of the tables by the wall.

  “I’m getting there quickly. My usual spells would take too long, and I’m creating a new spell for this.” Sophie’s hands moved faster, and golden light shined around her fingers. “James Faulkner has done it, so it must be possible… There!” Magic reflected in her eyes like galaxies. “I can cast the Ptolomean hex if I get closer.”

  “Give the string to me,” Lincoln said. “The beads are enchanted now, right? I’ll get up close and you can release the magic once I’m there. Safer for you, safer for Helen Tea—”

  “Heleentje,” she said. Despite the magic shining on her skin, she still looked brightest of all when she said her daughter’s name.

  “Helen Tea, I said that.”

  “You’re awful, Mr. Marshall.” She let the beads slither off of her hands and fall into his. Elise propped herself against a table, and even though her face was masked by blood, her eyes were still disturbingly bright watching the exchange. “I’m awful for beginning to find your awfulness an endearing quality.”

  The beads were growing hot on his skin. He couldn’t linger. “Frankly, shortcake, I’m starting to find your pedantry pretty damn endearing too.”

  “Go,” Sophie said. “Signal when you’re ready.”

  “I think you’ll be able to tell,” Lincoln said.

  The last thing he wanted to do was dive back onto the dance floor—a hurricane of dead-god souls and demons that sounded like a war waged in the belly of Eloquent Blood. But Lincoln couldn’t run away from it. Inanna was part of him. Her battle had become his. He had to make himself walk one step at a time back down the stairs. The beads leaped around his hands. Sophie was still manipulating them from where she stood, and her magic made his skin burn like he was scraped with coral.

  A wave of energy licked up the stairs and caught him mid-step. He stumbled onto the dance floor.

  Lincoln was caught in the maelstrom between Yatam and Yatai, Inanna and Ereshkigal.

  The space felt like it was filled with beings bigger than the entire city, somehow. The weight of their bodies upon reality created gravity wells that bent all light and matter toward them. Lincoln could barely focus through it. His eyes could see everything, but his mind could not interpret it. “You were my brother,” roared Ereshkigal, as huge as the night sky arcing over Lincoln’s power-wracked body. “You should have stood with me. You should have loved me.”

  “I’ve loved you since my heart began to beat,” said Utu, vast as the summer ocean, “but I chose to love her until our hearts never beat again.” There was so much more tenderness from Utu than from Inanna. Even now, he gazed at her with sunlight pouring from his eyes like waterfalls, casting the world in joy. But he did not try to touch Inanna.

  She stood alone between the two, proud and strong and angry. Junior stood at her side. His cracked face hadn’t kept him from rising. Now Lincoln was the only missing piece.

  “I’m coming,” he said. The beads thrashed hard, searing divots into his arms. He raced to reach Inanna. It felt more like swimming than running. The air was thick, and it roared in his ears like gale winds.

  A white hand locked onto his arm.

  Yatai rose from the tides of Ereshkigal’s power, her colorless body splattered in black. “Now is your time, Remnant.” Her teeth elongated into fangs. She was a gleaming snake with a mouth stretched back in a lipless smile. “I couldn’t have killed Inanna if you hadn’t come back. You make the same mistake every time. When Inanna came to apologize, Ereshkigal punished her for her sins.” She reached for Lincoln, finger-claws curving toward his throat.

  Yatam surged forth. “Leave the mortal! Punish me!”

  She grinned. “With pleasure!”

  One of Yatai’s hands snapped shut around her brother’s throat. She didn’t need both hands to hold him; she was magnitudes more powerful. Lincoln was only imagining the noose that seemed to hang from her other hand.

  Ereshkigal had hung Inanna before. He would do it again. Yatai would make sure that no scraps of Inanna remained. And she would tell herself, somehow, that all those deaths were adequate repayment for the loss of Eve.

  Her empty fingers beckoned for Lincoln. “Let me kill you now, so you may die with—”

  Yatai didn’t finish the sentence.

  Yatam had sliced her throat open with the sickle-sword.

  Now that he got a good look at its hilt, Lincoln knew that sword the same way that he knew Inanna’s face. It was Anat’s blade, gifted to her by Yatam himself before she’d changed into a vampire. He had kept it after her death. All these years, and he still had it.

  Now he had used it to open a deep gash underneath his sister’s chin.

  Yatai’s hand remained locked around Yatam’s throat as blood poured from her own, but her eyes did not focus.

  Ereshkigal and Utu seemed to have stopped to stare at them.

  “Cast the hex!” Yatam wheezed. Black blood dripped from one nostril.

  Sophie was watching from the balcony. She’d heard his plea. “If I cast while you’re in contact with her, you’ll be trapped too!”

  Yatam’s eyes caught Lincoln’s.

  They hadn’t known each other long, but Lincoln might have known Yatam’s true self better than his father’s. John Marshall’s life had ended without dignity. He had killed himself rather than face consequences. Now Yatam was making the same choice—to leap feet-first into something like death.

  He knew what he was doing. He wanted it. This was his choice.

  “Do it!” Lincoln hollered.

  Sophie clapped her hands.

  The beads got hot in Lincoln’s hands. They blazed so brightly that he was blinded by them, and Ereshkigal’s weight upon his mind vanished.

  The only time Inanna had been in places so bright had been when she’d walked through the desert dunes at midday, trekking to nearby viewpoints to watch for invaders. She had known peace in those times. The solitude, the sense of purpose. Lincoln shared in that quiet above the desert with Inanna for one sweet moment. It felt as though he were sitting beside her on the edge of a cliff. She was looking out at the hottest hours of the day, the top of her nose red. Her skin was caked in dust. She grinned. Whatever the consequences of this adventure, today, we did well. Her voice resonated through his mind.

  We did, didn’t we? Lincoln whispered back.

  Somehow, the air itself groaned. Dread shivered over Lincoln as the magic sighed out its final ropes. The beads turned to ash over his wrists.

  His vision cleared, and he saw the results of Sophie’s hex.

  Lincoln and Inanna stood alone in the middle of the dance floor. An enormous black crystal reared before them. Yatam and Yatai were locked inside, her hand around his throat and Anat’s sword at his side. They were perfectly frozen, taking Utu and Ereshkigal with them.

  When the dust began settling, Eloquent Blood was still just a run-down bar that didn’t look sanitary or exciting with its lights turned on. Not that the lights could turn on yet—trapping a couple ancient demons in crystal didn’t fix the power grid—but without Ereshkigal’s shadow filling the room, the battery-powered emergency lights could go a lot further. Lincoln had no trouble seeing the broken glass around the bar, just like he didn’t have any trouble seeing the crystal that had grown at the heart of the club.

  He found Junior collapsed on the other side of the crystal. Inanna stood over him as he kneeled to look for a pulse, which a gargoyle didn’t have. Junior’s busted face looked bad. “Is he gonna survive?” Lincoln asked.

  Inanna was, surprisingly, ready to answer. “He’s damaged. You’ll need an emet charm to heal him.”

  “What’s that? An emet charm?”

  “It’s an emet charm,” she said, as if she had no other words for it. She lifted a hand as if to touch the crystal.

  “Don’t,” Lincoln said. “I don’t know how that opens again.”

  “It’s not easy.” Sophie cam
e down the stairs slowly. “The longer the crystal sets, the more complex it becomes to free the captives. It’s somewhat like the way that Ancient Romans made concrete, in a magical sense, where natural forces that would degrade other materials only serve to reinforce.”

  “Right, Ancient Roman concrete,” he said. “Makes perfect sense.”

  “Once I’ve submerged them in my pond at the farm, they’ll be untouchable.”

  When Lincoln angled his head just right, he could see past the reflections of light on the glassy surface through to Yatam’s features. He’d been trapped with an expression of peace on his face and waterfalls of hair falling around his shoulders. Death had been an ugly thing for John Marshall, bulging and drooling, but Yatam had come to an end as beautiful as he had begun.

  “Could we free just one of them?” Lincoln asked. “Let Yatam go but keep Yatai stuck?”

  Sophie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Lincoln…”

  He took that as a no, and he couldn’t figure out why it made him feel like he’d swallowed down a leaden weight. Yatam had wanted to be dead anyhow. He’d regretted immortality from the moment that Anat crumbled to dust in his arms.

  “It’s all right,” Lincoln said, like he didn’t feel worse than when his childhood dog died. “It’s fine. I was just checking.” He kept a stiff upper lip and coughed into his sleeve. Just clearing his throat. Yatam wasn’t really dead anyway—just permanently frozen like the statue of Lilith. Nothing to grieve. No reason to be upset.

  Sophie pushed up Lincoln’s sleeves to look at his arms and winced. “I’m sorry.”

  His skin was mottled with bright red burns the size of thumbprints. They felt cold instead of burning. That made him think they were deeper than they looked. “Holy hell, shortcake, what kind of magic was that?”

  Sophie swayed into him. Her eyelids were drooping. She was a pregnant fourteen-year-old who had just cast powerful magic with disregard for time, the lingering shreds of the Treaty of Dis, and her grief. “Impossible magic. That should not have worked.”

  Lincoln steadied her. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”

  “No .” She grabbed his arm, giving him a look that was as intense as it was exhausted. “You don’t understand, Mr. Marshall. It should not have worked .”

  “All right, fine, it shouldn’t have worked.”

  It seemed important to her that he understood. Once he accepted it, she sagged again, and she didn’t bother him when he stooped to get an arm under her legs. Lincoln grunted lifting her. Sophie and her baby didn’t weigh much, but he felt like a tree that had been tapped for syrup. He didn’t have a single drop of juice left.

  “I don’t suppose you know what an emet charm is?” Lincoln asked.

  She mumbled, and he couldn’t tell if it was a refusal or a snore. He wasn’t going to be able to help his brother right now. “I can’t carry you, Junior,” Lincoln said, “so I dearly hope that you’re able to move.”

  Junior’s head lifted slowly. The crack had extended down to his jaw in a spidery fissure, but the hole wasn’t getting any bigger. He got to his feet. He was steady, but slow. He flexed his wings a few times as if testing them. He turned his hands this way and that, staring at the claws.

  “Well, that’s good.” He shifted Sophie so he could awkwardly pat Junior on the arm. “Glad to see you’re all up and about.”

  Junior looked at him, blanker than ever.

  “I’m gonna walk Elise and Sophie back to Yatam’s condo,” Lincoln said. “Can you get the crystal back there? We can dig up some ropes so you’ve just gotta lift, don’t need to find your grip… Can’t imagine someone like Neuma doesn’t have heavy-duty ropes around here.”

  “I know where they are.” Elise came down the stairs and leaned against the wall at the bottom. Her fingers were black with her own blood, drying rapidly over what remained of Omar’s. She’d scrubbed her face clean, though. “I’ll stay with Junior to help. Give my body a few more minutes to heal so I can sprint back to the condo.”

  Sophie laughed sleepily. “Sprint. With her body shattered.”

  “She ain’t joking,” Lincoln muttered. He eyed Junior. “You two look after each other, all right?”

  Elise nodded sharply.

  Of all the people he trusted in this world, Elise and Junior were right up there with Sophie. He had no reason to feel worried when he left them behind in Eloquent Blood. There were a lot of other reasons to worry, though. Ten of them.

  He stuck his head outside the Humans Only door to see if the world had ended.

  There was no more rain, no more flaming hail. He could see down to the end of the alleyway and beyond, so it seemed like the darkness wasn’t as thick, either. The plagues were dissipating now that God’s herald was trapped in Sophie’s magic hex.

  Lincoln closed his eyes and took in a deep inhale. It still didn’t smell right—not like his Reno. There was too much sourness to the air. At least it didn’t feel like the whole city was wound up tight and ready to explode.

  “Did we save the world?” Sophie asked sleepily.

  He pushed the door open the rest of the way with his shoulder. “Maybe not the whole world, but Reno looks like it’s doing all right.” They’d stopped the plagues before all the firstborn sons of the city dropped dead. Sophie hadn’t had her baby cut out of her. Yatam had gotten what he wanted. And Lincoln was watching the sunrise one more time. Everything wasn’t fixed. But for now, it was all right.

  James was drawn to the sounds of thumping on the roof. The wards were quiet, so the source of the sound was unlikely to be an attack, but he still didn’t want Betty to follow him. “Stay here.”

  She mumbled words of assent into the pillow that she hugged against her chest. She had made herself very comfortable in Yatam’s bed and looked completely disinclined to get out from under the comforter.

  He pulled his shirt back on before venturing toward the stairs. Morning was dawning over Reno—a surprise to see, but a welcome one. The clouds were thick but dispersing. The sun’s rays illuminated bars of red-tinted smoke over the valley. James buttoned his shirt slowly as he wandered toward the stairs, peering up at the door leading outside. It stood open. The others must have come back.

  James stepped out onto the landing and nearly bumped into someone he hadn’t seen coming—Elise.

  He stopped.

  She stopped.

  It was the first time they’d come face-to-face in an eventful twelve hours. Elise looked to be limping toward the bathroom for a shower, considering how much blood was caked on her shirt and pants. One of her eyes was swollen shut. Her hair was tangled.

  “Elise!” James took a step toward her.

  She tensed, and he stopped.

  “I’m fine. This isn’t all mine.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. It was bad enough that they’d been in each other’s minds while having sex. Being physically present in the same space was now so awkward that James contemplated crawling out of his skin. Though he’d never made a habit of getting drunk enough to humiliate himself, James had done it once or twice, and that was the same stab of shame he felt now—multiplied by roughly a thousand.

  He had no excuses for his behavior. Last night wasn’t the first time they’d been that close to the end of the world, so he couldn’t blame desperation. Now that the sun was shining through the stairwell, exposing a Reno where only one neighborhood remained assailed by the occasional fireball, James’s choices seemed unutterably insane.

  Elise had a habit of going blank when she was distressed. At the moment, her face was so blank that she could have been a painting of herself. “Both Yatai and Yatam are contained.” Even her tone was blank. “They’re on the roof. Sophie needs to rest before she can open the passageway to her farm, but she wants you to dismantle the circle so she can take the soul link home.”

  All of this was good news. Sophie was alive, the enemy was trapped, the weather was improving, and James would get a shot at the interdisciplinary magic before Sophie disappe
ared. By all measures, this was a victory. “Good,” James said. His answer was too delayed to sound authentic.

  Elise took one step down, toward him. “Lincoln told me that you’re a half-angel Gray who’s oath-sworn to deliver me to Him.”

  Of all the magic that James used to control himself, of all his practice controlling his expressions, there was nothing he could do to keep from looking as flabbergasted as he felt.

  How the hell does Lincoln know that?

  Elise was still so blank. He couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh over the unlikelihood of it or if she was preparing to saw his heart out with a blade. If James wanted to confess, this was his final opportunity to make things right. But the sun was shining. Yatai was trapped. There was still a chance that things could get back to normal.

  “Whatever Lincoln has told you, it’s not true,” James said. “I can’t imagine why he’d say any of that. It’s absurd.”

  “He’s not lying.”

  “He might be confused. Repeating hearsay. Or he may want to get between us.” He was forceful, but careful not to sound defensive. Only incredulous. Things can get back to normal . “Regardless of motive, nothing he’s said is true, and we can sort it out once the herald is secure. I promise, Elise, I don’t lie to you. Do you trust me?”

  He saw a familiar light pass over her features. “Yeah.” But there was still a shadow in Elise’s eyes. “Last night, with Betty, you—”

  “It was a foolish mistake. I was irresponsible by failing to close the bond. I owe both you and Betty apologies.”

  “No. You don’t owe me anything.” Her blankness was cracking around the edges. Her lips had gone tight. “I’m not interested in talking about last night.”

  James meant to say “Nor I.”

  But when he opened his mouth, the urge to vomit surprised him. It was accompanied with no nausea. He simply felt as though his stomach were suddenly too full to contain its contents. He bowed forward, his body jerked once, and something enormous shoved into his throat from his belly.