by SM Reine
A dark form on the ground moved, then groaned. A survivor.
Elise made a wide circle around it, squinting through the dim red glow. It looked like a human, but no human had skin so papery-thin that the outlines of its bones were visible. Its eyes twitched open. They were completely black.
“Tikest vo,” it whispered in a quavering voice. That was the demon language. James spoke it, but Elise didn’t.
“Don’t move,” she said.
It gave another groan, and spoke again, this time in Latin. “Help me.”
Cautiously, she sheathed one of the swords and kneeled at its side. The young nightmare was dying. Its skin faded in and out of Elise’s vision. For a few seconds it looked like a skeleton with a tangle of innards; then it faded back.
Nightmares couldn’t be killed by physical means—it could suffer for centuries without disappearing.
“I need to find the clock,” she said.
A pale hand reached for her. She jerked back. “It hurts,” said the nightmare. “Help me. Please.”
Elise set her jaw. “Do you know where it is?” After a moment, it nodded. “I need to find it.”
The skin faded. The nightmare shivered. “This path goes down,” it said. “Down. Beyond the Temple of Yatam—a stair. Down, down, down.”
“Is that where the chamber is?”
Its skeletal hand touched her arm. Elise’s skin crawled. “The door is behind the statue.” Its black eyes begged. “Please.”
She didn’t have her exorcism charms, but the blade of her sword was carved with some of the same symbols. She slid the falchion between two of its ribs. “Crux sacra sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ispe venena bibas.” The sword glowed briefly. The demon’s eyes fell closed. “Return to the Hell in which you belong. Begone.”
Its hand slipped off her arm, and a moment later, the body was gone. She stood over the place it had rested and stared at the empty ground. Killing demons was usually satisfying, but this time, she felt nothing.
“Be at peace,” Elise said to the empty chamber, sheathing her sword. She was surprised to mean it.
There was only one other path leading down from the cavern. Elise took it. It sloped into darkness, away from the red glow of the undercity, and she followed it down, down, down.
It took her an hour to reach the Temple of Yatam. The path opened into a quiet chamber with smooth walls. A stream spilled down the rocks to her right in a frothy mist, illuminated by the flickering glow of blue flame.
The only thing that made the room look like a temple were nine columns surrounding a faceless statue. It stared at her without eyes. Elise edged around it. As the nightmare said, there was a stair behind the statue, spiraling deeper into the ground. The air grew warmer and warmer as she descended.
Distantly, through the earth, Elise could hear the clock. Every swing of its pendulum gently rocked everything around her. Rock groaned. Dust showered from the roof of the stairwell. The stairs felt like they swayed from side to side—the slightest motion that made the entire world vibrate.
Tick…tock…The clock echoed through the air.
At first, she didn’t realize she heard it with her ears. But then she came upon a doorway and stumbled through, and she saw it.
The clock stood at the end of a very long chamber with sloping walls that rose high above her in the shape of four-sided pyramid. Elise wouldn’t have been able to reach its face if she stood on James’s shoulders. The mechanisms inside its body were made of glistening white stone.
The dagger-shaped pendulum rocked in time with every beat. It pulsed through her and made it hard to breathe. The hands on the face crept toward the place the twelve should have been—and all six were going to align simultaneously.
Dusty skeletons lay on platforms around the edges of the room. Scraps of red cloth hung from the bones, although time had eaten most of the robes away. They trembled with every tick and tock of the swinging pendulum.
Elise made her way through the room, stepping around metal grates that blasted hot air. She peered into one as she passed. It glowed red faintly, as though there were fires miles below.
She had to climb onto another platform to reach the body of the clock. It was almost too loud to approach. Elise drew her left-hand sword as she peered into the workings of the clock. Something throbbed in the depths of its cogs—a heart.
Why hadn’t the hour struck yet?
She didn’t wait to find out. There had to be attendants somewhere close.
Make it fast.
Bracing herself, Elise seized the handle on the cage of its body and swung it open.
A distant thud rocked the pyramid. The platform pitched beneath her feet. An invisible hand smashed into her chest, shoving her away from the clock.
She soared through the air and struck the opposite wall. The sword clattered out of her hand. Elise collapsed onto a grate and the metal seared her skin.
The tick tock was even louder than before. The beating heart thrummed. And when she rolled over, her face came up against a pair of bare feet. Her gaze traveled up bare legs.
The woman wore a necklace of skulls. Her dark hair was tangled with teeth, her dagger was carved of stone, and her hips were draped in folds of leather. The silhouettes of demons framed her—dozens of them. The stink of brimstone was strong.
“What a surprise,” said the goddess in perfect Latin.
Elise leaped for her sword.
Something connected with her head from behind. It cracked her skull and rattled her brain.
A flash of white light—and then darkness.
Elise could see the sky.
Her eyes opened to slivers. There was a window above her—an open square too small for a human to slip through. The sky was a churning mass of violet and crimson.
No, wait. That wasn’t a sky at all. It was smoke from the fires beneath the clock.
Elise was still inside the pyramid. But she was in a separate room, with the same jagged gray stone and hazy air. Her eyes and throat burned with it.
She had been chained to the wall. Her hip burned, and she shifted her legs out from under her, stretching out to see a mess of blood smearing her shirt. When had she been injured?
“That came from my children. They wanted a taste.”
Elise twisted around, trying to see the speaker, but the goddess stood beyond her field of vision. Her motion was limited by the shackles. “Who are you?”
The response came right behind her ear. “I am the cold kiss of death,” she whispered, “and you can never defeat me.”
Elise’s stomach churned. “Let me go.”
“No. You chose to come. Now you must live with that choice—and die for it.”
“I’ll kill you,” she said. It wasn’t a threat. Just a statement of fact.
“Maybe. Alive or dead, I will come back for you.” The flames outside flared, turning the smoke from purple to orange before fading back to red. A blast of heat filled the room.
Somewhere in the pyramid, people were screaming. Human voices. Elise wasn’t the only one trapped.
The goddess stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the window. In one hand, she held a staff of sharpened human bone; in the other, a stone knife carved with symbols. The whites of her eyes were consumed with the endless darkness of space.
“I didn’t expect anyone to find me,” she said, “much less the greatest kopis. I’ve heard of you.”
Elise responded by twisting her wrists in the shackles. They rubbed against the skin of her right wrist, and she realized one of her gloves had been removed. She clenched her fist.
The goddess must have seen what was on her palm. She must have known what it meant. And she wouldn’t have been there if she didn’t need Elise alive.
“You’re missing something for the clock—something that’s keeping you from tearing apart Hell and Earth. It’s a sacrifice, isn’t it?”
“Astute,” t
he goddess said.
Elise shifted, and her chains rattled. It wasn’t hard to be astute when she was tied up like a pig waiting for the spit.
The woman kneeled in front of her. She smiled.
Then she buried the point of the knife in Elise’s shoulder.
Pain flamed down her skin. She grit her teeth and took deep breaths, refusing to cry out. It only hurt worse when the goddess pulled the knife free.
“You can’t think this will do any good,” Elise said, her voice barely shaking. “You can’t kill me yet. Not like this. Not without screwing up your apocalyptic plans.”
Her laugh was deep and throaty. From anyone else, it would have been pleasant to hear.
“Who says I plan to use you?”
The goddess dragged the knife down her chest, drawing a line of pain along her skin in crimson ink. Elise’s blood swelled and dripped in a line down her ribs.
I won’t scream. I won’t scream.
Her resolve lasted for almost an hour. The goddess lasted much longer.
PART FOUR
Walking Dead
IV
RENO, NV – MAY 2009
The afternoon arrived sunny despite the patchy, steel-gray clouds lingering overhead. The sun should have warmed the air, but the light only succeeded in washing the colors out of the already-barren landscape. Beads of rain quivered underneath the letters on the street sign, Westfield.
Anthony Morales slowed his Jeep to a stop in front of Motion and Dance and glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Three-fifteen. Betty hadn’t asked him to pick her up until four (or, as the text had said “get me or die!”), but Elise handled the finances for the coven, and she always went in on the esbats.
There was movement beyond the glass doors. It was probably Elise.
He examined his reflection in the visor mirror, trying to order his brown curls by running his fingers through his hair. Anthony only succeeded in messing it up further. He scrubbed at an oil mark on his cheek. It was the best he could do for his appearance—he couldn’t make himself into Don Juan with a little spit and an attempt at a suave smirk.
He tried out the smile on himself, but it quickly faded. Smirk or not, Elise was way out of his league. She usually made him feel like nothing but Betty’s kid cousin.
A man Anthony recognized as James, the high priest of Betty’s coven, emerged from behind the building. He propped the open front door and went inside. All Anthony knew about the high priest came from his cousin, who liked to use adjectives like “dreamy” for him and said he was the most important person in the world to Elise.
“What kind of guy is a witch, anyway?” Anthony muttered to himself, climbing out of the Jeep.
Subsiding into half-coherent insults, he slammed the driver’s side door and headed up the sidewalk to the front doors. He heard voices and hung back to listen, easing in sideways to see who was talking.
James and Elise were in the midst of an animated conversation. Her posture was straight, shoulders back, chin lifted, like she was ready to fight.
“You were the one who wanted me to investigate, and I did. You see this?”
“I’m sorry.”
“This is serious, James, real serious, and I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want you involved.”
“What will the Ramirezes do? Someone has to help them, and if—”
She cut him off. “I’m not going over this again.”
All the tension drained from James’s shoulders, and he leaned forward to press his lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes. He whispered something into her hair, but it was too quiet for Anthony to make out.
A swell of jealousy rose in his chest, and he bumped the door with his foot. The entrance bell jingled.
James’s straightened. He glanced at Anthony without expression. “We’ll talk more about this later.”
Elise’s mouth stretched into thin line. “Fine.” James left, and she sighed, rolling her right shoulder to loosen it.
Anthony opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him—Elise always managed to render him nonverbal. Today, she wore a shirt that was swooped low in the front to reveal a lot of cleavage that he had to struggle not to look at. She was wearing gloves again—she always wore gloves—and cutoff shorts.
He cleared his throat and tried to find his voice. “Hi, Elise.” He shouldn’t stare at her legs, either. Really.
She sat down at the reception desk, dragging a squat filing cabinet to her side. “What are you doing here? Did you feel like taking up ballet all of a sudden?”
“No,” he said. “I’m picking up Betty.”
“The coven’s not done for another half hour.”
“I guess I lost track of the time.”
The corner of Elise’s mouth twitched. “That’s fine. You can hang out with me while we wait for the witches to finish. They’re boring when they’re meditating.”
“Awesome,” Anthony said, and he tried not to sound too enthusiastic about it. He took the second chair and moved over.
The door between the entryway and the dance hall was open and James’s voice echoed through the studio. “How did that meditation make you feel? Ann?”
“I felt in tune with the Earth,” she responded. “It was relaxing. Finals have been crazy.”
Others made assenting noises. Elise made a face at Anthony, and he grinned.
“You feel like working? There’s a lot of paperwork to go through,” she said. “I need to find where James stashed last year’s registrations that came through the workforce education program. They have to be here. He’s organized, but in the most obscure way possible.”
“I would love to help,” he said, and Elise turned the filing cabinet to face him.
Anthony absorbed himself in his search, trying to forget how tedious he found paperwork. She focused on her laptop, fingers ticking away at the keyboard, and Anthony shuffled through the folders. Elise’s bare legs occupied the corner of his vision.
The seconds dragged. She hadn’t been joking about James’s bizarre methods of organization—everything was neatly tagged and labeled, but with indecipherable codes. He had no idea what “G-3B” had to do with receipts for cleaning supplies, or why the thick folder full of yellow-tabbed sheet music was marked “T6” (or why it was between the receipts and what looked like coven inventory lists), but it meant that Anthony had to read everything to figure out what it was.
He distracted himself from his chore by scooting his chair back enough to peek through the door to the next room. An assortment of women and men rested comfortably on cushions around a small altar. Smoke rose from a censer between them.
Anthony’s cousin sat beside James, her blond hair pulled into loose pigtails. She listened raptly to the high priest, nodding along with everything he said.
“As we discussed last week, Marisa’s family is facing some troubles right now,” James said. “An exorcist determined that Lucinde may be possessed. I believe we should partake in a cleansing ritual.”
Elise began typing with renewed vigor. “Do you hear this?” he whispered.
“I don’t listen to their crazy witch nonsense.”
“Who’s the exorcist?” Ann asked.
“She prefers to preserve her anonymity,” James said.
“It would be so interesting to talk to her for my thesis. It’s on the supernatural and old-world religion in modern times.”
“I can pass along questions for you.” His tone left no room for argument. “What do you all think of my proposal?”
“An exorcist,” Anthony murmured. “It’s like they think they’re in a movie or something.”
Elise typed harder.
“Do you mean actual demons, or the kind of demons we regard as goddesses, like Lilith?” asked a man whose voice Anthony didn’t recognize.
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” James explained. “This one may be little more than an angry spirit, though. As such, it can be cleansed and cast out with ritual and positive energy.�
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“I don’t think we should get into it,” Ann said. “Demons are risky business.”
Elise sighed and stretched in her chair, drawing Anthony’s attention away from the conversations in the other room.
“It’s hot in here,” she said, slipping off her sweater.
He had to look. Her tanned skin was flecked with freckles, creating alluring trails that dipped down into the neckline of her shirt and out along her shoulders. He would happily explore those paths with his fingers and lips, if he could just get the balls to make a move.
And then the sweater dropped enough for him to see the gashes—three deep, parallel slices on her arm. That was what James had apologized for. Had he hurt her?
“What happened to your arm?” he asked.
“What? Oh. I got attacked by a bush when I was out running last night.” She pulled her sweater back on. “It’s nothing.”
“I thought you said you felt hot.”
“I changed my mind. I’m going to close this door, okay?” She shut it, and the coven’s conversation became an inaudible mumble.
He struggled to think of something right to say. He had a hard time imagining James, who was a witch (of all the stupid things) and a dancer (even stupider) managing to injure Elise. But if he had, Anthony couldn’t let it slide. He just wasn’t sure he could take James in a fight.
Suppressing the wild and ridiculous urge to challenge James to a duel, Anthony held up a folder. “I think I found the registration forms.”
She gave it a quick scan. “That’s it. Great.” Elise immediately turned her attention back to the computer. “Thanks for the help.”
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, and then he took a deep breath. “Maybe you’d like to hang out tonight. There’s this band performing at the Knitting Factory. I know you listen to Black Death, and this band is supposed to be a lot like their early work.”
“Yeah? What time?”
“Doors open at eight…but we could get dinner, if you like. Before the show.”
Elise’s eyes narrowed. “Are you asking me on a date?”
He gave her his attempt at a suave smile.
“Yes?”