by SM Reine
James’s screams suddenly silenced.
She skid around the corner and almost lost her balance, catching herself on a door. 6A. Elise tried the doorknob, and it turned smoothly.
She threw the door open, ready for a fight—but she was met by an empty room.
The embalming room was dark and windowless. Every surface was tiled or clean steel, from the table affixed to the wall to the sinks and ceiling. A sign read, “Danger: Formaldehyde Irritant and Potential Cancer Hazard. Authorized Personnel Only.” A row of locked refrigerators for bodies lined the wall, and a pump sat on a desk next to the table with liters and gallons measured on the side of its barrel.
Elise picked her way through the shattered debris of the embalming fluids. The scent made her gag. She covered her mouth to keep from vomiting as she rounded the table.
Her breath caught in her throat. “James…”
He was slumped in the corner, limbs twisted like a ragdoll. James’s shirt was torn open to reveal his torso. Elise didn’t need much light to recognize the black smears staining his chest: blood.
She felt his neck for a pulse. His throat pulsed in a slow, weak rhythm under her fingers.
“Thank God,” she murmured, pushing his shirt aside to examine the wounds.
Someone had begun to skin a patch of James’s stomach over his solar plexus, but it wasn’t a random, messy job. The looping lines were deliberate and strangely neat. The knife must have been incredibly sharp.
Elise recognized that knife work. She still had the scar on her chest. “Oh, James,” she said, brushing his bangs out of his closed eyes.
Something moved.
Her gaze snapped over. A shape snuck out from behind the door Elise had left open.
Launching to her feet, she barreled into the intruder. The person screamed in a woman’s voice. She gripped a short stone staff, dirty with blood and mud, and there was a pentacle charm on her bracelet.
It was a human—not a demon at all.
“Help!” she cried before Elise could smother her mouth.
She slammed the woman’s hand into the wall until she cried out. Her fingers lost their grip, and the stone hit the floor.
Hands buried themselves in Elise’s jacket and ripped her away.
She sprawled to the ground, catching a brief glimpse of a fiend as it pushed at the witch’s legs. The jacket flared behind her as they ran from the room. Elise scrambled to the doorway in time to see the exit swing shut behind them.
Elise hesitated, casting a glance at James. She couldn’t chase them without leaving her partner behind.
“Damn it!” she swore. James made a sound of pain, and Elise dropped to her knees at his side. “We need to get you out of here before someone shows up.” His eyes half-opened at her voice, and she gave him a tight smile. “Come on. I’ll help you up.”
She lifted him carefully under the arms. He gave a weak attempt at getting his feet under him…and then went slack.
He was unconscious.
XI
The door to James’s bedroom banged open.
Elise rushed through the doorway with James draped over her shoulders. She tried to roll him onto the bed gently, but he slipped and hit the mattress hard. He made a small pain noise in his sleepy delirium.
“Sorry,” she said. James didn’t react to her apology.
She cut his shirt open along the sleeves and tugged it out from underneath him, chucking it in the trash. The bandages she had packed over his wound in the car had already soaked through with blood.
Elise searched through James’s desk drawers for gauze and bandages, returning once she located them amongst a secret stash of Milk Duds. Blood welled up in the cuts as soon as they were bared to the air as though he had been sliced open anew.
She had suffered enough wounds to know that a little cutting shouldn’t have knocked James out, nor should it have bled so much. Poison, or magic? Either was trouble.
Summoning first aid experience from the musty corners of her memory, Elise bandaged him carefully. Her gaze wandered to the phone on the bedside table as she worked. She couldn’t call Stephanie. Even though the doctor would be all too happy to nurse James back to health, she would have questions Elise didn’t want to answer.
But she couldn’t give him the help he needed herself.
Muttering a terse prayer, she called Stephanie on James’s cell phone. “James,” the doctor breathed on the other end. “It’s about time you called me.”
“This is Elise.”
“Oh. Really. What are you doing calling from his number at this time of night?”
“He’s hurt. He might be poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” Stephanie’s voice sharpened. “Why are you wasting your time calling me? Hang up and call the poison control center, he needs—”
“We can’t call anyone, go to the hospital, or attract any attention,” Elise snapped. “He needs you. Are you going to come help him or what?”
“What are you doing, you stupid bitch? Call an ambulance! I’ll meet you at the emergency room.”
She counted slowly to ten, and then said, “Stephanie. I’m not messing around.”
“What happened?”
Elise glanced at her prone partner. His face was ashen gray. “James is unconscious but breathing fine. He’s bleeding from a shallow wound on his chest. I would guess that he’s stable for the moment.”
She cursed. “You did this to him, didn’t you?”
“Now isn’t the time for blame.”
The doctor gave a disgusted sigh. “You’re going to have to call someone else anyway. I was volunteered to take the directors to Sacramento International, so I’m still at least two hours away. If you care about him at all, you’ll get proper medical attention.”
“We have to wait for you.” A grimace, and she added, “Please.” She choked out the last word with no small amount of pain, but it made Stephanie pause. There was silence for a long moment. When the doctor spoke again, the venom had left her tone.
“If he dies…”
“I would care a hell of a lot more than you do. James needs to be looked at, and I can’t do it myself.”
“Make sure the wound is clean and well-wrapped. Two hours. Less if I rush.”
“Then rush.”
Elise hung up and sat back. She hoped she was right in trusting Stephanie. But…who would have known that Elise and James would exorcise Lucinde and get the “Sorrows” message?
The people in the coven might. They were the only ones who knew James was connected with an exorcist. But if Elise couldn’t trust the other witches, she could be in even worse trouble than she suspected.
Elise studied James’s room. What if Ann or Morrighan had left some kind of trap? She scanned the dark walls, watching closely for a telltale glimmer of eyes staring back.
James’s bedroom was too small for anyone to hide in it. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and not an inch of space was wasted. His bed rested atop several archivist boxes, each lovingly packed with texts that were too valuable to see the light of day. His headboard was stacked with shelving, too. The only free space was in front of the window where his altar stood. A statuette of the Goddess leaned against the right side of the window frame, mirrored by the Horned God to the left.
Elise sank into the worn chair at his desk and swiveled around so she could see James. A yawn caught in her throat.
Ignoring her body’s demands for sleep, she withdrew the short stone staff from her jacket pocket. It felt heavier than it should have been at only twelve inches long, as though it was lead instead of rock. Elise rubbed her thumb on the surface, scrubbing away some of the dirt to reveal demonic runes.
The stone was cool under her hand, sucking her body heat deep into its core. The staff felt unmistakably alive.
And evil.
Elise cleared off space on James’s desk, which was covered in notebooks with his precise handwriting and illustrations of sigils. Some of it was for the annual almanac hi
s coven published, but some of it looked like fresh spellwork. Several were weighted down with crystals, collecting their energy for later use. She set the stone staff somewhere it didn’t touch anything else.
James made a small noise again. His skin shone with sweat, and pain twisted his face into a grimace.
“Are you awake?” she whispered, sitting beside him.
He didn’t move.
She let out a long, slow breath, letting her hand fall to his chest above the bandage. Sweat soaked through the material, and dots of blood were seeping through as well.
His eyes fluttered open. “Elise,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”
“You’re the one that got carved up by a big bad witch. Don’t waste your strength worrying about me.” He moved like he was going to sit up, but she held him down. It wasn’t as much of a struggle as it should have been. “I’m here. Nothing will get you.” He mumbled softly. “Nothing will get you,” Elise said again, mostly as an affirmation to herself.
She sunk down lower on the bed beside him, rested her cheek against his upper arm, and laid her hand over his heart. The beat was slow. He sounded so…weak.
Elise could hear her own heart in her chest, beating strong. She wanted his heart to beat like hers. She wished so hard for a moment she almost convinced herself she could keep him alive on willpower alone.
He stroked her hair weakly. “It’s okay,” he said, and it was such a lie that she had to smile.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s okay.”
His hand slipped over hers when she sat up. “Stay.”
“James…”
“Stay, Elise,” he repeated, more strongly this time.
She didn’t want to argue with him. The weight of her fatigue was too convincing. Whether or not Elise had time to take a nap, she was failing her battle against sleep. And why not? Stephanie was still two hours away.
Elise kicked her shoes off the side of the bed and rested beside James.
The air was heavy and still, but she didn’t dare open a window to let it cool. His heart thumped its steady pace under her hand, and his shallow breaths marked out a rhythm like water rushing up the sand before sucking into the ocean again.
Or like wind blowing in the trees, sweeping through the branches.
Her muscles were leaden. Her eyes couldn’t open.
The walls of the room collapsed slowly inward. Moss spread beneath her cheek as vines of ivy slithered up James’s bookshelves. Leaves spread between the pages of the books.
Thunder rolled. Papers dripped onto the desk one by one and drizzled onto the floor.
Ivory fingers reached out to turn off the lamp, leaving the only light an occasional flash of lightning in the bellies of the red clouds. Rain began to tumble down the walls like a sticky-sweet waterfall.
Elise’s parents stood beside the desk, waiting for her arrival as the second hands on the clock rushed toward twelve. She was running late. Somehow, she had gotten caught in the storm and lost her way.
She twisted and turned in search of a path. They were waiting. She couldn’t keep them waiting.
A cool hand smoothed over her cheek, light as the kiss of the breeze. Forgiving. Her parents smiled down at her, calm but unseeing. Her mother’s left eye socket was empty, and it rained within her skull.
The sky poured down, and Elise sat, her pale skin bared to the elements.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux…”
“Let the holy cross be my light, let the serpent not lead me astray.”
“Vade retro, Satana…”
“Step back, Satan.”
What do you think that means, Elise? A gentle smile. But who smiled? Where were the eyes belonging to those lips?
“Nunquam suade mihi vana…”
“What you offer me is evil…”
But what is evil?
The question wasn’t part of the exorcism ritual. And neither was the second part—what is goodness? She had no answers for either. “Sunt mala quae libas…”
Such a sweet smile.
“Ipse venena bibas…”
“Drink the poison yourself…”
Fluid dripped from the corner of that mouth. There were hands, but they didn’t wipe the poison away. It was dark burgundy, the crimson of wine…or blood.
One more time, Elise. From the top.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas, ipse venena bibas.”
Very good. Again.
The branches scraped her vulnerable body.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux…”
The ground disappeared. Elise fell, and fell…
The yawning blackness devoured her whole.
And fell…
Drink the poison yourself…
“I am the cold kiss of Death,” the goddess whispered into her ear, “and you can never defeat me.”
Elise’s arms were bound to the stone wall behind her. Her face was bloody but set in a determined glare. Mud packed the open wound on her hip. A red cloak she didn’t remember wearing pooled around her body. The death goddess—had she any other name?—stood high above her, swathed in shadow and holding a staff of sharpened human bone.
“Alive or dead, I will come back for you,” the goddess murmured.
“You can’t think this will do any good,” Elise spat. The sky outside, visible through a small window near the ceiling, was black, blue, purple, and scarlet. Blood and pus bubbled from her wound. “You can’t kill me yet. Not without screwing up your apocalyptic plans.”
She laughed. Deep, throaty, bubbling like Elise’s blood. “Who says I plan to use you?”
In her other hand, she clutched a stone dagger that sang with power. It was covered in symbols, some more familiar than others.
Her blood bulged in her veins. Ipse venena bibas…
The witch had clutched a stone, too.
James.
The sky faded to orange and back to red.
He ran through the jungle searching for Elise. The branches scraped at him, though the trees never moved, but still he searched. She watched him from her prison with the goddess, and she almost wished he wouldn’t find her as much as she longed for him to save her.
The death goddess drew intricate designs in Elise’s skin with vivid crimson ink.
Her breast rose and fell with breath. Her heartbeat fluttered.
The witch. The stone staff. Death.
Who says I plan to use you?
Her eyes flew open, and she saw.
Sleep ripped away from Elise. Consciousness slammed into her body. She gasped, flinching against the blow that never came—and then realized she heard the familiar sound of cars rushing by on the street outside.
Elise sat up. Nothing inside the room made noise but James’s erratic breathing. He had pushed the sheets off to bare his body to the waist even though the room was only sixty degrees. She pressed her hand to his back. His temperature almost scorched her palm.
He made a small noise and moved into her touch, rolling over without waking up. His eyelids were dark, almost bruised.
“James,” she said softly.
She searched for her cell phone in the darkness. Only an hour and a half had passed.
Elise slipped out of bed to search the closet for spare clothes. She located clean jeans and a shirt by touch, identifying it as her Black Death concert top by the hole near the hem.
When she finished changing, she returned to James. She checked his temperature with a hand to his forehead, and he was even hotter than he had been before. Sleep had done neither of them any good. James hadn’t improved, and Elise had lost time.
Someone knocked at the door. She looked out the window to confirm that Stephanie’s car was in the lot before meeting her at the door. The doctor’s normally neat coif was frazzled.
“Thanks for coming,” Elise said as Stephanie pushed past her into the house.
“Is he in be
d?”
Elise nodded, and the doctor blew into his bedroom.
She sat beside him on the mattress and opened her bag. Elise waited in the doorway while Stephanie gave James a short and clinical examination. After a few minutes, the doctor took off her gloves.
“Can you take care of him here?” Elise asked.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Stephanie said. “He doesn’t seem to have lost enough blood to be struggling, and there hasn’t been enough time for infection to set in.” The doctor leveled a stern look at Elise. “He needs to be taken to a hospital.”
“Will he die if he remains untreated for a few hours?”
“I can’t be sure.”
“I need you to stay and monitor him,” Elise said. “I have to find the person that did this. Once they’re out of the picture, you can send him to any hospital you want.”
“Don’t you think you should call the police?” Stephanie asked, following Elise out of the room. “Whoever attacked him is deranged.”
“The police won’t be able to help. You have to stay.”
She folded her arms. “It goes against every good practice I know.”
“Great,” Elise said. “Now listen close. I’m going to lock all the doors and windows before I leave. Don’t open any of them until I come back. James has set up wards around the apartment, so he’ll be safe as long as they’re shut. Don’t let anyone in, don’t call an ambulance, don’t call the police. If you want James to make it to the hospital at all, you have to keep quiet.”
Stephanie nodded reluctantly. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Thanks,” Elise said. “Don’t let him die.”
She disappeared into the night.
The casino was full at three in the morning. Tricks of light and shadow made the room an endless plane of slot machines, where the drunk and down-on-their-luck hunched before digital screens. Listless, addicted gamblers fidgeted nearby as they watched for the next game to make them lucky.
Day, night. Neither mattered. Neither existed.
Money passed from player to casino attendant and became chips, and the chips went from hand to table, then to the dealer, and back to the attendants. The artificial clattering, jingling, singing sounds of slots and video poker paying out or begging to be played filled the air with discordant chorus.