by SM Reine
Steel glinted in the dim firelight.
“You recognize this, I’m sure,” said Ann’s body. Death’s Hand turned the sword in his hands, hefting it by the hilt to examine the line of the blade. Someone had cleaned the falchion. It was in perfect condition. “Here we are again. Little has changed in the ensuing years, except you are fleshier. You have fattened upon the spoils of victory and comfort while I have floundered.”
Elise finally found her voice. “You can’t have James.”
Death’s Hand made his lips smile. “No?” Ann’s chin quivered, and blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. “It is difficult to campaign on Earth. Things in Hell are much simpler. There are many complications. You and your aspis are a complication. What a coincidence that he would be a suitable vessel. It is fate.”
“Fate,” Elise echoed.
Blood pulsed in James’s veins. “Or something like that.”
“What about Ann?”
“She will survive in this form.” The gesture vedae som matis made with the sword encompassed James’s body, but not Ann’s. “I have absorbed what I need.”
“She was in love with you.”
He rested the sword behind him on the table, out of Elise’s reach. “She lives in me now. We are closer than ever before. She would prefer it this way.” There was almost a hint of love in that voice.
Elise took a step away, inching closer to her sword where it lay next to a bookshelf. She could feel the bulge of the charm-draped chain in her pocket. “Anyone that’s been possessed can be exorcised.”
Vedae som matis nodded, acknowledging the challenge.
Ann’s corpse fell, no longer necessary. Elise threw a hand toward her engraved sword.
The room exploded into black stars.
Elise was smashed chest-first into a wall. Hands gripped her wrists, pinning her in place.
His face buried in her shoulder, and pain erupted in her collarbone. She screamed and tore free.
Elise put several feet between herself and Death’s Hand before she touched the wound on her shoulder—and realized she had been bitten. Blood gushed from the raw flesh underneath her fingers. The inside of her body felt like the inside of fresh steak.
She turned. Blood dribbled down James’s chin as a small chunk of her shoulder disappeared between his lips. His throat worked as he swallowed.
Elise lunged for her sword. She scooped it into her left hand and stood in the same smooth motion, twirling just in time to see James flying at her. She dodged and raised the sword. Her blade slashed across James’s arm in a spray of blood that splashed across her chest.
Vedae som matis barreled into Elise and knocked them both to the floor.
She took their weight on her uninjured shoulder, trying to bring around the sword to slash at him again. Death’s Hand didn’t give her a chance. He grabbed her wrist and crushed it in his hand until Elise could feel something pop.
Her fingers went slack, and he ripped the sword out of her grasp, shifting his weight so his entire body pinned her to the wood. He stank of blood and decay and brimstone, and very faintly like Ivory soap.
Elise struck him with her right hand, but he grabbed her other wrist and pushed both of her arms to the ground. His body burned like a furnace.
She twisted her head away from his sulfuric breath. Death’s Hand buried James’s face into her shoulder, the same one he had bitten before. Elise fought harder, but it was like struggling against rock.
His teeth found her wound around the shoulder of her shirt. Something pinched, tore. She grit her teeth and refused to scream.
James’s weight shifted just slightly, and something pressed into Elise’s leg. Her charms. She squirmed around enough to see her jeans, and a glimmer of metal told her they were sticking just slightly out of her pocket.
“Crux—crux sacra sit mihi lux,” Elise panted. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade—”
Death’s Hand threw his head back, roaring. It tore through Elise’s ears, and she screamed with him as her eardrums thrummed.
He ripped at her jeans, tearing away the pocket. The charms spilled out onto the floor.
James’s teeth sunk into her shoulder again, and he worried at her flesh like a dog with a bone.
She beat her fist against his head, his shoulders, his hand where it pinned her other arm to the floor. He paid no attention, growling deep in his throat. She reached for the charms, but he shoved them out of reach.
Elise twisted and writhed, and all she could do was worsen the agony where he bit into her.
Vedae som matis pushed her shirt aside to get a better taste of her shoulder. The pain grew from agonizing to indescribable. His teeth scraped against bone.
I will not scream.
Her back arched, and he pulled his head away. A small strip of skin dangled from his teeth. The burning told Elise it was part of her neck.
Death’s Hand began to lower to her shoulder again, and Elise felt faint. She wouldn’t be able to remain conscious through another second of that horrible chewing, and if she passed out, the pain would be the last thing she ever knew.
Elise reached back. Her shoulder screamed.
Her hand flexed around a shelf on Ann’s bookcase, and she pulled.
The shelves came down on Death’s Hand, on Elise, and the books rained around them. The heavy wood of the shelf struck James’s shoulders.
He roared his terrible roar once more, rearing to shove the shelves off of himself. The space between them was slight, but it was enough for Elise to throw all of her weight into him and push him off-balance. Vedae som matis tumbled away.
Elise scrambled to her hands and knees, closing the inches between herself and her sword. Her hand closed on the leather-wrapped hilt.
Relief washed through her. Adrenaline overrode the pain enough for her to lift it.
She turned as Death’s Hand swung, but her head spun as she moved and dizziness swept over Elise. Blood loss slowed her. He knocked her blade aside and she felt the metal bury into his forearm.
Blood fountained from his arm and splattered against the floor. As Elise watched, the wound closed, healing without a trace.
She took a deep breath and pointed the sword at James. “Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” she gasped, pressing her hand harder over the wound on her shoulder. It grew more agonizing as it dried out and sent fire racing down her nerves.
Death’s Hand smiled. It was James’s smile, warm and friendly, as though he was beginning to assume her partner’s habits.
She reached inside herself, searching for that wellspring of energy that James would always touch when they piggy-backed. It wasn’t magic. It was older, primal—the force of a kopis and exorcist. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana.”
She took a mental hold of the power inside herself and tore it open.
Elise’s senses exploded. It hit James, still in the clutches of vedae som matis, and kept going, sweeping through the servants and wrapping its invisible fingers around them. It poured through her sword, through her charm necklace, and she felt her energy curl around the demons with metaphysical fingers.
Vedae som matis screamed. The demon’s voice ripped through James’s throat, but Elise’s power had taken a life of its own and it wasn’t done.
Wind blasted through the open window, and papers around the room went flying, swimming in circles around and around Elise and James. Vials tipped and shattered, carpeting the wooden floors in shards of colorful glass and ceramic. James’s hair stood straight up from his head, swaying as though he was submerged in the ocean.
His bleeding gaze cut through the chaos. He didn’t speak—she wasn’t sure he even could—but she could feel the fury of Death’s Hand.
Elise kicked him in the face as hard as she could. He crashed to the floor, but his hand reached out and dragged her down with him.
He rolled on top of her and closed his hands around her throat.
She struggled
, beating against his arms, but his muscles had turned into bands of iron. She shoved against him.
He didn’t budge.
Blood thudded in her skull.
His bloody moth still grinned as the room grew dark. Her chest hitched with a desperate need for oxygen.
Elise had imagined dying before. She knew it could come in any number of ways. She never imagined it with James’s hands on her neck.
Her legs might have been kicking, but she couldn’t feel them anymore. Her brain was bulging against her forehead. Everything grew distant and dark, even her fingers, and she thought she might have gone limp.
James…
She wished she could tell him she was sorry.
“No!”
The pressure on her throat vanished.
Air stabbed into her chest, burning a path down her bruised esophagus.
Elise wheezed and coughed as color returned to the room, too vivid with the sudden intake of oxygen. James arched. His lips peeled back against his teeth and veins bulged at his throat. His muscles rippled, almost tearing. It was like his skull was trying to crack in half.
His nails dug into the sides of his head. “Let go!”
The voice belonged to James.
An internal battle wracked his body as he fought Death’s Hand for control. Symbols swirled wildly over his skin. “James,” she said, “James, look at me—”
But he didn’t hear her. He twisted on the floor like he was burning in invisible flame.
Elise gathered both of her swords and stood over him, uncertain. She needed to help him, she needed to save him, but who was in control—James or the demon?
With another cry, he froze. His eyes fell on her.
“James?” she whispered.
His mouth was stained with her blood. “Elise, I—” James’s expression twisted, and then stilled.
He was gone again.
Death’s Hand thrust his fist toward the ceiling.
An explosion rocked the building. A huge roar filled Elise’s ears, followed by a cracking like a glacier snapping off into the ocean. Fragments of plaster showered across the floor.
The entire roof ripped off the house and flung into the night with a blast of wind. There were no stars. Clouds boiled overhead as rain poured into the attic.
“James!”
His body lifted into the air. She leaped, clambering as high on the wall as she could to swipe at his feet. Elise wanted to catch him and drag him back. She couldn’t exorcise him unless she could touch him. But an invisible wall had materialized around him, and her hand slammed into solid nothing inches short of his heel.
He dropped to the street outside, and Elise gazed hopelessly down at him, clinging to an exposed wall stud.
She dropped to the floor. The human servants had already gotten to their feet and disappeared down the trap door to follow Death’s Hand. The fiends stirred again, like they were rousing from a long night of sleep.
Elise didn’t want to give them the chance to move.
She took her swords—both of them—and plunged them into the heart of a fiend at her foot. She slashed and stabbed over and over again until blood coated her hand and spattered on her face and nothing stood in what used to be Ann’s attic. There wasn’t much left to kill. Almost everything had fled with Death’s Hand.
Elise climbed onto what used to be a window, preparing herself to climb down the side of the building. Her shoulder burned, but she didn’t care. She had to reach James. Maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe she could—
“Elise—help—”
Anthony had come to consciousness pinned underneath one of the ceiling beams.
She hung suspended, her urge to follow James warring with Anthony’s pleas for her attention. “Come on,” he said, groaning as he shoved at the beam.
Elise sheathed one sword and dropped down. With their combined strength, it was easy to shift the weight of the rubble enough for him to slide out underneath. He was white with plaster dust.
Betty screamed on the other side of the attic. It was a single, constant shriek like the wail of an alarm.
Elise went to her, but when Betty saw her, she only shrieked louder and hugged her body tight into the corner. “Shut up,” she said, kneeling in front of her. Betty tried to scramble back. Elise seized her wrist. “I told you to shut up!”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God—”
Elise slapped her.
Betty silenced instantly. Her free hand flew to her cheek. “Hey!” Anthony protested, but Elise turned her glare on him.
“You two need to listen to me. This is—”
A silent voice boomed through the air: Sleep.
“Did you hear that?” Anthony asked.
But before Elise could reply, she felt the command sucking her down into darkness, like she had a dose of narcotics injected straight to her heart.
Sleep…
Anthony and Betty’s eyes went blank at the same time. She slipped to the side and went unconscious immediately. He managed to take a step toward Elise before his knees gave out and he, too, collapsed.
Elise shook her head, trying to clear the flies buzzing between her ears. “No,” she said.
But it was like telling the sun not to set at the end of the day. Her eyes rolled up, and the world went dark.
XX
Time passed, and Elise awoke.
She rolled onto her side, groaning. Every muscle had stiffened. Her bloody shoulder felt like someone sawed into it every time she moved, and when she probed it with the tips of her fingers, she found blood caked over the injury.
With a jolt, she remembered James’s flight from the attic. She sat upright.
Anthony and Betty were still unconscious. Elise over and shook him.
“Get up. We have to get Death’s Hand.”
He rolled onto his back without stirring. She pressed her fingers to his throat and found a pulse. Anthony wasn’t dead, but he was equally useless.
Elise supported herself with what was left of one of Ann’s walls, shutting her eyes against the waves of pain that rocked through her body. Everything felt torn, bruised, and broken, but there was no time for self-pity. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. Death’s Hand could have been miles away already.
She scooped her charms out of a puddle of fiend blood and lifted the trap door.
The house creaked and shuddered as she made her way down the stairs. A steady drizzle turned the pavement into a shining black lake in the night.
Elise ran down the hill and across the road to the cemetery, feet splashing in the puddles. Anthony and Betty had made it to the road outside before getting dragged from the Jeep.
The gas indicator was almost on empty. Her voice still crackled out of the speakers, quieter than before. “…sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana…”
She punched the power button to silence it. Elise had almost backed onto the street again before something strange caught her eye.
All the graves had been torn open.
Elise pulled herself up on the roll cage with her good arm to stare out at Our Mother of Sorrow’s cemetery. Ann had raised several bodies from it over the last few weeks, but most of them had been untouched. Now every grave had sunk in on itself, pitting the grass and leaving piles of mud everywhere.
Her heart sank. Had Death’s Hand resurrected every corpse as he passed? Elise didn’t want to consider what that might mean. There were hospitals downtown, and more cemeteries.
And a lot of innocent lives.
Elise tore down the road, ignoring the speed limit. She approached tail lights and climbed the median to go around them.
The stoplight turned green. None of the cars moved.
She blew past the line and had to stomp on the brakes. A group of cars and trucks had stopped in the middle of the intersection, causing a minor accident. The drivers were all slumped over their steering wheels.
The calming must have spread far enough to stop everyone on this side of town. The streets were
completely blocked. Elise pounded her steering wheel, biting back a curse.
She wove the Jeep carefully around the intersection. It looked like there had been parties celebrating finals at the university, because the sidewalks were covered in students sprawled out in skirts and heels. A few had even passed out in the middle of the street.
The Jeep’s engine spluttered. The fuel indicator had dropped to the empty line. Elise made it another two blocks before it died, stopping in front of the school of art. The bar across the street had its lights on, and she could see everyone inside asleep on their tables.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She jumped out of the Jeep. The instant her feet hit the ground, she could feel the presence of Death’s Hand.
Sleep…
Elise muffled a yawn. It weighed heavily on her, but it wasn’t as strong as it was in the attic. Something about being a kopis—or maybe the particular kopis bound to James—seemed to make her resistant to the effects of the calming spell. The bite on her shoulder burned all the way down the scar on her arm. She wondered if James’s scar burned, too.
Something flicked through the darkness up the street, and she reached her good arm up to one of the swords on her back. Giant eyes shone at her in the darkness, spotting her in the street.
Another pair of lights reflected behind it, and then another, as their heads turned to look at her.
She couldn’t fight one fiend, much less three. Not with her muscles stiff and a ragged wound on her shoulder. Not with her aching ribs, which stabbed with pain every time she breathed.
With no other choice, Elise darted down the street and crouched behind a car and held her breath. The occupant inside had his cheek mashed against the damp window. Blood trickled from the corner of his nose, trailing down the glass like rivulets of rain.
The fiends yipped and growled as they scurried from the houses to the street.
Shutting her eyes, she rested her head against the side of the car and tuned out her pain to reach out and feel where the fiends were. She matched the noises—the scraping of claws, the brush of leathery flesh against branches—with the sensations in her gut that said they were behind her, just feet away. Something gave a heavy huff as it searched the air for her scent.