by Reine, SM
Time for him to move.
He ducked into the space between buildings and peeled the robes off. Just standing in the shadow of the building, utterly naked, was enough to make him feel like he was being dragged over the jagged rocks of the cliff.
James slipped in among the humans as they passed on their way to the gate. One woman looked askance at him, but the fiends didn’t react.
The metal bars jangled as the gates opened again. Another group of humans were led out. James’s group was prodded forward.
He barely breathed as they entered the House of Abraxas.
XI
Elise was halfway across the city when she realized that she was being followed by a short, stooped figure in a hood. She turned left, and it turned left. She doubled back through an alley, and it was waiting for her when she emerged. Whatever the creature was, it was dogged—a fiend? Something sent by her mother, maybe?
She continued walking as though she hadn’t seen anything, and the hooded figure followed.
Elise occasionally glanced at the map that Ariane had drawn for her, but she discarded it when she saw the gates for the House of Abraxas approaching.
It was a sprawling, castle-like property, positioned on the highly defensible slopes of the mountain district. There was no way to approach from behind unless she wanted to hike up the mountain and jump down. A narrow road led up from the only entry point at the gates to a second, inner set of walls—the perfect place to ambush attackers. Of course, an intruder would have to make it through the outer walls first, which were marked with symbols of magical wards. The kind of wards that would blow anyone up if they got too close.
The House of Abraxas was more of a stronghold than a house. And judging by the number of fiends she could see teeming on the mountain, it was heavily occupied.
Fantastic.
A glance in the window of the shop behind her told Elise that she was still being shadowed. It spurred her into motion again, and she took a roundabout path to the gates, hoping that she could lose the creature following her.
It stayed a few yards behind her, never gaining, never slipping back. Persistent little bastard.
Elise turned a corner, jumped into an alley between two sagging shacks, and waited for it to pass.
A few moments later, the cloaked figure walked up to the mouth of the alley.
She grabbed her stalker by the throat, dragged it into the darkness, and shoved it against the wall. “Why are you following me?” she growled, lifting it off of the ground so that their faces were level.
Nathaniel smiled sheepishly from underneath the hood. “Hi.”
Elise dropped him. His feet hit the ground. He stumbled, but caught himself.
“Goddammit, Nathaniel,” she hissed, keeping her voice low so that the brute staggering past the alley’s mouth wouldn’t hear. “I told you to stay at the Palace!” She didn’t want to think about everything that could have gone wrong while he was following her—some demon sniffing out his human odors, a butcher dragging him to its shop—whatever. For fuck’s sake, he had walked straight through the slave market.
“Your mom left me alone in her room, so I left,” he said.
“You just…left?”
He straightened his robes, like being manhandled had offended him. “I had a good reason. That guy with the Union, Gary Zettel, he wanted me to give a note to Abraxas. I had to come with you so that I could deliver it. I promised.”
“A note? Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”
“I’m not supposed to let you see it.”
Elise pushed him against the wall again, ignoring his protests, and patted down his pockets. The Book of Shadows was in the left. The right had a folded piece of paper. She yanked it out of his jeans.
The stationary was thick and silky, like the kind used for wedding invitations. Elise hadn’t seen Zettel or Allyson give it to him—they must have slipped it to him when they were at the portal. The end was taped together and obviously hadn’t been opened by the boy.
Elise broke the seal and unfolded it. The UKA logo marked the top of the page, and the rest was covered by a symbol drawn with an unsteady hand. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as the kind of spells that James crafted, but it sparked with magic when she opened it to the air.
She clenched her fist on it, crumpling the edge. “You didn’t draw this? Zettel gave it to you?” Nathaniel’s head bobbed in a vigorous nod.
The Union could write paper magic.
Elise breathed a string of colorful curses as she looked at the spell again. It was different from James’s spells in other ways, too—it didn’t “speak” to her as clearly as his did, and the hard lines reminded her more of Alain Daladier’s idea of paper magic than James’s graceful swoops. Alain had mimicked James’s magic to weave powerful wards, which he had left behind at the dark gates in Reno. The Union must have found and deconstructed them.
“But this isn’t warding magic,” Elise muttered, glaring at the page, like she could force it to yield its secrets. “I need James. He could tell me what this is supposed to do.”
Nathaniel stopped her before she could put away the paper. “Let me see.” He held it up to the light, rotated it a few degrees, and squinted. “It’s just some stupid dimensional wedge,” he said, sounding disappointed. “You can use it to force a portal open. See this glyph?” He pointed at the edge. “That’s a redirect. This isn’t good enough to open any doors, but it can make a door stay open, and it can make it open to a different room…kinda. But it’s really blunt. There’s nothing pretty about the magic.”
Blunt and unpretty? Sounded a lot like Allyson Whatley’s work.
Elise tucked the spell into her bustier. “Next time the Union asks you to do something, tell them to shove it.”
“But they said it was just a note.”
“They lied to you.” She planted her hands on her hips and studied Nathaniel. “You’ve got the Book of Shadows fully stocked with spells, right?” He nodded and pulled it out of his robes. Where had he even found robes? She didn’t really want to know. “Any battle magic in there?”
“Not exactly, but I do have this,” he said, flipping to a page in the middle and showing it to her. Nathaniel’s magic made Allyson’s attempts at writing spells look like finger painting. It was gorgeous, full of light and color—and absolutely incoherent to Elise.
She pushed his hands down, glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody had seen it. It wouldn’t mean anything to demons, but if a passing witch spotted it, Nathaniel’s Book would shine like a beacon.
“I can’t read it. Just tell me what it does,” Elise said.
“It throws the target into a random location elsewhere in this dimension. Anything that’s attacking, no matter how big, will just…” He shrugged. “Pop.” A little bashfully, he added, “It will probably not throw the target into a pit of fire, but it’s hard to tell.”
Elise’s eyebrows lifted. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
Nathaniel beamed.
She could only imagine how James would have reacted if he had known that Elise was seriously considering taking a child into battle, but Nathaniel wasn’t just any child, and her options were limited.
“Okay, you can come,” she said, pulling his hood over his head again to conceal his face. “Stay out of the way and let me take care of the fighting. Don’t get killed.”
A cloaked figure appeared at the end of the alley. It was Hyzakis.
“That last part is going to be difficult,” he said. “The House of Abraxas homes almost three hundred demons.”
He leaned on a cane as he hobbled toward them, and the alley felt much darker for his presence. She expected him to be angry that she jumped out of the kibbeth, but he was smiling—like he was happy to see her there. She didn’t trust it.
“You again,” Elise said. “Great. What do you know about the House of Abraxas?”
His frog-like mouth spread even wider. “I know a few things. I know every single wa
rd on those gates. I know that the centuriae have been patrolling the slums. I know that if you wait until the right time, there will be only one hundred demons in residence.”
“When does that happen?”
His watery eyes pierced her, like he could see through her skull and into her mind. “Why do you want to get into the House?”
“He bought a slave recently,” she said. “I want to get her back.”
“You’re not interested in killing Abraxas, perhaps?”
“Not even remotely.”
Hyzakis sighed. “Very well. Let me tell you a secret.” He leaned forward, and in a stage whisper, he said, “There are no wards on those gates. They are bound to Abraxas’s blood, and he has not been inside to renew them in months. If you enter when the tower chimes with Sunday’s bell, you can step inside and only have to evade a hundred of his army.”
“How do you know that?” Elise asked.
The demon’s smile slipped off of his face. He pointed at the gates with his cane. “Sunday is coming. I can show you where the slaves are kept, but you’re going to owe me.”
She clenched her jaw. Elise didn’t trust him—not at all. But he had given them passage across the desert, and disguises, and had shown no inclination of killing them. That was probably as good as it got in Hell.
“I still can’t do anything about the Palace for you,” Elise said.
“We can discuss how you’ll repay me if you survive the House. We’ll have a chat in the Nether Palace afterward. But you must promise me one thing: that you’ll kill as few of Abraxas’s soldiers as possible, and only take away one slave. Agreed?”
Elise frowned, but nodded. “Agreed.”
Hyzakis gestured, sweeping his hand through the air. “Come closer. Come.”
Reluctantly, she stepped forward, and bent over when he gestured again. His gnarled hand brushed over her forehead. A chill settled over her flesh.
Elise’s mind opened to his, and she saw the Nether Palace’s location with sudden clarity. It was only a glimpse before her mind soared back to the House of Abraxas, its castle, the barracks, the formations of the centuria. She saw the kennels and the naked humans penned within.
And she saw how she could walk in without being touched.
“Fly, daughter of Yatam,” Hyzakis said, thin lips curled into a wicked smile.
Her body unraveled, and she flew.
James mostly kept his head down as the fiends led him up the path to the House of Abraxas, but he couldn’t resist sneaking a few glances at the stronghold. Where Dis reveled in mocking the uglier sides of Earth’s major cities, Abraxas seemed to revel in Hell’s heritage instead; there was no hint of mimicry in his architecture. The beautifully ancient buildings were spindly mixtures of iron, hardened magma, and black bricks. It looked like viewing Heaven’s ruins through a distorted mirror.
The House itself was huge, but the fiends didn’t take them to it. They skirted around the landscaping—iron trees transplanted from the desert forest—and went to the buildings behind it.
The slave quarters were not so grand. They were simple concrete boxes with large doors, big enough to drive a truck through—or march several lines of humans inside at once.
Cages lined the walls of the kennels, like James had seen before at animal shelters. They were small enough that only one or two people could fit in them at a time, and only while sitting. A strange, hollow wailing filled the cavernous building, even though he couldn’t see anyone actually crying. It was too dark to make out the slaves beyond the first few rows.
The smell of effluence and sweat slapped him in the face as they took the stairs down to a lower level, where the people inside the cages were denser and the cries were louder.
The building was obviously designed to isolate humans from one another. Dispirit them. Make them feel like animals. And the sounds the slaves made were so far from human that James was confident that it worked. They weren’t even trying to escape, even though the cages weren’t locked—just tied shut with leather cord.
Short-fingered hands seized his elbow and steered him toward an open cage. He balked at the entrance, but the fiend shoved him in the back. He stumbled into the cage.
There was already someone else in there—a skinny black man that stunk of ammonia. He was curled into a ball at the back, and he didn’t react to having James pushed in with him.
The door slammed shut. Clumsy fingers tied the cord.
A low moan rose from the cage next to him, and a hand prodded at him through the chain link. James tried to squirm away, but there was nowhere to go. The neighboring slave kept scraping at him. In the dim light, he could see fingernails chewed to the bloody quick.
The fiends shuffled away with the remaining slaves. Doors slammed.
After a moment, the noises subsided.
“How long have you been here?” James whispered to the other man in the cage. “Why don’t you try to escape?”
“Belphegor,” he whispered, punctuating it with a shudder.
“Belphegor? What’s Belphegor?”
The slave was shaking too badly to speak. His teeth ground together, and the sound made the hair on the back of James’s neck stand up.
“Have you seen a blond woman brought in?” James asked. “She’s short and thin…”
“Belphegor,” said the slave again.
So much for that.
James didn’t feel any fiends nearby, so he grabbed the knotted rope that was holding the cage closed and began to wiggle it loose.
A raw voice exploded from the back of the cage. “No!”
The slave lunged at him, and blows rained on James’s shoulders and arms. He kicked out, striking the man in the face, but it didn’t stop the attack. He bit James’s foot.
With a cry, James shoved him to the back of the cage, opened the door, and tumbled out.
The slave slammed the door shut and clung to the bars. “Belphegor,” he hissed. “You idiot!”
And then he receded into the darkness at the back of his cage.
James didn’t bother inspecting the injury on his foot—it was throbbing, but what was one more wound among all the others?
He staggered between the cages, peering into the darkness. The only light came from a single lamp at the end of the hall. The shadows were too deep. “Hannah? Hannah, are you in here?”
The only response was more cries.
He took the stairs down to the next level, and the next, but nobody in any of those kennels responded to his calls, either. The bottommost floor was totally empty.
Which left him with nowhere to go but up.
James peered over the top step before climbing onto the ground floor of the slave quarters. There were no fiends watching the cages. They weren’t even stationed at the door leading outside. What the hell could Belphegor be that was terrible enough to keep all the slaves willingly locked away?
“Hannah,” he whispered, creeping down the aisle.
A small voice responded near the door. “Who’s there?”
He scrambled over to the cage at the end and peered inside. A woman sat cross-legged at the back, head tipped back so that she could stare at the ceiling. Blond, slender, graceful—Hannah. As soon as her gaze fixed on James, her entire face lit up.
Hannah scrambled to the bars and pushed her fingers through. All things considered, she was in much better shape than James. “How did you find me?” she asked as he touched her hands.
“Magic, naturally,” he said with a small smile. “Let me untie this knot…”
She craned her head around, trying to see the door. “How did you get rid of Belphegor?”
“What in the world is Belphegor?”
“You mean he’s still out there?” Hannah gave a low, desperate groan. “Shit.”
He loosened the ropes and opened the door. “You’re welcome.”
Hannah crawled out, motions stiff and slow. He had to help her stand. Once she was upright, she hugged him tightly. “I thought I wasn’
t going to get out of there,” she said, and then she released him and slapped his arm.
James shirked back. “What?”
“You got us dragged to Hell!”
“And now I’m going to get us out,” he said, grabbing her arm and hauling her to the door.
She dug her heels in, but she had been confined for too long to struggle against him. He pulled her outside into the hot air. “But what about Belphegor?”
He didn’t get a chance to ask again.
There was a commotion near the gates at the bottom of the mountain. The entire centuria was gathered near the entrance, protesting in garbled voices. James was grateful for the distraction—until he realized what was upsetting them. Isaac Kavanagh strode up the path, flanked by two members of Palace security armed with bludgeons. Isaac’s eyes skimmed the property as he rubbed a hand over his beard.
“Wrong way,” James said, turning Hannah around to steer her back to the other side of the kennel before they were spotted. He wasn’t fast enough to keep her from seeing who had come searching for them, though.
“Was that Isaac Kavanagh?” Hannah asked. “That couldn’t have been Isaac.”
“That was Isaac.”
“This just keeps getting better. How are we going to get out of here?”
He cast a glance around the mountainside. There were only so many places they could go: back into the kennels, or down the path toward the centuria. The face of the mountain behind them was sheer.
More noise from the gates. It sounded like Isaac had pushed through the centuria.
“Climb,” James urged, pushing Hannah toward the cliff.
He tried not to look down as he forced his hands into tiny crevices and sought footholds. His injured arm wouldn’t support his weight for long, so his ascension was painfully slow. Hannah climbed a little faster while muttering under her breath, but she didn’t complain. Her eyes were fixed on the few inches of rock in front of her face.
James’s toes slipped on the slick, sharpened rocks, and he lost his grip.
His belly slid down the rocks. He didn’t have far to go. They hadn’t made it very high.
James flopped onto his back, rolled, and found himself stopping in front of a pair of booted feet.