Dire Blood (The Descent Series, Book 5)

by Reine, SM

  James was being taken back to the courtroom.

  The doors at the end of the hall were twice as tall as he was, and built from heavy black stone mined from the mountains. Leering faces were carved into its surface, and the massive handles were made of heavy brass in the shape of flames.

  Metaraon pushed the doors open. Light flooded the hall.

  The courtroom was the same as the last time he had been there: a tall stadium with a judge’s stand and a ring of chairs. There were more people in the audience this time, and they weren’t all demons. The watching human faces were somehow a thousand times more terrible than the others. They stood and bowed as Metaraon mounted the stairs to the judge’s stand, sat down, and settled his robes around him.

  There was more motion around the edges of the room. James couldn’t see through the darkness, but his crown prickled and the unpleasant sensation of biting ants crept down his chest and arms.

  It was the feeling of angels. Powerful ones. But it wasn’t coming from Metaraon—James still felt nothing from him. His robes must have concealed his energy. The new creatures had no such protection. The Council didn’t seem to notice.

  The trial was a trap, but not for James.

  “Let’s begin,” Metaraon said, and the room grew darker.

  Another woman—a human woman—stepped out of the shadows behind Metaraon’s chair.

  For a dizzying instant, James thought that it was Elise. Her dark curls hung to her waist, and her full lips were curved into that familiar frown. But then he remembered that Elise’s hair was no longer curly, and that she hadn’t been wearing a black dress like that, and that Elise seldom cried.

  Ariane Kavanagh’s eyes were puffy and her cheeks were damp as she descended to the floor, skirts gathered in both hands. She knelt beside the circle.

  “Ariane,” he said, but she didn’t look up at him. Judging by the streaks of tears on her face, she had been crying hard, and for a long time. And no wonder: when she leaned over one of the grates, James saw that her face was covered in bruises.

  She touched the lines carved into the floor. A flare of energy punched through James’s stomach.

  “Ready,” she said.

  The nightmare shoved James into the circle. Ariane snapped her fingers, and energy flared again.

  Trapped.

  Ariane straightened. She finally looked at James, and her expression was one of pity. He begged her with his eyes, trying to silently communicate his plea for help, but she turned and ascended the stairs without responding.

  “Veronika,” said Metaraon from the judge’s stand. The nightmare guard with the severe features and butcher knives at her hips stepped into James’s line of sight. “Prepare the prisoner.”

  It wasn’t any easier to be kicked to the ground and have his clothing sliced from his body a second time. She pulled his shoes off, cut his shirt, and left him naked and cold on the ground. He didn’t even have a protective coat of dust on his skin this time. Somehow, it was so much worse to be exposed when he was clean.

  She grabbed his hair and hauled him onto his knees again. “He’s prepared,” she said in a clear voice that echoed off of the stands.

  “Listen to me,” James whispered urgently, trying to twist around to catch her eye. He could feel the hair ripping from his scalp as he fought against her grip. “This is a trap. That’s not Judge Abraxas. It’s an archangel, and he’s planning to—”

  The guard whipped the hilt of her butcher knife across his face. Pain exploded in his jaw.

  “High trial begins,” Metaraon said. “Witnesses, identify yourselves.”

  Voices rose from around the room, one by one.

  “I am Baphomet, infernal touchstone, and I bear witness to this trial.” Her voice was silken, and came from the chairs in the stands to James’s left.

  And then, from the right: “I am Felix Block, mortal touchstone, and I bear witness to this trial.”

  More than a dozen voices spoke up. One for each precept of the Treaty of Dis.

  They were all there. Every single goddamn demon and human touchstone. There should have been a few angelic touchstones, too, but they wouldn’t have attended a trial in Hell—and James doubted any of them were still alive, anyway.

  It took a few minutes for everyone to chime in, and when they were done, silence followed. Metaraon’s hood bobbed slowly up and down, as if pleased to acknowledge that every touchstone was there.

  James struggled to speak through his gag. Veronika smacked him again, and it felt like his brain bounced against the front of his skull. His vision swam.

  “James Faulkner,” Metaraon said. “You have been brought before the Council and all standing touchstones to be indicted for crimes against the Treaty of Dis. You have violated the purity of blood and endangered The second law. How do you plead?”

  He could only mumble in response. Nobody really cared if he thought that he wasn’t guilty, anyway.

  “Bring forth the seal,” said the judge.

  As the audience watched, Ariane stepped into the circle once more, carrying a stone disc the size of her hand. Through James’s vision as both a witch and kopis, he could see that it was an infernal artifact painted with human magic. The marks around the edges would illuminate when in contact with the skin of non-human creatures, but it was dark in Ariane’s grip.

  Veronika held her knife to James’s throat as the witch approached. He struggled anew, but there was nowhere to go.

  Ariane pressed the seal to his chest.

  The marks illuminated.

  XVI

  The basandere pulled Elise through the halls of the Palace of Dis. A dozen demons escorted them, and they stuck so close to her that she could barely see her surroundings. She still tried to memorize her path by focusing on the engraved ceilings and rafters, but she quickly lost track of them. It was hard to focus with burning chains wrapped around her throat.

  Even so, Elise decided that she was going to kill her guards, and then she was going back to James.

  Her captor was going to have to release her at some point, and he would die first. She thought she might choke him with his own chain—it would hurt to touch the metal, but the idea of it was all too satisfying. He was carrying her falchion anyway, and she wanted that back so that she could decapitate the other twelve.

  Elise’s violent fantasies occupied her as they took her to a lift and unlocked it with a tattoo on the wrist of one of the nightmares.

  They took the lift to the highest level of the tower. A black hallway with tall windows stretched in front of her. Five squat fiends guarded it—ugly little bastards. She would kill them, too.

  Elise didn’t want to be dragged anymore, so she got her feet underneath her and walked with the demons down the hall. The city sprawled beneath her. Dry air whipped through her hair. She eyeballed the glistening black blade of her sword on the hip of her captor as it flashed in and out of her vision.

  Could she grab it and kill him before he tightened the chain again?

  There was one more door at the end of the hall, crowned by a trio of symbols. Elise recognized them from Abraxas’s book of tattoos. She had two of them on her back, hidden by the leather bustier, and one on her thigh. But the locks didn’t matter when the door had been propped open. The dozen guards led Elise inside.

  An angel stood on the other side.

  The basandere took the chain off of Elise’s neck and shoved her. The instant of freedom was what she had been waiting for, but she was too shocked to react. She stumbled and landed on her knees.

  “Who are you?” asked one of the nightmares.

  The angel didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.

  Elise knew a cherub when she saw one—they were truly beautiful creatures, as were all angels. This one resembled a college football player in stature, broad-shouldered and dark-skinned. Though his flesh was a deep shade of brown, it shimmered with blue-gold undertones, like starlight. His hair was black, coarse, and curly, and cut to an inch from his sc
alp.

  It wasn’t the first time she had encountered a cherub, but this was the first one she had seen that had no eyes. Silvery blood stained his cheeks, and there was nothing beyond his eyelids—neither empty sockets nor skull. Just the endless emptiness of space.

  That entire class of angels had been designed for one reason: to protect God and the Tree. So there was only one reason Metaraon would have brought cherubim with him.

  She wasn’t going to let that thing lay a single fucking hand on her.

  Its fingers stretched for her arm, and Elise focused on the darkness in the room. She willed herself into shadow. All it should have taken was a thought, a moment of desire, and she should have been hanging among the rafters, well out of reach.

  Her skin unraveled. She felt herself extend, fade, shift.

  The angel unfurled his wings.

  They appeared at his back with a burst of blazing light, as though a miniature sun had gone supernova. A flurry of feathers exploded and swirled around him. Gray light pervaded the room until it was brighter than the brightest day.

  Elise was only halfway into the darkness when the cherub’s glow pierced her. She twisted away from it, throwing up one arm to guard her eyes while the other lashed out, reaching for the basandere that still stood just behind her.

  The nightmares were drawing their knives, screaming, suffering from the same pain that Elise was at the light of the cherub. They couldn’t fight back. Not against Elise, and not against the angel.

  Her hand fell on the basandere’s chain, which sagged uselessly between his fists. She ripped it from his grip and looped it around his throat. He was too shocked by the appearance of the angel’s wings to react in time. Elise shoved her bare foot into his chest, pulled her arms back, and tightened the chain.

  Elise had always been strong, but even she was surprised when she pulled hard enough to sever the basandere’s head from its neck.

  There was more screaming—but it wasn’t a reaction to the decapitation. One of the weaker nightmares had evaporated from the brilliance of the angel’s glow. Elise could feel herself coming undone, too. She didn’t have long.

  Dropping the chain, she jerked her black-bladed falchion from the dead basandere’s belt and plunged it into the gut of the nearest creature.

  The cherub grabbed her arm.

  Elise thrust the sword forward, but he twisted around her, forcing her hand behind her back. He marched her through the foyer toward another door, which was marked with even more locking symbols than the first.

  “Wait!” shouted another nightmare. Other shouts followed in the infernal tongue.

  The cherub waved his hand. Light blazed.

  Elise couldn’t turn to see what was happening, but she felt each of their lives vanish instantly, like snuffed candles at a church altar.

  The other door was propped open, and a portal waited on the other side. It matched the one at the Union compound, though it was in much more glamorous lodgings: genuine Earth wood decorated the walls, polished and gleaming; chandeliers hung from the ceiling; and when the cherub forced Elise to walk to the side of the basin, it was over plush red carpet.

  As they approached, the portal vibrated to life. Symbols illuminated around the rim as a light appeared in the air a good three feet above the basin. It started out as the size of her fingernail. Waves rippled from it, like tangible puffs of crystalline smoke filled with diamond starlight.

  The pinprick whipped into a lightning bolt that arced from the floor to the ceiling. The sliver became a gap. It widened.

  Gray sunlight poured forth, so much brighter than anything Elise had seen in Hell, brighter than even the angel’s wings.

  On the other side, there was a stretch of grass. Gray walls. A gate of stone that had no obvious seam. Ivy and creepers clung to the arched doorway, as though it hadn’t been crossed in years.

  And beyond it—far beyond—stood a mighty Tree.

  The garden.

  Elise felt a scream rise within her throat. She spun so that she could flee for the door, but the cherub stood in the way. His eyeless gaze bore down on her.

  She dived for him, slicing the falchion in a wide arc. He easily sidestepped it, darting through the light like Elise did the shadow.

  She swung again, and again. She missed every time.

  And as he dodged, he approached her slowly, one step at a time, forcing her to back towards the portal.

  The gray light burned. She could see her bones through the skin. She was losing herself.

  Elise reached into the her bustier and drew out the spell that Zettel had given Nathaniel, even as she feinted to the left. The cherub silently avoided her.

  He reached out, and his hand closed on her throat. His other hand slammed into the joint of her arm.

  The shock jolted through her spine. Her fingers went slack and the sword clattered to the ground.

  Immense pressure tightened underneath her jaw as the cherub lifted her off of her feet, but no matter how she clawed at his arm, he remained as immobile as a golem. He stepped toward the portal. The garden blurred in the corner of her vision, and a whiff of cool air blew over her skin. She smelled ripe apples and damp soil.

  Elise thrashed, kicking out. Her feet slammed into the cherub’s breastplate. He didn’t budge.

  Energy danced around her. Just inches from the portal.

  She threw the square of paper at the image of the garden.

  Elise wasn’t sure that anything would happen—she could barely force air into her lungs, much less attempt to speak a word of power. And though she had performed magic created by James and Nathaniel, Allyson Whatley’s brand of paper magic was new, unfamiliar, different.

  For an instant, the paper only fluttered through the air.

  It caught in a beam of light, and magic exploded.

  The energy had all the subtlety that Elise expected from Allyson—which was to say, none at all. The magic pounded through Elise’s core, sucked the color out of her vision, made her ears ring. They were at the top of a tower. She had nowhere to draw energy from but herself, and it hurt.

  All of her nerves lit up with flame. Her blood burned molten-hot in her veins.

  And the garden vanished.

  The cherub dropped Elise. Her foot caught in the dancing energy of the portal as she fell, and it instantly went numb below the knee.

  She jerked her leg free and scrambled across the floor to her sword while the magic continued to feed off of her. She stretched her fingers toward the hilt—and caught it.

  Elise twisted in time to see a new image appear within the dancing light of the portal: the room at the Union warehouse that she had left behind. Men in black were ringing the stone basin on the other side. They held guns, wore body armor, and carried oxygen tanks. They were prepared to invade Hell.

  The cherub gave a wordless shout and rounded on her. Allyson’s magic had faded, and she was ready for him.

  Leaping to her feet, Elise seized the cherub by his armor and flung him to the ground.

  “You aren’t sending me back,” she growled. “I am never going back.”

  She buried her hand in his throat, tensing her fingers around his esophagus. His expression remained impassive as he grabbed her wrist.

  God, he was strong. At least as strong as she was.

  Elise roared as she dug her fingers into his skin. She felt her fingernails pierce him. It was a struggle to force her way through whatever ethereal materials stood in place of his muscles, and silvery blood gushed out of the wounds, slicking her hand. She kept squeezing, tightening harder and harder, until one fingertip met her thumb.

  Then she ripped his throat out.

  Fluid splashed over her and immediately evaporated. The angel’s mouth finally opened, and the scream that came from him wasn’t a scream at all—it was a noiseless explosion that rocked the room, making the stones of the portal quiver.

  Elise swung her sword to point it at his breast. Before he could react, she plunged it through
the metal and pierced his heart.

  Fingers of shadow grew from the puncture wound, crept over his chest, slithered up his throat, and consumed his screaming mouth. The light of his wings flickered. Feathers shed on the floor even as they were devoured by darkness, one by one, and then shattered like delicate crystals on the ground.

  And that was when the Union men began marching through the portal.

  Several of them jumped through at once and fanned out, and Elise was suddenly faced with three fully automatic weapons.

  They fired.

  She phased into shadow, slid around them, and appeared at their backs.

  Metal churned in her gut as she resubstantiated—she had been hit. Elise reached around and ripped the oxygen mask off of one of the men. He cried out, hands flying to his mouth. She jerked the gun out of his hand.

  The other two whirled on her, but she pressed the muzzle to the head of her new hostage.

  “Don’t you fucking shoot me again,” Elise said. It was made somewhat less intimidating by the thickness of her voice and the way she wavered on her legs. Her abs were clenching as her body rejected the damage.

  The man she’d disarmed gasped, hand at his throat—he looked like he was shocked to be able to breathe.

  Another two people stepped through. Zettel and Allyson. Zettel ripped off his oxygen mask. “Don’t waste ammo,” he said. “It won’t work on her. Lock down the room.”

  They lowered the guns just in time for Elise to start vomiting bullets. Thick wads of black mucous slid out of her throat and splattered on the floor as Zettel stood over her, watching with disdain.

  Another pair of Union soldiers jumped through, and then another. Most of the men arrayed themselves around the room, but a few of them had taken position over the cherub’s body. There was no point in guarding him—he was solid obsidian, and definitely not going anywhere.

  “What is this?” Elise asked, her voice raspy. She climbed to her feet. “An invasion?”

  “We’re taking control of the Palace. Where’s Abraxas?” Zettel demanded.

  She grabbed his shirt in a fist and pulled his face toward hers. “You sent a boy into Hell with a booby trap. If he had been holding it when it activated, he could have died. You asshole.”