Dire Blood (The Descent Series, Book 5)

by Reine, SM

  He shoved her off. Straightened his shirt. “I didn’t have to let either of you go at all. You could have been dead at my base or dead in Hell. What’s the difference?”

  “What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? Where’s Malcolm?”

  He smiled thinly. “Malcolm’s not in charge anymore.”

  Anger choked her, but she had bigger problems than Zettel.

  “Abraxas isn’t here,” Elise said, sheathing her falchion. “He’s been replaced by an archangel—Metaraon, the voice of God. They have my aspis on trial right now.” The disbelief surrounding Zettel and Allyson was palpable, but Elise didn’t feel like trying to convince them. She strode toward the door, calling to them over her shoulder, “If you want to save the Treaty of Dis and keep the world from falling apart, you’re going to help me get James back and kill Metaraon. Or you can sit here and play with yourselves. I don’t care.”

  She left it all behind—the portal, the Union, and the body of the dead cherub.

  Every door between the portal room and the elevator was locked. It wasn’t only meant to keep people out—it should have kept people in, too. But every time Elise stepped up to the doors, the locks opened instantly.

  The Union followed.

  A half-dozen of them got onto the lift with her. More could have fit, but Zettel was the only one who would stand anywhere near her. Everyone else stayed at the edges, breathing loudly into their oxygen masks. Elise was tempted to rip them off and throw them down the shaft.

  She didn’t know where the courtroom was, but she imagined it had to be somewhere secure, probably underground. She lowered the lever as far as it would go.

  They didn’t make it far. The lift jerked to a stop halfway between two levels.

  There was a short hall and a temple on the other side of the doors. Steam sighed as the pressure in the pistons emptied. Hot, moist air gushed over the sides of the lift.

  “Someone knows we’re coming,” Zettel said, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Elise said. “Nobody is going to see me coming.”

  She phased.

  Everything was strangely peaceful when she vanished into shadow. The first time she had done it was an unpleasant surprise, but every time since had been better and better, like she was meant to sink into the darkness. She spread into the hallway outside the elevator and examined the temple with detached interest. There was a trio of statues labeled “The First Summit.” She didn’t recognize the angel or the human, but she knew the face of the eight-armed demon. It was a face she now shared—the stone image of Yatam.

  A strange mix of demons were on their knees in worship, but they weren’t Elise’s problem. The security guards rushing up the opposite hall were.

  Elise let herself expand to fill the room with a sigh. The glossy black stones welcomed her. Every molecule of the Palace hummed and vibrated with pleasure at her presence.

  The worshipers stood and began to shout as the Union slid out of the elevator one by one and dropped to the floor. The sounds of gunfire registered faintly, although Elise felt only faint bemusement as she watched demons fall under the Union’s gunfire.

  She waited until the security guards entered the temple, and then she wrapped herself around them…and tightened.

  Hazy screams swam in and out of her consciousness, as if she was hearing everything through twenty feet of water. She plucked the flesh from the bones of the security guards and then devoured their bones, too, as she had with the fiends at the House of Abraxas. They spilled blood and ichor. She drank it all.

  It was easy. A moment later, they were gone, and she was satiated.

  The Union had stopped shooting, stunned to inaction by the sight of Elise descending upon security. In the resulting silence, she heard murmurs spread through the crowd. Elise only understood one word, whispered in several human languages, as well as the infernal tongue: Father.

  She resubstantiated beside the statues, and all of her senses came rushing back to her, as though the volume had been turned up again and her ears had cleared.

  Hands lifted to her in worship.

  “Father!”

  The Union was still standing by the elevators, and she could see them gaping as the demons between them dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the floor. Elise plucked a bit of leather out from between her teeth—a scrap of uniform from one of the guards she had absorbed—and flicked it at the statue of Yatam before addressing the demons.

  “Listen,” she called. “There are traitors in Dis that would pull down this Palace. I’ve come to stop them, but I need to get to the courtroom. Where is it?”

  A hundred fingers pointed at once.

  XVII

  In the same instant that the demonic artifact illuminated on James’s chest, three other things happened in the courtroom.

  His eyes met Ariane’s. She looked sad.

  Several of the audience members shouted angrily, as if realizing that James had betrayed them and the Treaty.

  And the angels standing in the back of the room attacked.

  There were only two, but they were both massive creatures. One of them was a foot taller than James, and she was the smaller of the two. She wore the glistening gold breastplate of a cherub, but her eyes had been gouged from her face. It destroyed the perfect beauty of the angels that usually guarded the garden.

  The other was like no angel that James had ever seen before.

  It had to be at least ten feet tall, with ruddy skin and long, inky black hair. He wouldn’t have thought it was an angel at all if not for the burning wings at its back.

  They descended upon the onlookers from separate directions, and the monstrous one ripped Baphomet’s head off of her shoulders before she even realized something was happening.

  “Merde,” Ariane swore, clutching the seal in both hands.

  Adrenaline swamped James’s veins as chaos erupted in the audience. The Council and touchstones stood simultaneously to face their attackers, and nobody was watching him anymore—nobody except Metaraon.

  He grabbed Ariane by the throat. She struggled against him. “Release the circle,” he growled into her ear.

  “James—”

  “Release it!”

  Ariane kicked out one of her feet and nudged the line of the circle. The magic faded. He dropped her.

  Blood and ichor splattered into the ring, dripping into the grates and vanishing into the pits below. There were hisses, and the smell of something burning.

  For an instant, James was torn between running for the door and trying to save the touchstones. They all fell as he watched, skewered on the blade of the cherub, or worse, in the jaws of the other angel. It had silver teeth like fangs, and it ripped into one of the human men as though he were nothing more than a particularly juicy hamburger.

  Metaraon rose. James could feel the archangel watching him.

  So he ran.

  He slammed through the doors and raced up the hall, bare feet pounding against the warm ground. The sounds of battle echoed behind him. It wouldn’t last long. Some of the demons would be able to put up a fight against the angels, and maybe even kill one of them. But a hundred demons didn’t have the strength of a single angel, much less two.

  James grabbed the cage for the lift at the hall and wrenched it open.

  “James Faulkner,” a voice boomed behind him.

  Metaraon was following him.

  He jumped inside the lift, slammed the cage shut, and shoved the lever into position to ascend.

  Nothing happened. It was locked, and James didn’t have any keys.

  Metaraon slammed into the other side of the doors and reached a robed arm through. The pale hand closed on his throat, and Metaraon jerked him forward, slamming his face into the bars. James’s vision erupted into stars.

  The archangel entered the lift and towered over James. The darkness in his hood was immense, even now.

  Instead of dragging James out again, he pushed t
he lever down. Twice.

  And he did have the right keys.

  James had thought that they were at the bottommost level of the Palace before, so he was shocked when the lift jerked and began to lower again.

  “What do you want from me?” James asked.

  No response.

  It was only when the heat began to build in the lift and James heard distant, echoing screams that Metaraon’s intent began to dawn on him. The lift stopped after a few more moments, and there was dancing light in the short hallway on the other end of the cage—the flickering reflection of fire. It shined through the fogged glass on the door.

  Metaraon hauled James to the door. There were a dozen symbols on the top of the doorway, so the room on the other side was secure—very secure. But he waved an arm in front of the door, and it opened.

  They stepped through to the narrow edge of a vast cavern filled with flame.

  It was chokingly hot and smoky above the pit, which James had only glimpsed when he had first escaped his cell. The fires emanating from the earth below made the hair on his arms curl and his throat dry.

  There were dark shapes thrashing in the flames. Bodies burning for eternity. Their wails echoed through his skull.

  Metaraon shoved him toward the edge of the pit.

  “What did you hope to accomplish?” James asked, sprawled on all fours. “You deposed Abraxas. You killed the touchstones. You’ve broken the Treaty, and ensured that angels and demons can cross freely between the worlds. There is no law that can protect mankind now!”

  The archangel pushed his hood off, exposing his curly hair and hooked nose. The instant he emerged from the protective covering of his robes, the sense of power radiating from him flushed over James’s skin. “Yes,” he said. “I know.

  “So you know that He can break free now,” James said. “Everything that He did before you trapped and fascinated him with mortal women—it’s all going to happen again.”

  The angel didn’t respond, and a horrible sense of the truth settled over James.

  That must have been exactly what Metaraon wanted.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Metaraon lifted him once more, using a tight grip on his shoulders to raise his feet off of the floor. “I had high hopes for you, Mr. Faulkner,” said the angel.

  James heard commotion in the hallway. A pounding on the door, like fists. Someone had come to rescue him—the rebellion?—but the door was locked. He stared at the pit beneath his toes and saw dark figures thrashing in the flames. So many lost souls burning for all eternity, and one more about to join them.

  Something gave a quiet click.

  It was a small sound—so much softer than the screams emanating from the fires. Under normal circumstances, James wouldn’t have even noticed it.

  Except that it was the sound of an impenetrable door with a dozen locks opening.

  The doors slammed open, and Metaraon opened his hands. James’s stomach rose into his throat as he began to fall.

  He screamed, but the sound was impossible to distinguish from the rest of the voices echoing throughout the cavern. He tumbled end over end toward the flame, rushing toward those reaching hands, the heat scorching his eyebrows—

  Complete darkness consumed him.

  For an instant, he thought that he was dead. It was too cool, too peaceful, too quiet for him to be in the fire, and he couldn’t seem to draw air into his lungs. But when he felt his heart speed up with panic, he realized that he still had to be alive.

  His instant of peace was shattered when he slammed into the stone wall and fell to the ledge again at Metaraon’s feet. Elise dropped beside him, bounced off the floor, and almost slid into the pit. She caught herself with her fingertips.

  The archangel had tossed his robes aside and stood in front of them wearing nothing but a tailored shirt and jeans. He had exposed his skin, unfurled his wings, and beamed with a powerful light that pierced straight through Elise’s darkness.

  She hauled herself onto the ledge again.

  “I passed through the courtroom. The touchstones are dead,” she said, glaring at Metaraon.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Excellent.”

  His wings grew behind him, becoming so much brighter than the fire, brighter than the sun itself. He reached for Elise and James, and she struggled to her feet to face him.

  His light clashed against shadow.

  She braced herself in front of James, her arms spread wide, and he couldn’t see the line where she ended and the darkness began—they were one, singular and united. She was the night and the void.

  Metaraon didn’t move, but his light brightened, forcing Elise back. She took one step. Two. Then she grunted and stepped forward instead.

  Energy clashed like cracked cymbals rattling inside of James’s skull. He clapped his hands over his ears, but it wasn’t a sound that he could block—it was the power of one mighty creature against another, and neither of them were yielding. Elise was as beautiful as she had ever been, but it was a strange and deadly kind of beauty, like a sleek black eagle perched upon the spilled intestines of her victim. The muscles on her neck tensed into long, hard lines as she roared, teeth bared, eyes squinted, fists clenched.

  She pushed forward.

  James felt dull shock when Metaraon took a step back.

  Bit by bit, the balance began shifting. The immense gray light gave way to the void—and then vanished entirely.

  The cavern went dark.

  The sudden absence of Metaraon’s wings left James blind, and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear the green shapes out of his vision.

  Someone was laughing. It took a moment for James to realize that it was Metaraon.

  “Finally,” the angel said, and as James’s eyesight cleared, he saw Metaraon sitting up from the floor. “Finally. After so long.” He turned his brilliant blue eyes on Elise, and instead of hatred or anger, they were filled with adoration. Worship. “The sword is complete. You can kill Him.”

  “You’ve ruined everything,” Elise said as he stood.

  “No,” he said. “For the first time in centuries, everything has been put right.”

  Metaraon took her hand and bowed his head to her knuckles. Disgust twisted her face as she jerked free. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” she said. “I’m not a sword. I’m not a weapon. My name is Elise, and I’m a human being, goddammit. I don’t belong to anyone.”

  His finger fell on her lips. “Swords don’t speak.” His fingers snaked around her face and gripped tightly, digging into her cheeks and blocking her mouth. “You are the product of angels, and you belong to me as surely as your mother does. At least she came willingly.”

  Elise reached back to draw the obsidian sword. He caught her wrist before she could attack and used it to drag her against him.

  Metaraon dropped his lips to hers, his eyes sliding closed as though he was in rapture.

  He released her after a moment and tossed Elise aside almost casually. She stumbled. James caught her before she could fall.

  The angel’s wings appeared behind him again. There was a line of blood dribbling from one of his ears. Metaraon wiped it way with his fingers, looked at the silvery blood on his skin, and he smiled. He smiled.

  His wings curled around him. “No,” Elise growled, pushing James back to lunge at Metaraon again. “No!”

  She jumped—and tripped on empty air.

  Elise spun to search the room, but she was alone with James and the screams of a thousand tortured souls.

  Passing through the courtroom was a grim journey. Every single touchstone was dismembered and dead, draped over their chairs with blood slicking the ground. The worst part—if there could be such a thing—was that James only saw the body of one angel as he passed: the cherub. No sign of the monster.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked, hugging Metaraon’s robes around him.

  Elise didn’t respond.

  The Union was standing in the hall outside the portal room when James a
nd Elise returned. She strode up to a uniformed man by the door who was one of the few humans in the area not wearing an oxygen mask. It took James a moment to recognize Gary Zettel—one of the men that Malcolm had introduced to James at the warehouse back on Earth.

  “What are you all doing out here?” she asked.

  Zettel looked annoyed to see her. “One of our recruits let the door close, and now we can’t open it again. We have to wait until more men come through the other side of the portal to let us in.”

  “That won’t work,” Elise said. “These doors are locked on both sides.”

  “Then what the hell are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms. “What are you going to do? Why did you want to invade Dis in the first place?”

  “We’re bringing justice to this unholy place. The Treaty’s been in danger for years now—we’ve had our ear to the ground, and what we’ve heard isn’t good. If we don’t act fast to secure the Palace, we might not have any Treaty at all.”

  The Union didn’t realize what had happened yet. “Good thing you acted fast,” she said dully.

  “Not fast enough. We’ve arrested some of the surviving conspirators, but we can’t get them back to HQ to answer for their crimes if we’re trapped in Hell.” Judging by his tone of voice, James was pretty sure that Zettel thought that Elise was among those who should be brought in front of Union HQ.

  “Yeah,” Elise said. “Too bad.” She glanced at James, swathed in Metaraon’s discarded robes. “Look, we need clothing, and transport back to Earth.”

  “You’re not in a place to make demands.” Zettel grunted. “Our supplies are still in the portal room, anyway.”

  She laid her hand on the doorknob, pushed it open, and headed inside. Zettel stopped laughing.

  James followed Elise.

  The portal was still open, and James stood beside Elise as the Union rushed inside. James contemplated the sight of the Union’s warehouse on the other side of the dancing light. Not just the compound—Earth. The mortal planes.

  Fear knotted in his stomach.