by S. M. Reine
“Consider it done.”
Lincoln approached them as the last few demons climbed onto the crystal bridge. The fell beast bucked at the sight of him. Its growl was a bass thrum that shook the mortar between the bricks.
Terah eyed Lincoln. “My pet thinks we should kill him.” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down.
Elise hadn’t told anyone what the deputy had done, so she kept her features composed. “I’ll take it under advisement. Follow the seventeenth. Watch Rylie.”
Terah mounted smoothly, hooking her boots into the stirrups on her fell beast’s saddle. Its massive head swung toward Lincoln, but Terah jerked the chain hard enough to bend its neck in the other direction then heeled its flanks. Reluctantly, the fell beast climbed out onto the bridge and into the dust storm beyond.
Though the seventeenth centuria was gone, a shuffling sound filled the lower levels of the tower. Elise was moving Endi, Albrinck, and their forces to Earth as well—not to be stationed in Northgate, but to search for ethereal gates that might lead to New Eden. Endi would be going to Reno, Nevada, where several gates still stood. Albrinck would be headed to Mexico.
Elise glanced down the spiraling stairs to see that it was Albrinck on the approach before addressing Lincoln.
“You’re supposed to be with James.”
“He’s not done with the ritual space yet,” Lincoln said. “I got restless. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
Irritation prickled down the back of her neck. As if words meant anything. “Go back to the room.”
“Jesus, Elise. You know this isn’t what I wanted to happen. I was trying to do better. Trying to redeem myself.” He gripped his leather belt so hard that it looked like he might rip it off his hips. It was meant to look like a casual stance, but he was failing. “I never would have done that if I was myself.”
“I know.”
“It’s not okay,” Lincoln said. “It’s not.” But he wanted her to tell him that it was.
When had she gone from being the devil he feared to his salvation? She couldn’t absolve him of his sins, and she probably wouldn’t have if she could. Forgiveness didn’t change the past.
Yet a part of Elise disagreed. Lincoln looked so distressed—he needed to be comforted. That was Eve’s sympathy creeping over her, softening her irritation around the edges.
Elise gripped his shoulder. “You’re sick, Lincoln. You’re dying. You’re scared, and you think that you’re going to go to Heaven and have to answer for what’s happened. But let me tell you this: James works miracles. You will not die, not today. We can talk about what happened with Fenix and the guards at the House of Abraxas when you aren’t at death’s door.”
He relaxed a fraction. Only a fraction.
“You’re kinda sweet sometimes, considering you’re the Devil,” Lincoln said.
She felt the corner of her mouth lift in what might have been a smile. “Dying and delusional.”
“I heard what you told Terah about Rylie. About how she’s priority one. Why? What makes her all special?”
A thousand things. Seth’s body in the mausoleum. Her entire werewolf pack in New Eden. Her future son-in-law, Nash, burned to a crisp by Elise’s magic. And Rylie’s shy smile, her hair backlit by sunlight so that it looked like a halo. “I just want to make sure that Rylie and Abel make it out of this alive.”
“But they’re not mission critical.”
His tone was strange. Cynical. Was he slipping again? “I’ll kill anyone who fucks with them anyway. Got it?”
Lincoln shook his head as if to clear it. “You don’t have to threaten me.”
“Maybe I do,” she said softly. She reached up and wiped a thumb over his forehead. His sweat was tinted gray, like hers.
“Elise,” a man said from the stairs. She turned to see Azis ripping off his veils as he rushed past Albrinck, red-faced and out of breath. “Sorry. Ma’am. You said you wanted to know what was happening with the search for Draga.”
“And?”
“And we can’t find her. She’s not where Lincoln said she’d be. It looks like the whole place has been emptied out.”
Elise was sick of her answers running away—whether it was the Palace librarians or targets of Aquiel’s administration. She rounded on Lincoln to ask him where else Draga might have been.
But Lincoln wasn’t standing behind her anymore.
Screams drew her attention from the empty patch of floor where Lincoln should have been standing. Reflexively, she drew her Beretta and ran to the base of the bridge, squinting through the dust storm.
The seventeenth century was shouting and bumping into each other as they struggled to spread out. They dropped to their knees, drew their ranged weapons—guns, mostly, with some wicked longbows carried by a few of the craftsmen.
Terah was still the nearest. Her fell beast’s stance was wide enough that it could grip either side of the bridge in its gnarled feet, stabilizing her as she yanked her bow from its holster, nocking an arrow longer than her arm. Its fletchings were harpy feathers. Its point was spiked iron. Elise watched the arrowhead’s path as she lifted it, aiming toward the same dusty nothingness as the others.
Elise couldn’t see a thing from inside. She ducked her head and darted onto the bridge. The wind was immediately twice as strong, battering at her with mighty hands of grit.
Terah twisted in her saddle as she tracked something moving through the sky.
Searing white light appeared in the dust clouds. It flashed over the centuria and then vanished just as quickly, like a shooting star that had just hurtled past the bridge.
A demon fell off of the crystal bridge with a scream. His body rapidly receded to a dark point. Elise could hear him screaming for seconds after she could no longer see him.
It was a long way down.
She phased, flashing through the darkness. She had to guess where he might have fallen because she couldn’t see through that much sand.
Elise felt herself connect with a body. She wrapped herself around him. Phased again.
They reappeared on the bridge. The demon sprawled in front of her, weaponless and still screaming. He rolled onto his back. There was no gratitude in his eyes—only blind panic.
“Etheneoch!” he sobbed. “Etheneoch nati!”
Elise grew very, very still. She understood vo-ani, the infernal language. Fluency had come to her along with all of her other demon powers. But she wanted to believe that she was misunderstanding him.
She didn’t want to believe that he had been thrown from the bridge by an angel.
Terah finally loosed her arrow. It whistled through the air. The searing brightness of the shooting stars made it seem like there should have been nothing to hit at the center, yet her arrowhead buried into something with a meaty sound.
The light’s trajectory changed. It slammed into the bridge and dimmed.
“Ma’am,” Azis said. She hadn’t realized he had come up behind her. He was offering his veils to her.
Elise jerked the cloth around her face to protect her skin, gripped her gun in both hands, and squinted through the light. She could just make out the faint outline of crumpled wings. A tall, leggy man wearing normal street clothes. Shoulder-length hair. Silvery blood spreading from his breast.
An angel in the City of Dis.
Another hard gust cleared the dust for a half-second, and Elise realized that the angel wasn’t alone. There were more white lights plummeting through the violet gash of the fissure. Just looking at them made Elise’s skin hurt, as though her veils and body armor offered her no protection at all.
They swooped gracefully toward the factories, the warehouses, the streets. None of them were trying to approach the Palace. They had to know that Elise’s soul-linked wards would repel anything—even ethereal invaders. But Dis’s citizens were out there. Relative innocents, if such a word could be used for demons.
And where the angels flew, fire followed.
Another angel buzzed low over
the army on the bridge, plowing through the line of demons, impervious to their bullets. He made the second pass much closer. A half-dozen demons were flung from the bridge.
Elise gave a low curse and phased again. She darted through the air—one soldier, two soldiers, three—but she couldn’t find them all, much less catch them. She deposited the three she had saved back on the bridge.
She couldn’t protect her centuries like this. Not for long.
“Get through the fissure!” she roared.
Terah took up the call as she fired another arrow, and the others shouted it up the line. The demons began to run. The fell beast’s heavy footfalls shook the bridge.
Elise didn’t follow. She pushed Azis back to the tower, past Albrinck and his waiting centuria.
“Orders?” Albrinck asked.
She couldn’t send them up the bridge. The seventeenth centuria had a head start; some of them might make it to Rylie. Albrinck and his forces wouldn’t stand a chance.
In her moment of hesitation, she watched more angels punch through the fissure. The streets seethed as the army engaged them. Few of her demons could fly, but those who could phase took to the air to confront them. But the angelic light was too strong—it burned away half of them before they could cause any damage.
“Contact the Houses to warn them what’s happening. And then…” What? Let the angels burn the city? There were so many demons that hadn’t earned death in Hell, and so many slaves outside her protection.
And Lincoln was still nowhere to be seen.
“Talk to Gerard,” she finished, breaking into a run. “Have him meet me at my rooms.”
She took the stairs down the tower two at a time, shoving through the centuries that had been heading for the bridge. Her thoughts were spinning, her stomach twisting with nausea, sweat drenching the back of her neck. She hadn’t been ready for this. She had thought she would have more time to prepare to fight the angels—and she had thought she would be able to choose the battleground.
Yet Lincoln was missing. And she knew that this, somehow, was much more urgent than the assault. The exact same way that she had understood that finding Draga was more urgent than the war at hand.
She just didn’t understand why.
Elise hit the ground floor and phased across the rest of the Palace to her rooms. The crowd was too large to run through. They were all panicking, scurrying to reach the defenses, trying to rally against the angels.
She became shadow and the Palace halls flashed past her. A hundred doors and windows.
Then she was outside her rooms. She shoved into the antechamber.
Neither Lincoln nor James was inside, but she wasn’t quite alone. Ace’s body was at her feet, puppyish limbs in a tangle. His throat had been cut. One of his eyes had been stabbed. Numbness radiated through her as she took in the sight of him, her dog, her companion.
Murdered.
It hurt so much worse than finding Fenix, even worse than the human guards in the House of Abraxas. It felt like a knife driven between her ribs. It felt like…nothing at all. She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel.
She needed to move.
Elise shoved her bedroom door open, and there he was: Deputy Lincoln Marshall, dagger raised, prepared to stab it deep into the heart of the precognitive boy sleeping in Elise’s bed. Benjamin Flynn’s ability to see the future couldn’t save him while he was unconscious.
She phased.
Elise reappeared between Lincoln and the bed. She tried to catch his arm, but missed. Instead, the dagger embedded itself in her shoulder.
A scream ripped from her—not from pain, but from rage. She swung her fist. Backhanded Lincoln.
He went flying.
Lincoln slammed into the wall so hard that the stone cracked. She ripped the dagger from her shoulder, took one glance at Benjamin Flynn—still undisturbed—and then flashed across the room, hauling Lincoln to his feet. His left arm was bleeding freely, all but degloved from elbow to wrist, with ragged tooth marks in the muscle. Ace hadn’t gone down without a fight.
Elise snapped her fist across his face. “My goddamn dog, Lincoln!”
His lip split. His eyes wouldn’t quite focus on her. He managed to say, “The mutt fucking deserved it.”
She struck him again.
It didn’t feel good. It didn’t change anything.
And then Lincoln yanked at her belt. For a moment, Elise didn’t understand why—not until he rammed her own Taser under her veils, buried the points underneath her chin, and fired.
The world whited out around her. There was nothing but electric pain.
She was screaming, but she couldn’t really hear it.
The amperage on her Taser was enough to hurt, but not kill—not Elise, even after she had fed Lincoln with her own energy. She still found herself flat on her back on the floor when her vision cleared. Lincoln’s shredded arm hung uselessly at his side. He fell on top of her.
“Father, Father, Father,” he said in a slightly singsong voice. “You should have run.”
“I’m getting really tempted to just kill you, Lincoln,” Elise said through gritted teeth.
Doubt flashed over his features. “Elise?” He sounded like himself. Normal. A little wounded. “What’s going on? I’m not hurting you, am I? I would never hurt the woman I love.”
Yeah, he was definitely fucking with her. He still thought he was that nightmare.
She tried to rip the Taser out of his grip and earned a second, briefer jolt for it. Her skin flashed. Her bones went momentarily black.
It should have been easy to deflect Lincoln. He was just a man, for fuck’s sake. But he was wild with delusion and too free with that goddamn Taser. She needed to put space between them.
The instant she thought about phasing, he shocked her again, burning two ashen gray points into her wrist.
“Don’t go so fast. Let’s finish what we started,” Lincoln said.
It was just like in Northgate, when he had impaled her on an electrified spear. But he didn’t look possessed now—not a hint of bleeding eyes or crimson runes swirling over his skin. He was Lincoln. Just Lincoln. A sick, dying, delusional man who had murdered so many in pursuit of a vendetta that didn’t belong to him.
He ripped open her jacket, shoved her shirt up, pushed the Taser against her bare skin again. She caught his arm in both hands. Tried to shove him back. She just needed a moment to phase, a moment without getting shocked—
“Deputy Marshall!”
Lincoln twisted in time for his face to meet a fist.
James had a pretty good arm when he was pissed. He flattened Lincoln to the floor. The Taser skittered across the tile.
That was the moment that Elise needed, and she didn’t hesitate. She phased herself back to the bed.
“Where the fuck were you?” she asked, trying not to sound like she hurt all over and failing.
“Finishing your spell,” James snapped. “Sorry if I was slightly too distracted crafting near-impossible magic to babysit!” Lincoln scrambled for the Taser. James kicked it out of his reach.
“What about the guards I assigned to the two of you?”
“He killed them,” James said. “I couldn’t hear what was happening in the hallway from inside the circle. Dammit, Elise, he killed both of them.”
“And I’ll kill you, too,” Lincoln said.
The second knife seemed to appear from nowhere. He slashed it across James’s leg. Blood spilled, flooding the air with its sweet, tangy scent, making Elise’s stomach lurch with hunger.
James jerked back with a shout, but Lincoln was still too fucking fast for a dying man. He was on top of James instantly. Shoving him back against the desk. Thrusting the knife toward his stomach.
Elise seized Lincoln’s good arm and twisted it behind him. She ripped the knife from his hand. James squirmed free and she slammed Lincoln facedown on the desk, giving his clothes a quick sweep with her hand. She found two more daggers. Both hers. Had he been raiding
her weapons stash before or after the mental degradation? Did it matter?
She fisted her hand in his hair and dragged him toward the door.
It was time to heal Lincoln once and for all—and whether it meant curing him or killing him, she didn’t care anymore.
James had prepared the ritual space in one of the empty meeting rooms near the former Judge’s chambers. It was a sprawling box of black stone with faceted walls, buttressed ceilings, and windows three times Elise’s height. From that vantage point, it was easy to see what the angels were doing to Dis.
“Good Lord.” James stopped short in the doorway.
Elise shouldered him out of the way, Lincoln thrashing in a headlock in her arms. “Didn’t you notice the fucking invading army when you were finishing the spell?”
James had the decency to look embarrassed. “Well, no. I was distracted.”
Distracted enough that he hadn’t noticed that his one goddamn responsibility had left the room, killed the guards in the hallway, and murdered Elise’s dog. Nothing would ever be as important to James as his magic. She already knew it, but the wrench of despair in her gut was harder than usual.
The floor was painted with an oversized circle of power, enlarged so that James could paint the specific symbols he wanted without resorting to microscopic script. Some of the marks were infernal, some were ethereal. Others she didn’t recognize at all, but they glimmered with the same kind of magic as the anathema powder.
“Holy shit,” Elise said. “How did you—?”
Lincoln was so sweaty now that he slipped right out of her grip. She tried to quickly grab him again, but it wasn’t necessary.
He collapsed on the floor at the edge of the circle. His spine arched, heels digging into the tile, veins bulging on his neck. His shirt had holes in it now. They were black around the edges. Not burned. He was sweating through his clothes as though his very bodily fluids had gone acidic.