Torn by Fury

by S. M. Reine

  Elise stepped into her bedroom, and Rylie followed, watching the swaying statuette jutting from her pocket. It was turned so that the wolf head faced her. “Do you know who those are supposed to be?” Rylie asked. Her voice was thick, throat knotted. “Anu, Ellil…whatever the third one was… Who are they?”

  “Get in,” Elise said, holding her door open.

  Rylie and Abel stepped inside. Elise glanced at the antechamber and Behemoth, still unmoving beside the empty couch, and then shut them inside the bedroom.

  Elise paced, slapping the statuette lightly against her palm. Framed by the burning red sky of Dis, she looked every inch the general thinking hard about war, her eyebrows creased and eyes dark.

  “Adam, Eve, Lilith,” she muttered. “First Man, First Angel, First Demon.” Her fingers tapped the creatures on the statuette. “Werewolf. Angel. Demon.”

  “I’m missing something,” Abel said.

  But Rylie thought she understood. She was still holding that stone that Draga had handed her. It was so simple, but it suddenly felt like it weighed a million pounds. “I think she’s saying that those are gods. The people on the statue. Right, Elise?”

  “I’m thinking…maybe Adam, Eve, and Lilith weren’t the first after all.” She shook her head. “That conversation definitely explained why Lincoln would have wanted her dead. Leliel and Belphegor must both know about the Treaty, and what it actually did. That means that they know the greatest threat to their plans—whatever those are—are the two of you.”

  Rylie didn’t like the way that Elise was looking at Abel and her. She sidled under his arm. Even Abel’s protective embrace couldn’t save her from what was coming, but it felt more secure. She needed any comfort that she could get.

  “Don’t think it matters much,” Abel said. “Everything’s already all fucked up. We can’t do much about the whole universe.” He grinned darkly, baring very white teeth. “We can still remind the angels who the apex predators are, though.”

  “We can do something about the universe. We have to.” Rylie gazed up at him, trying to find comfort in his familiar profile, and just feeling more scared. “When we were in Shamain, we saw the angels with this machine thing. They ripped that world away from New Eden. If everything is already all fragile from this unbalance Draga was talking about, what’s going to happen when they break the last door to New Eden? What if the angels don’t stop there? What if they pull the whole universe apart?”

  “I’d prefer not to find out,” Elise said.

  Azis knocked lightly before reentering. “Ma’am?”

  She straightened her spine, turning to face him. All doubt was wiped from her face. There was no sign that she had just been thinking about the end of the universe. “Yes?”

  “James Faulkner hasn’t returned from his scouting mission to Ireland.”

  Elise’s expression still didn’t change, but there was no concealing the wash of adrenaline that rolled off her skin. “He hasn’t been in contact?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Azis gave a half-bow and slipped out again.

  Elise rubbed a hand over her forehead then looked at her palm. She was sweating black. She smelled awful. “Abel, have you ever been to Ireland?”

  “Ain’t never been over the ocean before,” he said. “Why?”

  “Today’s your lucky day. You’re coming on a trip with me. Rylie, take Ace for a walk.”

  Rylie’s heart dropped. Elise had promised she would let her help, even if she was pregnant. “But…”

  “Please,” Elise said.

  After a moment, Rylie nodded.

  Fourteen

  ELISE AND ABEL materialized twice: the first time, on the southern coast of Ireland to get her bearings, remove her ring, and feel for James’s presence; and then the second time outside a small collection of cottages.

  Abel took the shift between dimensions well enough, but the shift across Ireland was harder. Elise studied the place that they had appeared while he got sick in the bushes.

  The stone wall encircling the cottages still glowed with the memory of magic, though the spells seemed to have been dismantled weeks earlier. The salty air and heavy rains had washed all of the physical markers of wards away. What little she saw of the remaining spells looked like ordinary human magic. Nothing more, and nothing less.

  The complexity of the magic suggested a stationary coven, and a fairly powerful one—though not as powerful as James. But a coven that was gone.

  Elise extended her mind toward him and came up against a blank wall. He was there. He was close. She just couldn’t speak to him.

  She didn’t like being cut off like that.

  Abel got up, shaking himself out. It was almost a canine gesture. “Smell anything good?” she asked, opening the gate. The hinges whined.

  “Canned food,” he said. “Bottled water. Stinky, unshowered people.” Confusion crossed his eyes. He sniffed again. “And flowers? Really wet flowers, mixed with dirt and stuff.”

  Flowers and dirt. Kind of sounded like potions.

  “I wish I had your nose,” Elise said, drawing Seth’s Beretta as they slipped between cottages. If James had been nailed by witches, she wasn’t going to need her falchion.

  Abel grinned. “I could bite you, see if you change.”

  Elise still remembered Rylie’s bite all too well. She shot a look at him. “Do we have a problem?”

  “What, can’t you take some shit? Been on top too long?” He punched her in the shoulder. Not a gentle blow—she went numb to the wrist. “You need to get knocked down a few rungs.”

  If this was his idea of camaraderie, Elise thought she might prefer going back to the time that Abel hated her. “Focus,” she said.

  He grunted, rolling out his shoulders. “All right, all right.” Another sniff and he took off at a lope, breezing through the long grass toward a cottage in the back.

  Elise gave him a second before following. His mental signals were uncomplicated, once she tuned out the wolf inside of him. Abel was happy to be there. He was enjoying himself. The odds that he was slightly crazy seemed to be increasing. Still, she could see why Rylie liked him. He was exactly the levity the kid needed in her life. And dangerous enough to protect her.

  Abel crouched against the wall of one building. She dropped beside him. “I smell James in there. He is always fucking drenched in aftershave. Easy to find him.”

  “Alive?” She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t pick up his heartbeat.

  “Probably,” Abel said, sniffing again. “Don’t smell anyone dead around here.”

  “How many alive?”

  “Three,” he said. “No, four. Two witches I don’t recognize, Douchebag Gandalf, and then someone who smells like gunpowder.”

  “Gunpowder? A kopis?”

  Elise heard the bolt on a rifle being pulled back.

  “Good guess,” said a gruff, masculine voice.

  Elise whirled to find that someone was watching them from the roof of the opposite building. He was belly-down on the roof, propped up on his elbows, a rifle obscuring half of his face.

  Anthony Morales was watching her through the scope of a hunting rifle.

  She let herself break apart, reforming on top of the roof. He was unsurprised by her leap in space—he sat back calmly on his heels and said, “I figured that James would have friends trying to save him, but I hadn’t thought it would be you. Gotta say, I’m a little disappointed, Kavanagh.”

  “Disappointed?” She jerked him to his feet by the lapels of his jacket. “You’re the one who kidnapped James? Why? And where the fuck have you been? I thought you’d been taken by the angels to New Eden.”

  “Here,” Anthony said. “The whole goddamn time, I’ve been here.”

  “With this coven?”

  “Yeah. With the coven. You want to know what I’m doing here? You ask James. The man you came to save sold me to a fucking coven.” He shoved his sleeve up, baring his forea
rm. A white scar marked the inside of his wrist from the heel of his palm to the inside joint of his elbow.

  Elise’s fingers reflexively went to the matching scar she had on her left wrist. The scar remained from her binding ritual to James, making them kopis and aspis, sword and shield, stuck with each other for all of their lives—whether they liked it or not.

  “You have an aspis?” she asked.

  “They tied me down and performed the ritual,” Anthony said. His eyes smoldered with hate. “I didn’t get a choice. Neither did Brianna.”

  It took her a minute to recall that name. “James’s assistant?” Elise dimly recalled meeting her in Las Vegas before the Breaking. She had forgotten the girl quickly. She hadn’t seemed all that important.

  “He fucked both of us over, Elise,” Anthony said. “And you came here to save him? Yeah. Yeah, I’m just a little bit disappointed.”

  Elise stared at him in the dark, misty night without really seeing his face. She had gotten used to James being on her side again so quickly—old habits, she guessed. It was easy to forget that he had been manipulating people with abandon until he lost the ability to reach Eden.

  No, not easy to forget. Just really fucking convenient.

  A hard lump lodged in her throat. She forced herself to focus on Anthony, her best friend, standing safely in front of her. She had been starting to think he was dead.

  But James had known where Anthony was this entire time, and he hadn’t told Elise.

  So much for no more lies.

  “Where is James?” Elise asked.

  Elise shoved the bedroom door open, Anthony at her back. The bed was empty. “Is this some kind of joke?” she asked. The sheets were rumpled, but there was no sign that anyone had been restrained in the room.

  Anthony pushed past her. “What the fuck?”

  A tall figure lunged from the dark corner.

  It was moving for Anthony.

  Elise reacted on pure instinct. She stepped between them, stuck out her leg, and flipped the assailant over her hip.

  James hit the floor on his back. Hard.

  He didn’t recover anywhere near as quickly as usual. He remained on the floor, looking dazed, eyes only partially focused. Elise tried to reach into his mind and came up against the wall of his warding ring again.

  “Is he drugged?” Elise asked Anthony.

  “Something like that.” He didn’t look remotely guilty.

  James tried to get to his feet, motions slow and clumsy. “I have to get out of here,” he said, still not quite aware that Elise had been the one that had stopped him. One of his hands was bare, but the other was encased in a mitten of cloth and duct tape. He attempted to release a few ethereal runes, but the magic flickered and faded without his usual focus.

  He lurched toward Anthony again.

  Elise shoved James against the wall, pinning him with an elbow in his throat and a hand on his wrist. The glow of the ethereal runes burned through her gloves.

  He finally focused on her, blinking rapidly. He relaxed a fraction. “Elise. Thank—”

  She pushed harder on his throat, strangling the words before he could get them out. “You sold Anthony?”

  She watched the truth dawn in his eyes. James had definitely done it. There was no guilt in his expression—only resignation at having been caught. “It’s more complicated than that,” he said.

  “How?” she asked. “How could it be more complicated than the fact that you let me spend the last few months thinking he’d been killed?”

  His eyes were imploring. James wasn’t struggling against her at all, limp in her grip. “You never asked. Besides, he tried to murder me.”

  That wasn’t the excuse she’d expected. “Murder? What?” She twisted to look at Anthony over her shoulder. “Did you try to murder James?”

  He raked a hand through his hair, rubbed the back of his neck, didn’t meet her eyes. “Murder’s a strong word.”

  “‘Assassinate’ would likely be just as appropriate,” James suggested. Elise released him. He stepped away from the wall, tearing roughly at the duct tape on his hand. “I was transporting Brianna to the Talamh Coven for healing. Their specialty is dealing with aspides who have lost their kopides. I was only trying to help her.”

  “After you pretty much killed Seth and ruined her life,” Anthony said.

  Elise cut him off with a gesture. “And?” she asked James.

  “And Anthony got on the same ship that I was on and attempted to shoot me in the head,” James said. “Failing that, he tossed me off the side of the damn ship. I almost drowned. Forgive me if I didn’t feel forgiving after that.”

  Anthony advanced on him, anger clouding his eyes. “You broke the entire world trying to become God!”

  “I was trying to save it!”

  Elise planted a hand on Anthony’s chest, holding him back. James had finally gotten his other fist free and removed the warding ring, and his mind felt like it was filled with steel wool. He wasn’t up for a fight. Not yet.

  Although both seemed like they deserved the shit beat out of them.

  “This is petty bullshit,” Elise said. “I can’t believe I have to deal with infighting among my allies when—”

  “He is not your ally,” Anthony said in a low voice. “You can’t say that after everything he’s done.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you’ve always had a big fucking blind spot for James. I know you can’t be trusted to make sound decisions where he’s concerned.”

  “He’s working with me for now,” Elise said.

  “Maybe for the moment, yeah. But what happens the instant he sees an opportunity to do something that will help him achieve his goals, huh? Next time he sees a way into Eden, or the next time he—”

  “There’s no other way into Eden,” Elise said. “Adam’s bloodline has been wiped out.”

  Anthony glared at James over her shoulder. For his part, James was leaning against the wall for support, still trying to shake whatever drugs they’d used to be able to hold “Douchebag Gandalf” captive. He didn’t look threatening. But Anthony’s words screwed right into her chest and wouldn’t let go. There was too much truth in them.

  “Can we talk alone?” Anthony asked.

  “No,” James said.

  Elise pushed him gently. He sat down hard. Kittens were more threatening than James Faulkner at that moment. “I probably don’t have to say this, but don’t go anywhere.”

  “Elise—”

  She stepped into the hall with Anthony and shut the door.

  The cottage was eerily quiet aside from the drumming of rain on the roof. If Brianna was anywhere within, then she must have been incredibly good at playing quiet. “Where’s your aspis?” Elise asked.

  “Another cottage,” Anthony said. “She’s…getting help. It doesn’t matter.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I knew you wouldn’t let me handle James if I asked, so I didn’t ask. You’re pissed at me. I get it. I still think the smartest course of action would be to kill him before he’s back to full strength.”

  “You’re right. I am pissed.”

  “You can’t trust him.”

  “It seems like I can’t trust you, either.”

  Anthony looked wounded. “Come on, Elise.”

  “Do you know what killing my aspis would have done to me?” she asked. “If I’d been in the middle of a fight when you did it, I could have been killed, too.”

  “And that’s the whole reason you don’t want him dead, despite the fact that he’s the cause of most of the pain in your life? Come on, Elise, he’s the reason that you ended up in the garden! He lied to you, and instead of trying to fix it, he went ahead and did everything he could to make it worse.” Anthony lifted his eyebrows at her. “So you don’t want him dead because it would weaken you, and not because you’re blinded by your feelings.”

  Elise snorted. “I don’t have feelings.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

>   She reached up to stroke the line of his lip. When had he grown a beard? She liked this rugged look on Anthony. “Fine. I have some feelings.”

  “Some,” he muttered.

  For a moment, she felt disoriented. Her eyes saw a mature Anthony, bearded and rough. Her mind wanted to see the young Anthony that she had first met, still more of a boy than a man.

  She felt hot. She wiped at her forehead and found that she was sweating black again. “I’ve told you before that there’s nothing between me and James,” Elise said, wiping her hand off on her pants. “I won’t keep discussing it.”

  Confusion flashed over Anthony’s eyes. “Nothing? Since when? But you told me yourself that you guys have—”

  “We’re not having this discussion again. Period.”

  “Are you okay?” He took her wrist, looking down at the sweat on her fingertips. “You don’t look good.”

  Elise pulled free. “You said that Brianna’s being taken care of. I didn’t see the Talamh Coven here. This place looks pretty abandoned.”

  “Oh. Yeah. There’s something else you need to know. The reason that Brianna and I are still here, even though the rest of the coven left.” He glanced at the door, lowered his voice. “Your mother found us.”

  Her eyes widened. “My mother?”

  “She came to the coven for help at about the same time that they were going into hiding. The high priestess wouldn’t help her, but Brianna insisted on staying with Ariane.” Anthony rubbed a hand over his beard, smiling ruefully. “So…we’ve been helping your mom try to map a route to New Eden, and your mom’s helping Brianna with her recovery.”

  “Then do you know why she wants into New Eden, too?” Elise asked.

  “No clue. But she’s told us all about the angels. She told us what they’re doing. However you’re combating it, I want to help.”

  The sudden tension that had come over her eased. Anthony and Brianna didn’t know about Marion. Her sister’s secret was still safe. “I don’t know if you can help me, Anthony. I don’t know how to get into New Eden now. The door’s gone. They ripped it apart.”