by S. M. Reine
“The door in Araboth?”
“The door in Shamain,” she said.
A grin grew over his face. “It seems that Ariane and Brianna mapped a route that you don’t know, then.”
For a fleeting moment, Elise felt relieved.
There was another door into New Eden. They could still reach the city.
But then the location of the door sank into her, and all she could feel was dread.
“Araboth,” Elise said. “Fuck.”
“I didn’t think you’d like that. But I hadn’t thought I’d be going in with you. I’d thought I would just take Ariane.” He shrugged. “On the bright side, they’d never expect you to attack from that direction.”
That’s because she would never willingly return to Araboth. She couldn’t.
But for Marion… Maybe she had to.
“I forgive you, Anthony,” Elise said, feeling light-headed. Her muscles felt like they were turning to liquid.
“What, for trying to kill your boyfriend?” He said it mockingly, in the most irritating voice possible. The one he knew would drive her up the fucking wall.
She silenced him with a kiss, just like she always did.
Anthony froze. He didn’t move as her hands slid up his chest, looped around his neck, and locked him into place. He didn’t react when she leaned into him, either.
He must have been angrier with her than usual. There was virtually no fight she couldn’t make him forget with a little angry sex. But his lips were rigid under hers, and he wasn’t reacting with any hint of arousal.
He reached back to grab her wrists, dislodging her. “What the fuck?” Anthony shoved her away when she didn’t immediately step back. It wasn’t an overture to rough sex. He really was trying to pry her off.
Elise didn’t fight it. She frowned at him. “What?”
“You kissed me.”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Since when is that a problem?”
“Since we haven’t dated in…fuck, what, five years? Since you were still human?”
Her head was throbbing. Anthony looked so strange. So old.
What’s going on?
Elise turned, expecting to find herself in the apartment she shared with Betty. They stood in a narrow hallway—that was all right. There were three doors. Elise’s bedroom was at the end, Betty’s right next to it, bathroom on the other wall.
But when she drifted to the end of the hall, she didn’t find herself in a living room decorated with Betty’s half-assed paintings and the plants Elise had potted in her empty tubs of creatine powder. The furniture was too rustic, too cramped. The windows were drenched. It never rained that much in Reno.
“Elise?”
Anthony’s voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away—or a million years away.
She felt anger when she looked at him. That was nothing new. Elise was sick of putting up with Anthony’s insecure crap. He was clingy. He was too jealous of James. He wanted too much from her. He talked marriage and families like it was something that Elise would want to do, even if she could, and she was going to dump him if he didn’t shut up.
If she hadn’t been so fucking lonely, she would have gotten rid of him by now.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said, turning to work on the dishes.
Except that the kitchen wasn’t in the right place, and those weren’t her dishes. Betty never would have had that many mismatched plates.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“You’re shivering,” Anthony said, lifting the hem of her shirt. She looked down at her abs to see that they were slicked with sweat, just like her forehead, and that her sweat was burning holes in the cloth. Little holes. Tiny pinpricks, like stars in the sky. “I think you’re sick. Can demons get sick?”
“Demons?” Elise asked. He gaped at her.
Something reflective caught her eye—a mirror on the wall. She lifted it off the nail and angled it so that she could see her face.
There was a demon on the other side. Pale skin. Black eyes. Black hair. Beautifully symmetrical.
Reality slammed into her.
Elise wasn’t dating Anthony. They were in Ireland, not Nevada. She was a demon.
And Betty was still dead.
The grief hit her anew. She had to set the mirror down before she dropped it. Elise braced her hands against the counter, shutting her eyes against the surge of emotion—the realization that she would never see her best friend smiling again, never hear that stupid snort-laugh of hers, never talk shit about their boyfriends over a bottle of wine or three.
The fact that Reno had been completely destroyed, and that most of America had followed suit just a few years later, didn’t seem nearly as terrible as the fact that Elise was living in a world without Betty.
And the fact that she kept getting confused about it could only mean one thing.
Elise knocked once before entering the bedroom. She had already known that there were two witches inside by reading their mental signals through the wall, but she was still a little surprised to see Brianna confined to bed. She remembered the girl as bright, energetic, and enthusiastic. Now she was frail and filled with hate.
Brianna’s annoyance at seeing Elise was so palpable that it all but discolored the air around her. Elise wasn’t a stranger to people who hated the sight of her. She ran the least popular administration Hell had seen in centuries, after all. But the intensity of the emotion, coming from such a weak young woman—that was pretty impressive.
“Nice to see you too,” Elise said, turning her attention from Brianna to the woman at her bedside.
Ariane Kavanagh stood, smoothing her skirt over her hips. Her eyes were puffy. “Ma fille.”
Elise didn’t hesitate. She opened her arms, and her mother stepped in to hug her tightly. Ariane was a few inches shorter than her and much skinnier. She sagged in Elise’s arms, clutching at her jacket.
“How did they find you?” Elise asked.
Ariane responded in French. She always had trouble remembering how to speak English when she was upset. “I don’t know. We had recently moved and nobody knew where we were, so I had sent Marion outside to play. Then the sky ripped open. I went outside to look for her, and she was…” She clapped a hand over her mouth, shaking her head.
“Did you see anyone?”
“I’d seen one young man hiking earlier. I don’t think it could have been him. He looked human. He couldn’t have gotten Marion out of the dimension so quickly, and I know she was removed from Earth because none of my tracking spells could find her.”
Elise frowned. “Describe him.”
“Ah…” Ariane lifted her hand above her head, above Elise’s head. “This tall, twenty years old, sort of thin. A black man with curly hair. He had a backpack. He was just a hiker.”
Her heart sank. It could have been a coincidence, but that sounded too much like Benjamin Flynn—and Elise didn’t believe in coincidences.
But why would he take Marion? Had he given her to the angels?
Now Ariane looked alarmed. “Do you think he took her? Do you know him?”
“I can’t be sure,” Elise said.
Anthony and Abel slipped into the room, distracting Elise. Brianna’s angry flush in the bed shifted in a dazzling display of color when she saw who had entered, turning to happiness, anxiety, desire.
No wonder Anthony had freaked out when Elise tried to kiss him.
James was a few feet behind Abel. Five people in the small bedroom was far too many, and it tightened the tension in the air until Elise almost couldn’t breathe.
Everyone hated the sight of James. Most of them wanted him dead. James hated the sight of Ariane, and he wasn’t thrilled to see Brianna either.
The only person who didn’t hate was Abel—he could probably smell the hormones crashing through the room, and he seemed to find it funny. He sat on the edge of the desk, grinning.
“Why do I get all this company?” Brianna asked.
/> “It’s not about you,” Elise said. “Mother, Anthony said that you know how to get to New Eden.”
Ariane nodded, but she hesitated before speaking. “He knows,” she said, still in French. “He knows everything.” Elise’s eyes flicked to James. He was watching her intently.
He knew that Elise had an ethereal Gray for a sister. He knew that Marion had the capacity to become a mage, just like him. And he knew that she was from Metaraon’s bloodline—also just like him.
There was no way James couldn’t be wondering how to use her.
Yet his mind was blank to her. He had put on his warding ring and filled up the cracks so that she couldn’t get the faintest read on his emotions. The fact that he blocked her out couldn’t mean anything good.
Elise responded to her mother in French as well. She’d never quite been fluent, but she had practiced in order to speak to Marion, and now it was a convenient way to keep the others from understanding them. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Anthony believes we should kill him.”
“I know,” Elise said.
Ariane tilted her head to study her. “You won’t allow that, will you?”
“We’ll see.”
“Hey,” Abel said, snapping his fingers between their faces. “Talk English. Don’t be assholes.”
Elise briefly contemplated breaking his hand, but he would have healed too quickly for that to have the impression she wanted. She switched languages smoothly. “Is Araboth the only door you found into New Eden, Mother?” Elise asked.
“Yes. With Brianna’s assistance, I’ve searched thousands of other pathways, but that’s the only one remaining,” Ariane said in English. She was still upset, and her accent was probably too thick for anyone else to understand her, but she was making an effort. “There was one more in Shamain, but it’s been closed.”
“Not closed. Ripped apart.” Elise paced, arms folded tightly over her chest. There wasn’t much room to move. Two steps in each direction before she came up against the others. “I think the angels are trying to sever New Eden from the fabric of the universe so that they can be isolated. It won’t be long before they destroy the Araboth door, too. We’ll have to move fast.”
“Could we try a shortcut?” Anthony asked, sitting on the bed next to Brianna, scooting back so that he was shoulder to shoulder with her against the wall. The closer that they sat together, the murkier their mental signals became, turning to white noise. One of the major benefits of having an aspis. “Araboth had a door that opened in Oymyakon. Russia’s easier to get to than going the other way around.”
“That was a one-way door,” James said. “The only way into Araboth is to go through Coccytus, into Limbo, and find the fissure to the garden.”
“Can you find the fissure?” Elise asked.
James’s eyes darkened. “Possibly, given enough time. But there’s no way we’ll be able to get an entire army through Limbo. The distance is incredible and the environment is hostile to demons. They would be half-dead before the battle began.”
She shut her eyes, massaging her temples. Her head was throbbing. It wasn’t a hunger headache. It felt like her brain had become writhing worms inside of her skull, trying to escape through her eye sockets.
James had a point. Elise remembered how much Heaven had hurt her, and she was one of the more powerful demons. She’d be leading her legion to the slaughter if she tried to get them through Limbo and Araboth before reaching New Eden.
“Okay. So we don’t take the legion,” Elise said. “We’ll go alone.”
Anthony scoffed. “Not to be a pessimist, but even you two aren’t a big enough deal to take a city on your own.”
“But I am,” Abel said.
Everyone turned to look at him except Elise. She had already been thinking the same thing. “Not just James and me. James, me…and Abel.”
“What? Why him?” Brianna asked, shooting a scowl at Abel. She didn’t look at him for long. The scars seemed to make her too nervous. “Because he’s a werewolf?”
Elise turned a startled look on James.
“She can tell the species of everything she meets at a glance,” he explained.
“More like a smell,” Anthony said.
Abel leered, and his teeth looked a little sharper than a human’s should have. “I’m not just any werewolf. I’m the big bad wolf.”
“And werewolves are meant to kill angels,” Elise said, filing that information about Brianna away for later. “Abel chewed through them in Dis without breaking a sweat. With his help, we stand a good chance of getting in to free the pack. Once we have other werewolves, we’ll be far better off than if I managed to get the entire legion into Heaven. We’ll be unstoppable.”
James folded his arms. “Yes. All we have to do is get three people through Limbo and Araboth into the ethereal city, and then survive long enough to save everyone. Brilliant idea.”
“This coming from the guy who thought he’d save the world by turning himself into God,” Abel said with a snort. “Anyway, I can do better than that. Let’s take an army. Let’s take a werewolf army.”
Elise arched an eyebrow. “Do you have one hidden in your pocket?”
“No, but you do. You’ve got cool guys working for you in Hell. Some of those guys got bigger balls than mine, and that’s saying a lot. Let me bite them. I’ll make them shift into werewolves, and we can go into New Eden with a whole new pack.” Abel smiled darkly, and this time, Elise really was sure that his teeth had shifted to fangs. He was thirsty for blood. “Let’s make the angels really regret what they’ve done.”
James helped Ariane load one of the Talamh Coven’s remaining cargo trucks with supplies in awkward silence. Her bag jingled with glass bottles as he lifted it into the truck bed. James’s hands stilled on the leather strap.
“Don’t touch my potions,” Ariane snapped, pushing the bag away from him.
“I’m helping you. I’m not—”
“I know you, James. I know you can’t resist picking apart other witches’ magic. I don’t want you interfering with mine.”
He lifted his hands and stepped back. “Very well. Far be it from me to interfere with your damn potions.”
He had healed the fissure between Earth and Dis on his own, cured a man of his half-demon blood, and reinvented forms of magic that nobody alive had ever seen, yet surely she was depriving him of some magical holy grail by withholding access to her almighty potions.
James shoved a few more boxes into place. Anthony, Brianna, and Ariane were taking the last of the Talamh Coven’s canned food with them. It wouldn’t be enough to last them all the way to Russia, but most of Europe was still intact—they would be able to buy or steal supplies somewhere.
He jerked a tarp over the boxes once they were all situated. He was about to step away when Ariane grabbed his wrist, fixing him with an intent look.
“I know what you must be thinking,” she whispered, desperation in the press of her fingertips. “But Marion is just a child. She’s nothing like Metaraon.”
He shook her off. “You have no clue what I’m thinking.”
“You’re wondering if she’s a mage and why the angels would want her. It doesn’t matter. She’s just a little girl. She’s never known this terrible world you live in.”
“None of us can escape reality, Ariane,” James said. “It catches up with all of us eventually. It’s already caught up with her.”
The truth was that if Marion could perform magecraft, she would need a mentor. It was too dangerous a power to allow her to develop under the sole tutelage of a weak witch like Ariane. But he knew if he said that aloud, it would only validate every terrible thing that Ariane thought—everything that Elise thought, too.
That didn’t mean that he wanted to use her. He wanted to help her.
Of course, he’d only ever wanted to help people.
The door to the cottage swung open and Elise emerged. She was talking with Anthony and Abel—leading them with her ge
stures, holding their attention with her words. He couldn’t hear her at this distance, but James could tell she was talking about the mechanics of converting a large number of werewolves simultaneously. She bared her teeth, pointed at Abel, pointed at Anthony.
“You should have left her alone,” Ariane said softly from behind him. “She deserves better.”
James pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the ache that surged in his chest. “You told me to stay away from her a long time ago. Before she was even alive. Did you know what was going to happen? What the White Ash Coven would do to us?”
Ariane fiddled with the tarp, although it didn’t need to be adjusted again. “I knew what Metaraon intended you to do, but I hoped that you would rise above it. Both of your lives would have been better if you’d never become entangled.”
“I don’t believe that,” James said.
“It’s never too late to rectify our mistakes, James. History will attempt to repeat itself when we fail to learn necessary lessons, but we can always break the cycle.” Her hand slipped up to his shirt pocket. She tucked something in it then stepped back to climb into the truck.
James didn’t move for several seconds, gazing into the bed of the pickup. He could hear Anthony planning a route to Oymyakon with Elise now. He didn’t listen.
Break the cycle.
The words felt like they had lodged themselves into his skull.
He barely felt his fingers as he removed Ariane’s gift from his pocket. It was a piece of paper wrapped around the photo of Elise holding Marion. Queen of Hell, Godslayer, father of all demons, proud sister.
James unfolded the paper. It was a list of names. “Earth. Dis. Malebolge. Coccytus. Limbo. Araboth. New Eden.” She had drawn an arrow between Coccytus and Araboth alongside a single rune.
An ethereal rune.
He leaned into the truck and shoved the paper toward Ariane. “Where did you find this symbol?”
“I dreamed it,” she said, lifting her chin with a look of fierce stubbornness that could have just as easily come from Elise. She was already holding the steering wheel of the pickup like she wanted to drive away right at that moment. “I attempted to cast it myself after I mapped the route to New Eden, but found it impossible. I thought you might be able to make better use of it.”