by S. M. Reine
“Big deal. We skip a whole dimension. We’ve still got to get all the way down to the place they make snowballs in Hell before you can even cast that spell,” Abel said.
“You don’t realize how undesirable passage through Limbo is,” James said grimly. “I need a few things. Stephanie, for one. I’ll also require a few supplies that I left behind in Northgate as well.”
“Fine. I’ll take you.” Elise turned to Abel and Rylie. “Got the biting under control?”
Abel grinned. His teeth gleamed brightly in the dim tower. “I think I can manage.”
Elise grabbed James’s arm. Rylie wanted to ask her again to think about exorcising the werewolves, but before she could speak, Elise and her aspis vanished.
Sixteen
THE WORLD DISTORTED around James. The black tower vanished and was instantly replaced by a grassy field ringed by pine trees. The cloudy sky above was tinted blue—a pleasant, healthy Earth color. All the ash from the fissure was rapidly being washed away by spring storms. The world was healing and everything was beautiful.
Almost everything.
He sank to the ground, riding the nausea from switching dimensions. For once, he didn’t start throwing up. The overwhelming sickness wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as everything else he felt.
Elise stood beside him, stretching out her limbs as though preparing for a fight. She was unfazed as ever by the change in dimensions. He watched her, looking for signs of the sickness she was hiding. She looked fine at the moment. A little tired, but war would do that to anyone.
He had gotten adjusted to the idea of an immortal Elise rather quickly. Considering that he had spent the previous fifteen years afraid she would die any time she walked out the door, it was sort of a refreshing change. She walked among the greatest gods and demons myth had ever known, and he felt comforted knowing that she had become one of them. Relatively safe. Incapable of death.
Now he had to try to wrap his mind around the fact that she could die again.
Not simply that she could die—but the fact that she was dying.
Elise turned to face him. Still alive, for the moment. Still obviously uninterested in telling James the truth. “You good?” Elise asked.
“Yes,” James said. “Fine.”
She started walking, leading him down the hill. They’d materialized in the forest behind St. Philomene’s Cathedral. He could see the church in the valley below.
Elise walked ahead of him, and he stared at her back hard enough that he noticed that the neck of her shirt was fraying. She was wearing her hair down to try to hide the black smudges on the cloth and the wounds her own sweat was leaving.
Frustration took control of his senses, shoving every last hint of patience into the darkest recesses of his mind.
Dammit, he could fix this.
He couldn’t keep silent anymore.
James grabbed her arm and dragged her off the path, away from the trail and the church, where Stephanie wouldn’t be able to see them if she stepped outside. He pushed Elise behind an outcropping of rocks. A stream trickled down the mossy slope in a weak imitation of the waterfall by the werewolf sanctuary.
She shook his hand off. “What’s your problem this time?” Elise didn’t sound angry. Just tired.
“Are you just giving up?”
Elise studied him with her hands on her hips, her mind brushing against his, probing him for some idea of what he might be talking about.
He didn’t hold back. He showed her the gray-tinted sweat he could see on her forehead now, the holes in her shirt, and Anthony’s confession in Ireland.
She shuttered her thoughts to his. “Have you thought about what happens after this? After I’ve saved Marion and the pack. After the angels are no longer a threat. After I’ve pulled every last human out of Hell and leave the demons to the fires.”
James hadn’t let himself give any thought to what might happen if they achieved their every goal. It seemed like such an unlikely eventuality that it wasn’t worth contemplating.
She wiped her forehead dry, letting her eyes fall closed. “There’s no fucking way that I get to retire again. I’m not going to be an accountant. I’m not going back to college for a second degree. I’m not running a dance studio, or…I don’t know. Something else will happen. There will always be battles to fight.”
“Elise.”
“If it’s not the angels, it’ll be someone else. Belphegor’s still out there and he’s not the only asshole with a grudge. It’ll always be something. The Union. Other kopides. Some demon in some corner of Hell I’ve never even heard of.”
“Possibly, but—”
“This only ends for me when I die,” Elise said. “And we’ve always known that I wasn’t going to die an old woman.”
“Those threats will exist whether or not you succumb to poison. The difference is that you won’t be here to fight them.” Helpless anger burned in the pit of his chest, crawled up the back of his throat. “Are you suicidal?”
“I don’t have to want to kill myself to know when something’s inevitable. My time’s up. I’ve got enough life in me to finish this shit with New Eden. After that, it’s someone else’s problem.”
“I can heal you.”
Elise smirked mirthlessly. She’d obviously been waiting for him to get to that point. The suggestion had been waiting between them, lurking like a land mine with a hair trigger. “At long last, you’ve got a plausible excuse and a method to suck the demon out of me. Dreams do come true.”
“Don’t be such a damn child, Elise. You’re sick and there’s a way to fix it.” He took her hand, gripping it tightly. It almost felt like she was going to vanish if he didn’t anchor her in the forest, feet on the ground and skin against skin. “You never asked to be a demon. Yatam forced it upon you. You can’t tell me that restoring your humanity isn’t something you’ve contemplated more than once.”
“It’s not,” Elise said.
“But—”
“I don’t want to be human again.” She didn’t have any trouble meeting his eyes. There was no hint of lie in the words.
How could she care so little about something that James contemplated constantly? “I’d just assumed…”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe you should have asked me instead of getting your heart set on the idea that I’ve been waiting for someone to make me human again.”
“How could you want to be like…this?” He gestured at her. The leather and hair and eyes.
“I almost died from a parasitic infection once, when I was human. It used to take weeks to heal a broken bone. I don’t have bones to break anymore. Other demons can’t kill me. I can swallow hybrids whole. I never would have been able to survive against them as a human.”
“You neglect to mention that you’re vulnerable to light and electricity, neither of which are exactly in scarce supply in the modern world.”
“Two things, James. Two things instead of a thousand.” Her fingers tightened. “I can phase between worlds. I’m part of the shadows. Give me a little darkness, I can kill just about anything by consuming them. This is power, James, real power.”
“And it isn’t free,” James said.
“It comes at a cost, but it’s a cost I don’t mind paying.” Her thumb brushed over the back of his hand, tracing the line of his knuckles. “I don’t want to be human. Weak. Helpless to save the people who need it. I need this.”
“You’re not responsible for the whole world,” he said. “Wars were fought and won before you were ever born.”
“I couldn’t watch everything continue and know that I’m helpless to affect it,” Elise said. “Listen to me. I don’t want to be healed. I don’t want you to make me a human again. I’m going to die strong instead of living weak, and I won’t debate it with you.”
But couldn’t she see what good she could do for people without needing to harness the power of evil?
It wasn’t being a demon that had crafted such tight bonds with her friends, like R
ylie and Lincoln. The humans she liberated from Hell hadn’t volunteered to become werewolves at her request because she was a demon. And it definitely wasn’t the demon in her that had made her form a family with her mother and Marion.
It was Elise. Just Elise.
He couldn’t let her sacrifice that.
“Think about it,” James said. “Please, give it some consideration before choosing to throw your life away.”
“I’ll think about it all right. I’ll think about it every last moment I have my sanity.” She started to step away, over the stream, but he caught her wrist.
“We’re not done discussing this.”
Elise just shook her head. “Let’s get Stephanie.” When she tried to move away again, his hands dropped to her hips. James pulled her toward him. She took two steps before stopping, digging her heels in. “If you think that I’m—”
He pulled the steel falchion out of his spine scabbard. Elise’s eyes widened a fraction. He had been carrying it for months—ever since they escaped the garden—though he seldom had cause to draw it.
James contemplated the weapon. Her reflection in the engraved blade looked semi-transparent, as though she were already drifting away. “You won’t make it through Araboth like this. You’re already weakening far too much.”
“Are you attempting to threaten me?”
He responded by pulling the neck of his shirt aside. He held his breath as he sliced the sharp edge of the falchion over his skin. He hadn’t been aiming for the scar on his left pectoral, but he bisected it.
The blade was sharp enough that it didn’t hurt immediately. He felt the pressure first, and the sweep of adrenaline followed, making his skin rise with goosebumps. The sting was the last sensation.
Thick blood welled from the wound and dripped down his chest.
Elise’s gaze had gone sharp. She fixated on the blood, her body incredibly still. She wasn’t even breathing.
When she finally managed to speak, she sounded choked. “James. What are you doing?”
“I’m offering blood to you. Just blood.”
She was still for so long that James’s accelerated healing slowed the flow. He lifted the sword to cut again. She grabbed the hilt to stop him.
“Is this your way of trying to manipulate me into doing what you want?” Her accusing words were more painful than the bite of the sword. “Healing me would generate a hell of a lot more power than healing Lincoln did. You could do anything with that. You could get into Eden and the Origin.”
He wanted to be hurt that she thought he could have any ulterior motive more important than saving her life, but she was right. He could do anything with the power he made healing her.
“This is not an attempt at manipulating you. It’s just an offer to help,” James said. He kept his mind open so she could tell he wasn’t lying. It didn’t change anything.
She released him and backed away. Elise was fading from him. He had to say something. Anything.
“If I had thought about what happens after we finish this battle, I would have imagined that we would be together for it,” James said. “The time I spent in Limbo—the time I’ve spent since then, trying to find my son, trying to find myself—it’s showed me that there isn’t a life for me without you. Forget the world’s needs. Forget demons and angels and gods. I need you to survive this. If that means that I need to feed you—”
“No,” Elise interrupted, a little too forcefully. She turned away. Her back was hunched, as though she was trying to shield herself from an attack that wasn’t coming. “Even if I fed now, that’s not going to save me. Only one thing’s going to do that and I’m not going to allow you to do it.”
He reached out to touch her shoulder. “Please believe me, Elise, I’m not—”
“No,” she said again, jerking away from his hand. “Can you seriously tell me that you wouldn’t use the power generated by my healing to get into Eden if you could?”
His mouth opened and closed wordlessly. “I’m not—that isn’t the reason, Elise, and it’s not—”
“Exactly,” Elise said.
He jammed the falchion back into his scabbard. The blood cooled as it dripped down his chest and the ridge of his ribcage. “What do I have to do to make you believe me?”
“There’s nothing you can do, James. I’m not falling for your bullshit. Never again.” She hugged her arms around herself as she backed away from him, black eyes smoldering. “If you think you need me in your life, then you’d better prepare to be really fucking lonely.”
Rylie hadn’t expected any of the guards to be brave enough to approach Abel’s hulking black wolf, much less offer up an arm to be bitten. The fact that Aniruddha broke away from the others without a heartbeat of hesitation impressed Rylie. A lot.
“Is the arm the best place?” she asked Abel, one arm hooked over his neck. He was warm and reassuring against her side. “You’ve got awfully big jaws. It’d be way too easy to just…um…”
She didn’t want to say “rip his arm off” where Aniruddha could hear it.
“Shoulder?” the man suggested, dropping to one knee to give Abel easy access.
The werewolf nosed his arm. He wanted to bite the bicep. Okay.
“He has to break the skin,” Rylie began to say, trying to prepare Aniruddha.
Before she could finish, Abel clamped his mouth down on the man’s upper arm. The smell of blood flooded the air.
With a cry, the man tried to jerk back. Rylie caught his shoulder before he could move more than an inch. “Careful!” she warned. “You’ll make the damage worse.”
Aniruddha was sweating, but he nodded. Abel carefully released his jaws.
The remaining wound was a ring of tooth marks, just deep enough that it bled. It was far from the worst that a werewolf could do. Still pretty bad, considering that Abel was an Alpha and that bite wouldn’t heal with super-speed like a normal injury.
Aniruddha muttered something in a language Rylie didn’t recognize. She was pretty sure they were curse words. Some things were universal.
“I’ve got bandages,” Neuma said, hanging back with the other demons by the stairs. Rylie had forgotten that they were there. Some of those demons were watching with way too much interest.
Rylie shook her head. “I don’t think we’ll need that.” She touched Aniruddha’s arm just above the bite wound. He felt feverish. “Are you ready for me to change you?”
“How much is it going to hurt?” he asked.
“It shouldn’t hurt at all with my help, but it won’t feel good, either. It’ll be like getting your teeth pulled after a hit of Novocaine. Except, you know, all over your body.”
“But then I’ll be like him,” Aniruddha said, gazing at Abel.
“Not exactly. The change is mostly mental the first couple times. You’ll be stronger and have a hard time thinking like a person. Other than that, there won’t be a huge shift. The full wolf thing comes in about three months.”
Sharing that information with him sent her back to her memories of her first three months. Seth had helped her through it. He wasn’t an Alpha werewolf, so he hadn’t been able to keep it from hurting. He’d only been able to keep her from hurting others by chaining her.
These wouldn’t be the first new werewolves Rylie had helped through the change since then, but they were the first she’d allowed to be made.
Aniruddha nodded. “Do it.” He looked almost bored by the idea, but she could smell his terror. It was incredible how well he hid his emotions.
Rylie pressed her hand to his heart and summoned the strength of the Alpha. The wolf rose easily at her call. It had been suppressed too long, and it hated being forced to the background. The wolf didn’t understand that Rylie couldn’t change without killing her baby. Werewolves had never been meant to reproduce like that in the first place.
She could feel it asking to be let out.
Not yet, Rylie thought. Later.
Her wolf recognized something faint withi
n Aniruddha—a tiny spark. She had never tried to change a new wolf like this. She was surprised that spark existed a few seconds after the bite. But there it was, flickering away, just waiting to be fanned to life.
She seized it and pulled.
He dropped to his knees with a groan. His spine twisted, jaw muscles straining. “No,” he grunted.
“Don’t fight it. Just let it take you.”
He kept shaking his head with jerking motions. His hands gripped the floor, veins cording the backs of his hands and forearms. His shoulders twisted as fresh blood flowed from the bite wound.
Her wolf called to his. Come.
The scents in the tower changed from brimstone and smoke to something more familiar—pine, frozen rivers, and moist soil. Rylie smelled Gray Mountain. She smelled pack.
Aniruddha’s head snapped back. His lips peeled away from his teeth to bare bloody gums. His teeth were loosening in his jaw, and one by one, they fell from his skull to skitter across the floor.
The waiting men backed away, like those teeth were grenades.
“It’s okay,” Rylie said, extending her hands toward them as though trying to calm frightened animals, which they would literally become very soon. “This is normal.”
Aniruddha’s scream drowned out her last word.
“Normal?” asked Hank. “This is normal?”
It was actually a lot better than normal. Aniruddha howled, but she could tell he wasn’t in as much pain as Rylie had been, in the beginning. He wasn’t bleeding as much. He didn’t react to the muffled popping of bones in his face.
So yeah. Normal.
And it only took a few minutes, too. Aniruddha finally grew calm and rose to his feet.
He was more of a wolf than she’d expected at this stage. Shaggy fur covered his shoulders. Claws jutted from his fingertips, and his jaw had extended to make room for the fangs. His eyes were already gold.
And unlike Rylie in the early days, he was calm. He panted from the exertion of the change, but he didn’t fight or try to attack.
She held her hand out and he nuzzled it, acknowledging her as Alpha.