Torn by Fury

by S. M. Reine

  He peeled his eyes open and found himself in a garden.

  James was resting on his side in brittle yellow grass. The brambles around him had thorns that were longer than his thumb. They looked like they would be able to rip his skin open if he so much as brushed them.

  Very carefully, he rolled onto his back, feeling the comforting press of the scabbard against his spine. He only sat up to look around once he was certain that he was a safe distance from those thorns.

  The brambles were still higher than his head, forming a solid wall that obscured his view of the garden beyond. At least, he thought it had to be the garden—Araboth—though it looked nothing like he remembered. Everything was colorless, almost like Limbo, punctuated only by harsh blacks and sickly yellows.

  Elise was on the ground beside him, still unconscious. The obsidian falchion rested between them.

  He didn’t touch it.

  James struggled to his feet. Beyond the brambles, a hill curved down toward a dry riverbed. Gray roots jutted from hard soil. Skeletal brown vines hung from a crumbling wall. Craters pocked the still-scorched ground, which had never healed from the rain of fire that followed Adam’s murder.

  And the Tree waited beyond.

  Its branches jutted toward the sky like the pleading hands of the flesh gardens, worn down to nothing but skeletal spears. The trunk, wide enough that it could have cradled a city, had been severed into two pieces. Its weight had ripped the roots from the ground and bared its shriveled innards to the slate gray sky.

  It had once been so beautiful. Now it was a graveyard.

  There was no sign of the doorway that the angels must have built to New Eden—at least, not there. James turned away from the sight of the Tree, trying to suppress the powerful feeling of melancholy that threatened to drown him, and kneeled beside Elise.

  Her skin was slick all over, almost rotten-looking. He bit back fear as he peeled apart the sides of her jacket, half-expecting to see that her organs had already extruded through her ribcage. He had examined the body of one demon killed by anathema powder and remembered the horrifying sight of it all too well—he didn’t want to see it on Elise.

  But she was whole.

  He sagged with relief, resting his forehead on his hand. The weight of it all was too much. Returning to Araboth, Elise’s sickness, and Rylie—Lord, Rylie, that poor girl.

  “Adam?” Elise had stirred. Her voice was still that sweet, feminine, too-gentle tone that wasn’t meant to come from her lips.

  “I’m not Adam,” he said harshly. He should have been grateful that she was still alive, but it was hard to feel gratitude at the sight of her like this.

  She sat up gingerly with a hand on James’s knee to steady herself. A smile spread over her colorless face as she looked around the garden. “Oh, I’d thought that we were in Coccytus for some reason. What a strange dream.”

  How could she smile, waking up among brambles?

  James peered into her mind. She didn’t see the thorns or the dead grass. She saw the garden from her memory—Eden, her first home, before Adam and the Tree had been imprisoned in Araboth. She saw flitting butterflies and roses the color of blood.

  He shook his head, clearing his vision of hers. She was beyond confused. She was completely delusional.

  “Are we alone?” she asked, getting up onto her knees. She plucked at her jacket. “What am I wearing?”

  James grabbed her by the shoulders. “Wake up, Elise. Push Eve out. This isn’t you, and I need—” He cut off, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. He swallowed hard. “I can’t do this without you.”

  “Where did our children go?” Elise asked.

  He was beginning to loathe that vapid tone.

  “Dammit, Eve, listen to me,” James snapped. “Those beloved children of yours just stabbed a girl to death! An innocent, twenty-one year old child. Rylie Gresham. Look within Elise’s mind. You know her. You know she did nothing to deserve that!”

  Doubt flitted across Elise’s features. She turned inward, thinking hard.

  It was strange seeing his kopis’s memories filtered through another woman’s mind. Eve picked them apart delicately. Fighting against Rylie in Northgate the first time that they had met. Meeting with her in Las Vegas and hunting hybrids together. Rylie crying in the shower after she ripped a hybrid apart with her teeth, and Elise comforting her.

  A dozen memories. Elise’s affection glowed through them.

  And then he saw a recent memory—Elise pressing her hand against Rylie’s stomach and detecting a second heartbeat.

  Crushing grief rolled over Eve, so powerful that James’s heart nearly stopped beating.

  “The worst sin,” Eve whispered.

  They had stabbed the girl in the stomach. They had known that Rylie was pregnant with another of her kind—and the angels had deliberately killed them both.

  It hadn’t just been an assassination of the Alpha. It had been an attempt to exterminate the species.

  “My Lord,” James said.

  Tears rolled freely down Elise’s cheeks. She was beautiful when she cried. Probably because it was such a rare sight.

  Now that Elise’s memories had subsided, Eve’s vision of the garden was flickering, failing. The delusion wasn’t strong enough. She was starting to see the burned husk of Araboth, and it ached through the bond. James felt his eyes burning.

  “I never thought they would have done it,” she said. “I always told them that it was the one rule we don’t violate. New life is sacred. Infants, children, expectant women—when they went to war with Adam, that was the one sin I forbade them to commit above all others. And they obeyed. They spared innocent life.”

  “Not this one.”

  “They must be sick.” Tears dripped off her chin. She didn’t make any effort to wipe them away. “Something must have happened to them.”

  “You’ve been gone a long time. They simply don’t obey you now. New masters.”

  “But it must be one of my children leading them,” she whispered, as if it were the most horrible part of all. “My angels are perfect. They would obey nothing less than that perfection. Except…” She covered her mouth with trembling fingers. She finally looked at James and saw him—really saw him. “Who are you? Who am I?”

  Finally.

  “I’m James Faulkner,” he said. “I’m a witch. A mage, actually. Descended from Metaraon.”

  Brief warmth radiated between them. “He had children. Wonderful.”

  If only you knew.

  “It’s been more than two thousand years since you died.” He felt ridiculous for talking to this figment of Elise’s imagination as though she were real, but she was finally listening to him, and he wasn’t going to let go until she regained her sanity. “You’re in the body of a woman named Elise Kavanagh. I’m her aspis—which is to say, her partner. Aspides would have been after your time.” He hesitated, then said, “She’s a demon.”

  She looked down at herself again. “Oh my.”

  “You’re not really who you think you are. Elise is sick. You’re sick. You only believe that you’re Eve.”

  “Why would she think that she’s me?” Elise asked.

  So close, and yet so far. “She was trapped in the Tree. She acquired something during that time—your memories, a piece of your soul, I’m not sure. But you’ve been inside of her ever since.”

  “Trapped in the Tree.” She turned to look at it. She saw the Tree as it was now, and a fresh tear tracked down her cheek.

  “Let her go,” James said.

  Elise ripped her gaze from the Tree and searched his face with her eyes, looking for some hint that he wasn’t Adam.

  He didn’t look anything like the First Man. She just couldn’t see it.

  “What are you going to do to them?” Elise asked. “My children?”

  “We have a small werewolf army. We’re going to kill them.” He blew out a breath. “We were going to kill them, but we’ve lost the werewolves—they w
ere left behind in Coccytus. I have no idea what to do now. Not without Elise. You’re useless to me.”

  The words burned her like her sweat on the back of her neck. Her brow furrowed.

  “There’s a way to kill them without the help of the shifter spirits.” She clutched James’s hands in hers. “My children could never have hurt me. If they see me—if they believe this body is mine—they won’t be capable of fighting back. Tell your Elise—tell her that if she will suffer the indignity of my dominance for a little longer, I will force the angels to stand down.”

  “Stand down? Stand down?”

  “And then I won’t stop her when she kills them with the body we share,” Elise went on softly.

  James was shaking. “You don’t share this body, damn it. This is Elise’s body. You’re just some—fragment of a memory, something that possessed her when your damn husband took her captive and forced her body into the Tree.”

  “I believe I understand. So many things have gone wrong since I died. Maybe they were never right at all.” Her hands slid up his arms, his shoulders, cupped his cheeks. “Promise me you will fix this.”

  Whether it was because of Elise’s eyes looking at him like that, or Eve’s pain reflected in her features, James found himself unable to refuse. “Anything I can do, I will,” he said. “I will fight to make this right. Just let her go.”

  She sagged. Collapsed to the grass. A silent acquiescence.

  The garden was quiet.

  Elise didn’t immediately wake up. He rearranged the veils to cover as much of her skin as possible, then left her to look for his portal from Coccytus.

  James couldn’t find the faintest hint of his magic—not in the place that they had landed, not in the outskirts of the garden, and not on the bank of the dry riverbed that had once sheltered Mnemosyne.

  His portal was gone. Abel and the werewolves wouldn’t be following them into Araboth.

  And the only way out of the garden would be to go through to the next world.

  James didn’t find the door to New Eden, either, but he didn’t have the desire to look very hard. He found himself returning to Elise’s side where she slept among the brambles. She was still unconscious. Her breathing was shallow, her skin slick.

  He took the dagger from her boot and clenched his fist around the blade. The cutting edge bit into his palm.

  Before the blood could hit the ground, he moved his hand over her lips. It oozed down his fingers and dripped onto her mouth.

  Three drops struck before she stirred, eyes sliding underneath the lids as if caught in a dream. Her lips parted.

  He squeezed his fist again, urging more blood into her mouth.

  Elise’s eyes opened.

  “Stop,” she said, jerking away, wiping a hand over her chin and smearing the blood.

  “Drink it.” James pushed his hand toward her.

  “I already told you—”

  “Drink.”

  She was too weak to push him away when he forced his palm over her mouth, using his other arm around her shoulders to lock her into place. For an instant, she didn’t react. She only glared at him over his hand. But then her tongue massaged against the wound, her throat worked, and she drank.

  Within seconds, her skin was a little bit brighter, her hair silkier. He dropped his hand. His blood left her lips cherry red.

  “What happened?” Elise asked.

  He didn’t want to have to tell her, so instead, he opened his mind and let her see into his memories. He showed her the skirmish against the angels. He showed her Abel kneeling over Rylie’s body, and her flesh turning to obsidian.

  Elise shoved him out of her mind.

  “I don’t want to see that,” she said, turning from him. Her jaw was trembling.

  “I’m sorry, Elise. I know you were friends.”

  She didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. The iron-clad walls separating her mind from his said more than enough. Her entire body had gone rigid.

  Elise didn’t move for a long time. He wanted to try to console her, but it was impossible when she refused to show her emotions, much less acknowledge they existed. But even though she had blocked him out, her emotions were strong enough that they leaked through around the edges.

  Her heart was shattering, and it was breathtakingly painful.

  “She was pregnant,” Elise finally said.

  “I know,” James said.

  “Abel doesn’t. She hadn’t told him. She wanted to wait until they could enjoy it.” Her voice was dead.

  “Elise…”

  She pushed to her feet, stalking away from him. He hesitated. He wanted to give her room to be alone, but not here—not in the garden where she had been imprisoned. It was too much.

  James picked up the sword and followed her.

  Elise hadn’t gone far. She stood on the other side of the brambles, looking down on the severed Tree and the dry riverbed, expression grim. She didn’t remember anything that Eve had seen. It was like she was experiencing the dead garden anew.

  “I can’t protect anyone,” she said. “I lost Marion to New Eden. I let Rylie die. And this…I did this. Everything beautiful in this world gets destroyed because of me.”

  “Do you regret what happened to Araboth?”

  “No. But this is what I always do. This…death.” When she turned to face him again, her mask had cracked, exposing the pain that she felt within. Her walls weren’t enough to hold it back. She was losing control. “Why did you turn her into obsidian like Seth?”

  “Benjamin told me to do it,” James said.

  “Benjamin? When?”

  “In Coccytus.”

  Elise rubbed her temples. “I don’t think Benjamin is Benjamin. Or he’s changed somehow, but I don’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Benjamin is somehow at the center of this. If he told me to cut Rylie like that, then there must have been a reason for it.”

  “But is it a good reason? Or is he just manipulating us?”

  He got the impression that it wasn’t a question that Elise expected to have an answer.

  Her walls were crumbling. Grief seeped through. And he could hear one name like a constant undercurrent in her thoughts: Rylie.

  James couldn’t know she was hurting like this and keep from touching her. He stepped close. She didn’t move away.

  Elise shook her head, again and again. “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you and I don’t think I even like you anymore, and I don’t want—I can’t—I just need this right now.” She curled her fists in his shirt and pulled him toward her. “Just for a minute.”

  His throat was burning. “You can take all the time you need.”

  “I can’t,” Elise said. “There’s no time left.” But she wrapped her arms around him and rested her cheek against his chest, and she didn’t push him away when he returned the embrace.

  He held her for a long moment, wishing that it would stretch into infinity.

  It didn’t matter if they stood in a dead garden—the place that both of their destinies had been written out before they were born. All that mattered was that he held her for this moment. Her frail body, barely protected from the harsh gray light of Heaven by veils, slender and fading.

  Unfortunately, Elise was right. There was no time left. The angels had to know they were coming.

  “Eve said that there’s still a chance we can defeat the angels in New Eden,” James said, chin resting atop her head. He hesitated, trying to decide if he wanted to tell her the rest, and what that would cost. There didn’t seem to be any alternative. He was about to lose her, one way or another. The very least he could do was let her go out fighting. “If the angels think that you’re Eve, they can’t hurt you.”

  “I know. I’ve tried. Her presence isn’t strong enough to make them surrender.”

  “She offered to take over completely,” he said. “And she said—well, she said that she would allow you to kill them through her.”

  Eli
se went very still, as though she had stopped breathing. “Eve said that?” Her fingers tightened on his lower back, digging into his spine. “Her children are—were—everything to her. She forgave everything that they ever did, and they did plenty of awful things. They burned city-states.”

  “Yet they always obeyed Eve’s law. Now they’ve assassinated Rylie. Because they committed the greatest sin, she’s prepared for you to kill them all.”

  She was quiet, but her thoughts were churning. She recalled the first time she had compelled Nash, pretending to be Eve. James hadn’t realized how completely she could control the angels under the right circumstances. With Eve’s cooperation, it could be devastating.

  “It might work,” she admitted.

  He took a deep breath and pushed on. “You could cast another glamor, like the one you used to disguise yourself in the Palace of Dis, but design it to make yourself look like Eve.”

  “I won’t be myself at all anymore.”

  He inhaled the scent of her hair. Even though she smelled like sulfur and blood and sickness, there was still something distinctly Elise about her scent—the same smell that he used to have on his clothes when they lived together. “Eve can take your mind and body and you will still be yourself. You’re so much more than she ever was.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re trying to convince me that you care.”

  James stepped back, prying her hands off of him. “How can you think that I don’t?”

  “You’ve always just been out to get something,” Elise said. “It’s never been about us.”

  He couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. After everything that he had done—and everything they had done together—could she really still believe that it had all been artifice? He searched her eyes, but all he saw inside of her was pain, physical and otherwise. She was beyond rationality. Far beyond forgiveness.

  “Tell me you don’t really think that,” James said. “Please.”

  “I should make the glamor before the angels find us.” She turned away.

  He caught her wrist. “I need you to feed before you do anything else. It was a mistake to enter Coccytus weak and hungry. To go into New Eden like this is suicide.”