by S. M. Reine
“It’s suicide no matter what,” Elise said. “You just want to try to convince me to let you heal me.”
Frustration swelled in him, and he tamped it down. How could she still think that of him? “It’s not an attempt at coercion. You only need to survive long enough to return Marion and the pack.” And I need you to survive long enough to come back to me.
She hesitated for so long that he thought she was going to refuse. But finally, reluctantly, she nodded. “Let me do the cutting.”
Elise drew a knife. After a moment’s consideration, she pressed it underneath his jaw, almost like she was trying to shave him. Her cut was shallower and long. It stung. He had to bend over to allow her to reach his throat.
She latched her lips onto the wound and drank.
That definitely hurt.
She drew the blood from the cut with caresses of her tongue and hard suction that made the wound feel like it stabbed all the way into his chest. There was no pleasure in this—not for him. But she wrapped her hands around his neck, pulling herself against him, and satisfaction radiated from her as she devoured.
It seemed to take eons, though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. When she finally stopped drinking and dropped back onto flat feet, his blood was nothing more than a lipstick-smear at the corner of her mouth. No waste.
Her eyes were lidded. “Angel blood. Sometimes I forget where you come from.”
“Is it good enough?” he asked, pressing his fingers to the cut.
She wiped the blood from her lips and sucked it off her thumb. The drinking hadn’t aroused him, but that one small gesture did. “It’s good enough,” Elise said with a faint smile. “It’s very good.” She pulled one of the veils off her neck, wetted it with her tongue, and dabbed at his injuries. “I left a mark. You look like you were attacked by a giant leech.”
“It’s worth it. You don’t look like you’re on death’s doorstep anymore,” James said. Not quite, anyway. The slick shine had left her skin. She still didn’t look like she was prepared to fight a city of angels alone.
Elise took her time cleaning him, and he got the distinct impression that she was choosing not to hurry. He couldn’t blame her. Now that he wasn’t actively bleeding, there was nowhere he’d rather be than standing next to that dry riverbed, alone with Elise.
And now they would have to change her into another woman.
She stretched up onto her toes and kissed him gently. The taste repulsed him, but this was who she had become—maybe who she had always been. Elise didn’t come separately from her violent quirks. Blood was love to her, love and sex and every kind of intimacy that she wanted.
Even so, she was gentle for that moment. A moment that ended quickly.
“Thank you,” she said, winding the veil around her neck again. “It doesn’t change my mind about being healed. But thank you.”
“I didn’t feed you because I thought it would change anything.”
Elise’s smile was genuine and brief.
“I think I believe you.”
Elise drew the glamor using the ash at the bottom of a crater. James guided her through the marks she could use, giving her the word in ancient vo-ani, but she was the one who picked the characteristics that would make her look like Eve.
After all of her practice, Elise had become a competent warlock. Easily as good as any of the witches he had worked alongside in his covens—perhaps better.
He only needed to intervene to add a couple minor modifications. He showed her how to weave the illusion tighter, how to make it tangible, forming a shield that would protect her skin from New Eden’s light.
Elise did the rest alone.
She really didn’t need him anymore.
James walked away to let her finalize the spell, unwilling to watch her change herself into Eve when he wasn’t confident he’d see her in her real skin again.
He sat on the edge of Mnemosyne, legs hanging over the edge, and pulled the photograph out of his shirt pocket. He stared at it without really seeing Elise’s smile, the nose and mouth she shared with the toddler, the eyes that Marion had gotten from her angel father.
That little girl was in New Eden. This wasn’t about the werewolf pack, or petty revenge, or because what the angels had done was wrong. It was all for her sister.
It had to be worth it.
“What is that?”
James hadn’t realized that Elise was done. She stood behind him, cupping the glamor rune in one hand. He considered hiding the photo from her, but it seemed pointless now. He handed the picture to her without explanation.
The faintest hint of a smile flickered over her lips. “Nice shot.”
“Indeed.” He studied her expression. She looked at the picture with fondness that he hadn’t thought Elise was capable of showing toward anyone but her dog. “You’re close to Marion.”
“I visited as often as I could. It seemed like the right thing to do.” Elise traced her thumbnail over the photo again. “It was often weeks before I could see Marion again, but she was always happy to see me.” She folded the picture and handed it back to him without asking where he had gotten it.
He opened his mouth to remark on Marion’s bright blue eyes, then thought better of it. It wasn’t a compliment to note how much she looked like her father, Metaraon.
But he couldn’t keep himself from saying, “She looks like both of us.” That little hint of angel blood that Marion and James shared, mingled with Ariane’s bone structure, made her a strange mix of Elise and James.
If they’d been capable of having children, they might have looked like Marion.
“I guess she does,” Elise said. She didn’t make that sound like a compliment.
He tucked the photo into his pocket. “Are you ready?”
Elise rolled the rune over the backs of her fingers, considering it with the same expression she might have while carrying a rat. “Yeah. I can feel Eve inside of me. I don’t think she really went away. It’s like…I think she’s just standing back, waiting for my permission.”
“It’s not really Eve,” James said. “It’s just a collection of Eve’s memories that you got from the Tree. It’s not her.”
“It’s not? I don’t know, James. I really don’t know.”
He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. She was warming up again. His blood had made her stronger, but not by much. If she felt Eve taking over again, then it was just the anathema powder getting the better of her.
And he was supposed to stand back and watch Elise succumb.
“Let’s find the door to New Eden,” James said heavily.
The door to New Eden had been built among the massive roots of the Tree. Each was as wide as a city block, the bark dry and flaking. The white stone arch looked out of place among the garden’s destruction—the one thing that was pristine. It glowed gently, though it wasn’t active yet; there was no view of New Eden between the columns.
“It must be closed as a safety precaution,” James said, sliding down the root to stand in front of the gateway. “They don’t intend to send any more angels out—they’re just waiting for the survivors of the battle to return.”
He stood on the other side of the gate and watched Elise stroll toward him. She was distorted by the rippling air between the columns. The veils hid every inch of her skin, but he could tell she looked angry just by her eyes peering through the slit.
A glow deeper underneath the Tree caught his eye. He followed it down the path and realized that there were black cables running just underneath the ground, connecting the gate to another piece of ethereal work that he’d never seen before. It seemed to be a machine: a collection of large stone gears bound together by magic.
“What is that?” James asked.
“I saw a machine like it in Shamain.” Elise circled it with a grim expression. “They used it to sever the connection between Shamain and New Eden. They must be preparing to break Araboth off, too. But why aren’t they guarding this on
e?”
“Wait.” He stepped up to the machine, kneeling to get a closer look at the runes crawling underneath the cogs. “These are warlock runes. I thought that only you and Belphegor knew how to cast that kind of magic.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“So Belphegor is colluding with the angels?”
“I don’t think so. Aquiel and Abraxas were, but Belphegor had his own plans,” Elise said. James reached out to touch the machine. “Don’t. I messed with the last one and it turned on. If this is the last door to New Eden and we shut it down, we’ll never be able to get Marion out.”
But was that the worst of the consequences? The link between worlds was already so tenuous. There was a reason that it took a powerful witch like Nathaniel to manipulate them.
If the angels permanently severed the connections between dimensions with brute force, James couldn’t imagine the results—but he knew it wouldn’t be good.
“We can’t let them activate this one,” Elise said.
“I agree completely.” He pulled one of his gloves off and returned to the gate, pressing his hand to one column. The symbols ringing the base illuminated at his touch.
Elise followed suit. Even as a demon, she had never lost the ethereal mark that Adam had given her.
With both of them touching the gate, it opened.
A shimmering curtain of light parted, exposing New Eden’s gleaming towers on the other side. James could still see Elise through that light. The glow reflected in her black irises, and he realized that the sclera had turned yellow and bloodshot.
He pretended not to notice.
“Let’s go,” James said.
She stepped around the gate and put a hand on his chest, stopping him. “You’re not coming.”
“What? Why not?”
“They know you can cast magecraft. They’re already looking for you. I’m not going to hand you over to them.” She jerked a thumb at the machine. “You should defend that thing anyway. Kill anyone that comes back to activate it.”
But then there was nothing left to do but let her leave.
James gazed at her helplessly, trying to memorize her face. She may have looked sick, but her features were still hers.
He wanted to tell her so many things that she would never believe.
I never wanted to hurt you. I have always loved you. I thought everything I did was for both of us.
Instead, he drew the steel-bladed falchion. “Here.” He tried to hand her the steel falchion. “It seems right that you should take both.”
“I haven’t fought with both of them in years.” She pushed it back to him. “Keep that one. It’s yours.”
James clenched his jaw but nodded, sheathing it on his spine scabbard. “Very well.”
She unfurled the glamor rune in her hand, letting the energy swell until it filled the air around her. He thought about telling her to stop, or hamstringing the spell before it could take hold. But he remained frozen and watched as the glamor settled over her.
Her skin darkened. Her hair became lighter, softer. Her eyes paled to the same shade of blue as James’s. Her features shifted and her stance weakened, though she looked inches taller.
A moment later, Eve stood in front of James. The spell had been executed flawlessly. Truly impressive magic on Elise’s part.
He couldn’t see her like that. He turned away to gaze at New Eden instead.
Her hand settled on his back between his shoulder blades. He didn’t turn. Instead, she stepped around him, cupping his cheeks in her hands. James held still as she kissed him gently.
She didn’t kiss like Elise. She kissed like he imagined Eve must have. It was almost maternal—gentle, loving, and worst of all, forgiving. “Thank you, son of Metaraon.”
Elise was already gone.
“Make sure she comes back,” James said, though he knew it was a ridiculous request.
She smiled. Even he had to admit that it was beautiful on her.
When she turned to the gate, he thought he could almost see the faint outline of wings at her back. It was only then that he realized she was already holding the obsidian falchion—a cruel, jagged weapon that looked wrong in Eve’s delicate hands.
The vision of New Eden within the gate shimmered as she stepped in. A wind stirred the otherwise still air, blowing the scent of apples over him.
Every fiber of James’s being wanted to stop her.
He didn’t have a choice but to let her go.
Two more steps, and she was gone.
The growing breeze from the doorway made a piece of paper flutter from his pocket. He snagged it before it could be carried off into the brambles. It was the photograph of Elise holding her little sister on her hip, smiling down at the curly-haired child that looked so much like her.
Everything beautiful in this world gets destroyed. That was what Elise had said about her influence.
“Not everything,” James said to the doorway. She hadn’t destroyed herself—yet.
He did have a choice.
He didn’t have to let Elise sacrifice herself, and he would be damned if he allowed her to die because of stubborn pride.
James returned to his duffel bag to cast one more healing spell—the spell that would save her life, whether she liked it or not.
Twenty
ELISE STEPPED THROUGH the gate in Araboth. The garden distorted around her, then vanished.
She opened her eyes on darkness.
But that darkness wasn’t empty. She stood in front of a mirror with parquet under her feet. The air smelled like James’s earth-friendly cleaning supplies and blooming sagebrush. Somehow, Elise had stepped through the door and appeared in the dance studio back in Reno, Nevada.
Her reflection looked so out of place in her old home. The black-haired demon woman swathed in veils didn’t belong in the studio.
“Damn it,” she muttered. There was no way she could be in Reno. The delusions were getting worse, and fast.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked at herself in the mirror again. It wasn’t her demon form staring back, but Eve. Her wings were tucked away, but she still radiated with an ethereal glow that could never be hidden. There was no mistaking this woman for anything but an angel.
“Did we make it to New Eden?” Elise asked. “Are you running my body now?” She was disappointed to think that she might not get to watch the angels die—that she might not get to slaughter the bastard that had ordered Rylie’s death.
“Your perception of time has paused. We’re between Araboth and New Eden. We still have a few moments.”
“For what?”
“A request.” Eve stepped closer to the mirror, and Elise followed suit, until they were only an inch apart. The glass shimmered between them. “You will have to kill many of my children today. I only ask that you make it painless.”
“I thought you were taking charge.”
“I’ll be speaking for us. You will be killing.” Eve looked so sad. A tear streaked down her cheek, and Elise felt it track down hers as well. “Make it painless.”
“They haven’t done anything to earn painless deaths,” Elise said.
“I understand that.”
The room was moving around her. There was suddenly another mirror behind her, as though the rear wall had leaped through the mist to border her. Elise and Eve’s reflections were duplicated a thousand times over.
It was getting brighter. A wind began to blow.
Elise smelled apples.
“I’ll make it as painless as I can,” she said. “It’ll be easier if they don’t fight me.”
Eve wiped the tears off of her cheek. “They won’t.”
The mirror shimmered again, and the angel stepped forward. So did Elise. Their bodies merged at the glass.
The studio fell away.
New Eden rose from the mist, its towers surging out of the darkness, catching the shimmering glow of dawn. A ring of trees thrust from the earth around Elise.
> The last gateway was in the center of the city, on the ground far below the aeries and skyscrapers. It was protected from the light glowing on the horizon, yet there were still no shadows. Blue light emanated from underneath the trees, shining from between the twisting roots.
A second machine, twin to the one on the other side, sat waiting to Elise’s right.
To her left, there were three angels guarding the door.
She tensed at the sight of them, but they didn’t immediately attack. Time was still slow. Her muscles felt sluggish.
Elise didn’t know who she was anymore—herself, or Eve. She saw Eve when she looked down at herself. She felt like Eve. She felt fragile and sad, like all it would take to break her was a little push.
And when she looked up at the other angels, she saw Eve reflected in their eyes.
“Mother,” said Chismael in a hushed voice.
Time hadn’t really been slow. The angels just hadn’t been sure how to react to the sight of their long-dead mother appearing in their midst.
Elise didn’t choose to open her mouth. She didn’t speak. And yet the words came out anyway. “Chismael,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “Memeon. Saritiel. I’ve missed you all.”
She remembered when they had been born. Metaraon had helped her with their births, tending to their eggs when they first began to stir with life, reaching inside to pull them from the amniotic fluid. She had loved the three of them as she loved all of her angels.
Now they all carried swords at their hips where once only the cherubim had. Eve could sense the sin on them all.
She loved them so much.
“How is this possible?” Saritiel asked, sinking to her knees in front of Elise. The angel stroked her dress like she couldn’t believe it was real. The glamor was perfect; the cloth rustled as though it were really there.
Elise smiled, stroking her hand through Saritiel’s hair. It wasn’t as soft as it had been when she was born. Angels didn’t age, but time had a way of making all things coarse.