by SM Reine
She would have to investigate it later. Anyone that marked her territory with their brand was begging for a visit.
For now, she kept walking.
“Hungry?” whispered a voice from a tunnel that Elise passed. The breeze from that direction smelled like hot blood.
“Want to escape?” That offer was accompanied by a gentle chime, like ben wa balls, and the glow of tiny cubes. The woman holding them was a lethe dealer. It was a drug specifically intended for demon metabolisms, strong enough to kill most humans.
The tunnels slanted deeper, deeper.
Elise turned a corner and found another graffiti X. But this one was tagged with words, too. They were scrawled in dripping letters—the alphabet of Hell.
She had acquired the ability to understand the infernal language with the rest of her demon powers, but it wasn’t instinctive. Elise was still squinting at the words, waiting for her mind to catch up and translate, when she heard a familiar voice.
“There you are.”
A woman stood in the hallway at her back: a leggy creature with skin like glowing milk and the same black eyes and hair as Elise. Her firm breasts were cupped by a metal shelf bra half-concealed by a denim jacket. A strip of black Lycra served as a skirt. She was barefoot, revealing delicate feet and black toenails. Despite the flat nose and full lips, she easily could have passed as Elise’s sister. But they weren’t technically related—only a similar species.
Neuma was a half-succubus Gray. She was descended from Yatam’s line, but her mother had been human; she would eventually die a mortal death. It was impossible to tell by looking at her. Elise had met her five years ago, and Neuma could still pass for a teenager.
“What are you doing here?” Elise asked. “You’re supposed to be in Reno.”
“I’m protecting Anthony,” Neuma said.
All thoughts of graffiti and displaced Gray fled from Elise’s mind. “You found Anthony? Where is he?”
Neuma pointed one black fingernail at the ceiling.
“He’s in Original Sin,” she said.
Elise had few friends, but she numbered Neuma among them. The half-succubus Gray had begun as an informant, but she owned a bar and kept Elise’s vodka flowing, which was an extremely endearing trait. She was the first half-demon overlord to survive in the job for longer than a week, and now she’d held the Reno territory since 2009.
Neuma’s reach had recently extended to Las Vegas, too. She had purchased a brothel in town six months back, and ran it remotely with the help of some friends. Elise did their accounting as a favor. They spoke frequently, and Neuma hadn’t once mentioned planning to leave her territory.
If she wasn’t in Reno, then that meant there was no overlord in the territory. It wasn’t an indication of apocalypse, but it was definitely a bad sign for the lesser demons that dwelled there.
Even though she was only a half-breed, Neuma passed the other demons languishing in the sewer tunnels like a queen among serfs, though any one of them probably had twice her power. Elise followed in her shadow, their hands joined, connected by a tangle of fingers.
The door leading to the street behind Original Sin was marked with another spray-painted X.
“Do you know what that means?” Elise asked as Neuma passed her hand over the rusted door lever, triggering the unlocking spells.
Neuma glanced up. She hesitated a little too long before answering. “No.”
“Neuma…”
“You won’t like it. Trust me, doll. You want to get Anthony or not?”
Elise tightened her jaw and nodded.
Neuma opened the door. She waited until Elise climbed through before letting it swing shut behind them.
They emerged in an alleyway. A few unfortunate mobile homes were situated on the opposite side of a chain-link fence, facing Original Sin’s rear wall and barred windows. Sirens wailed a few blocks away. There was no unsettling graffiti up here—only the normal human kind.
Only one of the windows stood open, and it was on the fourth floor. They had to climb the fire escape to get inside.
The brothel was a dingy place that smelled of cum and piss. Demons weren’t too concerned about hygiene, and neither were the kind of men that paid to fuck them. The yellowing wallpaper was peeling. Muffled moans came from the rooms around them.
“Why were the sewers so empty?” Elise asked, turning off the hallway light as they passed the switch. Cool darkness settled over her. “Did a gang drive them out? Is that what that X graffiti means?”
“The demons chose to evacuate about a week ago. Some of them headed up north through the tunnels, some of them went south. Pretty much nobody’s left under there.”
“Why the mass exodus?”
“Because,” Neuma said, “they all know the storm’s coming. Nobody wants to be here when shit goes down.” She stopped in front of a door at the end of the hall. “He’s in here.”
Elise pushed her aside and entered first. She stopped short in the doorway.
The brothel bedroom was as tacky as Elise had expected. All of the furniture in the room had been pushed aside, making room for a pile of velvet cushions, upon which were sprawled a tangle of naked bodies. A pair of women cooed over the man between them. He was wearing chinos with a pencil mustache and a sling on his arm.
The women were obviously demons. They didn’t have the dark coloring of Yatam’s line—one was redheaded; the other was blond—but they had the long limbs and pale flesh of succubi. They were probably Gray, like Neuma.
And Anthony really seemed to be enjoying their company.
Elise cleared her throat. He broke away from kissing the redhead, lips swollen and cheeks flushed. “Hi,” Anthony said.
She felt the irrational urge to look Anthony over, searching for signs that the succubi might have fed from him. But she held still in the doorway, thumbs hooked in her belt loops, and kept the concern off of her face. That compassionate instinct made her uncomfortable. Acting on it probably would have scared Anthony more than her ability to phase into shadow.
“Are you all right?” she asked. The blond was straddling one of his legs and seemed to be pleasuring herself by gyrating against him.
Anthony gave an embarrassed smile. “I think I’m fine.” Yeah, he looked fine.
Elise was in no place to judge. She turned to Neuma. “Thanks for saving him,” she said reluctantly.
“My pleasure, doll,” Neuma said with a smirk. “I figured you’d need me in Vegas if everything was scattering. ‘Course, the fact that all of my demons went with them and left me the overlord of an empty territory was kind of a factor, too.”
Elise opened her mouth to ask why the Reno demons would have run, too, but then her gaze focused on the wall of the bathroom behind Neuma, and words failed her.
She had been too distracted by Anthony’s interesting predicament to realize that the interior of the brothel had been graffitied with a giant X, much like the sewers. It was encircled by the infernal tongue, too. She had to blink at the words for a moment before they translated.
I obey the Father.
Elise’s heart caught in her throat.
That was one of the names that demons called Elise: “Father.” She had the blood of Yatam, the father of all demons, running through her veins; whenever she walked the streets of Hell, its denizens recognized her as an extension of him. Elise had never been quite sure if they believed that she was Yatam, or if they had simply passed the honorific to her after his death.
She reached back, slowly unsheathing her falchion from the spine scabbard. Elise lifted it in front of her, arm fully extended, and tilted the sword to match one of the lines of the X. It wasn’t an X at all. The curve of the arms matched the curve of her falchion’s blade, and the perpendicular line through the leg was a primitive rendering of the hilt.
The X was a pair of crossed swords like the twin falchions she used to carry.
I obey the Father, it said.
The graffiti was a show of allegi
ance from the demons—allegiance to Elise.
Eight
Seth drove for endless hours. Day and night blurred as town after town passed. A long road stretched ahead and behind, cutting through rolling plains and endless farms. After living in a valley surrounded by trees so dense he could hardly breathe, the Midwest felt uncomfortably empty.
Rustling sounds drew Seth’s attention to the back compartment of the van. He watched Rylie fuss over their captive in the rearview mirror. She adjusted Katja’s arms, shifted the pillow under her head, and wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Katja didn’t react. She had been unconscious since the full moon, and there was no indication that she would be waking any time soon.
Katja was still recovering from the wounds she had suffered—and everyone was still dealing with the injuries she had inflicted, too.
Worse still, the whole pack was dealing with the aftermath of a full moon without an Alpha to lead them. As it turned out, they needed Rylie and Abel for more than controlling the transformations—they needed the presence of an Alpha to stay sane during the shifts. Crystal had almost killed Toshiko. Pyper and Trevin had brutalized each other. And Paetrick was still missing, somehow having wandered outside the wards.
That was why Abel had to stay at the sanctuary, even as Rylie drove cross-country with Seth. Abel needed to keep control of the pack.
Reaching that decision hadn’t been a pretty argument. Seth had been able to hear Abel shouting from three cottages away. His roars made the entire sanctuary fall silent, as if the birds were afraid to sing in the face of his fury.
Seth had been swimming laps in the lake, using long, smooth strokes to propel himself into the waterfall’s churning waters. Even with the loud sloshing noises, he had been able to make out a few words. You’re not going where I can’t protect you. As if Seth wasn’t fully capable of protecting Rylie—as if he hadn’t been the one that had taken care of her long before Abel even entered the picture.
Rylie’s response had been too quiet to hear. Whatever she said had stopped the shouting. But when Seth emerged from the lake to dress, dripping and shivering, Abel had stormed out of Rylie’s cottage looking as though he were ready to rip the trees from the earth by their roots.
And the glare that he had shot at Seth—it had been the kind of pure, venomous hatred that only brothers could share.
“If you let anything happen to Rylie, I’ll fucking kill you,” Abel had said.
And Seth had replied, “I’d kill myself before you could.”
The fact of the matter was, either of them would die for her. But only one of them was Alpha. Abel had to remain with his pack. No matter how insecure he felt about sending Seth off with Rylie, he was important in a way that Seth could never be.
The werewolves didn’t need Seth.
With that settled, Rylie and Seth had planned to leave immediately. He had already been packed; he only needed to move his backpack from the car to the van, which they needed to transport Katja safely cross-country.
He had said his goodbyes to Summer and Nash while Rylie got ready.
“You’re not coming back, are you?” Summer had asked, hugging Seth so tightly that his ribs creaked.
“No. I’m not coming back.”
Summer gave him a peck on the cheek and released him. Her cheeks were glistening. “I’ll miss you, old man. Look out for yourself.”
“You too, kid,” he replied. Since Seth was escorting Rylie, Summer and Nash were following up on the lead of Katja’s partner instead.
“She doesn’t have to look out for herself,” Nash said. “I have that more than covered.” An angel didn’t need to prepare before leaving on a trip; everything he needed was already attached. His wings were unfurled with their radiance dimmed. Summer had a small backpack. That was the entirety of their packing.
The angel scooped Summer into his arms, wrapping a possessive arm around her waist. She was tall enough that he could only get her a couple of inches off the ground, but she clung to his shoulders and tucked her head under his chin anyway.
They had looked so happy together.
Nash and Summer left immediately. Rylie and Seth had left an hour after that. Abel hadn’t emerged from his cottage to say goodbye to them.
And now here they were, almost a full day’s drive outside of Northgate. They hadn’t talked all day. It was like Rylie and Seth had forgotten how to be alone together.
She climbed into the front seat with Seth, stirring him from his morose memories. She reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a map that they had picked up at the gas station. None of them had phones with GPS anymore; they got no signal at the sanctuary, and there was no point in paying for contracts when they couldn’t use the phones ninety-nine percent of the time.
“Where are we?” Rylie asked.
“We passed Branson twenty minutes ago.”
She tracked a finger along the highway, following their route out west from Northgate. “Long way to go. Want me to take a turn?”
“I’m fine,” Seth said.
“You sound fine,” Rylie said, rolling her eyes. Summer’s emotional intuition was definitely genetic—and it hadn’t come from Abel.
Seth cast another glance at Katja. She still wasn’t moving. “Are the marks still there?”
“They fade when she’s unconscious. I don’t know if that’s normal.”
Neither did he. Even though he was a kopis, he hadn’t had much exposure to possession. Seth knew werewolves inside and out, better than most werewolves knew themselves. Throw in a demon, and he was utterly lost.
“Phone,” he said, holding out a hand.
Rylie grabbed his cell phone out of the glove box. It was a clunky, rugged device that looked like a Walkie-Talkie. It was ugly as sin and too big for most pockets, but it had satellite access, and it meant that Seth could make phone calls anywhere. As long as phone calls were all he wanted to do. It definitely wasn’t going to be playing Fruit Ninja anytime soon.
He scrolled through the contacts, settling on one that had no attached name and a Las Vegas area code.
Seth’s thumb hovered over the button that would call, hesitating to dial.
“I could talk to her,” Rylie suggested.
There were a lot of reasons that Seth didn’t want to talk to their exorcist-on-call. Elise Kavanagh had visited them only weeks earlier and had brought trouble in her wake; her appearance had coincided with the burning of Northgate, a series of ritualistic murders, and the attack by Lincoln Marshall. Rylie insisted that none of that was Elise’s fault—that Elise was the only reason they had survived those attacks.
But it didn’t change the fact that Elise wanted to kill Seth. She hadn’t said it outright, but he had seen it in her black eyes when she looked at him for the last time. She believed that Seth’s family was the last bloodline descended from Adam, the first man. While James considered it a good thing, Elise definitely did not.
Seth wasn’t a fearful man. He’d fought his own mother, dozens of werewolves, and survived the kind of shit that could make a guy’s hair turn gray. But he thought that if he crossed paths with Elise again, she was probably going to kill him, and that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
How do you protect yourself against a woman that turns into the night?
Rylie moved to pull the phone from Seth’s hand. He kept it out of her reach.
“I’ll make the call,” Seth said. “It’s fine.”
But he waited until the next time they pulled over.
They stopped at a rest area, which was a brick building with two restrooms, three vending machines, and one tree to shade it all. They were the only ones there. Rylie carried a barely-conscious Katja into the ladies’ room to help her relieve herself, and Seth paced outside the van, which audibly ticked as it cooled.
There were birds wheeling through the vast blue sky, distant black pinpoints circling the clouds. Hawks and eagles didn’t travel in clusters like that, but they were
too large to be songbirds. It was a flock of vultures. Carrion eaters. Seemed appropriate.
Seth walked behind the tree and dialed for Elise Kavanagh.
The phone rang. The brassy bell seemed cacophonous in comparison to the open, wind-swept hills surrounding him. Like a spike driving through his ear each time.
The line beeped once and went silent. An answering machine?
“Hello?” he said.
No reply.
Seth took a deep breath to brace himself, then spoke quickly. “This is Seth Wilder. Rylie and I are heading for Vegas. We’re going to be there late tomorrow night, and we need to see you.” How much should he say? He couldn’t even be sure that the answering machine belonged to Elise. He chose his words carefully. “We have a friend suffering from the same thing that the deputy was. I’ll call again when we get into town.”
He recited his phone number twice. Halfway through the second time, he heard another beep, and then a recorded message saying that he had run out of time.
He hung up and went to help Rylie carry Katja back into the van.
Rylie slept for most of the rest of the drive. She had stretched out in the back of the van with Katja, and her hand was extended so that she could touch the possessed woman’s shoulder, even in sleep. Katja jerked and snapped without ever opening her eyes and only settled under Rylie’s touch. Seth didn’t like the idea of letting her ride in back with a woman that might change into her murderous wolf form at any second, but Rylie had made it clear that it wasn’t up for debate.
Somewhere around Utah, the highway had become cruelly monotonous. There was nothing on either side of his van but endless dirt, salt flats, and the occasional town so small that it passed in a blink. Every sagebrush-covered hill looked exactly the same to him. Checking the map to see how much more of the endless nothingness waited for them was too depressing.