Oaths of Blood

by SM Reine

  It was McIntyre.

  “There’s been a spike in energy,” he said. “Alarms are going nuts on the Union computer system.”

  “Address. Now.”

  McIntyre gave her a street name and number. Rylie gave Elise her laptop and she brought up the map, searching for familiar landmarks. Being able to fast-travel anywhere didn’t mean that she knew where to go; she needed to have some point of reference if she had any hope of landing near the murder. It was a block away from a Thai restaurant that she had eaten at once before. She could remember the heat of the sun on her skin—when the sun still felt good, instead of making her fray—and visualize the neighborhood beyond.

  She hung up on McIntyre.

  “Well?” Seth asked. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re coming with me,” Elise said. “Both of you. This won’t feel good. Hold your breath, close your eyes, and don’t move until I tell you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rylie asked.

  She showed them.

  Ten

  This must have been what dying felt like.

  Seth’s lungs closed. He couldn’t tell if the roaring in his ears was from his pounding heart, or if his heart had stopped beating and that was the sound of his body beginning to fail. He had no fingers, no legs, no taste or smell or sight. There was only darkness—an endless nothingness outside of time and body.

  And then there was grass underneath his hands and knees.

  Elise’s voice barked from behind his ear. “Move.”

  Seth’s eyes shocked open. The back room of Original Sin had been replaced by an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood. There was a stucco wall to his right, lit by brass lanterns with Spanish detailing. The grass underneath him was a small patch of earth encircled by xeriscaping—prickly desert bushes, gravel, glossy paving stones.

  His lungs ached as they expanded with oxygen, making his ribs creak and his shoulders shake. He was drenched in sweat. He tried to sit back on his knees, but his muscles wouldn’t work.

  He lifted his head to see Rylie vomiting beside him. Tears streamed from her eyes as she heaved, spilling bile onto the grass.

  Elise stood above them both, legs spread into a wide stance, one fist wrapped around her obsidian falchion. She wasn’t looking at them—her narrowed eyes were focused on the Mission-style house upon whose yard they had landed. It was surrounded by a low wall, wooden arches, and grapevines.

  The roaring in Seth’s ears faded. He heard screaming.

  Where had Elise taken him?

  “It’s happening,” Elise said.

  As soon as she said it, he could feel it: the throb of infernal energy, spilling over his flesh like hot, pulsing magma. It felt like his skin was trying to crawl off his spine.

  Elise’s boots pounded against the stones as she entered the house’s courtyard, erupting into shadow the half-second before she would have hurtled through the archway.

  “What’s going on?” Seth asked.

  “Someone’s trying to open a gateway to Hell, and they’re killing people to do it,” Rylie said. He reached out to help her stand, but she was stripping her blouse over her head, arms tangled in the cloth. “Don’t worry about me. Go!” Her voice rumbled deep in her chest. Her jaw was popping, shifting. She was already partway to wolf.

  He drew his pistol and ran after Elise.

  The courtyard wrapped around the side of the house, past open windows through which he could see red ceramic floors and marble countertops. The smell of chlorine hit him as he hurtled over a picnic table…and the smell of blood followed a moment later.

  He skidded around the corner and slipped. Seth landed on his ass, the impact jolting up his spine to his skull.

  “Jesus,” he groaned, lifting a hand to his forehead. He stopped inches short of touching himself. His hand was slick with glossy red blood.

  Seth tried to stand, but slipped again. The entire side yard was slicked with puddles of blood. It soaked through his slacks, made his shoes glossy, smeared up his arm. It smelled like a butcher shop. People were still screaming, voices echoing through the courtyard.

  He got to his feet and turned the corner, pistol braced in both hands.

  What he saw around the corner made him freeze.

  The house had a huge, kidney-shaped pool curving through their garden. And it was an impressive garden: terracing, a giant wagon wheel, grapevines, rock paths, a labyrinth that terminated in a rock sculpture at the center. It was all drenched in blood.

  A shriveled, gray-haired woman was on the ground at Seth’s feet, throat sliced open and stomach a mess of twisting organs—the source of the puddles that he had slipped in. There were smears where she had been dragged from a pool chair toward the house. Another old woman was near the chairs, folded over the side of the pool with her head in the water and crimson clouds rippling over the pool light.

  No, that wasn’t a pool light—it was too red, too flickering. There was a glowing circle at the bottom of the pool. It writhed and twisted with demonic symbols. The water was beginning to boil. There were more bodies on the other side of the pool, arrayed like the numbers of a clock with the pool as the center.

  Elise was standing on one of the tables just outside the symbols marking the boundaries of the wards, and her sword sheathed in the gut of a man who was wearing a waiter’s uniform. He gurgled, choking on his own blood.

  “What are you doing?” Seth shouted.

  She didn’t look at him. She kicked the man off of her blade and he collapsed. Where the sword had punctured his gut, a black sickness crept over his flesh, hardening it to the same texture as her falchion. It was an awful way to die. The puncture wound wasn’t what killed him—it was his chest turning to stone, making the organs inside rigid so that he couldn’t breathe. He gave a final gasp and stopped moving, eyes frozen open.

  “That was a demon,” Elise said, lifting her blood-drenched hand to look at the fingers. She rubbed her thumb over the pads of her fingertips, slicking the blood between them. “There are more in the garden. They killed these people. Find them.” She wasn’t addressing Seth.

  A wolf launched around the side of the building, paws pounding against the poolside. Rylie’s gold-furred body lanced into the darkness on the other side. She was out of sight almost immediately, but Seth could hear shouts of pain, and knew that she had found the demons.

  He looked up at the table in time to see Elise licking the blood off her fingers.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She twitched, jerking her hand away, and looked at it in surprise. Elise jumped off the table beside a dead man. She was careful not to set foot inside the wards. “Forget about it.”

  He was more than happy to do so. “What’s in the pool?” Seth asked. The water was a crimson froth that sloshed over the concrete.

  “A portal to Hell,” Elise said curtly. “Get ready to shoot.”

  “Shoot what?”

  Elise responded by stepping up to the edge of the pool. She swung the falchion in a lazy figure eight, swiping the blade through the air.

  “Come on,” she muttered.

  Seth stepped up behind Elise, Beretta aimed at the ground as he watched over her shoulder.

  Symbols glowed and swirled, sliding around the inside of the pool faster and faster, until it was a whirlpool of light. Energy crackled over his skin, filling his sinuses with the scent of burning ozone. Pressure crushed his skull. It was almost too much—he was going to break.

  But the surface of the pool erupted first.

  Water gushed in a column three stories high, and then splashed back down in a scalding torrent. Seth stepped back, flinging an arm up to shield his head too late. It burned his shoulders, his chest, his biceps.

  Where the column had formed hung a demon that Seth had never seen before, his feet inches above the surface of the pool.

  But he didn’t look like a demon—not exactly. He was like a bodybuilder from the waist up, with broad shoulders and bulging muscle
s encased in leathery red flesh. Below the waist, he was furred, with cloven hooves. And he had wings. Huge, glorious wings like Nash’s, but black.

  “Hybrid,” Elise said, pressing the heel of her palm to her temple. “Fuck.”

  “You mean, angel and demon?”

  She nodded once. “I thought I killed all these assholes.” Her eyes flicked over Seth. “Whatever you do, don’t move. I don’t want to accidentally swallow you, too.”

  Elise’s skin blurred at the edges. She faded until he could see the other side of the pool through her body.

  But then a pulse of light flared from the pool, piercing Elise, and she re-solidified instantly with a sharp cry of pain. She couldn’t turn incorporeal with the gate to Hell still glowing—which meant she couldn’t easily kill the hybrid.

  A stream of curses rolled through Seth’s mind, but he was too paralyzed by the hybrid’s energy to say any of them. All he could manage to do was raise the Beretta.

  The hybrid turned his eyes on them, suspended in midair without needing to flap his wings. Even though Seth wasn’t familiar with the breed, he thought that the hybrid looked sick. Blood trickled from his tear ducts and ichor dripped off of his wings and jet-black hair. It was like he was melting.

  He approached them slowly, walking over the surface of the pool. The water roiled underneath him and burst into steam that stunk of brimstone.

  The ground trembled as the he came closer, drizzling ichor in his wake.

  Then Rylie emerged from the garden with blood on her muzzle and hunger glowing in her eyes. She was chasing another man in a waiter’s uniform, nipping at his heels.

  Seth didn’t get a good look at the demon before he raced around the side of the house—he was a little bit distracted by the massive hybrid. But Elise saw whom Rylie was chasing. She went rigid, face paler than usual, eyes wide. “Kill the hybrid,” Elise shot over her shoulder as she broke into a run. “I’m getting the ringleader.”

  “What? How do I kill it?” Seth asked.

  “Get its wings,” Elise said.

  And then she was gone—a shot of darkness whirling into the black depths of the house to follow the waiter.

  Its wings?

  Rylie didn’t pause to question Elise’s instructions. The wolf’s mind was a wild thing; it saw a threat, and there was no keeping it from attacking.

  She lunged, digging in her paws to turn a sharp angle behind the hybrid, and flung herself at his back. Teeth sank into the base of his right wing. He threw his head back with a roar, flapping his oily wings hard, spraying flecks of ichor over the pool. As soon as each drop hit the ground, it sizzled into nonexistence.

  He twisted. The momentum flung Rylie off of his back, and she splashed into the roiling pool.

  That turn presented the hybrid’s back to Seth. He wanted to stop to see if Rylie was okay, but he had to trust that an Alpha werewolf could save herself from drowning. Seth clasped his hand underneath the pistol to steady his aim, sighted down the barrel at the hybrid’s wing, and squeezed the trigger.

  The first shot slammed into the hybrid’s back, splattering blood over its skin as though Seth were shooting paintball pellets rather than bullets. The hole closed immediately. It didn’t even have to heal. It was like the bullet passed directly through.

  But the second short hit its wing where Rylie had bitten, ripping away a fistful of flesh.

  Screaming, the hybrid rounded on Seth, crossing the distance between them in three long strides. Each footfall shook the earth beneath Seth’s feet.

  He shot again, and again, chewing through the tips of the hybrid’s wings.

  It plowed into him. Seth’s mind whited out with pain. One instant, he was standing on two feet, gun lifted, and the next he was crumpled against the back wall of the house with plaster showering over him.

  Claws flashed as a mighty hand swiped at his head.

  Seth rolled. The hybrid’s hand breezed past his shoulder and sank into the concrete, leaving deep gouges.

  Rylie leaped onto his back again. She must have climbed out of the pool while Seth was distracted—her thick fur hung heavy around her, streaming crimson water. He couldn’t tell how much of it was blood. He hoped that none of it was hers.

  Her weight drove the hybrid to the ground on his belly. Growls tore from Rylie’s throat as she bit down on the base of his wings again and again, mercilessly shredding the flesh. Her teeth sank into the joint of the wing bone. She worried it like a chew toy.

  With a sickening pop, one of the wings dislocated.

  The hybrid’s screams reached a piercing pitch as it tried to stand, but Rylie wasn’t letting it up. She didn’t need a lot of weight to keep it down—only the pain inflicted by her jaws.

  Seth wavered on trembling legs, leveling his pistol again. He took two steps to the right, planting a boot on the back of one of the hybrid’s thighs to help pin it down, and aimed at the wing Rylie wasn’t chewing. “Watch out,” he said.

  Two loud bangs, and the base of the wing was shredded. Amber blood gushed over its back. The scream was one long, wordless note now.

  Rylie snarled as she ripped into the hybrid’s spinal column.

  The beast stopped screaming.

  She continued to rip at the hybrid for another minute, though Seth could tell it wasn’t necessary. The hybrid’s limbs were slack. The blood flowed more sluggishly. But the wolf seemed happy to make sure that the creature wasn’t going to be able to heal its wounds, and she continued to tear until Seth finally said, “It’s dead, Rylie.”

  The wolf backed off and shook. Her fur stuck out in every direction in damp spikes.

  The blood that had gushed from the hybrid’s back injuries streamed downhill, pouring in a thin waterfall into the pool. It didn’t hit the water right. The human blood had clouded, but the hybrid’s slicked the surface in an oily rainbow of orange and crimson and yellow. It looked like toxic waste.

  The edge of the blood touched one of the marks on the side of the pool. Everything went silent. The light faded. All sense of infernal power vanished, leaving Seth feeling disconcertingly normal. He rubbed the back of his neck in the memory of the itch.

  Seth stepped up to the edge of the pool, aiming his Beretta at the place that the portal had formed. But the waters were calm now. The lights were dim.

  The door to Hell had been closed.

  Elise followed the stink of brimstone through the house, not the sound of the man that was fleeing from her. His laughter came from everywhere. It echoed off the walls, rattled the china on the shelves, whispered through her mind.

  But even though the body was human, the voice was not. It was high and shrill. Taunting.

  She chased it through the dining room. The shelves tipped as she rushed past; crystal shattered in her wake.

  The cackles made the mirror on the wall tremble, bouncing in its frame. The nail ripped out of the drywall and the mirror slipped, striking the ceramic floor with the sound of cracking sea ice. Glass showered over the toes of Elise’s boots.

  A dark shape darted through the kitchen, reflecting on the stainless steel refrigerator for only an instant before it faded again.

  Elise’s damp soles slid on the tile. She stumbled, caught herself on the marble countertops.

  A man slammed his foot into the door beside the handle. Wood splintered. Elise lunged, trying to grab him before he fled into the living room, but her fingernails only scraped his shoulder. His skin burned so hot that she could feel it through the cloth.

  She caught him before he reached the front door, and her momentum carried both of them into the window. His face smashed into glass. Her fingernails dug into the back of his scalp.

  The responding grunt was familiar, stirring distant memories that Elise had spent years struggling not to remember.

  She flung him to the floor and planted a boot on his chest. The back of his head bounced on carpet. A moonbeam splashed over his face, tinted crimson by the stained glass window.

  The face
that glared up at her was not human.

  His skull was smashed and distorted, with a broad mouth like a frog’s and beady black eyes. He had cleaned up to pose as a waiter for this house’s cocktail party, with concealer to mask the heavy rings under his blood-encrusted eyelids and foundation to smooth the blemishes. But there was no hiding the bulge of veins gripping his cheeks and forehead, like inverted river beds cutting through a desert.

  That blood. Its iron-rich scent hung heavy on the air. She wanted to lick his face clean, sink her teeth into the veins, rip away the meat.

  He smiled, stretching the craggy wrinkles on his face.

  “Hello, Daughter,” Abraxas said.

  It had been a long time since anyone had called her that. It wasn’t a paternalistic greeting—Abraxas believed that Elise was the daughter of Yatam, father of all demons, and used it as an honorific. Hearing it again made her skin crawl.

  The last time that Abraxas had called Elise “Daughter,” she had been standing on the planes of the wasteland beyond the walls of the City of Dis, watching the Palace crumble. He was the former judge in charge of the Council of Dis before its dissolution. That had been so many years ago—an entire lifetime.

  He did not belong on Earth.

  “Abraxas,” Elise said, leaning her weight on her leg to press against his sternum. “I’m surprised you’re here.”

  “Are you?” He gave her a wide, froggy grin that bared every one of his cracked molars. His eyes pinched into slits. “James isn’t.”

  Elise thought about responding. She thought about making snide remarks, questioning him, beating him until she got answers for every question whirling through her mind. But Abraxas was a clever creature. Anything he said would be a lie, or a misleading half-truth at best.

  Her fingers slipped to the back of her neck, unclasping the gold chain so that it pooled in the neck of her shirt.