by SM Reine
“But Katja’s more useful possessed,” Neuma said. “She’s got the same thing the hybrids do, right? And you said she’s crazy. We can skip fighting with hybrids and sacrifice her to close whatever doors Abraxas has been opening.”
Rylie’s eyes flashed with anger, and she opened her mouth to argue.
“We’re not killing the werewolf,” Elise interrupted. “I’ll exorcise her.”
Rylie looked surprised and grateful. “Really?”
“Yes.” Elise rested a hand on top of Abraxas’s head, feeling the burn of his scalp. He had an entire centuria of hybrids under his control. She might need every friendly werewolf she could get. “But first, I need some help.”
Eleven
Elise stood alone on the playa miles outside of Las Vegas, where the harsh lights of the city couldn’t hurt her. It should have been a relief to be out of civilization in absolute, natural darkness. Yet it wasn’t enough. Not anymore. The moon shone above her, a waning semicircle that reflected the sun’s rays painfully upon her flesh. It was like standing in a spray of showering sparks underneath a welder. It pricked and poked and burned. She rubbed her arms, but it wasn’t a tangible thing that could be wiped away. The moonlight was getting under her skin.
She felt James before she saw his dark shape moving among the rocks to the north. He was still wearing his warding ring, but radiated enough energy that she could sense him under her flesh, just like the moonlight.
Elise had called the number on his card and asked for him to come to her, expecting him to pull his “almost like scrying” trick and appear in Original Sin. But he had insisted that they meet in the desert outside of town. Whether it was because he couldn’t appear in downtown Las Vegas or because he got off on controlling Elise’s movements, she couldn’t be sure.
He stopped walking a few feet away, hands in his pockets, peacoat fluttering around his knees. It was still too hot for the jacket, but he looked unperturbed.
And James also wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by a woman who must have been barely five feet tall, with pixie-cut brown hair, bright eyes, and a heart-shaped face. She was young and cute and fresh-faced. Someone who had probably never gotten into a fight in her life, much less killed anyone.
She was draped in a loose brown shirt that looked hand-sewn, cutoff shorts, and Keds. She made up for the simple wardrobe with a couple of chains around her neck and wrists that held clacking wooden charms. Some of them were carved with animal totems; others were carved with magical runes, and others still with pentagrams.
The girl was a witch, probably a member of the White Ash Coven. It used to be a dangerous coven in which to be a young woman. Elise was surprised to see her with James—in more ways than one.
“Are you in Nevada?” Elise asked.
“No,” James said. She lifted an eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation for the girl with him. He said, “She’s my new high priestess. I’ve brought her as a method of training.”
Elise’s eyes narrowed as she studied both of them. There was no indication that they were being projected onto the Nevada desert the way that James had been projected to the murder scene in Monterey—but he hadn’t exactly looked like a magical ghost then, either.
The witch hung back, far behind James, looking kind of uncomfortable. Too far for Elise to touch her and see if there was a responding jolt of magic.
Elise ran her tongue over her teeth, feeling the hard edges, pondering the pale stretch of the high priestess’s throat glowing in the moonlight. “I need to perform an unusual exorcism,” she said. “I want whatever spell you used on me in Northgate.”
“You don’t have a witch powerful enough to use that magic,” he said.
“I can cast your spells if you make them first. I healed Yatam like that once. I can do it again.”
He hesitated, one hand on the wrist of the opposite glove, as though considering removing it. “I was careless with written magic, and now the Union possesses what used to be secret. They’ve weaponized it. What I do now—I have to be careful, Elise. It’s the most incredible method of casting magic that’s ever been invented. It’s also imperfect. Unstable.”
It was exactly what Elise needed if she hoped to exorcise Katja without getting anyone hurt.
She held out her hand. “I’ll take it.”
The supposed high priestess was watching them closely. She had stepped nearer to them, face bright with interest. James glanced back at her. “Leave us, Brianna.”
The girl rolled her eyes and turned to trudge back through the rocks. “Some partner,” she growled, stomping away.
The fact that she didn’t vanish made Elise’s hackles lift. She approached James slowly, staying out of arm’s reach. “Where are you?” she asked, watching him closely, looking for any hint of whether he was really there or just a ghost.
“I’m with the White Ash Coven,” he said, turning to watch her circle around him. There was a hint of gray at his temples again, like when he had first started to show signs of aging. It was impossible to tell if he was losing control of the glamor, or if he had simply adjusted it to reflect his preferred appearance. “The specific location is privileged information.”
“As privileged as the fact that you’ve been in contact with Abraxas?”
“Ah,” he said. “So you found him.”
“I could have used warning,” Elise said.
“It wouldn’t have done you any good.” James folded his arms. She tasted the change in subject in his mind an instant before he spoke. “You don’t need to exorcise Abraxas. Why do you think you need additional help for this ritual? You’ve done this many times.”
He hadn’t been honest with her. She didn’t plan on giving him information that he didn’t need, either. Elise returned to the original topic. “What does Abraxas want?”
“You would have to ask him,” James said.
“Fine. I will.” Elise held her hand out expectantly. He still didn’t move. “You don’t trust me enough to have your runes, but you trusted Abraxas?”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. He peeled his glove off. Runes danced over his fingertips, rolling over the knuckles and down his palms in electric waves.
James hesitated with his fist clenched tight. The muscles in his arm trembled with the effort.
“I thought that giving Abraxas a path back to Hell would make him leave Earth peacefully,” he said softly, staring deep into Elise’s eyes, as if trying to communicate with more than words. “Naïvely, I believed that some small concession of power on my part could save lives.”
“If you found him, you should have told me. I could have stopped him.” She stepped toward him, hand extended. “Please,” she said, and the word made her teeth ache.
He sighed. “Remove the glove on your unmarked hand.”
Elise peeled her glove off, baring an empty palm that used to be twisted with black lines. The fingernails were still flat black, like empty voids. The surrounding skin was ashen.
He touched her fingertips.
She expected to feel a shock of magic between them, just like when he had kissed her cheek in Monterey, but there was no bracing herself against the power that rushed through her. It electrified her skin, making her hair stand on end.
It wasn’t that James’s magic was more than she was accustomed to shouldering. Light seeped from the runes as they crept over his fist and onto hers, and she wasn’t prepared for how much it would hurt. She gritted her teeth and tried to remember how to breathe as the world whirled around her.
Through it all, she saw James’s face illuminated by the burn, familiar and handsome and creased into lines of worry.
She tried to pull her fingers away, but it was like the electricity of magic had connected them magnetically. “Let me go.”
James’s eyes flicked over her face. She wondered if he could see the bones through her skin. “What’s happening to you?”
It wasn’t easy to admit to James, of all people, that she wasn’t sure what
was happening to her—that Neuma thought she was starving. She glared up at him, repeating her demand with her stare. Let me go.
The magic eased, and Elise stepped back, lifting her fist to inspect the runes that slid over her fingers. The blue glow was fading to an amber tinge. The illumination outlined the edges of the bones underneath, rendering her skin semi-translucent.
Holding the runes filled her mind with whispers that sounded very much like James’s voice. If he hadn’t been standing in front of her, she easily could have believed that he was standing at her back, breathing words onto the nape of her neck. The flesh on her upper arms prickled with goosebumps.
“How do I use it?” Elise asked.
“You must speak words of power. I trust you remember how to draw them from within.”
She didn’t. She would figure it out.
Elise rolled the runes over her fingertips. She had made the mistake of jamming a couple of her father’s knives into a light socket as a child, and she remembered the sensation of ants swarming under her skin perfectly. The burn of light was much like that.
Her fingers spasmed as she pulled the glove back on, fighting to cover her hand. Muscles all the way up to her shoulder tensed and released.
Once the runes were closed off from the air, the twitching slowed. She blew out a breath and forced herself to relax.
“Abraxas was there,” James said.
“What?”
“I spoke with my contact within the Union. They recently recovered cell phone video recorded by a witness to Senator Peterson’s flight prior to his assassination, and he wasn’t only followed by a creature that appeared to be…well, you, Elise. Abraxas was also sighted at the senator’s home that night.”
Elise had forgotten that James had wanted to look into the Union’s investigation. She clenched and unclenched her fist at her side. Her wrist was rock-hard. “Abraxas was at Senator Peterson’s home? Wasn’t the senator killed at his office?”
“Yes,” James said.
Interesting. “Abraxas is responsible for the other murders, too. That’s where I found him—at another murder site. How can they be connected?”
“I can’t begin to guess.”
She frowned, considering this new information. “I made contact with Detective Gomez, the man that attempted to arrest me. He genuinely believes that I killed the senator. Everyone does. And the footage that includes my face came from Gary Zettel.”
The name made James pale. He was silent for a long time before asking very softly, “Do you know that man shot my son?”
He hadn’t just shot James’s son. Gary Zettel, former Union commander and Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs, had murdered Nathaniel. The fact that Nathaniel had walked away from the wounds—in a manner of speaking—had little to do with Zettel, and everything to do with ethereal intervention.
Elise had been there when he died. She had seen him reborn. She had tried to spare Nathaniel the horror of the second life as a transformed, twisted, damned creature—a creature very much like Elise, though angelic rather than demonic.
She had failed to save him. Another failure among hundreds.
“I know,” she said. “I’m going to find the person responsible for Senator Peterson’s death.” A faint smile played over her lips. “I hope it’s Zettel.”
“As do I,” James said. “Let me know if I can help.”
She wanted to refuse him. After everything he had done to her, did he really deserve the satisfaction of revenge? But she had held Nathaniel’s newly formed body, fragile and damp with the blood of the Tree, and seen the shock on his face when he remembered dying. She wasn’t the only one that deserved retribution for that horror.
“I will,” Elise said.
A faint smile touched James’s lips.
For an instant, she could almost forget what they had become, and convince herself that they were a functioning team again. Kopis and aspis: more fatal than family, more permanent than marriage, closer than the oldest friends. A pair that fought for the same things, instead of against one another.
But his smile soon faded, and so did her moment of warmth. Her hand was still burning and twitching. Her skin ached under the moonlight. And her anger at James Faulkner was as black as the night.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Elise said—more to remind herself than him. It wasn’t the first time that she had said it in recent memory, but it was with less conviction than ever.
“Of course not,” he murmured.
She clutched the magic to her heart and willed herself away from James.
Over the years, James had become accustomed to watching Elise leave him. She was strong and nimble, and could climb like a spider when inspired; once or twice she had fled from his company by climbing up a building and disappearing over the roof. But those had been physical, traceable departures—he had only lost her because he was fractionally slower.
Yet he would never grow accustomed to watching her vanish into shadow. There was nothing to track, nothing to follow. She was gone in a heartbeat like a flock of scattering ravens.
In the half-second before Elise disappeared, when her hair and eyes had faded to leave nothing but a woman’s pale, hovering face in front of him, she looked like she once had as a human. He could imagine all of her flaws were intact: the twisted nose, the freckles splattered on her too-sharp cheekbones, the disproportionately full lips. She didn’t look like a statue with her features smoothed to perfection.
She looked like someone that had belonged to him.
“Who was that?”
James didn’t turn to see Brianna approaching. Seeing Elise filled him with the raw ache of an open, festering wound, and it felt like letting anyone else witness that might make him bleed out.
“I told you to leave,” he said gruffly.
“And go where? To those moldering ruins in utter darkness? You think I’m going to sit around at camp with all of the lights off, like this is some kind of—”
“Silence,” James snapped.
Her jaw clamped shut. It was the first time that he had been curt with her since they had reunited, but she didn’t look hurt or betrayed. He hadn’t fooled her at all with his cordial behavior. Brianna might have been a weak witch for most purposes, and obnoxiously assured of her self-importance, but she wasn’t stupid. Far from it.
“I was trying to protect you and the site,” James said, a little more levelly than before. “She needed to believe that we were only projections of ourselves. If she had realized that we have a nearby camp, we never would have been able to finish our work.”
“Our work,” Brianna echoed. She plastered a grin on her face. It didn’t reach her eyes, and made her look a little crazy. “Okay. You were protecting me. Fine. Let’s go finish our work for the night so I can go back to our hotel and take a shower to get all of our crappy dirt off of me.”
Brianna whirled and stalked through the rocks, keeping a hand on the steep side of the canyon as she slid down the slope. It was an utterly graceless descent, which kicked up gravel on James’s slacks as he followed.
He removed his jacket and scarf, throwing them over his shoulder. Even at night, the desert was sixty degrees. He had only been wearing it to help deceive Elise, and he was sweltering.
They had to climb into the canyon for twenty minutes before finding the dim outlines of their camp. He had inherited his kopis’s strength from their close bond, but not her eyesight. He was blind.
Metal and tarp rattled as Brianna scuffled around. “I can’t find the lantern,” she said. “Let there be light?”
“Fine. Just a moment.”
James snapped his fingers, pushing a candlelight rune through his leather gloves. It hovered in the air above his palm, splashing electric blue light over their camp. It was bright enough for Brianna to find the lamps that they had turned off when James invited Elise for a visit.
The LEDs illuminated, bringing the camp fully into view again. They had digging equipment
, lengths of plastic to conceal what they exposed, and a case of water bottles. James had also erected a tent to protect some of their equipment, but they weren’t sleeping there. It got too hot during the day.
Ethereal stone hewn from the bones of long-extinct beasts jutted from the sides of the cliff, dusty and brown from being exposed for far too long in the Nevada desert. Many portions of the pillar were identical to the one that the White Ash Coven was reassembling at the warehouse, but this one was already complete—buried within the rocks, but whole.
The exposed pillars were the ankles and calves; parts of a hand jutted from the ground a few yards above his head. Once the entire structure was exposed, it would look like a primitive statue of a man swathed in robes.
James had been shocking runes through the earth, making the rocks tremble and shaking loose soil from the pillar underneath. The rubble around camp was piled higher than he was tall, in some places. The destruction would be even greater by the time they were done with the magical excavation.
While he had been exposing the statue, Brianna had been working at disassembling the ancient mage spells that protected the site. The ground was essentially a dead zone; they couldn’t erect an altar there until the old magic was wiped out.
James climbed onto a patch of boulders near the statue’s leg that had already been wiped clean. He had built a circle of power in front of the marble feet, and he lit the lone taper at the northern point. Smoke spiraled toward the stars.
“So I’m supposed to accept that you’re meeting up with demon friends on this trip without asking why?” Brianna asked, looking up at him with her hands propped on her hips. “What’s a half-angel Gray got to do with some succubus?”
James had intended on ignoring the rest of her questions, but he couldn’t remain silent at that. “She’s not a succubus.” Elise was so much more than that. The blood of a damned god-demon might have changed what she was, but Yatam could never have changed who she was.
“No, she’s definitely a succubus,” Brianna said. She tapped the side of her nose with one finger. “I know stuff, remember?”