by SM Reine
She also felt a werewolf tickling her senses.
Rylie.
Sprinting down the tunnel, Elise only skidded to a stop when it opened into a cavern, complete with stalactites and a hot springs trickling down one wall. It was as large as a baseball field and illuminated by torches along a central path—a path leading straight to an altar, where several tied humans were held under the watchful gaze of a dripping, rotting hybrid.
And Abraxas.
Their eyes met from across the cave, and he didn’t look surprised to see her. He held a blade like a butcher knife in one hand, and his other shriveled fist clutched a glass bottle. “There you are,” he said. “I was hoping you would see this, Daughter.”
Elise stepped forward, trying to see whom he had tied behind him through the steam pouring off of the hot springs. She could only make out their figures—at a quick count, nine of them.
Abraxas stepped down the stairs toward her, leaving the humans on the raised dais behind him. Infernal magic seethed through the air, thicker than the stench of sulfur, richer than blood, and growing in strength.
“Did you see my army?” he asked. “I know they’ve been dying to see you.”
Elise nodded reluctantly. “You brought them through Senator Peterson’s portal.”
He grinned toothily. “Yes.”
“How did Senator Peterson get a portal to Hell?”
“The Union gave it to him,” Abraxas said. He worked his mouth around to collect saliva, and then spit on the floor. Ichor splattered at his feet. “You trapped an entire unit of Union forces within Dis when the tower fell. But they had contingency plans. Their witches established another portal within days and were able to escape to Earth when I staged my coup.”
She kept an eye on the hybrid in the back of the room as she moved slowly toward Abraxas. “They escaped to Senator Peterson’s house.”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “He was a lackey for the Union’s lobbyists for years before the OPA existed. He deserved to die.” His smile bared many square, crooked teeth. “They all do.”
“Is that what you want? The deaths of the men leading the OPA?” The edges of the cave were darkening, flames struggling to illuminate the farthest corners.
“It will be a start,” Abraxas said.
“What do I have to do to get you to go back to Dis and take your centuriae with you?”
He spread his hands wide. “There’s nothing to be done. You have nothing to offer.”
“Then why did you wait for me?” she asked.
Abraxas stopped walking a few feet in front of her. “You left Dis destroyed in the wake of your battle with Metaraon. All I want from you, Daughter, is your immortal suffering.” He swept the butcher’s knife toward the altar. “This is how it will happen.”
With the gesture of his arm, the steam blew away, and Elise realized whom he had captured.
Rylie was on the dais, back to back with another woman whose hair was Kool-Aid pink—Leticia McIntyre. Once she recognized the first two people, Elise recognized some of the others, too. McIntyre himself had one arm each tied to his daughters, Dana and Deb. Their tiny bodies weren’t moving. Katja was on the floor behind them. Strangers rounded their number out to nine.
Everything was in place to reopen the fissures to Hell. Abraxas only needed to kill them.
Elise wasn’t going to wait for him to act.
She exploded into shadow, filling everything and nothing with her body. She went for the hybrid first—it was easy to attach to him, encase his body, swallow it down. Too easy. Its flavor filled her with a heady rush of new strength.
It should have been equally easy to swallow Abraxas. She filled the spaces in the cave in preparation to descend on him. Or at least she tried to fill the spaces in the cave—but there was already something there, and as she grew, it squeezed back.
Elise hit the ground hard, corporeal and dizzy and stomach knotting as she digested the hybrid. Her head thundered at the failed attempt to expand.
A pair of feet stood in front of her. Elise’s gaze tracked up the leather boots to the soft leggings, the black corset with silver buckles, the dog collar dripping chains into a woman’s cleavage. She had skin like starlight, black eyes, and red lips. She stared down at Elise expressionlessly, hands loose at her sides with fingernails that looked like black claws.
It was the demon that had assassinated Senator Peterson.
And she looked almost exactly like Elise.
The differences were slight—the shape of her chin and cheeks. Her hair wasn’t sleek and inky like Elise’s, either. It was barely more than a black fog at her shoulders. She was fraying, semi-translucent, barely able to hold on to her physical form. And Elise couldn’t get a read on her mind. It was like the white noise that bound kopides and infected hybrids produced, but the volume had been jacked up until Elise could sense nothing else. Just being near this new demon made her skull throb.
No wonder Abraxas had let Elise devour the hybrid. He had a much better weapon than that.
“Meet the thing I call Atropos,” Abraxas said. “She’s an enhanced megaira. What do you think?”
Megaira were much like nightmare demons, though they fed off of human aggression rather than fear. Elise had never seen a megaira that didn’t have serpents for hair and a skeletal figure. Being “enhanced” with Elise’s blood had done Atropos a big favor, in more ways than one.
Elise tried to expand again. She flooded the walkway with her shadowy form, wrapped tendrils of shadow around Atropos, and began to contract.
The megaira disappeared and reappeared a few feet away, equally expressionless, unimpressed by Elise’s attempt to hurt her.
How the hell was Elise supposed to kill a demon she couldn’t touch?
She reformed on the walkway and jerked the falchion out of her spine scabbard. Abraxas was mounting the stairs again, moving for the sacrifices he had tied together. Elise might not have been able to fight a demon with her powers, but Abraxas was physical—she could always dismember him and worry about the rest later.
Atropos stepped in her way when Elise tried to follow him. She didn’t attack—she just stood there, an impenetrable wall with bottomless pits for eyes.
“Move,” Elise growled.
Atropos said nothing.
Rylie caught Elise’s eye and shook her head fractionally. Elise had no idea what she was trying to say. Don’t attack? Don’t speak? What? With the buzzing void of Atropos’s mind between them, she couldn’t sense Rylie’s intent at all.
Abraxas moved to McIntyre and his daughters. “I’ve always liked children,” the demon said in a voice that probably was meant to be kind. “I’ll make this swift.”
Behind him, Rylie stood and shook out her arms. She was unbound. And she was smiling a sweet, bashful smile, as if she were kind of embarrassed by how easily she had broken free. Abraxas hadn’t realized that Rylie was a werewolf—he hadn’t chained her in silver.
Abraxas swung the knife toward Dana, but the blade never met flesh. Rylie caught his arm and tossed him to the ground.
Atropos turned at the noise to see what was happening. Elise snapped a high kick into her jaw and was satisfied when she connected with something mostly solid—though her boot sank an inch into the megaira’s flesh, like she were made of cold molasses. Atropos staggered. Elise shoved past her.
Rylie was almost as strong in human form as she was in her wolf body, and with a strike of her fist, she sent Abraxas flying. He splashed into the hot springs. He screamed as boiling water lifted welts on his wrinkled flesh.
“I have Abraxas. Get everyone out of here!” Elise barked.
Rylie gave a sharp nod.
Leaping off of the walkway, Elise splashed down in the hot springs. To demon flesh, it wasn’t that hot—Abraxas’s cries weren’t from the temperature, but because Rylie had literally cracked his skull with the last blow, sending blood coursing down the side of his face. Elise slammed her fist into his wound again and aga
in, satisfied by his cries of pain.
But then Atropos was on her—not in her corporeal form, but as an overwhelming darkness that blacked out Elise’s vision, rolled down her throat, thrust into her ears.
There was no voice in that darkness. Atropos wasn’t really there. She was a void of thought and reason, and Elise felt no mercy from the megaira squeezing on her flesh. She slapped at the darkness, but there was nothing to hit. Elise stood, stumbled, fell again. Scorching water splashed her leggings.
“Stop,” she gasped. She wasn’t sure if she actually managed to speak or not. The sound never reached her ears.
Within Atropos, Elise felt nothing.
She had James’s exorcism spell under her glove. With enough time and focus, she could try to thrust Atropos into Hell, much like James had once done to her. But with the open doors, she had no idea how long that would last. And once she used the spell, she wouldn’t be able to use it on Rylie.
There had to be another way to beat the megaira.
With a hard push—not with hands, but with energy—Elise loosened Atropos’s grip enough to dissolve into shadow, leap away from the other demon, and reform on the other side of the cavern. She gasped at the overwhelming return of her vision.
Rylie had ripped the bonds from McIntyre and Leticia, and each of them was carrying a daughter along the walkway, away from the altar. The sound of Debora’s crying was sweet music. As much as it grated on Elise’s nerves when McIntyre’s kids threw tantrums, dead kids didn’t cry at all. Tonight, that was a sound of victory.
Abraxas stepped in their path, butcher knife raised. Elise staggered toward him, but Atropos reached her first, and they clashed in a mess of translucent limbs.
She thrust her elbow into Atropos’s face. A knee jammed underneath Elise’s breastbone. She twisted, tried to pull away. But the megaira was always there, forming a black barrier between Elise and Abraxas. Someone was screaming. Elise couldn’t see; there was no way to tell if Abraxas had attacked the McIntyres.
Atropos exploded into a thousand fragments again, preparing to crush Elise.
“Get down!” Elise shouted.
She couldn’t wait to see if her allies obeyed.
Elise blindly jabbed her entire arm through Atropos’s shadow, piercing the darkness, and felt her blade contact flesh. Hopefully, it was demon flesh.
The falchion jerked out of her hand as Atropos devoured Elise.
It only took a moment to disengage herself and cross the room again. As soon as she had eyes to see, she found Abraxas standing in the walkway with a falchion jutting out of his back. She had struck true. He had dropped the butcher’s knife and clutched the glass vial in both hands.
The McIntyres were safe. Uninjured.
Elise’s relief was only momentary.
Atropos fogged again.
The McIntyres were smart enough to run, sticking in the light from the torches, dodging around Abraxas’s falling body and dragging Katja with them. But it wasn’t enough. Atropos’s cloud crept over them, filling the room with night, dimming the torches until they were nothing but embers. She was going to swallow them all, even if Abraxas was dead—she was too mindless to realize she didn’t have to follow his orders any longer.
Elise tried to push back, tried to hold her off so that the others could escape. But even swallowing a hybrid and drinking Seth’s blood wasn’t enough to make her a match for Atropos.
The weight pressed on her. The roar of her mind throbbed inside Elise’s skull. She heard cries and didn’t know if it was the McIntyres dying or her own voice.
Sudden, brilliant light flared in the cavern, penetrating the megaira’s shadow.
Atropos fragmented and rapidly decayed, flaking away like parchment paper held to a lighter. It took mere seconds for the light to chase away the shadows. The cavern was agonizingly bright—there was nowhere left for the megaira to hide.
She vanished.
Without Atropos’s body shadowing her, the light hit Elise full bore. She flung her arms in front of her face and cried out. It burned—for the love of Hell, it burns—and she felt herself burning, fraying, flaking like the megaira had.
A body moved in front of hers as a shield. “It’s okay,” Rylie said, her gentle voice breaking through the haze of pain. “I’ve got you.” Louder, she said, “Turn it down!”
The light dimmed, swathing Elise in blissful darkness. She dared to lower her hands from her face. Her eyes were blurred with pain, but beyond Rylie’s protective outline, she could make out a pair of broad, sweeping wings. Each one was six feet long, glossy white with silvery tips.
Nash stepped into view. Despite the energy it must have taken to flare so brightly, he looked composed, wearing a dove gray suit without a necktie. “Reinforcements have arrived,” he said with a twist of amusement to his mouth. He offered Elise a hand. She ignored it and stood.
There were three other angels at the end of the cavern: a beautiful woman with auburn hair and two men with flaming swords. They were drenched in so much blood that Elise could smell it at that distance, but it was demon blood, not mortal; she didn’t crave it at all. They must have cut through the centuria to reach the cave.
The McIntyres and Katja huddled behind them, safe and unharmed.
Reinforcements indeed.
“Took you long enough,” Elise grunted.
Rylie elbowed her. “Be nice.” Turning to Nashriel, she said, “Thank you. You’ve got great timing.”
“It seems that you didn’t need me,” he said, eyes sweeping over the cave. Abraxas’s body was a few yards away, blackened to stone by Elise’s falchion.
“I don’t know about that,” Rylie said. “I wasn’t too hot on getting eaten by an Elise clone.” She wrapped her arms around Nash’s waist and squeezed him tight enough that he let a surprised noise slip from his lips. But after a moment, he patted her back, returning the affection. The angels milled behind him, muttering among themselves. Elise didn’t have to be able to make out the words to know that it was unflattering. She glared at them until they looked away.
She stooped over Abraxas. Duke of Hell or not, he had been taken by Elise’s sword as easily as anything else. The poison had turned his wrinkled face, sunken eyes, and frail limbs to stone. The butcher’s knife had slipped from his rigid fingers.
His robes flaked away as she pushed through them. It only took a moment for her fingers to find something glassy and smooth.
Elise pulled the vial of her blood out and held it up so she could see the dancing torchlight on the other side.
There was so little blood within the glass. Three drops was barely enough to stain the sides when she swirled it. And this was her blood from the time before she had entered the garden, when the Tree’s sap was forced through her veins—it was sludgy and red, like a very thick wine. It didn’t look like enough to cause so much trouble.
She wrapped her fist around it tightly. James had said she could close each of the doors with it. It was time to test that theory.
“There are demons on the surface,” Elise told Nash. “A lot of them, including some hybrids. Abraxas has been bringing them over for months. Can you take care of them while I take care of this?” She lifted the vial between them.
“It will be no trouble at all,” he said. He gave a dignified sniff. “That so-called duke never posed any real threat to us. It may have been centuries since angels went to war, but we still—”
Nash was interrupted by a rumbling in the earth. Dust showered from the roof of the cave. The torches flickered.
The earth rocked beneath her, throwing Elise off her feet.
She lost her grip on the vial of blood.
It smashed on the wall, leaving a tiny smear of blood—three drops rendered useless.
“No!” Elise cried. Her voice was drowned out by the growing cracks and grumbles within the earth, Rylie’s shrieks, and a chorus of distant screams.
Those weren’t human screams.
Infernal energy spiked,
crushing against the inside of her skull, and she clapped her hands over her ears to soothe her throbbing eardrums. But it wasn’t a noise that was hurting her, and she couldn’t block out the sound of the universe tearing apart.
With a roar like a furious tornado, the ceiling of the cave ripped away, fragmenting into a thousand pieces that hurtled into the night. There was no starlight beyond the hole that it produced—only a wall of smoke and fire.
Another fissure had opened.
“But Abraxas didn’t open this door!” Rylie cried.
He hadn’t. But that didn’t mean someone else hadn’t opened another door, somewhere that Elise hadn’t been watching while she had been distracted. Like she’d told Anthony, there were more pieces in a game of chess than the king.
Elise and Nash’s eyes met. They were obviously thinking the same thing. “I’ll find it,” she said. She jerked her chin toward Katja and the McIntyres. “Whatever you do about the demons, make sure they get home safely.”
He nodded once.
Elise grabbed Rylie by the wrist, and they hurtled into the night.
Twenty
It wasn’t difficult to find the source of the fissure. Elise only needed to follow the screams coming from the deepest pits of Hell.
From above, she could see the line of fire stretching northwest toward California and southeast into Arizona. A second line cut toward Utah. The glorious expanse of the barren salt flats had torn open to reveal the wastelands of Dis beyond, burning with eternal flame, belching smoke into the sky, casting a red hue on the bellies of the clouds.
Demons were scrambling out of the fissure in the center of the desert, so many of them that they only looked like ants swarming from their nest. Too many for even Elise to swallow. The Union’s helicopters tracked the movement of demons with their spotlights. SUVs tore through the desert. The distant popping of gunfire, like strings of malfunctioning fireworks, echoed through the air.
Elise passed them, tracking the gash toward the place where it widened, just north of Las Vegas. All of the lines converged there. Not within the city, but a few miles beyond the edge of the metropolitan area.