by Annie Bellet
Still, it would have to be enough for now.
Don’t worry, Angela, he thought then.
I won’t let him have you.
Connor and Angela’s story begins in Darkangel. Download it for free!
Amazon - Barnes & Noble - iBooks - Kobo - Google Play
Find out more at www.christinepope.com, and sign up for Christine’s newsletter here.
Dying Night
SM Reine
Hell is trying to squeeze its way onto Earth via the Grand Canyon. Elise and James, a demon hunting team, haven’t spoken about that thing that happened in Copenhagen for six months. With all the pressure boiling under the surface, something is sure to blow.
Kopis: A Greek word meaning “sword.” A kopis is a demon-hunting human born with better than average strength, reflexes, and healing. Though physically strong, a kopis is vulnerable to magical attack.
Aspis: A Greek word meaning “shield.” An aspis is a witch who binds with a kopis to shield them from magical assault. A kopis can only have one aspis. The bond is for life: closer than friendship, stronger than family, and more permanent than marriage.
It was inevitable that someone would eventually use the Grand Canyon for evil. That was why it had been made in the first place, after all.
Sometime in the dark, early years of existence, primitive demons cracked Earth in an attempt to route directly to the boiling river of Hell-blood known as Phlegethon. Many hundreds of years later, that crack would be known by mortals as the Grand Canyon.
The natural juncture between Earth and Hell occurred at a point in the south rim of the eventual Grand Canyon, below a rock formation later known as the Tower of Set. The ancient warlocks who created the canyon failed to burrow into that natural juncture despite many years of magical labor. They progressed to within a thousand feet of the fissure before angels, annoyed by all the commotion on Earth, slaughtered the warlocks and let their bodies rot in the sun.
That was why the Grand Canyon existed, and such inauspicious origins had a way of leaving a mark for millennia into the future.
Furthermore, the boiling blood of Phlegethon sensed the nearness of Earth’s air. It sensed light and mortals and food.
Those warlocks had failed to free it, but that didn’t mean that Phlegethon forgot how close it was to being unleashed.
It never forgot.
That lurking evil spent more than six thousand years building enough resentment, strength, and pressure to snap.
Anything twisted up with that much tension will always snap sooner or later.
***
September 8th, 2000 — The Grand Canyon, Arizona
In a stone vault under the earth, a portal opened.
The rocks shifted, groaned, cracked.
A fissure the width of an arm spread in the darkness.
Hot blood sprayed from it as if from an artery sheared by a razor. Fluid gushed over the opposite wall, splattered the cave floor, and instantly steamed the air near to boiling.
A hand thrust through the fissure. Unharmed by the blood, the arm stretched across dimensions to claw at Earth, feeling the freshness of the atmosphere and the waiting prey.
Then that hand began tearing the fissure wider.
On the surface, approximately a mile away, Elise Kavanagh was in a gift shop filled with many incredibly tacky keepsakes—slightly less horrible than the blood gushing from Phlegethon, but only slightly.
The knickknacks intended to look like they were Native American were the worst, with “Made in China” stickers plastered under totem faces. She sneered at the flimsy arrowheads that couldn’t have cut through paper. The XXL tourist clothing in garish colors were almost as bad as those inauthentic artifacts, though. Nothing in the store verged on displaying the slightest sense of taste.
“Ooh,” said Malcolm Gallagher, lifting a pair of fringed leather chaps to measure them visually against Elise’s hips. “Very cowgirl.” He affected an imitation American accent, which he was not getting better at, despite traveling with Americans for several months. “I’d like you to ride my bucking bronco with these on, partner.”
Elise trailed her gloved fingers over leather satchels, looking for one pouch just large enough for a wallet or makeup.
“What do you think?” Malcolm asked, resuming his usual Irish accent. He swapped out the chaps for a smaller size and lifted them in front of Elise again. He seemed to find that size more satisfactory than the first one. “Should I buy them? You’d look great in these things. In just these things. Eh?” He thrust his hips against the hanger of the chaps, which was probably meant to indicate bending Elise over something.
Elise picked a leather satchel with turquoise fastenings. They looked genuine. The turquoise was a must; it would help cancel out the effects of the moonstone artifact they would soon carry into the depths of the Grand Canyon. The thick leather flap would allow a protection rune to be imprinted into it, too.
“Whoa doggy,” Malcolm said, now miming swinging a lasso over his head.
The corner of Elise’s mouth tugged into something that was the distant cousin of a smile.
Over Malcolm’s shoulder, she realized that there was another man standing in the doorway to the gift shop. He leaned his shoulder against the doorway. He was so tall that the top of his head nearly brushed the upper frame, and the harsh sunlight cast a yellow halo over his charcoal-black hair.
Even with his face shadowed, Elise could feel the chilly weight of his pale gaze. James Faulkner was watching Elise shop with her boyfriend.
“Fine,” Elise said. “Buy the chaps.”
Malcolm cackled and slapped her ass. “Yee haw!”
She pointedly did not look for James’s reaction.
***
September 9th, 2000 — The Grand Canyon, Arizona
The demon hunters were staying at a campsite to the north of the canyon. It was one of many similar campsites, and they inhabited one of many motorhomes similar to those occupied by other tourists. The mundanity of it all rendered Elise and James anonymous among the crowd. Who would expect to find the world’s greatest kopis in a puke-colored Winnebago from the 80s?
That Winnebago was currently groaning on its springs. Inside, in the double bed in the back, Malcolm reclined while Elise rode him.
Her motions were less like the cowgirl he’d requested and more like she was wrestling him into submission. Elise wasn’t stronger than Malcolm, physically speaking; despite the fact that they had equally impressive muscle from similar myostatin deficiencies, she was still female, with lower body mass, and therefore at a disadvantage.
He allowed her to top him, though. He liked it when she got rough with him. The more their sex verged on the scary and potentially murderous, the harder he got off.
To be honest, Elise liked it that way too.
She was always kind of pissed. Always on the brink of snapping. Killing demons wasn’t enough to get it all out. In the moments when she reached climax, in the brilliant white light of orgasm, Elise felt relaxed. Just for a moment. And she appreciated the release.
If she got to choke Malcolm while reaching that release—well, that was just part of the fun. If there was one thing to be said for her relationship with Malcolm, it was that they always had fun.
Six months. It was easily Elise’s longest relationship to date, if one didn’t count her relationship with James.
James didn’t count their relationship as a relationship. Why should Elise?
Her aspis was down in the canyon, drawing on her energy as he cast a spell. Their bond was open in what was colloquially known as a “piggyback.” That meant that they were sharing their thoughts, feelings, and strength, as well as all of the sensations that went along with that. Being able to piggyback off of one another was one of the primary benefits to joining as kopis and aspis.
Separately, neither of them was as strong as they were together—or at least, that was how it worked when the bond was going well.
The bond hadn’t
been going very well lately.
As Elise’s hips rocked atop Malcolm’s, she felt James’s hands sifting through salt and crystal as surely as she felt Malcolm’s ribs pressed between her knees.
James was taking extra care to shield his thoughts from her. She got no sense of his reaction.
He must have known what she was doing. He should have felt every moment of it.
Elise had no idea what James thought of the way she occupied her time while he cast a boring, lengthy ritual. But she could imagine it.
He’d be disgusted.
James barely tolerated Malcolm’s presence, the way that the demon hunter called him “Jimmy,” the constant sex Elise and Malcolm had—even when they were in a demon hive, fresh off of a dozen kills. And that was fine.
Elise must have disgusted James long before Malcolm entered the picture. At least she was giving her aspis good reason to hate her now.
Let him see her gloved hands clamped on the muscles of Malcolm’s neck. Let him watch the male kopis’s face contort with pleasure even as his cheeks purpled from asphyxiation. Let James hear the playful, laughing whoops of an Irishman who was pretending to be a cowboy, or whatever the hell those noises were supposed to mean.
Six months since they’d left Copenhagen.
Six months since James had stopped managing to conceal his distaste from Elise.
Malcolm flipped Elise over on the bed, shoving her hard enough that her head hung over the edge of the mattress. The fact that he’d managed to do that, when Elise usually thwarted his wrestling maneuvers, meant she was truly distracted.
It was hard to concentrate on sex when she was also mentally nestled near the Tower of Set, casting advanced magic.
James was speaking Latin. His words flowed through her.
Malcolm withdrew from Elise’s body and spent himself across her belly, as he always did in a lazy attempt at birth control. She hadn’t bothered telling him that it was impossible for her to get pregnant. She preferred to clean him off of her skin rather than from her innards.
He was done. Finally.
Malcolm rolled onto the bed beside her with a sigh.
Elise remained sprawled on the bed. Eyes unfocused, she watched the candles flickering around James’s circle of power.
She could see every detail of the canyon as though she were the one standing in it. Elise could even feel the heat from the flames and the tingle of power flowing through both of them.
Yet she couldn’t pick up a single one of James’s thoughts. He was so carefully shielded.
“You didn’t come.” Malcolm opened the drawer beside the bed, grabbed the whiskey, and took a swig. “Want me to finish you off, cowgirl?” He flicked his tongue out in a lewd imitation of a snake.
Elise took a drink of the whiskey as well. “No.”
“How’s Jimmy?” he asked.
She was surprised that he asked. Elise hadn’t thought Malcolm realized that she had an open bond with James.
It wasn’t surprising that he would have had sex with her anyway. Malcolm got bored whenever they weren’t actively screwing or killing, so annoying James was high on his list of pastimes. Forcing James to watch them have sex probably only helped Malcolm get his rocks off.
“James is casting,” Elise said. Roughly a mile away, her aspis rolled the moonstone artifact between his palms. It was unsettling to feel rock against bare skin like that, when Elise took such care to never remove her gloves. She had to remind herself that it was only James’s hands that were unprotected, not hers.
Malcolm took the bottle back, and then another drink. “Is he jealous? Wishing he were here, eh? I know he wants my body.”
Actually, James hated Malcolm so much that even his carefully guarded emotions couldn’t conceal it. “He’s almost done with the spell.”
Elise climbed out of bed. Her gloves were stained with bodily fluid, so she swapped them out one at a time. Left hand first, and then right. She was careful not to let Malcolm see her palms. Even when she was lost in James’s thoughts, she was aware enough to hide her palms.
The moonstone glimmered in her mind’s eye. It was an impressive artifact—a magical padlock that could block dimensions. It had cost a good half of Elise and James’s stolen fortune to buy it in Lebanon, but it had been a worthwhile investment. Once that padlock was placed on the fissure to Phlegethon, the passage between dimensions would never open, sparing them the effort of confronting tens of thousands of demons and saving even more mortal lives.
James just needed to entrap that moonstone within the turquoise-and-leather bag first so that the fissure to Phlegethon wouldn’t feel it approaching. Hell had a way of reacting violently when it sensed something that could defeat it nearby.
“Did Jimmy come when I did?” Malcolm was still lounging naked on the mattress, unselfconscious with all of his rippling muscle, shiny scars, and chest matted with brown hair. “Should I take him a clean pair of pants?”
Elise was about to drain the last of the whiskey when the Winnebago shivered around them.
Cabinets rattled. The wardrobe door swung open.
Then the floor jerked under Elise’s feet.
Surprised, she steadied herself with a hand on the counter.
“Earthquake,” Malcolm said. “Shit. We’re out of time.” He checked the clock on the bedside table. “The apocalypse isn’t due for a few more hours. I hate it when people show up early for a party.”
The earth shook harder for a few more seconds before subsiding. Not a big deal. Just a little quake.
When the next one came, it wouldn’t be little.
Elise wiped Malcolm’s fluids off of her skin with tissues, then put her wrist sheaths back on. She also donned her spine scabbard with the twin falchions that she always carried—presents from her kopis father.
She stepped outside.
Two people cut through the gloom of night, moving toward Elise with purposefulness unlike the confused tourists who wandered the campground.
One of the newcomers was as close to a friend as Elise had: Lucas McIntyre, a third kopis to complete their trifecta.
McIntyre had always resembled a bear fatted for winter. Ever since he had married his girlfriend, Leticia, he had only grown fatter still. He was broader than Elise and Malcolm combined. His hair was thinning on top of his head as it grew in fine curls on his pimply shoulders. He currently had a shotgun propped against one of those shoulders.
“Fuck, Kavanagh,” he said, rolling his eyes to the sky when he realized she was half-naked. “I don’t wanna see your…whatever you got going on there. I’m blind.” He pointedly didn’t look at her tits.
Elise held out a hand. Malcolm placed a shirt in her waiting grip as he emerged from the trailer. He tucked himself into his jeans and zipped the fly.
“The Traveler,” she said after a moment of studying McIntyre’s companion.
The Traveler was neither he nor she—a human witch who preferred to identify itself by its sole and unique power, which was a very special kind of traveling. Even James couldn’t imitate its abilities.
The Traveler had no breasts under its tank top, but its full lips were feminine. Long eyelashes framed pale eyes. Its mohawk flopped over one forehead, and tattoo sleeves covered it from knuckles to slender biceps.
Elise couldn’t tell if the Traveler had been born male or female. It was the Traveler, and that was all.
“At your service,” said the Traveler, inclining its head in greeting to Elise. “And not a moment too late.”
Another earthquake punctuated its sentence.
Elise could actually see the RVs in the campground rippling, tossed by the rolling ground. The suspension on her vehicle groaned.
She surfed the earthquake even as she pulled the shirt on to cover her breasts and protect McIntyre’s modesty. Elise was still trying to maintain her footing when she realized that Malcolm had given her a Hooters tee. It was short enough to expose the holsters on her arms and her scarred midriff.
Malcolm was grinning when she shot a look at him.
“What?” he asked innocently, sidestepping a trash can as it rolled past him.
Elise rolled her eyes.
Hooters. Hell of a way to face the apocalypse.
The earthquake slowed, but didn’t stop. Somewhere beyond the RV park, humans were screaming. Those screams weren’t because of the earthquake. Elise recognized the sounds of dismemberment when she heard them.
“Traveler, let’s travel,” Elise said.
McIntyre pumped his shotgun. “Before this campground turns into a graveyard.”
***
Demons flooded out of the depths of the Grand Canyon. They clambered up the cliff, scrambling to reach James where he had constructed his circle of power within the Tower of Set’s crook.
The black tide of demons crashed against rock, unhindered by gravity. They slavered. They shrieked.
They came to kill James.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Good Lord.”
James lifted his hand, and the mass of demons crashed into an invisible barrier of magic. Inches from James’s face, teeth snapped, claws raked against his circle of power, and boiling blood gushed through the air.
James had had ample time to prepare the wards before the demons arrived, since the spell to shield that leather satchel had been long and boring. His magic was sturdy enough that Ba’al himself wouldn’t have been able to punch through—at least, not for ten minutes.