51
The world folded as Zuriel and I vied for the relic, competing for control of its stored power. He sought to push through to the Shadowside, and I fought to keep us anchored with the others in the basement.
I was losing. Saliriel wavered in the air between us, fading first to a hazy figure painted in grayscale, then bleeding to a featureless silhouette of scarlet. The rafters and cinder block walls fell away and the shattered remnants of Zuriel’s circle grew sharper, taking on substance until the broken filaments of energy glittered like stubs of spun glass sprouting from the floor.
Too much effort, I thought, and with the wound over my kidney, I didn’t know what kind of strength I had to waste. So I changed tactics, trying to piggyback on the relic’s power.
As it bridged the journey to the Shadowside, punishing images lashed the air around us—Zuriel’s attack on his father, the man’s torture and eventual murder. Graphic didn’t even begin to cover it. I got a ringside seat to the young Anakim’s singular capacity for sadism. The relic was drenched in it, sick and bloated, and, as it ripped us both across to the other side of reality, I realized that the miserable death was a fundamental part of its power.
No wonder the thing could carry two of us across, and still not be spent. I could even see how Tabitha had managed to tag along through its wrenching backwash. The relic was strong—obscenely strong.
Human sacrifice had a way of doing that.
The boy hadn’t realized it at the time, had no initial understanding of the item’s purpose. He’d only felt the knowledge as compulsion, so acute and blinding that he hadn’t dared to call it into question.
That is the great tragedy of your tribe. Your knowledge manifests first. The memories of consequence, only later.
Get out of my fucking head. Despite the language, the thought lacked any real force. Everything I had was focused on keeping hold of Zuriel while we made the brain-ripping transition. Stepping to the Shadowside with a relic wasn’t a joyride under normal circumstances. Making it a two-for felt like both my brain and stomach were being put through a cosmic centrifuge.
I am waiting, Neferkariel responded.
I didn’t dare ask for what, and I couldn’t spare him any further thoughts. We were tumbling through the rift and Zuriel came out swinging. Distracted by Neferkariel’s yammering, I took a solid blow smack upside the head from one of Zuriel’s wings. The force of the strike lit fireworks behind my eyes, nearly knocking me stupid.
As I tried to shake off the damage, the little punk won the tug-of-war with the relic. He managed to stuff it in a pocket, but since Sal had done me the courtesy of breaking his arm, the kid was forced to work one-handed. I still had a good grip on him and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Ducking my head against his shoulder to avoid getting clocked with another wing, I drove him forward. As I strained to topple him, pain lanced across the small of my back. Raw and hot, it wasn’t as debilitating as before, but it still served as a reminder that things weren’t OK.
“Get the fuck off me, bro,” Zuriel yelled, flailing.
I didn’t waste my breath, just focused on wrestling the kid to the ground. I would have settled for shoving his back against a wall and cuffing him from there, but the walls of the basement—hell, the entire house—were virtually non-existent. About the only solid things on this side of reality were the ward and the wreckage of the circle. Vague shapes like poorly sketched shadows told me where the others stood in the flesh-and-blood world.
Winged, spindly scarlet—that was Sal. Something like a moving block with a head, that had to be Javier hustling down the stairs. Remy was a faint smear on the floor, red like Sal, but dim and spun out, pale streamers of essence sprawled around him like a doll’s torn stuffing.
I shivered, realizing we were wrestling inside of all that—the ruin of Remy’s blood. For that reason, if no other, I grabbed Zuriel by the throat and shoved hard to push him beyond the circle. The energy glittered like a broken ice castle, all razor-sharp points and brittle edges. They shattered into stardust with a sound like scattered chimes as I smashed my opponent through them. Agony soared hot and swift, but I just kept going. Maybe the Nephilim Primus kept me up. Maybe it was stubborn desperation.
Spitting insults, curses, and ridiculous jargon, Zuriel got in a few lucky punches, but the way I pressed into him, I kept his leverage to a minimum. With only one good arm, he couldn’t effectively pry me off, and I had probably twenty pounds of weight on him—all of it pissed-off, wiry muscle. He tried to brace himself with his wings, but mine were bigger. I countered by bringing them into play, pounding the air to increase our momentum.
He took another futile swing and I scissored his wrist in my elbow, trapping that arm between us. Furiously, he shouted his power, energy spitting from his fingers, but it was a token show, at best. Some of it danced up to snap against my cheek and throat. It stung like a motherfucker, but it was nothing compared to a blade in the back. I twisted to keep his arm locked between us, insulated by the warded leather of both our jackets.
He thrashed and tried worming his fingers inside my coat to dig his nails sharply into my ribs, then quickly withdrew when he got an elbow in the face.
With all my hurt and anger and outrage, I poured on the pain, blue-white fire crackling in a nimbus around the hand that held his throat. Zuriel gave a long, warbling, and very satisfying scream. I wanted right then to slap him in the Thorns of Lugallu, but to grab the cuffs I’d have to release his trapped hand. I didn’t think he could do much, not at this point, but—
And what will you do with him then? Neferkariel asked. The words held all the bland detachment of a therapist—or perhaps a scientist, curious but thoroughly uninvested in any particular outcome.
“For fuck’s sake, shut up already!” I yelled. The fire around my hand faltered along with my focus. Zuriel choked on the dregs of his scream, then fixed me with the weirdest look. I could almost see a reflection against his pale irises, red as the ominous light of a distant city against a cloudy night’s sky.
This one will not stop. You realize that, do you not?
“You mad, bro?” Zuriel whispered. That weird look crawled his features a second time and then, without warning, he vanished from my arms.
52
I thought—reasonably—that he had simply stepped back to the flesh-and-blood world. But, as far as I could measure, we stood in solid bedrock, nowhere near the open vault of the basement. Peering across confirmed this. Behind me, at a distance of about thirty feet, I could just make out the wavering silhouettes of Sal and company. I counted each familiar signature—Sal, Remy, Tanisha, Javier. A fifth had joined them—Ava.
Zuriel was nowhere within sight.
“What the fuck?” Furious, I lashed out at the space he’d so recently occupied, energy still glimmering around my fist.
Blue-white shimmers lingered in the air, outlining… something. A slit or seam, suspended amid all the lightless gray of the shadowed limbo. Curious, but with a mounting trepidation, I passed my hand across it a second time. The thing pulsed and trembled at the touch of my energy, like a mouth, pursing to open.
Barely visible, a darker bit of space hovered just beneath the parted surface. A rush of uneasy recognition shivered down to my wingtips and I recalled my conversation with Lailah in Halley’s vision of the hidden well. Layers. The Shadowside had layers. I’d been skimming the surface all along. This explained how Zuriel had appeared and disappeared so suddenly.
Are you sure you want to go there? With that wound, your mortal body is dying. Retreat would be safer.
I ignored the annoying voice in my head, determined to wall it from my awareness just like I had the wound he claimed was killing me. It probably was, but that just gave me more incentive to keep pushing. Neferkariel was right on one count. Zuriel wasn’t going to stop until he was captured. I was the only one who could go after him.
Drawing on the same capacity that allowed me to step out of the flesh-and-bloo
d world, I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and stepped through the parted curtain toward parts unknown.
A layer of light stripped away—or, perhaps, more appropriately, a layer of dark was added. I wouldn’t have thought of the Shadowside as being well-lit. The whole crushing bleakness of that space arose primarily from its lack of illumination and color. Perpetual twilight, starless skies over a world gray as dust—that was the Shadowside as I knew it.
This was darker. The space was a pit around me, and the air weighed heavily upon my wings. The suffocating atmosphere clawed more hungrily, and I knew without having to test it that this layer would eat my strength even faster than the one I’d come to know. Which made me wonder—if Zuriel was losing, why the fuck did he come down here?
Cast-off energy from his wings glistened faintly in the air ahead of me, the only thing of substance that I could see. He’d taken off as soon as he’d crossed over, and there was nowhere to go but up into the desolate excuse for a sky. Twenty, thirty feet above, he arced like a comet, a white tail trailing through the shapeless, choking black.
No telling where he thought he was going. There was nowhere to hide, and I didn’t think he could outrun me, regardless of his head start. Even if he escaped to further layers—assuming this descent might be endless—we both had to leave eventually, or face death.
“Not today,” I muttered. “Not today.” With a running leap, I pounded the air after him, pain a distant clarion ringing against my spine.
Zuriel had dumped a whole lot of energy into his assault on Remy—the ward, the alarm-traps, the near-impassable circle. He’d probably stepped through this nether-space more than once, as well. All of that was costly, and from the way his wings fought to chew the air, he was feeling it.
The broken wrist probably didn’t help.
I caught up with him fairly quickly, working even higher so I could drop on him from above. He didn’t have his daggers anymore, but I still had mine. If I had to cut the little bastard from the sky, I’d do it. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Containing him was more important than killing him.
Dead, he’d just come back.
Still, I’d kill him if he gave me no other option. He sure as hell deserved it.
Below us, the shadow of Parma was nearly featureless. A few roads cut through the unrelieved charcoal of what might have been fields, but most were smudges at best. The rows and rows of identical houses were phantoms, few possessing more substance than smoke. Here and there, the stain of a crossing stood out with the barest hint of color. Red. Always red.
The pigment of anger, of fire, of blood.
Zuriel was pale and sweating when I closed on him, beads forming greasily on his shock-white brow. He’d partly unzipped his jacket, tucking the wounded arm inside the leather like a makeshift sling, but every down stroke jostled it. I could practically hear the shattered ends of bones grinding together—it had to be agonizing.
Drawing my daggers, I tucked and dove, bracing to slam into him from above. He twisted his head around, realized what I intended, and he… rippled. A sucking vacuum shimmered in his wake. He’d gone deeper again.
“Fuck me running,” I hissed.
I dove in after him. Another layer, another crushing atmosphere. Shadows congealed as more light stripped away. The half-shadows of houses grew shapeless, as if few things at this level remembered their forms. The air itself swirled thick around us, heavier, a suspension of ink.
I spotted him just ahead. “You can’t run forever,” I shouted. The dark choked sound and sense alike. The ringing notes fell flat. Zuriel spared me a glinting look. Even his features were pared down to light and shadow, lines and planes.
“Who says I’m running, bro?”
He flickered again.
* * *
Layer and layer, we descended, the pressure grinding with intolerable weight. Each time he crossed deeper, he jumped ahead just enough to force me to rush, so I never fully caught up. That didn’t stop me from trying. The wound at my back began to clamor again. Whatever power I’d used to ignore it was flagging.
I tried not to think of the price.
Our flight became more like swimming, then like insects struggling in amber, then beasts drowning in tar. We hung, suspended, our nearly frozen wings the only remaining source of light. That light limned us, traced rough sketches of our bodies, pooled at our hearts. We were reduced to that most basic substance, all else either stripped by the increasing formlessness of the space, or impossible to perceive in the unrelenting void.
“Why?” I gasped, but it was wasted effort. The sound was as flat as if I’d spoken with my face pressed to a wall. Zuriel didn’t hear it, or he tuned me out. I was only a few body-lengths away, but moving forward felt like clawing through cold molasses. A breathless effort only gained me an inch.
With his good arm, Zuriel trailed light across shadows, as if he was finger painting on the dark. As I closed on him, a shape took form—the only form visible on this level beyond our thready light of moon and ice.
It was a house, rendered crudely, but recognizable all the same.
Halley’s house.
Even as I made the connection, Zuriel blipped from the darkness and I knew with terrible certainty that he’d reversed his direction, crashing through layers up and up and up. The bastard wasn’t running away from anything.
He’d been running toward her this whole time.
53
“No,” I breathed, but words couldn’t negate the horror. I had to act—and quickly.
The faint outline of the house beckoned, tugging like an anchor in some direction I could not name. Before I could gather my power to flicker after Zuriel, a terrible, familiar chittering chilled me down to my bones.
Cacodaimon.
My wait is over, Neferkariel announced. Here is the face of your true enemy, the misbegotten legacy of Dorimiel.
“What?” I choked.
The sound slithered closer, swift in the darkness and drawn to my light. Two slitted eyes opened in the distance—hardly distant enough. Red as bloody gashes, a membrane flickered and from their depths another color drank the red.
Green. Green as poison, green as sickness, green as a void-touched Nephilim’s maddened gaze as he peered down at me and swallowed my memories like candied dates.
“No,” I gasped again, even as the very air around me sought to drink my breath. “No, no, no.” That chittering cry rose again—high and terrible and almost within reach. Answering ululations resounded from every direction. The darkness filled with eyes.
“Weeee sssseeeee youuuu, Sssskyborrrrrrn,” the green-eyed one shrilled. “Weeee wwaaaannt ttooo plaaaaay…”
I gripped my weapons tighter, but against the encroaching dark, their light had grown hopelessly faint. That green-eyed horror—bigger than all the rest—had nearly ended me the other night at the lake. Only its behavior, erratic even for a being of chaos, had kept me from being devoured. And while I still couldn’t fathom why the thing had spared me, at least I understood what marked it as so mind-crushingly wrong.
Dorimiel was in there somewhere—or parts of him.
We are not yet prepared for this battle. Run.
I didn’t trust the Nephilim primus any more than I could trepan myself, but that was one bit of advice I wouldn’t argue. Headlong I fled into the faint sketch of Halley’s home, trading darkness for ascending layers of light.
With a knowledge that taunted beyond the periphery of consciousness, I kicked whorls of power behind me and collapsed the open path. The shrilling cries of hungry cacodaimons faded into the black.
54
When I caught up with him, Zuriel stood one layer from crossing into the flesh-and-blood world. Somehow, through that near-endless descent into the crushing void, we’d crossed miles in the mortal world. We were in Little Italy, the echoes of houses clustered among the hills leading up to the towering monuments of Lake View Cemetery.
Cemetery and houses, both crafted with the s
ame dedicated hands, held significant substance in this gray shadow of the world, a welcome contrast to the deep and formless dark I had escaped. Still rattled by my encounter in the depths, I kept an ear out for the cacodaimons’ shrill cries. But Zuriel and I were alone in this space.
With one exception.
On the other side of a street that flickered between cobbles and asphalt and bricks, Halley’s house stood solid as a fortress with its complex matrix of obfuscations and wards. Lil’s lioness lay recumbent on the porch, warily regarding us through one slitted eye. If Zuriel noticed the spirit-guardian, he was too cocky to care.
“You led me right to her,” he said. He was missing a front tooth. “And I know what she is. I’m not stupid. Gonna fuck her up good.”
“With a broken arm?” I demanded. “No weapons? What, you’re going to bleed on her?” Not that I was doing much better.
He patted the front of his jacket, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Your wards can’t stop bullets.” The lioness took keener interest. “I got your gun, bro, and you didn’t even notice.”
There was no need to check. Once he’d pointed it out, I couldn’t miss the change in the weight of my jacket, the subtle void on that side of my chest.
“You little fuck,” I hissed.
“I think I can tag someone before the old priest guns me down.” His wings shimmered as he started to step out of the Shadowside.
No.
With a roar of purest fury, I launched myself at his back. Fading dregs of power licked along my blades as I drove them deep into his shoulders—right in the meaty hollow between collarbone and neck. It was a conscious echo of his initial attack on Remiel, and it was wickedly effective.
His wings spasmed and a guttural cry erupted from his throat. Hissing profanities, he jerked and twisted, trying to clap me between the powerful musculature at the joints of his wings, but, with flagging strength, I crushed myself into the unreachable space along his spine where he couldn’t touch me. I knew that weak spot well. I’d had cacodaimons use it on me often enough.
The Resurrection Game Page 30