Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5)

by S. M. Reine

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next year,” Rylie said. It was nicer than saying “not a chance in Hell, literally.”

  “So why do you need somewhere to hold court?” Elise asked, jerking her thumb at the stage. “I thought all the wolves did whatever the Alpha ordered.”

  Rylie sat on the edge of the stage with a sigh, fiddling with the hem of her dress. “So did I.”

  “Problems with the masses?”

  “You could say that.” She wasn’t sure she should tell Elise that the werewolf pack was trying to grow. Rylie had promised herself—and the Office of Preternatural Affairs—that, as Alpha, she wouldn’t allow more people to become werewolves. Elise wouldn’t care about the promise. But werewolves were one of the few creatures that could actually hurt a demon like Elise, and she would care about that part.

  “Should I send up some forces to help you hold the fissure?” Elise asked.

  “It’s not that kind of trouble.” Not yet, anyway. “More like…growing pains.”

  Elise hopped up to sit beside Rylie on the edge of the stage. “Within your ability to control?” The way she swung her feet, she looked young and ordinary. Not at all the queen of Hell.

  “I hope so. How are you handling troublemakers in Dis?” Rylie asked.

  “I kill them as publicly as possible to send a message to my enemies.”

  Rylie winced. Maybe Elise wasn’t the best person to talk to when it came to ruling without fear.

  “Is that the only way to keep people under control? Threat of death? Really?”

  “In Hell, yes. Here?” Elise shrugged. “You’ll have to figure that out.”

  Rylie hung her head, focusing hard on the lace detailing on her skirt. “The Apple’s still in Northgate.”

  “If they’re causing trouble, get rid of them.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It could be,” Elise said. “You and I have a lot of bullshit to deal with, Rylie. Don’t waste time on anything you don’t need to.”

  A thought occurred to Rylie. She felt guilty that it was talk of “bullshit” that had reminded her. “What are you doing next month on the thirtieth?”

  “The thirtieth?”

  “Yeah. Of May.”

  Elise frowned. “What’s today’s date?”

  “April seventeenth,” Rylie said patiently.

  It was hard to keep track of time in Dis. Time flowed differently between Earth and Hell. It used to reliably be that one day in Hell was one week on Earth, but the fissure had changed things. Now it varied depending on which way the wind blew or the way the planet rotated or… Rylie wasn’t sure, but it was no surprise that Elise had lost track.

  “Hmm. I’m thinking I’ll be knee-deep in demon gibs on the thirtieth.” Elise shrugged. “Not that I have plans. Just saying, it seems pretty likely.”

  Rylie smothered a giggle. When had she become the kind of woman that could laugh at the idea of slaughtering demons? Probably about the same time that she had become the kind of woman that considered killing Felton to keep her pack in line.

  Sobering thought.

  “Nash and Summer are getting married on the thirtieth,” she said. “You’re invited.”

  Elise gave her a blank look. “I’m…invited. To a wedding.”

  “Yep. We’re not mailing invitations, sorry. We need the paper too much. But you are definitely invited to the wedding of Summer Gresham and Nashriel Adamson on May thirtieth, starting at five o’clock in the evening, right here.” Rylie spread her hands out to indicate the stage. “Food after, of course. Nothing fancy. Just slabs of cow, probably—the werewolf special.”

  “Nashriel Adamson.” The corner of Elise’s mouth twitched. “Don’t tell me Summer’s taking that last name.”

  “She’s pretty happy to be a Gresham.”

  “Good,” she said, pulling one knee to her chest and hugging it. “Good.”

  She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  Rylie patted Elise’s hand. “You don’t have to come. I know you’re probably not the wedding type. I just wanted you to know that you’re welcome if you want to, or if you get bored or something.”

  “I can’t imagine Nash wants me there.”

  “Probably not,” Rylie admitted. “But he can suck it up. Summer says it’s okay.”

  She expected Elise to refuse, but the demon just said, “I’ll think about it.” Elise jumped off the stage, brushing off the butt of her jeans. The sunlight was dimming. She looked a little stronger, not quite as withdrawn and trembling.

  “If you’re not here for homecoming, then what do you need? Just felt like talking?” Rylie asked.

  “Actually, I have to ask a favor,” Elise said. “Can I borrow a computer? I need to check my email.”

  Four

  SUMMER AND NASH’S cottage was unoccupied, but the fans in the server room were still roaring. The generator hummed steadily as it supplied power to two long rows of racks. Rylie flipped on the light switch and stood aside, allowing Elise to enter.

  “Summer’s the only one with reliable power and network access. You can use her main workstation over there. I know she won’t mind.”

  Summer might not, but would Nash? Elise could feel his energy all over the cottage even though neither was home.

  “Where are they?” Elise asked, shucking her jacket and tossing it on the back of Summer’s chair.

  Rylie’s cheeks turned pink. “Pre-honeymooning. Nash is flying Summer pretty much anywhere she asks right now. We don’t get a lot of updates, but I think they’re probably kind of…busy.”

  Point taken. Elise jiggled the mouse and the monitor came to life.

  “Thank you,” she said pointedly.

  “Let me know if you need anything else,” Rylie said. “Watch out for the cat.” She backed out of the room and shutting the door behind her.

  It took a minute for Elise to familiarize herself with Summer’s computer. She was a Linux user. The program icons were at the bottom of the screen instead of under a menu, like Elise was used to.

  She hadn’t been sitting down for five minutes when a heavy weight materialized in her lap. Elise didn’t even look down. She could tell by the hefty weight and tickle of fur that it was Sir Lumpy, Summer Gresham’s hideous cat.

  She logged into her email as Sir Lumpy nuzzled her wrist, smearing drool over her glove. It had been a long time since Elise had checked her messages. Most of it was from before the Breaking. She didn’t pay any attention to the old messages—they were mostly spam or newsletters from Original Sin, a whorehouse in Las Vegas that Neuma had owned before the Breaking.

  The most recent email—the only recent message—was from McIntyre.

  “Don’t know if you check this anymore. We’ve got a case, came through the normal channels from an American number. Missing persons. Anonymous client sent me a list of names. Money’s already been wired to us. Everything’s there. Figured you’d want to know.”

  Elise pushed the chair back and stared at the wall above Summer’s computer monitor.

  The email was phrased too casually, considering the contents. It irritated Elise. Some things called for a little more panic than McIntyre’s usual no-fucks-given attitude.

  Of course, he couldn’t have adequately conveyed the strangeness of the situation even if the text had been all-caps, underlined twice, and concluded with a dozen exclamation marks.

  The case had come through “normal channels”—meaning that someone had left a message on McIntyre’s anonymous voicemail—but most of America no longer had reliable electricity. That meant no phones, and no computers to access the Hunting Club’s website in order to find their phone number in the first place.

  That also meant no banks for wiring money.

  McIntyre was right. Elise did want to know what the fuck was going on. She wanted to know very badly.

  In her return email, she said, “I’ll look into it. Have Anthony contact the Northgate pack so they can send him down to Hell for me. I’m going
to want him on this one.” She hadn’t heard from her friend and fellow kopis Anthony Morales in months, but she needed him on Hunting Club cases.

  Elise sent her response before skimming the names, which McIntyre had attached to his original email. She didn’t recognize any of the ones that she read. And there were many. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. She scrolled through quickly, but the document seemed endless.

  These missing persons could have populated an entire city.

  She clicked the button to print the names, and a clattering across Summer’s server room drew Elise’s attention to an old HP Inkjet stashed in the corner. Sir Lumpy leaped off of her lap, startled by the noise.

  Elise got up and studied the first page as subsequent portions of the list printed. There didn’t appear to be any slant toward male or female, nor any predominant race. They may as well have been randomly selected from the phone book.

  The first question would be how these people had disappeared, and when. Many people had gone “missing” during The Breaking. Many more had died in riots, while others had been slaughtered by the infernal forces that clawed their way to Earth. Still more had been abducted for slavery in Hell—the same booming slave trade that Elise had been trying to end for months.

  She doubted that it was coincidence that someone would have gone out of their way to send her agency, the Hunting Club, this list of names.

  “How did you contact me?” she muttered, tracing a finger along the email header. There was no way that the anonymous person emailing them could have gotten into Hell and left a sticky note for her. He must have somehow asked one of her people to leave the message, although Elise had no clue who the enigmatic “B” could be.

  A man spoke behind Elise, loud enough for her to hear it over the printer.

  “Hey there.”

  For a moment she thought it was James, even though it didn’t sound like him. Hope did strange things to a woman’s sense of hearing.

  But that faintly accented drawl didn’t belong to her aspis. It belonged to another man that she had expected to never see again.

  She turned to find Lincoln Marshall standing in the doorway to Summer’s cottage.

  His hips were hugged by torn, dirtied jeans with tattered hems that looked like they had been worn through a tornado. There was a gun holstered at his right hip. His hair actually touched his ears. The scruffiness suited his chiseled features.

  At the sight of him, Elise momentarily forgot how to breathe. The memory of having him torture her was too fresh. Too raw.

  She was torn between wanting to kick his face in and wanting to tear his jeans off.

  “Lincoln,” she said, setting down the list.

  He tipped his cowboy hat back with a knuckle. It was dusty, well-beaten leather, bleached to paleness on top by sunlight. “Guess I’m probably not anyone you were hoping you’d see again.” He shut the door before Sir Lumpy could escape. The cat tangled around his ankles, pretending that he had never intended to exit in the first place.

  “Hope and expectation aren’t the same thing. What are you doing here?”

  “Gerard contacted me. I’d already been thinking of heading this way when I got his letter, though. I seem to be…well, look.” He spread his hands wide. The skin on his palms glowed a very faint shade of red, as though coals had been embedded between the metacarpals.

  That wasn’t normal for him. That wasn’t normal for any human.

  “What is that?” Elise asked.

  “I’ve got my suspicions, but I hoped you’d be able to tell me.”

  She had her suspicions, too.

  This was the grandson of Bain Marshall, the man honored by the statue in Northgate. A man with demon blood in his veins and relatives that could perform magic, making him as much of a potential warlock as Elise was, if he ever manifested the abilities of half-demon Gray.

  A man whose hands now looked to be glowing with internal fire.

  “Who let you in?” she asked. Lincoln wasn’t welcome in the sanctuary. He had tried to slaughter the werewolves with silver bullets, and the pack didn’t really care that he’d been under infernal influence.

  “I let myself in. The magic wall around the sanctuary doesn’t seem to be working,” Lincoln said. “And I saw you walking here with Rylie, so I just followed you.”

  “I don’t want you here,” Elise said. “Leave. Now.”

  Surprise flashed over his eyes. “Gerard said you needed me.”

  When Elise had last spoken to Lincoln, he had refused to help her run the Palace. He loved God and feared his infernal heritage. He didn’t want anything to with her, or Hell, or warlock magic.

  She hadn’t been in a hurry to argue with him. It wasn’t his fault that he had driven a spear through her gut and tortured her with electricity, but it was hard to separate him from what he had done under demonic possession. Even though he was still the handsome cop she’d stalked like a hawk circling a field mouse, her instincts also registered him as an enemy.

  At some point, Elise really wanted a man in her life that wasn’t so fucking complicated.

  “I don’t want you,” she said again, more firmly than before.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go. The world isn’t the way it was before I got possessed. It’s—it’s all ruined, Elise. And I have dreams. I can’t get away from the dreams.” He took her wrists. His hands burned hot. “Sometimes, when I wake up from those dreams, my bedroom is burning. I’m setting fires in my sleep.” His eyelid twitched. “It’s happened, Elise.”

  Lincoln had feared the day his infernal powers would wake up. It was the reason he had worked for James. He had been desperate for salvation.

  Now James was gone, and Lincoln didn’t look at Elise like she was the Devil anymore.

  Now she was his salvation.

  She turned his palms up to look at them. His skin danced with inner magic.

  Dammit, Gerard. He was too fucking good at his job. He had seen how Elise was struggling to figure out warlock magic and located someone else to work on it for her. It was a good idea. A great idea, actually. At least, it would have been if the warlock had been anyone but Deputy Lincoln Marshall, who deserved to be free of all of this.

  Elise didn’t want to be Lincoln’s salvation.

  Even though he might be hers.

  She took a long look at his face, carved in lines of fear and exhaustion. Her initial impression of him had been wrong. He wasn’t the same pious deputy that she had met the previous year, and his soul wouldn’t magically heal if she pushed him away. He hadn’t been better off when Elise had left him to his own devices.

  And Elise was surprised to realize that she had missed him.

  One week working together—just one very long, very dark week—and Lincoln had left an imprint that hadn’t faded. Lincoln and his slices of cherry pie for breakfast.

  Her hands slid in his grip until their fingers twined. Some tiny warm place inside of her liked that. She decided to blame it on Eve. “I’m not going to turn you away if you want help.”

  “You’re the least of the evils left to me.” He gripped her hands tighter. “I’ve remembered some of what she did while she had me. I’m not gonna let those memories torture me—I’m determined to right those wrongs. I’m gonna prove that I’m better than the demon, even if I’ve got demon blood.”

  The printer was done. She gathered the papers—a hefty stack that had nearly emptied Summer’s tray—and jammed them into the inner pocket of her jacket.

  “Don’t worry, Lincoln,” Elise said, heading for the door. “You have nothing to prove to me.”

  Gerard was inspecting the thirtieth century when Elise rejoined him. They had moved this part of the army to the Butchers’ District, close to places an insurgent group had been spotted. The rebels had been attacking supply lines, committing acts of arson, that kind of thing. The thirtieth should have been able to suppress it.

  But they hadn’t. Another warehouse had been burned down earlier that week.

&
nbsp; It might have been coincidence that Sallosa, daughter of the House of Volac, had failed to protect supplies at the same time that Gremory was leading another centuria to her House, but Elise doubted it.

  “What happened to the warehouse? Did Sallosa do it on purpose?” Elise asked when Gerard met her in the lobby of Sallosa’s apartment building. This part of the district resembled Columbia in architectural design; the high rise was brightly colored, with elegant lines and high fencing surrounding the exterior.

  “Hard to say,” he said. “The centurion is saying everything I want to hear. They’re patrolling the neighborhood in shifts that last one day on Earth, swapping out teams so they’re always fresh, covering all the right ground.” Gerard showed her the rudimentary map that he had drawn of the district. Sallosa, the centurion, had added lines to indicate patrol routes. It looked comprehensive.

  “Then how did we lose another warehouse?” Elise asked.

  “That’s the question I can’t seem to get answered.”

  She massaged her temples, fighting back a growing headache. She had forced herself to eat food and sleep before going topside to check her email, but ordinary mortal methods of replenishment weren’t enough to hold back her growing hunger. She needed to feed. Really feed.

  “We were already low on food for the troops,” Elise said quietly, too quiet for any of Gerard’s guards to hear. He needed an entire squad to watch his back these days. The residents of Dis recognized him now, and he wasn’t popular. “If we lose another one…”

  “I know,” Gerard said.

  She was tempted to just kill the entire century. Slaughtering them was the likely outcome anyway—Elise was already prepared to believe that Sallosa had been conspiring with Gremory. And that would reduce their need for supplies by a hundred heads.

  Except that the House of Volac was one of Dis’s oldest families. Killing Sallosa would mean that Volac would never release the one hundred and seventy-six mortal slaves kenneled on her property. Volac also owned all of the flesh farms in the city—the only way to grow food without slaughtering humans—and her House was critical to Elise’s plan for a murder-free Dis.