by S. M. Reine
Elise stood strong against the tides of energy that Volac shoved at her, and the energy hurricaned around them harder.
But, slowly, Elise was worn down.
She staggered, trying to concentrate all of her energy on smashing Volac into nothingness. If she could just peel away into darkness, she could consume the demon—devour her physical form, make it part of herself. But Volac’s grip was too tight. Elise’s powers weren’t enough.
Elise didn’t have any ethereal runes left. She didn’t have any infernal runes, either. She had no magic left to help her stand up against the power of one of Dis’s oldest Houses.
So Elise ran.
She wrenched herself away from Volac, breaking the eye contact. It was harder than it should have been.
Her boots pounded against the wooden floors as she rushed through the antechamber, echoing hollowly within the facade of Volac’s plantation home. Wood cracked behind her. All that priceless Earth mahogany shattered as though smashed by a wrecking ball, peppering the back of Elise’s jacket, pelting her head.
“Please, don’t leave,” Volac cackled. “I so seldom entertain visitors!”
Elise launched off the stairs just as the entire house boomed behind her, making the ground shudder. It sounded like it was imploding under the weight of Volac’s power and the demon didn’t even care.
She was closing in.
The truck was waiting outside the gates, beyond Volac’s soul-linked wards, where, hopefully, it would still work.
She put all her energy into her legs, pumping her fists, hair streaming behind her as she ran. The path trembled under her feet. Stone began to crack. Volac was chewing through the earth in her pursuit.
Elise shot through the gate. Azis held the back door of the truck open. She was relieved to see that he was still alive and had returned to the pickup first. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to wait for him if he had still been in the slave quarters.
She leaped in. Nikolaj was on the floor of the truck, breathing shallow, heart slowing. Felicity’s body was gone. And Azis didn’t seem to have recovered a single slave.
Too late to worry about that now.
“Fucking floor it!” Elise shouted.
Edwin slammed his foot onto the gas, whipping the pickup into a one-eighty. They kicked up a cloud of dust behind them as they drove back toward the city.
Elise twisted in the seat, watching the gates recede in the rear window.
Volac hadn’t followed. She was trapped within the invisible walls of her own wards. But Elise could see the size of the true demon now—a shadow larger than even Aquiel. She was crouched on those wasted fields with multiple heads, a thrashing tail, and a body of dense smoke. The woman’s body wasn’t even a hand puppet. More like a finger puppet.
Even as they drove away, Elise could hear Volac continue to cackle over her victory and the Father’s failure.
Nine
GERARD MET THEM at the gates of the Palace of Dis. Elise shoved her bloody jacket into his hands and staggered inside.
“That good, huh?” he asked.
“I’ve had worse meetings with Householders, but not many. Get me a list of every demon in Belphegor’s hierarchy. I need to know how many helpful assholes out there are supporting my administration.”
“Consider it done,” he said.
“Anyone recognize the names on the list of missing people yet?”
“Not yet.”
She muttered a few curses under her breath. It didn’t help anything to swear, but it made her feel better. Not many other things were doing that at the moment.
Elise stripped her shirt off over her head and tossed it aside, too. Gerard scooped it up as he followed her through the courtyard. She knew that wearing only her tank top and sports bra wouldn’t adequately conceal the wound on her chest, but she didn’t care. Anything to get the stink of the House of Volac off of her. She couldn’t stand how much her shirt reeked of that demon.
“Why are you following me?” she snapped at Gerard. “There’s shit to get done. Go.”
“Wait,” Azis said, rushing to catch up with them. “We need to talk about the slave quarters.”
The reminder of her failure rankled. “What about them? You didn’t get any volunteers to leave with us. End of story.”
“There was nobody there to volunteer.”
Elise stopped. Faced him. “Dead?”
“Gone,” Azis said.
Gerard shook his head. “I tracked down the auction records for slaves sold to the House of Volac. There were almost two hundred, and she didn’t sell any of them. Not while Aquiel’s administration was here, and not since.”
“They weren’t there,” Azis said, firmer than before. “The slave quarters were unoccupied. No clothes, no signs of waste, or even any kind of food or water. There hasn’t been anyone there for weeks.”
“Missing,” Elise said softly.
What the fuck had Volac done?
As if reading her mind, Azis handed Elise a scroll. It was covered in a table filled with tiny handwriting—names, dates, and ages. Elise’s heart sped. “What is this?”
“Ledger of slaves that Volac sold. I found it in the manor while you were still talking to her. I believe that she cut a deal under the table without notifying the Palace.”
Volac’s scribe had written down all of the slaves’ names. Why? Demons didn’t typically record the names of the people that they bought and sold. Gender, ages, and the physical condition in which they were acquired—yes. But names were meaningless to them.
Elise flipped through to the end. All of them were listed as having been sold to the same House.
“Which House has the ‘CV’ mark?” she asked.
“Can’t tell you off the top of my head,” Gerard said. “I’ll have to cross-reference it with auction records.” He held out a hand to take them, but Elise tucked the scroll into her pocket.
“I’ll check myself,” Elise said. She needed to check Lincoln’s progress on the warlock spells anyway. “Thank you, Azis.”
All of the lights in the Great Library were off except for a single desk lamp. Lincoln sat alone within its glow, surrounded by papers, a notepad in his lap. With a mere thought, Elise darted through the shadows to arrive at his side. An awkward, misshapen rune was drawn on his pad of paper, and it barely resembled the warlock rune in Onoskelis’s book. Deputy Lincoln Marshall was good at investigating. His art skills left much to be desired.
He must have seen her coming, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He was glaring down at his hands and their dull red glow.
Elise set a covered tray in front of Lincoln. He looked at it, and then at her, nonplussed. “What’s wrong with your hair?”
She drew her dagger and checked her reflection in the blade. One of the braids that Deb and Dana had made was so knotted that it stuck out from her skull. Neither her guards nor Volac had thought to tell her how ridiculous she looked. No wonder that damn demon had been giggling so much.
Muttering curses, she ripped the rubber band away and finger-combed the tangles out. “Don’t ask.”
“You went investigating without me, and went to a shitty hair salon while you were at it,” Lincoln said.
She swallowed down her anger. He hadn’t been at the House of Volac with her. He hadn’t seen Felicia and Nikolaj die, didn’t know how miserable her day had been. And if she tried to tell him that, it would only fuel his argument that she should have let him help her.
Maybe he would even be right.
“Just open the damn tray,” Elise said.
“What is it?”
“An apology.”
That got his attention. He lifted the metal dome off of the tray. Underneath, there was a small pie with a crust that had been carefully folded and imprinted with tines of a fork. Baked cherry filling peeked through the slices decorating the center.
A smile spread over Lincoln’s lips. “Cherry pie? Here?”
“It was a special order. Don’t
get used to it.” She took a napkin and fork from the inner pocket of her jacket and handed them to him.
“Looks good,” Lincoln said. He kicked the chair next to him, pushing it away from the desk. His smile was lazy and almost boyish, a little of that country charm finally peeking through. “You’re not going to make me eat it alone, are you?”
“I still don’t like pie,” she said, but she could feel herself weakening.
“Yeah, yeah. Sit down.”
Elise glanced around the library. They were alone. Nobody to see if she sat down for pie, nobody to judge her as weak.
She grabbed a box of records she’d had Paimon collect before sitting down with Lincoln. He put the first bite into his mouth. His eyes dropped closed. Satisfaction radiated from every inch of him, both inside his skull and in the fibers of his muscles. Shoulders that looked like they had been knotted for months relaxed. And the dopamine—Elise had gotten good at recognizing dopamine. He was happy.
Amazing what just a single bite of food could do to a man.
“Your cooks are good,” Lincoln said.
She lifted a stack of papers out of her box. “They’ve been used to serving a master that would kill them if they didn’t cook well.” She smiled thinly. “I’m slightly more tolerable than the last demons in charge were.”
“Only slightly. Have a bite.”
“No.”
“Come on, you know you like it.”
“I like watching your reaction when you eat,” Elise said. It was true. She loved seeing the pleasure centers of his brain activating with the second and third bites he took. The man was nearly ecstatic.
She shuffled through the pages in search of the “CV” House label that marked Volac’s scroll.
“I haven’t had pie since I got exorcised,” Lincoln admitted as he stuffed more into his mouth. “Can’t get a good milkshake these days, either. Not a lot of electricity topside, which means not enough refrigeration to keep ice cream cold.”
“Topside” was a word that demons used to indicate Earth. It was strange hearing it in Lincoln’s drawl. If he didn’t realize how odd it was for that word to be in his vocabulary, she wasn’t going to point it out. “You won’t find milkshakes in Hell. Sorry. Canned cherries, sure. I’m also told that pie dough is easy. But you wouldn’t want to have anything made out of the kind of milk you get here.”
Lincoln’s eyes went distant, like he was remembering something. He set down the fork. Sat back in his chair. “I know. I remember that.” So much for his relaxation—he was tense all over again. “When I was possessed… Nightmares don’t like to eat cherry pie.”
Elise was very familiar with the food offered by street vendors in Dis. She didn’t indulge in the human flesh kebabs or organ meat candies, even though she suspected she would find them more satisfying than what the kitchens were producing under her orders. She planned on doing away with all trade in human flesh. It wouldn’t do for her to satisfy her cravings on something she was trying to make illegal.
“Don’t think about it,” Elise said, setting aside several pages from her box. The House of Abraxas had been buying nearly every slave that passed through Hell for years, and his mark was on everything. No “CV.”
Lincoln gazed at her, thoughts flickering over his mind and vanishing just as quickly. “Is it that easy for you? Is that how you don’t let the sins drive you insane? You just don’t think about them?”
“Generally, no. I don’t.” She shrugged. “I don’t think of them as sins anyway. We all do what we must to survive.”
He prodded the filling of the pie disconsolately. “Doesn’t matter if you don’t think of this all as sinful. It’s still wrong, and God knows it.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, as if trying to get an awful taste out of his mouth. “Or worse—God has forgotten me.”
God had never known that Lincoln existed, and a dead god had no memories to forget. She opened her mouth to tell him that. Then she shut it again.
Elise had come to understand that people often didn’t want to hear the truth. Men like Lincoln already knew the truth deep in their hearts, so what they really wanted was childish reassurance. Half-truths and outright deceits to help them sleep at night.
She couldn’t give him that, but she didn’t need to tell him the truth about Adam, either.
“You can’t change what you did in the past,” Elise said. “You can only move forward.”
Lincoln nodded, poking at his pie with the fork. “Guess you’re right.”
She flipped through the last page from Paimon’s box. The CV logo was nowhere to be found in her papers.
“Damn,” she sighed.
“Having trouble?”
“The House of Volac sold a couple hundred slaves under my nose. I can’t figure out who took them, but I think it has to do with the missing people on Earth.”
He perked up at that. “You think everyone might be in Hell? Including the folks from Two Rivers?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“What can I do to help?” Lincoln asked.
“You’re already working on it.” Elise grabbed the notebook out of his lap and ran her fingers over the mark he’d been drawing. There was no power in the drawings. Even with Isaiah’s help, he wasn’t making any progress toward casting warlock magic.
She set his papers aside, put the box of records on the floor, and turned to give him her full attention. “I can’t win against these demons right now, Lincoln. They’re as strong as I am, but they all have lifetimes of knowledge to back up that strength. I need an edge. I need something they don’t have.” She tapped the rune on the page. “I need this.”
“I can’t do ‘this,’” he said.
“You won’t if you don’t let Isaiah and Aniruddha help you. Cooperate with them. They’re good at what they do.”
Lincoln pushed the plate away from himself. “They want me to embrace my inner demon.”
“And?”
“I might already be damned for what I did when I was possessed. I want to make it right, not make it worse.”
“You can be a demon without being evil.”
His expression said that he didn’t agree with that. He probably thought she was evil, too. A very tempting evil, but still evil.
How could Elise convince him otherwise? She didn’t even know where to begin. It hadn’t been a fight for her to embrace her demon—she’d had no choice in the matter, and there was no point lamenting what couldn’t be changed.
James would understand him. The traitorous thought rose from nowhere, unbidden.
“Work with Isaiah,” Elise said. It came out harsher than she intended. “We don’t have time for crises of faith and morals.”
Lincoln didn’t seem to hear what she had said. He was staring at her very intently, leaning toward her. “I think that I remember you,” he said. “When I was possessed. You were there.”
Yes, she had been there. She had been so much “there” that he had gotten inside of her guts and made her scream. “Toward the end,” Elise said in a measured tone. “You spent several weeks under the influence before I found you.”
“You beat the shit out of me. I remember that, too.”
“I was trying to restrain the nightmare so that I could exorcise you,” Elise said. “I had little choice. In any case, you returned the favor pretty thoroughly.”
He spread his hand over her stomach, touching the place that he had speared her with an electrified weapon. His hand was glowing faintly again and his skin was as hot as the ground in Hell. It heated her through her shirt and raised goosebumps on her shoulders.
“Seems like I messed you up pretty good,” Lincoln said. “Is that why you’re not as friendly as you used to be?”
She had been hoping he wouldn’t remember that. He was right, though—it was hard to be as “friendly” with someone who had driven a blade through her stomach. Elise rested her hand over his. “Don’t worry about it. I fed. I healed.”
“You fed,” he echoe
d. His eyes dropped to her lips. “Do you still like blood?”
“Like” seemed like such a petty, insignificant word. She needed it. Thirsted for it. Relied on its strength, warm and dripping and sticky.
But she only said, “Yes.” He was leaning so close now. There were only a few inches between them, and Elise knew it wouldn’t take much to bridge that distance. “Are you still hungry?”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “What do you mean?”
“In Two Rivers. You said you were hungry.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still hungry.” The kind of need that couldn’t be satiated by cherry pie.
“Me too,” Elise said.
Neuma had summoned him to feed her. She was hungry, he was hungry. It seemed like an easy solution.
At least, it should have been.
His lips brushed over hers, lingering. Probing. He tasted sweet and earthy at the same time. He tasted like someone who belonged in a small town like Northgate, so very human, so very normal—not at all like a demon. There was something unsettlingly sour about the flavor of the pie on his lips. Maybe the canned cherries had been sitting around for too long.
Lincoln cupped the back of her neck to deepen the kiss, but Elise pulled back. The taste of sweetened cherries remained on her tongue.
Confusion creased his brow. “What’s wrong? Before I got possessed, you and me… I know I didn’t dream that.”
It felt like it had been years since they had taken that shower together, naked and slippery in the steaming water. Elise knew now that it had been the first time she had unwittingly fed like a succubus did—not by eating her enemies whole, but by drinking sexual energy through her body.
“You didn’t dream it,” she said, curling her fingers in the neck of his shirt, sliding her fingernail up to his pulse point. His heart was thumping hard and steady. It sounded like the promise of strength to her.
“I guess I don’t expect we should be picking up where we left off before I got possessed,” Lincoln said. “It’s been a while. Things have changed. I hurt you.”