by S. M. Reine
It hadn’t used to be like this, all wrecked cars and empty streets and burned-out buildings. It had been awake and alive, a twenty-four seven city.
She materialized a couple of blocks away from her destination and took the time to walk the rest of the way, skirting along the edge of the dry river underneath trees that had been bare for years. The once-grassy Idlewild Park was an empty dirt lot with rotten, collapsed playground equipment. A swing hung by a single chain, swaying in the wind.
A familiar brick building rose out of the darkness a couple of blocks away. Its front door was already standing open. The sign on the lawn still said “Motion and Dance,” but it was dark.
The strains of piano drew her into the dance hall. The reflection of a pale-skinned, dark-haired woman followed her along the mirrors as she approached the lone piano in the corner.
The man who played it had his head bowed over the keys, eyes closed, fingers sliding up and down the ivory with smooth grace. He played a complex tune of rising and falling chords as though he had three hands instead of two. His feet pumped the pedals, easily transitioning the nonsense scales between emotions. Angry and harsh. Wistful and bitter. Sweet and sad.
Elise stopped beside the piano. Without looking up, James transitioned the scales to a morose, down-tempo version of “Für Elise.”
His little joke. Acknowledging her presence without actually acknowledging her. Giving a nod to a time long past that Elise had moved beyond, but James hadn’t.
“This is pathetic,” Elise said.
He didn’t stop playing. The tune swelled. She had never heard him play the song like this before—in fact, she had never heard anyone play the song like this before, with so much meaning behind the melody.
Elise clenched her jaw. She didn’t like the way the music dragged at her heart with razorblades.
He stopped playing.
“I need your help,” she said in the fading echo of the strings that followed.
James finally lifted his head to look at her. Gone was the black hair and olive skin. His features were smooth and ageless, as though he were an effigy to the man she had known sculpted in marble. Combined with his pale, haunted eyes, the whiteness of his hair made him look old at first glance, but his face didn’t have a single wrinkle.
He touched one key. And then another. Two became four became eight. Slowly, James began to play “Orpheus in the Underworld” as though it were a funeral dirge.
She drummed her fingernails on her arm, annoyance tightening like a corkscrew in the back of her neck. “I’m not Eurydice.”
“You want me to follow you into Hell.” His voice was hoarse. It sounded like it had been a long time since he’d had reason to speak.
“Yes,” Elise said. “I want you to follow me into Hell. I want you to help me save lives. Something that I thought we had a mutual interest in.”
“We’ve never agreed on the means, or whether the end justifies them.”
She clenched her jaw. Unclenched it. Forced herself to relax. It was obvious that James thought the means justified the end. He had manipulated a murderous cult, cut a deal with Abraxas, and tried to hold Elise captive in order to achieve his end.
His problem wasn’t with ruthlessness. His problem was the fact that Elise was still a demon and doing demon things in a world filled with other demons very much like her.
Angels didn’t think much of lesser creatures like demons or humans, and James was very much angelic Gray. Elise didn’t expect him to prove himself better than his base natures—but she had hoped he would.
Apparently, she had hoped naïvely.
“It’s about Lincoln,” she said.
“Lincoln Marshall?”
She didn’t like the way James said that name. “No, Abraham Lincoln.”
“I’m surprised our noble former president ended up in Hell.”
Funny. So very funny. “Lincoln’s been poisoned. My witches can’t heal him. He’ll die if you don’t help me.”
“Help you? You mean, help him,” James said.
“Us,” she said.
James played on, leaning into the music, rocking gently from side to side with the beat.
“It’s not just Lincoln. People have been taken. A lot of people. Entire towns are disappearing under my nose. I’m not strong enough to save them—not without magic. My librarians left me everything I need to learn how to cast warlock magic, but it’s impossible for me to decipher alone.”
“Very well.” He finished the verse of “Orpheus” with a dark flourish of sharps and flats. He pushed back the bench and stood.
Elise had forgotten how tall he was. He had never struck her as a particularly large man when they lived together; outside the dance hall, he was soft-spoken, with a quick wit that belied his size. The lofty grace of angels had been passed down his line, and the height along with it.
It had been months since Elise walked among angels, and she wasn’t used to feeling small.
He gazed down at her with pale, penetrating eyes. Elise couldn’t resist glancing down to see if his wrist had healed where she had bitten him—mangled him—with her teeth, and she wasn’t sure if she was disappointed to see that there was no scar.
If she had taken off her warding ring, she could have looked into his mind to see what he was thinking about her. But she didn’t need to. She knew James’s regrets and self-hatred and longing all too well.
“Have you been here since the fight at the Shamain gate?” Elise asked. It came out softer than she intended.
“Not the entire time. I’ve traveled a bit. You might say I’ve been doing some soul-searching.”
“Trying to figure out how much of your coven’s sworn oaths to the Apple, you mean.”
“I haven’t spoken to my coven at all.”
That was a surprise. Elise had expected James to be regrouping, figuring out new ways to achieve his goals. “Eden?”
“Paradise is lost. I don’t know what remains of me now. With no way to reach Nathaniel and the Origin, and without you…I don’t know what I want anymore.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Sometimes I feel like you’re haunting me.” His voice had become so quiet that the words didn’t echo in the empty dance hall.
Elise’s eyebrow lifted. “Then maybe you should stop hanging out in haunted houses.” She held out her hand. “Come with me to Hell. Lincoln doesn’t deserve to die—especially not when the assassination attempt was meant for me.”
His gaze sharpened. “Who’s trying to kill you?”
“Who isn’t?” she asked.
James contemplated her outstretched hand. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea, Elise.”
“It’s not like you’re leaving anything behind. Is it?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Think about having open access to the Great Library. Thousands of books you’ve never read before. Hundreds about warlock magic, which almost nobody knows how to cast. All of it for you—after you save Lincoln.”
He hesitated for another moment then laced his fingers with hers. The leather of his gloves creaked as their hands curled around each other.
“You don’t need to bribe me,” James said. “You know I’ll do anything for you.”
Her chest hurt, and it wasn’t just because she’d had a blade plunged through her breastbone. “You promised to stop lying to me.”
“Elise…”
She didn’t want to hear what else he had to say.
They phased.
Night had fallen when Elise and James returned to the Palace of Dis, casting the city in violet-tinged twilight. Elise set down on a bridge connecting two of the towers. The view of her domain was best from there.
James released her hand to reflexively grab at the railing. “Lord,” he breathed. The word was sucked away by the wind. He ducked his head to shield himself from it.
Through the bond, she could tell that he felt like he had been tossed into the kitchen grinder. She stood beside him, untouched, and watched him struggle to breathe in
detached silence.
They didn’t have much time to get back to Lincoln, but she couldn’t make herself pull James inside. Not yet.
He had been the one to teach her to perform. How to make herself look more impressive, more graceful, more intimidating. Now it was her turn to show him what she had learned.
More than that, she wanted to show him what she had accomplished without an ounce of his help.
“What do you think?” Elise asked.
He shielded his eyes and followed her gaze to the new tower and the crystal bridge arcing up to the fissure. Only the few hundred feet nearest to them were visible. The rest faded into smoke and shadow.
James turned to take in the entirety of the Palace, the city beyond the battlements, the army camped out on the street. Firelight dotted the streets. Dark spires formed sharp silhouettes along the horizon, and the wasteland was a stripe of distant yellow just beyond. From there, they could see all the way up Mount Anathema to the House of Abraxas, and all the way down to the edge of the House of Volac’s vast farmlands.
It was more than just a little awe-inspiring, and it was more or less hers.
“Let’s go inside,” James said, voice raw and rasping.
It wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for, although she wasn’t entirely sure what that would have been, either.
She glided to the archway.
Once they were inside, James leaned against the inner wall to collect himself. “What was the point of that?”
She gave him a blank look. “I’m staying in the former judge’s rooms. They’re this way.”
He followed her up the spiral staircase, through the antechamber, and into her bedroom. Lincoln rested on top of her black silk sheets, surrounded by the iron ribs of her bed frame.
Isaiah stood when she came in. He had a few witches’ implements spread on the floor beside the bed—some bowls of herbs, a couple of crystals, an empty vial. “How is he?” Elise asked.
“The deputy’s not waking up, but…” Isaiah rubbed his hands together nervously. His knuckles were so dry that they were bleeding. “I want to say he’s stable. I’m just not certain.” The sight of James had his blood pressure shooting through the roof. Isaiah wasn’t much of a witch compared to James—nobody was—but he knew enough to tell when someone with incredible power had just entered the room.
“Isaiah, this is Orpheus,” she said. “Orpheus, Isaiah.” She didn’t want Isaiah spreading James’s name around the Palace. The fewer people that knew she had dragged her aspis into Hell, the better.
“Nice to meet you, Isaiah,” James said.
The other witch didn’t look like he agreed. He edged away from them and the bed. “Elise, we’ve found the would-be assassin. He had this on him.” He handed a vial to her. Magic sparked inside when she shook it.
James was hovering beside the edge of the bed, gazing down at Lincoln. The deputy was still drenched in sweat, even though he had been stripped to his boxers. Elise hadn’t seen him naked since his return to the Palace. He looked so diminished in comparison to the strong, muscular body he used to have. Even the glow in his hands was fading now. It barely even flickered.
“That’s new,” James remarked.
“I think he’s manifesting megaira powers.” Elise pocketed the vial of powder before he could see it.
“He said that Levi Riese gave it to him.”
That werewolf bastard with the Apple? One more reason to kill him, as if she needed another. “Where’s the assassin now, Isaiah?”
“Dungeons. With Neuma.”
Neuma and Jerica. Elise would be surprised if the assassin was in a chatting mood by the time they were done with him. “Move him to the cells underneath the court. Keep him alive until I can talk to him.”
Isaiah nodded, abandoned his ritual space, and scurried from the room.
James peeled a glove off of one hand, exposing lightning-blue runes slithering between his fingers. A sigh of envy escaped Elise. She didn’t miss how much the magic had hurt her, but she missed the power.
“What happened to him?” James asked.
“He was poisoned. Can you help him?”
James flexed his hand. “I’ll do my best.” He brushed his fingers over the other man’s forehead.
He didn’t speak a single word of power, but several. The runes lifted from the back of his wrist and crawled across Lincoln’s skin.
Ethereal magic was always just a little bit off when it was cast in Hell—just a little bit dimmer, as if distorted through a tinted window. But James’s magic still radiated. Every single spell hummed with a different tone. Taken together, it was a symphony that touched the invisible fibers woven throughout the room, the Palace, all of Hell, and beyond. The magic stretched to the fissure. Elise wouldn’t have been surprised if James’s spells reached all the way to Heaven.
Color faded into Lincoln’s cheeks. His chest began rising and falling with heavier breaths. White-blue runes slipped down his cheekbones, raced onto his chest, grew to encompass his entire body.
For a moment, he glowed.
Then the symphony of magic was simply gone. James grabbed his glove and stepped back.
Elise watched Lincoln for signs of rousing. He was still unconscious. “What happened?”
“I can’t cure it,” James said. Her heart twisted. “The poison has already penetrated his marrow. What did you say he consumed?”
“We still don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was anything that presented such a threat to demons.”
Elise rubbed her stomach. She still ached from the poison herself. “Neither was I. How long does he have?”
“I’m not sure. The poison is reacting with his demon blood, and that is what will eventually catalyze and kill him.” James hesitated. She could almost see him performing the mental math. “He might have days.”
She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “After we exorcised him, I asked if he wanted to come to Hell with me. He didn’t. Lincoln just wanted to have a normal life without demons and angels and witches in it.” She glanced at James. “Sound familiar?”
Elise and James had tried to retire so many years ago that it was practically another lifetime. But neither of them had forgotten. She didn’t think either of them had stopped wishing they could quit, either.
James massaged his forehead. “Nobody gets out of this anymore, Elise.”
“He should have.” If it hadn’t been for James, Lincoln might not have been caught up in it in the first place. “Will he wake up?”
“He could, but his energy has been drained,” James said. “I doubt he’ll be fully rested before…”
He fell silent. Elise could still hear the unspoken words.
He won’t wake up before the poison kills him.
Elise sank to the bed beside Lincoln, pulled his hand into her lap. “I can feed him.”
“Feed him? How?”
She closed her eyes. It wasn’t hard to find anger within herself—she didn’t even need to dig very deep. Anger smoldered inside of her. She was constantly on edge, always two seconds away from shattering her veneer of calm.
Usually she fought it, but now, she fed into it.
Elise thought of the three thousand missing people and the brutality of a broken world that wouldn’t allow innocents to live in peace. She thought of the obsidian falchion in the chest in her bedroom—and what she had done to Seth with that blade.
She thought of all the Houses that refused to comply with her. Davithon, the demon in her dungeons, threatening her rather than listening to reason, forcing her to keep him confined. Volac’s steward driving a blade into Nikolaj’s back.
James’s betrayal, and the fact that Elise couldn’t seem to push him away despite it.
Her shoulders trembled. Her cheeks burned. She pushed all of that anger, the hate and frustration and exhaustion, toward the place where her hands joined with Lincoln’s.
Take it. Take i
t all.
It wasn’t like being drained. It was more like ramming the point of a dagger into a light socket. Elise’s energy scraped out of her in piercing lines and bled into Lincoln.
She faded, and he improved.
Her anger only intensified under his megaira influence, knotting in her stomach until it was too much, until she thought she might be sick.
Images flashed through her faster and faster. Adam in the garden, after He had gone insane. Eve’s eggs pulverized by Nashriel. Adam wrenching Metaraon’s head off of his shoulders.
Elise’s heart pounded. Her fingernails dug into Lincoln’s wrist.
His hand twitched on hers.
She wrenched free of him and stood, putting distance between them.
Her heart was hurting again. She peeled the neck of her shirt away from her chest to investigate the wound. Unsurprisingly, she was dribbling blood again. Lincoln must have fed deeper than she realized. She was getting better at moderating her own hungers, but he was still new to this, and too sickly to be the one to break away.
“What’s wrong?” James asked.
“Nothing,” she said, tugging her shirt back into place.
“You’re wounded.”
She ignored him and sat beside Lincoln again. The deputy was stirring.
Lincoln’s eyes opened. “God?” he whispered, trying to focus on her.
Elise smiled. “You almost had me worried, Deputy.”
When he recognized her voice, he relaxed back against the pillow. “Elise. What happened to me?”
The door whispered shut behind them. Elise glanced over her shoulder. James had left the room, and the space he had been standing looked so very empty.
She put him out of her mind.
“You tell me.” Elise offered him the vial. “This was found on the body of the man that tried to assassinate us. I don’t recognize the substance. I hoped that you would.”
He extended a hand. Elise dropped it into his palm. Instantly, his blood pressure spiked. “It’s Aquiel’s. He’s trying to fucking kill us.”
“Aquiel’s dead. He’s not giving anything to anyone.”
“But this looks like anathema powder,” Lincoln said. “This is mined from the mountain underneath the House of Abraxas.”