by Reine, SM
She forced him to give directions all the way to the empty tattoo parlor Zohak inhabited. She even took him across the street—black pavement, orange lines, traffic lights, cars! He almost passed out.
They reached the back of the parlor shortly after the demon-king. Zohak scrambled over the chain link fence, and the Godslayer finally dropped Rick to follow.
She scaled it in two short motions, vaulted the top, and landed on top of Zohak. He grunted as they both fell to the pavement.
Rick searched wildly for another exit from the alley. Anything to get him home without crossing another street. But he was trapped, so he pressed against the wall, drew his knees to his ears, and prayed to long-dead gods for help.
He watched as the Godslayer and Zohak exchanged blows on the other side of the fence. Her strikes were fast and brutal. She went for the soft spots on his face, and when he exclaimed with pain, she ripped the crown from his head and flung it into the wall.
Fury blackened his visage. He threw her into the back door of the tattoo parlor and grabbed his crown.
For an instant, Rick could see nothing around the back of the demon-king, and then he heard a wet crunch, a feminine cry, and a guttural laugh.
Blood splattered on the asphalt inches from Rick. Mortal blood.
So she was human.
“Stupid,” Zohak said, hand clenched around her throat. “You should have known by now not to face me alone.”
Her voice was strained when she replied. “I’m not alone.”
The streetlights flickered. Turned off.
A massive shape hurtled out of the night sky and slammed into the pavement.
The shockwave rushed through the alley, expanding the air inside the dumpsters and making their lids bang open against the walls. Grates rattled. The smell of rotting produce filled the air.
Rick gagged, but not from the smell. He gagged on the energy. His throat closed as that crushing pressure weighed on him, his vision darkened at the edges, and he realized that at least some of the rumors about the Godslayer were true.
She had an angel bodyguard.
He was tall, willowy, and ageless, with coppery hair to his shoulders. Luminous blue eyes turned on Zohak as the angel straightened. Downy feathers drifted to the asphalt.
“Took you long enough,” the angel said with a delicate snort. He addressed the Godslayer. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
“Don’t worry about it, Nukha’il.”
He inclined his head. “How can I help you?”
“Hold Zohak down.”
The demon-king’s eyes went wild. He darted for the fence, but the angel grabbed the back of his shirt and threw him into the Godslayer’s waiting arms.
She pinned him against the wall with a hand to his throat and her sword digging into his stomach. Nukha’il didn’t have to do anything. His presence was threat enough.
“How many times did I tell you to leave my city?” the woman asked.
“Bistak,” Zohak replied.
She shoved him to the ground and used her weight to pin him. Her bicep bled where he had injured her. Barely a scratch. “Tell me where your fiends are, and I’ll have Nukha’il escort you out of the city—out of the country.”
“They are dead. You killed them.”
She punched him with the hilt of her sword, and his head slammed against the pavement. One of his horns chipped. “Where are your fiends?”
“Dead!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Nukha’il said. “He believes you killed them.”
Her sword wavered. “How did they die?” she asked Zohak, and her voice wasn’t quite as angry as it had been earlier.
“Deep beneath the city. There’s something down there.” He whimpered. “Something… black.”
“Tell me.”
“It came from the earth, from the rocks. A shadow with inertia.” His voice changed, deepened, as though he were speaking through an echoing cavern. “It came upon us. One by one, it devoured them, and then…” His face twisted. “And then it took me.”
Rick had heard the rumors. Creeping shadows, a hungry darkness, a change in the Warrens. Everyone said it was the Godslayer. They said she had unimaginable power.
But she exchanged glances with the angel, and her expression was genuinely confused. She didn’t know anything. That information would be worth money—if Rick could get home without dying.
She shook his jacket. “You’re lying, Zohak. You have to be. Where are your fiends?”
Zohak responded with a groaning cry. The inky shadow devoured his eyes again. His body shuddered, and his hands reached up to close around the Godslayer’s wrists.
The demon-king jerked her hands down and plunged the blade into his heart with a sickening crack.
“Whoa!”
She struggled to free herself, but it was too late. A black fog spilled from his chest, creeping up her blade.
With a shout, she dropped the sword and leaped to her feet.
The ichor spread over the sword and fountained over Zohak as he twisted on the ground. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth yawned in a silent cry. He sat up, hands gripping his chest, and tried to get to his feet as the shadow devoured the last of his flesh. A croak tore from his throat.
Rick’s heart beat a panicked tattoo. Forget the humans. Forget their technology. Forget their goddamn cars.
The nightmare leaped to his feet and ran.
II
“Holy mother of demons, what the hell is that thing? Is that a body bag?”
“Clear off the desk, Neuma,” Elise grunted, staggering up the stairs to the manager’s office in Craven’s Casino.
She held Zohak by the shoulders, and Nukha’il had his feet. Even wrapped tightly in trash bags and twine, he was strong enough that they were both sweating with the effort it took to hold him.
Neuma shoved the paperwork to the floor, placed the laptop on the filing cabinet, and watched anxiously as Elise lowered the body to the desk. She wasn’t in her stripper costume that night, and might have passed for a normal girl if not for the glowing skin and black eyes.
Zohak arched and roared. He nearly threw himself to the floor. Only Nukha’il’s hands pressing into the demon-king’s shoulders kept the bag pinned down.
“Ropes,” Elise said, “get the ropes!”
Neuma vanished.
Elise ran to the closet behind the desk. The charmed lock didn’t open the first time she tried to open it. It didn’t respond to the second or third attempts, either.
Finally, she gave it a swift kick and yelled, “Goddamn it, it’s me! Open up, you moron!”
Somewhat begrudgingly, the lock clicked, and she opened the closet.
The walls were filled with rows of hooks and dangling tools—mostly torture devices left by the last manager of Craven’s. Her belongings had begun migrating to the closet ever since she had taken over: a few knives with the mark of St. Benedict stamped on the blade, some free weights for when she got bored, and several looping golden chains with dangling medallions.
She took the chains and shut the door, which locked itself again with an offended click.
Neuma returned carrying an armful of heavy silver chains. “Will this work? These are the thickest ones I’ve got. I only had time to run to the play room.”
“That’s fine,” Elise said.
The angel restrained Zohak as the women tied him to the desk, wrapping the chains all the way around the heavy oaken furniture. There were metal rings welded to the floor too—probably for the same reason that David Nicholas had kept torture implements in his office closet. Elise clamped the chains to the rings.
Nukha’il stepped back, and the demon struggled in vain. He was secure.
“Did the ichor touch you?” she asked the angel.
“No, I’m fine.”
Neuma bent to pick up the boot knife. The inky shadows had moved to consume the entire blade, joining with the metal and turning it obsidian.
“Don’t touch
that!” Elise barked, and the half-succubus froze. “Don’t touch anything black right now. Even if you think it’s just shadow.” Neuma glanced around the office, and Elise knew what she had to be thinking. The previous manager’s aesthetic tastes ran toward the dark. Aside from the tacky casino carpeting, which was patterned with red geometric shapes, everything was black. The walls, the furniture—even the tinted windows overlooking the floor of the gaming room. “Now stand back. Both of you.” She eyeballed Nukha’il, who made her palms itch. “Especially you.”
He politely backed into a corner, and she closed her hand around the charms.
It had been months since she had attempted an exorcism. In fact, she hadn’t done one since she sent David Nicholas back to Hell. And something had definitely changed. It was as though her center wasn’t quite so… centered.
She had to try.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” she began, voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana—”
Zohak heaved and jerked. He was spitting with laughter.
The bastard had spent weeks trying to take over Elise’s city, and he kept mocking her after she killed him.
Heat swelled within Elise’s ribcage.
There was her strength.
She slammed her fist into his chest, and the charms blazed. “Crux sacra sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux.” Elise envisioned reaching her power into the hole in his chest, beneath the bag and beyond his shattered breastbone. “Vade retro, Satana. Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas—”
A shadow passed her closed eyelids, as though something huge had blocked out all of the light in the room.
Elise’s eyes flew open.
And she saw nothing.
There was no floor beneath her feet, no chains around her hands, no air in her lungs. She was blinded, disoriented. Elise tried to gasp and didn’t find any oxygen.
The shadow gripped her throat.
She clawed at it, but there was no breaking from the grip of immense nothingness.
And a voice rose from the darkness. It was silky, feminine, and furious.
Exorcise me? You must be kidding.
Pain exploded in the back of her head. Elise shouted—which meant there was air, blessed air—and her forehead was pressed to the ugly red carpet.
Her vision cleared. She had been thrown clear across the manager’s office and was crumpled on the floor by the door.
She couldn’t see Zohak’s body on the desk because Nukha’il had thrown his wings wide, filling the entire span of the office.
Neuma was screaming. Once she could breathe, Elise snapped, “Shut up!”
The bartender clapped her mouth closed, smothering her cries with both hands as Elise struggled to her feet. The chains burned with heat, and she flung them to the carpet. The instant they touched the ground, a fire sparked.
Elise stomped the flames out before they could spread, and Neuma ripped the extinguisher off the wall. A white cloud of flame retardant chemicals blasted over the chains.
“Elise!” Nukha’il called. “You need to see this.”
Neuma remained poised with the fire extinguisher, eyes wide and chest heaving. Elise edged around Nukha’il’s wings. Her palms burned, and there was no way to tell if it was from the charms or the power of his angelic energy. But she forgot all about it once she saw Zohak.
He had stopped thrashing. The ooze had melded with his skin in much the same way it had with Elise’s knife, and he was frozen in obsidian.
His mouth was spread in a frozen cry. His eyes had been sucked into his skull, leaving empty pits.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Nukha’il’s eyes widened. “Nothing. I thought you did this.”
Elise recalled the voice she had heard from the darkness. Exorcise me?
It was suddenly too hot in the office. She wiped sweat from her brow. “Damn.”
“I think I missed something,” Neuma said, voice shaking. “Weren’t you going out to find Zohak and get rid of him, for good this time?”
“We just did.”
Nukha’il folded his wings against his back and stepped aside. Considering his impressive wingspan, they could be folded down comparatively small, and they vanished completely with a moment’s thought. He looked like any other man who was well over six feet tall, androgynous, and ageless, with blue eyes that glowed in the dark.
Neuma clung to Elise’s shoulder and got on her toes to peer into the garbage bag. “That doesn’t look like him.”
“It’s him,” Elise said. “What’s left of him.”
The bartender dropped the fire extinguisher and inched forward. “What killed him?”
“I did. I stabbed him in the chest with one of my falchions.”
“Oh,” she said.
Elise located a knife and sliced open the trash bag over Zohak’s gut. The shadow didn’t spill forth and consume her knife a second time.
Elise tapped the point of the knife against his stomach. It sounded like stone.
“We need to get rid of this.”
Neuma blinked rapidly, trying to process the order. “Shouldn’t we… investigate? Do an autopsy?”
“No,” Elise said, and it came out more forcefully than she intended. She kneeled and unclipped the chains from the rings in the floor. “I’ve learned everything I’m going to from Zohak. Someone needs to take him out of the city and drop him down a mineshaft—a closed shaft, preferably, that doesn’t lead into the Warrens.”
“So shall it be done,” Nukha’il said.
She shook her head. “Not you. Neuma, could you find a volunteer?”
“Sure thing.”
The stripper scurried downstairs again. As soon as the door shut, Elise stopped undoing the chains.
She drew her sword.
When the shadow had spilled from Zohak’s chest in the alley to devour her falchion, she had wrapped it in trash bags and jammed it into her spine sheath for later study. Now she held the sword in both hands without unwrapping it. Elise wasn’t sure what would be worse—if she opened it and her sword was destroyed by the same obsidian that had taken Zohak, or if the shadows were still seething.
She hefted its weight in her hands and swallowed hard.
Nukha’il noticed her silence. “Is there a problem?”
“No.”
Elise climbed to her feet, opened the closet after a short argument with the locking charm, and set the sword on a suitcase inside. Her back felt unbalanced with only one sword. It wasn’t the first time she had lost a falchion, but after months of using the pair together again, she hated to lock one away.
She shut the door. Her fingers were shaking, so she shuffled through the desk drawers and came up with a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
It took two tries to get a flame. She sucked hard on the cigarette and sighed out the smoke.
That was all she needed—just a taste. If David Nicholas had seen her smoking his leftover cigarettes, he would have thought it was the greatest joke ever. He probably would have laughed himself to death.
Good thing he was already dead.
“You know that could kill you,” Nukha’il said.
Elise ignored him and stubbed it out in the ashtray, which was filled with barely-smoked cigarettes. All hers. She stuffed the box in her pocket.
Back to business.
Elise continued releasing the silver chains. “I need you to go into the Warrens. You have to go to the gate.”
That got his attention. His hands stilled on a clamp on the other side of the desk.
“Why?”
“Because you’re the ethereal delegate and it’s your job, that’s why,” she snapped. “Zohak said that there’s something underneath the city. I need to be sure that the gates are still safe. Still secure.”
“Very well,” Nukha’il said with an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before.
He had remained in Reno to ensure the safety of the gates, so
they had been working together toward those ends for over a month. But neither of them had found occasion to go that deep into the Warrens. In fact, they had both been doing their very best to avoid them.
She opened her mouth to speak again, but her ringing phone interrupted her. She glanced at the screen.
It was James. Of course it was James.
Elise pressed the button to deny the call and scrolled through the history. He had already tried to reach her three times since midnight. Nothing like a failed attempt at an exorcism to wake up her aspis.
“What if the gate has already been compromised?” Nukha’il asked, drawing her attention back to the task at hand.
What if the gate had been compromised? What could an infectious shadow do to an ethereal city suspended in a second dimension over her territory?
Elise grimaced. “Just go check.”
By the time Neuma found “volunteers” to discard Zohak’s body in the desert—which happened, in this case, to be two very nervous basandere—dawn was approaching, and it was much too late for Elise to try to get any rest.
For weeks, her nights had been dedicated to unearthing the roots that Zohak had embedded in her territory. He had trafficked drugs, used his fiends to bully other demons, and had managed to destroy one of Craven’s subsidiary restaurants on the south end of town.
Tracking him meant hitting the streets for hours on end, every single night. It meant that she hadn’t slept more than two hours at a time since September. It meant that she could rest, now that Zohak was dead.
So why did she feel so unsatisfied?
Elise loosened her fraying braid, retied it into a ponytail, and threw on her jacket before heading out onto the streets for a jog in the dim blue light of false dawn.
That was the time when she liked the city the best. Most demons had crawled into the Warrens to sleep for the day, and it was before shifts changed for the human casino workers. All that Elise faced on her jog was empty streets and blissful silence.
The guard she had posted at the front door of Craven’s gave her a polite nod as she passed. “Good morning, ma’am.” Sharp teeth flashed between his lips when he spoke. He was a real teddy bear, but he looked scary as hell, and he was meant to deter Zohak from sending fiends through the front door.