by Reine, SM
The stoplight wasn’t working.
“No,” Elise said, running to the sidewalk, “no, no, no—”
What could disable the cell phone network and the power grid at the same time? It had to be the same thing that had his palms itching—a powerful ethereal presence, such as the one that would be suspended over downtown Reno.
All at once, the signs along the street turned off, and the traffic signals followed.
The honking of car horns filled the air. People began stepping out of buildings onto the sidewalk, staring around in bemusement at the perfectly clear day.
“This isn’t right. This can’t be caused by angels.” Elise showed her cell phone to him. It still had power. James felt a small jolt of surprise to see that her wallpaper was an old photo of them dancing together at a competition. “Angels disable electrical devices. We should have lost power to our phones before losing reception.”
“But the ruins—”
“That’s a different problem. I don’t know what this is.”
A man behind them spoke. “I believe I can take you to the ethereal city now.”
James spun. The man standing behind them had long hair sleeked into a ponytail, flawless skin, and a white formal suit that was unbuttoned at the throat to reveal a ruby choker. His eyes were entirely consumed by black, from the irises to the sclera.
Elise didn’t register surprise at seeing Thom Norrel waiting for them, but James felt an unpleasant lurch. She spoke first. “What’s changed? Why can you phase now, if you couldn’t earlier?”
“The barrier between dimensions is thinning.”
She extended a hand. “Fine. Great. I’m ready to go when you are.”
“Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” James asked, stepping forward before Thom could give her his arm.
“An extremely powerful demon has gotten into the ethereal city,” Elise said, moving around him. Thom took her gloved hand in his. “And she has an angel.”
“I’m coming with you,” James said, seizing her opposite wrist.
“James…” she began.
She didn’t get to finish.
“Prepare yourselves,” Thom said.
He shifted his weight to the side, stepped off the sidewalk, and disappeared from the dimension.
IX
Thom blinked them back into reality about three hundred feet above the street.
For an instant, they hung on the glimmering edge between Reno and the ruins. Elise had a heartbeat to realize that they had entered the ethereal city in midair, on the same level as the highest floor of the tallest casino, which was followed immediately by the second realization that the formerly bone-white streets were rotting beneath her. Ichor was slicked over the surface, and the stones crumbled into dust.
Then they began to fall.
The hotel tower blurred as they rushed through the air, and the roofs were suddenly right there and they were going to hit—
Thom’s arm tightened around her. Elise squeezed James’s hand.
She blinked.
Cobblestone connected with her knees, but it was from a fall of inches rather than hundreds of feet. The shock of the impact rocked through her legs and up her spine. Elise gave a sharp cry.
Her abs clenched, her back muscles strained, and what little remained in her stomach burned up her throat. She spit a few drops of bile onto the ground with pink-tinged saliva. It had been hours since Elise had eaten—she didn’t have anything left to throw up, and it hurt to try.
Her stomach quickly settled. She rolled onto her back with a groan.
Vertigo rushed over Elise as she saw the streets of Reno inverted over her head. Everything seemed serene through the shimmering veil between dimensions. There was no way to tell that the power had failed, aside from the clogged intersections. She could barely pick out the car accident they had left behind.
She sat up and wiped her mouth clean. Thom’s second jump had dropped them by the gas station’s mirror image, one block from the north edge of the ruins, where gray void severed the bridge over the freeway.
The last few yards weren’t made of the same white cobblestone as the rest of the street anymore. They had been devoured by shadow, and the edge of the gas station rotted, sending black ash swirling into the air. The ground was stable and untouched beneath her knees, but the line of darkness was inching—slowly but surely—in their direction.
Beside her, James was also throwing up. His vomit was red. Fear hit Elise like a punch to the gut, and she crawled to his side. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“The blood—”
James looked embarrassed. “I ate a Jell-O cup at the hospital.”
Thom seized her arm and hauled her to her feet. Her pulse quickened at his touch. “What are you doing?” she demanded, twisting out of his grip.
“Look.”
He pointed to the buildings surrounding them. Heavenly light had once filled every inch of the ruins, keeping the insides of each building as bright as the streets, but the empty windows were dim. Not even a hundred feet away, the mirror of the hospital was crumbling. Its supports were exposed, the foundation was sinking, and the grass was dead.
And there were shapes moving in the shadows of its towers—not only Zohak’s possessed fiends, but more humanoid forms, too. Nightmares, basandere, incubi. Demons that Yatai had taken from under Elise without her noticing.
“Shit,” she breathed.
Where could they run? The street was rotting only a block away. Everywhere else was void.
“The sewers,” Thom said. “Go!”
James didn’t wait to be told twice. He jammed his fingers into the holes on the manhole cover, levered it open, and set it aside as easily as he might have moved a skillet. The shaft that opened into the sewers was the same bone-white material as the street.
“Elise?” he asked, poised over the hole.
The line of fiends swept toward them, and Elise moved between them and the sewer. “I’m right behind you, James.”
He threw his legs over the side and dropped.
Elise drew the obsidian sword. Its blackened blade was a fraction heavier than its twin, making her feel strange and unbalanced.
The nearest fiend rushed her, and she swung. The possessed blade cleaved right through it. A halo of dark energy rippled through the air, and the fiend splashed to the ground in two pieces, like a water balloon sliced in half.
Ichor gushed over the sidewalk. Elise had to jump back to keep her feet from getting hit.
“I never should have come here,” she grunted, impaling another demon. “There’s no way to get through the city. Yatai’s already taken the whole thing.”
Thom whirled and darted over the street. His bare feet touched Yatai’s ichor and came away unscathed. “Not the gates. Not yet.”
He slammed his hand into the mouth of a fiend. It gagged. He jerked its slimy tongue out of its mouth, and she plunged her sword into its eye to finish the job.
“Where is Yatai?”
He caught the last nightmare standing by the throat and twisted. Its head popped off. Shadow splashed over his hands. “The cathedral.”
St. Thomas of Aquinas Cathedral was several blocks south of their position—and there were a lot of fiends and shadow between them.
Elise nodded, clenching her jaw. “Okay, let’s go.”
“I’ve already faced the serpent and drank her venom today. I won’t be with you.”
“What? Then how am I supposed to get home?”
“Take this.” He tossed her a ribbon. A ruby matching the one on his choker dangled from the end. “When you reach Nukha’il—if you survive—speak my true name, and I will get you back to Reno.”
She shoved it into her pocket. “What’s your true name?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yatam.”
Yatam?
A second wave of demons scrabbled toward them, e
merging from the depths of a casino’s rotten husk.
Thom shoved her. She lost her footing and slipped into the open manhole.
Her elbow smacked into the edge as she fell, wrenching her arm over her head.
She tried to catch the ladder. Slipped.
She landed on a soft body—James.
Her momentum carried them both to the ground. They splashed into water at the bottom of the sewer.
The shock of hitting the ground wasn’t as terrible as the shock of her body being pressed fully against his. The flimsy barrier between their minds evaporated at the contact, and everything Elise had been struggling to avoid for weeks crashed over her.
Betty with a gunshot wound in her forehead.
The funeral. Her sobbing family.
Carrying the box of ashes through the forest at Lake Tahoe.
Holding McIntyre’s premature newborn at the hospital. The way Anthony had looked when she told him that she was incapable of having children.
James strolling through an orchard hand-in-hand with Stephanie, talking about marriage.
Elise gave a cry and scrambled away from him, pressing her back into the wall. He reached toward her, concern rippling through the bond, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t touch me!”
He froze. “Sorry.”
She shut her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to compose herself.
Betty’s face floated behind her eyelids. Not the way she used to look, slathered in lip gloss and smiling impishly, but the way she looked after she got shot. A trickle of blood down the bridge of her nose. Slack face. Colorless lips.
James hovered over Elise, hand hesitantly outstretched. She shoved him. “What the hell were you thinking, following me to the ruins?”
“I came to help you.”
“You can’t help me. And I can’t fight with you in my head.”
“But I’ve made a solution for that.” He took a box out of his pocket. The corner was dinged, and magic seeped out of the gap. James gingerly lifted a pair of rings from the box, and Elise flinched. They were bright—too bright. “I designed the charms on these. They’re wards.” James pocketed the box. “This one should be your size, I hope.”
“What does it do?” she asked.
His response was to hold the ring out.
Elise hesitated before removing her leather glove. There was nothing underneath to protect her palm, and the symbol was raised and irritated.
James slipped the ring over her middle finger. It was too big. “Damn. I used some of the jewelry you left at the studio to size it—I was so sure it would fit.”
“I’ve lost weight.” She put it on her left thumb instead.
As soon as the smooth metal slid over her skin, the tunnel blurred, and her head spun. Everything was a little bit darker when her vision cleared. The world had fewer colors. She lifted her hand to stare at the ring, but its radiance was gone.
She couldn’t see magic anymore.
Then James put the matching ring on. It was sized to fit the first finger on his right hand.
An invisible barrier smashed between them, cutting off the undercurrent of his thoughts and lifting a weight from her gut.
He vanished from her mind. She was blind, deaf, and alone.
“There,” James said, looking winded. “Normal again. Well, as normal as we could ever be.”
Elise turned around in the middle of the tunnel, trying to orient herself among the gleaming white stones. Everything looked different without the gleam of magic. “Good,” she said, but she wasn’t sure she meant it.
Above their heads, Yatai’s ichor had consumed the manhole cover. It oozed around the edges and dribbled down the walls in thin lines. The sewers might have been untouched, but it wouldn’t last long.
“We should hurry,” James said, but she didn’t immediately move.
“You know, manhole covers are heavy. They probably weigh as much as I do. You lifted that pretty easily.”
“I suppose I did.” He sighed. “I just had Stephanie run blood work for me. It looks like I’ve developed a myostatin deficiency. You aren’t the only one who’s changing with this bond.”
Elise frowned, and irritation plucked at the back of her neck with icy fingers. What did that mean? Would he become as strong as she was?
“We’ll have to arm wrestle,” she said.
“Now?”
“No. When we’re not in mortal peril.” Elise squinted at the dripping ichor. Beyond it, she could no longer feel Thom’s presence. Gone? Or dead? Only one way to find out. “Which way is the cathedral?”
“East.” James pointed down the tunnel.
They started walking.
The ethereal sewers were almost beautiful. There was almost no trace of the real Reno in the tunnels—it was pure angelic architecture, from the white stone to the graceful arches embedded with silvery-gray symbols. The walls were carved with murals.
“Seems the builders got carried away,” James said as they splashed through crystalline water that had puddled over an etching of an angel. They stuck to the side of the tunnel. Part of the wall was missing, and void yawned on the other side.
She hesitated over the etching. “Why would they put so much effort into a place that nobody would ever see?”
“Angels.” He shrugged. “Perfectionist bastards.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Even when she focused, she couldn’t hear his thoughts. The rings were good. “When we get to the cathedral, I want you to wait for me in the sewers. I’ll get Nukha’il and come back for you.”
“Why? I followed you because I wanted to help,” James said.
She gaped at him, unable to respond.
Help? He wanted to help?
She whirled without responding and stalked down the tunnel, mentally counting the arches that marked each block on the surface. After a beat, she heard James’s splashing footsteps following her.
“How are we ever supposed to get through this if you walk away every time I try to talk to you?”
Elise shot a look at him. “What do you want? Really?”
The question seemed to startle James. He blinked. “Well, the rings take care of our bonding issue, so… I hoped it meant things could go back to normal.”
“Normal?” She gave a mirthless laugh. “No, James. We can’t be normal again. There isn’t enough magic in the world to make things normal again.” Her words came out a sharper than she intended. “You know what I did on Labor Day weekend?”
He blinked at the change in subject. “No.”
“I went to Lake Tahoe. Betty never liked paying the fee for Sand Harbor—said it was too busy and overpriced. So we used to go to this… God, this really awful pile of rocks. There was nowhere to stretch out. But Betty would bring cranberry juice and vodka so we could drink warm cosmos out of plastic cups.” A laugh jolted from her chest. “The last time we went, we got lost trying to climb out again. We had to swim through that icy water to Sand Harbor anyway.”
She turned the corner. There was a ladder at the end. Judging by the way her palms ached, the cathedral was close.
“So that’s where I went on Labor Day. I took Betty’s remains to the lake, and I left her there. Those awful rocks. Her dad asked me to do it. They gave the urn to me and…”
Elise couldn’t speak anymore. James touched her arm, but she pushed him away—probably harder than she needed to.
“I miss Betty, too,” he said softly. “The esbats aren’t the same—not without Betty, and not without you.”
She fixed him with a hard stare. “That was normal life. Betty’s the one who got me through college. She made me sunbathe in our front yard and dance with strangers at bars, just because it was fun. When everything was shit, Betty was still sunshine. She made me laugh, James.”
“It’s okay to grieve.” He raked a hand through his hair. “There are other reasons to laugh.”
“God, James, what’s the point? My choices killed my best friend, and all I c
an think since then is…” She clenched her fists. “You know what? Everyone dies. I’m so sick of this—these emotions. I’m sick of being sad, of being in pain, of being lonely, of having to fight all the time just to survive—”
“Then why keep fighting?”
She threw her hands into the air. “What else am I supposed to do? Roll over and die?”
“If the Union took control of the city—”
Elise cut him off. “What?”
Deadly silence filled the air between them.
James continued, more tentative than before. “I know that the Union’s been trying to get a foothold in America. Maybe—well, perhaps there’s some merit to that. Think about it. I’m sure the Union could defend the territory. They have more resources and manpower than we could ever muster.”
Elise stared at him, mouth hanging open.
It was almost the exact same bullshit propaganda the Union had spewed at the semi-centennial summit.
Why the hell was James saying it? He knew how she felt about them.
Her jaw clapped shut. “Fuck the Union.”
Conversation over.
Elise scaled the ladder, swift as a spider monkey, and left James no choice but to follow.
They emerged behind the church. Roiling clouds filled the air, blotting out what little ethereal light remained in the city. It smelled like the entire world was on fire, and Elise had to cover her face with her sleeve to keep from coughing.
The cathedral was a lone light among the crumbling black buildings. A heavy black cloud swarmed its steeple, but the glossy white bricks were untouched. The shadows rippled where holy ground met street, unable to move forward.
Elise jumped from the manhole to a clear patch of pavement. James grunted behind her as he jumped.
They were the only living things in sight as they jogged across the parking lot. What used to be the Santa Fe Hotel down the street was now nothing but a crumbling mess of obsidian. The concrete holding up the traffic lights had crumbled, and the metal poles crossed the intersection, broken in their fall.
But the church remained a radiating beacon of light among the darkness. The walls stood strong. Only the roof had crumbled away, and she could make out the apex of the stone gateway inside.