Damnation Marked (The Descent Series)

by Reine, SM

  “I can’t read the spell,” she said. “Help me out.”

  “Look.”

  At his insistence, she lifted the spell in front of her eyes. It blazed at their joined touch. “All I see is light.”

  “There are words within. Incantations. Pages upon pages of painstaking inscription. You only have to find it.”

  Focusing on it brought the magic welling up inside of her, like water overflowing in a cup. But she couldn’t direct it. “I feel it, James, I do—but I can’t read the words.”

  He spoke a word into her ear.

  And then she saw it.

  The word of power rose from her throat unbidden, coming from a core that was not within herself, or within James, but somewhere between them. Her voice didn’t make a sound, but it scraped her chest on the way out as though she had screamed it.

  The magic unfolded.

  Ropes of energy bound her—from the mice and the demon in front of her to James’s arms wrapped about her body. Elise was connected to the earth and air, the fire in the core of the earth, the clouds in the sky. The house around her fell away, and she saw only the golden shimmer of life, and the gloom of impending death.

  And it hurt. It was like peeling the veins from her forearms and tugging until it ripped at her heart.

  With a sickening lurch in her gut, the magic ended.

  She could see the house again. The mice in the cage were dead, and Yatam’s skin had reappeared.

  Elise dropped what was left of the paper. All but a scrap had burned away.

  She sagged against James. “That didn’t feel good.”

  “No,” he agreed, “it often doesn’t. It’s worst when I perform magic that asks too much of my abilities.”

  “How do you survive it?”

  “With a lot of practice.”

  An hour later, Thom was still asleep. James cleaned the mouse cage, helped Elise move him to the couch, and watched his unconscious body from the doorway. “Who is this man?” James whispered, arms folded across his chest. “I mean, who is Thom really?”

  She sighed. The dark circles under her eyes had only deepened since performing her first spell. “His name—his true name—is Yatam.”

  Of course. Elise couldn’t have made friends with a thousand other demons. She had to have somehow picked up the most ancient demon who had fathered every single incubi, succubi, and nightmare on Earth. Why wasn’t he surprised?

  James glanced down the hall. “Let’s talk somewhere safer.”

  Passing through the doorway to his private office felt like stepping through a wall of pure electricity. He barely dropped the warding spells, just in case. Of course, even if James was one of the most powerful witches in the world, he was still nothing against a demon as ancient and powerful as Yatam.

  James set his empty cage by the back window, moved a fallen statue of the Goddess, and picked up the books on his futon. Elise watched him tidy without moving from the doorway, and he wondered what she saw. If she was developing like a fledgling witch, she wouldn’t know how to ignore the common signs of magic, and his room would be colorful. Everything his hands touched sparked, like striking a sword on the anvil. The room was attenuated to his presence.

  She stopped in front of the mirror hanging over his desk. The hairs that had come loose from her braid stuck straight out in every direction. He took the opportunity presented by her distraction to scoop up a few more books on apotheosis and the concept of deity, which she didn’t need to see.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Relative to what, exactly? Having the city devoured by Yatai and brought into our dimension? The part where the oldest demon on Earth is sleeping on my couch? Or do you mean the fact that you—a kopis—just performed magic using one of my spells?”

  Elise shook her head. Her curls stuck out in every direction, tacky with sweat. “Any of it. All of it.”

  “Well, Yatai failed,” he said simply. “We’re still alive, and the world is intact, so we can be sure of that. We can also be sure she’ll try again.” He began sorting books on his shelf. He glanced at her. “Perhaps with the help of her brother.”

  “Brother?”

  “If he’s Yatam, as you say, then he’s her twin. They are ancient and immeasurably powerful.”

  “But he tried to keep her out of the city in the first place. He healed me when one of her fiends bit me. Yatam wants her to fail.”

  James shoved a book between two others with a sigh, pushed his glasses onto his forehead, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “An entity as old and as evil as Yatam is immensely clever. The route he would take to accomplish his agenda would be…circuitous.”

  Elise planted her hands on her hips. “I’m not easily tricked, James.”

  “No. I suppose you’re not.” He sighed. “Just because Yatai pushing through the gate didn’t destroy us doesn’t mean the consequences won’t be catastrophic.”

  She peered through his window, and he leaned around to find out what she was staring at. It was hard to see through the plants growing in his greenhouse—which hadn’t been damaged by their spell on the street—but they could make out the cloudy haze billowing from the city. It was creeping over the desert and blotting out the sun. James’s office grew darker by the minute.

  “The Treaty of Dis is a tricky thing,” he went on. “Some laws are utterly inviolable. For instance, a demon cannot be born with the ability to use magic. But there are a few laws that simply cause reality to reform to make the Treaty hold true. Yatai seems to have found one of those.”

  Elise sank to the edge of his futon. “She’ll keep trying. There are still eight other gates. And a reality that bends can still break.” Her eyes were distant, and for once, she didn’t seem to be in the mood for fighting. It was like all the strength had drained from her.

  James chose his words carefully, hesitant to broach the subject of the Union again. “I don’t think that we can handle her. Not a demon like Yatai. Not alone.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “I should have been able to heal Nukha’il.”

  “We can’t save everyone.”

  Elise’s face dropped into her hands. “Some days, I don’t think I can save anyone, James.”

  He moved to put an arm around her, but she slid away and shook her head. He sighed. “It’s getting dark in here. I have boxes of candles in the garage. Wait here. And…don’t touch anything.”

  She didn’t look at him.

  His cell phone alarmed as he stepped out the door, warning him that the battery had less than five percent of its charge remaining.

  The sound was like a spike of crystal driven through his heart. Between everything that had happened in the city and healing Yatam, he had forgotten that there were other problems looming on his horizon. And with no utility power to the city, it might be his last chance to check his email.

  James glanced at the living room to make sure Yatam wasn’t stirring before opening the message. His phone had downloaded it before he had lost the connection.

  It was from an address he didn’t recognize, but it was signed by Hannah. All it said was, “I guess we should talk,” with a new phone number at the bottom. There was also an attachment to the email—a photo.

  In the thumbnail, he could make out his ex-fiancée’s tall blond figure standing next to someone shorter, someone who barely reached her shoulder. Someone the size of a child, perhaps ten years old.

  All the gravity in the world seemed to have suddenly been inverted, like when he stood in the cathedral with Elise.

  James tried to download it, but a “no network connection” message flashed on the screen.

  He hit the button again. The message flashed a second time. “Oh, come on!”

  His battery died, and the screen went out.

  Anthony was sleeping when Hell arrived in Reno.

  He twitched awake and almost fell off the couch. Betty’s album dropped from his lap, hit the floor, and bounced closed.

  The rig
ht side of his face was tacky with drying saliva, and he winced as he tried to wipe his cheek clean. The spot where his head had been resting was a damp circle. His muscles ached, his back cracked, and it hurt to sit upright.

  The apartment was dark. Even the microwave clock had gone out, which meant he didn’t have power. But even without the lights, it was too dark, as though the sun had gone into hiding. How long had he been sleeping? It couldn’t have been night yet.

  He stumbled to the window, stiff and graceless. He had to press his face to the glass to see the sky beyond the bars and between the buildings behind them.

  And he looked straight up into a city suspended over his own. Ash fluttered and wheeled through the wind. The mirror of Anthony’s apartment building was decaying.

  For an instant, he felt fear. He registered that something was horribly wrong, and that he needed to call Elise.

  Calm blanketed him. It’s just a bad dream.

  “Yeah. I’m dreaming again.” He went to the kitchenette sink and splashed water on his face. He had been dreaming of the city a lot—every night, in fact.

  He dreamed of being lost among empty buildings on white cobblestone streets, of pulling the shotgun’s trigger and watching brains spray against the wall, of seeing angels wheeling overhead as madness overcame them.

  You should go for a walk.

  He needed air. The apartment was too small.

  Anthony turned to leave.

  A young girl, barely a teenager, stood in the center of the room. Her blond hair was looped around her head in a milkmaid’s braid, framing a face that was still round with baby fat. She wore pale blue capris and a white shirt tied at her midriff. And her plump lips were red—very red.

  She hadn’t been there a few minutes before, but he was certain that she had been waiting for him in the apartment for a long time.

  Anthony realized she had been watching him sleep, and felt nothing.

  Her mouth didn’t move when she spoke.

  Could you help me?

  The question sent sadness lancing through him. She was so lost and alone. She needed his help—needed him—so much more than Elise ever had.

  “Yeah, of course,” he said. “Anything you need.”

  She followed him to the front steps of his apartment building. Cars were jammed against each other in every lane, bumper-to-bumper, with nowhere to go.

  The hellish, rotting mass of the ethereal city loomed overhead. Anthony heard screams—but none of that mattered.

  The blond girl held out a hand. He took it.

  Together, they walked into the city.

  PART FIVE

  Shielded

  FEBRUARY 2000

  The binding spell to turn a witch into an aspis required obscure supplies—or at least, supplies that were obscure in rural France. They had to get in contact with James’s old coven to have a set of crystals and holy items shipped. For the rest, they took a train into Paris, and spent several days dealing with the demon underground.

  Elise had seen some strange and disgusting things in her time as a kopis, but the undercity in Paris was uniquely foul. The demons dwelled in filth dragged from the surface. She recognized a few gypsies among the black market, as well as several imps that masqueraded as children on the surface.

  Buying everything they needed wiped out their francs, and the last message Malcolm left was from Denmark, so they carefully boxed up everything they needed for the ritual and headed north.

  The flight to Copenhagen was mostly empty. James and Elise had three entire rows of seats to themselves. They sat together in the back.

  “What are you reading?” Elise asked. His head had been bowed all morning over a book that had been sent by his coven, and she was bored of watching the frozen ocean outside her window.

  He held it up so she could see the cover. It was a slender text with the graphic of a circle slashed by an arrow stamped on the cover. “It’s a reference on the binding ritual. I’m trying to understand all the nuances of it before we do anything.”

  “But you’re one of the most powerful witches in the world. I thought you were beyond learning from books.”

  James shrugged. “I’ve never done this ritual before. I’d prefer not to kill either of us.”

  She peered over his shoulder. He was examining a drawing of an unusually elaborate circle of power. There was an illustration of a man’s forearm on the other page, and a knife digging into his skin. Inky blood dripped off his wrist.

  “Who’s getting stabbed?” she asked.

  He turned the page, hiding the illustration. “Both of us.”

  They had splurged on lodgings and arranged for a small condo in Klampenborg, which had two bedrooms, a private bathroom, and relative privacy. It was on the edge of the king’s hunting grounds, so they only had neighbors to the west, and trees protected their windows.

  Elise pushed all of the living room furniture into one of the bedrooms. James gave an approving nod at the area left behind. “Lovely condo. Too bad we won’t get our deposit back.” And then he set about converting the living room into a ritual space.

  Elise jogged through the park while he worked. Everything was buried in a foot of snow; crowds were sparse aside from the occasional passing carriage and wandering deer.

  When she returned to the condo a couple of hours later, out of breath with the tips of her ears stinging and red, she found the air thick with incense. James had carved the circle directly into the wood floor. She had never seen such elaborate designs, and they were enlarged to fill the space from wall to wall. There was barely enough room for the door to open.

  Elise stuck close to the wall as she removed her jacket. “You weren’t kidding about the deposit,” she said, watching as James anointed the northern point with a jar of oil.

  “You can enter the circle. It’s not complete yet.”

  Even with permission, she didn’t immediately step over the line. He had set a candle in the south, a bowl of water in the west, and a wand in the east. Pretty typical supplies. But she had no idea what the rest was used for. He had spaced crystals, candles, and a few small statuettes along the edge. The center of the circle was strangest of all. He had left pillows in the center of the pentagram.

  “Are you going to nap in here?”

  “Probably.” He finished rubbing the oil around the pile of salt and sat back, wiping his hands on a towel. “I think that does it. The circle will need a few more hours to set, but we can perform the spell this evening.”

  His voice was odd, as though speaking around a lump in his throat. Elise gave him a sideways look. Was he reconsidering the binding?

  “I want to get dinner,” she said.

  They took the train into Copenhagen and wandered around while eating hot dogs. The ocean was frozen beyond the docks, too, and the streets crunched with snow. The sun had barely risen that day—it was a wobbling yellow circle on the horizon.

  As they walked, James explained the spell. “It’s an ancient ritual, as old as kopides themselves. Though there have been some improvements over the years, it does require that we transfuse blood directly into one another’s veins.”

  “Do you have any diseases?” Elise asked.

  “No, but it wouldn’t matter if I did. Kopides are immune to most infections. I’m most worried about catching something from you.”

  “Excuse me? I don’t have anything.”

  “You’re a ginger,” he said, tugging one of her curls. “I’d hate to discover that it’s contagious.”

  Elise shoved him. He stumbled and slipped on the ice, but he was laughing. She found herself smiling, too.

  She took the wrapper for his hot dog and threw it in the trash with hers. They walked with their heads bowed into the wind, shoulder-to-shoulder.

  James stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s not reversible, Elise.”

  “I know.”

  “The bond’s integrity is critical. A kopis and aspis who fail to trust one another will find the bond s
ouring. They become more vulnerable than they were without, and—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “I’ve heard this from my parents before.”

  “It’s important that you know what you’re getting into.”

  Elise stopped on the corner and tilted her head back to study James. He had a scarf wrapped around his face, but his cheeks were pink with cold. “I know what I’m doing.”

  His eyes curved up at the edges. His mouth was hidden, but she could tell he was smiling. “Jesus, it’s cold here. Let’s go back.”

  The condo felt different when Elise and James returned. The air was thicker, and not just because of the incense haze. She didn’t need to be able to feel magic to know that the circle was ready.

  He patted his pockets, searching for a lighter. “Why don’t you get comfortable while I light these candles? The spell is going to take some time.”

  She hung her jacket on the door and removed her boots, stripping down to her leggings and undershirt. Elise carefully stepped over the carved lines of the circle with her bare toes and settled on a pillow.

  James found his lighter and shed layers of clothing until he reached his t-shirt and slacks. He flicked off the electric lights, lit the candles one by one, and muttered an incantation under his breath. Vapor spiraled toward a ceiling that was gray from the incense smoke.

  He took one last glance at the book his coven sent before closing the circle with a line of salt. His eyebrows lifted. “That’s quite the circle.”

  Elise glanced around the room. Nothing had changed. “So are we ready?”

  He nodded and folded his legs beneath him. James held one of her knives. She had bought it to skin brands off of demons, but she hadn’t used it yet, and the blade was razor-sharp. The flat part of the metal was dotted with red oil.

  James handed the knife to her.

  “We’ll each need to open a cut on our arms.” He took Elise’s wrist and ran a finger from the inside of her elbow to her wrist. Her glove was in the way. He rolled up the end of it to expose the heel of her hand.

  “You told me that before. I know what to do.”