by SM Reine
They didn’t have time for that much anger now, and Abram had said the magic word anyway.
“Love.” Abel snorted.
Those fucking Greshams. Worst taste in men possible. Family curse or something.
“I know what you think about gay people,” Abram said. “Levi told me. You and Seth both, the way you treated him in high school.”
He thought this was about being gay?
Sure, it was gross and weird, but it would have been gross and weird for Summer to be with Levi, too. Levi was a huge asswipe. Rylie’s oldest adversary. The grossness of being gay was vastly eclipsed by the general grossness of Levi.
“I don’t care about the gay…thing,” Abel said. Whatever the hell he was supposed to call it. “I care about the fact that it’s Levi. Why him?”
Abram shrugged. “I don’t know. Just how it worked out.”
For some reason, that answer made way too much sense.
Why had Abel wanted to be with Rylie, his brother’s girlfriend? Some scrawny blond werewolf girl?
Just how it worked out.
Instead of responding, Abel walked over and offered Levi a hand. He was still bleeding from his nose, which wasn’t likely to heal any time soon, considering Abel was Alpha and all.
Levi looked suspiciously at Abel’s hand.
“Take it,” Abel said. He did. Abel pulled him to his feet. Miraculously, he resisted the urge to punch Levi in the face again, even though he deserved it. “You’re just with him to piss me off, aren’t you?”
Levi glared. “It’s a bonus. But that’s not the only reason.”
“Don’t provoke him,” Abram said, elbowing his boyfriend. His boyfriend, for fuck’s sake. He hesitated, and then said, “Thanks, Abel.”
Abel grunted and turned to go to the window.
He felt a hand on his arm. When he turned around, Abram gave him a half-hug—one of those manly gestures with the brief pat on the back.
“Goddammit,” Abel said, and he gave Abram a real hug, one with both arms and werewolf strength. Still brief. It was the only way he knew to say that he loved Abram just like he loved Summer, even if Abram was Seth’s son, and he wanted to be better for them. For their sakes, for Rylie’s sake, maybe even for his sake.
It was the last chance they had for that. The gates to Eden were open, and the end had come.
They didn’t have enough time to leave regrets between them.
“They’re coming,” Ariane announced softly.
She was right. When the wind picked up again, Abel could smell demons approaching. He peered through the smoke outside to see darkness swirling over the mountains, rushing toward them.
Guess it was time to run.
“You said you know a path through the sinkholes,” Abel said, even as he reached out to the spirit wolves. They appeared around him. They’d been there the entire time—he thought they would probably always be with him now—but they waited until he wanted them to show. Nice thing, too. It was a little unsettling being followed everywhere by ghosts.
Ariane grabbed her bag off the floor and slung it over her shoulder. “Across the bridge. This way.”
She raced across the temple, feet ringing against the blue-tiled floor. The building was ringed by white pillars, its walls painted with murals of angels working at looms.
Levi and Abram followed. Abel hung back, watching the army approach.
It looked like Belphegor had sent the whole thing for them. There had to be hundreds of demons swirling toward the temple, skimming over the trees.
Abel felt the wolves’ excitement around him. They were ready for the fight.
He turned to race after his companions, but they’d stopped on the bridge just outside the doors.
“Merde,” Ariane said.
Another segment of the army blocked the only path out of the temple. The same Fate that had attacked James in the library was at their lead—the pale woman who looked like Elise. She still bore the wounds of the wolf spirits who had torn into her. Ichor caked her arms and throat.
She looked pissed.
“Get her,” Abel said, and the wolves leaped from behind him.
They attacked her again. He could feel their anger, their excitement. He felt her fists and feet strike them. Every blow ached deep in his gut.
He dragged Abram back from the bridge as they ripped into her, and the others followed, jumping into the temple.
There was nowhere else to run. That bridge was the only way out.
The bridge, or the gateway to Eden.
“What are you waiting for?” Levi asked, standing on the edge of the portal.
“We can’t go into Eden,” Abram said, balking when Levi took his arm.
“You want to stay here and die?”
It didn’t sound like a great alternative.
“Fine,” Abel said. “Let’s go.”
The vision of the garden shimmered. It shifted.
Before they could jump through the gateway to Eden, the light changed, coalescing into the image of a doorway. Not one of the grand arches built by angels, but an entirely normal-looking door, like the kind that Abel had on his cottage back at the sanctuary—assuming the sanctuary still even existed.
Someone knocked on the other side of it. Three sharp raps, like a pizza delivery guy asking for attention.
Abram reached for the doorknob.
“What are you doing?” Abel asked. “That seems like a really bad goddamn idea.”
“Who would want out of Eden?” Abram asked.
“Belphegor. Belphegor would want out of Eden to kill us.”
“If he knows we’re here, he doesn’t need to make a door.”
Abram twisted the handle. The door opened.
A little girl stood on the other side with her hand uplifted like she was going to knock again. Her brunette curls were a wild tangle surrounding her round face. A brush of freckles dotted her nose.
Ariane made a sound very much like a sob. “Marion?”
She collapsed to her knees, enveloping the little girl in her arms.
Abram was staring, jaw dropped, but it was Levi who spoke. “A kid? In Eden? Did I miss something?”
Ariane was too distracted to respond. She began babbling to the girl—her daughter?—in rapid French, and the girl responded in kind. Abel didn’t understand a word of it. All he knew about French was “baguette” and maybe “cervesa,” although he wasn’t sure that was actually the right language.
The wolves projected alarm toward him.
She’s strong. We’re losing ground.
It was a warning. The Fate was going to break through and enter the temple.
“We need to go,” Abel said, striding past Ariane toward the gate.
A small hand grabbed the knee of his jeans. Marion was trying to stop him. She spoke in French and Ariane quickly translated. “She says we shouldn’t go into Eden. She has a trick, and she wants to show it to us now.”
“We don’t have time for some kid’s games,” Abel growled.
But Marion walked up to the wall of the temple, lifted her hand, and knocked again, this time on one of the murals.
Light flared from her fist.
A door appeared in the wall, very much like the door to Eden. With a smile, the girl opened it. On the other side, there was a long, dark tunnel of black stone.
A tunnel that looked an awful lot like Hell.
“Some trick,” Abel said.
Victorious shouts rose from outside. Abel felt the spirits retreating, rushing back to him.
Run, whispered the wolves.
Now there was nothing between them and the Fate’s army but about fifty feet and a narrow, open archway.
Seemed like they didn’t have a choice to be picky about escape routes.
Marion was smiling, like she was proud of herself for making that door. She was completely oblivious to her mother’s horrified expression and the stunned silence from Abram and Levi.
“Looks like we’ve found our way out,” Abel sa
id.
He hauled Ariane to her feet, grabbed the little girl, and rushed for the door.
Sixteen
James hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but Elise had worn him out, and he was unprepared for the depth of the fatigue that would follow. He had just barely finished setting the gaean ritual to heal Nathaniel when he finally succumbed to the fog in his skull.
He woke up alone, draped in blankets that were crusted with months-old blood and unsure what had stirred him. He sat up, brushed the bangs off of his forehead, and shivered in the cold.
It was much too chilly to get out of bed naked. He slid from the mattress with the stained comforter wrapped around him as he scavenged for his clothing. Only his underwear and shoes seemed to be intact. Elise had shown little regard for everything else.
If he could gather enough of his dignity to find a way out to the trucks, there would most likely be spare clothing. It was going to be a very cold trip to make that happen, though.
Where was Elise now?
James opened the shutters on the window, peering out to the wind-blasted landscape. There was no way to see the gate from there; he had made sure of that when he selected the location to cage Elise. But there were a few werewolves outside the walls. Maybe one would take pity on him.
He was about to call to them when he realized that they weren’t actually moving. One of them had stopped with his foot just a couple inches above the stone, caught in mid-step. A swirl of snow sparkled around them, as motionless as the rain at Hannah’s grave had been when Nathaniel arrived.
“Damnation,” he swore under his breath.
“Yes?”
Belphegor stood in the corner, hands folded in front of him.
James’s eyes flicked to the spell he’d prepared. Everything was there: the runes, the circle, the anointing oil. If it would cure Nathaniel, it might cure Belphegor, too.
He was no longer a witch, but would he need to be a witch to activate a spell that was ready to be cast?
If he could just get that oil on Belphegor…
He edged along the wall as the demon strolled toward him.
“Just so you know, I have planned to kill you,” Belphegor said. “You’re part of my plan to bring Elise to her knees.”
“Isn’t that nice,” James said, inching to the desk.
“I thought that your death would break her spirit and make her despair. Interesting, though, that she already despairs so deeply in the loss of her friends, even when you’re alive. You do nothing to make her less miserable. You’re an antagonizing influence.”
“Historically speaking, our relationship has been somewhat fraught,” James said, mostly as a way to keep Belphegor talking rather than acting. He wasn’t interested in relationship therapy led by a sadistic demon.
He grabbed the bottle of anointing oil behind his back and unscrewed it.
“Love,” Belphegor mused, his eyes skimming the rumpled sheets on the bed. “The most poisonous substance in all of time.”
James began forming the words to activate the gaean spell in his mind—the Sumerian, the infernal, the ethereal. The verses carried no weight when he thought them now, but if they did trigger the spell, he would never be able to detect it. He no longer had the requisite senses.
He stood back on the outer edge of the circle, cupping salt in his left hand.
Belphegor looked James over as though assessing the quality of a side of beef. “You are almost what I sought in slaves, when I was still bound to Dis. You are strong. Healthy. I imagine you would have survived a long time in my play room.”
The demon moved within arm’s reach.
With a swift gesture, James tossed the salt along the edge of the circle to seal it—with both him and Belphegor inside—and splashed the anointing oil over the demon.
Belphegor didn’t flinch. He looked down at his shirt as oil dripped from his chin to his chest.
The oil vanished without so much as a gesture from him, like he had never been touched by it.
“If you thought to test a ‘cure’ for your son on me, you have wasted time and supplies. You can’t sever me from what makes me a god the way you can sever the Gray from their power.”
Calm spread to his extremities, leaving James numb.
The spell had failed.
It was bad enough that it hadn’t worked on Belphegor, leaving James defenseless in the face of a god, but the other implications were far worse. The spell had been Elise’s only hope of curing Nathaniel. Now, he would have to die to be saved from madness.
Fortunately, it was looking less likely that James would survive to see that.
There was nothing he could do against Belphegor. Most likely not when he had been a witch, and certainly not now.
He could choose to die without screaming, though.
James set the empty vial on the table. His motions felt slow, like he was packed in cotton. “Then what will it be? A gruesome display of my body? Perhaps leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood on the floor?”
“My dear mortal,” Belphegor said, “give me some credit. I’m somewhat more creative than that.”
He extended a long-fingered hand to James, as though it was no more than a gentlemanly invitation to go for a walk.
What choice did James have? He shed the comforter on the edge of the dead circle and approached the demon.
He only took two steps before the world vanished around him.
A cold wind blew through the mountains. It whistled among stone and ice and whirled around Elise without touching her.
The hybrids were dead, and werewolves circled around the statue of Lilith.
Lachesis hovered between them. She melted within the light of Eden, shriveling away to nearly nothing.
You have tricked me, she hissed.
“Damn right I did,” Elise said.
The Fate tried to phase away, but Elise reactivated Brianna’s spell—specifically, the wards along the circle’s circumference. The witch had cast those protections using one of James’s older designs, and they were strong enough to erect magical walls that Lachesis would never be able to destroy on her own.
She was trapped. That meant that Elise was trapped, too.
But now the gate to Eden was open, and Elise didn’t need to get out again.
Let me go, Lachesis said.
It almost sounded like begging.
This thing had killed Neuma and Gerard. Good people. Great people, in fact. Elise’s lover and her praetor, people who had stood by her during the worst, who had given their lives in a futile attempt to save the slaves.
It wasn’t Lachesis who had murdered McIntyre, Leticia, and Deb, but she would have done it just as readily if Belphegor had ordered it.
And Lachesis had the nerve to beg.
Elise leaped forward, seized the Fate, and dragged her toward the bright light streaming through the gate.
The demon thrashed against her as she smoldered. Gritting her teeth, Elise held her in place.
It burned. It burned so much to sink into Eden’s glow instead of hiding from it. It was like trying to give Nash a big hug when he was at his most brilliant. Elise’s skin burned, melting away almost as quickly as Lachesis’s fog.
She managed to pin Lachesis to Lilith’s tail. The Fate was nothing but a wisp now. A wisp with wide, panicked eyes in dwindling darkness.
Let me go!
“No,” Elise growled.
With a scream, Lachesis’s smoke dispersed.
Elise knew she was gone when there was no longer any resistance against her hands. She slipped forward, palms flattening against Lilith’s tail. Ichor slicked her arms. It was the same sludge that Clotho had left behind after she died.
Two down, one to go.
Sinking to her knees, Elise bowed in front of the statue of Lilith, ducking into the safety of shadow, and pressing her forehead to the stone. It had been lovingly engraved to resemble the scales of a snake.
She didn’t feel victorious in killing Lachesis.
It didn’t bring Neuma back.
Instead, in the absence of an enemy to fight, Elise was overwhelmed by grief.
She had been the one to kill Lilith. She had decapitated the ancient goddess using her falchions that rested in the circle now—the same goddess who had, with Yatam’s help, turned Elise into a demon.
She had never known Lilith well enough to miss her, but in that moment, she did. Desperately.
Lilith had been the sculptor of life, master of death. She had been the architect of the universe. She had taken Elise’s soul and given it new form.
If she had still lived, what would Lilith have been able to do for the McIntyres and Neuma?
What could she have done for Nathaniel’s mother?
The uneasy shifting of the wolves and the cold breeze brought Elise back to reality. By the time she pushed herself to her feet, her shoulders were squared, and she was careful to show no emotion on her face.
She moved to the center of the circle, skirting the brilliant light from the portal, and picked up her swords.
“I’m going into Eden now,” Elise said to the wolves. “I don’t expect any of you to come with me. This is somewhere that only I can go.” She didn’t wait to see if any of them departed. The light was still making her skin ache, and she needed to get inside Eden.
But when Elise tried to jump into the gate, she came up against an invisible barrier.
Elise pushed her hands against it. The air did not yield.
The doorway to Eden was open. She could see the garden on the other side, just a few tantalizing inches away, yet she couldn’t pass through.
Belphegor had somehow locked her out.
How? Why? If he could lock her out even once she opened the doors, why bother trying to kill Abram? Why sacrifice Lachesis and the hybrids in an attempt to prevent them from completing the ritual? It was like he was taunting her. It wouldn’t have been surprising, considering Belphegor’s sickening sense of humor, but that couldn’t be the whole point.
Unless it had also been a distraction to keep her from seeing what else he was doing.
I want you to despair.
Her eyes swept over the wolves. There were ten of them remaining. Had any stayed behind to guard James?