Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  “She’s a friend of Father Night’s, too,” he pointed out.

  “Which is why we’re concerned. We know who she is.” Father Armstrong’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “We know what she is. Do you?”

  The memory of Elise straddling his hips, hand down his pajama bottoms, mischief on her face, flashed to mind. It was mixed with his mental image of the Devil, red-lipped and black-nailed in a bed of fire. “I’m not sure why we’re having this conversation,” Lincoln said.

  “Where Elise Kavanagh goes, darkness follows. It’s not in the town’s best interests for her to be involved in this investigation. It’s not in your best interests.”

  Lincoln straightened in his chair, trying to look more official, more imposing. “She’s a consummate professional, and her expertise could save lives. I brought her here to solve a case that my department isn’t capable of solving. She’ll be gone as soon as she’s done.”

  Father Armstrong looked surprised that Lincoln had dropped the pretense, but only for a moment. It was quickly replaced by another look of deep concern. “You’re a good, God-fearing man, Deputy Marshall. I’m surprised to hear you’re making deals with the Devil. How have your dreams been, my son?”

  A chill washed over his skin. “What?”

  “Your dreams, deputy,” Father Armstrong said. “Have you been having nightmares? Dreaming of darkness, hellfire, sin?”

  “How did you…?”

  “You think that you know what Elise Kavanagh is, but you don’t. The Devil comes in many forms, and some of them are more tempting than others.” Father Armstrong strode around the desk, withdrew something from his pocket and set it on the corner of the desk. He kept his fist closed around it. “Demonic possession takes time, Deputy. By the time you realize something’s happening to you, it’s too late to save your soul. Don’t let it get that bad before you come to me for help.”

  He stepped away. Lincoln looked down at what he had left on the desk.

  It was a small gold crucifix on a delicate chain.

  Lincoln’s crucifix.

  His hand flew to his neck. “How did you get that?”

  “I’m not the one you should ask that question,” Father Armstrong said. “My doors are always open.”

  He left the office. Lincoln was too stunned to follow him.

  Moments after Father Armstrong disappeared from his doorway, he was replaced by Sheriff Dickerson. She was short enough that Lincoln could have used the top of her head as an elbow rest, yet she still seemed to fill his entire office.

  “You’re suspended for two weeks,” Sheriff Dickerson said without preamble. “Clear out, Linc.”

  He had been in the middle of clasping the crucifix around his neck again, but the chain slithered from between his fingers at her voice. “Suspended? On what grounds?”

  “Professional misconduct. Interfering with an ongoing investigation. Tampering with evidence. Pick your poison.” She rapped a knuckle on the edge of his desk. “Leave your badge and firearm and get out of my sight.”

  FIFTEEN

  ELISE DRIFTED OVER the wastelands of Hell. The air was warm as liquid magma; it buffeted her with gentle turbulence, carried her on its tides, drew her toward the obsidian slabs of the mountains. She watched gashes of flame spread below. Human hands stretched toward her, screaming for mercy until enveloped by curls of black smoke.

  Herds of demons swept over yellowed earth, a creeping plague that left rot in its wake. Father, they said, it’s been too long.

  Love us.

  Be with us.

  But Elise drifted on, as untouched by their pleas as she was the screams of the damned.

  She knew peace, soaring above Hell. Serenity.

  Elise wasn’t supposed to be there.

  It should have only taken a moment’s thought to return herself to Earth. Waking up from Hell was unpleasant, but easy. Yet she thought, I need to get back to Earth…and nothing happened.

  An electric shock jolted through her.

  She was trapped.

  Elise.

  The wasteland fuzzed. Wind smashed into her, blasting her toward the ground.

  Elise, come back.

  That voice was familiar—more familiar to her than her own body. It was masculine, carefully-articulated, almost professorial. And he sounded as though he shared her fear.

  I can’t, she thought. I’m trapped here.

  I won’t allow that, he replied.

  Another shock of electricity.

  Hell blinked out of view. Trees reared above her, piercing a navy-blue sky with their jutting branches.

  It was night. The moon had waxed to a fraction less than full, and its brightness bore down on her, a disapproving gray face that reflected sunlight onto her tender skin.

  Her flesh solidified. Her bones became whole.

  Elise had returned to Earth. Hours had passed, and it was night again. But something was wrong. Her corporeal form hadn’t been restored with her clothing and weapons intact.

  Naked on the forest floor, Elise’s skin was bared to a merciless moon.

  And she wasn’t wearing her warding ring.

  Elise!

  Another mind drove into hers like two cars colliding at high-speed. Magic blazed in her vision, illuminating the night with arcs of gold and blue and bronze. A lacework of veins traced through the trees, the earth, and climbed Elise’s flesh, patterning her skin with the images of lightning bolts.

  She could see magic. But worse than that, she could see through another person’s eyes.

  He was in the forest, too. He was running, beating away the branches that reached for him with pine fingers, desperately seeking Elise. The mud sucked his feet under with every step. He knew that she was close, because he could see through her eyes, too.

  It was James.

  Elise fought to sit up, struggling to make sense of what she saw around herself in the forest. She couldn’t separate her sight from James’s. The trunks swirled around her. Earth and sky inverted, spreading the clouds underneath her like a distant carpet, before everything righted itself again. Her head throbbed.

  I’m coming, Elise.

  It was meant to be a promise, but it sounded like a threat.

  “Stay the fuck away from me,” she said aloud. Her own voice throbbed in her chest, her skull, making her eardrums pound.

  I’m almost there…

  The sun reflecting off of the moon burned her. She was coming apart.

  And James was looking for her.

  Elise had to get the ring back on her finger.

  She spotted her clothing tangled in the high branches of a tree. Her charms were snagged on a lower bush. The falchion was on the ground, blade halfway out of the holster, obsidian gleaming in the moonlight. Magic was tangled around the sword.

  Scrambling on her hands and knees, she fought against the tilt of the earth to reach the falchion. Elise clutched it to her chest.

  What had happened to her? One minute, she had been in Father Armstrong’s mobile home behind the church, Rylie at her side, the Bible in front of her on the altar. And then she had opened the cover of the book, and…what? Somehow she had ended up in Hell, then snapped back to Earth without managing to reassemble herself properly.

  But she had her sword. It was a start.

  In her mind’s eye, she watched through James’s eyes as he scaled a cliff, hands swift and sure on the rocks. She could feel that he was less than half a mile away. Given how quickly he was moving, even with the obstacles between them, he would be there in no more than five minutes.

  Where the fuck had the rings gone?

  She wrapped the charms around her bare neck. James’s warding ring was tangled with them. She jammed her thumb into it, but it was much too large, and the ward wouldn’t stick.

  Elise leaped to grab her shorts. They were stained with ichor, black and sticky. She pulled her underwear out of the tangle of cloth and donned them. The shorts were a loss. She discarded them.

  If th
e sword and charms had ended up close together, then the warding ring had to be somewhere nearby, too. It had to be.

  “Come on, come on…” she muttered, searching through the bushes.

  James was at the top of the cliff. He was only a short run away.

  Elise’s heart pounded in her throat, and part of her was tempted to give up the search, sit down, and wait for him. But it would mean facing what he had done again—and the idea ripped her heart in half, making grief and anger and betrayal surge through her blood.

  There was no way in any of the seven Hells that Elise was going to let him reach her.

  But she didn’t dare fade into the darkness again. Her corporeal form felt tenuous, heartbeats away from shattering. She hadn’t been able to return to Earth on her own the first time. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to come back at all a second.

  James’s guilt tasted bitter on her tongue. His thoughts were a constant stream tangling with hers. Stay where you are… Don’t move… Dark in the forest, people out here tonight, danger…

  An engine roared. A motorcycle was incoming from the opposite direction as James.

  Hide! he thought.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  Elise jumped, catching her shirt where it hung from the branch with one finger. She ripped it down. Pulled it over her head.

  The motorcycle’s headlight splashed over her, and Elise shoved her wrist in her mouth so that she wouldn’t cry out. If the moon made her ache, then the brilliant headlight set her on fire—she was seconds away from turning incorporeal again.

  But the light turned off almost as soon as it hit her.

  A man climbed off the bike, kicking the stand into place. Black hair, dark-skinned, leather jacket—Seth Wilder, the kopis with the werewolf pack. “There you are,” he said, swiping his bangs off of his forehead. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Elise knew that James was looking through her eyes. She knew that he saw Seth. His despair welled up inside of her as if it were her own, and Elise staggered, gripping her head in both hands. “Ring,” she said. “Find a ring, a gold band, it has to be close.”

  Seth didn’t ask what it was or why he needed to find it. He grabbed a flashlight off of the bike and shined it on the ground.

  She jumped behind a tree, clinging to the shadows, trying not to let the light touch her.

  Get away from Seth, James thought. He was close—too close.

  Seth exclaimed. “I found it!”

  “Get on the bike,” Elise said, coming around the tree and pushing him toward the motorcycle. “Get me out of here.”

  “Can’t you—?”

  “No,” she said, snatching the ring out of his hand.

  She jammed it onto her finger.

  For an instant, James’s mind was sharper than ever. Magic swirled around her, and she sensed that he had new magic, incredible spells, greater power than he had ever possessed when they were working together. The kind of power that cost a high price.

  Does it cost human sacrifice? Elise wondered.

  But the wards slammed into place, severing her mind from James’s before he could answer.

  The forest went dark. Her vision of magic disappeared, taking her sense of James’s position along with it. He could have still been at the top of the ridge or around the next tree—she had no way of knowing, and she didn’t want to find out.

  Seth was on the bike. Elise climbed on behind him, grabbing his shoulders.

  “Go,” she said. “Now!”

  He kicked the stand off and released the brake. The engine roared as they lunged to motion.

  Seth drove through the forest like a man who wasn’t afraid of dying—or a man used to having to keep up with werewolves in dense forest. Elise clung to him, hair streaming behind her, and threw a look over her shoulder.

  She thought she saw a flash of pale skin, but the darkness swallowed it.

  They drove into the night.

  Seth stopped the motorcycle outside the sanctuary, leaving Elise to sit with the bike while he turned off the spotlights ringing the cottages. The lights flicked off one by one. When her eyes stopped burning at the light’s violation, she could see that the sanctuary’s streets were empty, and all of the cottages were dark.

  “I called ahead,” Seth said, returning to Elise. “Abel and Rylie will meet us at her cottage as soon as they can. Let’s wait inside.”

  He parked the motorcycle underneath the awning, then led Elise past the waterfall to Rylie’s cottage. The door was unlocked.

  It was dim and quiet inside, and he had the good sense not to turn on any lights. Seth peered out the windows before snapping the curtains shut, leaving them in utter, blissful darkness.

  “What happened?” he asked, shedding his leather jacket.

  “There was something in Father Armstrong’s Bible, and I think it might have…” Elise frowned. “It exorcised me to Hell. That must have been why I had trouble coming back.” She rubbed her neck. The wounds were still unhealed, despite the foray to Dis.

  “I know—Rylie told me about what happened at the church today. I’m actually asking about out there. Tonight.” He pointed at the window, indicating the forest beyond. “What were you running from? Was something out there?”

  “No,” Elise said.

  “But you said—”

  “Where’s the rest of the pack?” she asked, interrupting him.

  Seth folded his arms. “Elsewhere.”

  “What’s an entire pack of werewolves doing ‘elsewhere’?”

  “Hiding from you,” he said. “Look, Rylie might trust you, but you’re some kind of demon, and you messed with Nash, and…” He frowned, carving deep lines on either side of his mouth. “You can’t blame us for protecting our family. I don’t trust you yet. Nothing personal.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Funny—she had been thinking much the same thing about Seth and Abel.

  James had lured Elise to Northgate for a reason. No matter what she felt about his methods, or the fact that he was interfering with her life again, she knew that he wouldn’t have come back unless he was utterly convinced that he had a good reason. And James had panicked when he saw Seth.

  Was Seth why James had brought Elise to Northgate? Could he be the one killing people?

  “How does a kopis end up with werewolves, anyway?” Elise asked, circling him slowly, studying him through the darkness. He leaned against the back of the couch, staring at the opposite corner. He couldn’t seem to see Elise at all.

  “Abel’s my brother,” Seth said, like that was any kind of explanation.

  “Cain was your brother, too.”

  He jerked as if struck. “How do you know about Cain?”

  “Rylie,” Elise said.

  Seth raked a hand over his hair. “Jesus. I can’t believe she told you about that.”

  The door opened that moment, letting the smell of rain wash through the house. Rylie strode in with the blanket from the backseat of the Chevelle under her arm, Abel shadowing her. “Are you okay?” she asked, lifting her nose to the air, as if she could scent Elise’s health.

  “Yes,” Elise said.

  Rylie looked relieved, though she only said, “Okay.” And when Abel reached for the light switch, she said, “Don’t do that.”

  Elise didn’t thank her, but she did give Rylie a small nod.

  “What was in the Bible?” Elise asked.

  Rylie opened the blanket, letting the Bible spill onto the couch. It had been tied closed with bungee cords. Elise lifted an eyebrow, and Rylie gave her an apologetic smile.

  “It was strong enough to banish you, so I figured it was worth having,” Rylie said. “We won’t open it until you leave, but I got some pictures of what’s inside. I figured you’d want to see it.”

  She handed her cell phone to Elise, who swiped through the most recent photos. Seth peered over her shoulder. She tilted it so that he could see.

  The Bible’s pages had been glued together, and then carved o
ut, creating a hollow book. What lie inside was hardly Christian: a brass bell, a wooden pentacle that would have fit in Elise’s palm, and sticks of incense. Symbols were inked into the inner border of the Bible’s rigid pages.

  “What is all that?” Seth asked.

  “Those are typical ritual items used by a witch. It’s all the basic things you need to cast a circle of power, which is the foundation of any ritualistic magic,” Elise said.

  A mere glimpse of them was enough to fling her on a trip through memory. She had spent so many humid days sprawled out on a couch, watching James spread salt in a circle, using the pentagram to place his candles around the perimeter, ringing the bell to summon the spirits.

  Bell, book, and candle. They had been James’s bread and butter.

  The memories filled her with a bittersweet feeling—a sickening mixture of warm nostalgia and apprehension, fondness and fear.

  James hadn’t needed any of those tools to cast magic. His blood had carried greater power than Elise could have ever imagined. But he had pretended that he was a normal witch to lure her into a false sense of security.

  His specialty had been trapping magic within written runes. The symbols in the Bible looked to have been designed using a similar mechanism. And one of those symbols had been enough to toss Elise out of the dimension just by looking at it. James would have known which one it was, but she didn’t plan on asking him.

  “After you disappeared, the air smelled funny,” Rylie said. “There was this loud noise, too. Like…kind of a sucking sound. We didn’t stick around to see if anything else would happen.”

  Abel snorted and shoved into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Rylie flinched.

  “The fuck?” Elise asked.

  Rylie hung her head, picking at her thumbnail. She shot a sideways look at the closed door through her hair. “Abel panicked,” she said softly, as if trying to keep him from hearing.

  Apparently, this wasn’t a normal behavior for Abel, because Seth looked even more shocked than Elise felt.

  “Yeah. Like a panic attack.” Rylie flung her hands into the air. “I don’t know. He’s not scared of anything, but he ran like the Devil was chasing him, and he won’t tell me why. He’s been shaken up ever since.”