by SM Reine
“Let the holy cross be my light, let the serpent not lead me astray.”
“Vade retro, Satana...”
“Step back, Satan.”
What do you think that means, Elise? A gentle smile. But who smiled? Where were the eyes belonging to those lips?
“Nunquam suade mihi vana...”
“What you offer me is evil...”
But what is evil?
The question wasn't part of the exorcism ritual. And neither was the second part—what is goodness? She had no answers for either. “Sunt mala quae libas...”
Such a sweet smile.
“Ipse venena bibas...”
“Drink the poison yourself...”
Fluid dripped from the corner of that mouth. There were hands, but they didn’t wipe the poison away. It was dark burgundy, the crimson of wine… or blood.
One more time, Elise. From the top.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas, ipse venena bibas.”
Very good. Again.
The branches scraped her vulnerable body.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux…”
The ground disappeared. Elise fell, and fell…
The yawning blackness devoured her whole.
And fell…
Drink the poison yourself…
“I am the cold kiss of Death,” the goddess whispered into her ear, “and you can never defeat me.”
Elise’s arms were bound to the stone wall behind her. Her face was bloody but set in a determined glare. Mud packed the open wound on her hip. A red cloak she didn’t remember wearing pooled around her body. The death goddess—had she any other name?—stood high above her, swathed in shadow and holding a staff of sharpened human bone.
“Alive or dead, I will come back for you,” the goddess murmured.
“You can’t think this will do any good,” Elise spat. The sky outside, visible through a small window near the ceiling, was black, blue, purple, and scarlet. Blood and pus bubbled from her wound. “You can’t kill me yet. Not without screwing up your apocalyptic plans.”
She laughed. Deep, throaty, bubbling like Elise’s blood. “Who says I plan to use you?”
In her other hand, she clutched a stone dagger that sang with power. It was covered in symbols, some more familiar than others.
Her blood bulged in her veins. Ipse venena bibas…
The witch had clutched a stone, too.
James.
The sky faded to orange and back to red.
He ran through the jungle searching for Elise. The branches scraped at him, though the trees never moved, but still he searched. She watched him from her prison with the goddess, and she almost wished he wouldn’t find her as much as she longed for him to save her.
The death goddess drew intricate designs in Elise’s skin with vivid crimson ink.
Her breast rose and fell with breath. Her heartbeat fluttered.
The witch. The stone staff. Death.
Who says I plan to use you?
Her eyes flew open, and she saw.
Sleep ripped away from Elise. Consciousness slammed into her body. She gasped, flinching against the blow that never came—and then realized she heard the familiar sound of cars rushing by on the street outside.
Elise sat up. Nothing inside the room made noise but James's erratic breathing. He had pushed the sheets off to bare his body to the waist even though the room was only sixty degrees. She pressed her hand to his back. His temperature almost scorched her palm.
He made a small noise and moved into her touch, rolling over without waking up. His eyelids were dark, almost bruised.
“James,” she said softly.
She searched for her cell phone in the darkness. Only an hour and a half had passed.
Elise slipped out of bed to search the closet for spare clothes. She located clean jeans and a shirt by touch, identifying it as her Black Death concert top by the hole near the hem.
When she finished changing, she returned to James. She checked his temperature with a hand to his forehead, and he was even hotter than he had been before. Sleep had done neither of them any good. James hadn’t improved, and Elise had lost time.
Someone knocked at the door. She looked out the window to confirm that Stephanie’s car was in the lot before meeting her at the door. The doctor’s normally neat coif was frazzled.
“Thanks for coming,” Elise said as Stephanie pushed past her into the house.
“Is he in bed?”
Elise nodded, and the doctor blew into his bedroom.
She sat beside him on the mattress and opened her bag. Elise waited in the doorway while Stephanie gave James a short and clinical examination. After a few minutes, the doctor took off her gloves.
“Can you take care of him here?” Elise asked.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Stephanie said. “He doesn’t seem to have lost enough blood to be struggling, and there hasn’t been enough time for infection to set in.” The doctor leveled a stern look at Elise. “He needs to be taken to a hospital.”
“Will he die if he remains untreated for a few hours?”
“I can’t be sure.”
“I need you to stay and monitor him,” Elise said. “I have to find the person that did this. Once they’re out of the picture, you can send him to any hospital you want.”
“Don’t you think you should call the police?” Stephanie asked, following Elise out of the room. “Whoever attacked him is deranged.”
“The police won’t be able to help. You have to stay.”
She folded her arms. “It goes against every good practice I know.”
“Great,” Elise said. “Now listen close. I’m going to lock all the doors and windows before I leave. Don’t open any of them until I come back. James has set up wards around the apartment, so he’ll be safe as long as they’re shut. Don’t let anyone in, don’t call an ambulance, don’t call the police. If you want James to make it to the hospital at all, you have to keep quiet.”
Stephanie nodded reluctantly. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Thanks,” Elise said. “Don’t let him die.”
She disappeared into the night.
The casino was full at three in the morning. Tricks of light and shadow made the room an endless plane of slot machines, where the drunk and down-on-their-luck hunched before digital screens. Listless, addicted gamblers fidgeted nearby as they watched for the next game to make them lucky.
Day, night. Neither mattered. Neither existed.
Money passed from player to casino attendant and became chips, and the chips went from hand to table, then to the dealer, and back to the attendants. The artificial clattering, jingling, singing sounds of slots and video poker paying out or begging to be played filled the air with discordant chorus.
The air was thick, and not with cigarette smoke. What it masked was impossible to ignore—an eternal depression, a feeling of being trapped. The feel of people imprisoning themselves in a place where the odds were low and wishing for a row of lucky sevens to change their ruined lives.
Elise moved quickly across the floor, watching each table as she passed. Cards whispered across the velvet—ten of spades, three of hearts, suicide king—and were taken into hands with nails yellow from tobacco.
She didn’t enjoy the casinos here. She had been to Vegas and little back-alley stands in Eastern Europe where the dice were all hand-carved, and either was better. At least there was fun and good company to be had elsewhere.
It didn’t take long for Elise to spot who she was looking for. David Nicholas never slept, and seldom worked, so he made up for decades of spare time with a platinum gambling card at every casino and a reserved spot at the Texas Hold-‘Em table. He was a ghost beside two swarthy tourists with purple rings under their eyes. He cupped a stack of dwindling chips in one hand.
“Check,” he said, tapping his cards on the table. He glanced up as Elise approached,
his hand half-raised as though he expected a cocktail waitress. Then he realized who it actually was, and his face fell. “Shit.”
Elise hauled him out of his chair and dragged him to the back door, flinging him into the alley behind the casino. The nightmare splashed into a puddle of rainwater and trash. He stared up at her with an expression like that of a rabbit spotting a hawk.
Jerking him up by the collar, she slammed him into the wall. “Tell me what you know,” she snarled, pushing her dagger against the nightmare’s stomach.
“Hang on, wait, whoa,” David Nicholas said, holding his hands up. “All I know is I was winning a hand of hold-‘em and you interrupted my streak. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ve been inspired to take a break from accounting. If you cooperate, I can cut my vacation short. Understand?”
“I've got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re the one who told me something was coming when I visited Craven’s,” she said. “I’m starting to suspect you might have been onto something. I’m here to chat about it.” Elise jerked on his collar again. He gurgled. “Chat, David Nicholas.”
She dropped him back into the trash. Rats scurried away. “Don’t think I got to chat about anything with you,” he said. “It isn’t profitable to play with humans…unless you want to try to make it that way, if you’re catching my meaning.”
She studied the blade of her knife, testing the edge against her thumb. “Tell you what. You tell me what you were talking about at the club, and I’ll make it profitable by not stabbing you… again. I’m looking for a demon that can resurrect people.”
He slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his sleeve and tapped one into his hand. He lit it, but didn’t take a puff, contemplating the glowing end as he rolled it between his first finger and thumb.
“Demons can’t resurrect people on their own.”
“Yeah, but something is doing it anyway. Does the name le Main de Morte ring a bell?”
“The what de what?”
“The Hand of Death. That’s what I said, the Hand of Death.”
He sneered. “Death’s Hand,” David Nicholas murmured. “Old bastard.”
“You know it, then.”
“Know of it, yeah. It’s hellborn. There was lots of talk about Death’s Hand a few years ago. It was some big fad to talk about it, like, ooh, it’s going to kill us dead, it’s going to destroy Earth.” David Nicholas took a drag. “Didn’t happen, as you see. I wasn’t worried about it. I never worry about that kind of thing.”
“So it can resurrect people,” Elise pressed.
“It can reanimate. Huge difference,” he said, leaning one elbow on an orange crate. “Move corpses. You know, like a puppet.”
“A little girl died,” she said. “This Death’s Hand thing possessed her. I performed an exorcism, and when he was gone, she was alive again.”
“Treaty of Dis says demons can’t perform resurrections. Only humans can do it, and not many of them at that. Just those special witches—you know, necromancers.” He dropped his cigarette on the top of a nearby crate and ground it in with his fingers. His other hand was already moving to bring a second to his lips. “So can I go back to my game now?”
“No. What were you trying to warn me about?”
David Nicholas spread his hands wide. “What am I supposed to say? I got four hundred and sixty-three years of knowledge rattling around inside my skull. I could warn you about things that would give the Night Hag nightmares.” His black eyes grew shadowed. “You got a necromancer on your hands, and you’re in bigger trouble than anyone would be able to help you with.”
“Tell me why.”
“Death’s Hand reanimates, right? Useful trick. You work your slaves to death, then bring ‘em back and do it all over again.” He shrugged, and it looked like his bony shoulders could almost pierce his jacket. “If it got a necromancer, though, it could resurrect, too. All Death’s Hand’s got to do is reanimate a freshly dead necromancer to create a bond with it, and—”
“I thought you said it couldn’t come to Earth,” Elise interrupted. “There are no necromancers in Hell. There aren’t even any necromancers on Earth, come to think of it. Not in years.”
“It can’t actually come up. With a dark object, yeah, it can appear up here. But with the help of a necromancer, Death’s Hand would have a heck of a lot easier time finding a witch to become a vessel.”
Elise slipped her hand into her pocket, wrapping her hand around the stone she had taken from the witch. It vibrated ever so slightly as though it knew they were talking about it. “What do you mean, a vessel?”
“Someone to possess. A strong enough witch with the right power could become the body of Death’s Hand. Like an ascension, you know, but without the centuries of building up its power first. ’Course, once Death’s Hand has a body, it won’t need a pet necromancer any more. It’ll destroy him and keep the bits it wants, like everything else it reanimates.”
“Destroy him,” she echoed. “Do you mean…”
“Death’s Hand destroys its legions once they’re used up. Clean-up, you know. Real easy and nice. It won’t need the necromancer to keep the power after awhile. Hypothetically, of course. That would violate the Treaty of Dis and bring down all kinds of hellfire, and nobody’s stupid enough to do that.”
“Good. Thanks.” Elise turned to leave.
“Vedae som matis,” he said. He said the words with a strange accent, almost choking on them, as though they were spoken in the throat rather than the mouth.
“What?”
“Vedae som matis. It’s the demon language, and that’s what they call it down there. Thought you might be interested.”
“What does vedae som matis mean?”
“Hand of Death.”
Shocking. Elise stuck her knife back in her belt. “Thanks for the information.”
“This is twice now you’ve made me had a bad day, cabbage,” David Nicholas called after her as she headed down the alley. “First one was free. Second one’s going to cost you.”
“Send a bill to my office,” she snapped. “The check bounced, by the way. I’m going to get that money from you in blood if I have to.”
“Go ahead and try,” he said. His eyes glowed.
Elise mulled over the information he had given her as she navigated the alleys behind the casino. Vedae som matis. Death’s Hand. Reanimation, not resurrection. That would explain why it had possessed Lucinde. She must not have been strong enough to become the vessel of Death’s Hand. James had enough power, but Death’s Hand needed a dead witch.
She wrapped her hand around the stone in her pocket, as though it might give her answers. The sense of demonic energy had grown in intensity, ringing throughout Elise’s senses.
Had the staff begun radiating more energy, or was it something… else?
Elise picked up the pace again and stretched out her senses. Yes, there were definitely demons around, and it wasn’t hard to guess what would be tracking her.
Fiends. And they were close.
She gripped her knife. Elise hurried down the sidewalk toward the parking garage. Dancing casino lights lit her path, casting flickering shadows on the street before her, turning the night into a tired carnival of once-great businesses harping their unwanted wares.
A chill crept up her spine, and the demonic sensations intensified.
Motion blurred at the corner of Elise’s vision.
She spun, cutting the dagger through the night air. A huge fist grabbed her before she could even see the attached face—the corpse from the hospital again—and slammed her hand into the wall. Concrete scraped her exposed fingers. Pain shocked up her arm. Her fingers lost their grip on the dagger, and it clattered to the concrete.
The possessed one twisted her around, jerking her into his body and wrapping a steel-clad arm around her. He threw himself backward into the shadow of a building, taking Elise with him.
She lost her footing, and th
e servant forced her against a wall. His hot hand clamped over her nose and mouth, cutting off her breath. The rag in his hand smelled faintly sweet, and slightly alcoholic. Elise had never smelled anything like it before, but she’d seen enough movies to recognize chloroform.
She held her breath, but her throat burned with the taste of chemicals, and it was too late.
XIII
Betty took the coffee pot out of the machine, grabbed a cozy, and set both on the table in front of Anthony. “Drink,” she said.
Anthony slumped forward on her table and dropped his chin on his folded arms. He wore a button-down shirt and clean jeans, and there wasn’t a spot of oil anywhere on his body. He was well-dressed for the crack of dawn. “I don’t want it.”
“Cheer up,” she said. “Caffeine’s a mood booster.”
“I hate coffee.”
She dropped into the chair beside him, moved the vase so it wasn’t between them, and poured herself a cup. “Of course you like coffee. Everyone likes coffee. It’s just a matter of how much sugar and creamer you need.” She punctuated her statement by emptying the cream bottle into her half-full mug and sprinkling sugar atop it, stirring with a swizzle stick topped by a hula dancer. “Did you even change out of your clothes after last night?”
“No. I slept like this,” he said. “I just don’t get it. If she didn’t want to go on another date with me, why would she agree to go out in the first place?”
“Isn’t that just another delightful part of the enigma that is Elise?”
“It’s fucked up, that’s what it is.” He glanced at the coffee pot. “What kind is that?”
“Komodo blend,” she said, wafting the cup in the air. “Also known as percolated heaven. Sound good yet?”
“No.”
Betty took a large slurp of the coffee and set it down again. “I’m going to give it to you straight, baby cousin of mine: Elise would not be afraid of refusing dates. If she thought your first date sucked, she would get that look that says in her not-so-sneaky way that if you speak to her again she’ll break your nose. That’s about as subtle as she gets. Agreeing to a date and then ditching you—that isn’t her modus operandi.”