Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3)

by S. M. Reine

  “That’s not what I meant,” James said, pausing in mid-step. “Are you okay?” The way he pitched it, she could tell that he didn’t mean the smoke rising from the fissure, her long days in Hell, the failure to save so much of the mortal army.

  It was tempting to tell him the truth. Elise wanted to tell him that she wasn’t okay. She hadn’t been okay since she found out that James wasn’t who she thought he was, and there was nothing that could fill the holes he had left behind in her life—not Anthony and McIntyre, not all the hunting, not learning to write magic and trying to conquer Hell with steel and blood. There was a big part of her that felt like none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for James. But everything was worse without him.

  “I’m fine,” Elise said. A stupid, horrible lie.

  James began to speak. “I wish that I could—”

  Thud.

  The earth shook below them, interrupting him.

  Elise broke free of him and rushed to the edge of the town square, holding on to the corner of an accountant’s office building for balance.

  Aquiel was on Earth.

  The remaining wolf pack stood between her and him, ground scattered with bodies both human and otherwise. The survivors were insignificant pinpricks in front of his hooves. He was taller than Bain Marshall, taller than the sky.

  She was dizzy with pain, and the sight of the battle lost was almost enough to make her succumb to the void. But the fact that she could feel herself on the verge of becoming incorporeal meant that Aquiel had relinquished his hold on her—or been forced to relinquish it.

  It was then that she realized that a handful of angels floated in front of Aquiel without having to flap their wings, lifted by the brilliant glow of energy.

  Nash’s reinforcements had arrived after all.

  It didn’t matter. It was too late for most of the humans and too late for Elise. The light scalded her. When she tried to grab James, her arm slipped through his shoulders as though she were a ghost.

  She dug her fingers into the ground and tried to focus on the tactile sensation of it: soil between her fingers, the pain in her gut, the tangible world.

  Elise was about to lose herself.

  “Your demands mean nothing to me,” Aquiel was saying, voice shaking through downtown Northgate. “This world is mine. I have set hoof upon it and will feast on the flesh and fears of every mortal in my reach.”

  She thought that the angels must have been responding to him, but all she heard was a skull-shattering chime. Elise bowed her forehead to the ground and pressed her hands over her ears. She could see through her elbows and watch the blood in her veins coursing through her arteries.

  James’s body curved around hers, shielding her from the light. It wasn’t enough. The glow was pulling her apart. She was fraying.

  “They’re not going to be able to kill him,” she mumbled. He was too great, and Earth had become Hellish enough that it was practically his home territory now. The angels didn’t stand a chance that close to the fissure.

  “I know they can’t. I’ll get the angels out of the way.” He took her wrist, lifting her hand to his mouth. “And then you can kill him. You can get closer than I could. Make it swift.” He pressed a kiss to her palm. A shiver rolled down her spine.

  But he hadn’t been merely kissing her. He still had at least one trick up his sleeve that he hadn’t taught her—he had whispered an ethereal rune straight onto her hand.

  Elise stared at the glowing rune. It was shot through with both blue and red. Their individual colors. It resembled the destruction rune that she had wasted on Belphegor with his enchanted armor, but far more complex, and so much brighter.

  She curled her fingers around the rune. Her skeletal fist trembled.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He tugged off his gloves and tucked them into his belt, leaving them folded over his hip. “This could be loud,” he warned.

  Then James turned and lifted both hands.

  For an instant, he was bathed in stinging light, his flesh a wash of crystalline daylight, white hair outlined in brilliant blue.

  He must have spoken, but the words never reached Elise’s ears. All she heard was a heavy thud. And then she heard nothing at all—her ears were ringing too loudly.

  Everything went dark.

  Her eyes quickly adjusted, and she saw that the angels were plummeting to the earth, suddenly unable to hover without their glowing wings. In the sudden darkness, lit only by the fires of Hell, Elise felt strong.

  James’s mouth moved. It looked like he said, “Go, Elise.”

  She let herself break into the night.

  Elise was everything and nothing—the violet darkness that came with snow, filling the air with her presence. She could see the entire battle. The angels were regaining their footing and trying to relight their swords. The werewolves were herding the surviving humans down the street. And there were bodies—so many bodies, both wolf and human.

  And then Aquiel himself.

  From her perspective, spread throughout the darkness, he suddenly didn’t seem so large. The Tree had been bigger than him. He may have been a very large Prince of Nightmares, but he was still just a demon.

  He was no God.

  With the extinguishment of the angels’ power, he was regaining his control over nightmares. She could feel Aquiel pulling her into her body again. Elise didn’t let him get that far. She snapped back into form and landed on the bony ridge of his shoulder, his skin unsteady and leathery underneath her boots, and hung on to his necklace of iron spikes for balance.

  He twisted his head around to glare at her. Sulfurous breath blasted over her.

  “So Judy is dead,” he said at the sight of her. “This will be my revenge for her, then.” His tongue snaked toward Elise’s midsection.

  She grabbed the slippery muscle in both hands.

  “If you see her, give her my regards,” Elise said.

  She released the magic.

  Aquiel may have been as tall as the clouds, but he was far from the most powerful entity in the square.

  He was nothing against James’s spell.

  She hadn’t been certain what to expect from it initially—maybe some kind of firestorm, since it looked like the other destruction spell—but even her vague expectations were nothing in comparison to what actually happened.

  The demon pulped.

  With a loud slurp, his bones liquefied. Elise could tell because his teeth melted in a gush of black over his tongue, and she was suddenly sinking into his flesh. The ridges under her feet were gone. He was collapsing.

  He didn’t die immediately. There was still consciousness in each of his massive eyes even as he tumbled.

  Aquiel fell gracelessly, unable to struggle as his skull became mush and his tendons disengaged from melted bone. Elise gripped his necklace tight and rode him down. He dived toward the fissure—directly toward the top of the bridge.

  He impacted with the pylons and was impaled. Ichor gushed from his body.

  The landing tossed Elise off of him, necklace breaking off in her hands, and she tumbled through the air. She only had an instant to realize that the fact that she couldn’t explode meant that Aquiel was still alive and awake before she hit a pair of waiting arms.

  James caught her. They hit behind the deflating balloon of Aquiel’s leg, hitting the ground in a sludgy puddle of mud. No, not mud. The demon’s cloven hoof was melting onto the grass in a sloppy black mess.

  They had landed in Aquiel’s ichor.

  “Are you okay?” Elise asked, pressing a hand momentarily to James’s cheek. She left a black imprint on his skin.

  “Never been better,” he said, looking breathless and exhausted, eyes rimmed with bruises. Somehow, he managed to smile. “Just like Castle O’Reilly, don’t you think?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  He allowed Elise to get to her feet, but she had to grab one of the pylons to support herself. It was too difficult to stand with
her flickering skin and the gaping hole under her ribs. But she still couldn’t turn to shadow. The Prince of Nightmares was still alive.

  Aquiel was conscious all the way down through the fissure. It wasn’t until he hit the bottom that he completely splattered, and Elise felt his grip on her corporeal form vanish for a final time.

  The Prince of Nightmares was dead. The Palace had been taken. The battle was over.

  And Elise had won.

  Twenty-One

  Elise turned from the fissure to see James standing behind her. The fact that he was covered in ichor only served to make him more handsome, not less; Elise had always found him most attractive when they had survived death together. The heady rush of adrenaline did irresponsible things to her libido. The smell of his blood didn’t help.

  Beyond him, beyond the pylons, the pack was shifting back into their human forms. The angels were amassing around the injured. The fight was over, but a lot of lives still hung in the balance. The sight was sobering.

  Elise stared down into the fissure again, and James remained a warm, silent presence at her back. “I don’t understand. If Aquiel and Abraxas were in alliance, then why wasn’t Abraxas’s guard with Aquiel’s army.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before I killed him, Abraxas had demons like me, James. They looked like me, with my abilities, and I didn’t see any of them in Hell. And I know he must have had more hybrids, too. I only killed one of them in Los Angeles.” She frowned as she rubbed the back of her neck, remembering the fight that she had lost against Belphegor in the House of Abraxas. The fact that he hadn’t shown up on Earth was just as worrying.

  He was still out there, too. Still in Hell. Still waiting for Elise.

  James glanced back at the fissure. “You think that there’s more to come.”

  “I think this was a distraction,” Elise said.

  They stood together, side by side, staring down into Dis. The Palace was hers, and so was the bridge. If there was another army planning to cross over, then it wasn’t going to get through that way. They would have to stick to kibbeths and other, slower methods of transport. She could handle that. By all means, this was a great victory—maybe even something that could prevent the war from getting worse.

  But Elise couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that this was only the beginning of the storm.

  She glanced at James. He had pulled his glamor over him again sometime after the end of the fight, and he looked like an ordinary human again. As ordinary as he ever looked.

  There must have been other things to take care of on his agenda. Coercing witches into doing unethical things to help him achieve his goals, continuing to break down the walls between dimensions, the pursuit of ultimate, godlike power and knowledge, reading the new JD Robb novel. But he had come here to stand beside her when she needed it.

  James had set aside his selfish pursuits long enough to save Lincoln, stop Aquiel…and be with her.

  It didn’t change what he had done, but nothing could.

  His fingers brushed against hers. She didn’t take his hand, but she didn’t move away, either.

  Something hard and square touched her palm. Elise lifted her hand to look at it. James had given her a small notebook that would easily fit into a pocket, and she flipped through it quickly to see that there was a different magical rune on every page. She recognized a few, but many of them were completely new.

  “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “To help you with your studies—and to ensure that you’re capable of stopping anyone that challenges you,” James said. “You’re going to do amazing things, Elise. I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and she meant it.

  A look of regret flashed through his eyes. “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “Elise!”

  She turned to see Rylie running at her, stumbling through the snow. She was wrapped in a shirt that the angels had given her and her skin was pale with cold.

  “What’s wrong?” Elise asked, immediately alarmed.

  But Rylie was smiling. It made her shine. She was so beautiful and human, so much more pure than everything in Hell had been. “Look,” she said, grabbing Elise’s hand, then turning to the rest of the square.

  Abel staggered behind Rylie, gripping his side with a pained expression. But he was on his feet. It was a distinct improvement from the last time Elise had seen him.

  She looked beyond the Alphas to the others. Many of the wolves were still shifting back—it was easy to tell them from the slaves by their unblemished skin and nudity. Nearby, Abram was talking with Josaiah, the witch that had enchanted their weapons. Both of them looked safe and uninjured, but they were two of the only ones. Almost everyone else seemed to have suffered some kind of wound, either in the escape or in the final conflict with the nightmares.

  But the angels were moving among the injured and laying their hands upon them. They helped people stand, supporting them with gentle hands and gentle words. A soft noise underscored the conversations, and it took a moment for Elise to realize that people were crying. Eve stirred in her heart at the sound of it.

  Those were tears of relief, not sorrow.

  Many of the army had died, but many had survived. Humans that had thought they would never see Earth again were home. And now werewolf, angel, and human were working in unison to pull themselves together after the battle.

  When Abel limped into reach, Rylie grabbed him too, squeezing him gently. He buried his face in her hair.

  “Who are they?” Rylie asked. “All these humans?”

  “They were slaves trapped in Hell. I helped them escape.” Although that wasn’t the whole story. Elise gave a mirthless chuckle. “They helped me win this fight.”

  “Slaves,” Rylie whispered, like it was the most horrible word she could imagine.

  “Yeah. Now what am I going to do with all of these people?” Elise asked, gazing at the humans as they milled around, stripping off their armor, tossing aside their weapons. She hadn’t originally planned on doing anything with them at all—as far as she had been concerned, once the cages at the House were opened, they weren’t her problem anymore. But now she felt responsible for all these tearful faces. She couldn’t leave them now.

  “Well,” Rylie said, glancing up at Abel, “we do have a lot of cottages in the mountains.”

  He gave an irritated growl. “We’re not a halfway house.”

  “No, but we are a sanctuary,” she said. She squeezed Elise’s hand. Her grip was so tight that it felt like she never planned on letting go. “I’ll take care of them. I’m sure we can figure out some way to get these people where they need to go.”

  Something in Elise’s chest relaxed. “Thanks.”

  “This is what a win looks like,” she said.

  Elise caught herself smiling. “I guess it is.”

  “Thank you,” Rylie said.

  “It’s not just me. James…” She glanced over her shoulder, but there was nobody behind her anymore. He was gone.

  Rylie’s eyes sharpened. “What about James?”

  “Nothing,” Elise said, feeling heavy. “Forget about it.”

  It seemed like the Alpha already had. She was smiling again.

  “Why don’t we take these folks home?” Rylie asked.

  Transferring all of the survivors to the sanctuary took a few hours, even with the angels helping transport those that had been wounded. Rylie was right. The sanctuary had added on since Elise’s last visit, and they did have a lot of cottages. It still wasn’t enough to comfortably accommodate over a hundred people.

  Yet somehow, they found enough blankets, a few extra mattresses, and there was space for everyone.

  Some of the werewolves that were least injured started cooking while the others dug graves. They had a wake that night—a memorial for those that didn’t survive the battle, a celebration for those that had made it home, and a chance for humans and werewolves and angels to become acquainted. Elise w
atched it all from a distance. Eve liked seeing them get along, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

  But Elise had to tear Eve away from it eventually. All of the survivors had been moved to the sanctuary except one—a man unconscious but alive in Poppy’s Diner.

  When Elise delivered Lincoln to the cottage that had been repurposed as an infirmary, nobody seemed to realize that the pale, shrunken man wasn’t one of the hundred wounded ex-slaves. “Poor guy,” said Summer Gresham, wiping blood off of Lincoln’s lacerated forehead with a wet rag. She had spent all night tending the wounded while everyone else celebrated, but she didn’t look even remotely tired. If anything, taking care of people seemed to make her happier, more vibrant. “He looks awful. What happened to him?”

  Elise imagined that most of his injuries had been from being thrown into a wall. But what she said was, “I don’t know. I found him like that. Will he survive?”

  The shifter girl took a sniff of his hair. “Yeah,” she said. “He’ll definitely survive.”

  Elise had no idea how Summer could smell that, but the answer was good enough for her.

  The next morning, she met Neuma and Gerard outside the sanctuary’s wards. They had driven from the fissure into the mountains, and they looked freezing; after all that time in the eternal desert of Hell, winter in the Appalachians had to be an unpleasant shock. But they had found heavy jackets and boots somewhere. They’d even hot-wired a pickup that had been abandoned in Northgate. It spewed steam from its tailpipe as it idled.

  She found herself smiling as Neuma and Gerard climbed out of the pickup to meet her. She was almost grinning by the time she hugged Neuma.

  “You’re alive,” Elise said.

  “Most of Aquiel’s army is still outside the walls, but there were quite a few stragglers inside,” Gerard said. “We had to kill them before we could head up to meet you. Sorry we missed the big fight. But the Palace is empty and safe now—waiting for you.”

  Waiting for Elise. Her scalp prickled at the idea of it.

  “How did you pull off those wards?” Elise asked. “Aquiel almost ate me.”

  “We used the blood you gave me to switch the Palace’s soul links.” Neuma jerked a thumb at Gerard. “The new administration’s all standing right here.”