The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

  Portia blinked rapidly, trying to process the information. “You understand if I don’t walk you to the door.”

  “Of course.”

  She waited until they were gone before letting the shudders overtake her, but once they began, she couldn’t stop.

  Portia wouldn’t look at Nukha’il. His presence nauseated her. She moved short locks of hair into place and dabbed at the sweat in the cleft of her breasts to give her hands something to do. Deep breaths in, slow breaths out.

  “What should I do?” Nukha’il asked, making it sound as if he was offering to clean a toilet.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she snapped. Raising her voice, she called, “They’re gone.”

  The door behind her opened, and the Night Hag entered.

  Portia had been assured that the overlord of the city was a demon, but she appeared to be a frail, ancient, and entirely human female. Her sagging face was a severe, bony mask that resembled the ancient mummies. Every breath rattled in her chest.

  She was shadowed by a man so painfully beautiful that he could have been mistaken for one of Mr. Black’s stock. His almond-shaped eyes were black, as though the pupils had overtaken the irises. He had been introduced to Portia as “Thom.”

  “Mr. Black,” the Night Hag muttered. “Bringing his ‘collection.’ I should have known! And now you’ve given him your fleet?”

  “We can track his movements,” Portia said, fighting to keep her voice steady. The Night Hag and her companion looked normal, but they terrified her in a deep, primal way. “And you instructed me to cooperate with him.”

  “We’ll kill Mr. Black,” the overlord said to herself, stroking claw-like nails down the side of her face. “Yes. We’ll have to strike fast.” She snapped her fingers. “Tell David Nicholas.”

  Thom gave a small bow. “Very well.” His voice was deep and without accent. He turned to leave, but the Night Hag caught his arm.

  “We’ll need the kopis, too. Get to her before Mr. Black does.”

  “What about this… thing?” Portia interjected. “You asked for it, and I bought it, but I don’t want it in my house.”

  “Nukha’il,” the Night Hag whispered. “Yes. I have plans for you, my new angel.”

  Two years of client files. All the knives stored in her desk. A safe filled with important documents. Her laptop, her desk phone. Her favorite coffee pot.

  Gone. All gone.

  The police left after taking pictures, samples, and statements. It felt like her office had been violated a second time, and all that remained after the investigators were done was shattered furniture, smoke stains, and a lingering sense of grief.

  She sank to her knees on a clear patch of floor by the window and let the silence engulf her. There was so much to be done. She needed to meet with the landlord, a cleaning company, her insurance agent—not to mention all her clients, whose private files had been stolen.

  Elise rested her head in her hands. She had a headache. She never had headaches. It must have been caffeine withdrawal.

  “They took my favorite coffee pot,” she whispered. That part stung the worst.

  She didn’t bother locking the door on her way out.

  Outside, the day was too hot and too bright. The lack of clouds felt like a personal insult. She jammed sunglasses onto her face, slammed the car door, and went home to start the recovery process. She blew through two stop signs on the way. Elise couldn’t seem to focus on the road.

  Her roommate greeted her at the door with a feather duster.

  “Anthony’s looking for you!” Betty announced, plucking a headphone out of one ear. She was a human hurricane of caffeinated enthusiasm, and all that energy was currently directed at cleaning their kitchen in tiny shorts that said “juicy” on the butt.

  “Great,” Elise said, dropping her satchel on the couch. “Thanks.”

  “He’s probably on his side of the duplex. You can catch him before work if you hurry.” Betty frowned. “You okay? You look tired.”

  It seemed like too much effort to rehash everything she had gone over with the police in exacting detail. “I’ll tell you later.”

  She went into her bedroom and locked the door.

  Anthony. He was exactly the person she didn’t want to see. He would freak out and expect her to do the same, and then he would try to comfort her, and the thought of having to deal with that much emotion was exhausting.

  The endless to-do list kept rolling through her mind: Landlord. Cleaning company. Insurance agent. All her clients. The police. Maybe the security company would have footage, maybe she should…

  Elise threw herself on the bed without getting undressed and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.

  She didn’t even know where to begin. Backups? She could restore most of the data to the laptop in her bedroom. That would be the easiest place to start. But thinking of it reminded her that the police expected copies of her files as part of the “evidence collection” process, and that got the torrent going again.

  Landlord. Cleaning company. Insurance agent. Calling the clients.

  “Fuck it,” she told her ceiling.

  Elise threw on jogging gear, tied her hair into a loose ponytail, and did a few twists in the living room to test her mobility. She felt like hell, emotionally speaking, but her body was in good condition after fighting demon spiders for a week.

  “Leaving again?” Betty asked. She was listening to electronica so loudly that Elise could hear the bass through the headphones. “Don’t you want to see Anthony first?”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “So what should I tell him?”

  Elise stretched a leg in front of her. “Nothing. I don’t owe him any explanations.”

  Betty sighed again, as though that answer put her in physical pain. She was still sighing when Elise rocketed out the door. Sometimes Betty’s antics were cute, but this was not one of those times.

  Her feet pounded a rhythm on the pavement that kept time with the incessant thoughts.

  Landlord. Cleaning company. Insurance agent. The police, the security company, offsite backups…

  She put on her own headphones and blasted Black Death’s latest album from the MP3 player on her arm. It couldn’t go loud enough to muffle her thoughts.

  Life was so much easier when Elise hadn’t owned anything. There was a time when she hadn’t cared about coffee pots or the nice desk she bought as a treat for surviving her first year as an accountant. All she cared about was sticking close to James—and sometimes, she didn’t care much about that, either.

  James was the only person she could imagine talking to. He always knew the right things to say. Conveniently, she kept her monthly backups on flash drives in the safe at his dance studio, so that was where she was heading anyway.

  He owned a studio called Motion and Dance, which had two classes in progress and a full parking lot when she arrived. Business had been good lately. Demand for his classes spiked when he was contracted to choreograph a casino show, and with another Christmas show in the works, it was only going to keep improving.

  But he wasn’t downstairs when Elise peeked into the dance hall. One of his employees, Candace, was guiding a group through hip-hop moves. The instructor waved at Elise. She didn’t wave back. She jogged upstairs to the apartment over the studio and entered without knocking.

  Elise took off her headphones.

  “James?”

  His apartment was a disaster. The couch was shoved against the wall. The kitchen chairs were stacked on the table. He had pulled everything out of the closets and turned the floor into a cluttered mess. Even the window-mounted air conditioner had been unplugged.

  Spring cleaning? He was usually anal about tidiness. It was quiet other than the music downstairs, so he wasn’t home to ask.

  Disappointed, she went into the bedroom that used to be hers. Flat pack boxes were leaned against the wall, and everything else was separated into two piles. The belongings she left behind when she
moved out had been dumped in a corner. “What are you doing, James?” she muttered, nudging the pile with her foot. She recognized her tattered sweatpants and a bottle of shampoo.

  The only thing untouched was the safe against the wall, which had been bolted in place. Elise entered the combination, twisted the key in the lock, and passed her hand over the magical sensor. The door swung open.

  She kept a pair of falchions and a back sheath in the safe, as well as a chain of charms she used for exorcisms. The envelope of flash drives nestled next to an old Book of Shadows was laughably mundane amongst everything else.

  Elise selected the one labeled with the most recent date and moved to close the door again.

  But she hesitated. Her fingers trailed down the long gold chain of her charms, and they whispered to her in a dozen voices, hissing with magic and ancient words. Her finger stopped on a single stone between the ankh and pentacle. It was white and soapy-smooth, like polished bone.

  Another voice whispered to her, a voice from her dreams: Elise…

  A chill rippled down her spine. She locked the safe.

  Elise pocketed the flash drive and sat on the laundry to check her cell phone. She had missed three calls while jogging. One was from Anthony, but the other two were from her insurance company and landlord.

  Landlord. Cleaning company. Insurance agent. The police, the security company, off-site backups…

  She called the remote voicemail service she used for her business.

  There were twenty-six messages.

  After a week of camping, she expected to find a few things on her answering service, but the majority of clients contacted her by email. She had to brace herself to play the first message. “This is Frederickson Lane. We need to talk about terminating our contract. Call me back at…”

  Elise pushed the “next” button.

  “I’m looking for Bruce Kent. I’m from Crimson Mark Incorporated, and we need to transfer our accounts from…”

  Her heart sped. Transfer?

  The next one began. They wanted to discuss ending their business with her, too. More than a dozen of the messages were from different accounts about the same issue.

  Elise turned off her phone and set it carefully on the floor as though it had been possessed.

  She only had a few clients. Since Elise served a niche market—supernatural creatures with Earth-based businesses—there was no competition, but there also weren’t many accounts to take on. And it sounded like she had just lost half of them.

  The numbers raced through her mind. Three percent from Crimson—that would mean thousands of dollars if they bailed. A half percent from Plymouth. Another few hundred dollars from Frederickson. She had already been on narrow margins after Craven’s took their accounting in house…

  Craven’s.

  Anger bubbled inside her. Who would have the nerve to call Elise’s clients and tell them to find a new accountant? Who knew where her office was located, and had motive to vandalize it? The manager and owner of Craven’s Casino, David Nicholas, was exactly the kind of bastard who would do both. And more, if given the chance to fuck with her.

  Maybe it was time to pay him a visit.

  III

  Craven’s was a cesspool of a casino wedged in a dark corner downtown. Tourists didn’t go there. They visited the big hotel casinos that hosted touring Broadway shows and served fancy buffets. The only people who visited Craven’s were demons—and angry demon hunters.

  Elise had contacts at Craven’s that offered a steady stream of information, but she hadn’t visited since David Nicholas fired her as their accountant and tried to beat her to death. To be fair, she had beaten him up first, and she ended up killing one of his cronies in his attack. She thought they were even. But apparently he didn’t agree.

  An incident in the spring had destroyed half of the casino. It had been a chance to rebuild it newer and better than before, but instead, they rebuilt it to look exactly as old and outdated as it had been before Death’s Hand’s attack. It meant that Elise still knew the way to David Nicholas’s office, which was on the ninth level overlooking the poker tables. She navigated through the dimly-lit casino floor, where people gambled away their savings and drowned in alcohol, and headed up two sets of escalators.

  A cocktail waitress spotted her. Her face might have gone pale if it hadn’t been caked in so much makeup. She dropped her drink tray and ran in the other direction.

  So much for surprising them.

  She hurried up the stairs, found the door labeled MANAGER, and shoved it open. David Nicholas looked up from his desk.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  David Nicholas was a full-blooded, Earth-bound nightmare that hadn’t been powerful since the Middle Ages and wasted the centuries since trying to recapture his old glory. He smoked like a factory and usually looked like a greasy scarecrow. But he had filled out in the weeks since Elise had last seen him, as though a layer of fat had developed beneath his papery skin. His yellow hair was cut to the chin and had been washed. His office wasn’t even covered in garbage and tobacco ash anymore.

  In another time, his strong nose and chin might have been considered handsome. But that foul grin sickened Elise. She would never mistake him as anything but dangerous.

  “Yeah, we do need to talk.” He returned his attention to the schedule for the cocktail waitresses on his desk. “Heard what happened at your office. I knew you’d come crawling back for a job.”

  “Is that what you were trying to do? To get me to ask you for work?”

  He stabbed the point of his cigarette into the ashtray and opened a desk drawer. Elise tensed, but he only took out another cigarette. “What are you talking about?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth as he lit it.

  “Someone’s been calling my clients and telling them to leave. Likely the same person who started the fire.”

  “And you think that was me? That’s precious.”

  She drew her knife. “Precious?”

  He stood, shoving his sleeves above his elbows. His forearms had the illusion of being muscular now, but a nightmare’s strength had nothing to do with its physical form. “You’ve been away too long, cabbage. The game’s changed. You barely matched me last time—think you could take me now?”

  “Yes.”

  He vanished with a swirl of smoke and reappeared inches in front of her, shoving his beak of a nose into hers. She held her ground.

  “Want to try me?” His breath smelled like tobacco and rot.

  She grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “You’re in my space.”

  The stress of the morning built in her muscles and desperately wanted to be unleashed on his ugly face. Give me an excuse. Just give me an excuse…

  His phone rang.

  For the first two rings, David Nicholas didn’t move. His eyes flicked to the desk and back to Elise.

  She released his shirt.

  He grabbed the receiver. “What?” he snapped. Whatever response he received wasn’t good, because he pulled a face. “Okay.” A pause, and then again, “Okay.” David Nicholas hung up and held both hands out in a gesture of peace. “Game’s up for the night. You’ve been summoned.”

  Elise laughed in disbelief. “Summoned? If you’re trying to distract me—”

  “I want nothing more than to see you broken on my floor, accountant.” He bit out the last word like an insult. “The day you die is the day I’m a happy demon. I’ll throw parties with hats and trumpets and streamers. But today’s not that day. She wants to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “The Night Hag.”

  She scoffed. “This bullshit again?”

  David Nicholas bumped his shoulder into hers as he left the room.

  Elise almost didn’t follow him. He had been foretelling the return of the Night Hag for as long as she had been in town, but it had always been a lie. And that was a good thing. Part of the reason she had chosen to live in Reno was its lack of a demonic overlord. They didn’t
like having kopides in their territory.

  But he walked with confidence, like he expected her to follow, and Elise sheathed her dagger. What did she have to lose?

  They took a different path through Craven’s than the one she used to find his office. They went down, down, down a set of stairs with walls painted black, and the thump of music began rising around them.

  Eloquent Blood was a demon bar in the basement of Craven’s, and during the afternoon, it was completely empty. The pit of a dance floor stood bare. All the neon was turned off, and the brimstone droppings were swept into a corner by a cleaning crew. Someone was cutting off the music and switching songs as they ran sound checks. A demon with horned shoulders wiped down the tables. It was… ordinary.

  “Where’s Neuma?” she asked. Being able to speak without yelling was strange. It felt like a cavern without partiers packing it to the brim.

  David Nicholas shot her a sideways look. “You think we live here or something? The dumb bitch has an apartment. If she’s not sleeping, she’s shooting up.”

  Elise hadn’t given the living situation of local demons much thought. In most cities, overlords kept their subjects close. They stayed in dens and rarely emerged.

  The reminder of why they were going into Blood was sobering. She traced the edges of the leather sheath hidden at the small of her back. She had killed an overlord once in a surprise attack, but this time, she was the one taken off-guard. Elise wished she had worn her swords.

  Tension built in her skull as they descended to the bottom floor of the club. It wasn’t nerves. It was infernal power, and lots of it.

  “Believe me now?” David Nicholas asked with a sneer when he saw her expression.

  She checked her knives for a third time. “Take me down.”

  They got into an elevator behind the DJ booth. It was an old mine lift, rickety and rusted, and a shaft extended endlessly beyond the grate under Elise’s feet.

  It rattled, squealed, and began to move.

  Rough stone walls slid past them. Lights marked every few feet, but they were weak, and the shadows between them were immense. Every time they slipped into darkness, David Nicholas flickered out of view. But he always reappeared, yellow-haired and sweaty, with one hand on the lever.