The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

  But there wasn’t anything there.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked, scratching the nape of his neck.

  A feather drifted past him.

  They both looked up at the same time. Wings flared, and a man dropped from the sky.

  He appeared young—hardly any older than a teenager—and he glowed like a star. His hair was as white as his flesh. It whipped around him like a cloak.

  “Get to the Jeep,” Elise snapped, drawing her blade.

  “But the cargo—”

  “Now!”

  Anthony scrambled up the rocks, hurrying to reach the Jeep.

  He was halfway up when Elise screamed.

  A gust of wind blasted his bangs over his face. He flattened his body against the rock. Something hurtled past him, just inches away. The angel had thrown her. Elise’s body struck the rocks beside him and bounced off with a crack.

  Her fingers dug into a boulder. Anthony yelled, throwing out a hand to grab her by the wrist, but another gust of wind stopped him.

  Hands fell on her shoulders. She kicked and shouted as the angel hauled her into the night sky, wheeling toward the stars.

  “Elise!”

  They ascended so quickly that Anthony soon couldn’t see them. He hauled himself on top of the hill and searched the black sky for motion.

  He spotted a black shape against the moon. They plummeted toward the earth, growing bigger rapidly.

  They were falling right at him.

  Anthony threw himself out of the way just in time. They struck the dirt like a meteor, angel on the bottom with his massive wings stretched wide.

  Soil exploded into the air. Anthony shielded his face with his arms.

  One wing swept out as the angel struggled to right himself. Each wing was almost as long as a school bus. It clipped Anthony’s legs and knocked him onto his back.

  Elise rolled off the angel. “Don’t—stay back—” she gasped. The wind had been knocked out of her by the impact.

  The angel stood, wings folded around him like a cloak. Feathers showered around him. Anthony couldn’t breathe. The air had become thick and vibrated with sheer energy. It pinned him to the ground as surely as though one of the boulders had been dropped on his chest.

  Light radiated from the angel as he stalked toward Elise.

  She got to her knees, ripped off a glove, and held out her hand.

  “Stay back,” she said, blood trickling from her nose. Her entire body shook. “You see this? Don’t fucking touch me!”

  His wings flared out, catching the wind.

  “You!” he hissed.

  Air blasted around them as he swept into the sky again.

  Elise grabbed Anthony’s arm with her gloved hand. “Run. Run!”

  He leaped into the passenger’s seat of the Jeep, but before he could slide over to the driver’s side, she climbed behind the wheel.

  “Sit back!”

  She punched the gas, and they tore across the desert. He twisted around to see if the angel would follow, but Anthony could barely make out its pale shape circling over the semi. “What was that?” he asked.

  Elise held her bare hand out to him. There was a tattoo on her palm, and it was bleeding.

  “What is that?”

  “A mark.”

  Anthony didn’t understand. “Did you know that—that thing?”

  “No. Never seen him before.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Long story.”

  “It’s a long drive back to town.”

  She shot a look at him from the corner of her eye. “Knowledge can be dangerous. You might change your mind if you knew.”

  Anthony laughed harshly. “More dangerous than what we just did? I think I can handle anything you throw at me.”

  So Elise told him.

  By the time she was done, he wished she hadn’t.

  X

  Stephanie was fuming.

  “How in the world is Betty supposed to heal like this?” she hissed, cornering James in the kitchenette. The lights were dimmed in the apartment above Motion and Dance so Betty could sleep, but judging by the wheezing James heard from his bedroom, she wasn’t going to get much rest.

  “It’s all right. I can help her. I have a ritual—”

  She cut him off by stabbing a finger into his chest. “She wouldn’t need rituals if she was sedated at the hospital the way she should have been!”

  “They were attacked. Do you want fights in your hospital?” James asked, setting his glasses on the counter so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. It was a useless gesture. Nothing would stop the tension headache that had lodged between his temples when he found Elise’s note at the rehearsal that morning.

  Stephanie’s voice sounded extra shrill. Every word was like hammering a fresh nail into his skull. “No! But that’s another issue entirely. We wouldn’t be having fights in my hospital if that woman—”

  “Who happens to be my oldest and dearest friend.”

  “—would stop getting into so much trouble! This is why we should have relocated to the Bay Area.”

  James sighed. That discussion again.

  In June, Stephanie had been offered a job in California. When James declined to leave Reno with her, she stayed, and insisted they buy a house together instead. He hadn’t thought it was a big deal at the time. They spent most nights together anyway. But he was starting to suspect that the issue wasn’t Stephanie wanting him to be closer to her. It was Stephanie wanting him to be further from Elise.

  “Betty is here for a reason,” James said, carefully enunciating each syllable. “She’s safest between these walls. She’ll be fine with some time and rest, which she can get here just as well as at a hospital. Probably better, actually.”

  “Magic is no substitute for modern medicine.”

  “Ordinarily, I would agree. But the magic I cast is not ordinary.”

  Betty gave a dry, hacking cough that turned into a full-blown fit. She barely had time to breathe between exhales. They both fell silent to listen.

  “I should check on her,” Stephanie said. She moved to leave the kitchen, but turned back with renewed anger before she made it three steps away. “Elise is dangerous.”

  He focused on a spot on the ceiling and took a deep breath before answering. James had the same thoughts himself, more than once. And he was angry at her, too, if in a completely different way than his girlfriend was. He had been on the verge of snapping with stress for hours.

  But that was his business. Not hers. And he was about ready to slap Stephanie.

  When he spoke again, it was in a careful, measured tone. “Yes, she’s sometimes in dangerous situations…”

  “She almost killed her friends,” she interjected.

  “You just don’t—”

  The front door opened.

  James grabbed the notebook off the counter. He almost ripped one of the spell cards out before he saw who it was.

  Anthony entered first, dusty and hollow-eyed. Elise was a step behind him with a fist clenched to her chest.

  She wasn’t wearing a glove.

  The sensation of falling filled his gut, like tripping off a cliff. James crossed the space between them in a flash to grab her wrist. He studied her bleeding knuckles, but she didn’t relax her fingers. “What happened?”

  Elise shrugged stiffly.

  He looked at Anthony, but the younger man was too stunned to string together an entire sentence, much less respond coherently.

  Stephanie shot a look at James. “I’ll check on Betty.”

  At the sound of his cousin’s renewed coughing, Anthony followed, leaving James and Elise alone. She finally pried her fingers open. There were deep indents where her fingernails had dug into the skin.

  James didn’t leave her palm exposed for long. He snagged a dish towel out of the drawer and pressed it against the mark.

  “Where are your gloves?”

  Elise sank onto the couch. “I don’t have any other gloves lef
t.”

  He found a box of cloth bandages over the washing machine and sat down to wrap her hand, but she gripped the dish towel like it was it was a grenade with a loose pin. “Let go,” he said. She shook her head. “Please, Elise. We need to cover… that.”

  “Mr. Black is building a gate.”

  There was that falling feeling again. “How do you know?”

  “He’s shipping fragments of angelic ruin into the city. I saw them tonight. I tried to take them from him, but…” She lifted her hand. “He sent an angel to stop me. He has dozens of them.”

  “But he doesn’t have the entire bowl anymore.”

  “What if he’s found a way around that?”

  They stared at each other, communicating silently in a way that only partners could after so many years. What if he had found a way around needing a complete keystone? Elise’s hand clenched tighter on the towel. Her knuckles were white.

  He squeezed her wrist gently until she opened her fingers.

  James wiped the blood off her skin as quickly as possible and wound the bandages around her palm, careful not to touch the marks. He didn’t let go of her when he was done. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

  Elise gave him the short version: a convoy, stealing the truck, and being stopped by an angel. “When I left, nobody else had arrived to pick up the semi. I don’t know if Mr. Black got it or not. The angel was there, so I can only assume we lost tonight.”

  He frowned. “Who else would have picked up the semi?”

  “Friends of mine.”

  She was a terrible liar. He knew for a fact the only people she considered friends were in the apartment.

  “Elise…”

  Her phone rang and cut him off. She paced to the kitchen window to answer it. “Hello?”

  He returned the first aid kit to the closet and dropped the blood-stained towel in the washing machine. Even though he couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, Elise’s terse replies were telling.

  She hung up when he joined her in the kitchen. “I have to go. Stay here with Anthony and Betty.”

  “We can’t hole up in the studio forever.”

  “It won’t be forever. Just until I kill Mr. Black.” She took a couple of knives from James’s kitchen and stuck them in her belt. He followed her to the door.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  “My contacts recovered the truck, but not all the pieces. I’m going to see what they found.”

  “You’re joking,” he said. When she reached for the doorknob, he leaned a hand against the door to keep her from opening it. She didn’t fight him.

  “Would I be walking around without a glove if I was making a fucking joke? I don’t want to visit the Night Hag, but—”

  “The Night Hag? But she’s asleep!”

  “Yeah. Funny story. She’s not.”

  He could tell his raised voice carried through the apartment because the murmured conversation in the bedroom died off. James lowered his tone before continuing. “How?”

  “Probably the same thing that let Mr. Black find us.”

  She didn’t have to say any more than that. He suddenly understood. “It’s because of that damned Death’s Hand, isn’t it? Every godforsaken creature on this Earth felt my resurrection. You aren’t a necromancer, Elise, and by using that magic—”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “By using that, we violated the Treaty of Dis, and everything knows it. If we survive this, Mr. Black could be the least of our worries!” He raked a hand through his hair. “We should have never done that. You should have left me dead.”

  “No.”

  That single word was so absolute that he turned on her, ready to argue, but her cold expression stopped his voice in his throat.

  “No?” he asked.

  “If Death’s Hand killed you a thousand times over, I would do the same thing every time. I will always bring you back.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Fuck magic. Fuck the Treaty. And fuck Mr. Black.”

  James faced away from her, bracing his hands on either side of the window and letting his head hang between his shoulders. The sidewalks outside were motionless. The street lamp at the corner flickered, but held steady. It was dark enough that there could have been anything outside—an entire army of angels waiting to strike against them—and he never would have seen it coming.

  “You know what this means,” he said. “The implications…”

  Something touched the center of his back. He relaxed when he realized it was Elise’s hand.

  She slid her arms around him, hugged his ribcage, and rested her cheek between his shoulder blades. He let out a long breath. She was very warm, even through his shirt. “I don’t care,” she said, softer than before. “I’ll always choose you.”

  “Elise…”

  James turned. She took a quick step back. Her face was blank again. “Don’t leave. I mean it.”

  “Wait—Elise—”

  She flicked the jacket over her shoulders to hide the daggers and pulled her hair out of the collar. Her cheeks were red. “Lock the deadbolt.”

  She left, and the apartment was very empty with her absence.

  Demons unloaded the semi in the alley behind Craven’s. David Nicholas supervised from atop a closed Dumpster lid, arms folded behind his head like he was on a beach chair by the lake.

  The casino employed all kinds of local demons. The ones indistinguishable from humans were put to work as cashiers and waitresses—nightmares, incubi, the half-breeds. But the staff that worked in back were the uglier monsters. The ones that couldn’t walk outside during the day.

  A demon that looked like it was made of raw meat hurried past with a box three times its size when Elise entered the alley. It smelled like an outhouse.

  Neuma took notes of the crates as demons lifted them out of the truck and carried them inside. She peeked into every one and wrote a short description before letting them move on. She wore snug jeans that had been attacked by a Bedazzler, a pushup bra that practically made her choke on her own cleavage, and a midriff jacket without a shirt. Considering her usual work uniform, it was downright decent.

  Elise’s usual revulsion at seeing David Nicholas was pushed aside by her total relief at finding the semi in the alley. She didn’t even mind when Neuma greeted her with a hug that lingered a little too long.

  “Why aren’t you watching James?” Elise asked.

  David Nicholas responded from his perch on the trash. “Thom’s on babysitting duty today. Rest assured, he’s well-supervised.”

  “And the angel?”

  “Killed six brutes before it left. No big loss.”

  Neuma glowered. “We lost good guys. Manuel—he was just a kid. Jerry has a family.”

  “Human servants?”

  “No, they were Gray, like me,” she said. That was what the mixed-blood children of humans and demons called themselves. “But they were good. That fucking angel is going to pay for it.”

  “Yes. It will.”

  Neuma leaned her head on Elise’s shoulder and let out a sigh. It was such a sweet gesture from someone so aggressively sexual that it didn’t occur to her to push Neuma away. Her skin tingled unpleasantly where the half-succubus’s cheek rested against it.

  “But we got the cargo,” Elise said, talking over Neuma’s head to David Nicholas.

  “Sure. Most of it.” He laughed at the alarm in her gaze. “Ooh, nosy little accountant is scared now, isn’t she? The angel called in friends before we got there and flew off with a half dozen crates.” He inspected his fingernails, which were painted with chipped black polish. “But we got enough to assemble the gate, I think.”

  Cold fear spiked through her. “You can’t do that.”

  “Take it up with the boss. It’s her game.”

  “Fine. Take me down there.”

  He sneered. “No.”

  Between having her boyfriend almost get executed in the desert and losing part of the shipme
nt, Elise’s patience was destroyed. She wrapped a hand around David Nicholas’s ankle and hauled him off the Dumpster.

  The demons scattered when she threw him to the ground. David Nicholas immediately scrambled to his feet.

  “You goddamn bitch, I’ll cut your—”

  She fisted his shirt at the collar. “I wasn’t asking,” Elise said, breathing hard through her nose. It was all she could do not to throw him again.

  “You’re fucking unhinged,” he spat.

  “Take me. Now.”

  He shoved her off. “Suit yourself.”

  David Nicholas took the back paths through Craven’s. The hallways were unlit. Elise had to keep a hand on the wall and follow the stink of his cigarettes to navigate down the stairs.

  When they reached Eloquent Blood, there was no music, and nobody was left at the bar. Like last time, a cleaning crew moved through with mops and disinfectant to scrub off the worst of the encrusted brimstone.

  She checked the time on her phone. It was almost sunrise.

  “Losing your nerve?” David Nicholas asked, opening the elevator door.

  Elise got in without answering.

  They went a few levels deeper than the Night Hag’s den this time. She watched the ground ascend around them as the elevator sank deeper and deeper into the earth, where noise could not touch them and the air grew motionless and cold.

  When it finally came to a grinding halt and David Nicholas pushed open the cage, nothing greeted them on the other side but darkness.

  He darted into the shadows without waiting for her.

  “Hey!” Elise called.

  His chuckle came from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Not afraid, are you?”

  Elise turned on her cell phone’s flashlight mode, which made the screen white. It wasn’t powerful enough to break the tangible darkness, but it illuminated a small circle in front of her feet. Enough to see a rough stone floor.

  There was only one way to go—forward.

  A powerful presence grew as she moved through the hall. It wasn’t just David Nicholas as he flitted in and out of the shadows. There was something else. Something immense, and not demonic.

  She came to a crossroads. She had to stop to let a line of demons pass, carrying crates between them on litters. They flinched at seeing her cell phone light. Their eyes were wide and bulging with huge black irises—perfect for seeing in dark mines. The demons were marching deeper into the earth, treading a dusty path split by footprints.