The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

  “What—Elise?”

  James stared at her through the tangle of legs.

  “Help?”

  He lifted the daimarachnid, and Elise wiggled free of the carcass. Venom and other unidentifiable bodily fluids seeped out of its stab wounds. She looked down at herself. There was an imprint on her leg where it had almost managed to break the skin, at which point her blood would have been pumped full of all that poison.

  “What happened?” he asked. His cheek was imprinted with the pattern of the couch fabric, but his eyes were alert as he took in the two bodies of the spiders.

  “They were downstairs. I don’t think they wanted to attack us. Hold this.”

  She picked at the web on her leg with her fingernails. It wouldn’t come off, and she couldn’t feel her skin beneath it.

  “The wards,” he said. “How—?”

  “They’re broken. I don’t know how.”

  She shivered as she limped back into the apartment. Elise suddenly felt very, very vulnerable in her underwear and wanted nothing more than an actual pair of pants. “Impossible,” James said, staring at the doorway where he had etched tiny marks of warding. “These are the strongest wards possible. Petty daimarachnids couldn’t have broken them.”

  Anthony staggered into the hallway wearing nothing but his boxers. He had found a knife somewhere. “What’s going on? Was it an angel?”

  “Wake Betty up,” Elise ordered, grabbing a clean pair of James’s jeans from the laundry cubby. She pulled them over her stiff leg, threaded a belt through the loops, and pulled it tight. They were so long that they bunched over her feet. “We’re not safe here anymore. We’ve got to move.”

  “I’ll take them to my—” James stuttered. “To Stephanie’s house. The wards aren’t as strong, but nobody should know where it is.”

  Anger surged through Elise. Stephanie’s house? She would have preferred to take everyone to the Night Hag’s den. Biting back a nasty comment, she nodded sharply. “Fine. Let’s get going.”

  Morrighan arrived at the studio exactly two hours later. Nobody in the coven approached James’s skill with magic, but she was unusually good at protective charms—with the added bonus that Mr. Black wouldn’t be out to kill her.

  “Thanks for this,” Elise said, stifling a yawn. “How long do you think it will take?”

  The witch surveyed the studio with a binder hugged to her chest. “You want the entire perimeter redone? At least three hours. I’ll have to do some measurements.”

  “Thanks.”

  Elise rolled her pant leg up to the knee and picked at the spider webbing stuck to her calf. Instead of sleeping, she had spent the last hour in a hot bath trying to separate the web from her flesh. She had peeled most of it off, along with half her skin, and was slowly regaining sensation above the knee. There was still a thick sock of slime over her ankle.

  A car pulled up behind her. She prepared herself to turn away yet another dancer who hadn’t gotten the message that classes were canceled for the day, and then realized it was Anthony’s Jeep. And Betty was driving.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Elise asked, offering her a hand out of the car. “You don’t drive.”

  “I came to help redo the wards,” Betty said. She still sounded like she had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in one sitting, but the bandages on her shoulders were gone, and her skin was completely unmarked by burns. “I got coffee. Check the passenger seat.”

  “You should be somewhere safe. You can’t be here until Morrighan finishes.”

  “There’s nowhere safer than with you. Besides, Stephanie’s house radiates bitch vibes. Didn’t I tell you to grab the coffee?”

  She found a cardboard container with four huge cups of plain coffee. “There’s only three of us here.”

  “Those are all for you. I already drank mine, and Morr doesn’t imbibe.”

  Elise had to smile. “Thanks. What happened to your burns? Did James take care of them?”

  Betty grinned. “Something like that.”

  She took a sip to test the temperature. It was perfect. Elise tipping her head back and drank until nothing but dregs remained. She sighed and rolled her shoulders, enjoying the familiar warmth she had missed since losing her coffee pot. Betty’s smile grew.

  “Five hours,” Morrighan announced, joining them at the Jeep. “Hi, Betty.”

  “Hey there.”

  “Whatever James did here originally is powerful. I’m going to have to cast three levels of charms to fix them. Do you have some touchstones so I can rebind the wards to him?”

  “Sure,” Elise said.

  She went inside to gather some of James’s remaining belongings. He kept a few broken things around for spell fodder—cracked coffee mugs, old bed sheets, jeans that had worn thin at the knees. Belongings James had used a lot but no longer needed. The wards would be tied to him and him alone.

  Other than watching for attack, Elise could do little to help. She gave James’s belongings to Morrighan, then finished cleaning up spider-demon corpses and the web they left behind. The bodies were easy—she skinned the brands off of one, gathered as much of its venom as she could in a Tupperware for later, and then stuck their corpses in trash bags.

  The webbing was much more difficult. Elise donned rubber gloves to remove it, but it was too tacky. It wouldn’t come off.

  She connected a hose to the tap in front of the house and power-washed the dance hall. It broke down most of the mess and left a blurry residue on the mirrors. James wouldn’t be thrilled, but at least his workspace was clean. It was a start.

  Elise paused to study herself in the wall of mirrors. She still didn’t have any money to buy clean clothes and James’s hand-me-downs were ridiculously baggy on her. She twisted around to look at her shoulder, bared by a wife beater that she had knotted at the waist. The Night Hag’s brand was angry and red.

  “What is that?” Betty came inside, sweaty and pink-cheeked from the summer heat.

  “Nothing,” she said, fluffing her hair over the mark to hide it. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m on so much Vicodin that I could be an amputee and I wouldn’t know it. So I’m fine. When it wears off, though…” Betty’s smile was wan. “The attempts on my life are not my favorite.”

  Elise clenched her jaw. “I know.”

  “You must have really pissed this guy off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sure he deserved it.”

  She nodded again, and Betty didn’t ask any more questions. There was a reason they were such good friends.

  They went outside and sat on the front step to watch Morrighan work. She was so focused on burying objects around the yard that she didn’t seem to notice how hot it was becoming.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave,” Elise said suddenly.

  Betty blinked. “Where would I go?”

  “You could visit your family in Canada for a few weeks. At least until everything settles down.”

  “You’re trying to protect me, right? It’s sweet. But I’m a big girl. I understand the consequences.”

  “This isn’t a game. You could die. The fact that you haven’t already is miraculous.”

  “Trust me. I’m getting to be a better witch.” Betty glanced around the street, as though she expected someone to be listening, and then she pulled a notebook out of the back pocket of her jeans. “Check this out. I finally figured it out last night, when I couldn’t sleep. James didn’t heal me. I did, using copies of his spells.”

  Elise flipped through the pad of paper. Each page was labeled in Betty’s looping, girly handwriting with a single word, like “candlelight” or “wind.” The rest of each page was covered in huge black marks.

  Paper magic. It was James’s specialty, and he had never taught anyone how to do it.

  “How did you make this?”

  “I’ve been peeking at James’s private Books of Shadows. They don’t all work. I haven’t figured out how to ac
tivate everything. But think about it! Imagine going into a fight with two witches who do battle magic!”

  Elise’s fist clenched on the notebook. “Betty…”

  “I can make fires,” she said, yanking the paper back. “See this one? It makes a big noise—sounds dumb, but I can think of some clever uses for it, and—”

  “James can handle this magic because he’s unusually powerful. It could kill you.”

  “I could be powerful. I just need practice. Maybe someday I could even bind to a kopis as aspis. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

  Elise touched her friend’s arm. “Promise me you won’t use these. Not without James’s guidance.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Promise. Or I’ll take this from you right now.”

  Betty groaned. “Fine. I promise. Unless someone tries to burn me to death or smother me again—then all bets are off. I’m not going to be defenseless. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She grinned. “Fabulous.”

  Elise didn’t like the enthusiasm in her voice. Betty had always been too excited by life-and-death situations, but she thought if anything would put a damper on that enthusiasm, it would be assassination attempts. “Can I say anything to convince you to throw out that notebook?”

  “Nope. You could tell me how amazing I am for healing myself, though.”

  “That is difficult magic,” she conceded.

  “Hell yeah it is. Say I’m amazing.”

  Elise shook her head and sighed. “You’re amazing.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Betty leaped up to join Morrighan again, swaying on her feet as she ran over to help dig a hole for one of James’s old sweaters.

  “Damn it,” Elise muttered.

  There was a dark form beyond the witches. Someone stood under the trees near the fence. His back was turned, but something about the slant of the shoulders told Elise it was no stranger.

  By the time she reached the trees, the man had climbed into the lowest branches with his feet dangling off the side. He lounged against the trunk, comfortable and casual as a cat. Thom was dressed in all black and a thick shirt that was almost woolen. He wasn’t even sweating.

  He plucked a petite apple from a branch and turned it in his fingers. “These will make a good pie soon,” he remarked.

  Elise didn’t bake, and she definitely wasn’t interested in casual conversation. “What do you want? You’re supposed to be watching James.”

  “There are others watching him.” He dropped the apple. “I have something for you.” Thom swung his legs over the side of the branch and slipped to the ground in front of her. He held up what appeared to be a credit card.

  “What is that?”

  “This is a key to a penthouse in a downtown casino.” Thom flicked it against his fingers. “A very fine penthouse. The kind of place where very rich men stay. You must have a key card to operate the elevator and reach that floor.”

  “Mr. Black is staying at a casino?”

  The witch shrugged. “If you’re not interested in getting the key…” Elise held out her hand. Thom didn’t immediately give it to her. “The Night Hag does not know I am going to give this to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How did you get it?”

  “You would be amazed at what I can do.” He waved it through the air to taunt her. “The Night Hag doesn’t want you to confront Mr. Black directly. There is sense in that.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t give me access to his penthouse.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” He held out the key. After a moment, Elise took it. The room number was written on the logo in permanent marker. “There’s beauty in the spontaneity of chaos. Too few people appreciate it.”

  She stuck it in her back pocket. “Thanks.”

  “You were right when you told your friend she should leave, you know, but she is not the only one. You and all your friends would be wise to escape.”

  “And break my pact with the Night Hag? That would go over great.”

  Thom rested his hand on her shoulder. It was heavy, and her brand ached. The pain radiated through her arm, her chest, hot and cold all at once. It wasn’t threatening, like when David Nicholas had done it. It was almost… possessive.

  His eyes bored into Elise. “Leave now and you may prolong your fleeting days on this Earth.”

  “Is that a threat?” she asked in a low voice.

  His fingers flexed. The pain traveled through her body, heating her skin, quickening her pulse. Thom’s face suddenly didn’t make sense, as though it wasn’t a human face—he was alien, unnatural, his eyes too large and his skin nearly transparent.

  “I am not your enemy, Elise Kavanagh.”

  “You’re not my ally.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. A smile. Thom was actually smiling. His lips were a shade pinker than the rest of his skin, and Elise had the strange urge to reach up and touch them. “The world is permeable. Every day, it changes.” His hand slid from her shoulder to her collarbone, brushing up to her throat. “I am not your ally today.”

  A shudder rolled down Elise’s spine. She took a quick step back.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Yes,” he said. Thom hooked his thumbs in the waist of his pants, dragging them down an inch. Only an inch, baring a pale strip of skin and the lines of his hips. A fine brush of black hair disappeared behind his belt. “I suppose it is too late for you to leave. You will need help soon. When you do, you may summon me.”

  “Summon you? I thought you weren’t my ally.”

  “Not today.”

  Elise glanced over at Betty and Morrighan. They were still working on the hole they had been digging minutes before. “Look, I’m not in the mood for—”

  But when she turned back to face Thom, he was gone.

  She turned in a circle, searching for him on the street, but there was nothing. Not even a hint of swaying grass to indicate a person’s passage. Somehow, Elise wasn’t surprised.

  “Great,” she muttered at nothing.

  Betty was leaning on her shovel again when Elise returned. Her shirt was plastered to her chest and back by sweat. Morrighan wasn’t much better, even though she hadn’t been doing any of the physical labor herself.

  “Do I even want to know what that guy wanted?” Betty asked, and Elise shook her head.

  “No. You don’t.” She took the shovel from her friend. “Come on. I’ll finish digging.”

  An hour later, the wards were almost done. Elise told Betty that she was going to run an errand, gave her strict instructions not to leave, and went to the penthouse.

  She watched the hotel elevators from a bank of penny slot machines, where nobody would bother her as long as she continued feeding what little cash she still had into the slot. She lost five times as often as she won, but the free drinks helped make up for it.

  There was no sign of Mr. Black as Elise emptied the change out of her wallet. But an hour and two Long Island Iced Teas later, Alain emerged from the elevator.

  He wore sunglasses and a tan suit, and didn’t look in her direction as he breezed toward the lobby. People gave him a wide berth even though he wasn’t especially imposing. It must have been all the burn scars.

  Elise stood once his back faced her and contemplated attacking. She had worn the red sundress again, since she had a habit of tripping over James’s jeans, and there was no way to conceal her swords in it. She wasn’t sure the daggers would be enough to take Alain down.

  So she let him pass. He spoke on his cell phone in French with no mind for his volume—most likely confident that nobody else would understand him. But Elise did.

  “I have a map of the mine shafts,” he said. “I’ll bring the car to you.”

  He disappeared into the lobby. She set her half-empty glass on top of the slots and ducked into an elevator.

  There was no button for the top floors. Where the numbers for the five highest levels should have been, a card reader had been installed. It was obviously m
uch newer than the rest of the sixties-era building. She swiped the penthouse key, the light flashed green, and the elevator doors closed.

  Each of the walls was mirrored, so she could see her back and sides as she made a slow ascent. Even with her hair down, the Night Hag’s brand was conspicuous on her back. Dim yellow light washed out her skin and made her curls the same color as the dress.

  She double-checked the position of her knife.

  The doors chimed and slid open.

  A short hall terminated in the penthouse door, from which a “Do Not Disturb” sign hung. She pressed her ear to it. No sound.

  She unlocked it and slid inside.

  Mr. Black’s penthouse was fashionable and impersonal. A spacious entryway filled with a cubist’s idea of furniture led into another sitting room. There were two bedrooms with sliding doors and a kitchenette. The tinted windows had a perfect view of the mountains and the city that stretched between them.

  The air hummed. Elise didn’t see anything to cause it and assumed it was the air conditioning.

  With her ears perked, she moved to the papers stacked on the desk. Mr. Black had an old Royal Deluxe typewriter under a plastic cover and stacks of pages that he had annotated in red ink. She shuffled through them.

  They were mostly business letters and invoices. The letters were stamped unevenly across the page, like the mechanisms on the type ball were out of alignment.

  “Why a typewriter?” she muttered.

  On a hunch, she tried to turn on the plasma TV. It wouldn’t work. Electronics often failed around ethereal energy.

  So the hum wasn’t air conditioning.

  She found a map that showed the route of the hijacked semi from Los Angeles to Reno. He had drawn a big red line through the segment that led away from the lakebed and circled the downtown area instead—not far from Craven’s.

  Elise pushed the map aside to find another one that indicated entrances to abandoned mines. Most of them were crossed out. One had been marked with more arrows than the others.

  At the very bottom of the stack, she found a leather-bound journal. Elise opened it. It was new enough that he had only filled the first dozen pages, but she didn’t have time to read it. She tucked it under an arm, put the papers back the way she found them, and went into the bedroom.