The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

“Whoa! Hang on there!” Neuma grabbed Elise’s arm. “Let him go, doll.” She lowered her voice. “People are watching. Calm down. Have a drink.” She pried one of Elise’s hands off of David Nicholas’s shirt so she could shove a bottle of vodka into it.

  Elise released him. She itched to turn his face into a pulpy mess, but it wasn’t the time or the place. And he was right. She should have known better than to not declare the terms of her contract in the beginning. But two hundred dollars wasn’t going to cut it.

  She glanced at all the money exchanging hands below. The aatxegorri was completely destroying the lamia, and people were getting rich on it. The snake demon wasn’t fast enough to withstand his bull-like strength, and he had already ripped open her tail with one of his horns. Elise had fought an aatxegorri before. They were hideous, but slow. She could outmaneuver them in her sleep.

  She turned on David Nicholas. He raised his hands to defend himself, but she didn’t attack. “Let me take the next fight. Hell, the next dozen fights.”

  He grinned. His split lip bled something black. “Why? Is it my birthday or something?”

  “No, Elise, you don’t know what you’re volunteering for,” Neuma said. “Drink. Drink!”

  She took a swig. It burned hot all the way into her stomach. “I’ll take the next few fights. You know I’ll kick ass. Nobody expects a female kopis, so you guys can collect on all the bets against me—and I get a percentage.”

  “Deal!” David Nicholas said before Neuma could open her mouth again. “Here’s the rules: You get in the pen and fight until one of you isn’t standing. No killing.” His mouth twisted. “Unfortunately. You keep at it for five rounds… or whenever you’re kicked shitless and can’t get up. I’ll send you home alive with a cushy paycheck. A thousand bucks, if you win them all.”

  A thousand dollars. Her head buzzed, and she wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or excitement.

  “Neuma, get cloth bandages. Now,” she said, taking another drink. “And I want to take you in the ring, David Nicholas.”

  Neuma ran off. He dragged on a cigarette she hadn’t noticed him lighting. “Fuck no. My life’s worth more than that. You can have five percent of the bets.”

  “Fifty. I’m the one fighting.”

  “Employees got to get paid. Ten.”

  “Twenty-five, or I’ll go to the Night Hag and let her pick an amount. I wonder what she would think of this.”

  His mouth twitched. He smashed the tip of his cigarette on the sound board. “Fine.”

  She stripped off her jacket. Neuma returned, and Elise took her gloves off one at a time, replacing them with bandages around her knuckles. In the cage, the lamia crumpled, and a waitress dragged her out by the tail.

  The crowd started to cheer as soon as David Nicholas leaped onto the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fight!”

  “No humans.”

  James squinted at the bouncer blocking the door to Eloquent Blood. It was almost twice his height and had to stoop to fit in the doorway. Thick tusks protruded from either side of its mouth. He thought it was a female, but it was hard to tell if sagging breasts were a sexual characteristic on demons or a racial feature.

  “Pardon me?” he said, realizing he had been analyzing its exposed breasts for too long.

  “No humans,” it repeated, barely able to articulate English words. It crossed its massive arms over its chest. Each one was as thick as his waist.

  “But this is the human entrance to Eloquent Blood. It even says ‘humans.’”

  “It’s a cage fight night. No humans. Too dangerous.”

  James stepped back with a frown, tipping his glasses over his nose to study the alley entrance to Craven’s again. If there were no humans allowed in Eloquent Blood on the night of a cage fight, then what was Elise doing?

  He had left Stephanie’s house five minutes after she did and followed her downtown. He didn’t have to track her car to find her. James had a sixth sense for Elise in the same way that she had a sixth sense for demons, and he could have found her anywhere on the planet. Her car was parked in a nearby garage, and he was certain he could feel her inside Eloquent Blood.

  “I could pay you,” he suggested.

  The bouncer rolled its beady black eyes, backed into the hallway, and slammed the door. The rusted sign that said “humans” bounced and rattled.

  He took a deep breath, tamping down on his frustration.

  Knowing Elise, she was in mortal peril right that second, which was her idea of “running errands.” He wouldn’t have had to chase her down if she had just let him come along.

  “Damn it, Elise,” he muttered to the closed door.

  He took the street entrance to Craven’s. Since that was the door to the human entrance, there had to be one for demon patrons as well. And hopefully it wouldn’t be guarded by some kind of troll.

  Craven’s was especially labyrinthine, even for a casino. Finding his way to the back was difficult, and it didn’t do any favors for his mood.

  He spotted a pale figure darting behind a row of slot machines with bare shoulders and a crate in her arms. She looked like some kind of waitress. James tailed her through the winding paths until she ducked into a back hallway. He made sure nobody was watching before following.

  Now that he saw her unobstructed, he realized with dull shock that she wasn’t just another cocktail waitress. She was a pale, voluptuous woman wearing nothing but liquid latex. Definitely one of the strippers from Blood. There was a black handprint on one of her otherwise bare ass cheeks. He caught her arm.

  “Are you going down to the club?”

  She didn’t snap at him for grabbing her. Her eyes illuminated with delight, and she set the crate down as easily as though it was filled by feathers instead of jingling bottles of alcohol. Once her arms were free, she melted against his body, warm and soft and pliant.

  “Well hello, handsome. What can I do for you?” she purred, rubbing a thigh against his. “I have a few ideas if you don’t. My name is Neuma.”

  Bile crept up his throat. Demons. Mindless animal urges wrapped in something resembling flesh. Yet another thing he hadn’t missed since retiring.

  “I need to get to Blood—without the succubus charm, thank you. I’m looking for a kopis. Elise Kavanagh. About this height, kind of wavy hair…” He gestured at chest level.

  “You’re Elise’s, huh? Ooh. She sure likes ‘em tall. And mature.” Neuma trailed her hand up the hem of James’s shirt and stroked his hip bone. He caught her wrist to prevent her from dipping her fingers behind his belt. That didn’t seem to actually discourage her. She circled around to plaster herself against his back. “Maybe she’ll share if I ask nice.”

  She traced her fingernails over the white streaks at his temples and down the line of his jaw. He swatted at her.

  “Stop that.”

  “I could be just as much fun as she is. Even more fun. Why d’you want her?”

  Where a succubus was concerned, his mind was not in charge. It was hard to think when all the blood was being redirected from his skull. “I’m her aspis,” he said stiffly.

  His arousal vanished in an instant, like a switch had been flipped.

  Neuma took a big step back. “Oh.” She heaved a big sigh. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you’re James. I never would have… heck.” She glanced around as though she expected to see someone else in the hall, but they were alone. “I don’t think I should take you down there.”

  “I’m asking politely. For now.”

  “All right, handsome. Don’t blame me if you don’t like what you see. But you get to carry the booze with those big ol’ hands of yours.”

  Before he could protest, she shoved the crate into his arms and started down the hall again. He staggered under the weight of it as he hurried to follow her swaying hips.

  “How do you know my name?”

  She bat her eyelashes at him over her shoulder. “I read minds. You’re having dirty thoughts about me, you b
ad boy.”

  “The hell you do.”

  “I like a temper on a man. Makes him tastier.” She sighed, giving him a long look that said she was mentally undressing him. “Crying shame. Come on, keep up with me.”

  Neuma led him down several flights of stairs. When she pushed through a door marked “Employees Only,” the sound of a roaring crowd spilled into the stairwell. She led him to a dressing room. There was an entire wall occupied by shelves of alcohol.

  She started to unload the crate as he held it, but James dropped the box on one of the vanity counters.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  Neuma jerked a thumb at the door. “Out there. You can’t miss her, if she’s still standing. Don’t come complaining to me. You got it?”

  James ducked out of the room. The end of the hall opened up behind the bar. It was mostly empty, but what was there almost made his eyes fall out of his head. He had only ever heard of Blood from Elise before, but she failed to mention that they didn’t bother clothing their waitresses, all of whom appeared to be half-demon Gray. These ones wore nothing but panties, boots, and reflective electrical tape over their nipples.

  The women gave him a few strange looks when he exited the bar, but nobody stopped him as he moved up to the rail to scan the crowd. He searched for Elise’s auburn hair amongst all the motion. No humans. Most of them didn’t even have hair.

  And then he saw the cage.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered.

  Elise faced off against two demons: an aatxegorri and a brand new nightmare, semi-transparent skin and all. She had a half-empty bottle of vodka and a swollen eye that dripped blood down her cheek. Her clear eye blazed. Her lips were peeled back in a grin. Every time her fist or foot connected, something like satisfaction surfaced in her expression before fading into the drunken haze again.

  Intoxication hardly slowed her down. If anything, it kept her from holding back.

  She brutalized her attackers.

  Knuckles met face with a wet crunch. Her legs were a blur of kicks and lunges. She stopped only to throw back another swig of vodka, then twirled to backhand someone as they jumped at her.

  The crowd loved it. They screamed, they cheered.

  James was horrified.

  He rushed down the steps and shoved through the crowd. It was hardly less violent in the audience. He took an elbow to the face and a hard shove on his way down, but he managed to fight his way to the front row and grip the bars of the cage.

  “Elise!” he shouted. “Elise!”

  She didn’t hear him. The crowd was too noisy.

  Elise snapped a high kick into the jaw of the nightmare. It cracked so loudly that the audience was shocked into a moment of silence, and then they cheered again with new vigor. The nightmare crumpled against the side of the cage. It didn’t look like he was getting up again.

  She pumped her arms into the air victoriously.

  “Who’s next? Who can take down this machine?” shouted an announcer.

  The aatxegorri took the moment of distraction to jump at her again, but there was no surprising her. She whipped around, grabbed his neck, and smashed his face into the bars.

  Clawed hands shoved wads of money through the cage. Elise grabbed a fistful and kissed it. “Oh dear Lord,” James groaned. He couldn’t even hear himself over all the shouting.

  A demon wrenched the door open, and only the succubus bartender leaping in the way prevented half the crowd from spilling inside. But when a Fury twice James’s height stomped through the crowd, Neuma didn’t even try to fight him. It stooped low and climbed into the cage.

  Elise grinned when she saw what joined her. She shoved the money down her shirt, threw back another drink of vodka, and beckoned for the Fury to attack.

  James’s anger was forgotten in a wash of fear. Elise had killed a Fury before—and a multitude of other large and nasty creatures—but that was when she was armed, sober, and free to move around the landscape. Her remaining eye could barely focus on her attacker.

  The Fury rushed her. Two pale, meaty fists seized her by the shoulders and slammed her into the bars in front of James.

  The crowd roared and jostled him against the barrier.

  “Elise!” he yelled again. She didn’t see him. She kicked the Fury away.

  The aatxegorri clambered to his hooves. With a snap of his wrist, a switchblade flashed in the stage lights. She was too busy with the Fury to notice.

  “Watch out!”

  She still couldn’t hear him.

  The aatxegorri inched to the side, waiting for an opening.

  James leaped onto the steps, pushed Neuma away from the door, and got in. There were protesting shouts from the audience. He ran forward and punched the aatxegorri in the back of the head.

  He hadn’t thrown a good punch in years. The force of it radiated all the way up his arm and into his spine. One of his knuckles split open with a flaming shock of pain.

  The demon whirled on him as he shook out his fist. He raised his hands to indicate no desire to fight. “I’m not—” he began to say, but it didn’t wait for him to finish. It lowered its horned head and rushed him.

  James knocked the knife out of its hands and took the full brunt of its body.

  Getting hit by a bull-demon was a lot like getting struck by a car on the highway. James’s back hit the bars, blinding him with pain so powerful that it took a good five seconds for him to really feel it.

  What he did feel was the tip of a horn ripping his sleeve open and burying in his bicep. He seized the horns on instinct and wrenched them away, throwing the aatxegorri into the Fury.

  They both dropped. The impact made the entire cage rock.

  Elise’s eye met his over the bodies. Her jaw dropped. “James?”

  He jumped over the Fury and grabbed her elbow. He was about ready to give her a good shake, but she was so pummeled that he wasn’t sure she would remain conscious through it. “What were you thinking? A cage fight?”

  But it wasn’t time for an argument. The Fury pushed itself onto all fours.

  Elise shoved James out of the way. “Move it!”

  She drove her knee into the Fury’s face, and it fell again with a splatter of yellow blood.

  Demons were yelling, the stage lights were blindingly bright, and James regretted jumping in. Neuma alone wasn’t enough to hold the crowd back for long, and the entire bar was about to start fighting. The announcer seemed to love it. He shouted incoherently over the speakers.

  The aatxegorri charged again. James dived for the knife. He clutched it in his fist and blindly jabbed.

  It sank into flesh and jerked free of his hand.

  An instant later, all the yelling outside the cage changed from excitement to panic.

  The crowd shifted. Footsteps thudded. James ran to the bars to squint outside. The demons were feeling for the doors to the Warrens. Even the aatxegorri and the Fury shared in the panic—they both scrambled out the door and down the steps.

  Elise chugged the last of the vodka and flung the bottle to the stage.

  “Hey! David Nicholas!” she shouted, shielding her eyes from the spotlights. “What the hell’s going on?”

  It was Neuma who replied. She appeared in the open doorway again, breathless and wide-eyed. “There’s a whole freaking army of cops. We gotta clear.”

  James’s heart dropped. Elise snatched his hand and dragged him off the stage with a pronounced limp. She scrubbed furiously at her blood-crusted eye.

  “Where are they?”

  Neuma hung back on the steps, visibly torn between following Elise or the other demons. “The girls are trying to hold them off upstairs in Craven’s, but I don’t know—how would they know how to find the door to Blood anyway?”

  “Mr. Black,” Elise said, spitting his name like an insult. “Get out of here. Go!”

  The bartender ran after the others. Where there had easily been two hundred bodies clustered around the stage moments before, there was nobody lef
t a few moments later. David Nicholas was gone. One of the basandere waitresses darted up to the hall behind the bar and vanished.

  Elise hauled James up the stairs to the human entrance. “Shouldn’t we follow—?” he began.

  “No. Can’t go into the Warrens. We have to make a break for it.” She stumbled over her own feet. He caught her.

  “Jesus, Elise, you can’t even run! How much did you drink?”

  “Enough.”

  James propped her upright, but she sagged on him. “I think you and I need to have a talk.”

  “Lecture later. Move now.”

  She shoved him toward the door, and they broke into the long hallway back to the alley on the surface. The tusked bouncer was long gone. Nothing kept them from rushing out of blood and into the hot night air.

  On the other side, someone had opened the gate blocking off the alley. Three police cruisers with flashing lights waited on the other side.

  Elise tripped on a bag of trash and sprawled across the pavement.

  “Don’t move!” someone shouted. The spotlights mounted above the windshields blasted right at them, and James could only make out blurred shapes on the other side. He froze in mid-crouch with his hands on Elise’s arm.

  “A very serious talk,” he muttered. Louder, he said, “I’ll comply! We’re not going to run, we’re just—”

  A man in uniform emerged from the light to take James’s arm. Elise chose that moment to roll over and focus her bleary eye on them. Rage instantly filled her face at the sight of someone grabbing her aspis.

  Elise lunged to her feet and swung one of her best punches.

  The cop took it in the jaw. Out in a heartbeat.

  “Don’t fight, don’t fight!” James cried, but it was much too late. Three of the others descended on her with pepper spray and batons.

  He didn’t get a chance to watch. The last officer was too busy shoving him against the police car and handcuffing him. He got into the enclosed backseat of the cruiser without arguing.

  Elise put up a good fight, as always, but even she had her limits. Facing down four trained police officers after a long cage fight was apparently hers. They pinned her down, cuffed her, and tossed her in the cruiser with him. Her good eye was streaming from the pepper spray.