The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

  Before she could turn around, an explosion blasted behind Elise. Her ears rang.

  Alain’s face was blown off his skull. His body bounced against the wall with a spray of blood. She whirled to see Anthony just behind her, shotgun braced on his shoulder. His knuckles were white on the metal. Hatred filled his eyes as he pumped and shot again.

  “Anthony,” she said, voice muffled in her ears. He didn’t acknowledge her except to shove her aside and stand directly over Alain’s body.

  Another pump. Another shot. Skull fragmented and brain splattered. The empty hull dropped to his feet.

  He tried to fire again, but there was no ammunition left. The shotgun just clicked.

  “You killed her,” he said. “You fucking killed her!”

  She grabbed his arm. He spun to aim at her, but Elise grabbed the muzzle and yanked it out of his hands. The metal scorched her fingers. She flung it aside.

  Anthony swung a fist, and she ducked under it to sock him hard in the gut. He grunted. Doubled over.

  “He killed her!”

  “And now he’s dead,” Elise snapped, gripping his shoulders in her hands. “Look, Anthony!”

  She forced him to face Alain’s body. The witch wasn’t recognizable anymore. Strands of hair stuck to the wall and the cavity that used to be his face. As they watched, the body slipped to the side inch by inch, and then landed on its shoulder. Fluid dribbled out of the neck.

  The anger slowly drained from Anthony’s face.

  “Oh my God, Elise. She’s…”

  “Dead,” she finished for him. It hurt to say it. “I know.”

  He dropped to his knees, and a scream ripped from his throat. Fury, grief, pain—it echoed off the high pillars and the reflection of the city below. His hands shook as they covered his face. His skin was flushed and red as tears coursed down his cheeks.

  Elise stepped back. She thought there was probably something she was supposed to do. Comfort him? Hold him? Tell him it would be okay? “Hey,” she said, crouching in front of him when he didn’t stop screaming. “Anthony. Anthony!”

  He didn’t acknowledge her. She hauled back and punched him again. His head snapped to the side, and it cut off his cries like a string snapping on a guitar.

  He glared at her. Blood trickled from a split on his lip. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, voice ragged. “He killed Betty! How can you be so goddamn calm?”

  “He’s dead. You’ve got your justice. But we have a job to finish.”

  “Betty—”

  “We can’t do anything for her now.” Elise swallowed hard. “Come on. We have to find Mr. Black.”

  The first thing James realized when he regained consciousness was that he was very cold and laying just a few feet away from the Night Hag’s doorway—which was open. Light radiated from it in colors he had never seen before. It would have transfixed him if he had been alone.

  But the second thing he realized was that Mr. Black was standing over him.

  He groaned, trying to push himself away on instinct. But hands clapped down on his shoulders and hauled him to his feet before he could go anywhere.

  The cool hands burned against his skin. He tried to pull away, but the angel was too strong for him to break free. Even if he could have, there were more angels waiting to stop him. James made a quick head count. Six of them. Where ethereal beings were concerned, it was virtually an army.

  “So glad you could join us,” Mr. Black said, drumming his fingers against a notebook tucked under one arm. The Book of Shadows. Fantastic. “I thought I’d have to throw you over my shoulder to jump through.”

  James tried to remember how he had ended up in the cavern and what happened. When had the gate opened? Why was there a dead spider the size of a small house on the other side? And where was Elise?

  Then he looked down at where he had been laying. Someone was on the ground not far from him.

  “Oh no,” he whispered.

  Betty had been laid out with her hands folded on her stomach and a shirt tucked under her head. She might have been sleeping, if not for the bullet wound.

  He clapped a hand over his mouth and turned away. It seemed somehow obscene to gaze upon the body of Elise’s best friend. Maybe if he didn’t see her, it wouldn’t be true. Maybe she would sit up and be fine again.

  “Look at her,” Mr. Black said. “Look.”

  James didn’t want to obey, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the wound on her forehead and the bloody line running down her nose. He thought of all the times he had snapped at her for doing something absurd at the esbats, and her musical giggle, and he felt like he was going to vomit.

  He turned on Mr. Black. “You’re sick,” he said, voice trembling with fury.

  “Actually, that would be the mark of my friend Alain. Isn’t he a good shot?” Mr. Black stepped close to James. The old kopis was three inches shorter than him. “I’ll admit I was a tad offended when you burned my home and destroyed the gate. In fact, I’ve thought about very little else in the years that have passed.”

  “We didn’t kill anyone.”

  “No, but you sure as God tried. Now, I hope you spend the rest of your life thinking about this…” He swept a hand toward Betty. “Like I’ve thought about you. However short that ‘rest of your life’ might be.”

  He tossed the Book of Shadows aside. It disappeared into the darkness, and James watched it go with longing.

  “Elise is going to—”

  “Shut up. I’ll consider myself threatened and save you the effort.” Mr. Black took out a pocket watch to study it. “Alain should have everything ready now.” He pointed at the gate with his cane. A silver cuff glimmered at his wrist. “You first, Mr. Faulkner.”

  Elise would have argued. She probably would have fought him, and seen how many angels she could take out before they brought her down. But James was not nearly so brave. He couldn’t stop staring at the neat little hole in Betty’s skull.

  “You’ve made a big mistake,” he said.

  He prodded James in the knee with his cane. “Walk faster, please. We’re on limited time.”

  There were only three wide steps to reach the dais on which the gate had been built, so there was little time to examine where he was going. James knew quite a bit about angels and their ruins, and this was not a gate to an ethereal dimension—that much he could tell. He suspected it would take him to the mysterious angelic city rumored to be under Reno. It was enough to get his academic heart racing.

  He tilted his head back to gaze at all the shifting colors and shapes within the gate. He stretched a hand out and felt the vibrations in the air. He had never felt it like that before. Something had changed.

  Mr. Black cleared his throat. When James didn’t immediately move, he prodded him again.

  Bracing himself, he stepped through the gateway.

  When he reappeared a few seconds later, he was on all fours on a street corner. His glasses fell off the bridge of his nose. They cracked when they struck the cement sidewalk.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. His stomach wanted to reject everything he had eaten that day. He took shallow breaths and focused on holding it down.

  He studied his surroundings through his bangs. The angels had appeared around him on their feet. They were as calm and composed as though stepping through interdimensional gateways was an ordinary part of their day. For all he knew, it might have been.

  Then he looked straight up.

  He lost his battle against his own heaving stomach and vomited.

  When he was done, he didn’t dare look up again. One glance had been more than enough. The mirrored cities were too much for any mortal mind to process.

  James trembled as he sat back, wiping his mouth clean. The angels watched him, showing no signs of concern. They looked so different to him now. His body reacted to them—a clenching of his gut, a tickle in his skull. It was like a whole new sense had opened for James.

  And then he realized what had changed
.

  He could feel Elise.

  To an extent, that was nothing new. He could always sense her. She was like his phantom limb, and sometimes he felt a little twitch that said Elise was thinking about him. But this was something new. He could hear her voice, like tuning into a fuzzy radio station.

  Anthony shot him… going to regret that… damn it, Betty…

  He glimpsed an image of a bloody skull and brain. James couldn’t make sense of it. He gripped his head in both hands as the images and voice grew stronger.

  I can’t do this…

  James tried to see over the heads of the angels, but they were taller than him—a novel experience. He couldn’t see anyone on the street. It didn’t sound like he was hearing with his ears anyway. He was hearing her inside of his mind.

  And being close to the angels made his palms itch.

  “Elise?” he said aloud. She didn’t respond.

  He put his broken glasses back on his face. The left lens was fragmented into two pieces, warping the buildings. It was not nearly as dizzying as the mirrored cities.

  A moment later, Mr. Black appeared on the other side of his angelic guards.

  The air warped, and he dropped a few inches to the cobblestone street. He lost his balance and fell with a cry. The cane flew from his hand.

  James seized the moment.

  He stumbled to a standing position and ran. He made it about three steps before his heaving stomach brought him to his knees again.

  An angel swept in and took his arm. It was a beautiful woman, elegant and slender, and he tensed with the expectation of being dragged to his feet. But she only offered him a hand. “Be careful,” she murmured. Coppery hair fell in soft waves around her shoulders.

  After a moment of hesitation, he let her help him up. Something in her face was open and trustworthy. “Let me run,” he whispered urgently.

  She shook her head. “We have a plan. Wait.”

  By the time she guided him to their landing spot, Mr. Black had stood. Sweat drenched his brow as he clutched at his chest. “No,” he gasped. “Where did he go?” He spun, staring wildly at the ghost city around them. “Where is he? Alain? Alain!”

  James didn’t see anybody on the street. “What are you on about?”

  The kopis dropped his cane and seized James’s shirt in both hands. “He’s gone. Alain is gone. I can’t feel him!”

  “Perhaps he’s not here,” James said.

  But he suddenly knew that wasn’t true. He saw the bloody skull again, and could hear the faint blast of a shotgun. Anthony shot him…

  Mr. Black shook his head. “No! He came ahead of me! That can only mean he’s…”

  His mind caught up to what he was about to say an instant before he said it. Horror dawned on his face.

  Alain was dead. James couldn’t find any satisfaction in the realization.

  Why could he hear Elise’s thoughts?

  Mr. Black dragged James down the street. The angels drifted after them without being ordered to do so. “Impossible,” the older man muttered. “He can’t be dead.”

  Have to find Mr. Black…

  The thought didn’t belong to James.

  The angels followed him with those beautiful, expressionless gazes. They flanked him to either side as if he might run from them. Where would he go? The only way out would be to go through one of those gateways.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting Mr. Black’s hand lead him on, and caught flashes of imagery in his mind’s eye. Even though he couldn’t see Elise, he felt like she should have been standing next to him.

  An elevator. More angels. Parking garage.

  She was close. He was certain of it. But he had no idea why.

  He opened his eyes to search for her again. If she was that close, he was sure he would have been able to see her. He scanned the roofs of the nearby buildings as Mr. Black dragged him along.

  Angels moved atop the nearest structures surrounding the dark gate. They were spreading long lines of cloth ribbon in rows. One strand had been laid across the street, and James took the opportunity to examine it when they passed. It was covered in magic symbols, like the pages in his Book of Shadows.

  “Paper magic?” he said. “That’s impossible—I’ve never shown anyone how to do it.”

  “Some of the spells you used to burn down my home never ignited.” Mr. Black bit out every word, shooting a glare over his shoulder. “Alain studied them. Deconstructed them. His aren’t quite the same, but they do the trick, and—my God!”

  The exclamation made James look up. They had turned a corner to see a parking garage—the same parking garage he could see with his eyes closed, but from another angle. A ritual space had been established at the corner near a street light.

  Alain’s body was a few feet away with blood and brain drying on the wall behind him.

  “Mon ami,” Mr. Black murmured.

  Before James even realized the older man was moving, Mr. Black swung his cane. It cracked against James’s skull.

  His ears rang and his vision blurred. But he was ready for it when Mr. Black swung again.

  James caught the cane and tried to wrench it from his grip. They struggled. James was a good twenty years younger and several inches taller—it shouldn’t have been a fight at all. But even an older kopis was much stronger than the average human.

  Mr. Black shoved him to the ground and seized a fistful of cloth ribbon.

  “She killed him,” he said, voice thick with tears. “My aspis—my companion—”

  “Karmic justice,” James said.

  “Justice? Justice?”

  He didn’t even see the strike coming this time.

  The force of the blow made James black out. It was only for a few moments, but that was enough time—when he roused again, he was dangling upside down over the shoulder of an angel as they ascended in an elevator. He watched the hazy mirror-world slide outside the window.

  When the door opened, the angel carried him outside and threw him to the floor.

  James stared up at the towering column of the gate. It was so much bigger than anything he had seen before. The very top almost brushed the real city, and light swirled between the pillars like a tear in existence. The symbols at the base were already glowing. It was almost open. All it needed were the matching marks.

  Mr. Black knelt over James with a fistful of ribbons, blocking his view. “Activate it.”

  James’s eyes traced the path of ribbon. The angels had completed the circles—all nine of them, each one slightly smaller than the last and nested within each other. It encompassed the entirety of the gate.

  He could see the spells for entrapment in the line, which had been Alain’s specialty. It was relatively harmless—if one considered trapping a god harmless.

  “I won’t do it,” James said.

  “Hold his arms!”

  An angel pinned him down. There was no fighting against its grip.

  Mr. Black threw the rope of ribbon around James’s head and tightened it on his throat. Pressure crushed against his esophagus. He gagged and gurgled, tongue bulging from his mouth.

  “Activate them!”

  James would have said no again if he could speak. He fought against the restraints of the angel’s hands to no avail.

  And Mr. Black pulled harder.

  His skull began to fill with white noise. The older man’s face blurred in his vision. Elise’s voice echoed in the back of his mind: He’s here… where is he? James?

  Such pain.

  He stretched out a finger to touch the ribbon as Mr. Black tightened the ligature.

  The symbols flared to life.

  Magic flowed from him into the ribbons, stretching out over the city. James moved through his magic. He raced through every line and saw the angels with their hopeless stares as if he walked past them himself.

  And he saw Elise running toward Mr. Black’s back.

  She jumped on the other kopis, knocking him off James. They bumped i
nto the angel. The pressure vanished from his throat and arms.

  Freed.

  James ripped the ribbons off his throat, sucking in a blessed lungful of air. Anthony raced from the stairwell. “Stop the magic!” he cried, waving his arms.

  But it was too late to take it back. The entire city was aglow with the symbols on the ribbons.

  Elise and Mr. Black rolled across the roof, trading blows. They ended up on their feet on the other side of the pillar, just beyond the barrier of the ribbon.

  She lunged toward him, but Mr. Black side-stepped her, moving out of the way as though she had telegraphed her move. She swung again. His arm struck hers, knocking it aside.

  Mr. Black slapped her other hand when it rose to strike him. He twisted, capturing her arm, and bent her elbow the wrong way. She cried out.

  He finally gave a hard shove, launching Elise over his head, and she stumbled over the line made by the ribbons. “Finally,” he spat.

  “Don’t start celebrating yet,” she said, striding toward him again.

  But when she reached the ribbon line, it was like striking a wall. The shock of it resonated through James. She couldn’t pass the magicked runes.

  “I’ve envisioned this moment for years,” Mr. Black laughed. “Years! And what a satisfying moment it is.”

  Anthony tried to rush the barrier of ribbons, but an angel snagged him in its arms, holding him back. “Elise!” he shouted.

  She faced the gate.

  Elise…

  This time, it wasn’t her voice that James heard, but another entirely—something great and terrible that rang through his entire being, vibrating down to the marrow of his bones.

  She held up her ungloved hand. Blood streamed from the symbol again.

  The marks wanted to open the gate.

  Her legs moved of their own volition. She stepped toward the pillar, rooted deep in the concrete of the parking garage.

  She fought it. She fought it hard. But there was no way to stop the inevitable march.

  Before she even touched it, the gate began to open.

  A gust of wind roared across the top of the parking garage, ripping through them and nearly blowing James off his feet. Electricity sparked and danced in the air around the pillars. A rumbling shook the entire structure, from the top of the gate to the very earth, and the angels backed away as white light erupted from the arch.