Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series)

by Reine, SM

  And they were…twitching.

  Abram didn’t nudge her on this time. He had stopped to stare too.

  Neuma noticed that she was alone halfway down the stairs and returned to Rylie. “Flesh gardens. Like ‘em?”

  “Are there people under there?” Rylie asked.

  “Wanna dig ‘em up and find out?”

  The taste of bile welled up in the back of Rylie’s throat. “What is wrong with you people?”

  “The problem’s thinking that we’re people at all.” Neuma’s tone wasn’t unkind, exactly. She slid a finger down Abram’s chest, from between his pecs to his navel, dropping off before reaching his belt. He was so stunned by the sight of the hands that he didn’t even react. “Look, those were left by the last guys. Me and Elise didn’t put them there. It’s not our style.”

  “Why don’t you save them?” Rylie asked.

  “This is the most humane way to leave them,” Neuma said. “Trust me. Still want to see the prime minister?”

  The nearest hand strained toward Rylie, fingers swiping blindly through the air.

  She covered her mouth with her hand, swallowed vomit that stung her sore throat, and followed Neuma down the stairs.

  A few underground paths and staircases later, they reached something that looked a lot like a throne room. High, arched beams crisscrossed the ceilings, each hung with velvet drapes that were long enough to brush the floor. The crimson banners were stamped with black X’s as tall as Rylie, and they fluttered in a wind that Rylie couldn’t feel. The flapping of cloth echoed in the silence.

  A throne stood in front of a wall painted with a peeling mural. The seat was a stark black slab with a webbed iron back and toothlike spikes where the armrests should have been. Sitting on it would require extremely careful arrangement of limbs—and maybe full body armor.

  Between the fiery light filtering through the frosted windows and the deep shadows behind the banners, the throne room was starkly beautiful. A work of art carved from gleaming obsidian and black opal.

  Nails clicked against stone, and Rylie realized belatedly that Ace was chained near the throne. The pit bull had been given enough slack that he could pace back and forth across the end of the room, pink-lined ears perked and teeth bared in a growl. He had water in a crystal bowl and naked bones scattered around his bed.

  Neuma all but skipped to the throne, keeping out of Ace’s biting range as she flopped onto the chair. She didn’t seem to be worried about the spikes. She placed her elbow between them without getting punctured, kicked her feet up on the other side, and gave a big smile. “You wanted to talk to the prime minister, and here I am.”

  “You’re not the prime minister,” Abram said, his silver eyes flashing in the firelight.

  “I am whenever Elise ain’t here, and I told you topside, she’s away on personal business.” Neuma flourished her hands. “But you got me. I’ve got all the authority she does, and I’m almost as sexy.”

  Rylie’s heart twisted. She didn’t know this succubus, didn’t trust her. “When will Elise be back?”

  “First day of next year,” Neuma said. “It won’t be long if you wait down here. Time’s been shifting between dimensions a lot lately. I’d bet if you wait about four or five days, January’ll come before you know it.”

  By January, Abel would be so far gone that there would be no trail to follow. Rylie’s eyes stung. She blinked back tears. “I really need to talk to Elise.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Ain’t it always. Look—here, come on, sit up front with me. I don’t wanna have to yell at you from across the room.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Rylie and Abram stepped through the fluttering banners. There were tables and benches in front of the throne. Rylie sat down and set her jacket next to her.

  “There,” Neuma said. “Better, huh?”

  Abram stood behind Rylie, a warm presence at her back that smelled of annoyance. He wasn’t happy with any of this. Ace didn’t seem to be happy with it either. He had paced to the end of his chain until the collar dug into his neck.

  “You’re wasting our time like this, leading us so deep into the Palace. How much time have you wasted on Earth? Is it deliberate?” Abram asked.

  “Yeah, it’s deliberate. Not the time wasting. The room.” Neuma jerked her thumb toward the mural behind her. “This throne room ain’t been used in a long damn time. Way before the Treaty of Dis. You know what that is?” Rylie’s hesitation was apparently answer enough, because the demon explained. “It was a pact between angels, demons, and humans to end the First War. It kept angels outta Hell, demons outta Heaven, and it created kopides—demon hunters—just like His Royal Hotness here.” She smirked at Abram. “And after the Treaty, Dis’s monarchy was replaced by councils and shit. Elected officials. No monarchy, no need for a throne room.”

  “But now you’re ruling,” he said.

  “We moved back into this room because it’s safe,” Neuma said. “Way back in the past, warlocks magicked it so that nobody can listen in on conversations here. If shit goes down, this is where you want to be when it does.”

  “Is espionage much of a concern? Really?”

  “Actually, yes.” She sighed. “We don’t got control of the city. Aquiel left an entire fucking army behind when he died, and we don’t got the manpower to push the army back. We don’t know that everyone inside the walls can be trusted, either.”

  Rylie and Abram exchanged looks. If they couldn’t trust everyone in the Palace—the one place that had a direct line to Northgate—then the town wasn’t safe at all.

  Maybe a demon had grabbed Abel.

  Neuma went on. “Anyway, I figured if the Alpha’s showing her face at our doorstep, it’s gonna be a big deal. I brought you down so we’d be safe talking about it. You’re Elise’s friend, so I’m your friend too. You can trust me.”

  Rylie wasn’t so sure about that, and judging by Abram’s tension at her back, he felt the same. But what choice did they have? He was right. They had already wasted too much time coming into Hell.

  “My mate’s gone,” Rylie said. “Abel. He went missing.”

  Neuma’s lips tipped into a frown. “Dead?”

  “No,” she said, maybe too sharply.

  “Huh. So what’s the problem? You got the epic nose. Sniff him out.”

  “His scent isn’t there,” she said. “I can smell things weeks back, sometimes months if it was strong. But all of Abel’s smells have just…vanished.”

  Neuma’s elbow slipped onto one of the spikes, and she pulled it against her side with a wince. “Well, that’s not right.”

  “Exactly. It has to be some kind of—I don’t know, demon abduction or something. Elise would know. She has to help me find him.”

  “I’m gonna say this in the nicest way I can,” Neuma said. “There’s about a hundred thousand humans enslaved in Hell right about now. To their families, all of ‘em are missing. Elise’s personal business is more important than working to free more of those people. I don’t think one more missing guy is any reason to summon her back, even if he is an Alpha werewolf.”

  Abram stepped forward. “So you can summon her.”

  “Can, but won’t.” She shrugged. “Nothing personal.”

  The despair that crashed over Rylie was quickly swamped by the surge of the wolf. The beast was responding to her anxiety in the only way it knew how: with the powerful, emotionless weight of its mind pressing against hers.

  She didn’t realize that she had stood until Abram grabbed her shoulder.

  Rylie glared at him. “What?”

  “Nails,” he said simply.

  She looked down at her hands. Blood spotted the edges of her thumbnails. That was the first sign that they were loosening to be replaced by claws. Rylie hadn’t seen that happen in a long time—she had better control over her beast than that—but fear of losing Abel threw all self-control out the window.


  Just the smell of her near-transformation had made Ace flatten his belly to the floor, ears pressed to his skull. He had known that she was on the brink of violence before she did.

  Rylie put her hands behind her back. “Elise would want to be summoned to help us.” Her voice was an octave lower than usual. Clearing her throat didn’t help. “I’ll answer to her if she comes back and doesn’t agree.”

  Neuma sighed, rubbing her fingers against her temples. “How’s this: I’ll help you find Abel.”

  Abram snorted. “You?”

  “Me and a few handfuls of fiends,” she said, unperturbed by his response. “Nasty little fucks. Dumber than a shit brick. I’ve got a few hundred of ‘em from this House we conquered, and I’ve spent the last few weeks training ‘em to listen to me. I give them a command and they’ll wear themselves dead before dropping the mission. They don’t need smells to find someone.”

  “Unleash demons on Earth? Deliberately? Are you kidding?” Abram asked.

  “I’ll tell them not to hurt anyone they don’t got to,” Neuma said pleasantly, inspecting her manicure.

  “Okay,” Rylie said.

  He whipped around to stare at her. “No, we can’t—”

  “We can,” she interrupted. She caught Abram’s hand in both of hers. “The faster we find him, the better. I can’t let him…” Rylie swallowed hard without finishing the sentence.

  She had already lost Seth. She wasn’t going to lose Abel, too.

  “I know what you mean,” he said softly, quietly enough that Neuma might not be able to hear, “but these things never come without consequences.”

  Neuma rose from the throne, dusting herself off even though her black dress was unsullied. “No charge,” she said. Apparently her hearing was pretty good. “Consider it a…favor.”

  The way she smiled wasn’t reassuring at all, but the deal was already done.

  Neuma left to collect her fiends.

  Five

  Neuma came to the surface riding on top of a giant cage, leather straps gripped tightly in her fists like reins controlling a particularly feisty horse.

  The cage crawled up the crystal bridge on wheels with thick rubber treads, like the kind that Rylie had seen on a thousand lifted pickups. But the cage itself was straight out of a medieval nightmare. Thick iron bands had been bolted together, leaving tiny gaps through which Rylie could glimpse shifting bodies and leathery skin. The corners were spiked with wicked metal thorns.

  Its front end rippled as it passed through the fissure. The smell of fiends struck Rylie a moment later: blood, feces, rotten meat. They’d been in the cage long enough to soil themselves. But the sickness was older than that; the fiends carried it on them as surely as the musk of their skin, as though squalor was simply part of them.

  The news of Rylie’s deal had spread fast in Northgate. Everyone that wasn’t searching the town for clues had come out to watch Neuma’s arrival. There were some humans, some werewolves, all of them looking worried.

  Rylie herself stood on the lawn ringed by armed Scions. She had thought that they almost looked intimidating with their old hunting rifles and Tasers until she saw them beside this cage, this infernal device carrying the scent of death within it.

  Neuma let out a groan as she passed through the fissure, arms trembling from gripping the reins so hard. Bain Marshall’s upthrust hand seemed to be aiming down at her.

  “Made it,” she said, casting a wink down at Rylie—or, at least, in her general direction. It was probably intended for Abram, who was standing behind Rylie’s back.

  Rylie felt a hand slip into hers and squeezed it hard enough that she probably would have broken human bones. But Summer gripped her just as tightly. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Summer asked softly. She had been working out a game plan with the Scions at St. Philomene’s, but even she hadn’t been able to resist the urge to watch Neuma bring a small army of fiends into Northgate.

  No, Rylie really wasn’t sure this was a good idea at all. Every breeze that carried the scent of the fiends to her made her more and more convinced that there was nothing good about unleashing demons on the Earth, no matter how much Neuma claimed that they were under her control.

  She needed someone to talk sense into her, help her see the unemotional reality of it. Was the risk worth Abel’s safety? Seth would have known, and Abel, too. They would have both had extremely vocal opinions about it.

  If Rylie shut her eyes and concentrated, she could imagine what Seth would say. Don’t do it. We can handle this alone. Comforting, reassuring, positive. But if it were Rylie missing with Abel in charge, she knew that he would use the demons. He would dump all of Hell onto Earth if that were what it took to recover Rylie. The conflicted voices echoed in her skull.

  She squeezed Summer’s hand even tighter. The gold-banded engagement ring dug into Rylie’s fingers.

  “What would you do for Nash?” Rylie whispered under the whine of wheels.

  “Anything,” she whispered back. “But I’d do it myself.”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe Rylie should send them back.

  But before she could say anything, the cage ground to a halt. Neuma unraveled her arms from the leather straps and swung to the ground. She turned to address all of the former slaves that had gathered, light catching on the bone clips that held her hair back from her face. “The werewolf pack’s Alpha has gotten himself taken,” Neuma called out. “Your problems are our problems. So long as me’n the Godslayer are in charge of Hell, we’ve got your back. We’ll bring the Alpha back. We’ll protect Northgate.”

  The implications of that promise were unspoken—the fact that they might need to return the favor sooner or later.

  Rylie looked at all the faces of the Scions and the other men and women that were trying to make their lives in Northgate, and she felt a stirring of guilt. She was Alpha. Her promises were promises made for a lot of lives. Could she really ask all of these people to be ready to march into a fight again?

  “Neuma, wait,” Rylie said, releasing Summer’s hand to step forward.

  The succubus had already seized the handle of the cage and hauled the door open.

  The fiends stepped tentatively into the snowy night. They looked as ugly as they smelled—squat little gargoyles covered in fresh brands with bulging eyes and virtually nonexistent noses. Their heads looked like leathery skulls.

  Neuma cooed as she stroked her hand over the nearest of them. “It’s not so bad, babies.”

  “Babies?” Summer pulled a face as a fiend limped up to her, sniffing at her feet.

  “What do we do now?” Rylie asked Neuma.

  “Did you bring what I told you to?”

  Rylie extracted one of Abel’s shirts from her pocket. Before she could offer it to Neuma, the fiend at her feet snatched it from her hands, only to have another fiend take it instantly. The demons scrabbled over the shirt, pushing at each other, snorting, huffing the scent of it.

  The instant that each of them smelled the shirt, they broke into a run.

  Rylie stepped back against Abram’s chest, unable to suppress the disgust within her as the demons fought over Abel’s property. It was what he had been wearing the night before he was taken. She remembered how soft the cloth had been against her cheek with the hardness of his muscles underneath, and how comforting it had been to savor his odors. And now the demons were sharing in those smells too. It felt like a huge violation of privacy.

  Abram dropped his hands to her shoulders. The tension at her back said that he didn’t approve of Rylie’s choice, either, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Look at ‘em go,” Neuma said almost fondly, with her hands propped on her hips. “Eager little fuckers. I shoulda gotten me some of these sooner. Way better’n puppies.”

  Rylie’s mother had bred dogs. She had spent a lot of time playing with puppies as a kid. The fiends were definitely not better than puppies.

  But they were soon gone, leaving nothing but their wretched s
tink and trampled grass.

  “What good does it do for them to have Abel’s smell if it’s been wiped clean?” Rylie asked as Neuma scooped the scraps of Abel’s shirt off of the ground.

  “They weren’t snuffing up his BO, Goldilocks,” Neuma said. “They were drinking up his energy. Nothing can hide that shit. If your boy’s alive or dead on this Earth, they’ll find him. Trust me.”

  Neuma offered the shirt to Rylie. She didn’t reach out to take it.

  The crowd parted to let a man through—Josaiah, the witch in charge of the Scions.

  “Ma’am,” he said to Rylie. When he noticed Neuma, he gave a half-bow to her and said again, even more respectfully, “Ma’am.”

  “What is it?”

  “We found something,” Josaiah said.

  The house looked like any of a thousand others that had been left standing empty since Northgate’s evacuation. It had been built in the eighties in response to a mining boom, and the layout was indistinguishable from every other house Rylie had been in. There was a small living room, a kitchen with an attached dining room, and a short hallway that led to three bedrooms and one-point-five bathrooms.

  The inhabitants of this particular home had been hunters. There were antlers in the living room, a stuffed wildcat head in the kitchen. Everything reeked of mothballs.

  Neuma stuck her face close to the wildcat’s. “Nice,” she said, sticking a finger in its mouth to stroke the canines.

  “Don’t touch that,” Abram said.

  “Who’s gonna care? Nobody lives here no more.”

  “It belonged to someone once,” he said. “Show some respect.”

  Neuma rolled her eyes. “Stop the party, Mr. Fun, I wanna get off.” But she pulled her hand out anyway.

  Josaiah led them into the master bedroom. The bed was stripped. The screen of the TV on the dresser was cracked.

  “We almost didn’t find this,” Josaiah said, pushing open the closet doors. “If it hadn’t been for Crystal’s nose, we wouldn’t have.”