by Reine, SM
They released him simultaneously.
This time, when they ran, Elise let them go.
She wanted their beating hearts, their flowing blood, but some dim part of her knew that this would have to be enough—this corpse at her feet.
Elise fell upon him in the snow at the heart of a dead city. She drank.
It was the best blood that she had ever tasted. It filled her with a heady warmth and the rush of fluid from her hair to the tips of her fingers. It drove away the cold. It shielded her from the light and cloaked her in utter darkness, in which she had no thoughts, no mind, no body.
She realized too late that something was wrong with this blood. As good as it tasted, it was sitting badly in her gut. The back of her throat burned.
Elise wanted to pull away and vomit the blood onto the snow. Reject it before it hurt her.
But she couldn’t tear herself away.
Her throat worked, swallowing bigger and bigger mouthfuls. The desert was as bright as it was hot. She tasted iron on her tongue.
It filled her. It burned her.
Elise wasn’t consuming—she was consumed.
Eight
The angels placed the gate that they recovered within one of Shamain’s underground caverns, which were naturally illuminated by the crystals’ glow without a hint of shadow. Normally, Nash wouldn’t have been so paranoid about trying to keep something out of the darkness in Heaven, but he was unprepared to trust the city’s natural defenses after what had happened to Leliel.
“Where do you think it leads?” Uriel asked once the gate was settled into place.
Nash traced a hand up the markings on the right side. They were warm underneath his palm, almost alive, as though he were stroking the flank of an ancient beast. “I don’t know. Wherever it goes, it can’t be good.”
Uriel’s eyes were hungry. “Let’s find out.”
He extended a hand toward the second pillar of the gate. It took two angels to open such a door; with Uriel determined to trigger it, it would instantly awaken at their combined touch.
Nash jerked back before that could happen.
He couldn’t shake the Union’s warnings, absurd as they sounded. This was an ethereal artifact, part of the city’s heritage, a native to Heaven. But dread filled him at the sight of it. He didn’t trust the gateway. He didn’t trust the demons not to have found some way to interfere with it.
“Nobody opens this,” Nash said. “Nobody touches it. Once I’m gone, nobody even enters the cave.”
Uriel couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from the gate. “Don’t you want to know?”
“No,” he said. It was a lie. The fact that Nash did want to know so desperately was worrying.
They exited the chamber together. Nash positioned two other angels at the only mouth of the cave—angels that hadn’t touched the gate yet and didn’t feel the overpowering urge to open it.
Uriel was reluctant to leave. Nash stood by the mouth of the cavern until he was gone.
“You’re authorized to disable anyone who tries to come into this cave,” Nash said.
The angel on the right, Ezekiel, looked surprised by the command. Perhaps not the command itself, but the authority with which Nash had issued it. He surprised himself with that, too. It shouldn’t have been so easy to step back into his old role as a warrior and leader, not after so many millennia being considered a traitor.
But Nash hadn’t become a successful businessman in the Haven by being meek. If there was anything he did well, it was arrogance.
“As you order,” agreed Ezekiel.
Leliel’s condition hadn’t improved. She looked more and more like a statue than a living angel as the hours passed, and the pale light filtering through her curtains sapped away what little color remained in her features.
But the visitors in her room had changed. The men that had been guarding her were outside on the manor property. Michael was nowhere in sight. And almost a dozen angels were hovering over her bed, whispering urgently among themselves.
Nash stood in her doorway for a long time without announcing himself, watching the conversation unfold. He recognized many of these faces. Raphael and Raqib had long been friends of Leliel’s. On the other hand, Yemiel was more of a lackey. Always quick to execute the smallest of Leliel’s whims. He was sure that he knew the others, too, but had let them slip from memory either because they were insignificant during the First War, or because they hadn’t lived in Shamain in centuries.
“What is this?” Nash finally asked.
A dozen heads swiveled to face him.
“Nashriel,” Azrael said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
That wasn’t an answer to his question. He stepped inside, letting his wings stretch behind him. “Answer me. And don’t tell me that you’re mourning a woman who isn’t dead.”
“Not mourning.” Raphael had a white-knuckled grip on the saber at his belt. He was short for an angel, barely six feet, but with enough muscle in his shoulders to make up for it. He had obviously come from Earth recently; he wore a black sweater, distressed jeans, driving moccasins. “We’re trying to decide what to do in case a need for mourning arises.”
“Do about what?”
“Raphael,” Azrael said sharply when the other angel opened his mouth to respond.
Raphael didn’t look chagrined. He tossed his head, throwing the blond hair out of his face with a defiant glare. “Nash should know.”
“Know what?” Nash asked, carefully enunciating each word. He didn’t like having things kept from him. He didn’t like hints and secrets. And his patience was quickly wearing thin.
“Leliel was trying to bargain with Belphegor,” Raphael said. The declaration was punctuated by uncomfortable mumbling from the angels. Wings shifted, feathers rustled.
Nash frowned. “Yes. I know.”
“You…know?”
“Yes. I also know that it was Belphegor’s demon that did this to her.”
Raphael and Azrael exchanged looks. “Damnation below,” Azrael murmured.
“What do you all know of this? Did Leliel tell you her plans?”
“We were going to help her,” Yemiel said. He was sitting at the head of the bed, one hand on Leliel’s.
“What was she bargaining?” Nash asked.
“The Palace of Dis. She offered to take her men—us—down to the netherworlds in order to seize the Palace from the terrorists who unrightfully conquered it. In exchange, she expected Belphegor to cease his troop movements toward the Heaven gates and retain control of the broken fissure.”
Leliel had been trying to give the City of Dis to Belphegor, sacrificing humans for her safety.
“That ‘terrorist’ is our ally,” Nash said.
Azrael sneered. “The Godslayer is a plague.”
That was true, too. One day, perhaps at the end of all days, Nash knew something would need to be done about the woman that had slain Adam. It was too much power for one demon to possess. But this day, they were working on the same side—the side that served to protect the werewolf pack. Leliel had gone behind Nash’s back to destroy that.
He drew his saber.
The room fell chillingly silent. He could just barely make out the rasp of Leliel’s shallow breaths.
“Leliel’s machinations amount to treason,” Nash said. It was easy to remain calm; it felt like his heart had turned to ice. “Collusion with Belphegor is heinous.”
“How is it worse than collusion with the Godslayer?” Azrael asked.
Because collusion with Elise was helping to keep Summer’s home safe.
“The Godslayer has no interest in invading Heaven,” Nash said levelly. “She only wants to restore Earth. Like what she’s done or not, fear or love her—I don’t care. We won’t keep Shamain safe by appeasing those who want to crush us. We will keep it by appealing to powers who feel no more than benign disdain for our breed.” He swung his blade toward the bed and pointed to the unconscious woman. “Leliel will answer to
the coalition when she awakens. For now, you will all swear to help me fix this grievous error. If we act quickly, we may be able to save Shamain yet.”
“Perhaps we wouldn’t need to save Shamain if you hadn’t helped the Godslayer,” Azrael said.
Nash shoved the point of his sword into Azrael’s open mouth.
The other angel’s eyes widened.
He could tell what everyone was thinking by their stricken expressions. This was not civilized or appropriate. He had let emotion seize him. Crazed by fascination, they would say. But they also wouldn’t have the balls to stop him.
Nash used the point of the sword to force Azrael to his knees.
Could an angel’s blade kill another angel? Would angelfire burn him? They had never had the opportunity to find out before.
“Swear that you will obey me,” Nash said.
“I will,” Yemiel said instantly, though he wasn’t the one being threatened to eat mage-crafted steel.
The others murmured. One by one, their wings rustled as they kneeled. But Azrael only stared at Nash with hate in his eyes.
Finally, Azrael nodded.
It was a lie. This angel’s grudge would hold strong, and he would stand by Leliel if and when she woke. But for the moment, he nodded. That meant Nash had an excuse not to kill him.
He withdrew his blade and allowed Azrael to stand.
Nash was sweating.
“There may still be a demon in Shamain,” he said. “There is a weakness in our walls, and we must find it if we want to save ourselves. We search now. We don’t stop searching until the demon is dead and all of the holes are closed.”
“As you order,” Raphael said, and he bowed.
It had been a long time since any angel bowed to Nash like that, and it gave him unpleasant memories of the First War, passing on Adam’s orders.
But Nash worked under no orders but his own now, and he knew that his intimidation wouldn’t work for long.
“Go,” Nash said, “and be quick.”
“What will you do?” Raphael asked.
Nash spread his wings. “I’m going to retrieve backup.”
“I have to scratch my nose,” Summer said.
“Don’t,” Abram said.
“I’m going to do it. You can’t stop me.”
He smacked his paintbrush down on his tray. This was the first time he’d had good light in months—natural light from the midday sun breaking through the smoky clouds—and Summer couldn’t sit still for one freaking hour so that he could work on her portrait.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Scratch your damn nose.”
Summer was sitting on a stool by the window, just a few feet in front of Abram. She scrubbed wildly at her face as soon as he gave her permission, crinkling her nose, twisting her mouth around, eyes scrunching. “Oh man,” she sighed. “This is torture. As soon as I need to sit still, everything itches and aches. Can’t you just take a picture of me?”
How many times did Abram have to explain this? “Colors and light are already flattened in a photograph. Too much information is lost. I need you, the subject, to be able to render a lifelike painting.”
“As if you haven’t seen me every day of your stupid life,” Summer said. “Work from memory.”
Abram wiped his hands clean on a rag, stepping away from the easel. Painting had been his passion ever since he had first started finger-painting with Gran’s food coloring, but there had been little time for it since building the sanctuary. There was always real work to do—repairs and cooking and maintenance, all the little chores that a werewolf pack required to run smoothly—not to mention heading the homecoming committee. Going weeks without painting made him feel his heart had been carved from his chest.
This was his first foray back into portraiture. He had taken paints from the abandoned craft store and made his own canvas for it. He had painted Summer a hundred times before, so it should have been easy. Just a warm-up.
But it was ridiculously hard to get back into the art of it, and not just because his sister wouldn’t hold still.
“Fine,” he said, heavy with exhaustion. “Go find something else to do. I’ll paint Sir Lumpy.” The fat cat was unconscious on a pile of white blankets in the corner that Abram had been pinning up as makeshift backdrops. When Sir Lumpy slept, he was basically dead. He wouldn’t go anywhere for hours.
“I would love a painting of him,” Summer said. “Something that captures his noble stature.”
“Uh huh.”
She smiled sympathetically as she hopped off the stool. “I know you’re having a tough time.” She straightened the hem of his shirt, wiped a smear of paint off of his chin. “Let me stretch my legs and I’ll get back to playing statue for you.”
“I’m sure you’ve got other things you’d rather do.”
“Sure,” Summer said, “but nothing as important as this.” She leaned around him to look at the canvas. Abram hated people looking at his works in progress, but he could make an exception for his twin sister. “My lips aren’t that big.”
“When’s the last time you looked in a mirror?”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “The only mirror I need is within Nash’s eyes.”
“Get back on the stool before I slaughter you for your pelt.”
“I prefer her skin intact, thank you,” Nash said, striding into the room without knocking. He had his wings out. He usually tucked those away before going inside any of the cottages. “Wasn’t this Seth’s room?”
“I think Seth would like having his bedroom repurposed as a studio,” Summer said as she melted against her fiancé, like it was so hard to keep a couple of inches between them when they were in the same room. Abram rolled his eyes. “I thought you weren’t coming back until New Year’s—not that I’m complaining. Do you need something?”
“I always need you,” Nash said, stroking his fingers down the side of Summer’s throat. “Today, I need to ask you to do something dangerous.”
“All you have to do is ask,” Summer said with a note of teasing to her voice.
A smile tugged at the corner of Nash’s mouth. It was the kind of suggestive smile that Abram would have really preferred not to see any man make at his sister, much less an angel. “A demon entered Shamain and attacked Leliel. We can’t find her.”
“You want me to sniff it out?”
“No, we need to inspect the fissures connecting Shamain to Earth. She might have used one to escape.”
“And you need help with that,” Abram said flatly.
“Just like in the Haven, only non-angels can pass through the fissures from Shamain to Earth. It’s a safety precaution to allow humans to escape if they accidentally find themselves in Heaven. But it’s been centuries since angels were permitted to traverse the junctures; I don’t know where they let out, so I can’t search for demons on the other side alone.”
“You need me to escort you through a hole between Heaven and Earth to find a killer demon,” Summer said.
Abram shook his head. “Not happening.”
“Shut your face, bro. I didn’t ask you.” She looped her arm through Nash’s. “You know that I’ll do whatever you need.”
“What about the pack?” Abram asked, trying not to let the climbing worry he felt into his voice.
Rylie had already left. Were the Gresham women allergic to responsibility?
His sister only grinned. “You’ve got everything here covered, right?”
And then she and Nash vanished.
Abram glared at the place they had been standing. Good thing he had already set down his paintbrush—his fists were clenched so hard that he would have probably snapped it otherwise.
The door opened behind him. Trevin shoved his head in.
“Where’d Summer go?” Trevin asked. “Wasn’t she with you?”
Abram dropped his brushes in a cup of turpentine. “She’s indisposed. What do you need?”
“Well, I guess I need you. We’ve got trouble. Like, demons out
side the wards trouble.”
Shit. Summer and Rylie had great timing.
Abram toweled his hands dry. Grabbed his gun, jammed it in his belt, and then pulled a jacket over it.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”
It wasn’t like he had any other choice.
Trevin didn’t move through the forest like a human did. He easily slipped through dense foliage where no paths existed, walking almost on top of the snow. Abram had practiced running with wolves a lot—ever since he and Summer had been children—but he was still trudging slowly in comparison, huffing with exertion, legs going cold from the knees down.
It was obvious Trevin was impatient with Abram’s speed. He kept darting ahead, leaving Abram to follow his footsteps, and then would return a few minutes later with a look of barely controlled annoyance.
Abram didn’t blame him. He felt just as irritated.
It should have been Rylie here, not him.
They finally reached the fence marking the edge of the wards. The men vaulted over them.
“Down there,” Trevin whispered.
He didn’t need to say anything. Abram could already feel something nearby—some kind of powerful demonic energy that sickened him, leaving him dizzy.
Abram leaned around the tree, allowing most of his body to remain sheltered in the shadows behind it.
Far below, there was a camp. It was the only word he could think to use for it. There were no tents or sleeping bags or campfires, but someone had arranged tree branches against the trunks of a few pines, forming a narrow shelter. The snow had been stamped flat by frequent foot traffic. Smoke curled into the air from the gap between two branches.
“What is it?” Abram asked.
Trevin waved a hand in front of his nose, as if wafting a scent to himself. “It’s not human. It’s sulfur and this other smell, this kind of—like Crystal’s hair dryer in the morning.”
Burning hair, metal, brimstone. A demon smell.
This wasn’t his forte. Not at all. He had grown up without ever having to fight to survive, and he didn’t even know where to begin planning a fight against a demon.