Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series)

by Reine, SM

  “This unit has been assigned to help the werewolf pack protect the Bain Marshall gateway, as well as equip and train the local population.”

  “Before the fissure shifted priority, the OPA was trying to register all preternaturals and exterminate werewolves. ‘Equip and train’ crap doesn’t seem consistent with your previous policies.”

  “Like it or not—and a lot of us don’t—those policies were trying to prevent an incident like the Breaking. We failed. Things have changed. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing our allies. We also wouldn’t have the manpower to take Northgate from the werewolf pack even if we wanted to.” Yasir folded his arms. “When I heard the OPA secretary was planning to intervene here, I spoke on behalf of the pack and asked to keep it under Rylie’s control. If you turn me away, I’ll go, but I can’t promise that the next unit they send will be as helpful.”

  And if Abram said no, then the helicopter with its impossibly bright spotlight would stop looking for Clotho. They would be alone against whatever was to come.

  Abram could only guess at what his parents would say to the offer. Rylie wasn’t there and she had left Abram in charge. That meant he had to use his best judgment, not guesses.

  If she didn’t like it…well, she shouldn’t have gone running off and left the pack without an Alpha.

  “We can use all the help we can get,” Abram said, offering a hand to Yasir. “Thank you…sir.”

  They shook.

  Nine

  Elise was standing outside the Crane Hotel again, but she wasn’t sure how she had gotten there. She didn’t remember finishing with the basandere’s body and leaving him.

  She turned to look behind her. There were footsteps in the snow, so she knew that she must have walked. Strange, since it was easily dark enough for her to phase. Her footsteps were surrounded by dots of darker snow. She was…dripping.

  Elise checked her jacket, the pistol at the small of her back. Everything was intact, even though her breakfast had left her a mess and her head was throbbing like a motherfucker.

  She was going to have to feed again, and soon—but first things first.

  Elise phased up the elevator shaft to Rylie’s hotel room. It was quiet inside and the wards were intact. She rapped her knuckle against the door. “I’m coming in.”

  If Rylie responded, she didn’t hear it.

  Pressing her hands to the doorframe, Elise drew the runes toward her again, urging them to crawl up her fingers and slide under the wrists of her sleeves. Her stomach lurched at the touch of magic. Elise steeled herself and kept tugging, unraveling the latticework of wards that had protected the walls, the vents, the windows, the crack underneath the door. The sound of rushing blood filled her head.

  She couldn’t take all the magic. It was too much.

  Wrenching her hands away, she stepped back from the door. Some of the runes were still swirling over the walls. The rest were on her arms underneath her jacket.

  “Shit,” she said, wiping a gloved hand over her forehead. Fuck it—she was going to have to leave the rest of them behind.

  Elise entered. Rylie was sitting in bed, back against the headboard, curtains open so that she could squint at a book she tilted toward the faint light from outside.

  “You’re later than I expected,” Rylie said. Then she actually looked up. She dropped the book and spilled the pillows to the floor as she stood. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “You’re covered in blood!”

  Elise looked down at herself. It looked bad, but not nearly as terrible as she felt. A sour taste climbed the back of her throat. “I took care of the demons that were following us,” Elise said, shrugging it off. “They’re gone and I’m fine.”

  That answer seemed to relax Rylie a fraction. “You could have let me help you.”

  Not unless she wanted Elise to turn on her in crazed hunger, too.

  “Thanks,” Elise said. “Maybe next time.”

  She went into the bathroom and tried the tap. The water wasn’t working. She stripped off her jacket and scrubbed at the worst of the blood on the collar with a dry hand towel.

  Rylie stood in the bathroom doorway to watch. “Why were those things following us?”

  “They said they were with Belphegor. He must have had them follow us from Northgate.”

  “Assassins?”

  Assassins didn’t raid convenience stores for Twinkies and attack with brass knuckles—not against a creature like Elise. But she nodded. “Something like that. Did anything happen here?”

  “No, it was quiet all day.” Rylie was hugging the book she had been reading to her chest. It looked more like a slender leather journal with loose binding that was stuffed with too many pages.

  That was Elise’s book. A librarian in the Palace of Dis named Onoskelis had given it to her. “You got into my box,” Elise said. Not accusing, not yet. Just giving Rylie a chance to explain.

  Her cheeks reddened. “It fell open when you threw the saddlebags on the bed. Is it okay if I read it?”

  “Guess it is now. Getting anything out of it?”

  “Not the book itself, no,” Rylie said. “It’s all written in the demon language, isn’t it? I can’t make heads or tails of it. But your translation notes are interesting.”

  “How much have you read?” Elise pulled her bodice off to examine it. The front was drenched with basandere blood. Not going to be recoverable. She tossed it in the trash.

  “Just your stuff about the map. It’s dense reading.”

  No kidding. Onoskelis had given Elise an old diagram of the city—as in, millennia old—and the accompanying notes could have been used as sleeping pills. “I hope you get more out of it than I have. I’ve spent days translating it and still barely understand what I’m working on.” Scholarly analysis had always been James’s strong suit, not Elise’s.

  She returned to the saddlebags and donned a fresh shirt. Just pulling it over her head hurt. The entire back of her skull felt like a massive bruise, and she wasn’t healing where she had been struck by the basandere’s chain.

  Rylie hung back as Elise dressed, toying with the spine of the book. “I haven’t seen much of Hell,” she said slowly, “but I never would have expected there to be freshwater springs there.”

  Elise jerked the hem of the shirt down to cover her abs. “That’s because there aren’t any.”

  “The map—”

  “There is no fresh water in Hell,” Elise said again. “Dis is a desert. The only fluid there is liquid magma.” That was the strangest part of the book that Onoskelis had given her. The map claimed that the city had been built on top of a source of water.

  “So it’s all fake,” Rylie said.

  Elise plucked the book out of her hands. “That’s what it looks like, yeah. If one part has been made up, then there’s no reason to believe that any of that supposed ancient history could be true.” She tossed it back into her box, closed the lid, and shoved everything into the saddlebags again. Rylie’s belongings were already in there. It didn’t seem that she had ever bothered to unpack.

  “Why bother translating something if it’s fake?”

  “Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it has no message,” Elise said. She just needed to figure out what the fuck Onoskelis was trying to tell her. She had brought the book with her in the hopes that she could work on it on the road, but that didn’t seem likely now. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Rylie pulled on her sweater and hurried to follow Elise out the door. It felt strange and wrong to leave the rest of the warding runes behind, but Elise didn’t dare attempt to gather them. “Where are we going? Did you already cast another one of those red light things?”

  “We’re going to Colorado,” Elise said. “Belphegor’s assassins were trying to push us in that direction. I want to find out why.”

  “Wait, Belphegor’s in Colorado? But we’re not looking for Belphegor, we’re—”
/>   “James is probably in Colorado too,” Elise interrupted. “That’s where his original coven came from. The locator spells guiding us west corroborate that.”

  Rylie paled. “You don’t think that James is working with Belphegor, do you?”

  The thought had crossed Elise’s mind. It wouldn’t be the first time that James had made unsavory alliances to get what he wanted. “We’ll find out in Boulder.”

  When she moved to step down the stairs, Rylie stopped her with a hand on her elbow. Her golden eyes were filled with worry. “What’s wrong, Elise? You don’t look good, and I don’t just mean the blood.”

  Her concern was so genuine. It suffused her neurons and the muscles of her face and her posture. Elise felt her intestines coil in on themselves when Rylie looked like that. She owed this werewolf and her family a deep debt—the kind of debt that should have left a grudge, made Rylie hate her. Yet she didn’t. She only cared that Elise was looking weak.

  “I think it’s the hunger,” Elise said, surprising herself with her honesty. “Something’s wrong with me, and I can’t seem to feed enough to make myself stop starving.”

  “Do you need to go home?”

  They were still days behind James and Abel, and Rylie was offering to delay the search. “I don’t think that would help,” Elise said, “but thank you.” And she meant it.

  Rylie gave her a tremulous smile. “Well, then let’s go to Boulder.”

  Sophie Pinkett was almost done building a gateway to Heaven, and she felt pretty good about it.

  She stood back with her hands on her hips to study the product of her hard labor. It was a beautiful piece of stonework. It had two columns of equal height and width approximately eight feet apart and twelve feet tall; connecting them was an archway of stone that was still braced by wooden scaffolding until she placed the capstone that would complete it.

  All those puzzles she had put together with her five-year-old granddaughter had finally turned into a useful skill. But this was a thousand times more interesting than a twelve-piece picture of Dora.

  The gate stood in an empty clearing surrounded by trees, looking kind of like a weird Christmas decoration among all the snow. Like Sophie should have built a manger out of the remaining scrap wood next, propped up some figures of the Magi, dragged in a few sheep. Considering that it would soon open to Heaven, she suspected that the decorations would be received as slightly tacky.

  “Where’s the capstone?” Jorge asked, coming up to stand beside her. He was layered in a sweater and jacket and thermal underwear. Not a cold weather guy.

  “Here.” Sophie pulled the capstone out of her pocket. It looked awfully mundane, considering its importance. It was the size of her clenched fist and came to a gradual point at the bottom. Sort of a pizza-shaped wedge of stone.

  There was a symbol carved faintly into one of the flat sides, barely a millimeter deep. Jorge rubbed his thumb over it as he took it from her.

  “Can we put it in now?” he asked.

  “Not until James gets back.” She made herself speak with confidence so that Jorge wouldn’t hear the doubt she felt. It was “when” James came back, not “if” he came back. Even though he hadn’t been seen since the Breaking, she had to believe that he had survived.

  “But it’s otherwise done, right?”

  “It’s done,” Sophie confirmed.

  Another man spoke. “Excellent work, Sophie.”

  James Faulkner had appeared in the clearing, as if summoned by Sophie’s doubts. There were no footsteps leading up to where he stood, but that didn’t mean anything—he had a way of appearing and disappearing without disturbing his surroundings. He had a real flair for the theatrical; he knew exactly how much those kinds of strange behaviors added to his mystique.

  He wore all white today: white slacks, white cable knit sweater, white scarf. The white was only broken by his black leather gloves and black loafers.

  “Thank you, James,” Sophie said. She couldn’t bring herself to call him “sir.” She had babysat for him when she was in high school and still struggling to cast candlelight magic. He might be high priest, but he would never be an authority figure. “Now that you’re here, do you want me to place the capstone…?”

  “In a moment.” The edge of his shoulder distorted. Blurred.

  The tension in Sophie’s body eased a fraction.

  He wasn’t really there—he was just projecting his image in the clearing. Jorge had jokingly called it “lazy witch telecommuting.” James had been doing it constantly, to the point where Sophie never knew whether to expect him to make a real appearance or one that was remote.

  James could have been anywhere at the moment. He could have been in Tijuana, for all Sophie knew. But judging by the fact he was in winter wear, she thought he must have been close. Watching, waiting, but hidden.

  “We’re thinking of having a bonfire tonight,” Jorge said. “You know, to celebrate the upcoming solstice. It’s a little preemptive, but since we don’t know where we’ll be for Yule this year… Could be fun, right? You want to come, sir?”

  The corners of James’s eyes crinkled. “We’ll see. That sounds fun. My parents’ house has a fully stocked liquor cabinet; you should take advantage of it.”

  “Don’t have to twist my arm,” Jorge said.

  Sophie bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted to ask when they could put the capstone in. When the gate would be done. When the trap would be prepared. Not whether James had any interest in dancing around a fire with them.

  James drifted toward the gate, running his hand through the air near its leg. He shivered at the near-contact.

  “Vivienne already volunteered to sit out of the fun and guard the clearing tonight,” Jorge said helpfully.

  “Considerate of her.”

  The high priest pushed his hand through the gate’s west-facing column. Magic crackled. The whiteness of the stone brightened against the snow, washing everything around it out to a shade of gray.

  It was bright enough to make Sophie’s brain ache. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Place the capstone,” James said. White energy was sparking between his wrist and shoulder. How could he sound so calm? “Do it now.”

  He wanted her to walk up to that thing when it was glowing? Oh, for the love of Adam.

  “I can do it,” Jorge offered.

  Sophie squared her shoulders. This was her puzzle. Her pride. “Thank you, but I’ll take care of it.”

  The air grew thick as she approached the gate, footsteps crunching in the hard-packed snow. The capstone was suddenly heavy. She cupped it in both hands and trudged toward the light.

  She set the capstone on the first level of the scaffold before climbing up after it.

  Looking down at James, she could see how he was barely there. His arm had disappeared below the elbow, though the energy was still dancing between him and the gate. He gazed up at her with white eyes.

  Sophie took a few embarrassingly long minutes of struggle to reach the top of the gate. Her old bones groaned at the effort.

  “I’m doing it now,” she called down.

  James nodded as if to encourage her.

  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut and jammed the capstone into place. It wasn’t difficult. It fit perfectly.

  She didn’t dare move. She was frozen, gripping the scaffold in both hands now that they were empty, wondering if the wood was suddenly swaying under her feet. She feared that the complete gate would push her over somehow.

  Or suck her in.

  “Sophie?” Jorge said.

  She opened one eye. The gate wasn’t glowing anymore.

  James was gone and Jorge was standing at the bottom of the scaffold, hands uplifted to help her down. Sophie was grateful for the help. He caught her around the waist as she dropped, lowering her gently to the snow.

  Then they stepped back to look at what they had done.

  It was a gate to Heaven—months of effort finally come to fruition. Somehow it looke
d much more intimidating now that it was complete, even though all of the energy had disappeared. It was, as far as she could tell, sleeping.

  Sophie eyed the spot where James had been standing. There were no fresh footprints there. “I wish he wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’ll take the scaffold down,” Jorge said, jerking his chin at the pile of scrap wood and cans of spray paint. “I bet you’re cold. You should go home.”

  She rubbed her hands together. “You’re right. I think I will. You don’t mind handling the teardown?”

  “Not at all. Go on.” He nudged her.

  Sophie glanced over her shoulder at the gate one more time before walking away. Everything was so white. The snow, the stone.

  She wondered if Eden was so pale.

  As she walked away, Sophie pushed down the neck of her jacket, scratched at the fresh tattoo on her shoulder. The skin surrounding it was red and rashy. She wasn’t taking the red ink well at all—or maybe it was the magic within the drawing that chafed.

  The sound of Jorge disassembling the scaffolding followed her up the trail toward the coven’s houses. She waited until those noises faded away before drawing her phone.

  She speed-dialed the first number.

  Nobody answered the call. It just stopped ringing and went silent.

  “It’s done,” Sophie said. Her mouth felt so dry. She swallowed hard. “The trap is done. What do I do now?”

  A woman replied, “Let them spring it.”

  Now that she knew where they were going, Rylie refused to stop for the day. “It doesn’t matter if I travel alone, does it?” she argued as Elise repositioned the saddlebags on the motorcycle. They had stopped again a few hundred miles west of the Crane Hotel. It was getting colder as they passed the plains and approached the first mountain ranges. “You can just disappear somewhere dark for the day and reappear wherever I am at nightfall. You have tracking spells. You can find me.”

  “You can drive the motorcycle alone?” Elise asked skeptically, flipping the saddlebag closed.