Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series)

by Reine, SM

  He had been staring at the rune underneath the snow without moving for too long and lost track of his mental math. James refocused, attempting to rearrange and assemble every symbol he needed in the correct order. The illustration of the sphere goes near the northernmost triangle; those lines to the east need to crisscross…

  James scuffed out the incorrect lines. He grabbed the spray paint from the stack of scrap wood and began adding new lines where the old ones had been erased.

  He tried not to think of the smell of Elise’s sweat or the fact that she had called him Adam.

  Fourth quadrant octagon needs to be shifted three degrees to the left.

  He wasn’t Adam. His dreams meant nothing.

  Two parallel lines connecting with the circle…

  James kept spraying until the circle was complete.

  A loud crack drew his attention to the sky. It had been brightening as he worked, but he had ignored it, assuming that the light was only from approaching dawn. Now he stepped back and shielded his eyes from the gray glow.

  It wasn’t sunlight, but gray Heavenly light thrusting into Earth’s atmosphere.

  And there was something coming through that fissure.

  It was impossibly huge, much larger than anything that was meant to be suspended in the sky. It looked like the underside of an earthen sphere.

  He had survived the demon apocalypse of 2009 in Reno. He had seen what happened when ethereal ruins had been pulled from a Heavenly dimension onto Earth. This looked similar—but on a much, much larger scale. Frighteningly so.

  Shamain was tumbling.

  The city shifting changed everything, and the teleportation spell was so specific. He was making estimates based on Shamain being where it had stood for millennia. He could change the symbols, do a new estimate that involved catching the city as it slipped between dimensions. But that would take time.

  If he didn’t go now, he would never get into the city. Lord only knew where the Eden gate would be after that.

  He had no choice. He had to go through now.

  James activated the rune on his body that he had linked to the larger teleportation rune. Light flared between the pillars of the gate.

  It wasn’t like an ethereal door—he couldn’t see what was on the other side and make sure that it was aimed at the right position. He could have misestimated his target. His hurried, sloppy calculations could be wrong. Or the city could have already moved too far for him to reach it.

  But Eden was waiting.

  James covered his head with his arms and leaped through.

  James didn’t land on the roof of the building that he had been aiming for. He appeared in the air six feet to the right and about twenty feet lower than intended.

  On the bright side, he didn’t have much time to build momentum before crashing into the canal below.

  He hit the wall of water with less than a lungful of air.

  The water was as warm as tears, sweet but salty. It pulled him under with gentle hands and sucked him deep into its belly, swirling and rushing and shoving against his limbs, catching on his clothes, soaking his loafers so that they instantly doubled in weight.

  It was comfortable to be submerged in Shamain’s canals. They welcomed James so readily that, for a moment, he forgot that he couldn’t breathe.

  James reached out for the canal’s wall. His fingertips grazed stone worn smooth by millennia of flowing water then slipped away. The water was moving too fast.

  His lungs hitched, desperate for oxygen.

  James’s knee banged into the bottom of the canal. He kicked out with flat feet, connected with the bottom, pushed off. His head broke the surface. Air rolled down his throat with the taste of cinnamon and apples, and then the canal pulled him under again.

  It shoved him onward as he struggled against the weight of his clothes. James kicked off his shoes. His socks were whipped away into the current.

  The falchion on his back felt like an anvil pressed against his spine, dragging him to the bottom.

  He wouldn’t let go of it. That, of all things, needed to stay.

  In bare feet, James kicked against the bottom of the canal again, lurching toward the surface.

  But suddenly, there was no water and no canal.

  James was launched into open air.

  He was falling.

  He sucked in a dizzying rush of oxygen as he reached blindly for something to catch himself. Fingers brushed wet stone. He seized upon it and gripped it so tightly that his knuckles ached. His weight stretched his arm to its full extension, shoulder aching, and water sluiced past him in a frothy white roar to disappear into a black pit underneath him.

  James had caught the edge of a shattered canal where it drained into a sinkhole. That much he could tell. Why the canal would have broken—why there was a sinkhole at all—made no sense.

  His grip slipped, and he grabbed the rim of the canal with the other hand. Grunting, teeth gritted, he hauled himself over the edge of the chasm.

  He rolled onto cracked white cobblestone, dripping water from his hair and clothes.

  It took him a moment to realize that he couldn’t see anything, and it wasn’t because he had knocked his head against something in the canal. Heaven was dark. He had been in ethereal ruins that were thousands of years old and they had still seemed to sparkle with an internal light. This darkness was…impossible.

  Had his calculations gone further awry than he realized? Had he somehow cast himself elsewhere on Earth and missed Heaven entirely?

  But no—there was a growing energy pressing against the base of his skull, lancing all the way down to his navel, and it was distinctly ethereal.

  It felt like the presence of magical wards, but far more overwhelming than anything he had ever cast before. They were pushing at him, telling him that something was wrong.

  James hadn’t encountered magecraft cast by anyone else before. For a moment, he was too shocked by the sheer immensity of the magic to realize what the spells were trying to tell him. They came from everywhere around him, the ground and buildings, even the sky above, circling him like the water in the canals circling the chasm that he had escaped.

  The city was crying.

  He clutched at his forehead, trying to contain the pressure of the magic that clawed at him. It was like a dog jumping on its master after weeks in a kennel. But this magic had been ignored for much longer than that. It was desperate for someone to listen. It was desperate for him.

  “Wait, calm down,” James said aloud, even though he knew that the city, and the raw magic within it, wouldn’t understand his words. “Give me space to breathe. I can’t understand you.”

  The magic didn’t give him space. It pushed harder, frantic for attention.

  He picked through all of the sensory information flooding him, trying to process one image at a time. He could see how ancient ethereal runes had been built into the fiber of the city. They were imprinted on each and every building, threaded underneath the streets, even buried under the forest rimming Shamain. Each rune had its own eyes and they all wanted to share what they saw with him.

  James focused on Eve’s temple. All of its wards had been shattered. It was the source of the invasion.

  “Invasion?” James repeated aloud. The word had simply appeared in his mind.

  Another picture appeared. Not a word this time, but a tall, slender demon wearing a jacket buttoned up to his throat.

  The glimpse struck fear deep into James’s heart.

  Belphegor.

  James hadn’t prepared to find Shamain under infernal assault. Especially not from a demon like Belphegor.

  “Why tell me?” James asked. “I just got here.”

  It was too complicated a question for him to get a response, but he didn’t need an answer anyway. The wards were alerting him to the intrusion because he was the only one who could hear. Angels couldn’t cast magic anymore. They were so distant from their roots that Shamain could have been crying for years a
nd nobody would have known.

  Information continued pouring through him. Instructions, to be precise.

  James could activate the wards, isolate the entire district surrounding the temple, sever it from Shamain. Cut off the source of the poison—in this case, Belphegor.

  All he needed to do was ask.

  The ground pitched under him, tipping until he slid an inch toward the chasm. James dug his feet in.

  Through the towering buildings and swaying trees, he could see that the color of the sky was changing. It had gone from inky-dark to a paler shade of midnight blue. A cloud blew past too quickly. And then a plume of smoke.

  He realized with a lurch of nausea that the city was still falling.

  Cut off the poison, the city urged. Save us.

  James planted his gloved hands against the ground. The wards rose to meet him. Ropes of pale magic crawled from the gaps between the stones, wrapping around his wrists in silvery tentacles that were warm and slick as umbilical cords.

  “Do what you need to do,” James said. “I’ll be your vessel.”

  The city sighed with relief and gratitude, pleased that someone had finally listened.

  Then the magic crushed him.

  Rylie reacted to Belphegor’s presence too slowly. She must have already been staring at him for twenty seconds before she realized that she needed to wolf out.

  Belphegor’s hand clamped on her throat. He jerked her away from Summer and lifted her off the ground. His eyes skimmed her naked body, and the weight of his gaze felt like an actual hand touching her breasts and stomach and legs.

  “It’s been too long since I relaxed,” he murmured, seemingly to himself. Louder, he added, “Everyone will be still if you expect her head to remain attached to her shoulders.”

  Summer and Abel froze behind her. Rylie couldn’t help but struggle against Belphegor, scratching at his wrist, kicking out in search of ground. One of her teeth had fallen out in her mouth. A sharpened canine was growing in its place.

  No. Get control. The wolf was a heck of a lot bigger than Rylie’s human body, and Belphegor’s hand felt as solid as a metal shackle. If she grew, she didn’t think his grip would break. She would just grow around his hand and mangle her neck.

  She fought to breathe normally and settle the wolf inside of her.

  Belphegor watched her calmly as she fought with herself. When her skin stopped rippling, he nodded with approval. “Incredible power to possess. There was a time when Hell enlisted your kind. In the First War, we were allies.”

  His hand tightened a fraction on her neck, reminding her that it had been many long years since demons and werewolves had been friends. Adrenaline thrilled through Rylie. When she clawed at his wrist again, two of her fingernails slid off in a bloody streak.

  He snapped the fingers on his free hand. “Atropos,” he said without raising his voice. “Lachesis.”

  Two demons stepped out of the temple. Rylie recognized Atropos from their confrontation in Las Vegas. The other was naked, with no nose or mouth. Just the sight of it was enough to make terror climb up Rylie’s throat, dragging a scream from her chest.

  “Seize the dogs, sisters,” Belphegor said.

  The last word had barely left his mouth when Abel leaped.

  Black fur flashed in the corner of Rylie’s eye. All werewolves could move with incredible speed, but it was nothing like Abel tackling Atropos.

  The demon was utterly unprepared for Abel. She fell under him, struggling to push his head back. He buried his teeth into her throat. Blood and ichor sprayed.

  When Rylie had bitten Elise, the flavor had shocked her—that warm, sweet, musky taste of tree sap mingled with blood. The assault on her senses had been enough to make her pull back. But Atropos didn’t have the strange blood that Elise did. She bled like any other demon.

  And nothing was going to make Abel release her.

  She tried to melt into shadow, but the wolf bit at every tentacle that emerged, snapping them off of her before they could engulf him. Ichor drenched his jaw, clung to his ruff in black droplets.

  Lachesis should have turned on Summer, but Abel presented the more obvious threat. The mouthless demon rushed toward him and left Summer alone.

  Belphegor gave Summer a warning look. “Don’t move,” he said.

  Rylie took advantage of the moment of distraction, bringing her hind legs up between them. They were hind legs now—she had let her feet shift into paws, which came along with patchy fur, popping knee joints, and huge claws.

  She ripped into Belphegor’s stomach. Or, at least, she tried. Her claws went through his shirt easily, but her claws slid off his skin like it was steel.

  His hand tightened suddenly, compressing her neck. Rylie couldn’t gasp or cry out. She felt her esophagus collapsing, vision swimming, unable to focus on Abel’s fight against Atropos—

  Just as quickly as he had begun to crush Rylie, Belphegor stopped.

  Abel’s struggle between Atropos and Lachesis had smashed into James’s backpack of supplies, ripped it open, and spilled the contents over the lawn. Belphegor was staring at the bag like he hadn’t noticed it until that moment. His focus was so intense that it was like Rylie had disappeared completely.

  “Stop, stop!”

  It was strange to hear the demon yelling, actually shouting, like he was distressed. He had been so cold until that moment. Now his eyes blazed bright and hot.

  Lachesis had her arms around Abel’s throat to hold him off of Atropos, who was limp on the ground. Her grip looked effortless, but the fact that she hadn’t killed or removed him suggested it was much harder to hold an Alpha werewolf than she made it look.

  Belphegor dropped Rylie. Her shifting legs couldn’t hold her; she had to sit down hard on the grass.

  The demon didn’t notice that she had taken anything. He lifted James’s backpack by the bottom, spilling the remainder of the articles onto the grass. Belphegor nudged through them with his toe.

  “Which of you has the blood?” Belphegor asked.

  Rylie gaped at him. The blood?

  He must have recognized the ingredients of the spell, what it was meant to do, and why they would have brought it to Eve’s temple.

  Belphegor knew that one of them had the blood of Adam.

  Rylie couldn’t have said anything even if she wanted to. He had crushed her throat and the healing fever wasn’t done repairing the damage. But she knew that admitting the truth wouldn’t save any of them. Belphegor might decide Abel was worth capturing, but it would be instant death for Rylie and Summer.

  She wrapped her arms around her daughter’s neck, letting the familiar, musky smell of wolf fill her with warm reassurance.

  “Her?” Belphegor pointed to Summer. “You?” And then to Rylie.

  Still, she didn’t respond. Maybe Abel would have tried to give himself up if he could have spoken, but as a wolf, he had no lips with which to speak.

  The city grumbled around them. Sudden light blazed down the street, racing along the cobblestone—moving toward the temple. It looped around the bottom of the hill and the district containing the temple. The fiery wall grew taller as it consumed each block.

  Rylie had no idea if that was magic or if the city’s light was coming back, but she knew immediately what she needed to do about it.

  She had seen how dark Hell was and how Elise reacted to being put in bright lights.

  It was time to see if Belphegor was the same way.

  She didn’t have time to change to wolf. She lunged at Belphegor, wrapped her arms around his midsection, and let her momentum carry both of them down the hill.

  He hadn’t been expecting the naked girl to attack. He stumbled, tripped, rolled.

  They hit the street and bounced onto the other side of the light.

  White fire circled Eve’s temple, turning into a wall that was ten, twenty, fifty feet tall. Belphegor was on the wrong side—actually, the right side, at least as far as Rylie was concerned. The side where
he couldn’t reach the temple, Summer, or Abram.

  Unfortunately, that meant he was on the same side as her.

  He rounded on her with the blaze at his back. It was so bright that she couldn’t see through it to her daughter or mate, couldn’t tell if they were winning against Atropos and Lachesis. But for the moment, Rylie couldn’t quite care.

  She had bigger problems. Literally.

  Belphegor hadn’t been hurt by the light, and now he was swelling in size. His legs and arms were lengthening. His skin stretched over his skull as it grew. There was no elasticity to his flesh or clothing; it gapped and bared white bone underneath, including jagged teeth.

  “You have made a grave mistake, dog,” he said.

  The demon reached for her with a skeletal hand that had somehow become the size of a manhole cover.

  Rylie kicked his fingers off of her legs and scrambled away from him. Sharp nails scraped the backs of her calves and made her skin crawl.

  She was all human again. She couldn’t take the time to shift, couldn’t pull out her defenses—even if they would have worked on him.

  All she could do was run.

  But her speed meant nothing now that Belphegor was taller than the surrounding buildings. His limbs were so long that he only needed to take a step to close the distance between them.

  The street groaned and split under Rylie’s feet as she tried to run. Stone crumbled.

  The temple district—and the fire surrounding it—was breaking away from the rest of the city.

  It was too late to return to Abel and Summer. The wall of fire was pushing her toward the rapidly growing gap in the earth. It was six inches wide, two feet wide, four feet, now ten—

  She jumped over the gash and hit the other side hard.

  The split in the ground grew rapidly, severing the white fire from the rest of the city. Belphegor took a step away from it and stood over Rylie. Surprised registered on his huge, skeletal face as he stared at the isolated district. “No,” he said, “no, this isn’t right.”

  And then the entire temple district broke free.