Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series)

by Reine, SM

  Belphegor had cut a piece of his thumb off.

  “As you may have already realized, warlocks aren’t meant to cast ethereal magic,” he said. “You’re killing yourself every time you draw off a source of angel magic instead of what comes naturally to you—magic of an infernal source. The fact you haven’t already died is a testament to your potential strength.”

  Another wet slap, another piece of skin on the ground inches from her nose. The edges of the skin he had cut off began to curl inward.

  The smell slid toward her, seductively meaty.

  “You’ll find no documents on warlock magic, nor will you find anyone else who can teach you to use it.” A final sliver of meat was severed from his wrist. Belphegor’s shoes turned. He began to walk away. “I have been relearning infernal magic, and I will happily share this knowledge with you, Godslayer. Tell me when you’re prepared to learn.”

  By the time he spoke the last word, he was beyond her line of sight.

  “Eat,” Belphegor said, his voice fading. “And soon we’ll talk about Eden.”

  The shredded skin was already cooling. She wouldn’t eat it—not Belphegor’s flesh, especially not when it was willingly given. It was a gift with strings attached.

  But when Elise tried to focus in the distance to see what had become of Belphegor, she couldn’t. She also couldn’t stand. She rolled onto her stomach and blades of grass scratched at her spongy cheek.

  Something had just happened here that she didn’t understand. Something very wrong.

  Belphegor didn’t want the Palace—he had never intended to keep Elise from taking it.

  He didn’t want Shamain, either. He only wanted Eden.

  Everything Elise had done since moving to take the Palace had been based on the idea that other demons wanted the Palace as a stepping-stone to take Shamain. That had probably been true with Abraxas and Aquiel, but not with Belphegor. She had been wrong about him. So horribly wrong.

  It felt like Elise had been playing a game against shadowy enemies without knowing the rules. Instead, she hadn’t even been playing the right game.

  Where did that leave her?

  Where did that leave the entire damn world?

  Her fingers fell on the nearest sliver of Belphegor’s skin.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth and touched the skin to her lips. It numbed her mouth instantly, as if she was trying to kiss a glacier, but she slid the skin into her mouth anyway. The idea of chewing was too horrifying. She pushed it to the back of her throat, leaving a streak of numbness on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and swallowed it down.

  Elise devoured all of the pieces before she could think better of it.

  She pushed onto all fours. Her body tried to reject the flesh the way it did any other foreign body. The pieces of Belphegor had entered her less violently than bullets did, but they were no less hostile to her existence. Her stomach heaved. Her eyes blurred.

  Elise swallowed wetly, jaw clenched. She felt the tissue rise up her throat. She swallowed again.

  The energy rippled through her slowly. It wasn’t as much of a surge as James’s blood had given her, but where the ice touched her body, from chest to fingertips, strength grew. Belphegor was a demon. Feeding from him would never be as satisfying as devouring a human. The immensity of his power made up for it.

  He tasted like the ages of frigid darkness that had occupied the Earth before Adam and Lilith’s children spread across its face. Elise felt it all the way down to her stomach, as though she had swallowed a fistful of ice cubes. She traced her tongue over her lips, warming the chilly flesh.

  Belphegor didn’t belong in the heat of Dis. He was something older and far worse than that.

  Fresh energy lanced over her flesh. It wasn’t demonic—it was ethereal, and laced with magic.

  James was casting another spell.

  Elise stood. Drew the gun. And she walked into the tree.

  Elise entered the temple as if in a dream. She hadn’t had time to look around when she had entered it earlier to grab Belphegor, but now she saw it. Really saw it.

  This had been her home once, in a time long past. The floor under her feet had been decorated by hand. Adam had placed each and every stone in the mosaic Himself even though He could have easily wished it into existence.

  She had told Him that she appreciated the effort, but that it was unnecessary for God to put so much work into one mosaic when He had an entire city to build.

  “For you, I would make entire worlds,” Adam had said, gazing up at her from His hands and knees, a basket of gemstones by His knee. She still remembered the way that His voice had made her heart flip flop.

  Not my heart, Elise thought. Eve’s heart.

  It was getting harder to remember the difference.

  The delineation didn’t become any clearer as she followed her memory into the branches of the tree. It looked almost exactly the way she remembered it. The hand-sewn curtains were draped over the walls where Leliel had wanted them, claiming that the proper placement would help conduct happy energies through the home. The gears of the clock that Nashriel and Samael had forged were still well oiled and appeared functional.

  She followed the ghosts of her memories into the branches, walking the paths that Eve had taken thousands of times. Elise spiraled up the stairs, circling around the brass gears, and stepped off the landing near the top. That was where she had left the door to Eden.

  And that was where she found the werewolves—and James.

  Elise hung back in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight of the altar assembled in front of the statue. James had made the spell to open the gate more portable than the last time Elise had seen it. He had woven the circle of power into a large rug and pre-arranged pieces of the altar so that they only needed to be snapped together like a puzzle. She was almost as impressed as she was annoyed.

  The werewolves were backed against the walls. Abel on one side, Rylie and Summer on the other.

  All alive. Unharmed.

  Her relief was tempered by the sight of James kneeling in front of the altar. “It must be a problem with the spell,” he was saying. “The rug, maybe—it’s a new design—and if I have just a few minutes to pull some threads, then we could try—”

  “Don’t move,” Elise said. She leveled the Beretta at the back of his head.

  They all turned at the sound of her voice.

  James reflexively grabbed his wrist, pressing a palm to the bite wound that still hadn’t healed. “Elise.”

  “That’s the last one of those gates you open, James,” she said, sighting down her arm so that the muzzle was aimed at his forehead. “We’re not playing this game anymore.”

  Rylie scrambled to her feet. There was dried blood on her knees and elbows, but no visible wounds. She pushed Elise’s wrists down so that the muzzle was aimed at the floor. “It didn’t open.”

  Elise blinked. “What?”

  “The door to Eden didn’t open,” Rylie said.

  “I felt the magic. I know that he cast it.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t work. James did the spell, Abel gave his blood, and no doors opened.”

  That must have been why Belphegor walked away. He had been hoping to enter Eden, but had left as soon as he realized that James’s spell had failed.

  James swallowed hard. “That’s right. But I can still fix this. I can make it work the way it’s supposed to, I’m sure. The gate or the spell or… I don’t know, but something must have gotten changed after the fall. It must be reparable.”

  Elise gazed at the statue of Eve. Its hands were clasped over its breasts, eyes closed, head tilted as though weeping. The statue was fine. It hadn’t been damaged.

  She turned her attention to James’s spell. It was fine, too. She had spent more than enough time studying his magic recently to know it. The ritual space was complete, like a closed circuit, and there was no reason whatsoever that the door to Eden wasn’t open at that very moment.

&nbs
p; “This could save Seth,” Abel said. “Let him fix it.”

  Elise turned on the safety, gently pried her hands free of Rylie’s, and holstered the gun. “It doesn’t matter if I let him do anything. The problem isn’t with the spell. The problem is Abel.”

  James stood. “What?”

  “The falchion. Give it to me.”

  He didn’t move to draw it. Elise jerked it out of the sheath herself. It was the mundane steel twin to the obsidian falchion she had left behind in the bathroom. “What are you doing?” James asked.

  In two strides, Elise crossed the gate room to Abel and slashed the falchion across his chest.

  He jerked back with a shout, even though the cut had been shallow and he healed almost instantly. She didn’t press the attack. She lifted the sword and licked the flat side of the blade, lapping up the drops of blood that had sprayed.

  Seth’s blood had tasted unmistakably ancient. She had been able to taste Adam in him, and Elise had found it beyond energizing to the point of euphoria.

  Abel tasted like nothing but werewolf. She tasted fur and fang and musk without even a hint of Adam. “His blood is mundane,” Elise said, ignoring the looks of revulsion she had earned from the others.

  James swayed on his feet like a tree in a hard wind. “So that means that Summer…”

  The shapeshifter girl was already moving. She bit the side of her hand hard enough to break the skin and squeezed it over the circle.

  Two drops hit the altar.

  And nothing happened.

  Twenty

  Rylie found Abel standing in the wreckage of Shamain’s temple district looking lost. It had been so long since he moved that his shoulders and hair were dusted with snow.

  She gestured for Summer to hang back, approaching him alone.

  He wasn’t looking at the city itself. His gaze was on the cornfields beyond the sagging ethereal buildings, and he didn’t even seem to see those. He was as rigid as any of the marble statues decorating the broken streets.

  Rylie didn’t know what to say to him. She stood behind him with her hands outstretched, wishing she could touch him, but reluctant to break his reverie.

  Abel spoke before she did.

  “We’ve got company.”

  He pointed, and she followed his finger to the sky. There was a helicopter coming in fast despite the brutal winds. Even at that distance, Rylie could tell that it was painted black. A spotlight swept over the ground, tracking paths into the ruined district.

  Before they could hide, the helicopter was on top of them with a brilliant blast of light. Rylie shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at it.

  A rope dropped from the helicopter and someone that smelled familiar slid down.

  Summer brushed past Rylie and Abel.

  “Abram!”

  He landed in front of them looking wind-blown and exhausted, wrapped up in several layers of black jackets with headphones hanging around his neck. Summer clung to him immediately, smothering him in a hug.

  Abram usually managed to smile for Summer, but not this time.

  “Come on,” he said, holding the rope out. “We gotta get up there before the wind’s too bad to leave.”

  “What the fuck is this?” Abel asked. “Are you fucking around with the Union, Abram?”

  His anger didn’t touch Abram. “This isn’t the Union. It’s the Apple. I can’t explain now—there’s no time. But the rest of Shamain is going to fall, and we have to get out of the range of the city within thirty minutes if we don’t want to die. I came to save you.”

  Rylie stared up at the sky. He was right. The gash to Heaven was still growing.

  Thirty minutes, he said. She recalled the vastness of Shamain and thought it would take a lot longer than thirty minutes to escape being crushed. Even a werewolf couldn’t run that fast. The helicopter would be their only salvation.

  Still, she turned back to the temple. She had left Elise and James staring each other down in there. She didn’t care if James got flattened, but she couldn’t leave Elise.

  “I have to warn them,” Rylie said.

  But Abram caught her and dragged her back toward the helicopter. “You want to get out of here now,” he said. “Trust me.”

  Another rope dropped out of the helicopter, and two more people slid down.

  When Rylie recognized Stephanie Whyte as one of them, wearing a Union flak jacket like it was couture, her jaw dropped open. “Stephanie?”

  “I told you there was too much to explain now,” Abram said.

  Stephanie hefted a sledgehammer to her shoulder and gave Rylie a thin smile.

  “Save yourselves,” she said. “I’ll be happy to warn Elise.”

  Sitting beside his failed spell, James looked so very alone and tired. If he were smart, he would have been running or making portals or whatever magic it was that allowed him to jump across the Earth. He would have been several states away by now. Maybe even hiding in the cage that he had built for Elise.

  But he didn’t seem to care. All the energy had gone out of him.

  Elise stood just beyond arm’s reach. She folded her arms over her chest. Waited for him to acknowledge her.

  When he finally spoke, he was quiet, unemotional.

  “Adam’s lineage came through one of Eleanor’s husbands—Seth’s father,” James said. “It was in the journals. I assumed that Seth and Abel had the same father. I never realized…” He trailed off, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw as he stared past the altar, bloodied but inoperative, to Eve’s heartbroken face. “I sacrificed everything for this.”

  He had sacrificed everything? Elise could think of a lot of other people that had sacrificed far more than James had as a consequence of his actions. Their lives. Their sanity.

  She drummed her fingers on her upper arm. “What have you lost, exactly? You never needed to find Nathaniel. If he wanted to leave Eden, he would.”

  James looked at her, and she saw it in his eyes. He had wagered everything on becoming God and erasing the destruction he wrought on the path to power. Now he had nothing. Certainly not Elise’s sympathies. Even Eve was silent within her.

  Still, Elise sighed, set down the falchion, and slid his glasses off of his face. She folded the arms and tucked them in his shirt pocket.

  He enveloped her in his arms without standing, embracing her around her midsection, and pressed his forehead against her stomach. Elise didn’t immediately pull away. She ran her fingers through his hair, tracing the streaks of gray from his temples to the back of his head.

  “Why did you leave me the falchion?” Elise asked. “How did you even get it?”

  He didn’t look up at her when he responded. “You gave it to me years ago in Oymyakon.”

  “Not that one. The obsidian sword.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Elise’s hand went still. He hadn’t somehow retrieved the sword and left it for her in the bathroom of the cage.

  “We could still go somewhere together,” James said quietly, fingers tightening on her back, seemingly unaware of her tension. “Not Hell, but…somewhere.”

  It seemed like a mockery to agree to quit now, when it wasn’t really quitting at all. He had lost. He had failed. And he hadn’t wanted to leave with Elise until he had lost everything he was working for.

  “That’s not how this works, James.”

  He gazed up at her with empty, bruise-rimmed eyes. “No,” he said hollowly, “I suppose it’s not.”

  Movement shuffled by the entrance to the room. Elise turned, expecting to find that the werewolves had returned.

  Instead Stephanie Whyte stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, a single strawberry-blond eyebrow arched in disdain as she studied the wreckage. “Well,” she said, “it seems I missed the party.”

  The spotlights hit Elise a half-second later.

  Elise’s scream shook James free of his haze in an instant.

  He shot to his feet and stepped in front of her, tr
ying to shelter her from the spotlights blazing through the doorway. But the lights were handheld, and two people had them. Stephanie and her partner stepped into the room and spread out to hit Elise from both sides.

  James squinted through the eye-watering brightness of it all. Stephanie’s companion wore Union black, but he had a sledgehammer in his free hand rather than one of the Union’s usual machine guns. He could only assume that this man was operating as a member of the Apple, too.

  “What in all of the seven Hells do you think you’re doing, Stephanie?” James demanded, grabbing the falchion off of the floor. Elise was doubled over behind him, arm over her eyes.

  “Send her back now,” Stephanie said, sidestepping to keep Elise in her line of fire as James tried to move between them. “We won’t be able to hold her for long.”

  “Back where?”

  She looked impatient. “The cage, of course.”

  Everything fell into place. Elise had reported being attacked by basandere. Stephanie had sent them after her to drive her toward Boulder—toward the trap that he had placed for her. Sophie and Isabelle had known that James was preparing a cage. They had told the Apple all about it.

  Betrayal from all sides. Worst of all was the fact that they must have thought they were helping him.

  “Step away from her, James,” Stephanie said.

  He hesitated, arms still spread wide to try to shelter Elise. She clutched the back of his shirt in one hand.

  Stephanie was right. Given a few minutes to work, he could draw another portal and send Elise back to her cage. James could contain Elise once more.

  If he had been given the opportunity a few days earlier, he would have seized on it. It was a safe place for her to be. It protected Elise and everyone that she might hurt.

  But he didn’t move.

  “What are you doing here?” James asked Stephanie.

  “We’ll have time to chat about that later, James, but not right now. We have to act quickly, lest the remainder of Shamain falls through the fissure and rips the world asunder.” Stephanie sounded so matter-of-fact about it. “If you don’t remove Elise, we will.”