Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series)

by Reine, SM

  “I need to know why she let Belphegor into Shamain.”

  Nash sank to the bed beside Leliel. Standing was too hard for him, even now. “She wanted to strike a bargain with him.” He hesitated before continuing reluctantly. “She was going to offer to take the Palace of Dis from you and surrender it to Belphegor in return for a truce.”

  Annoying as that would have been, it wasn’t the kind of thing that would inspire Elise to retaliate in kind. She might have killed the angels, but it wouldn’t drive her and an army into Shamain. “Was that all? She was just going to team up against me?”

  “It was all I saw when I looked into her mind.”

  “Look again.”

  A frown carved Nash’s face into severe furrows. “What does it matter? She’ll go to trial if she awakens and be permanently restrained. She won’t cause you trouble—I won’t allow it.”

  She didn’t want to tell Nash what Belphegor had told her. For all Nash’s talk of a better future, he was among those that had destroyed her nursery and slaughtered her unborn children. Entangled with a mostly harmless werewolf pack or not, Elise had no doubt he would take action if he thought she were a possible threat to Heaven.

  So she said, “Please.”

  Elise had noticed that one word had an impressive effect on others, coming from her. Nobody seemed to expect it. And it worked on Nash now.

  He settled a hand on Leliel’s forehead and let his eyes fall shut.

  For several long seconds, he was silent.

  Then Nash’s eyes opened.

  “Nothing,” he said. “That’s all she had planned.”

  So Belphegor was crazy. Not prescient. Or he had been fucking with Elise and was laughing about it now while he planned his next move.

  She stood. “Thanks, Nashriel.” After a beat, she changed it to, “Nash.”

  He inclined his head in acceptance.

  The fissure was almost closed all the way. She had only minutes to return to Earth. She took a final, critical look at Nash and his wounds. “You want a ride down to the sanctuary?”

  “I’ll recover more quickly here. Thank you.”

  Fine with Elise. She stepped onto the balcony and slid back onto Earth—but not before she caught Nash staring at Leliel hard with the look of a heartbroken man, taking one of her hands into his.

  She heard him speak once before disappearing.

  “I’m so sorry, Leliel,” he said.

  It would be weeks before she understood why Nash was apologizing.

  Neuma was sleeping when Elise arrived at the Palace of Dis. Elise had forgotten how frequently humans needed to sleep until she found herself with a new, half-human roommate. Anthony and McIntyre had usually slept during the day while Elise was unavailable, so she hadn’t seen it. But Neuma slept for approximately eight hours for each week that passed on Earth, letting the days slide past her as if they were meaningless.

  Today she was in Elise’s bed, as she so often was. Her face, slack in sleep, with all her makeup washed off, looked incredibly young. Ace slept at her feet and wagged his tail once when Elise approached.

  Elise stood at the end of the bed, watching Neuma sleep with envy. She had never enjoyed sleeping, even when she had been capable of doing it, so she hadn’t regretted losing the ability. It hadn’t occurred to her that her constant wakefulness might have been a choice rather than a need. Now that she had slept again in James’s cage, she suddenly missed it.

  Dreams flashed over Neuma’s mind. Elise could glimpse them in star-bright bursts. It always surprised her to see that Neuma almost never dreamt of sex or brothels or flowing alcohol—the only activities that Elise had ever associated with her half-succubus friend.

  Neuma dreamt of riding horses around a ranch while being paced by her brother in a Willys. She dreamt of target shooting. She dreamt of velvety desert sunsets and pleasant, abstract nonsense.

  She wasn’t tortured by her longer-than-normal life or her sinful hungers. Neuma rested well and woke up to handle another day of eternity without complaint.

  It didn’t seem fair that she should be so…normal.

  Elise pulled off her shirt, set the Beretta 9mm on the trunk at the foot of the bed. She slithered out of her jeans and kicked off her boots as she rounded the bed. The mattress sank under her weight as she climbed on.

  She slipped under the silky sheets and slid across the mattress until her head was on the same pillow as Neuma’s. The half-succubus’s hair smelled faintly of flowers and tequila. Elise wiggled her feet underneath Ace, where the sheets were warmest.

  Neuma barely stirred from her sleep. She wasn’t surprised that Elise was back. She probably hadn’t even realized that Elise had gone missing at all.

  “Hungry?” Neuma mumbled.

  Elise was hungry, but her hunger wasn’t overpowering at the moment. The ache inside of her was much deeper and much more painful than a simple physical need. So she said, “Go back to sleep.”

  Neuma’s eyes opened to slits. She smiled faintly. Without all the lip liner and gloss, her peachy-pale lips were only a shade darker than the rest of her skin.

  “Rough day, doll?”

  Elise tucked her head against Neuma’s shoulder and thought of Shamain on Earth, Belphegor in Eden, and James looking exhausted and lonely in the wreckage of Heaven.

  “You have no idea,” Elise whispered.

  Neuma didn’t demand answers. She threw a leg over Elise’s, planted a kiss on her forehead, and fell asleep again. Her breathing was soon deep and even once more.

  For the first time in a long time, Elise allowed her eyes to fall shut and Hell to drift away from her, taking time and space with it. She lost herself in the soft rhythm of Neuma’s half-human heart, their fingers locked together, legs crossing at the ankles.

  For a few hours, Elise slept.

  The day after Christmas dawned gray and dreary in the sanctuary. The pack had been preparing for the holiday for weeks by tracking down decorations that didn’t require power: garland and tinsel, fake trees and ornaments. Summer had planned to stage a big event that spanned Christmas Eve and the following morning, too. The werewolves and Scions deserved one day where they didn’t have to feel like they were living in a dying world.

  But the Apple’s invasion had blown their Christmas plans, and everyone was in town to clean up the crap that the cult had left behind in Northgate. Everyone but Summer. She put on a warm jacket and gloves, waited for the sanctuary to clear out, and then went outside to finish decorating the communal area for the holiday.

  She was surprised to find that Rylie had beaten her to it. Her mother was on top of a ladder hanging garlands around the edges of an awning.

  “That looks good,” Summer said.

  Rylie shot a smile at her. “Thanks, but I’m just finishing it up. Most of the work wasn’t mine.”

  It was only then that Summer realized Rylie wasn’t alone. Abel sat at one of the picnic tables under the awning, scowling at colorful paper and holding a pair of scissors as if he had never seen them before. Mangled paper had been discarded on the ground behind him.

  Summer hid a smile behind her hand. He was trying to cut out snowflakes, and he looked pissed about it.

  “Ho ho ho,” she said, grabbing a second pair of scissors and sitting on the edge of the table. “Nice Christmas cheer you’ve got there, pops.” She poked him in the scarred cheek with a finger. He didn’t smile.

  Rylie cleared her throat, as if prompting him to respond. His scowl deepened.

  “I’m…angry,” he said, words stilted.

  Wow. So they were talking about feelings. Considering that this was the guy who preferred to spend all of his time in the forest as a wolf rather than publicly acknowledge Seth’s death, those two words were monumental.

  Summer grabbed a sheet of paper, folded it in quarters, and started cutting. “Why are you angry?”

  “You know what the shit that happened at the gate means,” Abel said. It sounded like it took all his strength
to say it. “Me and Seth aren’t full brothers. Maybe half-brothers. I almost wrecked the pack over him, and he’s not even…” Instead of finishing the sentence, he cut savagely into a sheet of red paper.

  Summer felt like her heart was splitting in half. “You were brothers, and you’ll always be family. You were trying to do the right thing. Nobody is going to blame you for trying to do something heroic.” Well, nobody but Abram, but he’d get over it.

  Abel still didn’t look at her. “I fucked up.”

  He sounded so damn serious that she just couldn’t resist messing with him. She poked him in the cheek again. “We all fuck up,” Summer said. “It’s okay to be angry. We still love you.”

  “Yeah. Love you, too,” Abel said, face flushed dark as he fought to unjam the scissors. He had tried to cut too many pages at once.

  Summer looked up to see that Rylie was watching, eyes glistening, cheeks pink. Apparently they’d had a talk about what Abel was going to have to do to make up for scaring the pack with his disappearance, and Rylie had settled on the very worst punishment possible for Abel: emotional honesty. Summer was tickled. Abel had never said that he loved her before. She had assumed that it was true anyway, but it was nice hearing it come out of his mouth.

  She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. He’d been tortured enough. “I’ll finish the snowflakes.”

  He dropped the scissors and gave her a grateful look. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t think this gets you out of decorating,” Rylie said as he stalked toward her.

  Abel hooked an arm around her waist, jerked her off of the ladder, and tossed her over his shoulder. “Done decorating. Done talking, too.”

  “Hey!”

  She beat her fist against his back, but it was a halfhearted effort. He hauled her away and disappeared into the swirling snow. Summer shouted after them, hands cupped around her mouth. “Sure, just leave me here to slave away on my own! It’s not like I need help or anything!”

  They didn’t reply. Summer didn’t care. A stupid smile had glued itself to her face.

  The garland that Rylie had been trying to hang was still dangling off the edge of the awning. Summer blew into her fingers to limber them, then climbed up to finish the job.

  That was where Nash found her.

  He arrived on foot rather than flying, emerging from the haze as a dark silhouette draped in a knee-length jacket and scarf. He limped when he walked and the left side of his face was a massive bruise.

  “Nash,” she gasped, jumping back off of the ladder to grab him. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be healing in—you know, up there?” She pointed at the sky. They couldn’t see it in this weather, but the fissure was almost entirely gone, aside from a sliver of gray like a crack in a mirror.

  “I’d rather finish healing here with you.” He glanced around the mess of decorations. “You’re aware that Christmas was yesterday?”

  She shrugged. “We rescheduled it. It’s not like the rest of the country’s celebrating anyway. Might as well, right?” Summer gave him a mischievous smile. “If you’re feeling well enough to be back on Earth, then maybe you’re feeling well enough to help me finish?”

  “Shouldn’t your family be helping you?” Nash asked.

  “Abram went for a walk. Said he needed to clear his head. And Rylie and Abel…” Summer just grinned. “Anyway, I’ve got plenty of time to get everything decorated. Northgate’s a mess, so people won’t be back for a while. I could use another pair of hands, though.”

  Normally, this would have been when Nash found an excuse to avoid decorating. But he only took the decorations from her silently and scaled the ladder. It looked like lifting his arms to each rung hurt. He winced.

  Summer frowned at him. “Are you okay? Aside from the obvious.”

  “Shamain’s position has been secured. The fissure is slowly healing. My brethren are, for the most part, safe and whole. Why wouldn’t I be well?”

  “You’re being cooperative. You don’t cooperate.”

  She only meant to tease him gently, but Nash draped the garlands over the top of the ladder and pressed his forehead to the top rung. “I’ve done something terrible, Summer.”

  “What?”

  “I took Leliel to a human hospital.” He said it like he was confessing murder.

  Her brow furrowed. “You told me that there are no angel healers left, right? So isn’t it a good thing to take her to the doctor?”

  He pinned up the edge of the garland and slid down the ladder. “She’s in poor condition—much worse than I am. There’s no guarantee that she ever would have woken up in Heaven, but she definitely won’t recover without exposure to Shamain’s light.” Nash took Summer’s hand, giving her an intense look. “Leliel will never wake up on Earth.”

  Summer let that sink in. The news made numbness spread through her chest to the tips of her fingers. She didn’t know what to feel—she wasn’t sure if she should feel anything.

  Nash was a good person. The things he had done in the past didn’t change who he was now. And even though Leliel was his ex-wife, a woman who had plotted against him and imprisoned him in the Haven, he never would have hurt her without reason. She believed that. She really did.

  “Okay,” Summer said. “Why?”

  He looked surprised by the mildness of her reaction. “I looked into her mind at Elise’s request, and I found something…awful. I didn’t tell Elise. I had to conceal the truth to protect us all from her wrath. And that also means that I couldn’t allow Leliel to awaken and tell anyone else.”

  “If it’s that dangerous, then why are you telling me?” Summer asked gently.

  “I won’t expect you to marry a killer.”

  “I’m just going to say this once,” she said. “We’re in this together. All the way through until the end. Whatever you do, I know you’ve done because it’s right, and I will stand with you.” She kissed his chin. “And she’s not dead, is she?”

  “It’s little better,” Nash said.

  “She deserves it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if she didn’t, you wouldn’t have done it.”

  He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. Their hands were joined so tightly that his knuckles were white. “She does,” he said softly. “By God, does she deserve it. And if Elise finds out—when she finds out—we will all pay for it.”

  Dear reader,

  Thanks for joining me for yet another story. Book five, Lost in Prophecy, will be available in early 2014. If you’d like to know when it comes out, visit my website to sign up for my new release email alerts.

  I hope you’ll also leave a review with your thoughts on the site where you bought Caged in Bone—it helps other readers find the series, and your feedback means the world to me!

  Happy reading!

  Sara (SM Reine)

  http://authorsmreine.com/

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