The Descent Series Complete Collection

by S. M. Reine

  “What is this?” she asked, raising her cell phone to see the boarded-up walls. It looked like an old mine, but there wasn’t stone beyond the boards.

  “Top levels of the Warrens, of course,” David Nicholas whispered. “Don’t you want to see where the worst of us lurk? Like turning over a river stone and finding leeches and cockroaches and all sorts of slime.”

  “I just want to talk to the Night Hag.”

  “You will. Almost there.”

  The last of the demons walked on. Elise fell in step behind them.

  “Almost there” was subjective. It felt like hours passed as she followed them through the twisting hall. Her breath fogged from her mouth and her skin rose in goose bumps. Then a dim light appeared at the end. A pair of tall doors stood open, leading into a dim cavern. The demons scurried off with eyes lowered.

  Elise started to follow them—but she stopped when she stepped through the doors and emerged on a platform near the top of a cavern.

  The room was so impossibly tall that the ceiling stretched up into shadows like an underground cathedral. Dim blue light emanated from stones in the walls, turning the shuffling line of demons into silhouettes as they stacked the crates. Several tapestries were hung in the back of the room, framing the room with images of alien forests and cemeteries.

  Other demons unpacked the boxes beside a tall dais. And at the center stood a gate.

  It was only halfway completed, but Elise already knew she had seen that gateway before. It wasn’t quite like the ones in her dreams, but it was cast of the same soapy-white stone with brands around the base. It was thrice her height and wide enough to accommodate a train.

  She knew it because Mr. Black had built one just like it years before.

  Someone moved through the demons to check their work—someone tall and beautiful and ageless. Even in the dim light, Elise recognized the man who had been chained in the Night Hag’s cavern on her last visit. But now she recognized the glimmer of magic around his necklace and the silvery stumps at his back.

  The Night Hag had one of Mr. Black’s angels.

  Elise moved down the ramp toward the gate. The angel caught her looking and stopped. The expression on his face was a mix of recognition and fear, just like the one the angel in the desert had looked when he saw her palm. How had she not known what he was before?

  “Like it?” David Nicholas purred, reappearing from with a whiff of brimstone. “I’d be lying if I said your shock wasn’t delicious.”

  “You people are making a huge mistake. You don’t understand what that does.”

  “It’s a gateway to a city.”

  Elise turned. The Night Hag had sneaked up behind her. She stood straight-backed and strong, arms folded and chin lifted regally. Her breasts and hips had become plump, with a tightly cinched waist, and her black hair was shot with gray. Her skin fit snugly against muscle. Instead of looking like a woman of ninety, she might have been James’s age. But it was her. There was no mistaking the way the brand on Elise’s shoulder burned when she saw her.

  “I thought you were only trying to defend the Reno territory from Mr. Black,” Elise said. “You have his gate. You have one of his angel slaves, which you need to operate the gate. You realize what this looks like to me?”

  The Night Hag waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes. But we must be proactive. Mr. Black won’t be the only one to come after the ruins.”

  “Do you know what can come through that?” Elise asked, stabbing the air with a finger.

  The gate reacted to her motion. It hummed as the symbols glowed, then faded.

  “Nothing. It’s only a doorway to the real threat—the angelic city, which I suspect is buried deeper still beneath the Warrens. And that city hides darker gates that are exactly as horrifying as you think. If we don’t get there first, someone else will. Don’t you see? The angelic city to which this gate opens is what makes Reno a powerful territory—and to keep control of the city above, we must control the city below.”

  “All of you will die if you go to that city,” Elise said.

  “It’s a risk we’ve got to take. There are nine doors in the angelic city—nine . If we finish it and cross through before Mr. Black builds his, we can destroy all entrances to the city. Nobody will ever be able to seize it.”

  “You think you can control it—”

  The Night Hag snapped her fingers. Bright pain flared in Elise’s shoulder, and she cut off with a groan.

  “Petulant worm,” she said.

  David Nicholas cackled.

  “No. We can’t control it. I am not suicidal, Elise Kavanagh, and I did not ascend to the position of overlord by foolishness. The only way I can keep my position is to destroy the gates at the source. This is my plan and you’ve agreed to work with me, so you’ll deal with it.”

  Elise glared at the Night Hag, David Nicholas, and the gateway. Her fingers itched for her daggers. But she kept her hands at her sides. “Nothing good will come from the city.”

  “I’ve made my decision. Have you? Is our truce finished?”

  “Please say yes.” David Nicholas bared all those yellow teeth in a grin that literally stretched to his ears.

  It took all of Elise’s strength to say, “No.”

  “Good.”

  Elise was obviously dismissed. The Night Hag glided toward the angel, turning her back to the kopis as though she was no threat at all. But Elise called out to her.

  “I stopped the convoy. I got the parts for your gateway. When are you paying me?”

  “Payment. Money.” The overlord snorted. “Petty things.”

  “If it’s petty, then paying me isn’t a problem.”

  “Fine. David Nicholas will take care of it. Now get out of my sight—I have work to do.”

  11

  Thom was waiting outside the studio when Elise got back.

  He sat on the Motion and Dance sign, awake and bright-eyed, and he acknowledged her with a nod. “You will be pleased to know that someone attempted to cast a remote spell on the studio and failed.”

  She was too tired to care. “Great. Fine. Good job.”

  Elise started to march upstairs. Thom hopped off the sign.

  “Quite a greeting for the person safeguarding your aspis. You appear displeased.”

  “It’s four-thirty,” she snapped. “The sun’s coming up soon and I haven’t slept. David Nicholas said he’s going to pay me ‘later’ and I have nothing in my bank account in the meantime. Sorry if I’m not chipper enough for you.”

  Thom tilted his head to study her. “You saw the gate.”

  “Yeah. That too.”

  “Then you know the whole story. What will you do about it?”

  She spread her hands wide. “What am I supposed to do? I’m branded by the overlord. My options are limited.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Save your pragmatic bullshit,” Elise said. “Get out of here. Take a break. I’ll keep an eye on my friends for a couple of hours.”

  “If you wish.” He vanished, immediately and silently.

  She stumbled upstairs, went to her old room, closed the curtains on the sunrise, and didn’t sleep.

  The air mattress she had dragged into the room for her and Anthony to use must have been leaking. It was almost flat to the floor. Her boyfriend snored without stirring when she climbed in with him. She never slept on the rare nights she allowed him to stay over, so she knew he was always terrible about that. It sounded like he was sawing wood. Must have been nice to sleep so deeply.

  Something scraped against the side of the building. At first, she thought it was a tree branch. But then it scraped again, and again, in a rhythm that sounded deliberate.

  Elise stood and moved to the window.

  She saw nothing in the street outside. The only motion came from shifting clouds a paler shade of gray than the dawning sky of morning.

  Another scrape.

  The dose of adrenaline put her body on high alert. Elise stretched out with he
r other sense—the one that would have let her track a demon blindfolded.

  There was something downstairs.

  Elise felt for the knife at her back on reflex, but there was, of course, nothing there. Nor were there any weapons in the bedroom. She had dropped her swords in the kitchen.

  She slid into the hall silently. James’s bedroom door was open, where Betty slept propped up by pillows. She wheezed in her sleep. Stephanie had dosed her with enough Vicodin to let her sleep through an attack from a horde of angels.

  Elise sneaked around James—unconscious on the couch with an arm thrown over his face—and found her spine sheath on the kitchen table. She took one of the falchions. Its engraved blade gleamed dully.

  She snagged James’s keys off the coffee table before slipping out the front door.

  Nerves singing, she crouch-walked down the stairs. The breeze made her sweat go cold. Grass crunched under her bare toes. She eased around the corner of the building, alert for signs of attack.

  Nothing outside. Not even cars on the street.

  She levered herself up to one of the windows in the main dance hall using her fingertips. The lights weren’t on, so it was hard to see. Figures moved among the mirrors.

  Nothing should have been able to get through the wards. Nothing.

  She cupped the keys in her hand to keep them from jingling as she unlocked the front door and sneaked into the reception area. The footsteps were louder inside. It sounded like there were a dozen people stomping through the hall.

  Elise set the keys on the table and peeked through the door.

  One of the back windows was broken, but the magic seals James placed over the frames should have still been in place. Yet a trio of hulking forms moved between the mirrors. Their two-segmented bodies were suspended above the ground by long legs.

  Spiders. Giant, Malamute-sized spiders.

  They weren’t the same breed as the demons Elise had been fighting out in the desert. These were sleek and mean-looking, with boxing-glove mouth parts and shiny black flesh. One turned in her direction, and she had a glimpse of six glimmering eyes before she pulled back into the shadows.

  She pressed her back against the wall to collect her thoughts. Elise wasn’t scared of spiders, but these looked like dogfighters, fast and sleek, and three was two more than she wanted to fight at once.

  A sense of calm settled over her. A challenge.

  The spiders moved into the secondary hall, where Elise’s punching bag waited.

  She tried to follow, but her foot caught on something dry and clinging. Thick gray webbing tore free of a mass that stretched from wall to floor. She tried to wipe it off, but it only stuck to her fingers instead.

  Spider webs. They had trapped the doorway.

  The spider-demons stopped moving in the other room.

  She crawled to the closet by the desk, trying not to make any noise or brush against the wall. Daimarachnids had poor eyesight and hunted by vibration. She was slower than usual, a little clumsier. Her foot was numb where it had been caked in webbing.

  Their stomping steps picked up pace as they approached. She ducked into the closet.

  Before she shut the door, a trap door in the ceiling caught her eye. An idea struck her. The crawl space between floors wasn’t big, but it let out in the other room. She could get behind them.

  Elise climbed on a box of records to push it open. There was a crawl space just tall enough for her to belly-crawl through on the other side.

  She threw her falchion into the crawl space.

  Something rubbed against the other side of the closet door. It sounded like a claw-footed bathtub come to life.

  A demon struck the door and shoved it open. She came face to face with six glistening black eyes. Its mouthparts clacked.

  She grabbed the sides of the trap door and hauled herself up just as the demon barreled into the box, knocking it over with a thunderous crash. Elise struggled to pull herself through the trapdoor.

  It reached for her with its boxing-glove mouth. She pulled her legs inside. It knocked into the ceiling instead, and its thick, hairy forelegs scraped against the crawl space.

  Elise pulled her elbows underneath her and wriggled forward as quickly as she could. Dust tickled her nose as she squeezed under the beams. Her falchion’s blade was only two feet long, but it got in the way and made her crawl much too slowly.

  Spider-demons scrabbled on the floor below. Spotting her had thrown them into a frenzy. But even if they were twice as smart as the spiders she fought in the desert, they would still be half too dumb to realize where she was going. She moved faster, dragging herself along with her free hand as wood scraped at her bare back and stomach. Elise was certain she had splinters in her arms. She could barely breathe.

  Her hand slipped into an indentation.

  Another trap door.

  Elise shoved it open and maneuvered to exit feet-first. Her arm and back muscles flexed as she sank into a controlled drop, waiting in a chin-up position to gauge the distance to the floor.

  The spiders had coated the room in webbing.

  She froze, fingers trembling as she studied the mess they had left behind. It was stuck to the mirrors, the curtains over the garage door, and formed a net over the parquet flooring. The only bare spot was on the floor by the exit—a good ten feet to her right.

  Okay. Maybe they weren’t so stupid.

  Elise aimed carefully and swung her legs in a wide arc. And then she let go.

  She landed by the door, but her foot sank into a mass of web. The sticky strands held fast, refusing to relinquish her leg. It burned against her bare flesh. Vibrations spread through the web as she fought to pull free.

  Hacking at the web with the falchion helped her rip away from the greater mass, but it stuck to her skin, forming a sticky gray stocking from foot to hip. It made her muscles prick and spasm.

  Thudding in the dance hall.

  They were coming.

  Elise clambered over the webbing, her left leg immobilized at the knee, and carefully climbed under a thick strand that stretched from one side of the doorframe to the other.

  A shadow rushed at her.

  She dived and rolled, coming up with the sword above her head to bury the blade in the spider-demon’s body.

  Its legs thrashed. A meaty limb connected with her midsection. It was like getting struck by a baseball bat, and all the air rushed from her lungs as she fell to her knees.

  Elise wrenched the sword free and drove it under the daimarachnid’s mouth.

  The point of the blade burst out of a liquid red eye. She stabbed again and again. The exoskeleton cracked. Fluid gushed from its body as the eight long legs curled inward.

  With a final twitch, the spider died.

  Elise took a moment to examine what remained of the spider in the moonlight: the red marks on its belly, the fine hairs on its legs, and the brands down its sides. Every mark had been scored to render them unreadable. “Damn,” she whispered.

  She heard motion in the lobby. There were still two others.

  Need to move.

  Elise climbed awkwardly out the open window, dragging her stiff leg behind her, and dropped to the grass. She couldn’t get both feet under her. She sank to her knees in the yellow grass, and her useless leg barely bent. The web was hardening. “Shit,” she muttered. Two more spiders. She couldn’t be immobilized.

  Crawling to the corner, she peeked around the wall. One spider dragged its spinneret along the lawn as it moved for the stairs on the side of the building. Gossamer stretched between its posterior and the wall, shiny and moist on the end closest to its body.

  She slipped under the stairs and waited until it anchored the silken strand to the bottom step before moving. Elise stepped over the trip line it had created at the bottom and followed it silently up the stairs on her toes.

  When it reached the landing, she struck.

  The spider was too fast. It saw her and twisted. What she intended to be a death blo
w glanced off its side.

  It smashed her into the railing and nearly threw them both off the side. She tangled her free hand in the hairs on its back and hung on. Unbalanced, her shoulders tipped over the rail. The world spun and flipped as she dangled. The ground was at least twelve feet down.

  She hooked her ankle on the spider’s leg, holding tight. Slimy pincers snapped over her face. She slammed her elbow into one of its eyes. It squealed.

  Upside-down, she saw the third spider reach the bottom of the stairs.

  Hauling herself upright, Elise threw her weight into the second spider and shoved them away from the edge. It crashed into the door. She slashed. Blood splattered on her face. It keened and fell.

  And then the third one was there.

  It slammed into her with its glossy body and knocked her onto her back. The hairs on its belly scraped against Elise. She drew her one good leg up to shield her stomach as fangs dropped out of its mouth. They came down on her knees instead of her ribs, and she twisted to the side before they could puncture.

  Pincers rushed at her face. She flung her arm up. The sword caught in its mouth.

  Red eyes bored into her from inches away as it pressed into her. Her arm trembled as she struggled to force it back. The angle was poor and it was too strong—a line of venom dripped onto her neck and slid into her hair.

  She pulled her fist back, and for an instant, hairy feelers scraped against her face.

  Then Elise shoved the blade straight into its mouth.

  It screamed as it thrashed, twisting from side to side above her. The contortions seemed to only pull the blade deeper into its body. Her slippery fingers lost grip on the hilt.

  One of its feet smashed into her leg, and another into her shoulder. Elise flung her arms over her head, trying to curl into a ball to protect her vital organs from its death throes, but its weight was too much.

  With a final rasping sigh, the air left its lungs. It stopped moving.