by S. M. Reine
Broken.
White light flooded the street again. Elise flung an arm over her eyes.
The shadow serpent plunged through the roof of the casino tower with a thump that shook the entire building. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, stumbling backward. The ground beneath her feet trembled, and she felt a thudding that could only mean that the floors above were collapsing.
She abandoned the doors and ran.
Halfway across the street, asphalt rose underneath Elise. She lost her balance and slipped to her knees as a spike of earth erupted from the road. She clung to its side.
It shoved higher and higher and jerked to a halt twenty feet in the air.
Her gloves lost traction. She slid, scraping her chest down the rock. Elise landed on broken fragments of pavement, which had been reduced to rubble beneath her feet, and she stumbled off of the asphalt hill. Yatai had ripped through the ground underneath the street like an earthworm through soil.
Sharp cracks rent the air. Windows in the hotel tower shattered, and glass showered down the sides of the buildings.
The remaining fiends scattered, scrambling around to the other side of the building, and the sound of gunfire a block away was drowned out by the roar of the casino’s collapse. One by one, the floors of the building began to fall in like a house of cards. Clouds of dust rushed through the street, blasting over her face and turning everything to white.
The street pitched underneath her. Pain flared in her knees and shocked up her hips. She landed on all fours, and her stomach rose into her throat as the pavement split and fell.
She jumped onto the sidewalk just in time for the place she had been standing to collapse.
Debris showered around her, pounding into the street and exploding like small bombs. The glass doors into the casino burst, and white clouds of plaster and concrete gusted over the entire block like a sandstorm.
She threw herself over the hood of a truck and rolled onto the ground. Her side hit hard. Her breath rushed from her mouth. A chunk of concrete the size of a couch smashed into the sidewalk behind her, and Elise scrambled under the truck, belly to the ground.
Elise watched as the casino crashed around her, bracing herself for the blow that would crush the vehicle on top of her.
But it didn’t come.
The earth yawned open to devour the building first.
The ground was falling away—sucking in the casino the way Rick’s Drugstore had been taken. And a line of darkness swept toward her hiding place under the truck.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck ,” she cursed under her breath, digging in her fingers to wiggle free again.
The highest floors of the casino vanished. Emptiness roared toward her, and she scrambled to her feet to run. Yatai’s ichor licked at her heels.
Her shoe caught on a rock.
She fell.
The ground disappeared beneath her.
Elise shrieked as the pavement crumbled away, scrabbling at the rocks with both hands and finding nothing to grip.
Her weight jerked on her shoulder as the ground disappeared. Her feet dangled over void.
But she wasn’t falling.
She looked up. Yatam’s fingers were closed around her arm, and his beautiful face was peaceful and calm. “Do you need assistance?”
Elise searched for traction with her other hand, but the road crumbled away everywhere she tried to grab, and her feet couldn’t seem to find rocks that weren’t falling either. She swallowed hard. The hole was so deep that she couldn’t see the bottom—it must have opened into the Warrens.
“Sure,” she said through hard, heaving breaths. “Assistance would probably be good.”
The demon hauled her up with a single arm, stepping back until she was on solid earth.
He wrapped an arm around her waist. Yatam’s eyes traced over her face, and his lips curved into a half-smile that was more reminiscent of hunger than friendliness.
Elise pushed away to stare into the hole.
The casino was completely gone. All that remained was an empty, gaping chasm in the street and some fragments of glass sparkling on the pavement. Hot air and a sulfur stench gushed from the earth.
It felt strange being able to stand on the main street and look past the block to the hospital beyond.
Elise clenched her fists.
She took a mental tally of the body count. Anyone who hadn’t evacuated the casino would be dead. Depending on the hole’s depth, hundreds of demons might have died with them. She had told the Craven’s employees to hide down there.
Maybe thousands dead, all because Yatai didn’t want her to reach the gate.
“Goddamn it!” she yelled into the chasm, voice echoing down the depths of the earth. “Goddamn it ! Mother of all fucking demons!”
“My sister doesn’t do things halfway.”
She spun on him. “You asshole. This is your fault—you and your sister’s, and your goddamn suicide wish!”
Yatam arched an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.” His hand was covered in blood from holding her arm, and he licked one of his fingers. “Delicious.”
She groaned. “Don’t do that.” She flung an arm toward the suspended ruins. “How the hell am I supposed to get up there now?”
“There are other ways to reach the ruins. Follow me.”
The path to Yatam’s condo was clear, and they didn’t encounter anybody on the way. There were no signs of normality remaining—all the demons and humans had fled, leaving the streets vacant aside from the occasional Union SUV chasing fiends.
The bell desk in the condominium lobby was empty, and the elevators didn’t work. Elise took the stairs two at a time.
His condo was on the highest level of the building, close enough that they could have touched its mirror if they had a ladder. Nügua smiled benevolently at her basin of clay, unaffected by the chaos.
Elise shielded her face from the wind, gazing up at the crumbling black apartments. Only a block away, the Union was erecting scaffolding between the parking garage and the dark gate. A helicopter buzzed between the Silver Legacy and its mirror. “What happened to your ceiling?”
“I spoke with Yatai. We had a disagreement.”
Some disagreement. She paced between the walls, studying the mirrored ruins. They didn’t look stable, and the Union’s scaffolds were too far away. “How am I going to get up there?”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know,” Elise said. “Maybe I can destroy her with the obsidian blade.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Highly doubtful.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Perhaps. Let me tell you a story, Godslayer.” Yatam circled Nügua. “Over five thousand years ago, two children were born in what would become Myanmar. They lived a modest life, ruled by the passing seasons. To them, wealth meant many animals flush with milk, and good rain that became good crops. Until a woman visited.”
He nodded toward the statue.
Nügua continued to smile.
“She was a wealthy traveler with no interest in farmers, but the children caught her eye. She was as enamored with the twins as their parents were with her jewels, and so she offered a trade. For the price of her necklace and a basket of spice, she took the children as her slaves.”
“What are you telling me?” Elise asked.
“I am telling you that I did not become a man through the natural cycles of life. I became a man because Nügua purchased me, sculpted a new body for my sister and I, and breathed our souls into the new forms.”
“You were born human.”
“Both of us were, Yatai and I.” He stroked Nügua’s shoulder. “Mortal minds in immortal bodies.”
“So she made you into demons,” Elise said. “That’s a violation of the Treaty of Dis.”
“It didn’t exist at the time. Nügua did as she willed. And she willed for us to be her eternal companions.”
She eyed the statue. “Some companions.”
“Like
me, Nügua grew tired of living. And, also like me, she could not die. Instead, she crafted a new body for herself—one that is eternally asleep. And I have guarded her for countless years.”
“Why don’t you destroy it?” Elise asked.
“Because she would be reborn.” He lowered his lips to one of her outstretched hands, and his voice dropped. “I don’t hate her so much.” She wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear that part.
Yatam bent and scooped clay from the basin, letting it fall through his fingers. His eyes were distant, as though he were reliving thousands of years of life.
“I thought she left this clay for me so I might follow her into eternal sleep. So I could sculpt one more body for myself and bleed my life into it. But who would guard us? Who would ensure we never awoke?”
“She must have known that,” Elise said.
His fist clenched on the clay. Yatam turned his burning eyes on her. “Yes. She must have known.”
“I can’t turn Yatai into a statue.”
“That’s not what I’m suggesting. The legends say that Nügua breathed souls into her creations to make them live, but this isn’t true,” Yatam said. “She opened her veins and poured life upon my sister and I. Blood, sword-woman. It’s all about blood.”
He rose, swift and sudden, and seized her wrist. His grip was painfully tight.
“Let go of me,” Elise said, voice level.
“I know what it means to be the Godslayer now.” His arms encircling her back to press her chest against his. “The angels intended you to be His wife. To be with you is death. Consuming your blood weakened me, so consuming more—consuming your flesh—would draw your mortality into me. I could become human again.”
Elise’s heart pounded. So that was Metaraon’s solution to the God problem—giving him a tainted bride. And using her angel-crafted blood to kill demons would have probably infuriated the ones who meant for her to assassinate Him.
She pushed against Yatam, leaning back in his arms. “But if you drink my blood and eat my flesh, then who’s going to take care of Yatai?”
“I will take us only to the brink. I shouldn’t need to kill you.”
“But Yatai—”
“She is my sister, and where one of us is damaged, we both shall fall.” He pressed his pelvis into hers. He was growing aroused, and it pressed painfully against her stomach. “Trust me, sword-woman.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said, even as her body disagreed by flushing with heat.
“I can make this painless.” He stroked his hand down her throat. “As angels have dominion over the mental, so do demons over the physical. This does not need to feel like dying.”
He tipped her head back gently, and his lips brushed down her chin.
“Get off of me,” Elise said. “Your suggestion to give Him wives is the whole reason my life is ruined. I should hate you.”
His tongue flicked over the pulse in her throat. “Yet you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.” Her gasp made it sound less than convincing.
“You’re attracted to me,” he said, circling the button on her jeans with a finger. “Don’t be ashamed. I’m the father of demons—incubi and succubi inclusive—and my touch is sinful Heaven on Earth.” With a flick of his thumb, he popped her fly open. His fingertips dipped behind the waistband, stroking the smooth skin below her navel. “You want to surrender your blood and body to me. You want my touch.”
“No,” she said, but then his hand slid into her underwear, and her ability to say anything else fled. She sucked in a hard breath.
But he didn’t move further. His eyes were burning coals, and he looked so serious. Deadly serious. “Let me bleed you, Godslayer. Make me human.”
His lips brushed over hers.
She barely breathed as she nodded.
He lowered her to the rim of the basin in a single smooth motion and gestured for her to lean back. Elise braced her hands on the edge.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Yatam’s hand stroked down her calf to her ankle and removed the dagger from her boot. He slashed the hem open to bare her leg. “I will drink from your femoral.”
She tensed. “You could drink from my arm.”
Yatam’s breath was hot on the inside of her bare leg. “Most likely. But don’t you think this is so much more fun?”
Before she could respond, he sliced open her thigh. The cut was shallow, and it only hurt for an instant. Fresh blood, so thick that it was black, dripped down her thigh.
His mouth closed on the wound.
He drank deep, and every draw of his tongue on her thigh sent warm sensations rippling through her core. It was not painful, although the initial suction was so powerful that she struggled to breathe.
Her fingers gripped the basin. “Careful,” she said, feeling light-headed.
Yatam didn’t seem concerned. He slid his hand up her leg, cupping the back of her thigh as his mouth worked over the wound.
When he lifted his mouth, his lips were stained red, and he was breathing hard.
“It hurts,” he said, as though it was a revelation. “In my chest—I can feel my heart failing.”
“Is that enough?”
He laughed. “No.”
Yatam tugged her pants to her knees, pulling them over her feet to render her naked from the waist down except for her boy-cut underwear. He removed her boots. Even through her dizzy haze, it made her feel exposed, and she put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait.”
He smirked and said again, “No.”
Dipping his head between her knees again, his hot breath burned over her skin. His tongue darted over the back of her knee and slid higher.
His deft fingers opened the belts on the bulletproof vest and spread them open. Relieving the pressure over the bullet wound hurt as much as getting shot for the first time. She gritted her teeth.
He removed the spine sheath next, letting the falchions clatter to the ground, and stroked his hand from her navel to her breasts. Yatam cupped her throat. Her blue veins were visible under the translucence of her peach skin, brighter than she had ever seen them before. “So much blood waiting to be tasted.”
“Not all that much.”
Yatam slid up her body, covering her cold skin with his warmth and abandoning the wound on her leg. For an instant, she was actually disappointed—but that must have been the blood loss speaking.
His weight settled over her, and he bit her shoulder gently. His teeth were sharp enough that the lightest of nips drew blood. Arousal flushed between her legs.
“I’m going to devour you. You, and every drop of your dire blood.”
She burned. Before she could think to say anything else, a single word slipped from her lips: “Okay.”
She surrendered.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she levered herself against him, pressing her lips to his. His tongue danced over hers, tasting of copper pennies and ash.
Yatam supported her with a hand splayed over her back as the other explored her breasts and abdomen. Everywhere he touched, she lit with flame.
He leaned back long enough to remove her vest and shirt, then pressed himself to Elise again, kissing her so hard that it hurt. She felt it all the way down her throat, into her gut. It was like dying.
His fingers, slick with blood, tugged her underwear aside and traced the dampness between her legs for an instant before plunging inside. She gasped. “Cut me,” he groaned into her neck as he worked his fingers in and out of her. His other hand pressed hard metal into hers—the knife he had used to cut open her leg.
It took her a moment to realize what he had said, but even when her brain managed to process the words, she couldn’t grasp the meaning. “What ?”
“Cut me. I want to see how I bleed.”
He kissed her again, harder than before. He nipped her tongue and caught her bottom lip between his teeth. The pain was brilliant and delicious.
She dug the knife into his shoulder,
dragging a line down his chest. Blood dribbled down his pale skin, crimson on white.
The wound didn’t close.
Yatam gave a low groan and pressed himself against her.
Elise’s balance slipped with his weight. Her back sank into the clay, and she gazed up at the smiling face of Nügua as Yatam’s slick, bloody chest rubbed across hers. Her pulse thudded between her legs.
“You have rendered me mortal,” he said, voice husky and deep.
Her hands moved of their own volition to push down his leather pants, baring his body to hers, and Yatam chuckled with his mouth against her breast. His teeth sliced open the skin over her pectoral, and his tongue massaged the wound.
Blood upon blood. Her fingers gripped his shining hair and dug into the back of his neck.
Yatam settled his weight between her legs. “Cut me,” he said again, face hovering over hers. His eyes were brown. Truly brown.
She slipped the sharp edge of the dagger over his hardened nipple, and at the same moment, he drove his body into hers.
It was tight and uncomfortable—it was always uncomfortable—but it was a kind of ecstasy that Elise had never known. Drawing his blood as he forced himself inside, the heat of him against her, the satisfaction of being filled.
She lost herself in the rhythm, grasping at his shoulders, unaware if she was damaging him with the knife or if she was even holding it anymore. She had been reduced to a sum of parts—exposed breasts, cold in the air, her bared legs, and the place between them where Yatam buried himself.
Her knees were pinned tightly to his sides. Each thrust rubbed against the wound on her femoral artery and ached in just the right way. They were both slippery with her blood. His mouth sucked hard on her wounded shoulder.
Elise’s head swam. Her vision was blurry.
How much blood had she lost?
It took Elise too long to realize that the pounding she heard wasn’t her fading pulse. Someone was beating against the door to the condo, trying to get inside.
Yatam’s tongue laved along the side of her neck. “You taste like mortality and my death,” he whispered before pressing his lips to hers. “For this, I will love you for the rest of my life—may it be only hours.”
