by S. M. Reine
Betty trusted Elise to make the hard decisions. The heroic ones. She had trusted Elise enough to follow her into a deadly battle, and not return.
And so had Anthony.
Spotlights slammed on, illuminating the opposite side of the landing pad. It drew Elise’s attention over Malcolm’s shoulder.
Someone screamed. “Let me go! I didn’t do anything!”
It was Jerica. The young nightmare was only wearing a tank top and underwear, which revealed bony knees, sharp elbows, and bruises mottling her colorless skin.
They were dragging her out of a van. Jerica was putting up a pretty good fight, but not good enough. There was only so much she could do with that much light on her.
“Let me go!”
A powerful sense of wrongness struck Elise. Her hand tightened on the wedding photo as the commander stepped off the skid and waved to the helicopter pilot. “Put on your harness,” James said. “We’re going to lift off.”
He was holding one of the straps out to her. Elise stuffed the photo in her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t take the strap.
Elise used James’s hand to pull his head down, and she kissed him fiercely. He tried to draw away. She grabbed the back of his head and held him in place. The rushing in her ears could have been nerves, or the rotor, or the wind. The folded corner of Betty’s photo jabbed her in the hip.
When she released him, James looked stunned. “Still?”
She suppressed a swell of sadness. “Always.” Elise rose from her seat and grabbed the strap over the door. She only managed half of a smile. “Bye, James.”
“Wait!”
Elise stepped onto the skid, took a deep breath, and jumped to the pavement.
The helicopter hadn’t risen far, but an eight-foot drop was still painful with all of Elise’s injuries. She grunted and rolled to her knees.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm asked, stepping back so she wouldn’t hit him. “You agreed to leave.”
She shielded her eyes to glance up at the ascending helicopter. “Change of plans.”
James was leaning out the helicopter door, but his features faded as he quickly ascended. She was glad for that. She didn’t want to see the confusion and anger.
Malcolm put a finger to his ear.
“Commander to pilot—”
She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t call them back.”
“You have to leave, Elise.”
“I don’t have to do anything. Except this.”
She strode across the landing platform to Jerica. A kopis restrained her by the back of her shirt. The nightmare had lost her footing, and he dragged her through the spotlights to the side of the hill.
Elise grabbed Jerica’s arm. Her fingers sank into the girl’s sallow flesh as she pulled her away from the other kopis. “Don’t you know anything about nightmares? She’s young. This much light could kill her.”
“We have containment procedures!” Malcolm ran to her side. “We’re not going to injure it.”
“Screw your procedures. Get out of here, Jerica. Run!”
The nightmare took three steps to escape the circle of light. The kopis raised his rifle, and Elise shoved the muzzle down.
“Thanks,” Jerica said. “Seriously.”
She phased into shadow and disappeared.
“Give me a car. I’m going into Reno again,” Elise said.
Malcolm sighed and ran a hand over his stubble. “This is crossing a line. Sorry, Elise.” He gestured to the rifleman. “Arrest her.”
She didn’t wait for the kopis to attempt it. She slammed her foot into his face, wrenched the rifle from his hands, and aimed it at Malcolm.
Instantly, a dozen other guns were aimed at her.
She backed toward the edge of the landing platform without dropping her aim. Elise glanced over the side. The ground was twenty feet down, but there was sagebrush at the bottom. She lowered her voice so only Malcolm could hear her. “I’m going to kill Yatai before she opens the gates. You can help me, or I can do it alone. I don’t care.”
“I’m under orders not to let you return. Don’t make me take you out.”
She barked a laugh. “You’re welcome to try.”
Elise threw the rifle at him and jumped off the platform.
Bushes rushed at her. She missed them.
Her side connected with the dirt, and she rolled into a bush. The hard branches stabbed at her face and hair. She staggered to her feet, using her momentum to carry her down the hill.
It was too dark to navigate gracefully. Her foot caught something—a rock or a root, it was impossible to tell—and she tripped, falling head-over-feet to slide down the slope. Grit and ice scraped up her side, her arm, her cheek.
People were shouting. Gunshots thundered overhead.
Elise slid to a stop where the hill leveled off, entrenched in mud and sludgy snow. Her body burned with friction, but she didn’t stop to nurse the wounds.
She could just make out a trail winding toward the highway. Scrambling through the sagebrush, she broke onto the clear path.
Her breath tore through her throat as she fled, pumping her fists and dodging the muddiest puddles. The hill steepened again, and she slid a few more feet. Ran another handful of yards. Slid some more.
Spotlights began scanning a few yards uphill. She dug a hand into her pocket and found the ruby choker. “Yatam. I need you.”
The answering pause was long enough that she thought he might not show up at all. But then he flashed into life at her side.
He wavered on his feet, clutched his stomach, and fell to his knees in the mud. Then he threw up. Ichor splashed onto the dirt.
Elise pushed his hair over his shoulder, but touching him didn’t fill her with a sense of overwhelming power. In fact, she felt nothing from him at all—no more than she did when touching Neuma.
Yatam gave a low moan. “This… I had forgotten this.”
His head lifted, and Elise felt a shock as a light swept over them, briefly illuminating his face. His eyes were brown. Not black. Crow’s feet marked his eyes, and the slightest lines framed either side of his mouth.
The light vanished again, and she was grateful for it. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Yatam, but you’re looking very… human. My blood did this to you?”
“I said it was delicious, didn’t I?” His brow furrowed. “Feel this.”
He took her hand and pressed it to his chest.
Elise’s eyes widened. There was a heart beating underneath.
“I am failing.” His eyes gleamed. It was the same look he had given her while his head was between her legs. Even with his aging face, it made her ache with remembered heat. “A heart beats a finite number of times before death.”
She didn’t have time to fully absorb the implications of it. There were spotlights tracing the sagebrush at the top of the hill—the Union was approaching.
“Can you phase us into the city?” Elise asked.
He took her hands. Closed his eyes.
Nothing happened.
“No,” Yatam said. “I started losing the ability after the first touch of your blood. Now, it seems to be gone entirely.”
An SUV crested the hill. Light splashed over them.
“Great time to lose it,” she said. “Fantastic. Okay. We’ve got to run. Can you move?”
He got to his feet. “Yes.”
They fled over the trail together, gripping one another’s hands to keep close, and the SUV pursued. Elise could imagine Malcolm driving it, grinning that manic grin he got when he was drunk on excitement instead of alcohol, and she kind of wished she had shot him before jumping.
Sagebrush flashed past them in the night. The desert was a blur of motion, and Elise moved purely on instinct.
The SUV began closing the distance between them.
“This way,” Elise said, taking a fork that narrowed and twisted through rocks too large for the SUV to climb over.
The highway wa
ited on the other side.
“There!” Yatam said, dragging her around a boulder to a crevice under the road. It was small—barely big enough for both of them lying down.
They squirmed inside, shoulder-to-shoulder.
The SUV roared toward them. The spotlight slid over their hiding place—and moved on.
Elise held her breath as the engine noise grew. Tires splattered mud on her arm as it rushed past, but it didn’t stop. The Union hadn’t seen them dive into the hole.
Yatam moved to climb out, but she held him back. “Wait.”
Her heart pounded as she waited to see if they would circle around. The sound of the SUV faded into the distance.
“Now,” he said, and they scrambled onto the empty highway.
The SUV was still searching the hills, but it was going in the wrong direction. They stayed low to the median and continued to run.
It was a long way back into town.
“Were you in Reno before I summoned you?” Elise asked, the words choppy and short through her heaving breaths. He nodded. “What’s going on?”
“The wards around all the gates have fallen, but my sister has yet to open them,” Yatam said. “I’m not certain why.”
“I spoke to her earlier—told her I could kill her. Maybe she’s waiting for me.”
He shook his head. “She would not wait if she knew another choice was available. She must not yet have what she needs to open the gates.”
“There are no angels to open the gates for her.”
“I know.”
“But you can open them. If you had left, she wouldn’t be able to open the gates and destroy the city. She wouldn’t be able to kill herself. Instead, you are giving her exactly what she needs to achieve her goals,” Yatam said. Elise clenched her jaw and nodded. “Then why did you stay?”
“She’s possessed my boyfriend, and I can’t exorcise him. Yatai is too powerful. He’ll die if I can’t kill her.”
“But you’ll have to die to accomplish that,” Yatam said.
She released his hand and ran faster.
Under her breath, she muttered, “I know.”
The Union had been using the freeway to evacuate people, so they hadn’t destroyed I-80 heading east out of town. But their barricades were still in position, and they were well guarded. Spotlights illuminated the road, guards paced along the barrels, and someone had clearly told them to watch for Elise, as they were scanning the night with binoculars.
A few hundred feet away from the barricade, well beyond the edge of lights, Elise and Yatam stopped.
She dragged a motorcycle out of a truck stopped on the westbound freeway. It was an older model Kawasaki, and it made a strange popping noise when it started, but it did start. Better still, it had two helmets.
“Get on,” she said, tossing one to Yatam.
He held it away from him with a finger hooked under the strap. “What is this?”
“It’s protective gear.”
“I am five thousand years old,” he said.
Elise pulled her helmet over her hair, lifting the mask so she could see him. “And now you have a mortal skull that can get crushed. Put it on.”
Yatam reluctantly obeyed and climbed on the bike behind her, hands wrapped around her waist. “Are you skilled in operating motorcycles?”
She had ridden dirt bikes with Anthony before. It couldn’t be that different.
“Sure. Why not?”
Elise avoided the Union barricade by backtracking a mile and taking the Lockwood exit. She didn’t have problems balancing on the heavy motorcycle, but the tires were slick and wide in comparison to a dirt bike’s. They wobbled on the turns, the engine protested when she shifted, and it was a jerky ride down the exit ramp. Yatam’s arms locked tight around her midsection.
They drove through the quiet, empty night, skirting Union patrols and winding toward the waiting ruins of the city.
The air grew thick as they drove down the main street. Every inch of the ethereal ruins had turned to shadow, half of the buildings had rotted, and the smooth white bone of the gates was now obsidian. Elise paused at an empty intersection and pushed up the mask of the helmet again.
It was quiet—too quiet, considering the way that the Union teams had been mobilizing. There should have been a fleet of SUVs and tanks and gunfire.
But nothing moved.
Yatam lifted a pale hand and pointed at his condominium. The top floor was ripped open, and dark energy radiated into the air. “My sister is waiting for us.”
Elise dismounted and dropped the helmet. “Then let’s get going.”
Her legs felt heavier with every step toward the condo.
She was sore. She was tired. She was weak. And she didn’t want to go into that building.
Elise stopped in front of the glass doors and tipped her head back to look at the top of the condominiums. The shadow was greatest there, like the crux of a gathering storm. The dark gate that she had fought so hard to protect was suspended over the parking garage across the street.
She put a hand on the door to the lobby, but she didn’t open it.
Elise closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I’m not ready to die.
But Anthony’s family had shed enough blood for her.
She lifted her chin, straightened her back, and stepped into the building.
The lobby still had all the hallmarks of a high-class establishment—nice floors, the bell desk, fancy geometric paintings. But it was so much darker than the last time she had gone inside. The shadows were so deep as to be tangible, and Yatai’s presence dripped from the fashionably tan walls and the desert mural by the elevators.
It took Elise’s eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, she realized that it was darker along the walls because there were corpses piled there—corpses in cargo pants and polo shirts. At least a dozen Union kopides.
So that was where they had gone.
She had to step over a boy who couldn’t have been older than seventeen to push the elevator button. It didn’t work.
“Guess we’re walking,” she said.
They found the stairs covered in ichor. It trickled down the steps like a waterfall, oozing off the metal banisters and sliding across the floor. Yatam climbed onto the first step, and the shadow parted to allow him to pass. “Stay close.”
She followed on the step behind him, her face all but pressed between his shoulders, and the ichor closed behind them as they ascended.
The climb was slow. More Union members had died in the stairwell, and they obstructed the landings. Elise tried not to look too closely at all the hardened obsidian skin as she passed. Her boots rung out on each step, muffled and flat.
What did criminals think of on their way toward the executioner’s chair? Did they think of their crimes and the people they loved? Did they feel regret?
Elise didn’t dare consider any of that. Instead, she counted the floors as they passed. She lost count after ten. And then she counted breaths, heartbeats, the blinks of her eyes—quantifying the gestures of her last moments.
It felt like they climbed among the bodies and shadow all night, but it couldn’t have been longer than half an hour. Eventually, Elise’s foot sought out the next step, and didn’t find it. They had reached the topmost landing, and all that waited for them was a short hall and the door at the end.
She stared at it, feeling numb.
Something touched her hand. Elise looked down. Yatam had curled his fingers around hers. He gave her a smile that might have been comforting, coming from anyone else. “Five thousand years, Elise. It may be difficult for you to understand, but what we are doing is a blessing. You should be filled with joy.”
She shook off his hand. “Sorry if I’m not dancing.”
“You can face death with reluctance and tears, or you can greet it with a warm embrace,” Yatam said. “Either way, we are both about to die.”
He pushed the door open.
The condo was the way they had left it�
��roof torn open, Nügua poised over the basin, and the darkest gate across the street. The Union’s scaffolding had spread across the block and formed a honeycomb of metal over their heads. The ashen night smelled like fire and death, and a haze drifted over the wooden floors.
But there was someone new standing there, too. Her skin shimmered with translucence, more like a specter than a woman. Her face had the same pleasant curves as Yatam’s. A satin dress the color of rubies hugged her curves.
Yatai was wearing her true face for once. But the lone wing hanging from her shoulder blade didn’t belong to her. Half of the feathers had fallen off to bare glistening bone.
She had affixed one of Nukha’il’s wings to her back.
Yatai stepped forward to greet them. Brother, you look unwell.
“Thank you.”
I’ve waited so many years for this. Let’s be quick to greet oblivion.
And that was it. Time to bleed.
Elise drew one of her knives and bit back a grunt of pain as she slit open her wrist.
Yatai’s fingers were delicate on her arm as she lifted it to her plump red lips. Her tongue darted out, sleek and slimy, as though an amphibian lived behind her teeth.
The caress of Yatai’s flesh against hers wasn’t as sensual as Yatam’s had been. Nausea crept down Elise’s spine, and it took all her strength not to pull away as the demon tasted her.
“Do you feel it?” Yatam asked.
Sudden fury blanketed Yatai’s features. What is this deceit? She dropped the arm and stepped back. I feel nothing! I am unharmed!
Her brother faltered. “Impossible. A mere taste of it weakened me perceptibly.”
That is not the blood of a kopis. It is mundane, as flat and flavorless as dirt!
Elise stared at her bleeding wrist.
What had changed? Why had her blood damaged Yatam, and done nothing to Yatai?
An image flashed to mind—the needle in her arm, and James leaning against her bed as he poured life into her veins. He might have been acquiring her abilities as kopis, but he hadn’t become a Godslayer, too. And she had taken on his blood.
Which meant her veins ran with his power—not hers.
“Shit,” she said.
Yatai laughed, high and chilling, but it quickly turned to sobs. The Godslayer cannot slay gods. Am I greater than God, or is she too weak? It is the same result—I live on! She staggered toward the edge of the condo.
