by S. M. Reine
“Wait!” Yatam said, stepping in front of her. “Look, sister. Look at my veins! Listen to my heart! Do you see?” But she didn’t seem to care. She gazed up at the gate with tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can’t open the gates with only a wing. It takes two marks—two angels—to open a gate. Be at peace—we can resolve this without destroying all our children!”
Yatai turned the endless pits of her eyes on Elise.
I do need two marks. That’s true, isn’t it?
She threw out a hand, and shadow erupted from her fingertips.
Darkness engulfed the side of Elise’s body. It overcame her in a rush, swarming from her fingertips to her shoulder.
She shouted and tried to pull free, but there was nowhere to go. Yatai’s ichor clung to her like spider webs.
Frost washed over her skin. Pain, swift and sharp, drove through her forearm.
Something snapped like celery.
It took Elise a moment to realize that it was her bones.
She wrenched herself backward, and the shadow let her go. A terrible sensation ripped through the muscle and shot fire over her nerves. The tendons stretched, then tore. Elise stumbled and fell.
Her right arm did not go with her.
She stared at her elbow. Below it, there was nothing but a ragged stump gushing blood in time with the beating of her heart.
Elise could move her elbow, and it made the remaining inch of arm wiggle.
Her forearm, her wrist, her hand—all gone.
It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.
Yatai stretched out her arm. The cloud of shadow briefly drifted over her, opaque and amorphous. When it dispersed, her right hand was gloved.
Elise’s stomach lurched. That glove matched the one that was still on her left hand—black and fingerless. But Yatai hadn’t just stolen her glove. She had affixed the entire forearm to her body like Nukha’il’s drooping wing.
There we are. Two marks, Yatai said. Thank you.
She flapped the wing and rose into the air, perfectly balanced, as though she had a matching set.
The pain finally caught up with Elise.
She cried out and fell to her knees, gripping the stump tightly. It hurt—oh God , did it hurt—and she needed it to stop—but pressing her hand into the wound only made it burn worse, and letting go made it feel like she was dying, and Yatai had taken her goddamn arm —
“We must move,” Yatam said.
There was a lot of blood.
Elise’s vision fuzzed. Yatam’s arm scooped her from the ground before she could fall.
“You’re in hypovolemic shock. You’re without at least twenty percent of your normal blood volume.”
“I can’t breathe,” she gasped. Her fingers gripped the ragged stump, slick and raw.
“You can breathe. As I said, it’s only shock.” Yatam wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping her on her feet as they lurched toward the edge of the roof. “You’ll likely survive, with medical treatment.”
“My arm—”
“Yes, very unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate ?”
Her pulse was fast but weak. Her vision blurred. She stumbled.
James. She needed James. He could fix anything.
Her knees gave out.
The room flipped upside down as Yatam threw Elise over his shoulder. The rush of blood from her injuries to her skull made everything darken. “Keep the limb elevated and try not to fall,” he said. It sounded like her ears were filled with water.
I’m drowning.
Yatam’s body shifted under hers, and she clung to his shoulder with her good arm as he climbed the rubble that used to be his ceiling to reach the roof. Her stump smeared blood down his spine.
The view of the ethereal ruins was excellent from the top of the condo, and hanging from Yatam’s back oriented her so that the black cobblestone streets were below her. The ruins seemed dizzyingly distant.
Yatam approached the Union’s scaffolding and gripped one of the metal poles for balance. “Yatai!” he shouted.
Elise twisted and saw the mother of all demons floating toward the darkest gate, her body seemingly inverted.
Yes, brother?
He set Elise down gently. Rolling over almost made her lose consciousness.
Yatam stepped to the edge of the roof, arms spread wide. “I am mortal! Her blood is what I claim! You must listen to me!”
Yatai’s crying laughter whipped over the wind.
Are you certain?
“Allow me to share my blood with you. We can die together!”
She returned to him. Elise lurched to her knees, preparing for Yatai to attack again, but the demon didn’t seem concerned by the writhing of a one-armed kopis.
Yatai wrapped her arms around Yatam, embracing her brother. Her skin was moonlight and milk against his darker flesh. He buried his face in the shadows of her hair as her hands stroked his neck and back.
“It’s been so long, sister.”
Indeed it has, Yatai said. So let’s see if you’re right.
She wrenched her arms apart.
Yatam’s upper half severed from his hips.
Elise wasn’t sure what she expected to be inside of him. Nightmares didn’t have organs—not like humans did. They were built of sludge and shadow. Given that Yatam had fathered all nightmares, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him simply gush black fluid.
But he wasn’t black on the inside. He was red—so very red.
Viscera spilled over the cement like that of a butchered steer. His legs rolled several feet away. His upper body splattered at Elise’s feet.
Panic surged through her. She stumbled and failed to catch herself. She slammed onto her side on the stump of her arm.
Elise cried out.
My brother , Yatai murmured, her voice filled with sadness and pride. My love . She kneeled in front of his torso, smoothing Elise’s gloved hand down his face. Mortal indeed, Yatam. Mortal indeed.
She jerked his head off his shoulders. It severed with a wet crunch .
Yatai placed his head over hers, replacing her ghostly, incorporeal face with his. Yatam’s features were so similar to hers as to be nearly indistinguishable. As soon as his ragged neck settled on her shoulders, his eyes blinked, his mouth twisted, and he smiled.
“Good,” Yatai said in her brother’s voice. It was only a touch deeper than hers. “My brother and I will end this the way we came into the world—together. That’s the right way to do it. Don’t you think so, sword-woman?”
The world swirled around Elise. She tried to sit up, and failed.
Yatai swept away without waiting for a response, ascending once more on Nukha’il’s broken wing.
Elise struggled to focus. He’s dead. She’s still opening the gates. She has two marks. I’m alone.
The pain didn’t matter. The blood didn’t matter.
She couldn’t let Yatai reach the gate.
Elise crawled to the edge of the scaffolding. The ladder reaching toward the dark gate looked impossibly, nauseatingly difficult to climb with only one hand. She couldn’t do it—not with the red haze of agony clouding her mind and sight.
She took the notebook James had given her out of her pocket. “Please, please, please,” she whispered like a mantra, focusing on the word to keep her consciousness.
There was nothing powerful enough to restore a limb in the Book, but there was one more healing spell. She tore the page free. It was harder with one hand than she had expected; she had to lean her knee on the notebook to hold it still.
Elise pressed her clammy forehead to the bar of the scaffold, clamped her teeth down on the thumb ring, and wiggled the gold band off. James must have still been wearing his ring. She couldn’t feel him, which meant he couldn’t feel her, either. Small mercy.
It took three tries to utter the word of power. The magic sputtered rather than spilled—it pulsed like the flow of blood and showered yellow sparks down her body.
The wound b
lackened, then began to pale, and new skin inched over the edges. It wasn’t much—she was still bleeding, still hurting, still without one of her arms—but it was enough to clear her head.
Enough to stop Yatai.
Elise abandoned the Book and stood on trembling legs.
The darkest gate hummed as Yatai circled it. Lightning leaped to life within the archway, making Elise’s palm burn with fresh pain. She ignored it and grabbed the ladder leading up to the scaffold, hooking her elbow over a rung and climbing behind it.
She inched up the ladder one step at a time and rolled onto the scaffolding’s platform. The street could have been miles away, for all she knew. She couldn’t focus that far beyond the grates.
Yatai hovered by the base of the gate, tilting her head to examine the symbols lining the bone. Energy haloed her head with darkness.
Elise crawled through the battering wind.
Only another twenty feet.
The demon peeled the glove off of her stolen hand and wiggled her fingers. “To think He would be the vehicle of our liberation,” Yatai murmured, her voice carried on the electric wind.
Belly to the platform, Elise slid until she was underneath the demon—only five feet away. She levered herself to her feet using the scaffold and climbed that short distance toward the chimeric demon, who only looked more and more amused as she approached.
Yatai smiled with Yatam’s lips. “What do you think you’re doing?” Elise drew her knife. “Charming.”
Stretching out her arm, the demon prepared to press her splayed fingers to the dark gate.
Elise threw the knife.
It buried in the back of Yatai’s hand an instant before she could touch the gate. She reared back with a cry and wrenched the blade from her flesh.
The wound didn’t close.
Yatai froze, marveling at the injury. Elise’s aim was good, despite the blood loss—she had driven the knife straight through the center of the mark on Yatai’s palm. Blood dripped down her wrist.
Red blood.
Bracing her knees against the scaffolding, Elise inched higher, drawing level with Yatai, and she pulled the obsidian falchion from its sheath.
“My brother made me mortal,” Yatai said, gazing upon the wound with wonder. “His face—he carried your blood—”
Elise drove her sword into the demon’s gut.
Her brown eyes went wide. Blood dribbled from one nostril.
The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile.
Elise pulled the sword out and stabbed again, and again. It made a meaty sound, like hacking at steaks.
Nukha’il’s wing wilted. Yatai’s expression slackened.
She drooped, her head rolled back, and her arms swept wide.
Like a feather, she fell.
The light of five thousand years blinked out, and Elise felt a great emptiness open in her senses where Yatai had been. The places her energy pervaded—the ichor that devoured the ruins, the darkness in Reno, her spirit within Anthony—vanished in an instant.
Elise clung to the scaffolding and watched as Yatai, with Yatam’s head, Nukha’il’s wing, and her own arm, hit the pavement.
A sob tore from her throat. She pressed her face to the bar.
The gates weren’t open. The city was safe. Anthony would be safe.
And she was still bleeding.
She slid down slowly, the metal slicked with blood from her climb. Breathing was so hard, and she wasn’t sure if it was due to the elevation or her exhaustion or the blood loss.
Elise made it across the scaffolding—a few levels and a ladder away from safely reaching the condominium. But holding her balance on the metal bar without a hand was too difficult. Even with James’s magic healing her, she couldn’t keep her balance.
Her foot skidded on a slippery bar.
Elise felt the rush of falling.
She didn’t feel the landing at all.
It took her a long time to process what had happened. She had been looking at her fingers curled around the scaffolding one moment, and then suddenly she was staring up at the statue of Nügua; how she had crossed the hundreds of feet between the ruins and the condominium, she wasn’t sure.
She couldn’t feel anything below the neck, including her severed arm and what must have been a broken leg. Elise could see her foot twisted strangely out of the corner of her eye, though she couldn’t move her head to inspect the damage. That was probably a bad sign.
Come to think of it, she couldn’t feel her chin, either. Or her throat as she tried to breathe.
Maybe she wasn’t breathing.
Everything was so distant.
Her eyes closed on Nügua’s benevolent smile. Elise’s last breath drifted from her lips, and her lungs didn’t fill again.
18
By midnight, the energy pouring off of the gates died down enough for Union witches to contain them. It took about six hours to construct the warding spells and execute them properly. An hour after that, a kopis reported that all of the possessed fiends were dead. And when the sun rose around eight o’clock in the morning, it was on clear streets and a silent city.
Once Bellamy confirmed that all the demons were contained or dead, Malcolm finally entered what Union HQ was already referring to as Ground Zero. His unit combed Reno for survivors, and he wanted to be there to see what they found. It was against Union regulations for a commander to take point in recovery efforts, of course, but HQ couldn’t get mad about what they never discovered.
Trackers noted activity at a condominium downtown when the gates closed, so that was the first place Malcolm visited. He took his sidearm. Not that he didn’t trust Bellamy’s detecting spells, of course, but being paranoid had kept him alive to see thirty. Not many kopides could say that.
Malcolm limped across the top floor of the condominium to meet his aspis. “Report?”
Bellamy’s spine straightened. Military instinct was impossible to beat out of a man. “We lost more than two dozen good Union men and women, sir. And we also recovered three other bodies.”
“Three?”
“Two demons and a human.” He hesitated. “An unassociated kopis.”
Oh, hell. Malcolm scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Which two demons?”
“Heather blew her magic out trying to identify the bodies,” Bellamy said, referring to a witch on staff whose sole expertise was demonology. “They were more powerful than anything she’s ever seen. Maybe the most powerful demons on Earth. Not much left of them, though.”
At least they were dead. The names weren’t too important. “And the human?”
Bellamy gestured to the edge of the condo.
There was only one thing in the otherwise empty room: a statue of a snake-woman atop a broad stone basin. The entire thing was made of baked clay, and perfectly untouched by the destruction.
Except for the corpse inside.
Malcolm knew who it would be before he looked, and he gave brief consideration to ordering the body’s transport without confirming his fear. But his curiosity won out.
It was Elise, of course.
He kneeled by her body to gaze upon her face, slack and calm in death. There was no hint of the cold fury he had once found so sexy. Her head had been cracked open on the side of the basin, and brain matter leaked from the back of her skull, making her auburn curls clump together with glossy gray fluid. That was probably what killed her, but he doubted she would have survived bleeding out from the artery in her arm, either. The fall just got to her first.
Gary Zettel brought over a stretcher. “Sir?”
Malcolm stepped back to let him lift her onto a gurney. Gary was actually smiling—the bastard.
Malcolm stopped a passing witch. She was new to the Union, and wouldn’t know who Elise was. “Bring the truck around and take this body to the medical bay. They’ll want to autopsy her.”
“I can take care of it, sir,” Gary said.
“No, you can’t. Go find something better to do.” The forme
r commander glowered at him, but moved on, leaving Malcolm alone momentarily with Elise.
He was surprised to find no sadness within himself at her death. Some part of him liked to think of her in a warrior’s heaven—a Valhalla where she could battle eternally without the troublesome complications of reality and relationships.
Her eyes were still open a fraction. He smoothed his fingers over her eyelids to close them, and then pulled the white sheet over her face.
The intact left arm hung out from under the sheet. Her hand was still gloved.
Malcolm had never seen what was under those gloves before. She wore them all the time, even when they had sex, and she had traded them out for bandages when she showered. He had seen every other inch of her, but that specific area was a mystery to him.
“Why not?” he asked her shrouded profile.
He peeled off Elise’s glove and turned the palm over.
Nothing. Her hand was utterly unremarkable. A little scarred, a few too many calluses on her knuckles. But it was only a hand.
“You were one crazy bitch,” he murmured, sliding her arm under the sheet.
The witch initiate returned a few minutes later, and he watched as she carried the gurney away. Malcolm heaved a sigh.
He felt his aspis approach. The slender man stood by his side silently for a few long minutes as Malcolm watched the rising sun inch toward the ethereal ruins. “So Elise Kavanagh died last night,” Bellamy said. It almost made Malcolm laugh to hear him say her name with such unfamiliarity, like she was a celebrity—or legend. “You had a history with her, didn’t you?”
“Ancient history.” He walked around the statue. There wasn’t a single drop of blood to be seen.
“Need me to do anything for you, sir?”
“Nah.” He kneeled by the basin and ran his hand over the smooth stone. It left a faint residue of dust on his fingers.
When he turned his hand to study the sandy residue on his hand, the recent scar from his binding to Bellamy caught his attention. He rubbed his fingers on his forearm.
“Actually, scratch that. Get me James Faulkner’s phone number.”
