The Descent Series Complete Collection

by S. M. Reine

  He snapped his fingers. “Everyone out.”

  The technicians rose from their desks. Each of them wore pentagram pins on the lapels of their black polos, marking them as witches. “What’s going on?” asked the male witch, gathering his playing cards into a pile.

  “You’re all done for the day. Return to the barracks.”

  One of the other witches lifted a hand to her ear. “On whose orders? I should contact Malcolm to verify.”

  “Malcolm’s been put on temporary leave. I’m in charge in his absence.”

  The door opened again and Allyson stepped through, propping it open with her foot. She cradled a shotgun in the crook of her arm. “Move!” she barked.

  An order backed by a gun was a lot more effective than Zettel’s shout. They dropped the playing cards and filed out quickly, muttering among themselves.

  As soon as they were gone, Zettel locked the door behind them.

  “We have to hurry,” Allyson said. “I think Malcolm’s out. People are moving this way.”

  “Shit,” Zettel said, and he rushed to the nearest terminal.

  “You have a portal to Hell outside my city,” Elise said. “That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

  He began typing on the keyboard. “It’s not your city anymore.”

  “We keep lines of communication open with the Council of Dis,” Allyson explained, steering Nathaniel to the side of the portal by his shoulders. “The only way to do it is via interdimensional portal. We open it every hour, on the hour—an Earth hour—and transmit updates to the Council. It’s a secure path. You might be able to get in unseen if we transmit between the usual hours.”

  Elise circled the basin, giving it a wide berth. She could almost read the infernal writing scrawled across the crumbling stones, even though she had never been able to read it before. Danger. Fire. “Where does it lead?” she asked.

  “To the top of the grand tower,” Zettel said. “All traffic enters there, so you’ll have to move fast. When they realize that something living has gotten through, they’ll kill you.”

  “I can carry us out unseen,” Elise said.

  The memory of her shadow in the warehouse flicked across Zettel’s mind and then vanished. “I suppose you can.”

  “I’ll need a map, though. I need to know where I’m going.”

  Allyson went to another terminal and brought up a detailed schematic of the Palace and surrounding areas. She pointed to the left side of the map. “There. That’s where you’ll pop in.”

  As Zettel continued to work, Elise drank in the map, trying to memorize as much of it as possible.

  She recognized a few of the towers on the 3D schematics. When she was six years old, her father had taken her on a short trip to Dis. Even though she had been very young and they hadn’t even stayed there for a full day, it had left quite an impression on her.

  That box indicated the courtyard—that was where the flesh orchards were grown and prisoners were tortured. Elise had witnessed a cambion being flayed as she walked past, and she could still remember how much everyone had cheered when its spraying blood was funneled into the orchard. She still wondered what was on the other end of the arms, buried deep in the earth.

  “Where do they keep prisoners that aren’t being interrogated?” she asked.

  Allyson pointed to the base of another tower, and Elise’s eyes traced the path between the Union’s portal and the prison. They were on opposite ends of the Palace. “Under there. It’s guarded. A direct approach would be suicide.”

  “What’s the indirect approach?” Elise asked.

  The witch smiled unpleasantly. “There isn’t one.”

  “We’re ready,” Zettel said as the humming around the basin intensified.

  Nathaniel moved to step into the portal, but Elise caught his arm. She addressed Zettel. “Can you get this kid back to his family?”

  “What?” Nathaniel asked, his mouth dropping open. “But you said—”

  “There’s a portal here. I don’t need your help to cross into Hell, and it’s too dangerous for you to come.” She shrugged and stepped over the portal’s ledge. “You should get back to your grandparents in Colorado. They’re probably worried.”

  His whole face crumpled. “Then how would you get back?”

  The door to the room rattled. Fists pounded on the other side. “Open up!” shouted Malcolm, his voice muffled by three inches of steel.

  “Nathaniel is going,” Zettel said curtly. “End of discussion. Allyson?”

  She pushed the boy into the basin. Nathaniel almost tripped over the side.

  “Wait,” Elise said.

  But Zettel had already gone back to his terminal and flipped the switch.

  6

  It was very dark, and Elise was sharpening her swords again.

  Whisk, whisk, whisk…

  A light.

  James walked down a long, empty beach as the wind roared over him. Chunks of ice floated on an ocean the color of molten steel, cracking and crunching and popping with the tide. The water sluiced toward his feet with foamy fingers.

  Elise sat on the dock, feet dangling into the ice. She had one of her swords across her lap and a sharpening stone in her hand. She wasn’t dressed well for the cold. She was in a black dress, like the ones she had worn at dance competitions after they had retired from hunting, and her hair hung over her neck in a loose, elegant knot.

  “You could ruin the geometry if you file that much more,” he said.

  Elise stood with the sword, swinging it easily through the air in a figure eight and then driving it through an invisible enemy. Her bicep rippled.

  “Don’t worry about it so much, James. Sometimes swords break. They have to be melted down, reforged, refolded. But they’re sharper the second time. Stronger. Better.”

  “What are you talking about?” James asked.

  “Destiny. Inevitability.” She offered the hilt of the sword to him. It was covered in blood.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Who better to wield it than you?” She tilted her head to the side and gave him a thoughtful look. “I don’t think anyone understands me. Other than you, anyway.”

  He gave her a warm smile. “I’m not sure I would say that I understand you. Your layers of mystery are one of your greatest charms.”

  Elise stretched up onto her toes, balancing herself against his chest with a careful hand.

  She kissed him—a light brush of her lips against his.

  James froze where he stood, and the reality of how he reacted warred against the way he wished he had responded. Memory and regret clashed.

  In reality, he hadn’t reacted at all. Elise had stepped back, disappointed, and he had apologized. In less than thirty seconds, the way they interacted was changed profoundly, for the rest of Elise’s too-short life, and probably for the worse—and good God, did he wish he could take that back.

  He didn’t want to make that mistake again.

  A voice spoke from behind him.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t been so selfish,” said the other, older Elise as she stepped around them, just out of sight. “Maybe if you had trusted me with the truth, we could have found a solution together. Maybe I would be alive. But it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  He released the girl in his arms and realized with a shock that she was already stiff and blue-lipped.

  Elise fell to the dock. Her gloved hand flopped over the side. Dead.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her corpse.

  James backed away from Elise. Even though she wasn’t moving, she was still sharpening her swords somewhere. Still running the stone along the blade of the falchion, honing the edge to a deadly point. Still preparing to hunt and kill, even in death.

  Whisk, whisk, whisk. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

  He opened his eyes.

  There was no sound inside of his cell. Everything glowed a very faint, very nauseating shade of red.

&n
bsp; So he hadn’t dreamed that part. He really was in Hell.

  James groaned in the dry air. His stomach knotted with hunger, his tongue was thick and heavy, and his very eyeballs felt like they were shriveling. He needed water. Desperately.

  But there was nothing to drink or eat in his miserable cell. In fact, there wasn’t even a bed, or a latrine. The stone room was six feet wide by six feet long, with a narrow inset for the door. A small cell—but it was private, if nothing else. Small mercy. He wouldn’t have wanted to be confined with the denizens of Hell.

  The door opened, startling him out of his groggy haze.

  A human entered, but James’s instant of relief was short-lived as his eyes skimmed up the legs of his captor, to his narrow shoulders, and then to the brush of flaming red hair atop his head. The man had a goatee with blond stripes on either side of his lips, as well as a scar running from the edge of his eye to the corner of his mouth. His eyes were green, and slanted in such a way that they probably always looked angry.

  Those were Elise’s eyes.

  It had been a long time since James had seen Isaac Kavanagh—maybe twenty years, although his brain was too sluggish to work out the math. Yet the kopis had barely aged a day. He looked like a very grizzled thirty-year-old.

  He also looked furious, and James decided immediately that Isaac was not there to rescue him.

  “There’s been a mistake,” James forced out of his dry mouth. His lips cracked at the corners where he had been gagged.

  Isaac crossed the cell in two steps and punched him across the face.

  Brilliant pain flared at the corners of James’s vision as his ears rang. The hinge of his jaw ached. “Yes, I would definitely say that there’s been a mistake,” Isaac said. A growl rose deep in his chest. “You let her die.”

  So he had received the news of Elise’s death. That was surprising. Her parents hadn’t shown any indication that they cared what happened to their daughter for over a decade—why would they care if she was suddenly gone from the face of the Earth?

  James didn’t get a chance to say that.

  Isaac punched him again.

  He lay still as blow after blow landed on his cheeks and jaw, forcing his back flat on the floor and snapping his head from side to side.

  Isaac’s knuckles split the skin on James’s lips. A burning welt formed on James’s cheekbone. The pain was white hot and shocking—but still, it was so little in comparison to everything else. It didn’t seem worth fighting back.

  The sound of flesh on flesh was deep and meaty. James’s eyes blurred, unfocused.

  He almost didn’t notice when Isaac stopped hitting him.

  “Too bad killing you now would spare you from what the Council has planned,” Isaac said, and his voice swam in and out of James’s ears, echoing hollowly.

  He tasted blood on his tongue. The moisture was a welcome change. “I would have done anything to save her.” James’s voice was hoarse, barely louder than a whisper.

  Isaac lifted his fist one more time—but let it fall. “Why have you been brought in for high trial? You’re not a demon. You must have done something to piss off Abraxas.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can interrogate you for being uncooperative. I could drag you to the torture room right now and peel the skin off of your face, if I wished, and demons would cheer as I did it.”

  “At least it would be a change in scenery,” James said dully. “But before you mutilate me, someone needs to find Hannah.”

  Isaac’s face loomed in his vision. His mouth was tilted into a frown. “Hannah?”

  “Hannah Pritchard. She was one of Ariane’s classmates in the coven. We were separated outside the Palace gates.”

  “You should be much, much more worried about what’s going to happen to you,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “You killed Elise. No matter what happens at the trial—whether you burn in fire or get flayed on the rack—I am going to have my pound of flesh.”

  The anger swelled inside of James, surprisingly powerful and sudden. It gave him enough strength to sit up and glare at Isaac. The man could have passed for a demon himself—he wore leather slacks and arm guards, along with a necklace of bones that hung over his black shirt. Hell had rubbed off on him.

  “I didn’t kill her,” James said. “I would never have hurt Elise. And you would know that if you had bothered to involve yourself in her life.”

  Isaac crouched in front of James and seized his jaw. “You know that you killed her as soon as you bound, you sick fuck.” His eyes were like emerald shards, dark and sharp. “I have never been so satisfied to see justice dispensed.”

  He released James and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  It had been years, and that man was still a goddamn bastard.

  The lingering anger gave James enough strength to flex his arms, and he twisted his wrists until the leather cut into his skin like a stripe of fire against the bone.

  With a roar, he ripped one arm free of the straps, and then the other. He flung the cord to the ground.

  His arms had been tied behind his back for so long that moving them forward shot pain down his shoulders, his biceps, his back muscles. James sagged against the wall with a groan. His perspiration felt tackier than usual—he didn’t even have enough moisture left in his body to sweat properly.

  But if Isaac wasn’t going to find Hannah, then there was no choice but for James to do it himself. Nathaniel had already spent the first ten years of his life without a father. He wasn’t going to lose his mother, too.

  James dipped a finger in the blood on his wrist and hissed at the sting.

  Slowly, carefully, he began painting a circle on the floor.

  Twenty years after Elise’s first visit to Hell, she still remembered what it was like when she had first passed the portal. It had hurt, of course—it wasn’t easy for mortals to pass through the barriers between dimensions. Hot prickles had spread down her spine, like having pins driven between the vertebrae. She had felt like her skin was disconnecting from her muscles, her heart stopped for several beats, and she thought she might be suffocating. But it hadn’t lasted long—just an instant. It was still more than enough to imprint itself permanently on her memory.

  That wasn’t what happened after Zettel flipped the switch and activated the Union’s portal.

  The control room disappeared, and so did the basin beneath Elise’s feet.

  Nathaniel cried out, and she instinctively seized his hand. He wrapped his arms around her neck and gripped her tightly. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but she could feel him trying to breathe, though there was no air to inhale.

  And then she was home.

  The black city she had seen in her vision unfolded beneath her, sprawling out in fractal lines, like it had grown as a mold on the underside of a rock rather than been planned by engineers. It was huge, climbing up the face of viciously jagged mountains and spreading out into a desert of crimson dunes. A hundred million lives sparkled amongst the shadows. Stars in a galaxy. She could smell them, even from miles overhead.

  She floated above it all for an instant, peaceful and breathless, and felt totally right for being there. Nathaniel’s arms were still locked around her neck—the only sense she had that there was still a fleshy body containing her soul.

  Then she felt a jerk. Her slow drift toward the glimmering spires at the center of the city halted.

  Something pierced deep within her belly, like a hook driven into her intestines.

  Everything blurred as she was hauled away from the city.

  She was falling. She was going to crash. If she could have breathed, Elise might have screamed.

  And then she stopped.

  The rushing noise vanished from her ears. She was standing on a mosaic of sparkling obsidian tile, like someone had cracked lava rock with a hammer. The room wasn’t large, and there were no walls—only pillars joined by arches. And beyond them, the sky was a shade of red
so dark that it was almost black.

  A short altar stood in the middle of the room with the figurine of a genderless form standing in the middle. A temple?

  Nathaniel still had his arms locked around Elise. She grabbed his wrists and disengaged him. The boy stepped back, looking embarrassed at the way that he had grabbed her. “Sorry,” he said.

  Elise frowned. “You’re not vomiting.”

  “Uh…no. I’m not.”

  “And neither am I,” she said, running her hands over her stomach. She was still wearing James’s shirt and jeans, with the hems tied so that everything fit around her curvy form, and her swords were still on her back.

  Nathaniel’s eyebrows knitted. “Is that…bad?” His voice was raspy. He coughed.

  No, the lack of vomiting wasn’t bad—it was kind of refreshing, actually. Elise had been teleported between dimensions by Yatam, and had reacted badly every time. But it wasn’t just that she didn’t feel sick; she actually felt…good.

  Elise took a deep smell of the air. Sulfur, ash, sage, cooking meat—it was simultaneously the strangest and best thing she had ever smelled, and she let the flavors roll over her tongue as she savored them.

  Nathaniel didn’t look like he was doing as well. He gagged on the heat and pulled at the neck of his sweater. “Oh man, this is gross.”

  “This isn’t the Palace of Dis,” she said, stepping up to the archway. “It’s too quiet. We should have been attacked by now.”

  The quiet made sense as soon as she leaned out the arches and looked into endless desert. The mountains that she had glimpsed were so far in the distance that they made barely any impression on the horizon. There was no sign of the city, either.

  Instead, they were near one of the flaming pits—a canyon that dropped off just a few feet away from the archway in which Elise stood. Smoke guttered out of its depths. She couldn’t see any leaping flames, but she knew they had to be there; she could feel the patterns of their heat dancing over her bare arms.

  A hot wind whistled between the arches and carried noise out of the canyon. At first, Elise thought it was just the air whipping over the rock and making a piercing noise like a whistle, but then she realized that there were voices. Shouts. Sobbing.