by S. M. Reine
“James Faulkner!” barked a familiar voice, and he didn’t have to turn to see that it was goddamn Isaac Kavanagh.
James slumped against the wall. Too weak to fight. Too weak to run.
Isaac blurred and distorted as he ran closer, backed by a half-dozen creatures in leather armor. One was another nightmare, like the one that James had left underground. There was a brute, too, and two fiends. He couldn’t identify the others. He had never seen anything with that many teeth.
“Fuck off,” he whispered to Isaac, unsure if anyone could hear him. The sentiment felt good.
Isaac drew a leather cord—more bindings.
James wasn’t going to be returned to prison. “Step back,” he warned.
The Inquisitor’s dark, angry eyes glowed in response. God, he looked so much like Elise.
James pressed his hand to the wall and spoke a word of power.
Without the blood in his cell, the energy for the spell had to come from within him, and there wasn’t enough strength left for that, either. So instead, his magic sought out more powerful sources of life.
Like the guards surrounding Isaac.
Screams filled the air as the demons fell to their knees, flesh shriveling and eyes bulging. James’s cries joined theirs. The flesh on his arm was peeling off of the muscle.
The shouts were soon drowned out by the resonant boom of an explosion rocking the Palace wall. There it was again—the separation of atoms and the nuclear energy of the fireball tunneling its way through the stone.
The skin on James’s arm turned to ash.
And the wall crumbled away to reveal the city on the other side.
Isaac roared his fury, but James didn’t stop to confront him again. He held his destroyed, blackened arm and the water bottle to his stomach and hurried through the exit he had made for himself.
He fell to the street on the other side and got up.
The street was similar to the one he had seen as he had been brought into the Palace with Hannah. There were tall, mirrored buildings decorated by ancient stonework and slavering grotesques. The walls had been vandalized with phosphorescent paint—profanities and insults in the written form of vo-ani , and the occasional inverted crucifix. More of a joke than anything, really. Demons thought human theology was hilarious.
But there were no actual demons in sight.
James stumbled down the street without checking to see if Isaac and his guards were capable of following. He lost himself in the slap of his bare feet on concrete. Buildings blurred past him. Windows and walls and street lamps built of iron, like the trees in the forest, entered his vision and disappeared as quickly.
He rounded a corner and stumbled into a riot.
Demons were spread everywhere—on the street, climbing the buildings, inside the shops. They screamed as they flung rocks through the windows. He should have heard them as he approached, but his ears were still filled with the rushing of the ocean, and all he could make out was a dull buzz.
They didn’t seem to notice him staggering into the fray. An elbow caught his side and knocked the breath out of him. A rock hurtled just past his face and shattered a window. Warped glass scattered across the sidewalk and cut into his feet.
He kept moving. Kept running. Didn’t look at the rioters.
A demon grabbed him by the neck. It was something with a serpentine face and long fangs. “Escaped slave?” it asked in vo-ani .
“No—”
The snake-demon’s head whipped around as it focused on something over the crowd.
It swore, its thin tongue lashing against its fangs, and dropped James. He unbalanced and fell to the sidewalk.
The tenor of the chaos changed instantly. The crowd’s focus shifted from the buildings to something that he couldn’t see at the end of the street. It must have been the Palace guards, because James heard people shouting about Council sympathizers and the Treaty.
He didn’t wait to see if the rioters could stop Isaac.
James stumbled down an alley, following its narrow, twisting paths until he was so thoroughly lost that he had no idea which direction he had come from. He splashed through muck and effluence. The moist splatter burned on his legs.
The alley was much quieter than the one he had left behind. Shops had doors and signs facing into the grimy passage, and he could read some of them. One said “Books.” Another said “Curiosities.” He didn’t stop to read any others.
There weren’t as many demons in the alley—they must have been distracted by the riot. But there were a few. They hollered obscenities at him as he shoved past.
Can’t stop running.
His body had better ideas. James staggered down another corner, and even though he intended to continue, his legs simply stopped working. His shoulder slammed into the wall.
End of the line.
There was an apothecary shop jutting into the dark alley. Its red brick face had a lacework of cracks through it. It looked ancient, medieval, and abandoned. Safe.
He dragged himself into the sliver of space between the apothecary shop and the building next door. The street end was blocked by a tall iron fence, and there were no lights in his hole, so nothing would be able to see him from the alley.
It was only then that James allowed himself to collapse.
He let his head fall back against the wall, and he waited until his heart slowed before he opened the water bottle and sipped at its contents. He wanted to guzzle it—it was still delicious, like honey and sex and hot showers—but he didn’t know when he would encounter water again. So he wet his lips. Let it trickle down his throat. Splashed a little on his face.
Then he capped the bottle and examined the damage on his arm.
Every inch of his left arm was a black, flaking mess, as though he had shoved it into a furnace. The only thing that remained untouched was the scar on his underarm, running from his wrist to the inside of his elbow. The white line stuck out among the black like a ghostly signature.
The burns didn’t even hurt. They felt kind of cold.
His eyes fell shut. He slid to the side, leaning against some kind of wooden bin that smelled like rotting animals, and let out a sigh.
The pain, the exhaustion, the dehydration—it finally won.
James passed out, and sweet oblivion sucked him under.
9
Ariane slept, and when she woke up, she was alone in Abraxas’s vast bed. She stretched, languorous in all of her wounds and sore muscles— the blossoming bruises on her thighs, and the rips in her skin, which had been limited to the areas that her clothing would hide. Her nipples were still marked with the imprints of her lover’s teeth.
He only knew how to love with pain, inflicted casually and with a severity that never failed to stun her. But at least he did love. Some men didn’t manage that at all.
He stood by the window, robed and hooded once more.
“Come back,” she said, rolling onto her belly and burying her face in a pillow. It smelled like garden soil, sweat, and the musk of blossoms on a hot day. Her blood left a moist imprint of her body on the sheets, though the cloth was so dark that she couldn’t see it. “And take off that damn robe.”
“I have work to do.” He nodded toward the city below. “Do you see?”
Ariane sighed and slipped from underneath the sheets. She limped as she crossed the room and leaned on his side. The rough red fabric stung her wounded flesh.
There was a hole in the very back wall of the Palace—a gaping maw that led straight into the city. The rioters were trying to enter through it, although security held them at bay for the moment. The rebellion had been beating at their walls for months, and now someone had opened a door for them.
It wasn’t the only damage to the courtyard. There was also a roped-off hole behind the flesh orchards from which smoke plumed.
“What happened?” she asked.
“James Faulkner.” The name dripped from his lips like venom.
Ariane’s eyes trav
eled from the chasm in the ground to the hole in the outer walls. James must have been imprisoned in the isolation ward above the pits. Escaping into the city might be an improvement over Hellfire—but not by much. “Where does he think he’s going? The only way back to Earth is contained within our towers. He won’t be able to get back like that.”
“He wasn’t brought into the city alone.”
Ariane gasped. “Elise?”
The hood shook slowly from side to side. “Hannah Pritchard.”
Though it had been years, Ariane still felt a pinch of annoyance at the name of the other witch. Hannah was a cold, unfriendly woman. Even eternal flames wouldn’t have been able to melt the ice packed around her heart. But if she was in Hell, and not in the Palace…
“He’s trying to save her,” Ariane said. James had always been a determined young man. He wouldn’t care that Hannah was already, more than likely, on the butcher’s block. “That means we can intercept him. I’ll contact the markets to see if she’s passed through.”
“That won’t be necessary. I already know where she is.” He turned and moved toward the doors of his quarters. “I purchased her at auction.”
She followed him into the foyer, scooping her dress off of the ground. “You purchased…?” She clipped the collar at her throat as she struggled to find a way to express her anger. “First, you didn’t tell me that James was on trial. Then you didn’t tell me that—”
“Sir,” said a demon waiting in the foyer.
She had been so angry that she didn’t notice that they had company. Belphegor could have passed for a human, though his smooth white skin and bald pate gave him the appearance of bones that had been bleached by too many hours in the sun. He wore a black suit buttoned up to the throat and a necklace of human teeth, which commemorated the passing of his favorite slaves.
He was Abraxas’s right-hand man, and he was obviously trying very hard not to notice the Inquisitor’s wife walking out of the judge’s private quarters with her breasts exposed.
Ariane’s lover moved to shield her with his body, but it was too late. “What do you want, Belphegor?” he asked.
“The Inquisitor has requested additional forces to comb the city for the escaped prisoner,” Belphegor said.
“Send one of my centuriae. Get out of here.”
With a sharp nod, Belphegor left. Ariane arranged the straps of her dress to hide the worst of the injuries and fluffed out her curls to conceal the rest. Isaac never looked very closely. But if Belphegor told him what he had seen, it wouldn’t matter how well she hid her love bites.
The voice emanating from the hood’s depths was strangely gentle. “Belphegor is extremely loyal to Abraxas. He won’t say anything.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Ariane lied. “But maybe I should seek out James myself. He’s smart. He won’t be easy to catch, even for a trained centuria.”
“That won’t be necessary. James Faulkner is no threat. The city will kill him, or I will.” Even though she couldn’t see him underneath the robes, his gaze chilled her. “Regardless, the touchstones will continue to arrive. Mark my words, Ariane—I will have my trial.”
Something was chewing on James’s leg. For a moment, he thought it was a dream—just another torturous part of his lurking subconscious. But then the teeth penetrated his calf, and he jerked awake to see a rat the size of dog hunched over him.
He kicked it off with a shout. Its teeth ripped free, taking an inch of skin with it.
The rat tumbled end-over-end into the wall. As soon as it hit, it sprung to its feet and bared its teeth in a hiss. Its tongue looked like a black slug trapped inside its dripping maw.
It lunged again. James tried to deliver a swift kick to its skull, but it was ready the second time—much too smart for any average alley-lurking rodent. Its mouth snapped closed on his toes and scraped when he jerked free.
He jumped to his feet, and it snapped at his heels as he scrambled to the other side of the narrow alley. There wasn’t far to run—the end was boarded up, and there were six feet of refuse between him and the exit.
James’s gaze fell on a broken bone jutting out of a pile of waste. It was the femur of an animal that had to be as big as a horse.
He jerked it out of the pile.
The rat jumped, and he swung the bone like a baseball bat. The bone connected with a meaty thud , like punching his fist into a wall. The rat fell. James didn’t wait for it to recover. He struck again and again.
Only when it was pulverized—skull flattened, cheek split, nostrils dribbling with ichor—did he drop the bone and fling off a thumb-sized maggot that had been inching toward his elbow.
God, he hurt. The alley was shaded from the worst of the ambient light of Hell’s deserts, but his skin was still drying, still flaking. Every breath dragged sandpaper down his throat. Every blink ached. And he felt so heavy, too sluggish to move. If he hadn’t taken on some of Elise’s strength as a kopis, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to move in Hell at all.
The half-filled water bottle was on the ground nearby. He picked it up, tried to wipe ichor off of the side, but only smeared it. He allowed himself a sip.
The hinges of a door squealed, and James ducked behind the refuse.
A demon lurched out of the apothecary shop. It was a tall, hunched creature with curling horns that spiraled all the way to its fanged mouth. It didn’t seem to have any interest in Hell’s current fashions, so instead of wearing leather or human-like garments, it had a tattered shroud that swathed its entire body.
Such an outfit would have concealed James more than adequately. With a pinch of glamor, he might even pass for a demon.
His hand fell on the broken femur again.
The demon lurched down the alley, muttering under its breath in the infernal tongue. It left the door ajar. James slipped inside the apothecary shop.
Inside, the room was lit by a single oil lamp that stained the walls and smelled like melted fat. Dried limbs hung from every inch of the ceiling, and the walls were packed with shelves of herbs, powders, and gels. The apothecary’s counter was in the middle of it all, where it could watch every inch of shelf space. Judging by the mortar and pestle and bowl of bone meal, the demon must have been in the middle of preparing something when it departed.
There was a back room, too—also empty of life, aside from a cage suspended in the corner with a crow that James thought was dead until it tried to ruffle its sticky feathers. There was a bed, a desk, some books. No windows. The shop didn’t have a door to the main streets.
Perfect.
He caught a glimpse of himself in a piece of broken mirror dangling from a mobile of crow feet. If he had thought that he looked terrible in the airport bathroom, it was nothing in comparison to the effect imprisonment in Hell had had on him. Blood caked the corners of his mouth, and several days’ worth of beard growth shadowed the lower half of his face. His skin was dry, dusty, cracked. He looked gaunt and old.
“Damn,” he muttered, scanning the room for something that he could use to wipe up his face. There were no sinks or other ways to access fresh water—it was too scarce a resource in Hell to waste on cleaning.
The door in the front room creaked. The apothecary had returned.
James pressed his back to the wall by the door, fist tightening on the femur. He listened to the demon shuffle through the shop to its counter. Heard it start humming as it went back to work. Stone ground against stone as it continued its work on the bone meal.
Peering around the corner, James saw that the demon’s back was turned.
He jumped, bringing the femur cracking down on the back of the demon’s horned skull. It didn’t even get a chance to cry out. It staggered and hit the counter, flailed for a grip, found none. The mortar and pestle crashed to the ground with it.
James ripped the shroud from its shoulders, and wrapped it around its neck.
He had seen Elise kill a dozen demons by strangling them, but had never attempted i
t himself—he hadn’t been strong enough, and didn’t have the resolve. But desperation made it strangely easy to tighten the ligature and jerk back with all of his strength.
It gagged. Clawed at his hands. He twisted the shroud even tighter, and the demon’s thrashing slowed.
James waited until it went slack, and then held for a good minute longer. His burned arm was shaking. The back of his hand was bleeding from being rubbed raw with cloth. But it worked. The demon was unconscious.
He searched the counters until he found a knife. James tried to imagine Elise standing beside him, and thought of what she would have done to kill a demon of unknown origin. Would stabbing it be enough? Slitting the throat? Decapitation?
She had once told him how easy it was to access the heart from between the ribs if you went below the breastbone. And very few creatures could survive having that organ removed.
He rolled it onto its back, stripped off the robes for his use, and pondered its concave stomach. Could James really cut out a heart—even that of a demon?
The apothecary stirred beneath him, eyelids fluttering.
James drove the knife into its stomach. A wet gasp fell from its lips.
He worked as quickly as he could, but it was so much messier than his kopis made it appear. The ichor stung his wounded arm, and his left hand was too weak to do the work, so he used only his right as he sliced through the stomach and felt around for its still-beating heart.
Sawing through the muscle was difficult from that angle, especially when he couldn’t see what he was doing. There was barely any room for his hand. Yet he felt the heart’s moorings sever, and he was able to squirm his fingers around it and fight the suction to pull it free, arm black with blood almost to his wrist.
James dropped the heart. The demon didn’t move.
“Good God,” he whispered in the reverent silence of the shop.
It may have been years since Elise had visited the City of Dis, but very little had changed. Every awful thing that she recalled from her childhood was still there: the bleached human skulls hanging over doors for luck, the penned yards where compliant slaves were kept, the slurping and growling sounds of vo-ani sliding off of inhuman mouth-parts. The narrow streets were crowded. Demons bustled, shoved, shouted.
