The Descent Series Complete Collection

by S. M. Reine

  “Neither of them were ever yours,” Metaraon said.

  He pressed the knife against her belly.

  Hannah moved without thinking.

  She jumped around the tree, heart pounding. She wasn’t a fighter—she had never thrown a punch in her life. But she couldn’t just stand there. She couldn’t watch Ariane be victimized again.

  Hannah scooped a heavy branch off the ground and wielded it like a bat.

  Ariane’s eyes focused on her over Metaraon’s shoulder. “Hannah, no!”

  The angel turned, and Hannah swung.

  He caught the branch. Jerked it out of her hands. Flung it into the trees.

  Then he stepped forward and plunged the blade into Hannah’s heart.

  12

  A half hour passed in the cave, and then an hour. James started to get restless. He stood in the open doorway leading to the tunnel, listening for any signs of Hannah and Ariane’s approach. Aside from the steady drip-drip of rain, everything was silent.

  “Where are they?” he muttered.

  Nathaniel shrugged. “I dunno.” The Union hadn’t taken Minesweeper off of their interdimensional control terminals, and he had played at least a dozen games.

  James’s worry grew the longer he stood in the doorway. “Ariane’s probably having problems getting up the hill,” he finally said. “I’ll run down and help. Stay here.”

  Nathaniel rolled his eyes and turned back to the computer.

  When James climbed out of the tunnel, he found everything just the way he had left it: the body leaking blood onto the dirt, the damaged outbuilding, and Nathaniel’s magic splattered everywhere. A soft rain was already washing Hannah’s footprints away.

  But the further he got from the horrors of the outpost, the more peaceful the forest became. The soft rain had driven all of the animals into hiding, so it was quiet, almost idyllic.

  He didn’t even feel the angel until the highway came into sight.

  James stopped on the trail, staring at the scene in front of him.

  Shock blanked his mind, so that the images came to him in confused fragments: Blood underneath Hannah’s body. Her hands wrapped around a knife—a knife that jutted from her chest. And behind her, a crouched man with wings.

  The angel’s figure concealed what he was doing on the pavement, but James could just make out Ariane’s feet on the other side.

  James couldn’t feel his extremities or his pounding heart.

  No.

  Metaraon straightened as if James had called to him. A gusting breeze sent a couple of golden feathers drifting into a trickle of runoff near his feet—water that ran red.

  “What have you done?” James asked.

  “I’m taking care of loose ends,” Metaraon said. “And you may be the loosest of them all.”

  The angel swooped toward him, crossing the space in an instant. James didn’t even have time to react.

  Metaraon reached for him.

  His hand was huge—so much bigger than a hand had any right to be, as if the fingers stretched into endless eternity, and the palm grew to occupy the spaces between. Metaraon didn’t seem to grab James’s face as much as engulf it.

  The highway, and the bodies, vanished. Darkness consumed him.

  For an instant, James felt the rushing sensation of falling, tumbling, plummeting. The wind rushed in his ears. He couldn’t seem to draw breath into his lungs, because there was no air to breathe.

  James had been severed from his body, leaving him floating in nothingness. But he wasn’t alone. Metaraon’s voice echoed from the void.

  “We need to talk, Mr. Faulkner,” Metaraon said. “I have a problem.”

  The garden appeared in the gray depths of the void, displayed behind James’s eyelids like a movie.

  The Tree itself was a looming tombstone with twisted black branches, its roots wrapped around the world, and James realized with horror that it was dying. The moss on its bark had dried out. The river frothed over its banks, but it no longer bore water—it was as crimson as the mud underneath Metaraon’s feet.

  And Elise was there.

  She wasn’t the auburn-haired woman that most frequently occupied James’s memories. It was Elise as she was now: a demon, slender and fragile and pale-skinned. She was naked, entangled in the branches of the Tree. One branch had grown across her eyes, locked over her face like a blindfold.

  She was trapped.

  Metaraon’s voice murmured through James’s mind. “This is my problem. She’s miserable. Malfunctioning. The power is there, but the will is not. Tell me what I must do to spur her into motion.”

  Miserable? Malfunctioning?

  The vision of Elise tangled in the Tree seemed to grow until it consumed him. Her slack face, limp fingers, a chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. James had kissed her cold corpse, and yet she hadn’t looked so dead to him in the Union’s freezer as she did in that Tree.

  Every fantasy he had indulged in—imagining her burning a path through the garden, locked in battle with cherubim and God Himself, on the verge of bloody victory—was shattered.

  He had no body to feel, but his fear took hold like the roots of the Tree. “Let me go to her,” James said. “Take me there.”

  The angel’s laugh was merciless. “I’m no fool, James Faulkner.”

  The vision of the Tree faded, taking Elise with it.

  “You don’t mind if I take a look through your mind, do you?” Metaraon asked. “Show me what makes her happy.”

  It was a demand, not a request, and James couldn’t help but respond. Memories surged to the surface of his mind.

  Suddenly, he was back in Reno.

  James sat at the dining room table in his old apartment above Motion and Dance. The red glow of late evening flooded the room. James looked down to see a fork and steak knife in his hands. He could feel the weight of eyes on his back, as though Metaraon stood behind him, but he had no control over his body.

  And Elise sat opposite him, looking totally normal and unaware. She was wearing a white t-shirt branded for the studio with her hair in a ponytail.

  James remembered this moment. Elise had just finished teaching one of the interpretive ballet classes, intended for children four to five years of age. It was just months after Motion and Dance had opened, and they were struggling for business—a very pleasant struggle, in comparison to what they had used to fight for.

  He wanted to shout. To warn her.

  He couldn’t move.

  “I’m not a babysitter,” Elise said, cutting into her steak with the same viciousness that she used while skinning the bodies of demons. “I’m not even a dancer, for Christ’s sake, but I’m especially not a nanny, and if one more parent dumps their snot-faced kid off in class to spread norovirus to all of the other students—and without even having the right shoes!—I swear to you, I will cut her like a—”

  “I’ll talk to Mrs. Ferguson,” James said, interrupting her tirade before it could gather steam. “I’ll make sure our policy is more explicit. No sick children in interpretive ballet.”

  She glared at her steak as though it had Mrs. Ferguson’s face. “That bitch did this last year, too. The whole class will be barfing on Thursday. And then I’m going to be sick the day after.”

  “You don’t have to teach the interpretive ballet class, Elise. I’ve told you that before. I’m happy to hire another instructor.”

  “That’s not the point.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to brood, James. Can I brood, please?”

  “Sorry,” he said, hiding his smile behind his wine glass. It was a genuine smile. Elise was so young. He loved to see her fretting over stupid things, like irritating parents and ballet classes, rather than saving the world. “Go on.”

  Elise opened her mouth, then closed it again. She gave a rueful smile. “I can’t remember what I was saying.”

  “Something about snot-faced children?” James offered.

  “I think I was about to threaten to kill one of y
our clients.”

  “Oh, yes. I almost forgot.”

  Despite the smiles, she still looked overwhelmed. Elise knew that she didn’t have to teach any of the dance classes, yet she did anyway, and James knew why.

  She was doing it for him.

  He had no words to express his gratitude. Not just for the way that Elise was willing to act outside of her comfort zone for his sake, but the fact that she was still there at all.

  The university radio station switched from an operatic performance to smooth jazz. James set his glass on the table and stood, unable to control his body, but happy to lose himself in the memory. “Come on,” he said, extending a hand toward Elise.

  “I’ve danced enough today, thanks,” Elise said. “If I have to think about doing another chassé , I will kill someone.”

  “Please. You can brood just as easily while standing.”

  She rolled her eyes again, but she curled her fingers around his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. She was wearing white lacy gloves with buttons at the wrists, since those seemed to disturb the clients somewhat less than the leather ones.

  James wrapped his arm around her waist, and she set her hand on his shoulder. Years of practice allowed him to keep his face smooth. He never let her see that he found any excuse to hold her, even when it killed him inside to know that it would never be more than that.

  “You’re just trying to distract me so that I don’t murder the people that pay your bills,” she said, poking an accusing finger in his chest.

  He smiled down at her. “Is it working?”

  “No,” Elise said, but they were swaying in time to the music, and he could see all of the tension draining from her shoulders.

  They were close enough to kiss, as they had been a thousand times before, and a thousand times after.

  The temptation was painful for James, but better than not being close to Elise at all.

  James knew that it was only a memory—an illusion invoked by Metaraon. But he was holding Elise again. Her hair was curly, red, and halfway down her back. She was so…human.

  That had been after they retired, and before Death’s Hand attacked again. The happiest time. The most peaceful.

  He wished that Metaraon would abandon him to those memories.

  “How sweet,” Metaraon said, and he somehow managed to make that sound like an insult. “But I will not use your memory to inspire her—not when He is such a jealous man. I need something else.”

  James felt himself drawing away from the memory. Elise’s face dimmed.

  “No,” he said, trying to grab her again. “Wait!”

  And then his arms were empty. The jazz music faded.

  He was falling again.

  It was just as shocking to land in the second memory, so much more abrupt.

  A ringing phone jangled in his skull.

  He blinked. Elise was gone, but he was still in Motion and Dance. It was a bright, early morning, and James realized that Betty was calling him.

  James was unable to resist picking up the phone.

  “I’m here!” sang out a cheerful voice.

  He remembered this morning now. It was a day when Betty had decided, for no apparent reason, that she needed to wash Anthony’s Jeep. It didn’t really matter if the Jeep was dirty or not—after plowing through so many zombies, there would have been no way to tell if it got totaled, much less muddy. Of course, once Betty got an idea in her head, it was impossible to get it out again.

  “What?” he asked, just as he had the year before, as if he had no clue what she had planned.

  “I’m going to use your parking lot to wash the Jeep,” Betty said. “We don’t have enough room at the duplex. That’s not a problem, right? I mean, you don’t have any more classes until ballroom at six anyway, so it’s not like anyone else will be using the parking lot. Okay?”

  “Uh,” he said.

  “Great! Bring a bucket when you come downstairs!”

  She hung up, leaving James scurrying to dress.

  He was still tugging the shirt over his head when he stepped outside the front door to greet Betty. It was the hottest day of the summer, just over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and James almost gagged on the heat.

  Betty wasn’t alone, but then again, she never was. She didn’t have a driver’s license, vastly preferring to force any of her multitudinous friends to help transport her—most often her cousin, Anthony. So James was pleasantly surprised to see Elise climb out of the driver’s seat, but somewhat less pleasantly surprised to see her wince when she landed.

  Elise’s right thigh was bandaged from knee to hip. She gave James a strained smile when he approached.

  “What happened?” he asked, gesturing at her leg. Anthony climbed out of the backseat of the Jeep without so much as looking at James. Always the friendliest of visitors.

  “I fell,” she said.

  “Into what?” James asked, arching an eyebrow at the size of the bandages. “A river of piranhas?”

  She lowered her sunglasses, giving him a hard look over the tops of the frames. Her eyes were rimmed with bruises. Twin black eyes—must have been a good fight. “Something like that.”

  It always pained him to see Elise wounded, maybe as much as it pained her to actually have damage inflicted upon her, and James always wished that he could heal her wounds for her. But he was out of practice, didn’t have the paper spells for it anymore, and couldn’t cast a new ritual without ruining his ability to teach classes for the rest of the night.

  Elise grabbed a bottle of soap out of the backseat. She winced when her midriff accidentally connected with the hot metal of the car door.

  “Careful,” he said, reaching out to touch her.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Betty said, hip-bumping James out of the way to take the soap bottle. She wore Daisy Dukes, cowboy boots, and a tube top that could barely be classified as a shirt. Betty had always been very proud of her curves. “Where’s the bucket, James? You’re not ready for us at all!”

  “A little more warning would have helped,” he said. Anthony passed, and James turned to speak to him. “The bucket is under the stairs.”

  “Get it yourself,” Anthony said. “I’m going inside to enjoy the air conditioning.”

  He slammed the front door behind him.

  God, James hated Anthony. Loathed him, in fact, on some days—like whenever it was obvious that Elise had been dressing up for a date with him, or when they kissed, or when that ham-handed boy touched her. Anthony could be a sullen jackass, but James would have hated him even if he were effusively kind.

  “He’s in a good mood,” James said lightly as Elise sauntered to his side on the lawn. To her credit, she only limped a little, and he found his gaze dropping to her legs.

  Her shorts weren’t nearly as obscene as Betty’s, and she was actually wearing a loose tunic over it—more like a short dress than a shirt. It was modest, and the sleeves covered her biceps. James suspected it had less to do with protection from the sun and more to do with concealing bruises.

  “Anthony,” she replied, like that was all the explanation anyone needed for her boyfriend’s behavior. She shrugged. “He was with me when I…fell. Betty says that he feels responsible. All I know is that he’s been grumpier than usual since then.”

  He took her arm and pushed the sleeve up. There were claw marks on her shoulder. “Sticking to the falling story, then?” he asked. Elise shook him off. “What were you fighting?”

  “Actually, my leg decided to chew on itself.”

  Betty squirmed between them with a brilliant smile. The bridge of her nose was burned. “No arguing! Today is car washing day, not angry whispers day, and the Jeep’s not getting clean on its own! Sponge for you, Elise, and a very stern look for you, Mr. Faulkner. You started it. And where is my bucket?”

  Elise rolled her eyes, but the tension between them was immediately broken. “We can talk later.”

  He obediently grabbed a bucket, plugged the h
ose into the faucet, and dragged both over to the Jeep.

  “What can I get you next, my lady?” he asked, dropping the bucket next to Betty.

  Her eyebrows waggled suggestively. “I have some ideas.”

  “Betty ,” Elise said.

  “What? I was just going to ask for lemonade.”

  He laughed. “I’ll make lemonade.”

  James watched Elise and Betty through the open window over the kitchen sink as he squeezed some fresh lemons. There was lemonade mix in the cabinet, but he didn’t dare serve it to Betty. She would beat him over the head with the bucket.

  Even from a story above, he could hear their voices. “If you spray me with that hose, I’m morally obligated to kill you,” Elise said. “Pretty sure it’s a law somewhere.”

  Betty planted her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

  Elise didn’t miss a beat. “Bolivia.”

  “Bolivia?”

  “I don’t know, probably,” Elise said with a shrug. “It’s not like you would know. When was the last time that you studied Bolivian law?”

  “Last week,” Betty said. “Lucky thing, too, because I have diplomatic immunity there.”

  She scooped the hose off of the ground and pressed her thumb over the nozzle, turning it into a power jet. She blasted it into Elise’s chest.

  If anyone else had done that, they probably would have found a dagger in their stomach a few seconds later. But when Betty dropped the hose again, leaving Elise’s shirt sodden and a stream of water drizzling from her chin…the fabled Godslayer only laughed.

  “Hope you’re ready for ten years in a Bolivian gulag,” Elise said, wringing out her shirt.

  She flung a sponge at Betty, who threw it back. It wasn’t long before an all-out war ensued over the top of Anthony’s Jeep.

  James forgot to keep squeezing lemons. Elise’s laugh, rare and lovely, had a way of distracting him from everything else.

  After a moment, he became aware of someone standing at his shoulder. He turned, expecting Anthony.

  It was Metaraon.

  “That is quite the laugh, I agree,” the angel said.