The Descent Series Complete Collection

by S. M. Reine

  But the damage was done. The nightmare smiled. The corners of her lips stretched from ear to ear, making her tallow skin wrinkle like wax paper.

  “You owe me, huh? Cool.” She held out a bony hand. “I’m Jerica.”

  Nathaniel moved to take it, but James pushed him aside. “We will have to negotiate that later,” he said, letting the depth of his power creep into his words. A mild threat. “For now, we have to leave.”

  “Not without speaking to the Night Hag, you don’t,” Jerica said. “You’re in her territory now. She’s going to want to see you.”

  James blinked. “The Night Hag is dead. There’s no overlord in the Reno territory.”

  She gave an unpleasant grin. “Shows how much you know.”

  16

  Considering all of the places that had been destroyed in Yatai’s attacks, it seemed entirely unfair that a dive like Craven’s Casino should remain intact.

  Craven’s was, as it had always been, an ugly little building crammed into an ugly little corner of Reno—the kind of pit that tourists would never find and most locals had the sense to avoid. The fact that half of the buildings around it had been pulverized didn’t make Craven’s less of a piece of shit. It was just the most intact piece of shit on the block.

  The windows were boarded up, and the neon signs were dead. But one of Yatai’s tunnels through the street had exposed the basement bar, Eloquent Blood, and there were enough lights inside that James could see it from two blocks away.

  Jerica led them down a narrow path that had been carved through the rubble. They had to slide down almost two stories of shattered pavement to reach Blood.

  Business wasn’t exactly booming, but there was a stripper on the bar, the bass was booming, and the dance floor was filled with customers. James had never seen it with fewer than a hundred partiers lost to the frenzy of lethe, a powerful drug designed to intoxicate even the most powerful demon, and tonight was no exception.

  Nathaniel gaped at the stripper. Lights flashed in time to the music, illuminating one side of his face, then the other. It turned his shock into pulsing masks of red and blue.

  James didn’t bother trying to hide his disgust as a bartender passed. She was red-skinned and bald, with erect purple nipples. She held a tray of what looked like glowing blue sugar cubes.

  Nathaniel turned to watch her swaying hips pass. He probably didn’t notice that she had cloven hooves, since his eyes didn’t seem to make it that far south.

  “Female aatxegorri,” James warned, steering his son away from her. “They’re deadly.”

  “Good for breaking up bar fights,” Jerica agreed. The loud music wasn’t quite as overwhelming with one of Blood’s walls missing.

  James jerked his thumb toward the waitress. “That was lethe on the tray. You’re openly serving drugs now.”

  “Yeah, so? Who’s going to stop us? RPD?”

  “How many humans have died from overdosing on a drug they didn’t know that they couldn’t survive taking?”

  “Does it matter? Look around, dude. This place is a fucking mess. We’re stuck together, humans and demons. Better to go out with smiles on our faces than deal with…” Jerica waved a hand toward the surface that they had left behind. “If you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with the Night Hag. It’s her city now.”

  James’s stomach flipped. The Night Hag. She had been a demon spider the size of a small building, but she should have been dead—killed by Elise almost a year earlier. If the Night Hag really had come back somehow, James didn’t want to think about the turn his evening was going to take.

  “Very well,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Take me to her.”

  “No need. She’s over there.” Jerica pointed at the dance floor.

  James braced his hands on the railing and looked over the side.

  He hadn’t looked closely at the bottom level when they came in, so he hadn’t noticed that the DJ booth had been replaced with some kind of throne—a massive chair built out of wreckage. The bumper and hood of a car were welded onto the back, and a bent I-beam formed the seat. Speakers were built into the arms. The thick cables plugged into the chair looked too heavy-duty for just the audio equipment—maybe it was to electrify the wicked metal cage that encased the seat.

  The woman lying on the chair was not a demon spider. She had sheets of inky black hair and the kind of body that would have thrown Barbie into fits of jealousy. And James could tell that she had a perfect figure. Aside from a bra that looked like metal fingers clutching her breasts, she was completely naked.

  As if she could feel him looking, she looked up from the dancers. Black eyes met his. Her lips were brilliant red, but he knew that it was her natural pigmentation, not lipstick.

  That was no Night Hag. It was Neuma.

  Nathaniel looked relieved when Jerica led them to the privacy of the storage room, where it was much quieter, and there were no topless demon bartenders.

  James briefly considered trying to talk about what Nathaniel had seen, but he knew that his son wouldn’t take kindly to a paternalistic talk about drugs, strippers, alcohol, and the apocalypse from him. Not now, maybe not ever.

  He turned his attention toward the one thing he could address.

  “The Night Hag?” James asked flatly.

  Jerica shrugged. “It’s good marketing.”

  The door opened, and Neuma slipped in. Despite the six-inch heels that gave her legs the illusion of impossible length, she looked much less intimidating without the throne. She also managed to look much more naked, strips of steel and all.

  “Is Elise here?” she asked immediately, eyes bright with excitement.

  James suppressed his irritation. “No. And no, we’re not going to talk about it. What’s going on here, Neuma? You’re not the Night Hag. You’re not even a proper demon. You’re infernal Gray.”

  Neuma seemed pleased by the accusation. “The first Gray overlord I’ve ever heard of. History in the making, right?”

  “Gray?” Nathaniel asked in a tiny voice. He was sitting on a crate next to a shattered vanity mirror. “What’s Gray?”

  Neuma seemed to notice him for the first time. Her face melted into a smile as she crouched in front of him, like she was talking to a kindergartner. “Well, hello there. I’m Neuma. And who are you, sugar?”

  He gaped.

  “Gray is what we call half-breeds,” James said when Nathaniel didn’t reply. “The offspring of mortals mating with demons and angels.”

  “My mama’s human. My daddy, not so much.” Neuma’s eyes filled with heat as she shot a look at James over her shoulder. She straightened and swayed toward him, lips spread into a teasing smile. “Though I’ve got quite a few daddies these days.” Neuma walked her fingers up James’s abs, crawling from navel to chest, then chin.

  The last time he had encountered her, she had been just as friendly. The fact that he immediately became aroused didn’t surprise him a second time, but it still unsettled him deeply. She was offensively trashy, from the penciled-in eyebrows to her exaggerated, pin-up proportions.

  Neuma was Hell’s trailer park trash birthed straight onto the stripper pole. There was no class in her, no real seduction. Yet James couldn’t seem to banish thoughts of tearing the steel from her body.

  She arched a slender eyebrow and smiled. “Only the first look is free,” she said, scraping a fingernail from the tip of his nose to his lips.

  He shoved her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “You and Elise,” Neuma sighed. “The two of you are no fun.” She tilted her head. “So what’s this? He looks like you. Elise didn’t tell me you made any babies.”

  “We didn’t,” James said coolly.

  She slunk in a circle around Nathaniel. He shrank away from her. “A flower that ain’t bloomed.” She pinched his cheek, ruffled his hair. It was a weirdly nonsexual gesture coming from a creature in steel panties, almost sisterly. “Cute, though. He’ll be cute for sure.”

 
“I need you to call off the nightmares so we can get to a gate,” James said.

  When she shrugged, it looked like her bra was perilously close to popping right off her body. “They aren’t mine. I can’t do nothing about them.”

  “Some overlord.”

  Neuma mimicked his tone. “‘Some overlord .’ Fuck you, asshole. You abandoned your city.” She wrapped her arm around Jerica’s waist. “At least we’re still here, picking up the pieces. You should be kissing my feet in thanks.”

  “I can probably draw the nightmares off,” Jerica said.

  “Not happening,” Neuma said, nuzzling her neck. “I don’t want you dead.”

  “Nightmares don’t die. It’s no big.”

  “Could you distract them for an hour? Long enough to do a ritual?” Nathaniel asked. His voice was tiny, barely loud enough to be heard over the bass seeping through the walls.

  “An hour? That’s a tall order. I don’t think so.”

  James sighed, rubbing his jaw. “Then we’ll wait until daylight.”

  “Then you’ve got to deal with those Union jackoffs,” Neuma said. “What are you trying to do that requires witchy-dancing around the gates for an hour?”

  “We’re trying to get to Araboth,” he said.

  Neuma gave a low whistle. “You have juevos , I’ll give you that.” One of her hands snaked toward James. He stepped out of reach to prevent her from checking him for the aforementioned “juevos .”

  “The problem is that there were only two doors to Araboth,” James said without missing a beat. “They’re both destroyed now. We’ll have to redirect one of the other gates if we want to get in. That will take time. Can you help us?”

  “If you want a few safe hours in downtown Reno these days, no. We can’t help you. There’s gotta be another way in,” Neuma said.

  “No, there doesn’t ‘gotta’ be anything. The garden is quarantined. All other doors were destroyed thousands of years ago. Only cherubim can get in now.”

  “Actually, you just need to get into Limbo,” Jerica said.

  All heads turned to look at her. The giant swell of bubblegum between her lips caught the light, showing the silhouette of her tongue poking through her thin lips. The bubble snapped, and she licked it back into her mouth.

  “Limbo?” Nathaniel asked.

  “It’s neutral ground. The only neutral ground.” She trapped her gum between her teeth, pulled a single strand out, and wrapped it around her finger. “It only has two entrances. One’s through Coccytus. The other entrance goes to Araboth.”

  “How’d you know that?” Neuma asked.

  Jerica’s sharp shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Malebolge is in the same dimension as Coccytus. That’s where most nightmares are born.”

  “So we have to get to Coccytus,” Nathaniel muttered, opening his notebook, pushing a leather costume off of the vanity, and then using the space he cleared as a desk. “There’s no doors to Coccytus, so we’ll have to go in sideways.”

  “What do you mean?” James asked.

  “Skip dimensions,” Nathaniel said, writing “Coccytus” in a bubble at the bottom of the page and “home” at the top. “Go through fissures.”

  “The fuck is a fissure?” Neuma asked, folding her arms underneath her ample breasts. She looked like she was going to smother on her own cleavage.

  “The doors between worlds are only a convenience built by angels to make travel easier,” James said. “But all of the dimensions are interconnected. There are physical locations where they join together, like joints on a bone.”

  “Not all dimensions are touching each other, though,” Nathaniel said, tongue sticking out between his lips as he continued drawing his map. “And Earth doesn’t have any fissures to Hell around here. We’ll have to take another gate and jump across a few dimensions to get to Coccytus.”

  “Is that all?” Jerica asked dryly.

  “Yup,” he said. “Give me a few minutes to look around. I’ll find a route into the garden.”

  Gary Zettel stood on the deck of the dirigible, studying the ruined city spread beneath him.

  James Faulkner was there somewhere. He had been seen in a silver Honda approaching the city, and even though he hadn’t been stopped at any of the guard posts, there wasn’t a single doubt in Zettel’s mind that the witch had made it through. The only question was what he was planning to do once he got there.

  Zettel had taken out his earpiece so that there was nothing to disturb him as he stood alone on the platform in front of the bridge, hands gripping the railing, wind beating around him.

  This high above the city, there was no noise. And with all of the spotlights illuminating the dirigible, there was no way that any of the millions of nightmare larvae could reach him.

  If he hadn’t been preparing for war, it might have been peaceful.

  The Union’s face recognition database was running full bore at the Fernley base. The instant Faulkner showed up on a camera, they would be on top of him—all three units that he had brought from Montana, and every unit stationed in Fernley. All of those units were preparing to deploy right now. Sierra Street and North Virginia were a parade of black vehicles bristling with spotlights, machine guns, and electrified metal cages that could each take down an elephant.

  The sight of the pieces moving into place below filled Zettel with grim resolve. He was laying out his side of the board with everything that he could muster, and he still wasn’t sure if it would be enough.

  Somehow, he doubted that James Faulkner would be taken unaware—or alone.

  The door behind Zettel opened and closed. “We’ve found him, sir,” Dante said. He spoke with forced bravado, but there was no hiding the undercurrent of anxiety. He had taken over as right-hand witch for Zettel after Allyson’s death, but those were big shoes to fill, and Dante’s metaphorical feet were about as small as his brain.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, sir. Our cameras spotted him entering a casino.”

  Zettel felt no excitement at closing in on his prey. A sense of purpose settled over him, as serene as being battered by the wind on the deck of the dirigible. That determination filled the gaping hole in his chest that Allyson’s death had left behind. The night she had died, he hadn’t been sure he would survive—it felt like his heart and lungs had been ripped out simultaneously.

  There was nothing quite like losing an aspis, and Zettel would make sure that Faulkner paid for that suffering. There would be no arrest this time. No chance for escape. Just a gunshot, an explosion of blood, and a death both swift and righteous.

  “Which casino?” he asked, putting his earpiece back in as he followed Dante to the door.

  “A place called Craven’s. It’s demon-owned.”

  Zettel stopped inside the bridge, letting the door fall shut behind him. He was familiar with Craven’s Casino. It was the home of an infernal terrorist cell. From those hallowed halls, they distributed drugs, sacrificed human lives to the Night Hag, and organized uprisings. Zettel had allowed Craven’s to continue operating because it was too hard to attack without also dealing with the nightmare infestation.

  If Faulkner was in Craven’s, then it must mean that he had aligned with them. Zettel may have had guns, witches, and tanks on his side, but Faulkner had a whole army of demons. “Clever bastard,” he swore under his breath.

  “Sir?”

  Zettel ripped open the cabinet on the wall. He donned a flak jacket and helmet. “Get ready. We’re going down.”

  “Uh,” Dante said, glancing toward the door. Zettel could practically see him considering jumping off the dirigible. Like a swift death on the pavement would be better than diving into downtown Reno with six units at his back.

  Allyson wouldn’t have even blinked.

  What a fucking pussy.

  Zettel didn’t even think before drawing his gun. He shoved it into Dante’s forehead. “Get dressed,” he said, voice cold.

  “Yes, sir,” Dante said, reaching ou
t a trembling hand to grab body armor.

  Zettel holstered his gun and prepared to drop.

  Faulkner was going to die.

  17

  Neuma led Nathaniel and James back to the manager’s office so they could make their final preparations in privacy. “Nobody’s been back here since Elise disappeared,” she said as she unlocked the door for them. “Bet she still has a few toys around, if you want to play with them.” Neuma winked at James. “Not the fun kind. Sorry.”

  The office had always been gloomy and lightless, but the destruction had made it even gloomier. The windows looking down on the gaming floor were cracked like ocean ice. The back half of the office was covered in debris from a collapsed roof.

  Nathaniel stood in the middle of it all. His puppy-brown eyes tracked over the giant slab of a desk, the executive chair, the bucket filled with half-smoked cigarettes.

  As soon as Neuma was gone, James made a quick sweep of the desk for anything dangerous, but all of the drawers were locked and the surface was clean. “You can work here,” he said.

  Nathaniel settled into the leather chair. Its massive silhouette dwarfed him.

  “Can I get you anything?” James asked.

  “Privacy,” Nathaniel said. “Mapping is hard. I have to zone out.”

  James’s eyes fell on a closet in the corner. “Very well. I’ll stay out of the way.”

  He tried to open the door, but electricity shocked through his palm when he touched the doorknob. He jerked back.

  “Well, what have we here?” he murmured, narrowing his eyes to study the magic sparkling around the doorframe.

  It was a locking charm. That kind of magic required enough sentience to be able to tell who should be allowed in or out, and too much intelligence was a terrible thing for an inanimate object. They tended to get ornery as they aged.

  “Open,” James said, shaking the doorknob hard.

  The charm ignored him.

  He gathered the force of his magic within him, letting it fill his words with power.