by S. M. Reine
“I told you to open.”
He could practically feel the door raspberrying him silently, as if to say, Yeah, right.
James pulled the plastic bag out of his back pocket. He was still carrying the skin that he had severed from Yatai’s palm in the Vault, and he flashed it at the door.
“Recognize this?”
He thought for a moment that the door’s sullen silence meant that it was ignoring him. But it finally, grudgingly, swung open.
The room on the other side looked more like a small storage room in a sadist’s house than a closet. Several spiked torture devices hung from the wall, and heavy iron shackles were bolted to the wall opposite the door. In comparison, the rollaway bed in the corner was totally unremarkable. Elise must have used David Nicholas’s closet as a bedroom when she had run out of money. That was morbid, even for her.
James closed the door halfway. Enough to give Nathaniel privacy without leaving him vulnerable. Then he lay down to rest on Elise’s bed. The pillow smelled like her shampoo; if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that she was beside him. But when he rolled over, he hit a hard lump.
He reached into the pillowcase and extracted a box of cigarettes.
A half-smile crossed his lips. He rolled a cigarette between his fingers.
James had been horrified when he’d discovered that Elise had picked up the habit, but he would have given anything to have her with him now—even if she were smoking those damn cigarettes and having tequila for breakfast. He might have even joined her for a drink or six.
Elise wouldn’t have cared that Hannah was dead. Not when danger was still on the horizon. A petty thing like death wasn’t enough to distract her from her mission, whatever it had been on any given week. She was a rock in the ocean, immovable, eternal. He could have used some of that himself.
James touched a mark on his knee and snapped his fingers. A flame hovered over his thumb.
He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.
Several of the dancers in James’s old ballet company had picked up the habit to keep themselves skinny, and smoking had been an easy way to ingratiate himself with the “cool” people. Twenty-five years later, he was surprised to find that the smoke tasted even worse than he remembered—and was equally surprised when the third drag settled his nerves.
James watched the smoke spiraling from the tip. It curved and twisted like a woman dancing. Or fighting. He set it on a plate Elise had been using as an ashtray, still smoldering.
He was still holding the flap of skin from Elise’s palm. James contemplated the intricacies of the mark, wondering how hard it would be to transfer the tattoo onto himself. Merely drawing it wouldn’t be enough. The power wasn’t held in the shape of the symbol, but in the way it had been transferred to the skin by the cherubim. James couldn’t emulate that.
But there had to be a way for him to use the mark.
His eyes fell on a shelf near the door. There were a few pairs of gloves on the top of it.
He found an oversized pair of fingerless driving gloves that didn’t look like they had ever been worn. Elise always preferred them fingerless, just in case she needed to use her fingers to kill someone. That was the explanation she had given him, anyway. It wasn’t that she wanted to have an easier time eating, or brushing her teeth—she always wanted to be ready to kill.
James searched until he found a needle and thread, which surely must have been for the waitresses to repair their costumes. Elise wouldn’t have had any idea what to do with it.
Sitting back on the bed, he extracted Elise’s skin from the bag. It was drying around the edges.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
James began to sew her skin onto his palm.
He flinched the first time that he drove the needle through the edge of her skin and into his. He flinched the next dozen times, too. But as he carefully stitched around the edge, his hand began to grow numb, and he quickly became inured to the pain. He only stopped long enough to finish smoking the cigarette.
It didn’t take long for him to feel the power of the mark connecting with him. It vibrated deep within his bones, making his head swim and his shoulder ache.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced up. Nathaniel stood in the doorway, watching him with a mixture of worry and disgust.
James considered hiding his hand. Instead, he turned the palm out so that his son could see the half-stitched skin. “It’s an ethereal mark. Do you know what a mark is?”
Nathaniel’s stunned silence was answer enough.
James returned his attention to stitching the edges of the skin in place, brow furrowed. “It takes two marks to open an ethereal door. Powerful angels have one mark. It means that only a pair of cooperating angels can open a door, and if an enemy manages to kill an angel for its mark, it still can’t get through the door.”
The boy sat down across from him on a cardboard box. “You mean that you killed an angel for that?”
“Elise used to have two marks. This is one of them.”
Horror dawned in his eyes. “You’re sewing her skin onto your body.”
“It’s the only way. She only has one mark now, so she alone is incapable of opening the gate to leave Araboth on her own.”
“How’d she get two in the first place?”
“They were given to her by willing angels and attached in much the same way that I am doing now. All angels adore her. They would do anything she asked.” James blew out a shuddering breath. “Anything .”
“You’re Gray, aren’t you?” Nathaniel asked. His wide eyes caught the dim light of the office. “Half-angel.”
James pulled the thread tight. “What makes you think that?”
“It takes two marks to escape Araboth. You’re only attaching one, so you must already have another. And Mom always said…”
He trailed off, train of thought derailed, and stared at his feet. When he spoke again, his voice was heated.
“The way she talked about you, I knew something was wrong.” He raked a hand through his hair, pushing his bangs out of his face. They immediately fell into his eyes again. He desperately needed a haircut. “If you’re Gray, that means that I am, too.”
“I suppose that would be true, if it were the case.” He wove the needle through his skin and jabbed a little too deep. A bead of dark blood trickled down his wrist.
Nathaniel continued to watch. “So what? Am I an angel?”
“You don’t have any of the physical symptoms. Don’t worry yourself.”
He watched James continue to sew for several minutes without speaking. It was impossible to tell if he was interested, or repulsed—Faulkners had done much worse in pursuit of power.
“Do you have scissors?” James asked. He was almost done sewing.
Nathaniel stood. “You’re sick,” he said, and he walked out of the room.
So that was a “no.”
James knotted the wire, then bit it off at the base. He had picked up a phial of healing solution at Motion and Dance before they left. He smeared it on the edges of the mark, sucking in a hard breath at the sting. But it quickly numbed the stitches. Now James only felt tightness, like it was impossible to fully extend his fingers. He was hesitant to attempt it before it healed.
He tilted his hand in the light to look at it. The cream was already being absorbed by Elise’s flesh, rehydrating it, bringing it back to life. He would reapply it in an hour or so, and again an hour after that. Blood vessels would connect. The tissues would knit together. It would be a part of his body permanently, this mark of God.
Hopefully, the mark would long outlive the entity it was meant to honor.
A hard thud shook the wall next to him. James leaped to his feet. “Nathaniel?” he called, pulling on the driving gloves.
Another crash, followed by the sound of shattering glass.
A dozen ugly images flooded his mind—demons attacking Nathaniel in the office, or worse, Metaraon bursting through t
he window.
James flung open his door. A lamp hurtled toward his head. He ducked, and its ceramic base shattered against the doorframe.
Nathaniel was alone. Fists balled, face red, eyes streaming. Silent rage shook his entire body.
He had spilled pages from his Book of Shadows all over the desk, and as James watched, Nathaniel shoved the rest of them to the floor. He tried to throw the chair, but it was too heavy, so he settled for kicking it. It fell out the broken window.
James saw Nathaniel’s punch coming, but he didn’t move to dodge it. He took the blow in his gut. James also took the second strike, and the third. His son’s aim improved on each one.
And then Nathaniel hit him in the face.
Stars sparked at the corners of James’s vision as he reeled. It was a lucky shot—almost hard enough to knock him off of his feet.
He touched his bottom lip. Blood glistened on the fingertips of his gloves.
James dropped his hands and stood before his son, unguarded, prepared to take whatever else he wanted to deliver.
Nathaniel lifted the phone over his head.
His arm wavered. His features crumpled, and the phone dropped to the floor, bouncing near his foot.
He sank to his knees.
Nathaniel gasped for air like his lungs had collapsed, gripping his chest in both hands as his spine bowed. His head tipped forward until his bangs brushed the floor and his tears left wet circles on the carpet.
James sat beside him. He leaned back against the desk and didn’t speak.
The rage ebbed from Nathaniel. He sank to his side on the floor, staring at the clawed feet of the desk.
Aside from the occasional hiccup, he fell silent.
James tried to imagine how Hannah would have comforted him, and then immediately banished the idea. He wasn’t Nathaniel’s mother. He was barely even his parent.
He began to speak, letting the words flow from him without thought.
“I met your mother when I was younger than you are now,” James said. “She terrified me on some level. She was beautiful and passionate—very smart, too. Stubborn. I enrolled in dance classes to be near her. We went professional together. Before her injury, she was the most graceful dancer in our company. The urge to dance left her, eventually, but the grace didn’t.”
Nathaniel remained still.
James didn’t know what he was trying to say, so he stopped. There wasn’t anything else that he wanted to share anyway.
How could he describe all of the years of love they had shared? The push and pull of a comfortable relationship—all of the compromises, the dreams, the sense of being settled in the last place he would ever want to be. That was all the stuff of being an adult. Nothing that a boy Nathaniel’s age could understand.
When Nathaniel eventually sat up, his face was splotchy and red. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “I’m going to kill him. That angel is going to die at my hands.” He shook his fists, and all that James could think was that his hands were so small. “Not just for my mom. For everyone. For Elise.”
“Elise is capable of handling her own retribution.”
Nathaniel glared at him. “I hope so,” he said, and it was obvious whom he thought deserved Elise’s revenge the most. He swiped his arm over the mucus on his upper lip. “We’ve both lost people. At least you’ve still got a chance to get Elise back.” His chin trembled. “You don’t deserve that.”
Those four words hurt so much more than every one of Nathaniel’s blows.
The door slammed open.
“Time to go,” Neuma said. She had replaced the metal bikini with a mesh shirt, cutoff shorts, and sneakers—not much of an improvement, considering she wasn’t wearing a bra.
James stood. “What? Already?”
“But I’m not ready!” Nathaniel scrambled to grab a fistful of the papers around him. “I haven’t mapped out the whole route.”
“Too bad,” Neuma said. “We’re about to get raided.”
“What ?”
“Union’s moving in, and that means we need to be gone, like, yesterday. C’mon.”
James shoved Nathaniel ahead of him, and he dropped half the pages on the first flight of stairs. Neither of them dared to take the time to go back.
Neuma ran from floor to floor, butt hanging halfway out of her shorts. James tried not to watch the pleasant way she jiggled on every step, which, for once, wasn’t too hard—the growing panic helped a lot.
They weren’t the only ones panicking. When they reached Eloquent Blood again, they found the dance floor emptied. The staff was all getting ready for a fight. They had found weapons, too—barbed wire whips, the shattered ends of bottles, rebar.
It was a small army: more than three-dozen demons and Gray, by James’s quick count.
He turned his shocked stare on Neuma.
“These ones are all loyal to Elise,” she said, misinterpreting his expression. “They’ve got your back. You can trust ‘em.”
A beefy man with fangs punched his fist into his other palm. A low growl rumbled through his throat.
So this was what Elise had been doing when she hadn’t been speaking to James. Had she been deliberately pulling together an army? He couldn’t imagine that she had been making friends.
Neuma gestured, and a woman stepped out from among the demons. She looked too normal to be among the clubbers in Eloquent Blood. She had green eyes, brown hair with red streaks, and a black blouse—James wouldn’t have looked at her twice on the street.
“This is your new bodyguard, kid,” Neuma said. “Meet Tania. She’s going to keep you alive long enough to perform whatever magic you gotta do. ‘Kay?”
Nathaniel was too pale to respond.
Bodyguard? James couldn’t believe that someone as unassuming as this “Tania” could face down the might of the Union, much less the swarming nightmares.
But there was no time to argue. A serpent of darkness the size of James’s leg shot onto the floor of Eloquent Blood, coalescing into Jerica’s figure. She was still wearing the thick-framed hipster glasses, but now she also held a one-handed flail that looked like it had been made from a fistful of rusty nails and a bike chain.
“They’re here,” she said.
Her announcement was punctuated by the sound of gunfire on the street above, igniting instant chaos within Eloquent Blood.
Neuma faced her small army and pumped her fist in the air.
“Get those fuckers!”
They roared and charged up the rubble, shoving past Nathaniel and James. He grabbed his son to keep from being dragged along, but Nathaniel shook him off with a look of disgust.
Neuma, Jerica, and Tania the bodyguard stood back until the last of them were on the street.
“Get them to the gate,” Neuma said, grabbing Jerica by the back of her neck. “And don’t you even think about dying on me.”
They kissed swiftly, and then Neuma was gone, charging up the destroyed street.
“We’ll go around back,” Tania said with a thick Australian accent. She led them to a dark hallway that had used to be the human entrance to Eloquent Blood.
They emerged into an alleyway between casinos. Jerica took the lead, and Tania watched the rear.
When they emerged, James could see the Union marching on the other side of the chain link fence protecting the alley. A black tank rolled past them, treads crushing the rocks beneath it. The cannon swiveled to aim down the road, and James realized that someone had stamped magical runes on the side.
The entire damn tank was an enchanted weapon.
They rushed through the empty first floor of Craven’s to emerge on the opposite street, a block away from the fighting between the Union and the employees of Blood. At that distance, it was impossible to tell who was winning. The writhing mass of bodies was just as indistinguishable as the clubbers had been in Blood, but they danced in time to the pounding of bullets instead of a bass rhythm.
The enchanted cannon fired with a whomph
.
Bodies went flying.
A leg landed near James, skittering across the pavement. Instead of a foot, the ankle terminated in a cloven hoof. The aatxegorri bartender , he realized, feeling sick.
“We have to keep moving,” Tania said. She hovered behind Nathaniel like his own personal shadow.
The fighting was so loud that James didn’t hear the roar of an engine until it was on top of them. He turned to see a fleet of black motorcycles bearing down Sierra Street. There were five of them in a line, blocking the entire road.
Jerica saw them coming, too. She launched into shadow and reappeared in front of the center motorcyclist. The flail slammed into his helmet.
James heard the crash, but he didn’t stop to watch the aftermath. Tania was half-pulling, half-carrying Nathaniel down the street, and it was all James could do to follow.
A broken helmet bounced past him.
They ran past the fight between the Union and demons. It was so chaotic that James’s brain processed the images out of order—flying bodies, staggering Gray bleeding from wounds, the flash of gunfire. The white UKA logo was everywhere, white letters on black, splattered with red.
Tania cut across an alley, blocking his view of the fight.
“Where are we going?” James panted, chasing after the others. His son didn’t reply. “Nathaniel! Which gate are we going to?”
The boy stared between the gates, eyes wide and cheeks pale.
“Uh—I don’t know, maybe—”
“Pick one!” James said.
“Okay, okay! That one!” Nathaniel pointed up at the train trench.
A kopis rounded the scaffolding at the end of the block. He dropped to one knee and braced his rifle against his shoulder. “Freeze!” he yelled.
Tania may have been a good bodyguard, but she wasn’t good at obeying orders. She launched down the street and barreled into the kopis. Her momentum carried them both to the ground.
Screams pierced the air as she ripped into the kopis with a wet crunch , like snapping celery.
“Oh my God ,” Nathaniel said. “Oh my God, oh my God—”
James shoved him. “Don’t watch!”
They clambered up the nearest ladder, hand over hand, as quickly as they could move. Tania rejoined them before they reached the top, her chin and chest drenched with blood. She wiped her lips off with a dainty gesture.
