The Descent Series Complete Collection

by S. M. Reine

  Even with his face shadowed, Elise could feel the chilly weight of his pale gaze.

  James Faulkner was watching Elise shop with her boyfriend.

  “Fine,” Elise said. “Buy the chaps.”

  Malcolm cackled and slapped her ass. “Yee haw!”

  She pointedly did not look for James’s reaction.

  September 9th, 2000 — The Grand Canyon, Arizona

  The demon hunters were staying at a campsite to the north of the canyon. It was one of many similar campsites, and they inhabited one of many motorhomes similar to those occupied by other tourists. The mundanity of it all rendered Elise and James anonymous among the crowd. Who would expect to find the world’s greatest kopis in a puke-colored Winnebago from the 80s?

  That Winnebago was currently groaning on its springs.

  Inside, in the double bed in the back, Malcolm reclined while Elise rode him.

  Her motions were less like the cowgirl he’d requested and more like she was wrestling him into submission. Elise wasn’t stronger than Malcolm, physically speaking; despite the fact that they had equally impressive muscle from similar myostatin deficiencies, she was still female, with lower body mass, and therefore at a disadvantage.

  He allowed her to top him, though. He liked it when she got rough with him. The more their sex verged on the scary and potentially murderous, the harder he got off.

  To be honest, Elise liked it that way too.

  She was always kind of pissed. Always on the brink of snapping.

  Killing demons wasn’t enough to get it all out.

  In the moments when she reached climax, in the brilliant white light of orgasm, Elise felt relaxed. Just for a moment.

  She appreciated that release.

  If she got to choke Malcolm while reaching that release—well, that was just part of the fun.

  If there was one thing to be said for her relationship with Malcolm, it was that they always had fun.

  Six months. It was easily Elise’s longest relationship to date, if one didn’t count her relationship with James.

  James didn’t count their relationship as a relationship. Why should Elise?

  Her aspis was down in the canyon, drawing on her energy as he cast a spell. Their bond was open in what was colloquially known as a “piggyback.” That meant that they were sharing their thoughts, feelings, and strength, as well as all of the sensations that went along with that. Being able to piggyback off of one another was one of the primary benefits to joining as kopis and aspis.

  Separately, neither of them were as strong as they were together—or at least, that was how it worked when the bond was going well.

  The bond hadn’t been going very well lately.

  As Elise’s hips rocked atop Malcolm’s, she felt James’s hands sifting through salt and crystal as surely as he felt Malcolm’s ribs pressed between her knees.

  James was taking extra care to shield his thoughts from her. She got no sense of his reaction.

  He must have known what she was doing. He should have felt every moment of it.

  Elise had no idea what James thought of the way she occupied her time while he cast a boring, lengthy ritual. But she could imagine it.

  He’d be disgusted.

  James barely tolerated Malcolm’s presence, the way that the demon hunter called him “Jimmy,” the constant sex Elise and Malcolm had—even when they were in a demon hive, fresh off of a dozen kills.

  And that was fine.

  Elise must have disgusted James long before Malcolm entered the picture.

  At least she was giving her aspis good reason to hate her now.

  Let him see her gloved hands clamped on the muscles of Malcolm’s neck. Let him watch the male kopis’s face contort with pleasure even as his cheeks purpled from asphyxiation. Let James hear the playful, laughing whoops of an Irishman who was pretending to be a cowboy, or whatever the hell those noises were supposed to mean.

  Six months since they’d left Copenhagen.

  Six months since James had stopped managing to conceal his distaste from Elise.

  Malcolm flipped Elise over on the bed, shoving her hard enough that her head hung over the edge of the mattress. The fact that he’d managed to do that, when Elise usually thwarted his wrestling maneuvers, meant she was truly distracted.

  It was hard to concentrate on sex when she was also mentally nestled near the Tower of Set, casting advanced magic.

  James was speaking Latin. His words flowed through her.

  Malcolm withdrew from Elise’s body and spent himself across her belly, as he always did in a lazy attempt at birth control. She hadn’t bothered telling him that it was impossible for her to get pregnant. She just preferred to clean him off of her skin rather than from her innards.

  He was done. Finally.

  Malcolm rolled onto the bed beside her with a sigh.

  Elise remained sprawled on the bed. Eyes open, unfocused, she watched the candles flickering around James’s circle of power.

  She could see every detail of the canyon as though she were the one standing in it. Elise could even feel the heat from the flames and the tingle of power flowing through both of them.

  Yet she couldn’t pick up a single one of James’s thoughts.

  He was so carefully shielded.

  She filled in the blanks of his unreadable mind with her expectations, though. Elise had more than enough tumultuous thoughts for the both of them.

  “You didn’t come.” Malcolm opened the drawer beside the bed, grabbed the whiskey, and took a swig. “Want me to finish you off, cowgirl?” He flicked his tongue out in a lewd imitation of snake.

  Elise took a drink when he offered the whiskey bottle to her. “No.”

  “How’s Jimmy?” he asked.

  She was surprised that he asked. Elise hadn’t thought Malcolm realized that she had an open bond with James.

  It wasn’t surprising that he would have had sex with her anyway, though. Malcolm got bored whenever they weren’t actively screwing or killing, so annoying James was high on his list of pastimes. Forcing James to watch them have sex probably only helped Malcolm get his rocks off.

  “James is casting,” Elise said. Roughly a mile away, her aspis rolled the moonstone artifact between his palms. It was unsettling to feel rock against bare skin like that, when Elise took such care to never remove her gloves. She had to remind herself that it was only James’s hands that were unprotected, not hers.

  Malcolm took the bottle back, and then another drink. “Is he jealous? Wishing he were here, eh? I know he wants my body.”

  Actually, James hated Malcolm so much that even his carefully guarded emotions couldn’t conceal it.

  “He’s almost done with the spell.” Elise climbed out of bed. Her gloves were stained with bodily fluid. Luckily, she always had spares.

  She swapped her gloves out one at a time. Left hand first, and then right. She was careful not to let Malcolm see her palms. Even when she was lost in James’s thoughts, she was aware enough to hide her palms.

  The moonstone glimmered in her mind’s eye. It was an impressive artifact—a magical padlock that could block dimensions. It had cost a good half of Elise and James’s stolen fortune to buy it in Lebanon, but they considered the artifact a worthwhile investment.

  Once that padlock was placed on the fissure to Phlegethon, they could be confident that it the passage between dimensions would never open, sparing them the effort of confronting tens of thousands of demons and saving even more mortal lives.

  James just needed to entrap that moonstone within the turquoise-and-leather bag first so that the fissure to Phlegethon wouldn’t feel it approaching. Hell had a way of reacting violently when it sensed something that could defeat it nearby, and Elise’s presence was warning enough that they were up to danger.

  “Did Jimmy come when I did?” Malcolm was still lounging naked on the mattress, unselfconscious with all of his rippling muscle, shiny scars, and chest matted with brown hair. “Should
I take him a clean pair of pants?”

  Elise was about to drain the last of the whiskey when the Winnebago shivered around them.

  Cabinets rattled. The wardrobe door swung open.

  Then the floor jerked under Elise’s feet.

  Surprised, she steadied herself with a hand on the counter.

  “Earthquake,” Malcolm said. “Shit. We’re out of time.” He checked the clock on the bedside table. “The apocalypse isn’t due for a few more hours. I hate it when people show up early for a party.”

  The earth shook harder for a few more seconds before subsiding. Not a big deal. Just a little quake.

  When the next one came, it wouldn’t be little.

  Elise wiped Malcolm’s fluids off of her skin with tissues, then put her wrist sheaths back on. She also donned her spine scabbard with the twin falchions that she always carried—presents from her kopis father.

  She stepped outside.

  Two people cut through the gloom of night, moving toward Elise with purposefulness unlike the confused tourists who wandered the campground.

  One of the newcomers was as close to a friend as Elise had: Lucas McIntyre, a third kopis to complete their trifecta.

  McIntyre had always resembled a bear fatted for winter. Ever since he had married his girlfriend, Leticia, he had only grown fatter still. He was broader than Elise and Malcolm combined. His hair was thinning on top of his head as it grew in fine curls on his pimply shoulders. He currently had a shotgun propped against one of those shoulders.

  “Fuck, Kavanagh,” he said, rolling his eyes to the sky when he realized she was half-naked. “I don’t wanna see your…whatever you got going on there. I’m blind.” He pointedly didn’t look at her tits.

  Elise held out a hand. Malcolm placed a shirt in her waiting grip as he emerged from the trailer. He tucked himself into his jeans and zipped the fly.

  “The Traveler,” she said after a moment of studying McIntyre’s companion.

  The Traveler was neither he nor she—a human witch who preferred to identify itself by its sole and unique power, which was a very special kind of traveling. Even James couldn’t imitate its abilities.

  They would need the Traveler to apply the moonstone artifact to the fissure.

  The Traveler had no breasts under its tank top, but its full lips were feminine. Long eyelashes framed pale eyes. Its mohawk flopped over one forehead, and tattoo sleeves covered it from knuckles to slender biceps.

  Elise couldn’t tell if the Traveler had been born male or female. It was the Traveler, and that was all.

  “At your service,” said the Traveler, inclining its head in greeting to Elise. “And not a moment too late.”

  Another earthquake punctuated its sentence.

  Elise could actually see the RVs in the campground rippling, tossed by the rolling ground. The suspension on her vehicle groaned.

  She surfed the earthquake even as she pulled the shirt on to cover her breasts and protect McIntyre’s modesty. Elise was still trying to maintain her footing when she realized that Malcolm had given her a Hooters tee. It was short enough to expose the holsters on her arms and her scarred midriff.

  Malcolm was grinning when she shot a look at him.

  “What?” he asked innocently, side-stepping a trash can as it rolled past him.

  Elise rolled her eyes.

  Hooters. Hell of a way to face the apocalypse.

  The earthquake slowed, but didn’t stop. Somewhere beyond the RV park, humans were screaming. Those screams weren’t because of the earthquake. Elise recognized the sounds of dismemberment when she heard them.

  “Traveler, let’s travel,” Elise said.

  McIntyre pumped his shotgun. “Before this campground turns into a graveyard.”

  Demons flooded out of the depths of the Grand Canyon.

  They clambered up the cliff, scrambling to reach James where he had constructed his circle of power within the Tower of Set’s crook.

  The black tide of demons crashed against rock, unhindered by gravity. They slavered. They shrieked.

  They came to kill James.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Good Lord.”

  James lifted his hand in front of the slavering mass of demons just before they reached his plateau, and they crashed into an invisible barrier of magic.

  Inches from James’s face, teeth snapped, claws raked against his circle of power, and boiling blood gushed through the air.

  James had had ample time to prepare the wards before the demons arrived, since the spell to shield that leather satchel had been long and boring. His magic was sturdy enough that Ba’al himself wouldn’t have been able to punch through—at least, not for ten minutes.

  Ten minutes would be more than enough time for Elise to rescue him.

  The demons shrieked as they smashed against his wards. They were black-skinned in the way that hardened lava was black. Boiling blood oozed from the cracks. James didn’t need to pull out his copy of Hume’s Almanac to identify these beasts. They were creatures from Phlegethon.

  The fissure was opening.

  “Damn,” James said.

  He reached toward Elise through their bond. They’re here , he told her silently, and then he shut her out before she could respond. He blocked every iota of information emanating from his kopis: the sight of Malcolm’s grin, her muscle strain as she raced toward the canyon, the sound of McIntyre lumbering behind her.

  James tucked the moonstone artifact into the leather satchel, closing it with turquoise buttons.

  Magic hummed as his protections fell into place.

  Demon claws skittered over the invisible dome of wards, filling the air with brimstone sparks.

  James slung the satchel across his chest. It fit well. Elise had picked the perfect tool for his use. She had good taste—in some things.

  Allowing Elise to graze the surface of his thoughts opened a hole in their bond again. She was making good use of their shared strength. Her heel snapped into the face of a demon that had been trying to claw open a motorhome. In the same motion, she leaped over its head and came up to plunge both falchions into the jaw of an attacking demon.

  He saw through Elise’s eyes when she fought like this. He felt her strength as though it were his. His heart sped, pushing blood hard enough to dizzy him.

  When Elise whirled to stab another demon, Malcolm got there first. He shot it in the face. Elise was close enough to watch skull fragments go flying.

  Then Malcolm kissed Elise, and James felt the scrape of the male kopis’s stubble.

  “Argh!”

  He slammed his protective walls down on their bond again.

  James destroyed his altar with a few swift kicks. He was usually more respectful when removing his work—he was an incredibly powerful witch, after all, and there were covens who would drain their collective life savings for a glimpse of his ritual spaces—but the kicking thing was far more satisfying after feeling like he’d kissed Malcolm. And fucked Malcolm. And…

  He smashed his heel into the altar a few more times.

  Demons continued to punch at the walls of his circle.

  Dammit, James was better at hiding his feelings than this. All this time with Elise, and he hadn’t lashed out over his frustration once. Not once! Not even when he was alone, seemingly unobserved, and it should have been safe to scream his fury at the injustice of the universe.

  That was because nobody was better at lying than him.

  But today, he didn’t have the strength in him to lie.

  Six months since Copenhagen.

  Six months of knowing what Elise felt, being unable to respond, and watching her with that abortion of a human being.

  James ground glass into the earth with his loafer.

  The Traveler came over the ridge above first. James had never seen the Traveler before, but he still recognized it instantly, as there was only one Traveler.

  Even if it had been wearing a paper bag over its head to concea
l its identity, James’s inner wellspring of magic would have reacted to its presence.

  All of existence bowed around the Traveler.

  It beckoned to someone James couldn’t see.

  “Found him!”

  Elise launched over the Traveler’s head.

  She was momentarily weightless, knees lifted, blades glinting in the moonlight.

  Then she plummeted into the mass of demons, a flash of muscles veiled in freckled flesh. Metal sang as her falchions tasted blood.

  James was safe.

  She was here, and he was safe.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t irritated at her.

  “We’re almost out of time,” he called, tapping his wrist as though he were wearing a watch.

  Elise surfaced from among the bodies. She was wearing those stupid leather chaps, which were now slashed in several places and blistered from boiling demon blood. “I know!”

  “The fissure’s going to finish opening within the hour.”

  “I know !”

  Elise came up with her swords swinging. Heads bounced, rolled, hit the border of his circle of power.

  The strength of his wards waned.

  Malcolm and Lucas McIntyre came down the slope more slowly, moving as a unit. The Irishman took the left, and Lucas took the right. They plugged bullets into demons methodically. Calmly. Nothing new about what they were doing here—just clearing a path so that the Traveler could approach.

  They cleared the rear half of the plateau. Elise rose from among the demons at the front half, shoulders heaving, a curl plastered to her forehead by a thumbprint of blood.

  Her eyes connected with James’s over the mass of bodies.

  The bond between a kopis and aspis was strong when they couldn’t see one another.

  Once they could, the floodgates opened.

  Elise was spattered in blisters from the heat of the demons’ blood, her knuckles sore from repeated impact, her adrenaline high.

  Yet she was thinking about Copenhagen.

  That icy beach. The steely ocean waters.

  Her attempt to kiss James, and the way that he hadn’t responded.