by S. M. Reine
The news surprised her enough that she forgot to worry about Betty.
“Who’s invading?”
“You will help me find that out,” He said.
A pair of cherubim crossed a cobblestone path cutting through the shallow pool, the male dragging the female toward Elise’s throne.
The captive cherub fell at Adam and Elise’s feet. When she saw Elise, a look of surprise dawned on her features. But not wonder. Not love. All angels loved Elise—and a sense of wrongness knotted in her belly.
“Tell me what this is,” Adam said to Elise, gesturing at the cherub.
“It’s an angel,” Elise said.
“No. Look closer.”
Elise rose from the wooden throne and circled the cherub. This creature had pale blue eyes, long legs, the confidence that came with immortality. Its familiar features made Elise feel confusingly warm. Almost…maternal.
“Where did you find her?” Elise asked the guarding cherub.
“It was outside the walls attempting to force its way into the garden,” said the guard.
He didn’t need to point out that cherubim should have been capable of stepping into the garden from anywhere, at any time.
If what looked to be a cherub was behaving entirely unlike a cherub—unable to enter the quarantined garden of its own volition, and looking at Elise with shock rather than adoration—then the obvious conclusion was that it wasn’t what it appeared to be. But that left so many other questions unanswered.
Adam’s gaze pressed on Elise as she stepped behind the cherub to look at its wings. They sprouted from its back with no obvious surgical marks to suggest that they had been modified.
“What are you?” Elise asked the intruder.
It stared at her in silence.
The maternal feelings just kept building. This was her child under scrutiny—a creature of her making. It pained Elise to see it kneeling in rainwater.
She pressed her hand to the cherub’s cheek.
The illusion fell away.
A creature with ruddy crimson flesh, sleek black hair, and the feathered wings of an angel appeared where the cherub had been sitting. It stared at her with eyes that were glossy black—not blue.
Shocked, she dropped her hand. All warmth fled from her.
“Hybrid,” Elise said. “This is…some kind of hybrid.”
Its lips peeled back over its teeth.
Adam stepped off of the pulpit. “Of course,” He said without an ounce of surprise. “She’s been making an army of them on the battlefront. This one must have been deployed as an assassin.”
Elise frowned. What battlefront was he talking about? There hadn’t been any wars involving hybrids for millennia.
“She?” Elise asked.
“Lilith,” Adam said. “Remember?”
And suddenly, she did. Elise remembered the smell of burning cities, the sight of angels wielding flaming swords. The mental image was as clear as though she had seen it earlier that morning.
“Okay,” she said slowly, massaging her temple. “Lilith is trying to assassinate you. Let me kill this…this thing. I just need my swords. I came into the garden with two of them—have Metaraon bring me one, and I’ll take care of it right now.”
Adam radiated displeasure. “You don’t have the stomach for killing. You never have.”
“I’m not Eve,” Elise said. “You know I’m not Eve, just like you know that Lilith’s been gone for a long time.”
Adam cupped her cheek in His hand. “Look inside your heart,” He said. “You know that’s not true. You don’t kill.”
The words slid through her: You don’t kill . It sounded like a command.
Her vision blurred.
What swords had she been talking about? Elise reached back to touch her shoulder, expecting to find the strap of a spine sheath, and found nothing.
He was right—she didn’t kill. She had never worn a weapon in her life.
“There,” Adam said. “Do you see?”
The guarding cherub suddenly snapped to attention, lifting its sword in a salute.
Metaraon strode across the cobblestone path. Elise’s stomach churned when she realized that he was dragging Betty behind him, his hand clamped around her wrist. At the sight of her friend, Elise realized that her thoughts were getting muddy again.
She stepped away from Adam. Her mind instantly cleared.
“What is the meaning of this?” Metaraon demanded, gaze locked onto Elise’s. “What do you think you’re doing, woman?”
“We’re attending to business,” Adam said. He swept a hand toward the hybrid. “We found this thing attempting to enter the garden. One of Lilith’s assassins, I’m sure.”
Metaraon used his grip on Betty to fling her to the ground. She splashed into the shallow water. “You’re ‘attending to business’ without alerting me?” he asked. “I am your right hand, your Voice. This is my responsibility.”
“There was no need for you,” He said.
Metaraon’s lips quivered with barely-withheld rage.
“Master,” rasped the hybrid, startling Elise. Its spoke as though its throat had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. It stared at Metaraon when it spoke.
Elise understood instantly that the hybrid didn’t belong to Lilith.
Fury ignited in Metaraon’s pale eyes. He stepped behind the hybrid, placed a hand on its jaw, and jerked.
Its head wrenched off of its spine with a slick pop .
The body collapsed, wings crumpling.
“There,” Metaraon said, lobbing the head at Elise. It rolled to a stop at her feet. Blood dribbled from its stump, clouding the shallow water. “Business has been attended to.”
If Metaraon’s anger was a grain of sand, then Adam’s was the beach. Hot rage rippled over Elise’s skin.
“You dare presume to sentence my captives?” His voice boomed through the roots of the tree, making the bark crackle and water slosh over the path. Betty gave a small gasp, clapping damp hands over her ears. “Who is Lord?”
It took visible effort, but Metaraon bowed his head.
“You are,” he said. “My apologies, Father. I reacted in fear for your safety.”
Adam didn’t calm down at that, but He didn’t get angrier, either. He gestured to Betty. “Why have you brought her here? I instructed the cherubim to make her comfortable.”
“I expected you would want your bride to enter the door as soon as possible,” Metaraon said through his teeth, “and she is our incentive. Let us stop waiting and get this done.”
Betty gasped again, turning wide eyes on Elise.
Adam laughed. “She doesn’t matter that much. Eve will enter the door for me . Some mortal you’ve dredged from a memory doesn’t influence her decision.”
“Are you certain?” Metaraon asked.
Adam had grown still, motionless but tense, and there was death in His quietude. Elise realized that the conversation had suddenly taken a turn for the worse—much worse, in fact, but she wasn’t exactly sure why.
“Elise?” Betty whispered.
She shook her head imperceptibly, trying to tell her friend to be quiet, but it was too late.
Metaraon seized her by the throat and lifted her from the water. Betty clawed at his forearm, bare feet kicking, cheeks reddening as she struggled for breath.
“Look at how the presence of ‘some mortal’ has reinvigorated your bride,” Metaraon said. “You wanted her awake? She is awake. She thirsts in a way that she did not until I brought her .” He shook Betty. “Your ‘Eve’ will go through the door to spare this woman pain.”
Betty’s eyes bulged. A tear trickled down her cheek.
“You’re lying,” Adam said.
“Test her.”
Metaraon tossed Betty as easily as if she were a kitten. She cried out when she struck the cobblestone path, rolling to Adam’s feet.
Elise jerked, almost stepping forward—but she stopped herself.
No. If she showed how much that b
othered her, that would only trigger His wrath.
She schooled her features and didn’t move.
He kneeled beside Betty, stroking a hand down her cheek. “Be calm, my child,” He said gently.
Betty bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. But she was still watching Elise, and Betty was smart enough to follow her cues. She didn’t make a sound.
Metaraon was watching Elise, too. He circled around her, wings partially unfurled. Feathers swirled on the water’s surface.
“Is Metaraon speaking the truth, my beloved?” Adam asked. “Do you love her above me?”
Such an innocuous question, asked so calmly. Adam stroked Betty’s forehead, like a worrying father. She trembled.
And still, Elise kept her expression blank.
“No,” Elise said.
Adam broke Betty’s pinky. The crack of the joint bent the wrong direction was like a gunshot in the silence of the garden.
Betty screamed and arched away reflexively, but His grip was too strong to escape.
Elise wanted to kill Him. She imagined plunging her sword into His heart, twisting the blade, gutting Him like a slaughtered pig. She imagined the heat of His blood gushing over her arm.
And then she wiped her mind as clean as her face. She forced herself to think of something neutral—like jogging through the empty streets of Reno.
Adam broke Betty’s thumb. Her scream drove into Elise’s heart.
Adam asked again, “You don’t care about this mortal, do you?”
Elise fixed her eyes on Metaraon.
“No, I don’t care,” she said, and she managed to make it sound like she wasn’t dying inside.
Adam wrenched Betty’s broken fingers back, bending them until the tips nearly brushed her wrist. She kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming, but Elise’s mind was far away, with her sneakered feet beating a rhythm against the pavement in the cool morning air.
“Cold,” Metaraon whispered over her shoulder. “Very cold.”
Elise shrugged.
Adam grew bored. He dropped Betty’s hand and straightened, seeming to forget about her instantly.
He looked surprised to see that Elise was there.
“You’re looking lovely today, Eve,” He said, running His fingers through her hair, like knives tickling her scalp. He smelled like blood and pain, and Elise didn’t allow herself to think about killing Him again.
She smiled, tilted her cheek into His hand, and stared over His shoulder at Metaraon. The anger seeped into her eyes—she couldn’t help it.
Metaraon glared back. Stalemate .
Adam brushed a kiss over her cheek and He drifted away, murmuring to the vines, the leaves, and the wind in the Tree.
After all of the screaming, the garden seemed even quieter than usual. Adam and Metaraon were gone. Betty sat on the wooden throne and Elise kneeled at her feet, preparing to fix the damage she had done.
She scissored at the seams of Betty’s slacks with her fingernails, trying to tear the cloth free to create a bandage. It was easier to pay attention to that than think of how much pain had been inflicted upon Betty for Elise’s sake.
She unraveled the seam and ripped, turning Betty’s slacks into shorts. They weren’t even.
Betty’s broken fingers were purple, swollen, bent the wrong way. “This will hurt,” Elise said, taking the tip of Betty’s thumb in her hand. “Get ready.”
She didn’t wait for Betty to acknowledge her before twisting the thumb into place. Betty smothered her cry with her undamaged hand, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Elise splinted the thumb to keep it in position and wrapped the bandages around it.
“I didn’t think it could be this bad,” Betty said.
“There are a lot of delicate bones in the hand. It’s a bad place to be injured.”
“That’s not what I meant.” All hints of Betty’s earlier cheer were gone. “When you didn’t tell me about everything that happened to you when you were younger, I thought…well, I knew it had to be bad, but this—”
Elise pulled the pinky finger back into place.
She had to pin Betty’s shaking hand under her arm to finish dressing the wound. As soon as Elise released her, Betty pulled it against her chest, giving her a mistrustful look.
“I’m sorry,” Elise said.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” Betty asked, voice thick with tears.
Elise climbed onto the throne next to her. The seat was wide enough that they could both fit in it, hip-to-hip. They used to sit in the oversized chairs at the student union like that while studying for finals.
“It’s complicated,” Elise said. “I did what I had to in order to save your life. I couldn’t stand to lose you again.”
Betty hugged her hand to her chest. “Again?”
Elise chewed on the inside of her mouth. Betty deserved to know the truth, no matter how unpleasant.
“You said the last thing you remember is going into the Night Hag’s cave, right?”
Betty nodded.
“You don’t remember anything after that because…” Elise swallowed hard. “You died there. Alain Daladier shot you.”
Betty’s cheeks were so bloodless that it looked like she was on the verge of dying again. She swayed dangerously at Elise’s side. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
Uttering that name made the Tree throb with a deep groan.
Betty clapped a hand over her mouth.
Elise waited for a minute to see if Adam would descend on them again, but He must have been preoccupied—the garden soon settled down again. She went on. “After you died, Anthony and I couldn’t keep it together. It’s kind of why we broke up. That, and…”
“You’re such a bitch,” Betty said.
She frowned. “A lot has happened after you died. It’s been hard.” Her voice broke. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Betty’s face softened. “What have I missed? Tell me about it.”
Where to begin? With the part where Betty’s parents had begged Elise to spread Betty’s ashes somewhere nice? The memorial service at the university, where everyone talked over Betty’s photo? All of the fights that Elise and Anthony had over Betty’s belongings?
Elise didn’t want to remember any of that.
Betty wouldn’t want to know how much darker the world had become without her. She’d want to know about the ass kicking, the fights, the victories.
“After we killed the Night Hag, Anthony got possessed by a demon,” Elise said. At Betty’s alarmed expression, she quickly added, “He’s fine now. But he was under the influence of the mother of all demons for a few days, and her brother—do you remember Thom?”
A faint smile twitched on Betty’s lips. “Insanely hot guy in leather pants.”
“Yeah, that guy. He was actually a demon, not a witch. His name was Yatam. He and I…”
Elise trailed off as she thought back to having sex with Yatam while the city was destroyed and the statue of the goddess Nügua looked on. There had been a knife and a lot of blood. Elise would have told Betty about any other tryst, but not that one—there was just no way that Betty could understand.
Realizing that she had lost the thread of conversation, Elise shook her head to clear it.
“We exchanged blood,” she said simply. “The swap ultimately killed Yatam, and made me into a demon when I died.” She grabbed a fistful of hair. “As you can see.”
“You died, too?” Betty asked dully.
“For a little while,” Elise said. She managed a weak smile. “Anthony came to get my body and helped me figure shit out.”
“After you broke his heart.”
Elise grimaced. “We both had problems, Betty. It wasn’t just me.”
“But mostly you,” Betty said. “You’re so cold.”
Elise dropped to her feet in the shallow water, pacing the cobblestone path.
She could have explained that she wasn’t cold—that she had always burned hot, too hot, but not for Anthony.
That he satisfied a physical need, as well as the need for uncomplicated companionship, and that she appreciated how quickly he adjusted to killing demons. But all of it would have sounded like an excuse. Maybe it was.
“I loved James,” Elise said. “Always.”
Betty’s brow creased. She picked at the edge of the makeshift bandage. “I probably knew that. I just wish you’d told Anthony. Even if you didn’t love him, you liked him, didn’t you? Wasn’t he your friend? He deserved better.”
It was like a slap to the face.
“I guess he did,” Elise said, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat.
“When we get out of here, you need to apologize. Promise me you’ll apologize.”
“I don’t know if we’re getting out of here.”
Fierce optimism burned in Betty’s face, even now. “Just promise.”
“Okay,” Elise said. “I promise.”
Elise watched over Betty as she slept through the pain. It didn’t matter whether or not Elise remained vigilant, but she feared falling asleep too much to relax. When she dreamed in the garden, she was never quite sure that she would wake up again.
They had climbed into the lower branches to escape the dampness of the tepid pool, and the Tree grumbled in deep, wordless voices as Elise settled in. Betty was using a pillow of moss to rest her head with her knees curled to her chest; one foot stretched out to touch Elise’s, toe-to-toe, as if she needed that reassurance.
As Elise waited, keeping one eye on Betty, her mind wandered. And she found herself thinking of Adam.
When she had first entered the garden, His touch had been agony. But it was getting easier all the time. She wasn’t sure if something about Him had changed…or if it was Elise doing the changing.
She almost wanted to touch Him again to find out.
It wasn’t His fault that His touch was sensory overload. It had been bad ever since He had entered the Origin and became omnipotent. Trying to concentrate that much power into a physical form was bound to have side effects.
If Elise concentrated, she could almost see the contrition in His eyes when He realized how much He had been hurting her when they kissed. She could hear the way He had whispered, I’m so sorry, Eve . And she remembered her heart breaking into thousands of pieces.
