The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1)

by SM Reine

  James scrambled to his knees, moving carefully to the rim of the grave. “Elise?”

  He could just make out her pale skin as she tilted her face up toward him. “My fault. Erosion. At least I had a soft landing. Can I get any light?”

  “The flashlight won’t work,” he said, opening it to reseat the batteries and fiddle with the connectors.

  “I think there’s a pair of security guards down here,” Elise said. A beat, and she added, “They’re dead.”

  James closed the battery door and the bulb came back on. He beamed it down into the grave. Elise shielded her eyes, back pressed into the muddy wall.

  The bodies looked like mud-covered sacks, half-concealed by a sheet flung over their legs. He could make out the Securitas logo on the breast pocket of the man on the right. His stomach pitched.

  “Shine the light over that way,” she said.

  James obeyed, watching as Elise kneeled in the space beside the bodies. She felt the throat of the closest guard and hovered her hand over his mouth. When she began wiping mud away from their throats to bare bloody gashes, James looked up at the sky.

  Gray clouds, highlighted with shades of blue and purple, shifted slowly across the heavens. The moon wasn’t even visible through the cover. Casino lights to the south turned the clouds green and orange and a dozen other unnatural shades of the rainbow.

  “Someone slit their throats with a sharp knife. The wounds are pretty clean,” she said from below. James took deep, shallow breaths, grateful that the rain kept the smell of death from reaching him.

  “We should get you out of there. We need to…I don’t know, report this or something.”

  “Report it? Are you crazy?” She dug her hands into the wall of mud, trying to haul herself up with the side of the grave. The soil slipped under her fingers. She lost her footing, stumbled back on the bodies, and one of the guards squelched deeper into the mud. “Uh, help?”

  James offered a hand to her. She took his wrist, and he hauled her out of the hole. Elise crawled a few feet away from the grave before trying to wipe mud off her arms. “Are you all right?”

  Elise cast a grimace at the grave. “Better than some people. We can’t report this. Once the police are here, we’ll never get the opportunity to find out what happened.”

  “But…”

  “Business first. Then we tip off the law.” She scooped the flashlight off the ground. “You never would have had a problem with this five years ago.”

  He glanced down into the shadowy depths of the grave and quickly averted his gaze once more. “You said it yourself. Five years is a long time.”

  Her head snapped up. “What was that?”

  James scanned the cemetery with his eyes as Elise did the same at his back, but he heard it before he saw it—slow, shuffling, squelching. Footsteps.

  “Perhaps it’s the next shift,” he muttered.

  “Or maybe it’s a zombie,” Elise said.

  She pointed, and James followed her finger to the street beyond the fence.

  A figure slid into the light. His shoes were visible first, and then his shoulders illuminated. His hanging head shadowed his face and chest. The man was clad in a poorly-fitting gray suit, torn and splattered with mud. There was no shirt under the jacket, baring a sunken chest covered in raised veins and swimming black marks that were darker than shadow.

  His head lifted. Light spilled onto his nose and angular jaw, which were gripped with veins. A single sigil was emblazoned between his eyebrows. James didn’t need to look closely to know it was the same mark Lucinde had borne not too long before.

  “You again,” Elise murmured.

  The possessed corpse shambled forward. His eyes didn’t quite focus on either of them.

  Elise and James backed toward the gate.

  A twig snapped.

  James spun. A woman lurched toward them from the darkness at the other end of the cemetery, her straggly hair caked in dirt. She, too, was clad in clothes that didn’t suit her—a plain frock and a pair of cheap sandals. The dress was several sizes too big, and it hung off her shoulder, exposing a sagging breast.

  Black tears streaked her cheeks. The other possessed one was close enough for James to see the swollen blood vessels in his eyes as well, and he realized that the woman’s eyes had burst.

  James edged over until he was shoulder to shoulder with his kopis. “This is your area of expertise. What do we do?”

  “Kill them.” She held a long, curved knife in one hand. James hadn’t seen her draw it.

  The woman sped up, and the man angled to cut off their exit. It took him a moment to realize Elise wasn’t following him toward the fence.

  “If they’re here, their master won’t be far,” she said.

  “You’re suggesting we fight.”

  Elise was never given a chance to respond.

  The man pitched toward her. She ducked away from his clumsy hands, delivering a kick squarely in the middle of the back. He tumbled into the mud.

  “James—look out!”

  He spun, but it was too late. A pair of hands dug into his shoulders, and the earth rushed to meet his face.

  There was a smack, a crack, and the female was suddenly on the ground with him. A small sound came from her throat, more instinctive than a protest of pain.

  James gasped and tried to squirm away, but the mud sucked him down, making it hard to move. Elise’s foot came down on the woman’s face once. The possessed one caught her ankle. She stumbled out of the grip.

  The possessed woman clawed at his ankles when James scrambled to his feet. Elise kicked her in the side of the head, even harder this time. It was accompanied by an even louder crack, and her skull caved in like a rotten egg that had been smashed against the asphalt.

  The older man lurched forward, grabbing James’s neck in both hands. He was slow, but too strong to stop.

  James struggled to pry the hands away. “Elise,” he groaned. “Help—please—”

  The female grabbed Elise, dragging her to the ground. “I’m a little busy right now,” she said.

  He heaved with all his strength, peeling the arms away inch by inch. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his temple. The man, however, showed no signs of exertion. The possessed one pushed steadily on, its half-focused eyes fixed squarely on James’s throat.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elise grab a felled branch the size of his arm. She swung her makeshift club like a bat, and it hissed through the air, smashing into the woman’s face.

  James leaned back and pushed his knee between himself and the zombie, trying to kick him off.

  The cold fingers tightened around his neck, the heels of his palms pressed into his esophagus, and the world grew darker—

  Then a familiar blade came down on the servant’s elbow, slicing across the inner joint. Blood gurgled sluggishly from the cut.

  Elise cut again, and suddenly, all the pressure was gone from the right side of James’s throat. The servant’s hand fell limply to his side, and James wrenched away from him with a gasp. Fresh oxygen rushed into his lungs, and he coughed as the graveyard swam around him.

  The man turned on Elise, groping for her with the arm that still worked. She flung him to the ground. “Hold him,” she ordered, and James approached cautiously.

  “Is he…?”

  “I slapped him with the pendant of St. Benedict,” Elise said, taking the necklace of charms from her pocket. It jingled in the night. “I stuffed it in his mouth. He won’t be able to get orders from his master until he manages to spit it out.”

  James put his foot on the servant’s chest just in case. “You still carry extra medallions?” he asked.

  “I just started again. It seemed like a good idea.”

  “A very good idea,” he agreed, watching as Elise hauled the dead woman to her feet. The rain made her bloody face run with red tears.

  “Where is your master?” she demanded. The body twisted and writhed, fighting to break free with
a whining shriek. “I know you can speak. One of your demonic friends spoke through a girl tonight, so talk!”

  Motion caught James’s eye. A small, leathery body emerged from behind a tombstone, perching on the top. Its bulbous eyeballs shone dimly in the light, yellow and bulging and focusing directly on him.

  Another scaled the fence. He turned, and his gaze fell on another as it crept out from the shadows of the building adjacent to the cemetery.

  “I told you to talk!” Elise said. She slapped the corpse across the face as James edged closer. Decomposing brain, like cottage cheese, crumbled out of the crack in her skull.

  “Elise…”

  Yet another gray demon crept out from behind the tree. This close, he could see the blood encrusting its nails and the droop of its lower lip as it salivated with hunger.

  “What, James?” she asked without taking her focus off the struggling woman.

  “I think we’re about to have bigger problems.”

  Her face darkened in increments as she counted each demon. “Fiends. I hate those guys.”

  James swallowed. “We fight?”

  “No. We don’t stand a chance against three.” The possessed woman suddenly stopped fighting and went limp in Elise’s arms as though all her strings had been cut.

  “What the hell…?” James wondered.

  “The master must have realized the servants weren’t doing anything,” she said, dropping the body. “Run!”

  She didn’t need to tell him twice.

  Elise leapt over the fallen body of the possessed woman, snatching at James’s hand and dragging him along with her.

  Their feet made sucking noises with every step, but James could hardly hear it over the pounding of his heart. He felt cold, awash with adrenaline. His gaze narrowed, focusing on the door to the cemetery’s attached office, until all he could see was the door half-lit in the darkness of stormy night.

  He hit the doors before Elise did, throwing them open. The lock was punched out—someone else had been there first.

  “Get inside!” he bellowed.

  They jumped in and slammed the double doors shut. Elise threw herself against it, bracing her back against the place in between the handles. The bodies crashed into the other side.

  James dropped the flashlight to help, but she shook her head.

  “Find something to hold the doors!”

  He searched the room. There were potted plants, but none heavy enough to hold the door. He grabbed the edge of check-in desk and pulled experimentally, but it was bolted to the floor. James flung open the door labeled “janitor.”

  Another heavy thud, and Elise grunted.

  “Soon would be good,” she growled.

  James snatched a steel-handled mop from the closet. “Push,” he said, trying to fit the mop through the handles. “I can’t wedge it in like this.”

  Elise lost her footing, and the door opened partway. A hand pushed through the opening.

  She grabbed it and twisted. Something snapped. The fingers went slack.

  Her weight still wasn’t enough to close the door.

  James threw himself into it. It smashed shut on inhuman fingers, and something on the other side gave a cry, jerking them out of the way.

  The doors closed. He wedged the mop’s pole through the door handles.

  She stepped back. The corpses slammed into the doors, and the hinges groaned, but the mop held.

  He sighed and leaned against the wall.

  “Don’t stop yet. Keep moving,” she said, grabbing his collar. She burst through the hall to the office, shutting the sliding doors behind them.

  James scanned the office. The stormy half-light of night outside filtered through slatted blinds, casting faint barred shadows across a cheap desk and filing cabinet. The brown shag carpet broke off at the head of a tiled hallway, and another door stood closed nearby with a sign that said “lab.” A map of the building hung on the wall, with the fire exit routes marked in red.

  The banging grew more distant, and more insistent. They jogged down the tiled hallway. Another set of doors stood at the very end.

  “We might be able to get out and make a break for the car before they realize we’ve gone,” Elise said.

  “I’m not sure—”

  Shuffling.

  They turned, falling silent as they faced the source of the noise.

  Fiends crouched at the end of the hall. It wasn’t the small handful they had seen in the graveyard beyond the office walls—there were more, many more, perhaps a dozen. They shifted in the darkness, crawling over each other and halfway up the walls.

  A pair scuttled forward and up, digging their claws into the stucco to scramble over James’s head. He ducked, but they didn’t stop. Instead, they dropped on the other side—between Elise and James and the exit.

  On both sides, the demons waited, staring at them with luminescent eyes.

  Elise gripped James’s wrist. She didn’t say what she was thinking, but he suspected it involved several expletives. He felt much the same. James shifted so his hand squeezed hers, and he hoped it was comforting.

  The fiends growled softly. His heart raced, and adrenaline turned his blood to antifreeze.

  Her body tensed. She was preparing to run.

  The office door beside them slammed open.

  James saw a flash of yellow claws and leathery skin. Small hands wrapped around his leg, and he jerked free, kicking it in the face. The little demon keened, reeling backward, but in its place came another.

  Elise’s knife flashed, glinting through the air like a blade of moonlight. She cut, ducking low and slicing along arms, across faces, pulling away from strikes. She moved smoothly, quickly, a dance of fist and blade. He fought to get free, trying to break from the increasing crowd of fiends as they clambered to grab him.

  And then the demons from the end of the hall leapt into the fray, and James was swarmed. He elbowed a face, pushed another away. The tide of small bodies pulled him toward the conference room, and inexorably away from the slashing blade that was Elise.

  She reached for James. “Elise!” he shouted, throwing his hand toward hers.

  Their fingers brushed. The fiends yanked. James lost his footing, and he fell, caught by clawed hands a heartbeat before hitting the ground.

  “James!”

  He tried to grab the doorframe, but the fiends released him before he could orient himself. His face hit the stripping at the bottom of the door. Elise’s sneakers moved—rising to strike a leathery body, pushing against the ground, fighting to get closer to James.

  Then they jerked, dragging him down the floor. The carpet burned the side of his face.

  “No!” Elise cried, struggling against the restraining arms of the fiends, pushing and hitting and scratching and doing no good whatsoever.

  The door slammed shut.

  The fiends wrenched James to his knees. He had an instant to see tiled floors, a drain, metal tables, and then the fiends pulled again. Nails dug into his arms. James didn’t have to count the fiends to know there were too many to fight.

  One of the demons clawed its way up his slacks until it stretched tall, almost up to his chest. Its fingers ran over his cheeks, his jaw, his nose.

  The other demons jerked on his legs. James lost balance and his knees struck the carpet. The fiends made slurping, hungry noises deep in their throats, staring at him like a slab of meat.

  Claws slid down his neck, catching on the hem of his shirt with a ripping sound. His chest was suddenly cold. His shirt had been torn open in one long line down the center, baring his chest and stomach.

  He felt the sharp press of teeth against his hip and gave a shout.

  “What are you doing?”

  The other door opened. His heart leapt when he saw a feminine figure enter—but it wasn’t Elise. The newcomer was swathed in a long jacket and a formless skirt. The fact he couldn’t make out her face, or even her body type, didn’t disturb James so much as the feeling of sheer power
that poured off of her.

  It wasn’t the normal power that James got from other witches, like those in his coven. This feeling was unmistakably evil.

  The witch drew a knife from behind her back.

  “Oh,” James said.

  She touched the blade to his skin, and after that, all he could do was scream.

  “No!” Elise threw herself against the door. Locked.

  Something scuffled behind her, and she spun, dagger raised for a blow. But the fiends had dispersed—gone from the hall as quickly as they had arrived in the first place. They had what they wanted, and it wasn’t Elise.

  The air shifted, and motion from a fiend she had killed caught her eye. Blood dribbled sluggishly out of the slit on its neck. And then…something changed.

  In her biology for non-majors college class, Elise had watched a time lapse video of a decaying rabbit. Its skin had rippled and exploded with maggots, the flesh disappearing as tiny fragments were carried off by numerous insects. The decay of the fiend was similar—one moment, it was whole and complete, and the next, its skin crumpled and peeled and flaked off, baring bone that burned away as well.

  She watched, stunned, as invisible flame spread from the brands down its back and devoured the entire body, leaving nothing but dust.

  Only very strong master demons could destroy its minions after they died.

  And it had her aspis.

  He screamed on the other side of the wall.

  “James!” she yelled. She shook the doorknob again, harder. “James!”

  She took a step back and threw all her strength into a single kick. Her blow landed beside the doorknob. Crack.

  His screaming grew strangled. She kicked again.

  The door was made of heavy oak. It barely shook.

  “Shit,” she muttered. The room number, mounted on a gold placard beside the door, said 6B. If there was a 6B, there must have been a 6A.

  She left James’s screams and scanned the map on the wall, trying to make sense of it in the dark. Finding the red dot marking her position, she traced the hall around the building.

  6A. There was another door in the opposite hall.

  Elise ran. Her feet pounded against linoleum, each step a clap of thunder.