Defying Fate (The Descent Series)

by SM Reine

  “Don’t you need supplies for that kind of ritual? Like…herbs and voodoo dolls?”

  “I used to need supplies,” James said. “Herbs, anyway. I’ve been finding workarounds. Good thing, too, because it seems the Union’s catching up with me.”

  Malcolm gave a weak grin. “I was wondering if you’d notice that.”

  “It would have been impossible to miss. How did the Union get written magic?”

  “Some bitch named Allyson Whatley picked it up in the ethereal ruins over Reno. There were these ribbons, she deconstructed the symbols, started designing new magic. All of a sudden, we don’t need rituals to cast spells.”

  “So she got it from Alain Daladier,” James said, scowling.

  “Most of it’s useless, if that helps,” Malcolm said. “Allyson’s not much of a witch. She doesn’t have the first idea of what to do with that stuff. Not like you do.”

  “Did you help them figure it out?”

  “Nah. I wouldn’t have known what to tell them anyway. ‘I once saw a guy set paper on fire and kill demons with it’? It didn’t come up before my conviction. Oh, and did I tell you about that? Funny story! Apparently, I helped Elise escape custody—never mind that I was the one to arrest her in the first place.”

  “Sounds like you made someone angry,” James said. “I find that so hard to believe.”

  “Zettel set me up. He wanted his job back.” Malcolm sat back against the rock and waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all his. I don’t care. It’s easier to get liquor outside of the Union anyway.”

  James continued to draw until the tiny symbols covered the map. Malcolm watched in silence for several minutes.

  Maybe it was the fading adrenaline rush, maybe it was the calm of the forest, or maybe it was a twinkle of maturity that Malcolm preferred not to have, but he suddenly felt much more serious.

  “What really happened to Elise?” he asked softly.

  James stopped drawing. Drummed the pen on his knee. “You know about me, don’t you?”

  “The whole Union knows about you. We found your blood on record in Dis. What we don’t know is how you could also be a witch when you practically bleed silver.”

  “Perfect,” James said. “Just perfect.”

  “What’s that got to do with Elise? Are you saying she doesn’t know?”

  He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “No. She didn’t know.”

  Malcolm heard a muffled thump. The trees shook, raining pine needles over the spell on the ground.

  Wind gusted, and he threw up a hand to shield his eyes.

  “The Union!” he yelled, struggling to his feet.

  Before he managed to get upright, the wind had died again. Malcolm dropped his hand—and there was suddenly another person with them.

  It wasn’t someone from the Union. A boy with shaggy black hair, square glasses, and muddy hiking boots stood in front of them. The air around him shimmered, as though with a mirage of heat.

  Malcolm was surprised to recognize him. He had picked this boy up at the same time he arrested Elise and never realized that he was on the Union’s most wanted list.

  “Nathaniel,” James said, abandoning his spell and standing up. “You noticed the beacon.”

  “Me and, like, every other witch in the United States. Way to broadcast.” Nathaniel glanced around the forest. “What are you guys doing here? And where exactly is ‘here,’ anyway?”

  “We’re on the run from certain death,” Malcolm said brightly.

  James sighed. “I’m hoping that we’re in Colorado, somewhere close to Boulder. How did you get here? When did you learn to do that?”

  The look that Nathaniel gave James couldn’t be mistaken for anything but disdainful preteen hostility. “You’re not the only one that writes his own spells.” He pulled out his cell phone and started tapping away. “I’ll find out where we are. I’ve got GPS.”

  Malcolm glanced back at the locater spell that James had been drawing into the earth. It looked like it was still no more than half-complete. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.

  Within a few seconds, Nathaniel said, “Oh. Only ten miles. Okay, that’s closer than I expected.” He turned around and started walking.

  “Can’t you zap us?” Malcolm asked. “Ten miles might not be much for a springy little sprite like you, but I just fell out of an airplane.”

  That question earned another disdainful look. “Sure, I can ‘zap’ you, if you want to wait a few hours for me to cast the spell. It’s a lot harder moving multiple people.”

  “So that’s why Hannah didn’t come,” James said. “Because of the spell.”

  “No,” Nathaniel said. “She actually didn’t come because she’s with Ariane.”

  James’s eyes widened. “Ariane? Ariane Kavanagh? Is she okay?”

  “You’ll see.”

  IX

  James’s parents’ house hadn’t changed since his childhood. The piano was still beside the bay window, with a couch that must have been reupholstered a dozen times on the opposite wall. They even had the same heavy gold drapes that James used to hang off of as a toddler.

  The only difference was that the house lacked the smell of his mother’s baking, his dad’s belly laughter, the sound of a visiting friend banging on the piano. He stepped through the front door, and his mother didn’t appear to yell at him for wearing shoes on her wood floors. He took them off anyway.

  A soft murmur of voices drifted from the kitchen.

  “Hello?” James called, setting his shoes on the rack before stepping through the doorway.

  Hannah and Ariane sat at the dining nook. Seeing the two of them together in his parents’ house was enough to send him rushing back to his childhood—the days when Elise had only existed as an idea in Metaraon’s mind.

  “James,” Ariane said warmly, reaching out to him.

  He took her hand. Her skin was as smooth as it had ever been. “I thought that the Union arrested you.”

  “They did, but I committed no crime.” She was beautiful, fresh-faced, and young—almost glowing. “They weren’t interested in recruiting me once they recognized my medical condition.”

  “What condition?”

  Ariane used James’s hand to pull herself to her feet. It took effort; she was unbalanced by a stomach the size of a basketball.

  The ground suddenly felt unstable beneath his feet. “Isaac?”

  “No,” Ariane replied with a coy smile. “But it’s better that way.”

  She glided into the living room, where Nathaniel and Malcolm were talking. James hadn’t even realized that they had stayed behind.

  He looked askance at Hannah.

  “Ariane won’t tell me who the father is, so don’t bother.” Her mug was only half-filled with tea, but it almost spilled when she lifted it with trembling hands. Hannah hadn’t even taken the teabag out before drinking. “Ariane and Landon, she…”

  “What about Landon? Did he see you?” James asked sharply.

  “He met us at Pamela’s house. He must have found out we were coming, because your parents aren’t even in Colorado right now. Landon told them that the Grand Rapids coven needed them.”

  So James had accidentally sent Hannah and Nathaniel into a trap. “Where’s Landon now?”

  “Dead,” Hannah said. “Ariane stabbed him. She told me that she wants to go into hiding with us.”

  “My God,” James said.

  He leaned around the refrigerator so he could see through the doorway. Malcolm was kissing Ariane’s hand, being as charming as he could with a scarred face and missing eye.

  “She probably saved us—Landon was acting so strange when he found us.” Hannah set down the mug, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I think Metaraon is looking for us.”

  “Then we’ll have to move fast,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  Hannah didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes.”

  James told the others that he needed to get supplies for a spell, then slipped out
of the house.

  The White Ash Coven had lived in a neighborhood outside of Boulder for over a century. Landon’s house was just a short walk down the road from the place where James had grown up, and he arrived within minutes, finding it uninhabited.

  There was a note on the front door. It said that Landon was out of town to visit family, and that the coven should call someone named Brianna if they needed help.

  James wadded the note into a ball, chucked it into the bushes, and stepped inside.

  The living room was devoid of furniture and smelled of cleaning chemicals. James peeked into the bathroom to find the water turned off and plastic wrapped around the toilet.

  “Must be a long trip,” he muttered.

  Landon seemed to have been planning to sell the house before Ariane killed him. But why run? The coven never left Boulder—especially its high priest—and these homes had belonged to the Faulkner family for generations. Though they were occasionally updated, rebuilt, or shuffled between members of the coven, they were never sold.

  James found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used it to break the lock on Landon’s office door. The curtain that had blocked the stairs behind the desk was gone.

  He took the stairs to the basement, igniting a spell for light so he could see. The room was empty aside from the door set into the wall. It should have lit up as soon as James approached, bathing the room in gray light—it had always responded to his presence, as though having a Faulkner nearby made it awaken. He dreaded that glow as much as he anticipated it.

  But there was no light this time.

  Cracks radiated from the center of the door, like a mirror shattered by a fist. James ran his free hand along the break. It was deep enough to bare a blank cave wall on the other side.

  Someone had destroyed the door, and all of its ethereal magic.

  James stepped back, cradling the light to his chest. Its warmth didn’t comfort him at all.

  He had been hoping that he would be able to open that door for Elise—offering her a quick escape from her prison, once the deed was done. But there was no way to repair that crack. The door would be closed forevermore.

  He moved to extinguish the light, but a pale shape on the floor caught his eye. James picked it up. It was a feather the length of his hand with a hard rib down the center. Flecks of gold shimmered when James spun it between his finger and thumb.

  An angel’s feather.

  The door must have been destroyed from this side after an angel passed through. And James recognized the color of that feather.

  It belonged to Metaraon.

  James’s mother would have been disappointed if she had learned that there were guests in her house and they weren’t being properly fed. So when James rejoined the others, instead of casting the spell to locate the Haven, he cooked dinner.

  Most of the perishables were close to expiring, so James roasted all of the meat in the refrigerator and sautéed the vegetables that hadn’t molded. It was easier than thinking of broken doors—and Elise stranded in Heaven.

  Hannah, Nathaniel, Ariane, and Malcolm formed a strange party sitting around the dining room table. It had taken mere seconds for Malcolm to discover the liquor cabinet, so he was well on his way to his natural state: utterly wasted. His booming laugh echoed off of the otherwise quiet walls of the Faulkner house.

  When Ariane’s voice carried through the dining room to the kitchen, James could almost imagine that it was Elise sitting at the table.

  But the door was broken. She had no way to escape.

  Would he ever hear her laugh again?

  The timer gave a cheerful ding. Dinner done.

  He carried everything into the dining room. Malcolm had found sunglasses that hid his missing eye. Now he was sitting much too close to Ariane, who cradled a glass of red wine in her palm.

  “You are lovely,” he said, slurring his sentence into a single word. “I’m sure I must know you from somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied with a giggle. Ariane seemed to find Malcolm’s drunken, cycloptic stupidity to be more charming than offensive.

  Hannah caught James’s eye and gave him the Hannah Look. The kind of Look that said she was about to do something about Malcolm if he didn’t.

  “We should get down to business,” James said, moving the remaining wine to his side of the table.

  “We should get down to it, shouldn’t we?” Malcolm murmured to Ariane. She giggled again. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  “The Haven,” James said loudly. “We used a map earlier to locate the region we believe it to be in, but we’ll need more specific information. I can perform a spell to locate it.”

  “And what about getting in?” Hannah asked. “It’s going to be guarded by the Union.”

  Malcolm stood to scoop two steaks onto his plate. “Last I heard, the Union had abandoned its research on the Haven, so now it’s only watched by three or four guys. Should be easy to knock ‘em out,” Malcolm said.

  Ariane swirled the wine in her glass. “What is this ‘Haven’? Is that what the hideout is called?”

  James’s mouth was full, so Hannah responded. “You know how Heaven and Hell are basically in different dimensions? Havens are alternate Earth dimensions, made by angels for habitation by humans. They’re safe. Angels and demons won’t go there because the doors are one-way for them—they can’t escape.”

  “And this particular Haven is just like our world, but without all the bad stuff. Paradise, really,” Malcolm said. “The Union tried to grab it for use as an outpost, but our computers and magic don’t work properly there. It’s useless to us.”

  Nathaniel sat up. “Magic doesn’t work?”

  “It should work,” James said. “But in a limited capacity.”

  The boy rounded on Hannah, and her warning look did nothing to calm him. “I can’t go there, Mom. I’m just getting good.”

  “It’s for our safety,” she said.

  “But Mom!”

  “Hannah is right,” James interrupted. “You’ll be out of Metaraon’s reach.”

  “Would you give up magic for safety?” Nathaniel asked. “Would you be happy lighting candles and floating pieces of paper after you walked between worlds? Seriously?”

  He didn’t give James a chance to answer, which was fortunate—James would have had to lie.

  Nathaniel shoved his chair back. “I’m not going there. You can’t make me.” He stormed out of the room.

  “He’ll come around,” Hannah said softly, her gaze fixed on Nathaniel’s plate. He hadn’t eaten anything.

  James sat back with a sigh. He had cooked so much food, and it looked like nobody had the appetite for it but Malcolm. “My spell will take a few hours. You all should rest in the meantime.”

  “That leaves us plenty of time to get acquainted,” Malcolm said, hooking his arm over the back of Ariane’s chair.

  “Would you like to know why Ariane looks so familiar to you?” James asked. “Her last name is Kavanagh. Ariane Kavanagh.”

  “Elise has a sister? Well, fancy that. I never knew.”

  “You’re sweet,” Ariane said, patting his cheek. “I’m her mother.”

  The light in Malcolm’s eyes vanished. He leaned back far enough to free him from her reach. “Oh, er—wow. You must have been…young.”

  “Very,” she said.

  James tried not to feel satisfied at Malcolm inching his chair away, but he couldn’t seem to help it. Apparently pregnant women were fair game, but mothers of exes were not. Even Malcolm had his boundaries.

  James started on the spell at the kitchen table, keeping Ariane and Malcolm company until they finished dinner. Neither of them were keen on talking anymore. It should have been easy to focus in the silence.

  But instead of drawing, he tapped the pen against the table and eyed the pale band of skin where he had used to wear a warding ring. He had thrown it aside at Motion and Dance, so it was probably still there—maybe in the dust under the piano. Elise
’s ring would be nearby, too. It seemed fitting for the rings to have been lost together.

  It hadn’t been all that long since James could close his eyes and find himself immediately transported to Elise’s mind. He missed watching her jog around Reno, drink tequila with breakfast, and even get in fights with her ex-boyfriend.

  Or, to be more precise, he missed being so close to her. Even when they were miles apart. But their bond didn’t work between dimensions.

  When he looked up again, Ariane was gone. Malcolm had finished eating. He was picking food out from between his teeth with a knife.

  “I’m not going to take you to the Haven’s door,” Malcolm said, flicking a string of plaque off of the blade. “I need to get away from the Union. Far away.”

  “I expected that would be the case,” James said, setting down his pen. “But I still need your help. Elise is in an ethereal plane right now, and I want you to get her.”

  “She’s in Heaven? I’m not going to Heaven. Not a chance.”

  “No, certainly not. I only want you to book a flight to Yakutsk, in Russia, and then drive to Oymyakon. When she returns to Earth, that’s where she’ll appear.”

  “Russia,” Malcolm said with a disbelieving laugh.

  “You want to get away from the Union, don’t you?” James asked.

  He blew a breath out. “I suppose that’s ‘away,’ yeah. But why aren’t you going to get her? You haven’t abandoned her, have you?”

  “No,” James said. It came out sharper than he intended. Sharp enough to make the other man lean back in his chair, tipping it onto its rear legs.

  “Right,” Malcolm said slowly. “So…why aren’t you the one hopping a plane to Yakutsk?”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  Malcolm gave him a calculating look. “She was in love with you the whole time, you know. Back when we were dating. I mean, she certainly wasn’t thinking about me when we fucked.”

  A headache throbbed in James’s temples, like every vessel in his skull was threatening to rupture. He pinched the bridge of his nose. It did nothing to relieve the tension.

  “I know,” he said. “I felt much the same.”

  Malcolm’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “Wait—you did?”