by SM Reine
She was doing it for him.
He had no words to express his gratitude. Not just for the way that Elise was willing to act outside of her comfort zone for his sake, but the fact that she was still there at all.
The university radio station switched from an operatic performance to smooth jazz. James set his glass on the table and stood, unable to control his body, but happy to lose himself in the memory. “Come on,” he said, extending a hand toward Elise.
“I’ve danced enough today, thanks,” Elise said. “If I have to think about doing another chassé, I will kill someone.”
“Please. You can brood just as easily while standing.”
She rolled her eyes again, but she curled her fingers around his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. She was wearing white lacy gloves with buttons at the wrists, since those seemed to disturb the clients somewhat less than the leather ones.
James wrapped his arm around her waist, and she set her hand on his shoulder. Years of practice allowed him to keep his face smooth. He never let her see that he found any excuse to hold her, even when it killed him inside to know that it would never be more than that.
“You’re just trying to distract me so that I don’t murder the people that pay your bills,” she said, poking an accusing finger in his chest.
He smiled down at her. “Is it working?”
“No,” Elise said, but they were swaying in time to the music, and he could see all of the tension draining from her shoulders.
They were close enough to kiss, as they had been a thousand times before, and a thousand times after.
The temptation was painful for James, but better than not being close to Elise at all.
James knew that it was only a memory—an illusion invoked by Metaraon. But he was holding Elise again. Her hair was curly, red, and halfway down her back. She was so…human.
That had been after they retired, and before Death’s Hand attacked again. The happiest time. The most peaceful.
He wished that Metaraon would abandon him to those memories.
“How sweet,” Metaraon said, and he somehow managed to make that sound like an insult. “But I will not use your memory to inspire her—not when He is such a jealous man. I need something else.”
James felt himself drawing away from the memory. Elise’s face dimmed.
“No,” he said, trying to grab her again. “Wait!”
And then his arms were empty. The jazz music faded.
He was falling again.
It was just as shocking to land in the second memory, so much more abrupt.
A ringing phone jangled in his skull.
He blinked. Elise was gone, but he was still in Motion and Dance. It was a bright, early morning, and James realized that Betty was calling him.
James was unable to resist picking up the phone.
“I’m here!” sang out a cheerful voice.
He remembered this morning now. It was a day when Betty had decided, for no apparent reason, that she needed to wash Anthony’s Jeep. It didn’t really matter if the Jeep was dirty or not—after plowing through so many zombies, there would have been no way to tell if it got totaled, much less muddy. Of course, once Betty got an idea in her head, it was impossible to get it out again.
“What?” he asked, just as he had the year before, as if he had no clue what she had planned.
“I’m going to use your parking lot to wash the Jeep,” Betty said. “We don’t have enough room at the duplex. That’s not a problem, right? I mean, you don’t have any more classes until ballroom at six anyway, so it’s not like anyone else will be using the parking lot. Okay?”
“Uh,” he said.
“Great! Bring a bucket when you come downstairs!”
She hung up, leaving James scurrying to dress.
He was still tugging the shirt over his head when he stepped outside the front door to greet Betty. It was the hottest day of the summer, just over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and James almost gagged on the heat.
Betty wasn’t alone, but then again, she never was. She didn’t have a driver’s license, vastly preferring to force any of her multitudinous friends to help transport her—most often her cousin, Anthony. So James was pleasantly surprised to see Elise climb out of the driver’s seat, but somewhat less pleasantly surprised to see her wince when she landed.
Elise’s right thigh was bandaged from knee to hip. She gave James a strained smile when he approached.
“What happened?” he asked, gesturing at her leg. Anthony climbed out of the backseat of the Jeep without so much as looking at James. Always the friendliest of visitors.
“I fell,” she said.
“Into what?” James asked, arching an eyebrow at the size of the bandages. “A river of piranhas?”
She lowered her sunglasses, giving him a hard look over the tops of the frames. Her eyes were rimmed with bruises. Twin black eyes—must have been a good fight. “Something like that.”
It always pained him to see Elise wounded, maybe as much as it pained her to actually have damage inflicted upon her, and James always wished that he could heal her wounds for her. But he was out of practice, didn’t have the paper spells for it anymore, and couldn’t cast a new ritual without ruining his ability to teach classes for the rest of the night.
Elise grabbed a bottle of soap out of the backseat. She winced when her midriff accidentally connected with the hot metal of the car door.
“Careful,” he said, reaching out to touch her.
“Don’t just stand there,” Betty said, hip-bumping James out of the way to take the soap bottle. She wore Daisy Dukes, cowboy boots, and a tube top that could barely be classified as a shirt. Betty had always been very proud of her curves. “Where’s the bucket, James? You’re not ready for us at all!”
“A little more warning would have helped,” he said. Anthony passed, and James turned to speak to him. “The bucket is under the stairs.”
“Get it yourself,” Anthony said. “I’m going to inside to enjoy the air conditioning.”
He slammed the front door behind him.
God, James hated Anthony. Loathed him, in fact, on some days—like whenever it was obvious that Elise had been dressing up for a date with him, or when they kissed, or when that ham-handed boy touched her. Anthony could be a sullen jackass, but James would have hated him even if he were effusively kind.
“He’s in a good mood,” James said lightly as Elise sauntered to his side on the lawn. To her credit, she only limped a little, and he found his gaze dropping to her legs.
Her shorts weren’t nearly as obscene as Betty’s, and she was actually wearing a loose tunic over it—more like a short dress than a shirt. It was modest, and the sleeves covered her biceps. James suspected it had less to do with protection from the sun and more to do with concealing bruises.
“Anthony,” she replied, like that was all the explanation anyone needed for her boyfriend’s behavior. She shrugged. “He was with me when I…fell. Betty says that he feels responsible. All I know is that he’s been grumpier than usual since then.”
He took her arm and pushed the sleeve up. There were claw marks on her shoulder. “Sticking to the falling story, then?” he asked. Elise shook him off. “What were you fighting?”
“Actually, my leg decided to chew on itself.”
Betty squirmed between them with a brilliant smile. The bridge of her nose was burned. “No arguing! Today is car washing day, not angry whispers day, and the Jeep’s not getting clean on its own! Sponge for you, Elise, and a very stern look for you, Mr. Faulkner. You started it. And where is my bucket?”
Elise rolled her eyes, but the tension between them was immediately broken. “We can talk later.”
He obediently grabbed a bucket, plugged the hose into the faucet, and dragged both over to the Jeep.
“What can I get you next, my lady?” he asked, dropping the bucket next to Betty.
Her eyebrows waggled suggestively. “I have some ideas.”
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“Betty,” Elise said.
“What? I was just going to ask for lemonade.”
He laughed. “I’ll make lemonade.”
James watched Elise and Betty through the open window over the kitchen sink as he squeezed some fresh lemons. There was lemonade mix in the cabinet, but he didn’t dare serve it to Betty. She would beat him over the head with the bucket.
Even from a story above, he could hear their voices. “If you spray me with that hose, I’m morally obligated to kill you,” Elise said. “Pretty sure it’s a law somewhere.”
Betty planted her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
Elise didn’t miss a beat. “Bolivia.”
“Bolivia?”
“I don’t know, probably,” Elise said with a shrug. “It’s not like you would know. When was the last time that you studied Bolivian law?”
“Last week,” Betty said. “Lucky thing, too, because I have diplomatic immunity there.”
She scooped the hose off of the ground and pressed her thumb over the nozzle, turning it into a power jet. She blasted it into Elise’s chest.
If anyone else had done that, they probably would have found a dagger in their stomach a few seconds later. But when Betty dropped the hose again, leaving Elise’s shirt sodden and a stream of water drizzling from her chin…the fabled Godslayer only laughed.
“Hope you’re ready for ten years in a Bolivian gulag,” Elise said, wringing out her shirt.
She flung a sponge at Betty, who threw it back. It wasn’t long before an all-out war ensued over the top of Anthony’s Jeep.
James forgot to keep squeezing lemons. Elise’s laugh, rare and lovely, had a way of distracting him from everything else.
After a moment, he became aware of someone standing at his shoulder. He turned, expecting Anthony.
It was Metaraon.
“That is quite the laugh, I agree,” the angel said.
James had forgotten that he was still in a memory. His heart fractured as he turned back to Elise and Betty. Their water fight was turning into a soap bubble fight. “She deserves that laughter, after everything you’ve done to her,” James said, and he didn’t bother trying to conceal his anger.
“Then it’s fortunate that I’m looking for ways to make her happy, isn’t it?” Metaraon glared out the window. Wavering light reflected off the metal sink straight into his eyes, but it didn’t seem to bother him. “This…Betty. Hmm. She will do.”
“She’s dead. You can’t do anything to her.”
The angel shrugged. “Death is inconsequential.”
“Take me to Elise,” James said, clasping his hands together—in prayer or begging, he wasn’t certain. “I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll kill Him myself. Just let her go.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Metaraon said.
Motion and Dance faded again. It didn’t return this time.
James shocked back to reality.
Every sliver of contentment that Metaraon had dragged from James’s memory was gone in an instant. He was cold, damp, and kneeling beside Hannah’s motionless body. There was no hope left in the world.
The only thing that had kept James functioning was the idea that Elise would be back soon. All she had to do was kill God, and she could come home.
But she had failed. She hadn’t killed Him. Something had gone wrong, and she wasn’t coming back.
Metaraon picked Ariane up. After all of the blood that James had seen on the angel’s hands, he feared that something terrible had happened to Ariane, but she looked unwounded—although something must have rendered her unconscious. Her hands were clasped protectively over her stomach, even in sleep.
“Why Ariane?” James asked.
“She is mine to do with as I please,” Metaraon said. “I’m grateful for your assistance today. It appears that you continue to have some use, young Faulkner, and I’m sure I will find use for you again.”
He flapped his wings once. The buffeting air slapped James in the face, and he realized that Metaraon was leaving.
James leaped for him, arms outstretched, but his foot slipped in Hannah’s blood. He dropped to his knees again.
The light surrounding Metaraon grew impossibly bright, a gray burn that seared James’s retinas.
When the light faded again, Metaraon and Ariane were gone.
Through the space that Metaraon had vacated, James could see the trail again—and Nathaniel standing just a few feet away.
“Mom?” he gasped. He splashed through the mud and fell beside Hannah. “Oh my God, what happened? Mom!”
“Metaraon,” James said, rubbing a hand over his burning eyes. “It was Metaraon.”
Nathaniel didn’t seem to hear. He lifted her head into his lap gently, as though he were afraid of waking her up. “Mom,” he said again, touching her hand, her cheek, her neck.
Hannah gasped.
James almost jumped out of his skin. He had assumed that the blade in her chest meant that she was dead, but Hannah was still breathing, still bleeding—for the moment. Metaraon must have missed the heart and punctured a lung instead. But she was hemorrhaging quickly. Blood bubbled between the fingers clenching the dagger, and her eyes seemed barely able to focus.
He gently pushed Hannah’s hands away to look at the wound. Metaraon’s blade was serrated—they couldn’t remove it without causing more damage. James stripped his sweater off over his head and packed it around the knife.
“What did he mean?” James asked. “Why would Ariane be his to take?” When Hannah didn’t immediately respond, he swallowed down the foul taste of bile. “The father. Was it…?”
“Metaraon,” she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered closed and didn’t open again.
She needed medical care, and fast—but the nearest town was hundreds of miles away. She would bleed to death before James could reach civilization, much less a city with the kind of medical facilities she needed.
But the Haven was close.
James had no idea what was on the other side of that door in the cave. Wilderness? A village? A modern city with hospitals and surgeons?
It was a gamble, but it was their last option.
Nathaniel could have turned into a statue, and James wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference—he hadn’t moved an inch. His face was blank with shock. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“We need to take your mother to the Haven,” James said. “It’s the only way.”
The boy sucked in a hard breath through the tears. Straightened his spine. Nodded once.
Together, they lifted Hannah into the van, and she cried out at the change in position. There was blood, so much blood—the slightest shift made it gush over her chest again. Nathaniel crouched over her, holding the jacket in place.
James threw the van into gear and slammed his foot down on the gas.
It chugged up the hill slowly. Every rock they bumped over made Hannah whimper and writhe. It took ten minutes to reach the gate that blocked the path, and there was no way to drive around it.
They would have to carry her the rest of the way.
Nathaniel scooped Hannah into his arms. The sweater he used to try to stem the bleeding had already started to soak through.
He staggered up the trail.
“Just hang on, Mom,” Nathaniel grunted. She didn’t respond.
They were running out of time.
“I’ll go ahead and open the door to the Haven again,” James said.
He sprinted up the trail to the cave. James lost his footing on the steep tunnel heading down, and he slid to the bottom.
He slammed the door open with his shoulder hard enough to make it bounce off the wall.
James rushed through the terminal’s menus, but he couldn’t seem to find the right commands. Nathaniel had made it look so easy the first time. Like it was just a few quick clicks away. But he could barely make sense of the menus, and through his panic, they may as well have been written in another languag
e.
Somehow, he found the button that opened the door. James clicked it, gray light flashed, and the archway reappeared.
It must have taken several minutes to find the command, but Nathaniel still hadn’t brought Hannah down the tunnel.
A hard knot of dread gathered in James’s throat as he rushed to find them.
He didn’t have to go far. Nathaniel sat on the muddy ground just a few feet outside the cave. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he didn’t seem to notice that they were dripping off his chin onto Hannah’s face—and neither did she.
“Why are you just sitting there? The door’s open!” James said, dropping beside them.
Nathaniel stared at him blankly. His Book of Shadows was discarded in the mud beside his knee, soaking up rain and mud.
James pressed his fingers to Hannah’s neck, searching for a pulse, but there was none. Her heart was no longer beating. Her lungs didn’t draw breath.
“I tried to help her,” Nathaniel said. “I had a healing spell. I used it.”
What did that matter? Nathaniel was just a boy. He couldn’t be expected to harness enough power to heal someone.
James pushed up his sleeves and looked at the spells that remained on his skin. But even if he had the power to heal Hannah, he had no healing magic on him now—he had never figured out how to transfer it to his flesh.
But he still looked. And there was still nothing.
“It was the best magic I could do. I spent weeks making that spell,” Nathaniel went on in an empty voice. “I can’t fix her. I’m too weak. And now she’s…she’s already…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence.
Hannah was dead.
XIII
Allyson Whatley was given a hero’s funeral. Everyone at the Union base lined up to watch the processional carrying her coffin into the cemetery, while cannons fired and music played over the base’s PA system.
Zettel delivered the eulogy in front of the cemetery gates. He said every nice thing about Allyson that he could think of, and made up a few others to pad the speech.
She was determined, he said, she was smart, and she advanced the Union’s understanding of magic by decades. But there was little to be said for her personality beyond a professional level, and he felt that it was better not to remark upon it at all.
