by SM Reine
“So there’s nothing to stop humans from using it safely.”
“‘Safe’ is not the word I would use,” James said. “But…desperate times.” He pushed his sleeve down again, then clenched his fist on the warding rings—the only reason that he had returned to Motion and Dance in the first place. Very desperate.
Nathaniel didn’t seem to hear him. He was rubbing his own arms, lost in thought, as if imagining what he could do with that kind of power.
James hoped that he would never find out.
They headed out immediately. James dug the bicycles out of the shed—a small red mountain bike for Elise, and a larger blue one for James. He pushed Elise’s bike toward Nathaniel. “Take this one.”
Nathaniel wrinkled his nose. “That’s a girl’s bike.”
“You’re welcome to walk,” James said, climbing onto his bicycle and starting to pedal.
He heard his son follow a few seconds later.
Orange twilight drenched the neighborhood, fading the shadows to blue. The shadows seemed to writhe. Darkness was approaching quickly, and James could feel a familiar tingling growing as the demons underground began to stir.
They climbed north, toward downtown Reno. James set a hard pace, but Nathaniel kept up without complaining.
Once they got on the freeway, they had to weave through the lanes to avoid crumbling concrete that would throw them off of their bikes. It meant James couldn’t stare at the ruination surrounding him, even though it was impossible to ignore. Several distinctive buildings were missing from the skyline.
As the sun grew dimmer, the shadows grew darker. It wasn’t simply an absence of light. The shadows had substance. James’s kopis senses itched.
Nightmares. Reno had been flooded by nightmares.
The ruins of the mirror city were still suspended above downtown Reno, encompassing the area from the Truckee River all the way to St. Mary’s Hospital. It had been deteriorating rapidly the last time that James had seen it, but now it was propped up by Union scaffolding. The honeycomb of metal looked like it hadn’t been maintained since it was originally erected. It was beginning to rust.
There were also multiple cameras on the scaffolds. If the Union hadn’t known that James was coming before, they certainly did now.
He punched the button on Allyson’s disruptor anyway, just in case.
“What is that?” Nathaniel asked, staring at the inverted city.
“It used to be an ethereal city in another dimension, but a demon pulled it into ours so that she could use the gates to destroy the world,” James said. “It didn’t work.”
“I get that.”
James took his feet off the pedals and glided through the shadow of Circus Circus’s remains. What used to be one of the tallest buildings in Reno had been sucked into the earth, leaving behind nothing but shattered walls and a lot of broken glass.
They crossed to Sierra Street, and James finally stopped beside the parking garage.
“Here it is,” he said, lifting his eyes to the city above. It was always dizzying to see streets and buildings hanging over his head. The darkest gate was positioned on top of the parking garage’s twin.
Nathaniel dropped his bike. “How do we get up there?”
“We climb,” James said grimly.
Night was creeping over downtown as they took the winding metal stairs to the top of the parking garage, and they had to climb three different ladders to reach the top of the scaffolds.
The darkest gate was a pair of towering columns that joined at their peak to form an arch. James remembered seeing it glow with energy, but it was quiet now. Nathaniel could only reach the left leg of the gateway.
“I only have one spell left that opens doors like these,” Nathaniel said, flipping through his notebook. “We’ll have to cast another one to get back out again.”
Which meant that they wouldn’t be able to escape quickly. Once they entered the garden, they couldn’t leave again until He was dead.
“Just open it,” James said.
Nathaniel glared. “Just give me a second!”
He made a triumphant noise when he reached a page in the center of his Book of Shadows.
Nathaniel ripped the page free and slapped it against the pillar of the gate.
Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” James asked.
Nathaniel frowned as he looked at the page in his hand. “I don’t know.” He flicked his wrist twice, as if trying to shake it awake, and then pressed it to the stone again. The effect was the same. “The gate’s broken. We can’t go that way.”
“Broken? What?”
James gave the towering gate a second look. It couldn’t be broken. He had seen it open before.
But Nathaniel was right. Cracks ran through the column, deep enough that he could fit a finger in them. Metaraon must have known they were coming and visited it first.
The sense of defeat nearly overwhelmed James. He sank to his knees on the scaffolding, scarred chest burning and a heavy feeling in his gut.
Both doors to the garden…destroyed.
He was so overwhelmed by anger and grief that he almost didn’t realize that the sense of energy in his gut was growing. That power didn’t belong to the ethereal ruins.
James was feeling something else—something infernal.
He looked down. Through the pocked metal under his knees, James could see the shadows of the street churning. The sun had completely vanished during their climb, leaving nothing but a smoky sky above and darkness below. But even at night, it shouldn’t have been quite that dark.
The demons were out.
“Could you convert one of the other gates to go to the garden instead?” James asked, glancing around for the nearest archway. It would be hard to reach any of them—the tangle of scaffolding was like a maze.
“Maybe,” Nathaniel said. “I don’t know.”
“We’ll have to find out.”
James pushed him toward the edge of the rooftop.
Before they could move to the next scaffold, a black wall erupted in front of them.
The column of smoke whirled through the air, so thick as to be tangible. The buildings beyond them vanished. James grabbed Nathaniel’s arm and dragged him back before he could fall off the edge.
They turned to run in the other direction. But a second wall of darkness formed at the other end of the scaffold, too. It soaked him with nauseating power.
The fear followed a few moments later—a sense of dread that crept from his marrow.
Voices whispered from the shadow.
It’s your fault. They’re all dead because of you.
Nathaniel is next.
It wasn’t a rational fear, and he knew those voices came from the demons surrounding them, yet James couldn’t help but listen.
Nathaniel froze where he stood. “Mom?” he whispered, staring into the swirling shadows.
“Whatever you hear, it isn’t real,” James said.
The gate is broken. Elise is lost.
He tugged on Nathaniel’s arm all too weakly.
The demons swirled in. The black walls grew until James couldn’t see any hint of Reno beyond the edge of the scaffold.
He pulled the bag of Elise’s charms out of his pocket. Opened the cord and fumbled.
The charms glimmered gold as they scattered across the scaffold and bounced into oblivion. Their golden light was immediately devoured by the nightmares.
Nathaniel dropped to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
James could barely hear him over the throbbing in his own skull.
He had to have something that would drive away the nightmares—some kind of light to burn them back. But he couldn’t remember where he had placed any of those spells on his body. All he could think of was Ariane limp in Metaraon’s arms, Nathaniel’s tears dripping on Hannah’s face, and Elise—oh God, Elise—
The walls closed in. James pressed a hand to a spell on his stomach
and flung magic into the nightmares.
It was a wave of wind, guaranteed to blast through anything—even a brick wall. But the nightmares weren’t corporeal. The wind blew through them harmlessly.
It’s your fault…
Nathaniel was screaming.
When a voice shouted out in the night, James thought at first that it was another voice from the depths of his mind. But then it yelled again.
“Hey!”
A bolt of darkness lanced through the nightmares and splashing into the scaffold in front of James. It coalesced into a body with two legs, two arms, and skinny jeans. A woman.
She waved her arms at the nightmares, as if beating them out of the sky.
“You heard me! I said, go away!”
The shadows dissipated. James wasn’t sure if he imagined their reluctance.
As soon as the darkness faded around them, the terrifying sense of suffocation faded. The whispering voices vanished.
The woman waved her arms one more time, even though the air was clear. “Yeah, you run! Stupid little assholes.”
James was relieved to have the weight of fear lifted from him, but the relief was short-lived. Even once the shadows were gone, the sense of a nightmare nearby hadn’t vanished entirely. Once he got a good look at their rescuer, he saw why.
The woman that had saved them looked like she had been cut from a shard of glass. She had sharp elbows, knees, and shoulders. The eyes, hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses, were so black that the night must have been envious. She was a nightmare, but strong enough to maintain a corporeal form. She even wore high-tops and a studded belt.
“Thanks for the save,” Nathaniel said as he stood. His cheeks were wet with tears. “Guess we owe you.”
James shook his head subtly, trying to indicate to him that he should be silent.
But the damage was done. The nightmare smiled. The corners of her lips stretched from ear to ear, making her tallow skin wrinkle like wax paper.
“You owe me, huh? Cool.” She held out a bony hand. “I’m Jerica.”
Nathaniel moved to take it, but James pushed him aside. “We will have to negotiate that later,” he said, letting the depth of his power creep into his words. A mild threat. “For now, we have to leave.”
“Not without speaking to the Night Hag, you don’t,” Jerica said. “You’re in her territory now. She’s going to want to see you.”
James blinked. “The Night Hag is dead. There’s no overlord in the Reno territory.”
She gave an unpleasant grin. “Shows how much you know.”
XVI
Considering all of the places that had been destroyed in Yatai’s attacks, it seemed entirely unfair that a dive like Craven’s Casino should remain intact.
Craven’s was, as it had always been, an ugly little building crammed into an ugly little corner of Reno—the kind of pit that tourists would never find and most locals had the sense to avoid. The fact that half of the buildings around it had been pulverized didn’t make Craven’s less of a piece of shit. It was just the most intact piece of shit on the block.
The windows were boarded up, and the neon signs were dead. But one of Yatai’s tunnels through the street had exposed the basement bar, Eloquent Blood, and there were enough lights inside that James could see it from two blocks away.
Jerica led them down a narrow path that had been carved through the rubble. They had to slide down almost two stories of shattered pavement to reach Blood.
Business wasn’t exactly booming, but there was a stripper on the bar, the bass was booming, and the dance floor was filled with customers. James had never seen it with fewer than a hundred partiers lost to the frenzy of lethe, a powerful drug designed to intoxicate even the most powerful demon, and tonight was no exception.
Nathaniel gaped at the stripper. Lights flashed in time to the music, illuminating one side of his face, then the other. It turned his shock into pulsing masks of red and blue.
James didn’t bother trying to hide his disgust as a bartender passed. She was red-skinned and bald, with erect purple nipples. She held a tray of what looked like glowing blue sugar cubes.
Nathaniel turned to watch her swaying hips pass. He probably didn’t notice that she had cloven hooves, since his eyes didn’t seem to make it that far south.
“Female aatxegorri,” James warned, steering his son away from her. “They’re deadly.”
“Good for breaking up bar fights,” Jerica agreed. The loud music wasn’t quite as overwhelming with one of Blood’s walls missing.
James jerked his thumb toward the waitress. “That was lethe on the tray. You’re openly serving drugs now.”
“Yeah, so? Who’s going to stop us? RPD?”
“How many humans have died from overdosing on a drug they didn’t know that they couldn’t survive taking?”
“Does it matter? Look around, dude. This place is a fucking mess. We’re stuck together, humans and demons. Better to go out with smiles on our faces than deal with…” Jerica waved a hand toward the surface that they had left behind. “If you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with the Night Hag. It’s her city now.”
James’s stomach flipped. The Night Hag. She had been a demon spider the size of a small building, but she should have been dead—killed by Elise almost a year earlier. If the Night Hag really had come back somehow, James didn’t want to think about the turn his evening was going to take.
“Very well,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Take me to her.”
“No need. She’s over there.” Jerica pointed at the dance floor.
James braced his hands on the railing and looked over the side.
He hadn’t looked closely at the bottom level when they came in, so he hadn’t noticed that the DJ booth had been replaced with some kind of throne—a massive chair built out of wreckage. The bumper and hood of a car were welded onto the back, and a bent I-beam formed the seat. Speakers were built into the arms. The thick cables plugged into the chair looked too heavy-duty for just the audio equipment—maybe it was to electrify the wicked metal cage that encased the seat.
The woman lying on the chair was not a demon spider. She had sheets of inky black hair and the kind of body that would have thrown Barbie into fits of jealousy. And James could tell that she had a perfect figure. Aside from a bra that looked like metal fingers clutching her breasts, she was completely naked.
As if she could feel him looking, she looked up from the dancers. Black eyes met his. Her lips were brilliant red, but he knew that it was her natural pigmentation, not lipstick.
That was no Night Hag. It was Neuma.
Nathaniel looked relieved when Jerica led them to the privacy of the storage room, where it was much quieter, and there were no topless demon bartenders.
James briefly considered trying to talk about what Nathaniel had seen, but he knew that his son wouldn’t take kindly to a paternalistic talk about drugs, strippers, alcohol, and the apocalypse from him. Not now, maybe not ever.
He turned his attention toward the one thing he could address.
“The Night Hag?” James asked flatly.
Jerica shrugged. “It’s good marketing.”
The door opened, and Neuma slipped in. Despite the six-inch heels that gave her legs the illusion of impossible length, she looked much less intimidating without the throne. She also managed to look much more naked, strips of steel and all.
“Is Elise here?” she asked immediately, eyes bright with excitement.
James suppressed his irritation. “No. And no, we’re not going to talk about it. What’s going on here, Neuma? You’re not the Night Hag. You’re not even a proper demon. You’re infernal Gray.”
Neuma seemed pleased by the accusation. “The first Gray overlord I’ve ever heard of. History in the making, right?”
“Gray?” Nathaniel asked in a tiny voice. He was sitting on a crate next to a shattered vanity mirror. “What’s Gray?”
Neuma seemed to notice him for the first ti
me. Her face melted into a smile as she crouched in front of him, like she was talking to a kindergartner. “Well, hello there. I’m Neuma. And who are you, sugar?”
He gaped.
“Gray is what we call half-breeds,” James said when Nathaniel didn’t reply. “The offspring of mortals mating with demons and angels.”
“My mama’s human. My daddy, not so much.” Neuma’s eyes filled with heat as she shot a look at James over her shoulder. She straightened and swayed toward him, lips spread into a teasing smile. “Though I’ve got quite a few daddies these days.” Neuma walked her fingers up James’s abs, crawling from navel to chest, then chin.
The last time he had encountered her, she had been just as friendly. The fact that he immediately became aroused didn’t surprise him a second time, but it still unsettled him deeply. She was offensively trashy, from the penciled-in eyebrows to her exaggerated, pin-up proportions.
Neuma was Hell’s trailer park trash birthed straight onto the stripper pole. There was no class in her, no real seduction. Yet James couldn’t seem to banish thoughts of tearing the steel from her body.
She arched a slender eyebrow and smiled. “Only the first look is free,” she said, scraping a fingernail from the tip of his nose to his lips.
He shoved her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“You and Elise,” Neuma sighed. “The two of you are no fun.” She tilted her head. “So what’s this? He looks like you. Elise didn’t tell me you made any babies.”
“We didn’t,” James said coolly.
She slunk in a circle around Nathaniel. He shrank away from her. “A flower that ain’t bloomed.” She pinched his cheek, ruffled his hair. It was a weirdly nonsexual gesture coming from a creature in steel panties, almost sisterly. “Cute, though. He’ll be cute for sure.”
“I need you to call off the nightmares so we can get to a gate,” James said.
When she shrugged, it looked like her bra was perilously close to popping right off her body. “They aren’t mine. I can’t do nothing about them.”
“Some overlord.”
Neuma mimicked his tone. “‘Some overlord.’ Fuck you, asshole. You abandoned your city.” She wrapped her arm around Jerica’s waist. “At least we’re still here, picking up the pieces. You should be kissing my feet in thanks.”
