by SM Reine
Landon would be waiting. He would make some excuse, take Elise back to his house, and lead her to the doorway in his basement. He would push her back into the garden. She would never be James’s problem again.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. Elise was scanning the forest surrounding the house, tense and alert. Watching for enemies real or imagined.
She wouldn’t anticipate the real attack yet to come.
He inserted the key. Opened the lock. The hinges whined as the door swung inward.
Someone must have cleaned Pamela’s house since the last time that James had visited; there was no dust on her shelves, the couches had been rearranged, and the air smelled like lemon. He pulled open the curtains to let light in from outside. The windows had been scrubbed, too. Everything was so immaculate that he almost expected to see his aunt come storming out of her office, annoyed that James had let himself in without calling ahead.
But Pamela didn’t come—and neither did Landon.
Elise walked through Pamela’s living room, and James hung back to watch her wander. Her motions always looked so careful, like she had choreographed them in advance. He could practically see her contemplating escape routes, possible makeshift weapons, hiding places. There was no sign of the vulnerable girl he had glimpsed on the train.
James made sure that he was in her line of sight before calling out. No need to startle the insane teenager.
“Hello?” he shouted. “Landon?”
He wasn’t surprised at the lack of response, but he was annoyed. The high priest had promised to meet him there. He was supposed to take Elise away immediately. And James was itching to escape before those warm, confusing feelings started creeping up on him again.
“Wait here,” James said. “I’ll look around.”
He stepped down the hall, peering into the bedrooms. All of the beds were turned down and the pillows were fluffed.
Pamela’s office was similarly tidy. He rounded the desk to find no bloodstains on the floor, no hint that this was the place where his aunt had been killed by Metaraon. All of the books were ordered on the shelves. A lifetime of information left intact by the coven.
James crouched in front of her desk and unlocked the bottom drawer. He slid it open. Pamela’s personal Book of Shadows was inside—the one with the most secret of spells.
Tucking it into his back pocket, he returned to the living room. Elise twitched at his approach, nostrils flaring, jaw tightening. Like a skittish animal.
He wasn’t the only one who had been exploring the house. She had found a pair of fingerless motorcycle gloves and a pair of swords, each of them the length of her forearm, with curved, wicked blades that shimmered in the sunlight. She lifted both of them when he approached.
Unarmed or otherwise, she always looked like she was on the verge of murder—but slightly more so with twin swords in hand.
James held out his hands in what he hoped would come across as a soothing gesture. “I think the house is empty. We must have beaten Landon here. Are those, um…are those your swords?”
“Falchions,” Elise said. “Yes.”
The idea of waiting with her sounded less appealing by the moment, and it hadn’t sounded like a good idea in the first place.
“I’m going into the kitchen. I’m not leaving. I’ll just be around the corner,” James said.
A tiny nod.
He stepped through the doorway, keeping Elise in the corner of his vision. The counters were washed, the cabinets were empty, the table had a fresh vase on it.
And Landon was leaning against the far wall, invisible from the living room.
James sucked in a gasp. “Why didn’t you answer when I called for you?” he whispered, ducking behind the wall with the high priest.
“Didn’t want the kid to see me,” Landon said. “Sorry, James. Change of plans. She’s not going back yet.”
“What do you mean, she’s not going back?” James hissed.
Landon took him by the shoulders. “Calm down, son. She’ll go back, but this isn’t the time. Metaraon says that she’s not ready.”
“She was ready the first time she went in!”
“If she’d been ready, she would have done what she was supposed to do.” Landon shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Metaraon’s not exactly…chatty. All he said was that she’s not ready, and you need to keep an eye on her until she is.”
Through the kitchen doorway, he could see Elise lingering over a photo of Pamela. Though her features were as cold and hard as always, he thought that it almost looked like Elise was sad.
And there were those warm feelings again. That overpowering sense of love.
Adoration.
“What am I supposed to tell Hannah?” James asked. “I was supposed to go back to her.”
“You won’t tell her anything. This is coven business. She’s not in the coven.”
James shut his eyes and tried to summon the memory of his fiancée’s face. He couldn’t. It was like being in the same house as Elise instantly wiped every other woman from his mind. It was foul, horrifying, perverse—and he was supposed to be escaping her.
Desperation built within him to near-panic levels.
“Elise won’t stay with me. She already escaped. I can’t hold her captive, I can’t just—this wasn’t part of the oath, Landon!”
The old man put a comforting hand on James’s shoulder. “It was part of the oath if He says it was, and this is the message that Metaraon has passed to us. You’ll die if you break your promises. I’m surprised that I have to remind you of that.”
Maybe death would be better than this insanity.
“I can’t stay with her,” James said hoarsely.
“You’ll find a way. Pamela made the girl trust her somehow, and Elise never tried to escape this house. You’re a clever man, James. Give it some thought.” Landon patted him on the back. “Just a few more months. Metaraon will come around.”
Months. Months.
He felt dizzy.
But the star-shaped scar on the left side of his chest was aching, reminding him of the oaths he had made and the consequences he would face if he tried to betray them. James had sold his soul for power, and there was no giving that back. Not anymore.
His life was over. It belonged to Metaraon, to God, and—worst of all—to Elise.
“I don’t have any choice,” James whispered.
Landon gave him a sympathetic look and another pat on the shoulder. It was probably meant to be paternal, but it came across as condescending. “Tell me where you want to go and I’ll buy the tickets.”
Elise swung one of her falchions through the air, battling an invisible enemy. James wanted to stop and stare at her grace, and he hated himself for it.
Just a few months.
Reno, Nevada - January 2010
Twelve years later, Elise and James were still together—twelve years without returning to the garden. But the Treaty of Dis had fallen. Their idyll was about to come an end.
Now, all God had to do was reach out and pluck Elise from the Earth.
And that meant that the carefully constructed distance between James and Elise was crumbling. The line dividing their bodies and hearts was gone. There was nothing between them now—nothing but the secrets that James had been carrying for years.
It was Elise who said that they should pull the exercise mats out of the closet after they had sex for the first time. The apartment above the studio would have beds in it, but she didn’t seem to want to leave the dance hall, and James was all too happy to oblige her whims—anything to keep her from setting foot outside the warded line of the front door.
He opened the storage closet, coughing on the dust that spilled out, and moved the punching bag and cleaning equipment out of the way. Elise helped him spread the mats over the parquet flooring. Either one of them would have been strong enough to move the equipment on their own, but it was the cooperation that was the fun part.
James kicked aside the pile of the
ir clothing by the piano so that they could set up in a bright patch of moonlight. Once they had converted the floor of the dance hall into a very large, very firm bed, he sat down on the mats. He was surprised when Elise climbed into his lap as easily as though it was something they had done a thousand times before.
James opened himself to her thoughts, but for once, her mind was an uncomplicated haze. It was as if the afterglow had wiped away everything except a pleasant buzz.
He was envious of the simplicity. James couldn’t seem to stop thinking about how much he hated himself.
She didn’t notice that, either. His thoughts were locked down tight, stuck in the darkest corner of his mind, sheltered from scrutiny.
“Should we talk about this?” Elise asked as she settled her thighs on either side of his, running her fingers through James’s hair with a half-smile playing on her lips. She weighed nothing in his lap. She stroked the streaks of gray at his temple, tucked hairs behind his ear, stroked the fuzz on the back of his neck. The casual contact sent ripples of warmth through his body. It wasn’t even a sexual thing.
Smiles aside, she had posed a sobering question.
Elise wasn’t asking to talk about the sex that they had just enjoyed—which James definitely had, in the sort of mind-melting way that made him doubt that he could ever enjoy sex with another human being ever again—she was asking the why of it all. What had changed. Why he had stopped denying her. What everything meant.
He knew that he should tell her the truth. She deserved to know about the oaths that he had made. She had deserved to know the truth for years.
But if he told her, then this would be over instantly—the smiles, the gentle fingers in his hair, Elise looking like her skin glowed in the moonlight. He ran his hands up her thighs, her hips, circled her waist, pulled her hips harder against his to simulate the weight she no longer had as a demon.
It pained him to try to summon the words for an explanation.
I have always adored you, and I have sworn to abandon you to your very greatest fears so that you can kill God.
Trying to explain that away would do him no favors. How could he explain that he hadn’t known Elise when he had sworn those oaths, and that he had never expected to care so much about her? I thought I would be surrendering a random sixteen-year-old girl to her death, not a woman that I love.
Even if Elise accepted that information—even if she wasn’t disgusted by the rationalization—it didn’t change the ten years he had spent lying to her. It didn’t change that he had told her that they needed to run away together for her safety, when he was really grooming her to become the bride of God, the Eve to His Adam, and a killing machine—a weapon made to Metaraon’s order. What did it matter that he had loved her the entire time and searched relentlessly for an alternative to losing her?
And then this. The final insult of all: making love to her when he knew that it meant that both of them would be killed.
She would hate him for it.
He would deserve it.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, flipping them so that she was lying underneath him on the floor. She was pliant in his hands. As trusting as she had always been.
James braced his elbows on either side of her head and gazed at her face framed between his forearms. He had always thought that Elise was beautiful, but she had never been more breathtaking than she was now, resting beneath him with an impish tilt to her lips and heavy-lidded eyes.
And so James made the selfish decision.
“No,” he said, tracing the curve of her bottom lip with his thumb. “I don’t want to talk.”
Elise turned her head and sucked his thumb into her mouth without looking away from him. Her lips were as warm and encompassing as other, equally favorable body parts, and a shade of crimson like the skin of a ripe apple. The message was unmistakable. It was an invitation.
She was the Godslayer, the benefactor of infernal powers, perhaps the most powerful being walking the Earth. And she sucked gently on his finger, her burning eyes locked to his as she offered herself to him in every way.
James almost wished that he had died in Hell. It certainly felt like he was dying now.
He slid his saliva-slick thumb from her mouth. Elise licked her lips.
James wasn’t young anymore. He should have been so exhausted that he needed to sleep for a few days before being capable of sleeping with Elise again. But his body was very awake, and he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her glistening bottom lip.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers.
“No,” she said. Her lips tickled against his as she spoke. “Tell me about it.”
Her hand slipped between them. Her fingers encircled him, and James closed his eyes as the shudder rippled down his spine. Elise stroked him in a slow rhythm. It was like she already knew his body like a lover that he had been with for years, not just the last hour.
How could this feel so comfortable, so right, when James had never been honest with Elise about himself?
He crushed his mouth against hers, wishing that there was some way he could force their bodies into a single unit in the same way that their souls and minds had been joined. She kissed the same way that she fought, graceful but aggressive. Every motion he made, she countered, as if trying to force him to surrender control.
She slid a leg up his side, teasing her toes along the back of his calf. “Tell me,” she said again, stretching up to kiss the underside of his jaw and down his throat. Her teeth nipped the skin of his shoulder. The same place that he had once bitten her while possessed by a demon.
“I seem to have lost all my words,” he said hoarsely.
Elise whispered into his throat. “That’s fine. Don’t use words.” Her breath raised goosebumps on his shoulders.
Without the warding rings, he could feel everything that Elise felt. He felt her chills when he slid down her body to run his hands along her upper thighs and the scrape of his stubble on her inner thigh. He felt her suck in her breath at the same time that it registered in his ears.
And James knew that she would taste herself on his tongue. She was inhumanly sweet. Whether that was Elise or her demon body didn’t matter.
He came with her again without needing to be touched. His tongue between her legs was far more than enough for that.
Elise remained aroused, and so did he. She pulled him to her again. He sank into her, savoring every inch.
It was such sublime relief that he thought he must have been trapped in a dream, though the roiling guilt within him was more of a waking nightmare.
Elise’s pelvis rocked. The sounds that escaped her throat were more animal than human.
Again and again, James spent himself inside her. The gray haze of climax was almost like the void in Heaven: outside of thought, outside of time, beyond regret.
In the light, he and Elise were one.
James wished that they could have remained like that for eternity: unified, and alone, in ecstasy.
But everything must come to an end someday.
Despite the fact that the exercise mats were hard foam only four inches thick, when James finally flopped on them beside Elise, they felt like the most luxurious bed he had ever experienced. Silk sheets and down comforters couldn’t have been better than those mats.
He sighed deeply, eyelids heavy. Elise wrapped her arm around his waist, rested her head on his chest, and kissed his neck. “Did you survive?” she asked.
James struggled against exhaustion to keep his eyes open. “No.”
Her chuckle was immensely satisfying. The way she snuggled under his chin was even more so.
James’s eyes fell closed.
God, I don’t deserve you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
He knew she would hear that thought, but Elise didn’t remark on it. She trailed her hand down his side, nails tickling his skin. “You can sleep,” she said, twining her fingers with his. “I’ll keep watch.�
�
But if he closed his eyes and fell asleep, then it would be over. She would be gone as soon as he opened them again.
There was no fighting against biology.
Whatever had become of Elise, whatever powers James may have had, he was still only a man—and he was exhausted. Even magical sex couldn’t keep him awake forever.
He had to tell her. It couldn’t wait anymore.
“Elise,” he said.
She shushed him. “Don’t even think about talking right now.”
His eyes fell on Elise’s face and he thought, She doesn’t want to know. It’s better this way. Even half-asleep, he knew that he was lying to himself.
He slept.
The next morning, she was taken.
PART FOUR
The Maw
XVIII
As James moved between universes, he felt like he floated in a motionless pool of warm water. Nathaniel’s form was a shadow far ahead of him. With no sign of the Union, it might have been serene—except that there was something in the void.
James could feel eyes watching him. The sense of presence was vast, immense, omnipresent.
White hands reached for him through the haze.
I see you, Priest.
Pain struck James’s palm, lancing to his shoulder. It spread through his bones, gripped the base of his skull, and made his stomach flip. The individual segments of his spine felt as though they pulled away from each other, straining against the tendons, stretching the nerves like rubber bands.
If he could have screamed, he would have.
The void vanished.
He slammed onto a stone floor. His bones snapped together all at once, and his lungs ached when he sucked in air.
Nathaniel was already there. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” James said. Transitioning between universes was always hard. He staggered to his feet, eyes watering, and pressed a fist to his gut. If he had eaten anything in the last day, he probably would have been vomiting.
Eventually, his vision began to clear. Nathaniel was the first thing he could see clearly. He looked unruffled by the transition. Moving between universes was of no consequence to a witch of his powers—no more difficult than stepping into another room.
