by S. M. Reine
James stood over Elise’s jacket. There was no longer a shape underneath—even though Elise shouldn’t have been able to phase away in all that light. His stomach churned. He had seen how little her physical body meant in comparison to her soul. If she died, he doubted that she would leave anything behind.
He took a deep breath before ripping her jacket off the ground, expecting to see something horrible underneath.
Instead, he found a hole barely a few inches across, as though Elise had punched straight down through the soil.
“Where’s Abel?”
He turned, leather jacket hanging from his fist. Rylie stood behind him. The wolf girl was covered in the same brownish dust that James had been.
“Abel?” James asked stupidly.
“Yeah, you remember my mate, Abel,” she said. “And…where’s the fissure?”
Abel. The fissure. James suddenly remembered.
“I closed it,” he said. “Healing Lincoln created more power than I expected, and I—well, I’m not sure, but it let me shut the fissure down. But before it closed, Abel went down the bridge to chase an angel. He’s probably fine. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“What? What do you mean, he’s probably fine? How in the heck did you just shut the fissure down? It’s not like a light switch you could flip!”
James glanced down the hole again. “I don’t understand yet,” he admitted, “and it’ll be some time before I can figure it out. We’ll bring Abel back. I promise. But there’s something else I have to take care of first.”
Though the moon was just past full, it was lightless in the sewers underneath Northgate. James let a rune hover over his head as he climbed down a ladder to the bottom. Even that pathetic amount of magic made him feel exhausted.
His foot landed on one of the rungs and metal snapped underneath him. He fell the rest of the way to the bottom of the sewer, landing on hard concrete with a thud that echoed up the tunnel.
“Damn it all,” he muttered, rubbing his sore knee.
Rylie leaned over the side of the manhole above, blond hair dangling over her shoulders. “Are you okay?”
She kept asking him that. The answer hadn’t changed since the last time. “Still fantastic.”
“What’s down there?” She almost sounded hopeful, like she thought that James might have simply hidden the fissure somewhere underground rather than shutting it entirely.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He followed his instincts down the southern tunnel, stepping along the edge so that he didn’t have to walk through the stream created by lengthy spring rains. Water drizzled through the cracks in the road. The pattering echoed, muffling his footsteps. His magical light cast deep shadows around the turns in the tunnels, turning rubble into monsters and angelic figures with spread wings.
James tried to keep a mental image of the town above in mind as he explored. He had to be past St. Philomene’s by now—he had been forced to enter the sewers a block beyond the church in order to enter safely, and he’d already been walking for several minutes. But considering Northgate’s size, the sewer system was complex, and James lost track of where he was going within a few turns. More than one tunnel had caved in, too. He had to backtrack twice.
When he finally felt like he had gotten himself completely turned around, he felt a tickle at the back of his neck.
Elise.
She didn’t respond to his prodding, but he knew it was her.
James followed the gentle nudge of her presence down the tunnel. The broken concrete shifted as he stepped carefully from fragment to fragment, and he knew that he had to be underneath the place that the fissure had been. The earth above sagged. He reached up to touch it as he passed and soil streamed down.
The sewer was moments from collapsing. He needed to get out while he still could.
But then he spotted a shape sitting against a pile of rubble in the back of the tunnel, back where it had already collapsed. He prodded his spell. It brightened.
Elise was reclining against the wall, head tipped back, eyes closed. Her hair was little more than a foggy mist hanging around her shoulders. One of her boots was unlaced, the tongue hanging limply over her ankle.
The sight of her whole and alive filled him with relief, though she looked terrible. Her escape had definitely been a retreat—not victory. Better than death, but not much less disheartening.
She flinched when his light touched her. James dimmed it again. “Sorry.”
The concrete groaned around him. He froze, gaze fixed on the ceiling. It was shifting. Water leaked through the cracks and pooled underneath his feet. “We have to get out of here,” he said softly. It felt like the tunnel might give if he spoke too loudly. “Take my hand.”
She didn’t even open her eyes. “I can’t fight angels head on. One, sure. Two, maybe. But more than that…or an entire city of them…”
“We just need a different strategy, which is something we can formulate once we’re no longer in a sewer on the brink of collapse.”
“The fissure is closed. I can’t even get my army out of Hell.”
“Again, a matter of strategy,” James said, mostly because he just wanted Elise to move, not because he actually had any clue how they could possibly get an entire legion from one dimension to the other. He inched toward her. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“How aren’t you dead?” Elise asked, finally lifting her eyes to his. Her black irises had swelled to consume the entire eye.
“I threw them out of the dimension. I used one of Nathaniel’s modified spells.”
“You used ethereal magic.”
James had to force himself to say, “Yes.”
“So they’ll know what you can do now. They’ll know someone has rediscovered it.”
“If they can get back to New Eden. I don’t know where I sent them.”
“Great. Just great.” Elise heaved a sigh, shutting her eyes again, letting her head roll back onto the wall. “I need a smoke.”
James lost his grip on the rune floating over his head. The magic flickered and went out, bathing them in darkness.
A hand touched his wrist, curving around the skin bared by the gap between glove and sleeve. James almost jumped back before he realized that it was Elise. Her hands climbed his arm to grip his bicep. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s strategize. And, more importantly, let’s feed.”
“Feed? What do you mean ‘let’s’ feed?”
“Your magic failed, James,” Elise said. “I’m not the only one of us who needs to recharge.”
He didn’t like the way she said that, like he was little more than some creature driven by feeding urges, no better than a demon. There was a big difference between drinking blood and needing to sleep for twelve hours.
James didn’t feel like arguing while they stumbled. Or at least, while he stumbled—Elise was steady on her feet beside him. She only limped because she was wounded and weak. Not because she couldn’t see.
“So did it work?” she asked.
“What?”
“Lincoln’s healing. Did it work?”
It seemed laughably ridiculous that Lincoln should be her primary concern, rather than what had happened to the fissure. “I don’t know. The spell definitely worked, but his heart had stopped. Stephanie was attempting to resuscitate him when I left.”
Elise was silent as she guided him through the darkness back to the manhole.
Rylie was still at the top. She leaned over and smiled down at them.
“Elise,” she said. “Thank God.”
To James’s surprise, Elise didn’t flinch at His name. She just smiled back.
He’d expected her to phase them to the surface when they reached the manhole, but instead, she climbed onto the third rung and extended her arm above her head. Rylie clasped her hand and hauled her out. Elise grunted at the strain along her side—James could feel that she wasn’t quite healed yet.
Then
it was his turn. He jumped up, caught Rylie’s hand, and the girl pulled him onto the street.
It was quiet this far from the statue of Bain Marshall, where the army was still congregating. Their voices were nothing more than a distant murmur that could have just as easily been rainfall.
“Abel’s in Hell,” Rylie said without preamble.
“Okay. I’ll get him back,” Elise said.
“What are we going to do?” Rylie bit her bottom lip. “There are still so many slaves in Hell, and now that James closed the—” She cut off, looking over Elise’s shoulder. “Oh. Oh my gosh.”
James turned to follow her gaze. Stephanie was approaching at a slow gait, her usual umbrella on her shoulder. But she wasn’t alone. There was a man at her side who walked with confidence and no hint of his earlier weakness.
Lincoln had survived the ritual.
He was alive, healed…and human.
Eight
BEEF JERKY HAD never tasted so good before.
Rylie gnawed on a piece the size of her hand, which was tough and leathery and incredibly delicious. It was a far cry from the raw meat that werewolves preferred to eat, but considering that she hadn’t eaten anything since before her meeting with Uriel, her inner wolf seemed happy to compromise.
She swallowed a mouthful and sank back against the arm of her couch with a contented sigh.
“Agreed,” James said. He was all but shoveling a can of green beans into his mouth. He sat on the edge of Rylie’s chair and leaned over the coffee table, as though worried about getting vegetable juice on her furniture.
“Could use a little salt.” Lincoln jabbed a fork listlessly into his own can.
“You just died,” Elise said. “Almost. You should be happy you’re eating at all.”
He shrugged. “I’m not hungry. I feel fine.”
“You smell fine,” Rylie said. “You don’t smell sickly and weird at all anymore.” He didn’t smell like a demon, either, but she wasn’t sure that he ever had.
Stephanie took his arm, set his fork down, and pressed her fingers to his pulse point. Her eyes went unfocused as she counted. “It seems normal.” She seemed about as certain as anyone else in the room that Lincoln was cured. With a little more confidence, she added, “His hands aren’t glowing anymore.”
“My hands didn’t glow before I got possessed, either,” Lincoln said.
“There’s an easy way to figure this out.” Elise jerked a knife out of her boot. “Deputy?”
He hesitated for a moment before giving her his hand. She jabbed the point into the meat of his palm. He flinched.
She licked the blood that welled forth.
“Human,” she said, dropping his wrist.
Rylie glanced around. It was hard to tell if everyone’s shocked expressions were because of Elise’s blood-drinking proclivities or because James had cured Lincoln.
James looked unhappiest of all. “Excellent. So you’ll survive.”
“Try to sound less enthusiastic,” Elise said dryly. She snagged a piece of jerky out of Rylie’s bag and popped it into her mouth. She chewed as she continued to speak. “We need another plan to deal with the angels. This attack on Dis won’t be the end. They’ll be back.”
“The angels must be pretty desperate,” Rylie said.
“They’re being distracting,” James said. “If they really wanted to destroy Dis, we’d be helpless against them.”
“Who says they don’t still have that up their sleeves?” Lincoln muttered, finally shoving the green beans away from him.
Rylie’s appetite was suddenly gone. “We can make the next move. I think I know how they’re getting back into New Eden. Abel tracked one of them to the Shamain fissure. There must be a door or something up there. That’s how it works, right?”
Elise lifted an eyebrow. “Sometimes. It’s worth investigating, but not without backup. If I go into Shamain alone, and it’s a trap…” She didn’t smell afraid, exactly, but there was a healthy dose of stress in her sweat. Rylie had never seen her look so uncertain before.
“You don’t have to be able to fly to reach Shamain.” Stephanie stood behind the couch Lincoln sat on, leaning her hands on the back. “There’s an old archway leading to the city that enabled the Apple to contact Heaven. It’s in Florida—not a convenient trip, I realize, but slightly more convenient than attempting to build another ridiculous bridge to the sky. You could march an army through it.”
“Why are you telling us that?” James asked, setting his fork down.
“Their motives clearly aren’t what I—and the entire Apple—believed them to be,” Stephanie said. “Our Lord God wouldn’t have wanted this. He would, however, want to punish the children that disobeyed Him.”
Elise still held the dagger she had used to cut Lincoln’s hand, toying with the point. “You don’t know that.”
“And you think you know better than I do?”
“I do. You’re wrong to think that He gave a single fuck about humans.” She sheathed her knife. “By the end, He didn’t care about anything. None of this would have mattered to Him. Not you, not what happened to your husband, not if the angels killed every single fucking human on the face of the Earth.”
Lincoln stood and abandoned his paltry dinner on the table. He didn’t say anything. He just left the room.
“I’ve given you valuable information,” Stephanie said tightly. “There’s no need to be rude.”
Elise crossed her arms. “Florida. Where in Florida?”
“Jacksonville. I can mark it on a map.”
“Fine.”
Rylie couldn’t deal with the tension anymore. She stood to pick up Lincoln’s green beans, the half-empty bag of jerky, a few napkins. There was too much for her to carry it all at once.
To her surprise, Elise helped her pick everything else up. “We’ll leave in a half an hour.”
“Leave for where?” James asked. “Jacksonville?”
“The Palace. A door in Jacksonville’s better than a bridge, but now I don’t have a bridge to Earth. I’ll have to figure out a way to get my army to Florida.”
“What about the angels that passed through the fissure?” Rylie asked. She was trying not to ask, Are you sure Abel is safe down there? Elise had already told her that he would be fine twice, and that seemed to be the limit of her patience.
“They’ll be dead before they can penetrate my wards. The Palace will be safe. Safer than anywhere on Earth.” Elise glanced between Stephanie, James, and Rylie. “If you want to help in Shamain, or if you want somewhere safe to hide out, you need to get ready to leave now.”
“Or?” Stephanie prompted.
“Or I don’t give a fuck. Do whatever you want.”
Elise slammed into the kitchen. Rylie hurried to follow.
They were conserving fuel, so the generator was silent outside and the lights were turned off. The cracked window let in the sound of rain. It wouldn’t be enough to protect their conversation from prying ears, but Rylie couldn’t keep herself from talking anyway. “Stephanie means well.”
“No. She doesn’t,” Elise said.
“She didn’t have to tell us how to get to Shamain.”
“She wants me to save her husband. She’s just chasing her own goals, like every other fucking person in the universe.”
“Can you blame her for wanting to save Yasir?” Rylie asked. “She shouldn’t have to raise that baby alone.”
Elise snorted. “She shouldn’t have been stupid enough to get pregnant after the apocalypse anyway. She deserves whatever she gets.”
“Oh.” Rylie winced. “Yeah. Um.” She didn’t have a good reply to that.
She took the dishes from the counter and set them in the sink. There was a bucket of collected rainwater on the floor. She plugged the drain before pouring the water into the sink and grabbing a sponge.
Just the act of doing the dishes made her miss Abel. He always helped her with them. Not because he liked doing the dishes, but because he
liked to be with her.
Elise leaned on the counter beside Rylie, facing her. “I get why Stephanie knew how to reach Shamain. The question is, how did you know that we need to get there in the first place?” Rylie opened her mouth to lie, but Elise said, “Tell me the truth. I’ll know if you don’t.”
Her cheeks heated. “We’ve been in contact with someone from New Eden. A friend of Nash’s.”
“I take it he’s healing fine.” Elise made it sound like an accusation. She plucked a clean dish out of Rylie’s hand and began drying it.
“Don’t blame him. He probably doesn’t have a choice but to feed and heal,” Rylie said. “They’re always feeding passively. Angels, I mean. They have to be around pretty much a constant flow of creativity and knowledge or they get weak. I guess it’s kind of addicting.”
Elise set the plate down. Hard. “Addicting? How do you know?”
“Nash told us. He’s pretty forgiving when we ask a million questions.” Well, sometimes. His moods were pretty mercurial around everyone except Summer.
“Could an angel feed himself?” Elise asked. “You know, by studying a lot, or performing experiments, or…?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. I mean, they didn’t abduct all those people to New Eden for fun. Why do you ask?”
“James never stops studying. He’s always put magic first. I just thought…” She stared out the window. A flash of lighting reflected in her black eyes, and she let out a sigh. “I don’t know if it would be better or worse if he’s addicted.”
She sounded so weirdly vulnerable. Rylie thought they’d gotten pretty comfortable around each other, but they weren’t exactly in “guy talk” territory, either.
Rylie bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know. Have you tried asking him?” The look Elise gave her immediately made her regret asking, but it was too late to take it back. She pushed on. “That’s the fastest way to get through anything with Abel. Talking. And I don’t just mean our relationship stuff. I mean that we really can get through anything, so long as we lean on each other.”
Even as she said it, the truth settled over her.
