Edge of Heaven

by Rhiannon Leith

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was the work of a minute to secure the door to the apartment, draw the curtains and plunge the place into darkness. Sam didn’t want to be disturbed, not by anyone, especially not by Lily and Micah. That said, if their intimacy as they left was anything to go by, that wouldn’t be a problem for a little while. No, Sam needed to be alone for this. He didn’t want to expose a window into hell to either of them, or anyone else.

  He stood in the centre of the living room and with one finger outstretched, concentrated on the fabric of reality. A brief spark greeted him, the warm glow of fire running beneath his skin like minute flames, worming their way down to coalesce beneath his nail. There was a hiss as magic met air and, slowly, he used it to draw a sigil, his finger leaving a glowing trail behind it. The symbol—once a forbidden word in a language now thousands of years dead and forgotten—fluttered, even though there was no breeze, and then twisted on itself, unfolding like the petals of some monstrous flower.

  Darkness filled the void in its centre and a face with hazel eyes looked out, placid, calm, terrifying.

  “Sammael? What is the meaning of this?” asked the Nameless.

  Sam bowed his head but kept himself firmly on his feet. If he had to get out of there quickly, he wanted to be in a position to flee as fast as possible. “I have a question.”

  “Why do you not come here? Why is your location shielded from me?” Suspicion glistened in the gaze that beat upon him, but Sam held himself firm.

  “After my last encounter with Asmodeus, I felt it politic to use a safer environment.”

  There was a long silence. Sam counted under his breath, wondering if he would actually be able to reach the door in time if the Nameless broke through Micah’s wards on Lily’s apartment. Evil couldn’t enter uninvited. And Lily had only invited Sam, not the rest of the hordes of Hell. In theory anyway. But the Nameless was no ordinary demon.

  “Did you indeed?” the Nameless chuckled at last. Something amused him about the statement. Sam just hoped the mood continued to be so genial. “Very well. Ask your question.”

  “I was given only a week.” He paused, waited for a reply.

  “That’s not a question.”

  “Why only a week?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Oh good, thought Sam, questions answered with questions. The Nameless was good at that. He thought it amusing.

  “I think that you plan to have her killed, to take her before her time.”

  The flawless face showed nothing for a moment, a beautiful mask, but then one eyebrow slowly rose. “I plan to have her killed? I think you credit me with too much, Sammael. I do not govern when a mortal life shall end. I merely read the book of destiny and wait.”

  Sam drew in a cold breath. “It’s her destiny to die? Is that what you mean?” Both Courts had given a week. Both of them. What else could he mean? Sam’s heart thudded dully and his head swam at the thought. No. Please no.

  “Destiny is such a controversial word.” The Nameless looked past Sam’s spell, at something in his throne room Sam could not see. “Is that it?”

  “Wait. Is there a way to stop it?”

  The drifting attention of the Nameless snapped back to Sam so quickly it was like a physical blow.

  “And why, pray tell, would you want to do that? Mortals die. We collect their souls. Or else they travel to the light. That is the way of things.” Sam felt himself studied, dissected, by that gaze and then dropped, like a plaything that no longer held a child’s interest. Relief thundered through him, sharp and palpable. “Everyone knows that if a life is forfeit we will have a life, if a soul is forfeit we will have a soul. It matters not which soul. But we will collect one at the appointed time. Come back to me when you have more interesting questions. Or the next time I really will lose my temper with you, Sammael. You’ve been warned already. Don’t make me send Asmodeus to do it again.”

  The Nameless waved a dismissive hand and the sigil sparked and died, the connection cut off. The bond of magic holding it to Sam snapped back, flinging him to the ground. He sat very still, nursing his head where an ache of colossal proportions was steadily growing.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.” He had almost lost her once. That had been bad enough. But the witch-crazed maniac was going to come back. Sam knew that. And when that happened, if it was Heaven and Hell’s appointed time, Lily was going to die.

  A knock on the door brought him out of his daze. Moving quickly, despite the protests of both body and mind, he opened the curtains and headed for the door, rubbing the back of his neck in a vain effort to quell the pain there. He flicked back the chain and opened the door to reveal their other neighbour on the floor, Mr. Hopkins.

  “Mr. Mayell?” The middle-aged man blinked at him in surprise. “What are you doing in here?”

  A grey man, Sam had decided on first bumping into him in the hall, some kind of civil servant or accountant who wore nondescript suits all week and nondescript casuals at the weekend. Looking at him now, Sam saw nothing to make him reassess the opinion.

  “Oh, just waiting for Lily to get back. We were going to eat. Can I help you?”

  “No. Not at all. I just wanted to see how she was. I heard about the commotion the other night.”

  Was it his imagination or was Hopkins peering past him, trying to see inside the apartment? Sam shifted, blocking the view more completely.

  “Well, I’ll pass on your best wishes then.” Leave, he willed the other man. Just leave.

  “And her…her guest?”

  “Her…” Her guest? “Oh, Mike. Yeah. They’ve gone out. Are you sure I can’t help you?”

  Hopkins looked up into Sam’s face for the first time, and his skin paled at whatever he saw there. If it was a shadow of the strength with which Sam was wishing him gone, it should have had him scurrying back to his own apartment in seconds.

  “Things have changed since you arrived, Mr. Mayell,” said Hopkins, clearly choosing his words with care. “I’m sure you haven’t noticed. But this is an…unusual building. We look after our own, and our own problems. Always have done.”

  With that he left, walking quickly and quietly down the hall. Sam stared after him.

  Had he just been threatened, however ineffectively, by an accountant?

  Hopkins vanished behind his own door, and Sam stared after him for a few minutes more. To his surprise, he found his hands shaking. An after-effect of his contact with the Nameless, no doubt, one which would be easily solved by a large scotch. He poured it, the splash of the liquid unexpectedly loud in his ears, but he pushed it aside and drained first one glass, then another.

  Their voices came from the hall outside, Lily’s soft laugh, Micah’s rumbling tones. Sam listened, envy rippling through his body. Sometimes he cursed his stronger-than-human senses. Sometimes they offered nothing but pain. Though he couldn’t feel what had passed between them in the same way as he had while under Asmodeus’s lust spell, he knew what they had done. The scent of their lovemaking travelled through the air ahead of them. It beckoned him, taunted him, and he reacted to it immediately, his body hardening.

  What could he do? He was meant to be seducing them, but he constantly felt as if he was the one being seduced. Did they know? Were they doing it intentionally? And to what purpose?

  No, it had to stop. He would have to stop it. If he left now…

  But then Lily would die. He had to stop that too. He was so wound up in the threads of her life that he was losing himself, but no matter what, he would not let the killer take her, not in the way he had killed Rachel or Todd.

  The footsteps stopped short of the door. The scent of desire wavered, and then changed. Like a weathervane in the wind, it swung around from love to fear, and Lily gasped.

  He didn’t think. In spite of his need to resist her, his body moved without hesitation, his quick strides taking him back to the door, which he flung open.

  Micah stood in the hallway, cr
adling Lily against him. Her face was buried in his chest, and the angel’s expression was caught between outrage and horror.

  “What is it?” Sam snarled. “What happened?”

  “Take it down,” Lily sobbed. “Please Sam. Take it down.”

  Sam swivelled around to see her once-pristine white door smeared with something red and sticky, and dangling from a nail hammered in it was a felt doll, hand-sewn with red thread. The noose around its neck was fashioned from bright, silken hair. Lily’s hair.

  Shadows dripped from the doll, tendrils of ill-intent and malice. Combined with the blood—he knew at once it was blood—he had no doubt who had left it there, nor what it was for.

  Sam swiped at it, sending it flying across the hall. “What the hell is that thing?”

  Surprisingly it was Lily who replied, her voice shaking wildly. “A poppet. It’s a charm, a thing to bind or ward off evil. God, my gran used to make them, but—” She shivered. “Not like that. Oh God, Sam, Micah.”

  “Come inside,” Sam said brusquely. “I’ll call the police. Where’s Reid’s number?”

  Lily sank onto the sofa while he punched the numbers into the phone. He spoke to her briefly and then slammed down the receiver.

  “Who makes poppets in this day and age?” he asked. Micah shot him a glare, a warning and Sam forced his voice to be gentle. “It’s more than a harmless charm, Lily. That thing had malevolence dripping from it. That’s blood on the door.”

  “And any charm can be turned to evil intent in the right hands,” Micah answered, sitting down beside her and slipping his arm around her shoulders. “That doesn’t make the act of making a poppet evil. They’ve been used for centuries to ward off evil in all sorts of cultures.”

  Anger still simmered beneath his skin, but Sam walked it off, pacing back and forth.

  “Your neighbour came over,” he told her. “Hopkins? Real worried about you. He warned me off. Who is he?”

  Lily gave him a bemused look. “Mr. Hopkins? He’s been here longer than me, longer than Mr. Cassini. I think he works for the city or something. Administration. He told me once he moves departments as they need him—medical, police, public affairs, all sorts of things. He’s always been nice. Just a good neighbour.” She paused, leaning back into Micah’s arms again.

  Sam bit on his lower lip and tried not to glare. He had no reason to be jealous, he told himself. If he clicked his fingers, she’d be his. All he had to do was say the word.

  “You’ve never been the target of a serial killer before,” Micah put in.

  Sam shook his head. “There’s more to it than this. Your grandmother made these things?”

  “You really hate them, don’t you?” Lily asked.

  Rolling his eyes, Sam tried to plough on. Even the thought of it made his skin crawl, as if it was trying to get away from the poppet without the rest of him. “Did she or didn’t she?”

  “Yes. I have a journal of hers. She was a white witch, a psychic like me. She was the one who looked after me.”

  And got her out of whatever place her parents had locked her away, but Sam didn’t really want to bring that one up again. “You have it? Where?”

  “Downstairs. In my storage area in the basement.”

  Sam crossed to her. “Let’s get it. I want to look at it.”

  “Now? Sam, the police will be on their way, won’t they?”

  “Then Micah will be here when Reid arrives. It’ll take a few minutes, Lily, and it could be important. Reid’s going to want to know about it. A poppet is an old charm. Seriously. No one makes them anymore.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t even want to think it. “What if they used your grandmother’s book to do it?”

  The basement of the building was accessed by a narrow staircase and looked like a rabbit warren of locked doors. They’d been designed for individual storage but most of the tenants didn’t bother. Lily moved with accustomed ease through the thin passage to a door third from the end and fished the key out of her pocket.

  “That’s yours,” she told him, nodding at the door to her left, which stood ajar. Sam rolled his eyes as if that was the last thing of importance. She gave him a nervous grin and opened her own door. She tried to flick on the light inside, but nothing happened. “Ugh, the electrics in this place are shot. My fault, I guess.”

  “Your fault?”

  “Yes. Sometimes, when a spirit comes it seems to—I don’t know—overload the circuits. Only sometimes.”

  Not since he’d been with her. She didn’t say that but he could see it in her expression. He had stopped consciously trying to block her, but he suspected he was still having an effect. What spirit lost between Heaven and Hell wanted to come anywhere near a demon?

  “Anyway,” Lily sighed, stepping into the dark cupboard-like room beyond, “I know where it is. Just give me a second.”

  Sam stood back, admiring the way her rear swayed as she bent to rummage through a box on a low shelf. It was half in shadow and beautifully curved.

  “Got it,” she said, triumphant.

  But as she stood and turned, an ancient-looking tome clasped to her chest, the door slammed shut between them. Sam cursed, and Lily’s muffled cry pitched him at the door. The handle jammed as he tried to open it.

  “Where’s the key?” he yelled, though he knew the answer. She had it with her. “Lily? Lily, can you hear me?”

  There was no answer, but another muffled cry of fear, words he couldn’t make out. He hung off the handle, trying to force the door open with brute strength alone. Nothing happened. He couldn’t get her out. He didn’t have Micah’s skill with locks and—

  “Micah!” He made his sending loud and desperate. He didn’t care if every supernatural being in the vicinity heard him. “Get down here! Lily’s in trouble!”

  The sound of a scuffle came from the far side of the door, then a thud, followed by Lily’s voice, thin and stretched with terror. “Sam? Oh God, Sam, is that you? Stop it. Please, please, stop it.”

  Sam pounded on the door, his physical strength meaningless, futile. “Lily!”

  But she didn’t respond. She couldn’t hear him, not through the heavy door. But his hearing was supernatural. He could hear her, hear her voice choking, her breath fading, her words. “I’m not… You’ll…kill me. Sam, please don’t.”

  Then silence, a terrible lingering silence like a shroud. Sam stepped back, staring at the door. He touched it with an outstretched finger, ready to summon all the fires of Hell to blast it out of his way. He’d pay for it but what did that matter? What did anything matter now? His skin warmed, glowed, readying itself for the passage of power.

  Something came down hard and heavy on the back of his head, felling him effortlessly and sending him tumbling to the ground.

  For a moment everything was wonderful. Burrowing through the box, Lily turned up items from her childhood that reminded her of good times instead of bad. Things she associated with Gran, from a china figurine to tattered photos, from old diaries to the small stack of her notebooks. She felt the soft leather binding brush against her fingertips and knew she had found it, knew by touch alone, though she hadn’t laid hands on the book in years. She pulled it out, dust billowing around her, catching the light from outside.

  A shadow moved, flickered across the corner of her eye, so fast she though she might have imagined it. She turned, catching Sam’s gaze and smiling in her victory, hugging the book to her.

  Then the door slammed shut and she was plunged into darkness. She screamed before she knew what she was doing, unable to move for fear of taking a tumble in the pitch blackness of the storage room. The noise of the lock slamming home broke the spell and she lurched forward, feeling for the door.

  “Sam? Sam! Let me out!” She fumbled until she found the handle, but it was stuck, just as if someone was holding it from the other side, or had jammed it somehow. “Sam! Let me out!”

  There was no ans
wer. Breathing hard, she tried to push at the door, ramming her shoulder against it, the book digging into her ribs.

  A hand touched her cheek, feather-light, and was gone. A low chuckle ran around the tiny room, bouncing off the boxes and forgotten oddments of a life she didn’t really want to remember. Lily froze, trying not to breathe. Someone else was in there with her. Even her pounding heart seemed too loud.

  “You know, for a witch,” said a too-familiar voice, “you’re mightily predictable.”

  The scream burst from her lips. She couldn’t help herself. Sam’s name was tangled in there amid the incoherency, and Micah’s, but she knew they couldn’t hear her. A leather-gloved hand slammed over her mouth, silencing her, the hand belonging to the killer.

  Lily recognised his voice, his touch, the smell of him, all starch and detergent. She struggled against him, but he was so strong. Impossibly strong.

  “Hush now, you little whore.” His breath trailed over her ear. “It’s holy work we’re about here.”

  There was no way out of here. She knew that. Not for him or for her. Sooner or later Sam would get the door open but… But Sam had been the only person with her. Her breath hitched in her throat as the thought coalesced. It couldn’t be. It didn’t sound like him. It couldn’t be Sam!

  But who else could it be? The door had been locked, so no one could have been waiting inside. There was only Sam! And a demon could disguise his voice.

  The hand lifted and she found herself spun around, her face shoved back against the door. The words that fell from her mouth came out in a babble. “Sam? Oh God, Sam, is that you? Stop it. Please, please, stop it.”

  Something pulled tight around her throat and suddenly she was fighting for breath. “Confess your congress with a demon, your practice of witchcraft and your evil arts. Confess what you are, witch, and save your soul.”

  “I’m not,” she tried to say through sobs and the terrible constriction cutting off her breath.

  He pressed in against her. “They won’t get to you in time. No one is coming to help you. I am your only help. Confess what you are and save your soul.”