Nightshade (17 tales of Urban Fantasy, Magic, Mayhem, Demons, Fae, Witches, Ghosts, and more)

by Annie Bellet

  And judging by her expression, she was not at all impressed.

  ***

  Considering that the Traveler was only a witch—which meant that it had average strength and reflexes, similar to those any other human might have—it was a useful asset to have against the demons. It didn’t need the runic paper magic that James used. It had a quick tongue and incredible powers of observation unlike any Elise had ever seen.

  “Three coming over the hill,” the Traveler said, and it was right: there were three demons cresting over the hill to Elise’s left, where she wouldn’t have noticed them without help.

  McIntyre swiveled. He fired his shotgun. The demons fell.

  The Traveler spoke again. “Behind you.”

  Elise spun, slashing her swords in an arc that reflected moonlight on the blades like blazing cerulean fire.

  Blood sprayed from the throats of two demons.

  That was how they reached the floor of the canyon. The Traveler barked instructions without needing to look. It always knew where the demons were coming from. Always knew what to say. It was as though it had lived this deadly night a dozen times before.

  It walked calmly between the two kopides, sidestepping attacks from the fiends, and was never touched by an enemy. Not once.

  “What is it?” Elise grunted to McIntyre when their paths of battle drew them close to each other. They had worked together frequently enough now that he understood what she was asking: why the Traveler was so strange, separate from the reality surrounding it.

  “It’s a witch,” he said.

  “Yeah, but what?”

  “Just a witch,” McIntyre said. “That’s it.”

  But it was a witch who had clearly traveled this path before, because it never drew a weapon, yet still never was injured.

  They reached the floor of the canyon. Malcolm and James weren’t dead on the ground, though she had already known that would be the case. If James had been dead, she would have felt him cleaved out of her soul and spent the rest of her life aching for the absence.

  She never should have bound to him. She never should have let anyone matter to her that much.

  When she heard the echoes of fighting within the tunnel under the Tower of Set, she was afraid. Truly afraid that there would be one more cry, and then her heart would shatter with James’s death.

  Elise never used to fear for anyone like that.

  Now she feared for him, and all he had in return for her was disdain.

  She hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel—her only hesitation throughout the entire fight. Her fists were clenched around the hilts of her falchions. Blood sizzled on the blade, sending plumes of steam spiraling toward the heights of the canyon. Her gloves were soaked. The H in “Hooters” on her right breast was stained.

  James and Malcolm were in the cavern somewhere.

  “Don’t bother second-guessing yourself,” the Traveler said. “You won’t remember anyway.”

  “Don’t bother asking what it’s talking about,” McIntyre said, breaking the shotgun over his arm to reload. “Ain’t no point in that.”

  Elise would take his word for that.

  She leaped into the cavern.

  Killing the demons was an easy thing, and if she’d had a choice, she never would have done anything else. Going through the instinctive motions of murder was easy. It warmed her muscles and made her blood flow and touched her forehead with sweat. It was the good parts of sex without any of the complications.

  A blade in the chest, a demon’s wail. Knuckles connecting with Elise’s ribs. Teeth sinking into her wrist.

  It was good. Very good.

  “Step to the left,” the Traveler said peacefully behind her.

  Elise leaped behind an outcropping in the wall. She reached cover an instant before James’s magic pulsed within the cavern, exploding from one of his runes.

  She watched through the crack as his magic bowled over the demons like pins.

  The demons, and Malcolm.

  Hatred filled James’s pale eyes. The fissure to Phlegethon gashed the wall behind him, twice as tall as the witch but narrower than a hair.

  He was still holding the page from his Book of Shadows that had knocked down Malcolm.

  The way that James was looking, it was clear that the kopis had been his target—not the demons.

  “Check him,” Elise barked to McIntyre.

  The other kopis kneeled beside Malcolm. “He ain’t dead.”

  That was something.

  Elise stalked toward James, the Traveler in her wake. She didn’t need to ask James what the fuck do you think you’re doing because she communicated it in every angry line of her body.

  Even without an open bond between them, James would know she was pissed.

  He was pissed, too.

  “We’re done with him,” James said. “If we survive this, Malcolm’s not coming with us to our next destination. And that is final. No debate! Don’t even try!”

  Elise wasn’t debating. She stood inches from James, glaring, breathing hard through her nostrils.

  God, but she shouldn’t have been happy to see him alive and barely injured.

  He hated her.

  Hated her so much that he was using magic to kick her boyfriend’s ass.

  “The artifact,” the Traveler said.

  James ripped the satchel off over his head and tossed it to the Traveler without looking. Elise had the entirety of her aspis’s focus. “He disrespects me,” James said. “He disrespects you. And whenever he’s awake, he’s drunk! I don’t care how useful he is as an ally. I won’t tolerate him anymore!”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Malcolm groaned from the back of the cavern.

  The Traveler glided toward the fissure, holding the leather satchel and its moonstone prize.

  The earth shook harder as it approached.

  Phlegethon knew its death was coming.

  Fresh blood sprayed from the fissure, sloshing over Elise’s feet, staining James’s khakis.

  “I’ll leave with Malcolm,” Elise finally said. “We won’t bother you again.”

  Disbelief made James’s face sag. “I’m your aspis.”

  “Yeah, and you hate me,” she said. “I’ll get out of your life. You can go back to Colorado.”

  The Traveler was only a dozen feet from the fissure now.

  James grabbed Elise’s wrist to maintain his balance, fingers sliding on her blood-slicked skin. An earthquake jolted the entire cavern.

  His touch hurt her in a way that the demons’ claws hadn’t.

  “Shit’s about to go down,” McIntyre said helpfully. He had helped Malcolm to his feet, but the other kopis still looked woozy, like he wasn’t quite sure if all the shaking was in his head or in the earth.

  The Traveler began to glow.

  It was preparing to travel.

  “Let me go, James,” Elise said, eyes narrowed. She could have broken free without effort, but she didn’t. She didn’t really want James to let go. Not if this would be the last fight she had with him—the last battle fought against him, and beside him.

  No matter how cruel the loathing that churned in her belly, she liked the feeling of steadying him against the shaking earth, and the curl of his fingers around her arm.

  “I don’t hate you,” he said. “I would never hate you.”

  The fissure widened.

  Blood slopped across the room, hot enough that James felt it through his shoes. He could also see into the dimension on the other side: the hideous, darkest depths of inhospitable Hell, filled with flame, evil, and the creatures that flourished on such things.

  Demons scrambled out of Phlegethon, illuminated by the Traveler’s glow.

  The witch lifted the moonstone artifact in one hand. It gestured with the other hand, as though parting invisible curtains.

  Time distorted.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Elise said.

  Even caught in this moment with James, she was hyper-aware of the tide of d
emons flowing around them, parting around their bodies. Most of those fiends recognized the greatest kopis. They didn’t attack her. They went for the easier targets—the mouth of the cave, and the helpless mortals beyond.

  But one demon plunged toward her. She thrust a falchion under her arm, skewering a demon that rushed from behind her without looking back.

  The earth bucked harder.

  The Traveler reached the moonstone artifact toward the fissure.

  “I’m not lying,” James said.

  McIntyre started shooting again. There was screaming.

  Elise turned to see what was wrong, prepared to help. But James didn’t release her wrist.

  He yanked her back against his chest.

  And he kissed her.

  ***

  Of all the inadvisable things James had ever done—and there were many—deciding to kiss Elise when they should have been protecting the Traveler at the mouth of Phlegethon was probably one of the most inadvisable.

  But dammit, he didn’t want to see her thinking like that.

  And he wanted to do it once. Just once.

  Even if they were going to forget about it as soon as the Traveler reached the fissure.

  James used his grip on her wrist to snap her back against his chest. His other hand clutched the back of her head. And he kissed her with the utter desperation of a man who knew that the kiss would never be remembered, not by either of them, when he wanted to communicate a thousand fraught emotions despite the fact there was no time for words.

  She shoved him away.

  For once, James’s desperation was enough to make him almost as strong as she was. He held her to him with his fingers digging into her biceps.

  Elise stared at him in wide-eyed confusion.

  He could see her mind attempting to reboot.

  They didn’t have a piggyback going anymore, but they had shared consciousness often enough in the last six months that James knew what she was thinking.

  He rejected me in Copenhagen.

  But he’s kissing me now.

  Is it because he thinks we’re going to die?

  Is he taking pity on me?

  Is he mocking me?

  “No,” James said. He had been holding on to his thoughts for so long that the one kiss had broken him, and now all of those emotions were spilling out at once. “Because everything you think that I think about you is wrong. You have no idea, Elise, you can’t even begin to imagine—”

  The cavern shook hard enough to throw them against the wall. Rocks smashed to the ground around their feet.

  Shotgun shells plugged holes into the wall about three yards away. McIntyre splattered a handful of demons before they could reach Elise and James.

  “You deserve better!” James shouted over the echoing death. “I’m not going to watch you with Malcolm anymore!”

  She finally managed to speak. “Why not tell me sooner?”

  “Because of all the things you don’t know, Elise. Because you have two marks, and I am a living mark, and if we were to do anything—if we were to be together—then Eden would open, and He would find you, and it would all end, and I can’t let you—”

  Her knuckles connected with his jaw.

  Being punched by Malcolm was nothing like being punched by Elise when she was furious and heartbroken.

  James hit the wall of the cave. He ragdolled to the ground.

  He wasn’t sure that she hadn’t broken his neck.

  “That should be my choice. Fuck you, Faulkner!” Her voice was ragged.

  A gong resounded through the cavern.

  The Traveler had reached the fissure and its journey had begun.

  This was the Traveler’s one magical power: the ability to shift time, to step back into the past after time’s natural flow had already compelled it forward.

  There was no way to sneak up on Phlegethon, after all. It had sensed Elise coming days earlier. And a fissure, once opened, was nearly impossible to shut down, moonstone artifact or not.

  But as the Traveler stepped forward in the cave, it also stepped backward in time.

  It leaped back to a point before Phlegethon realized Elise or the moonstone artifact were anywhere nearby. And once it traveled to lock the fissure, everything that happened in the timeline since it jumped back a few days would be forgotten.

  Time would be rewritten. Elise and Malcolm fucking in the RV, the fall down the canyon, and even James kissing Elise—all gone, evaporated, erased as though it had never happened, because it wouldn’t have happened. The Traveler was folding time in on itself and cutting away the parts that endangered their mission.

  Elise quickly realized that she was about to forget James’s kiss.

  She bolted toward the Traveler to stop it.

  “Wait!” James shouted, scrambling to his feet. It was hard. Every bone in his body cried out with pain.

  She couldn’t even understand the enormity of what James was trying to tell her.

  It wasn’t merely that James did care about her—that he cared about her far too much for someone who had been taking care of her since she was a teenager, someone who she should have been able to trust without thinking that he wanted love, or sex, or anything like that.

  There was no way she could grasp the enormity of his betrayal.

  If she did, James would never see her again.

  “You crazy bastards!” Malcolm roared from the rear of the cave. His voice was distorted by slowing time.

  James hurtled after Elise.

  She struggled to reach the Traveler first.

  Time and air were thicker around the glowing witch. It had already stepped out of the current timeline, and now it was little more than a ghost with the moonstone artifact held aloft in that enchanted leather satchel.

  It smirked when it saw Elise struggling to reach it.

  “I told you that you wouldn’t remember anyway,” the Traveler said.

  She reached out. “Don’t close the fissure!”

  “No, I don’t think so,” it said.

  James smashed into Elise from behind. They hit the ground together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hugging his arms tightly around her ribs. He buried his face against the nape of her neck. He inhaled the scent of her sweat. “I’m so sorry.”

  And she said, “No!”

  The Traveler lobbed the moonstone artifact, satchel and all, into the fissure.

  Time stopped.

  ***

  September 8th, 2000 — The Grand Canyon, Arizona

  In a stone vault under the earth north of the Colorado River, a portal opened.

  The rocks shifted, groaned, cracked.

  A fissure the width of an arm spread in the darkness.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said the Traveler.

  It lobbed the moonstone artifact into the newly opened hole between Hell and Earth.

  In a blink, the crack was gone.

  In the canyon, approximately five hundred yards away, Elise Kavanagh was very confused.

  She was currently being bear-hugged by James, both of them on the dusty ground in the hot sunlight. Malcolm and McIntyre were on a nearby ridge with their guns aimed at nothing. All four of them were sweaty and exhausted and bleeding, but there were no demons in sight.

  For an instant, nobody moved.

  James was spooned against Elise’s back. His breath was warm on her neck. She was a little too comfortable.

  He released her quickly and sat up. “Sorry, I don’t know what…” He coughed. “Sorry.”

  Elise stood and looked around.

  They were in the Grand Canyon near the rock formation known as the Tower of Set. Elise didn’t remember climbing down there. She had just been in some tacky tourist shop trying to find an appropriate vessel for James to hide the moonstone artifact in. Malcolm had been shopping for leather chaps. That was almost a mile away.

  Yet there they were, indisputably at the bottom of the canyon, and it felt like they’d been in a fight.
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  “Well,” James said. “I suppose the Traveler did its job, then. We’ve clearly gone back a day.” He dusted himself off.

  “Yeah,” Elise said.

  She dusted herself off too.

  It was unsettling to know they had suddenly lost a day like that, with no recollection of what events had gone missing. They had known that would happen, and it was still very strange.

  Elise touched her lips. She looked at James. She frowned.

  “Huh,” she said.

  She felt like she was angry with him, but she couldn’t think of why.

  James frowned back at her. “Hmm.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Well.”

  “Incoming!” Malcolm shouted from the nearby ridge.

  Elise turned to see a few hundred demons flooding up the canyon, coming from the opposite direction as the cave.

  That was one unfortunate side effect of using the Traveler to go on a short journey through time. The Traveler had sent Elise, James, Malcolm, and McIntyre back a day, before the fissure to Phlegethon would have had a chance to open. The tension that had been building for centuries had gotten a chance to erupt, and the Traveler had erased it.

  Unfortunately, the Traveler had also sent back any demons that had already crossed over to Earth after that eruption, too.

  Elise’s eyes swept over the incoming horde, their black-fleshed bodies glimmering in the harsh Arizona sunlight. She estimated at least two hundred demons coming their way. And there were more scrambling up the ridge to attack the RV park.

  “At least you aren’t deprived of a good fight,” James said dryly, plucking the Book of Shadows out of his back pocket. “Can’t ever have that.”

  She rolled out her shoulders to loosen them, adjusted her grip on the falchions, and nodded. “Yup.”

  Malcolm leaped into the canyon.

  “Dibs on the ugly ones!”

  ***

  September 13th, 2000 — The Grand Canyon, Arizona

  Elise and James ate breakfast at sunrise. He had made coffee and scrambled eggs over a campfire. He could cook far better food than that, but the simplicity was fine. It seemed right to keep things simple after yet another near-apocalypse.