by Reine, SM
The situation felt completely wrong for a rescue. Elise wrapped the rope around her fists again. She recalled seeing those bright blue eyes under a ski mask at the cemetery—the same eyes that smiled at her now.
“James told me you’re an herb witch,” Elise said. “But you’re the necromancer, aren’t you?”
Ann shrugged. “Kitchen witchery is easy to fake.” When Elise tensed, she held up a hand like it could stop an attack. “There are more than a dozen fiends in the house above us.”
“Why?”
“I’m not a fighter. It makes sense to have guards.”
“No. Why are you working with Death’s Hand?”
She stood and dusted herself off. Ann’s color was returning to normal. “Vedae som matis doesn’t think I should tell you very much. She’s usually right about things. Look, I like you a lot, Elise. I could have drained you dry to paint that sigil, but I used mostly pig’s blood instead. We don’t have to fight. There’s enough room in the new world for both of us.”
“New world?” Elise tried to make herself sound calm, even though she was watching the doorway and mentally calculating the odds of escaping twenty fiends unarmed.
“Sure. I know you’re in Reno because of the Warrens, and you thought all the power from them would prevent your enemies from locating you remotely… right?” Ann didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “But that protection doesn’t come from the Warrens. There are angelic ruins below them.”
She already knew that, but having her suspicions confirmed made a sick kind of chill settle over her.
“So this is a takeover.”
“Vedae som matis is trapped in Hell, Elise. You know what it’s like down there? It’s… well, it’s Hell. All she needs to break through to this side is a corporeal body, and then we can build a kingdom together.” She took the stone staff out of her pocket and gave it the kind of loving look most girls would reserve for a boyfriend.
Her opinion of Ann immediately shifted from “this girl is misguided” to “this girl is insane.”
Ann stepped forward, holding out a hand. “We can still be friends. When vedae som matis takes over, she’ll need a council, and I can suggest you and Betty if…”
“If what? If I agree to be a blood donor?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve got all I needed from you. My house is done being anointed. Vedae som matis was right about that, too. Your blood is really potent.”
“You can’t use me as a vessel. I’m not a witch.”
Her smile went painfully wide. “Who says I wanted you? I poisoned James for a reason, you know.”
I am the cold kiss of Death...
Elise joined her fists together and swung, bringing both down on Ann’s head.
The witch screamed as she fell, bringing up her arms to protect herself. It wasn’t good enough. Elise kicked her in the face, and her nose snapped. Blood sprayed across the concrete.
A gray blur hurtled into the room, striking Elise in the stomach with all the power of an oncoming train. Her back slammed into the wall.
Over the fiend’s head, Elise saw Ann try to push herself up, then collapse again.
Elise kneed the demon in the stomach, pushing it away from her. She ran for the door, but the fiend grabbed at her shirt with its clawed hands. She stuck her hip out and used its own momentum to throw it over her leg. It lost balance, and Elise jumped over Ann, pausing only to pick up the staff.
It made her hands burn, so she stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans. She ran up the stairs and burst through the door to the first floor of the house.
The walls were lined with pictures. None of them featured Ann.
Something scuffled in the basement behind her.
Elise darted to the nearest room, throwing the door open. Empty bedroom. There was a bookshelf in front of the window. She opened another door—closet. Its shelves were covered in fragments of bone.
The fiend launched itself out of Ann’s room, and she dodged. It hit the wall instead, and the drywall cracked.
“Get the kopis!” Ann shrieked from the other room. “Get her!”
Elise rushed into the darkened living room. It stank of brimstone and blood, and a trio of possessed corpses sat beside the battered couch. They didn’t register Elise’s appearance, even though she recognized two of them as the ones she had fought in the cemetery the night before.
But the pair of fiends huddled in the corner in the shadow of the television, eating a bloody scrap of meat, didn’t fail to see Elise.
One of the fiends darted at her, and she backhanded it, sending it flying into the wall.
Fire burned a path down Elise’s thigh. She cried out. The second fiend flung shreds of her jeans from its claws and slashed again, but she leapt away just in time. The backs of her legs bumped into something, and she stumbled. Her thigh gave out.
Elise hit the ground. The possessed ones animated and stood, staring at her with empty eyes.
She scrambled to her feet as they lunged, kicking a fiend squarely in the face. It flew backwards with a little squeal, striking the lone window through the curtains and sliding to the floor.
Elise flung open the front door, and light flooded into the living room. The remaining fiend recoiled, covering its bulbous eyeballs with tiny scarred hands.
She hurtled outside into fresh air and freedom. She ran to the end of the street and stopped short—Ann’s house was on a hill overlooking the city, and below the hill stood Our Mother of Sorrows cemetery.
The other houses on the street were silent, seemingly unoccupied, but the sky was gray and growing darker by the minute. Black thunderheads rolled down the mountains toward the late afternoon sun. Once the sun disappeared, there would be nothing keeping the fiends from following her.
The possessed ones didn’t care about sunlight. Something scraped behind her.
They were coming.
Elise’s feet pounded against pavement. Her right twitched. The fiend’s claws hurt like a son of a bitch, and the staff in her pocket hummed with furious energy.
The street behind her grew louder. More scraping, more motion. Elise’s leg wouldn’t go as fast as she needed it to—every time she set down her foot, her leg buckled and the best she could manage was a striding limp.
She glanced over her shoulder. Three possessed ones chased her, and they were picking up speed. Worse yet, Elise could feel the demonic presence of the fiends—they were vulnerable to bright lights, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t run blind. And Ann was furious enough to make them do it.
A Jeep passed the other end of the street and stopped at the corner.
“Elise!” The Jeep backed up, made a hard turn, and pulled up alongside her backward. Anthony stared at her from the driver’s seat. “What’s going on?”
“No time to explain,” she said, grabbing the car’s frame and hauling her body up. She didn’t even wait to be fully inside the car before waving at him. “Go, Anthony!”
He adjusted his side mirror. “What are those?”
She clambered into the passenger’s seat. The sense of the servants was almost overwhelming, and she didn’t need to look to know they were coming up on the Jeep. “Drive, damn it! Drive!”
Anthony slammed his foot on the gas. The tires spun out, and the engine red-lined.
Then he found traction, and the car shot down the street. Elise was thrown back into the seat. She gripped the roll cage, twisting around to watch the street recede behind them.
He threw a hard left turn without slowing down. The Jeep felt like it was going to roll, but it barely kept its tires on the road.
The fiends couldn’t keep up. Even better, there wasn’t much traffic, so they didn’t have to stop. Elise dropped back again and ripped her jeans open even wider to see the damage. Three parallel gashes marked the side of her thigh, hip to knee. Although they burned, the wound was shallow.
“Oh God,” Anthony said, staring at her leg.
“Get to the studio, and
take the back roads,” Elise ordered, reaching into the back seat to search through his junk. She found an oil-stained polo with a university logo on the breast. “Are you attached to this shirt?”
He shook his head, and she dabbed at her wounds.
“Elise, what in the heck was—shit!”
Anthony slammed on the breaks. She hit the dashboard hands-first.
She looked up in time to see a hand swipe at her over the windshield, white eyes and a pale face dripping with blood pressed against the glass.
“Don’t stop!” Elise yelled, pushing the hand aside when the servant reached for Anthony. He slouched low in his seat. “Faster!”
The engine roared. She pulled herself up on the windshield, hauled back, and punched the servant with all her strength. He didn’t register any pain, but his one-handed grip on the roll cage weakened.
Anthony swerved, and Elise fell against the side of the Jeep. The possessed one tumbled off the hood.
Elise watched him roll down the asphalt. A truck several car lengths behind them swerved to avoid him as it turned the corner. The servant picked itself up, and then Anthony and Elise turned a corner as well. He disappeared.
“What the fuck was that?” Anthony asked as Elise plopped back down in the seat again. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as though he had been the one running. His face and knuckles were white. “That looked like—I mean—was that a zombie?”
“Not exactly. I have no idea why you were passing that street, Anthony, but thank God you were. I’m not sure I could have out-run them. I think they’re getting stronger.”
“Oh my God, they’re still back there, aren’t they? Ann lives up there! We have to go back, she might be—”
“Fuck Ann,” Elise said. “She’s fine.”
“I’m going to take your word for it. I have seen the weirdest shit today,” Anthony said. “Do you want to tell me what’s the hell is going on?”
She studied the strong line of his nose and jaw in profile. He was focusing on the road, but the veins standing out on his neck belied how much of an effort it was for him not to stare at Elise.
“You know how you were saying you wanted to be a part of my life?” she asked. He nodded, knuckles white. “Wish granted. Now get me back to the studio.”
XV
“James!”
Elise burst through the apartment door. The air inside was stale having the windows and doors closed all day. Nothing had changed since she left—paper spells were strewn across the kitchen table, and a rug was rolled neatly against the wall. There were even vacuum lines on the carpet from the last time James cleaned.
“I could use you at Motion and Dance, Betty,” Anthony was saying into his cell phone, trailing behind Elise. “There’s something going down. Elise is messed up and I’m confused and I need someone sane. Yes, you’re sane. What? God, shut up. Just get over here, okay?”
Elise jiggled the handle on James’s door, and it didn’t open. She found the key on top of the molding for the bathroom door. The tumblers fell into place with an audible click.
James’s bed was empty. She cut her gaze to the window—open—to the mess of papers and books on the floor. The sheets on his bed were a mess. Stephanie sat at his desk. She gazed blankly at the window.
Anthony came up beside Elise and peered over her shoulder. “Was there a fight?” he asked.
Elise gazed at the exposed mattress. Red drops blotted its surface. She ran her fingertips along one of the spots, and rubbed it between her finger and thumb. She didn’t need a forensic expert to know whose blood it was.
“Stephanie,” she said. The doctor didn’t look at her. “Stephanie. Dr. Whyte.”
Slowly, so slowly, she looked over to Elise. “They took him,” she said. Her voice was the kind of calm that came from having reached a point of such hysteria that she didn’t have any emotion left. “Those… things. They came through the window. I cracked it to get some air.”
Elise hauled Stephanie out of the chair and slammed her into the wall by the door. Anthony gave a startled cry and stepped forward, but she shot him a look that froze him mid-step.
“Are you working with her? Did you let Ann in? What the fuck did you do to him?”
Stephanie’s face crumbled. “I didn’t do anything. James was resting peacefully. I got a phone call and after I hung up, they came in. They knocked me out. I woke up and…” She wouldn’t look at the bed.
“Who called you?” Elise demanded.
“Ann. She said she had a question for James.”
“Did you tell her to come in? Did you tell her to take him?” She pulled back a fist, but Anthony caught it.
“Elise!”
He peeled her off Stephanie. Elise jerked her arm out of his grasp, but she didn’t move to attack again.
The doctor adjusted her shirt, neatened her hair, and broke down into tears.
“I don’t understand,” she cried. “What was that?”
Stephanie sobbed for a good long minute, and Elise waited, drumming her fingers against her thigh. When the doctor showed no sign of letting up, she made a disgusted noise.
“This isn’t helpful. Where did they take James?”
Stephanie sucked in a hard breath, straightening and grabbing a tissue to blow her nose. The tears stopped as suddenly as they began. Long breath in, long breath out. When she spoke, her tone was measured and even. She enunciated each word with great care. “I have no clue. I was unconscious.”
“What were you doing all day?”
“I woke up a few hours ago and waited for you. I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I think—I might go home.”
“She’s in shock,” Anthony whispered.
“Fine. Get out of here. Have a drink and lay down or something. You’re not doing any good,” Elise said. Stephanie left without saying another word.
Elise stared at the spot of blood on the bed, her gaze narrowing until she saw nothing else.
James was gone. Ann had him, and Elise had been right there the whole time.
“I’m going to fucking kill her,” she said.
Daylight waned.
Clouds darkened what little sun remained. One moment, the air had grown still, and the next, rain poured out of the thunderheads. Lighting sparked over the mountains in the distance. Rain filled the streets and the people of the city took shelter inside.
Inside Motion and Dance, a storm also began to break within Elise.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Who?” Betty asked. Her friend Cassandra had given her a ride as soon as Anthony called, but Elise’s attitude made her wish she had taken a minute to put on full body armor first.
Her roommate paced the dance hall like a caged animal, limping on every other step. Her eyes were darkened pits of fury. She had become the spirit of vengeance itself, barely contained by human flesh.
Anthony cradled his forehead in his hands as he leaned against one of the mirrors in the main dance hall. He had stopped trying to talk when Elise almost punched him for it.
“Who’s not here?” Betty repeated.
“James. She took him.” She struck the palm of her hand with a fist. “I shouldn’t have left so fast. I should have searched the house. I should have…”
“Hey, calm down,” Betty said, touching Elise’s shoulder. Her skin was hot. “Talk to me, girl. What’s happened?”
“Ann has kidnapped my aspis for ritual sacrifice to a demon goddess of death.”
Betty shook her head. “Yesterday, I would have said you were crazy. Today—well, you’re still crazy, but it’s contagious. What’s an aspis? Demons? Is that what that gargoyle thing was?”
“That was a fiend.” She flung herself into the chair, shredding her jeans along the hole to turn them into half-shorts. Betty leaned in to examine the gashes on Elise’s legs. The blood had smeared, and the wounds were raw.
“I hate to state the obvious, but…”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look good,” Elise
said. She pressed a towel emblazoned with the “Motion & Dance” logo against her injury. They were intended to be used by sweaty dancers. Elise’s blood soaked through the cloth quickly, obscuring the logo of the ballet man wrapped around the ampersand.
“So what’s this about zombies?” Betty asked.
“They’re not zombies,” Elise replied impatiently. “They’re the dead, possessed by a demon called Death’s Hand, and reanimated to do her evil bidding.”
Betty began laughing again. When she saw that nobody joined her, she stopped. Elise’s eyes were cold. She was serious. Deadly serious. Betty deflated. “Oh, jeeze,” she said. “I can’t believe Ann’s evil. I mean, lazy Ann? ‘Let’s eat ice cream after working out’ Ann?”
Elise dropped the towel in the trash can. “The one and only.” She moved her leg experimentally, watching the gashes.
Betty spun on Anthony. “Why aren’t you as shocked as I am?”
“We were attacked by some kind of mutant this morning, and then a dead body with bleeding eyes attack my windshield,” he said dully. “My ability to get shocked has eloped with my sanity and run away to Africa.”
“I think I need the Reader’s Digest version of what’s going on,” Betty said.
“I don’t have time for this. I need weapons and I need to bring all kinds of pain down on Ann.” She snapped her fingers at Anthony. “You’re taking me in the Jeep. Now.”
“Fine.”
Betty hurried after them as they went for the front doors. Elise spoke as she limped along.
“So here’s what I told Anthony: I’m James’s exorcist friend. When working with Lucinde, I stumbled across a demonic plot to ascend to Earth from Hell. Ann is a powerful necromancer and she’s on his side. Now they’re planning to sacrifice James. Good enough for you?”
“Wow. Uh. Okay. If Ann’s got James, why can’t we just walk in and take him? I mean, we’ve worked out with Ann. She’s not exactly formidable.”
“She has a small army. We can’t ‘just walk in’ unless we deal with them first.”
“Oh,” Betty said.
Anthony opened the front door, letting in a wash of the moist air.
