by Reine, SM
She opened the door. James stepped in her path.
She tried to shove him out of her way, but even though she was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like she should have been dead, he was stronger.
“Your parents asked my aunt to watch you until they came back. Since she died, the responsibility of your care falls upon me. I’ve sworn to keep you safe. I intend to keep that promise.”
She transferred her grip from the doorway to a fistful of his shirt. He felt metal press against his stomach through his parka.
The knife. He tensed.
It took all his strength to speak calmly. “I’m not safe now that I’ve found you, either. We need to stay together. It’s the only way either of us will survive.”
Elise radiated silent fury. He was struck by her resemblance to Ariane, although he didn’t recall the sweet witch who birthed her ever being so angry.
And then she released him and sat on the side of the bed, stubbornly ignoring his hand. With careful, measured movements, she lifted the stew to her mouth and drank its broth without dropping her gaze from his. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had killed all those people in the clearing.
When the bowl was drained, she ate each piece of meat one by one and set the bowl down again with hands that were no longer shaking. It wouldn’t be long before she was much, much stronger than him.
“I don’t trust you,” Elise said. “I will never trust you.”
It was the last thing she said to him for a very long time.
Part Four: Afterlife
XX
Death’s Hand surveyed Elise with James’s eyes.
She tensed, expecting him to attack, but he stared at her without moving. His face twisted with a tangled mix of emotions.
Emotions? Could a powerful demon feel?
The silence of the attic around them was broken by shuffling feet. The possessed ones left Anthony’s body to flank Death’s Hand, heads bent in submission. Lucinde knelt with her small head resting against his knee.
The fiends crawled on their bellies to his feet. They laved their black tongues along his ankles, his calves, pawing his hips and stomach. Death’s Hand didn’t acknowledge any of them. His gaze remained steady on Elise, as though he was in no hurry to do anything but look at her.
Vedae som matis lifted a hand. She flinched.
Ann’s body lifted from the corner of the room behind the altar, where Elise had left her. Her limbs lifted, and her legs twitched, but her head remained slack on her shoulders.
She came forward without taking a single step. Her toes dragged against the ground. Ann’s face was blank and her mouth hung open. Her every motion was unnatural, as though she was a puppet with invisible strings. By the time she stopped moving just beside Death’s Hand, Elise was certain she was dead.
Ann spoke. The language that spilled from her lips made no sense to Elise, foreign and guttural and inhuman. Foamy saliva dripped from her bottom lip as though she were an ancient Pythia controlled by a demonic Apollo.
Death’s Hand gestured once more. Ann shivered, and when she spoke again, it was in English.
“Kopis,” she said. It came from her throat, her vocal cords, but the words belonged to vedae som matis. “I have been eager to see you and your aspis, who thrived as I struggled to rebuild my withered soul from the brink of nothingness.”
Another gesture. A fiend skittered from behind Death’s Hand and opened one of Ann’s drawers, withdrawing a long object wrapped in cloth. It supplicated itself at James’s feet. He took the item from the fiend’s hands, giving it time to scurry back before unwrapping it.
Steel glinted in the dim firelight.
“You recognize this, I’m sure,” said Ann’s body. Death’s Hand turned the sword in his hands, hefting it by the hilt to examine the line of the blade. Someone had cleaned the falchion. It was in perfect condition. “Here we are again. Little has changed in the ensuing years, except you are fleshier. You have fattened upon the spoils of victory and comfort while I have floundered.”
Elise finally found her voice. “You can’t have James.”
Death’s Hand made his lips smile. “No?” Ann’s chin quivered, and blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. “It is difficult to campaign on Earth. Things in Hell are much simpler. There are many complications. You and your aspis are a complication. What a coincidence that he would be a suitable vessel. It is fate.”
“Fate,” Elise echoed.
Blood pulsed in James’s veins. “Or something like that.”
“What about Ann?”
“She will survive in this form.” The gesture vedae som matis made with the sword encompassed James’s body, but not Ann’s. “I have absorbed what I need.”
“She was in love with you.”
He rested the sword behind him on the table, out of Elise’s reach. “She lives in me now. We are closer than ever before. She would prefer it this way.” There was almost a hint of love in that voice.
Elise took a step away, inching closer to her sword where it lay next to a bookshelf. She could feel the bulge of the charm-draped chain in her pocket. “Anyone that’s been possessed can be exorcised.”
Vedae som matis nodded, acknowledging the challenge.
Ann’s corpse fell, no longer necessary. Elise threw a hand toward her engraved sword.
The room exploded into black stars.
Elise was smashed chest-first into a wall. Hands gripped her wrists, pinning her in place.
His face buried in her shoulder, and pain erupted in her collarbone. She screamed and tore free.
Elise put several feet between herself and Death’s Hand before she touched the wound on her shoulder—and realized she had been bitten. Blood gushed from the raw flesh underneath her fingers. The inside of her body felt like the inside of fresh steak.
She turned. Blood dribbled down James’s chin as a small chunk of her shoulder disappeared between his lips. His throat worked as he swallowed.
Elise lunged for her sword. She scooped it into her left hand and stood in the same smooth motion, twirling just in time to see James flying at her. She dodged and raised the sword. Her blade slashed across James’s arm in a spray of blood that splashed across her chest.
Vedae som matis barreled into Elise and knocked them both to the floor.
She took their weight on her uninjured shoulder, trying to bring around the sword to slash at him again. Death’s Hand didn’t give her a chance. He grabbed her wrist and crushed it in his hand until Elise could feel something pop.
Her fingers went slack, and he ripped the sword out of her grasp, shifting his weight so his entire body pinned her to the wood. He stank of blood and decay and brimstone, and very faintly like Ivory soap.
Elise struck him with her right hand, but he grabbed her other wrist and pushed both of her arms to the ground. His body burned like a furnace.
She twisted her head away from his sulfuric breath. Death’s Hand buried James’s face into her shoulder, the same one he had bitten before. Elise fought harder, but it was like struggling against rock.
His teeth found her wound around the shoulder of her shirt. Something pinched, tore. She grit her teeth and refused to scream.
James’s weight shifted just slightly, and something pressed into Elise’s leg. Her charms. She squirmed around enough to see her jeans, and a glimmer of metal told her they were sticking just slightly out of her pocket.
“Crux—crux sacra sit mihi lux,” Elise panted. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade—”
Death’s Hand threw his head back, roaring. It tore through Elise’s ears, and she screamed with him as her eardrums thrummed.
He ripped at her jeans, tearing away the pocket. The charms spilled out onto the floor.
James’s teeth sunk into her shoulder again, and he worried at her flesh like a dog with a bone.
She beat her fist against his head, his shoulders, his hand where it pinned her other arm to the floor. H
e paid no attention, growling deep in his throat. She reached for the charms, but he shoved them out of reach.
Elise twisted and writhed, and all she could do was worsen the agony where he bit into her.
Vedae som matis pushed her shirt aside to get a better taste of her shoulder. The pain grew from agonizing to indescribable. His teeth scraped against bone.
I will not scream.
Her back arched, and he pulled his head away. A small strip of skin dangled from his teeth. The burning told Elise it was part of her neck.
Death’s Hand began to lower to her shoulder again, and Elise felt faint. She wouldn’t be able to remain conscious through another second of that horrible chewing, and if she passed out, the pain would be the last thing she ever knew.
Elise reached back. Her shoulder screamed.
Her hand flexed around a shelf on Ann’s bookcase, and she pulled.
The shelves came down on Death’s Hand, on Elise, and the books rained around them. The heavy wood of the shelf struck James’s shoulders.
He roared his terrible roar once more, rearing to shove the shelves off of himself. The space between them was slight, but it was enough for Elise to throw all of her weight into him and push him off-balance. Vedae som matis tumbled away.
Elise scrambled to her hands and knees, closing the inches between herself and her sword. Her hand closed on the leather-wrapped hilt.
Relief washed through her. Adrenaline overrode the pain enough for her to lift it.
She turned as Death’s Hand swung, but her head spun as she moved and dizziness swept over Elise. Blood loss slowed her. He knocked her blade aside and she felt the metal bury into his forearm.
Blood fountained from his arm and splattered against the floor. As Elise watched, the wound closed, healing without a trace.
She took a deep breath and pointed the sword at James. “Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” she gasped, pressing her hand harder over the wound on her shoulder. It grew more agonizing as it dried out and sent fire racing down her nerves.
Death’s Hand smiled. It was James’s smile, warm and friendly, as though he was beginning to assume her partner’s habits.
She reached inside herself, searching for that wellspring of energy that James would always touch when they piggy-backed. It wasn’t magic. It was older, primal—the force of a kopis and exorcist. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana.”
She took a mental hold of the power inside herself and tore it open.
Elise’s senses exploded. It hit James, still in the clutches of vedae som matis, and kept going, sweeping through the servants and wrapping its invisible fingers around them. It poured through her sword, through her charm necklace, and she felt her energy curl around the demons with metaphysical fingers.
Vedae som matis screamed. The demon’s voice ripped through James’s throat, but Elise’s power had taken a life of its own and it wasn’t done.
Wind blasted through the open window, and papers around the room went flying, swimming in circles around and around Elise and James. Vials tipped and shattered, carpeting the wooden floors in shards of colorful glass and ceramic. James’s hair stood straight up from his head, swaying as though he was submerged in the ocean.
His bleeding gaze cut through the chaos. He didn’t speak—she wasn’t sure he even could—but she could feel the fury of Death’s Hand.
Elise kicked him in the face as hard as she could. He crashed to the floor, but his hand reached out and dragged her down with him.
He rolled on top of her and closed his hands around her throat.
She struggled, beating against his arms, but his muscles had turned into bands of iron. She shoved against him.
He didn’t budge.
Blood thudded in her skull.
His bloody moth still grinned as the room grew dark. Her chest hitched with a desperate need for oxygen.
Elise had imagined dying before. She knew it could come in any number of ways. She never imagined it with James’s hands on her neck.
Her legs might have been kicking, but she couldn’t feel them anymore. Her brain was bulging against her forehead. Everything grew distant and dark, even her fingers, and she thought she might have gone limp.
James…
She wished she could tell him she was sorry.
“No!”
The pressure on her throat vanished.
Air stabbed into her chest, burning a path down her bruised esophagus.
Elise wheezed and coughed as color returned to the room, too vivid with the sudden intake of oxygen. James arched. His lips peeled back against his teeth and veins bulged at his throat. His muscles rippled, almost tearing. It was like his skull was trying to crack in half.
His nails dug into the sides of his head. “Let go!”
The voice belonged to James.
An internal battle wracked his body as he fought Death’s Hand for control. Symbols swirled wildly over his skin. “James,” she said, “James, look at me—”
But he didn’t hear her. He twisted on the floor like he was burning in invisible flame.
Elise gathered both of her swords and stood over him, uncertain. She needed to help him, she needed to save him, but who was in control—James or the demon?
With another cry, he froze. His eyes fell on her.
“James?” she whispered.
His mouth was stained with her blood. “Elise, I—” James’s expression twisted, and then stilled.
He was gone again.
Death’s Hand thrust his fist toward the ceiling.
An explosion rocked the building. A huge roar filled Elise’s ears, followed by a cracking like a glacier snapping off into the ocean. Fragments of plaster showered across the floor.
The entire roof ripped off the house and flung into the night with a blast of wind. There were no stars. Clouds boiled overhead as rain poured into the attic.
“James!”
His body lifted into the air. She leaped, clambering as high on the wall as she could to swipe at his feet. Elise wanted to catch him and drag him back. She couldn’t exorcise him unless she could touch him. But an invisible wall had materialized around him, and her hand slammed into solid nothing inches short of his heel.
He dropped to the street outside, and Elise gazed hopelessly down at him, clinging to an exposed wall stud.
She dropped to the floor. The human servants had already gotten to their feet and disappeared down the trap door to follow Death’s Hand. The fiends stirred again, like they were rousing from a long night of sleep.
Elise didn’t want to give them the chance to move.
She took her swords—both of them—and plunged them into the heart of a fiend at her foot. She slashed and stabbed over and over again until blood coated her hand and spattered on her face and nothing stood in what used to be Ann’s attic. There wasn’t much left to kill. Almost everything had fled with Death’s Hand.
Elise climbed onto what used to be a window, preparing herself to climb down the side of the building. Her shoulder burned, but she didn’t care. She had to reach James. Maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe she could—
“Elise—help—”
Anthony had come to consciousness pinned underneath one of the ceiling beams.
She hung suspended, her urge to follow James warring with Anthony’s pleas for her attention. “Come on,” he said, groaning as he shoved at the beam.
Elise sheathed one sword and dropped down. With their combined strength, it was easy to shift the weight of the rubble enough for him to slide out underneath. He was white with plaster dust.
Betty screamed on the other side of the attic. It was a single, constant shriek like the wail of an alarm.
Elise went to her, but when Betty saw her, she only shrieked louder and hugged her body tight into the corner. “Shut up,” she said, kneeling in front of her. Betty tried to scramble back. Elise seized her wrist. “I told you to shut up!”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God�
�”
Elise slapped her.
Betty silenced instantly. Her free hand flew to her cheek. “Hey!” Anthony protested, but Elise turned her glare on him.
“You two need to listen to me. This is—”
A silent voice boomed through the air: Sleep.
“Did you hear that?” Anthony asked.
But before Elise could reply, she felt the command sucking her down into darkness, like she had a dose of narcotics injected straight to her heart.
Sleep…
Anthony and Betty’s eyes went blank at the same time. She slipped to the side and went unconscious immediately. He managed to take a step toward Elise before his knees gave out and he, too, collapsed.
Elise shook her head, trying to clear the flies buzzing between her ears. “No,” she said.
But it was like telling the sun not to set at the end of the day. Her eyes rolled up, and the world went dark.
XXI
Time passed, and Elise awoke.
She rolled onto her side, groaning. Every muscle had stiffened. Her bloody shoulder felt like someone sawed into it every time she moved, and when she probed it with the tips of her fingers, she found blood caked over the injury.
With a jolt, she remembered James’s flight from the attic. She sat upright.
Anthony and Betty were still unconscious. Elise over and shook him.
“Get up. We have to get Death’s Hand.”
He rolled onto his back without stirring. She pressed her fingers to his throat and found a pulse. Anthony wasn’t dead, but he was equally useless.
Elise supported herself with what was left of one of Ann’s walls, shutting her eyes against the waves of pain that rocked through her body. Everything felt torn, bruised, and broken, but there was no time for self-pity. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. Death’s Hand could have been miles away already.
She scooped her charms out of a puddle of fiend blood and lifted the trap door.
The house creaked and shuddered as she made her way down the stairs. A steady drizzle turned the pavement into a shining black lake in the night.
