by S. M. Reine
The survivors weren’t even half of the creatures living in the Palace, though. Elise had begun allowing certain demons to live within the battlements. She trusted few members of Belphegor’s army—her army—and kept most of them outside her defenses, where they wouldn’t be able to easily stage a coup; instead, she had taken in the artisans and servants, the lowest of the low who served with gratitude.
These demon additions to her staff had stalls in the new market, too. Products made from human byproducts weren’t permitted, but there were an impressive number of handcrafted tools and trinkets made from Dis’s more natural resources: blown glass, stone cookware, harpy wool blankets.
When Hell wasn’t murderous, it could be downright beautiful.
A hush fell over the market as Elise passed through the stalls, heading toward the interrogation room. She had been spending so much time with the army outside the walls that people freaked out when they saw her within the Palace. Neuma said it was because they admired her; Gerard claimed it was fear.
Neither of those were pleasant possibilities.
By the time she reached the ladder into the interrogation room, her face was fixed into a severe frown and tension was knotted between her shoulders. The nearby walkways were filling with people, all eager to watch.
The interrogation room was a suspended platform surrounded by magical walls that allowed spectators to watch the proceedings within. It used to be where the Inquisitor plied his trade—a role occupied by Elise’s father in the previous administration, the irony of which did not escape her—but now it was the best place to torture high-profile prisoners.
The wards were inviolable. And everyone could see exactly how merciful Elise was toward those who didn’t obey the Father.
Every time she went in there, it was like being on stage again. Elise hadn’t performed in years, not since she and James had advertised their fledgling dance studio by participating in competitions. She had never been a fan of the attention, but James had thrived on it.
She couldn’t hide behind a dance partner anymore. Elise was a soloist now, and with a blade rather than high-heeled shoes and a fixed smile.
The corner of her mouth quirked at what James would have thought of Elise’s latest performances.
She climbed hand-over-hand into the interrogation room. Gremory was supervised by a group of human guards and a single gibborim. He was so large that he had to crouch to fit under the arched roof. Elise wished she had seen how he managed to get into the room in the first place.
The prisoner was chained on his knees with his arms above his head. His scale armor had been stripped away, leaving his muscular, human-like body bared to the harsh air of Dis. His skin was bone-white and translucent. Red veins gripped his ribs and crawled down his thighs.
“Father,” Gremory said, “what a pleasure to meet you.”
Elise didn’t bother replying.
Gremory had been Belphegor’s praetor when he still possessed the army. They were also the same type of demon, although Gremory was much weaker. That didn’t mean much. Considering Belphegor’s power, it would have been hard for anyone to match him.
“We found him trying to lead one of your centuria away,” Gerard explained, taking position beside the gibborim. “The twenty-sixth.”
Elise lifted an eyebrow. It wasn’t surprising that Gremory had been trying to undermine her, but the twenty-sixth had been camping right by the gates—a dangerous place for a dissident to appear. “Were they leaving willingly?”
“It seems so. He was trying to transport them to the House of Volac.”
That House wasn’t allied with her yet, but she did have its daughter, Sallosa, as centurion of another century. More dissent within the ranks. “Send men to watch the thirtieth century—the one that Sallosa is commanding. Reassign the twenty-sixth to the wasteland perimeter. Kill the ones that resist.”
“Sure we shouldn’t kill them all?” Gerard asked.
Tempting. But Elise couldn’t kill every single demon that didn’t like her. Besides, she’d needed to move more forces into the hostile wastelands anyway. The forces she sent to patrol there kept going missing. Might as well put the centuries that disobeyed at risk.
“You heard my order,” Elise said.
Gerard sent one of his men out to take care of the twenty-sixth centuria. The trap door opened and slammed shut again.
Elise held out her hand. Without asking, Gerard gave her a knife.
Gremory’s eyes tracked the motion of the blade. There was no fear in his eyes. Elise would have to see if she could change that attitude.
“What’s at the House of Volac? Is that where you were going to meet Belphegor?”
The answer came from him easily. No threatening required. “He’s not there. I was merely planning to run an errand for him.”
“Then where is he?” she asked, circling Gremory.
“You already know that I won’t tell you. Attempt to torture me.”
He sounded so calm about it.
Elise’s eyes flicked up to the walkways ringing the room. Half of the Palace was watching. She needed to handle this as she did all things—swiftly, and without bullshit.
She stepped close to Gremory. “This isn’t going to end well,” she muttered. “We don’t need to do it like this. It’s a waste of time.”
“However long you waste attempting to beat information out of me is entirely within your control, Father.” A lazy smirk curved over his lips, and it was unsettling on a face so similar to Belphegor’s. Belphegor didn’t smile. Not like that. “There’s an alternative way to reach my master, you know. Let me go. I’ll arrange the meeting.”
Belphegor had offered to teach her to perform warlock magic. He was the only surviving demon that knew the archaic skill now that Abraxas was dead.
Elise hadn’t taken him up on the offer. She still didn’t know why Belphegor regarded her as an ally, and, frankly, she didn’t want to know. There would be a price for that knowledge, and Elise wasn’t going to pay it.
She dug the knife into Gremory’s chest.
At least, she attempted to dig it into his chest. The blade deflected from his skin, grating as though he were made of stone.
When she struck again a second time, harder than before, the blade simply shattered.
Gremory was still smirking.
Elise slipped the hilt of the broken knife into Gerard’s hand, careful not to let the spectators see that it had failed.
“What’s your backup plan?” Gremory asked casually, as if he were one of the guards ringing the room rather than the prisoner.
Gerard barked a laugh. “You think that was her primary plan? You really thought she was going to try to stab you?” He said it loudly, grandly, playing to the audience. They all laughed. Of course they all knew how hard Gremory was. Of course the Father knew better than to hope she could damage him physically.
She couldn’t falter when people were watching. She couldn’t have doubts.
Gerard was right, though. She had already suspected that torturing Gremory wouldn’t be possible.
Elise paused to gather herself, eyes closed, taking a deep breath. This is just another performance. She was about to go on stage to compete for a regional title. She only had to dance for a board of harsh judges and walk away with the prize. The fact that her dance partner of the day was in chains and the only accompaniment was the pounding of her heart didn’t change the fact that it was just another performance.
It would have been easier with James beside her.
She opened her eyes and turned to face the spectators. With her teeth, she tugged on each finger of her left-hand glove, loosening it. Then she peeled it away.
Gasps and hushed whispers spread over the walkways.
Her hand was covered in fiery orange runes that crawled over her knuckles, slithered between her fingers, orbited the joint of her thumb.
Infernal runes.
Elise lowered her arm and turned back to Gremory before th
e spectators could see that the runes were flickering. Not the flicker of fire, but the flicker of failing power. Every time the symbols darkened, pain lanced to her elbow.
She didn’t let it show on her face.
“Do you recognize this?” she asked, curling her fist around the magic, concealing the weakening runes from his view. Flames licked between her fingers.
Doubt had crept into Gremory’s features. He pulled on his chains, as if testing their strength. “Impossible.”
“Tell me where to find Belphegor.”
After a beat, he said, “No.”
She wasn’t going to ask him again.
Elise took off her warding ring, letting the full sense of magic settle over her. With her opposite hand, she gripped his throat. “I am the Father,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear her. “Behold.”
Time to do the tango.
She let a word of power roll off of her tongue.
It spilled from her core, striking the air like a tuning fork rapped against stone. The tone was almost right. A little sharp.
The rune under her thumb flared.
Fire washed over Gremory. He radiated bonfire heat, veins burning bright red.
His head fell back and he screamed.
It was burning him—actually hurting a demon like Belphegor—so Elise didn’t let go. But she felt the wrongness in the spell. It was flickering harder. Her bones were shaking. The burn was creeping up her arm, lashing back against the wielder.
If she held it, she would be reduced to ash.
She gritted her teeth and pushed hard with all her willpower, trying to shove the magic into him.
Gremory’s eyes opened again. He glared at her.
“No,” he repeated.
His will was weaker than hers, but he wasn’t the one draining himself by using untested, hacked-together warlock magic.
She pushed, and Gremory pushed back.
The runes fizzled out. Her hand went blank.
“Shit,” Elise said.
With a roar, Gremory wrenched his arms down. The chains had been weakened by Elise’s faulty magic, too—they snapped.
His fist seemed to come from nowhere.
The blow sent Elise flying. Her back smacked into the wall, and she bounced off onto the floor.
Gremory was laughing as the humans fired on him with human guns. The bullets didn’t touch him.
And the spectators were watching every moment of it.
Elise had just fallen on a grand jeté.
Have to recover.
The gibborim threw himself on top of Gremory, and they wrestled, rolling across the tiled floor with a rain of meaty slaps and grunts. Her guard didn’t stand a chance against the prisoner. But the distraction gave her an instant to pull out her failsafe.
She wrenched off her other glove.
The ethereal runes blazed to life, making her entire body shake, blanking out her vision so that all she could see were green shapes when she blinked. This magic had been waiting for her for weeks. She hadn’t dared use it—not when it weakened her so much.
Now Gremory was slamming the gibborim’s head into the floor, and the gibborim wasn’t fighting back. Gremory got to his feet and turned to face Elise again.
She unleashed the ethereal runes.
Lightning lanced to Gremory, engulfing him in brilliant, burning light. It hurt. She was screaming. But it was so much more powerful than the warlock spell had been, and it was her only chance to kill him. There was no point containing something like Gremory for long.
The spectators shrieked with pain. Many were demons, and just as susceptible to ethereal light as Elise.
She didn’t stop to see if they were smart enough to run. She threw all of her strength into the spells, roaring as the magic ripped through her to consume Gremory.
He didn’t have any of Belphegor’s anti-magic defenses. He fell.
Elise stood over him for a full minute—about thirty seconds longer than she needed to—and kept pouring the rune magic into him, lighting up the interrogation room and the courtyard with nuclear white. She could actually watch as her skin faded away and the bones appeared underneath. But she kept electrocuting Gremory until he stopped moving, stopped breathing, until he was nothing but charcoal at her feet.
Then there was nothing left in her. The magic cut off.
She staggered, arms clutching her stomach. Hunger roared through her body.
“Elise!” Gerard moved to catch her.
She regained her footing and shoved him away. “Don’t,” she snarled. Just being near him made her hungrier. The heartbeats of her human guards made her salivate. Her body pulsed in time with their flowing blood.
“You killed him,” said another guard, Aniruddha. “But he could have told us where Belphegor was.”
Elise couldn’t respond. She stumbled toward the trap door.
“He wasn’t going to talk,” Gerard said from behind her. He still sounded confident. Unbothered. His trust in Elise was unaffected. “Send a cleaning crew up here. We’ll fertilize the flesh gardens with Gremory’s ashes.”
She wrenched open the exit and took a last glance around. The walkways had mostly cleared out, but not entirely. There were witnesses to Elise’s failure. Word would spread.
Elise had finished her dance, and the judges had awarded her a row of zeroes.
Onoskelis’s desk in the Great Library was unoccupied.
“Where is she?” Elise snarled, whirling on the other librarian.
Paimon squinted at her through gold-rimmed spectacles that magnified his eyes. “I take it that something of interest has happened?”
Elise thrust her bare hand at him. “The warlock magic failed. That’s what happened.”
Paimon slid his spectacles to the tip of his nose and studied her with cool indifference. The rune had burned into her skin, leaving the flesh blistered. Using the ethereal magic had drained her too much to heal it.
In order to replenish her stores she was going to have to feed again, even though she had fed barely two days earlier. In the meantime, her stomach was a painful pit and every mortal she had passed on the way to the library had looked like meat to her.
Elise had promised herself that she wouldn’t end up like this again.
“I don’t know what’s become of Onoskelis,” Paimon said in the smoothest vo-ani that Elise had ever heard. His voice was melted butter. “The fact that she has gone missing would suggest that she’s no longer needed.”
Clenching her hand into a fist again made the blisters stretch, but the ache helped her focus on his words rather than the beat of his heart. “No longer needed? Where, in the library? In service to the fucking Palace administration?”
“There’s no need for hysterics.”
Elise wasn’t hysterical. She was furious.
With a sweep of her arms, she sent Paimon’s papers scattering over the floor, then slammed her knuckles into his bare desk hard enough to dent the wood. Another shock of pain. It was good.
“The information she gave me wasn’t enough,” Elise said, enunciating each syllable. “I looked weak. I was forced to drain myself to kill the prisoner. Onoskelis failed me.”
Annoyance pinched Paimon’s lips together. “Really, now.” He slid out of his chair and landed on the ground. Standing, he was barely tall enough to reach Elise’s hips. He waddled to the nearest papers and began gathering them. “Did she teach you warlock magic?”
“No. She gave me a book.” A book that Elise had accidentally set on fire while testing the runes. It was now a charred pile of papers in her room.
“An instruction manual?”
“Not exactly,” Elise said. There may have been instructions, but she never would have known. She couldn’t read the language the book was written in. It wasn’t vo-ani. She had tried casting the infernal runes in the appendix the same way that she cast ethereal runes, assuming that the processes had to be similar.
Apparently not similar enough.
&nb
sp; “You failed to make use of a gift from Onoskelis, and you’re blaming it on her,” Paimon said.
Elise quivered with rage and hunger. “She said she would help me.”
“Did she?”
Now Elise understood what he was getting at, and it just made her angrier. No, Onoskelis hadn’t said she would help Elise. The librarian had been about as impressed by Elise’s demands as Paimon, and had given her the book mostly as a way to get her out of the Great Library.
He already knew this. He was only asking the questions to piss her off.
Or to prove a point.
Elise helped him gather the papers she had shoved to the floor. She moved more quickly than he did, and she had collected most of the mess within a couple of minutes. She set them on the desk.
By the time she spoke again, she was calmer. “It’s not normal for the librarians to vanish, is it?”
“Sometimes,” Paimon said.
“When will they be back?”
“They won’t. Not in this genesis.”
Elise sat in front of the desk. “Genesis?”
Paimon scrambled to get back into his chair—a graceless movement that involved a lot of wild kicking. Comfortable on his cushion once more, he began sorting his papers. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I will be here as long as you need me. I will keep the Library in order.”
Big job for a small toad. The Library occupied most of an entire tower, and it was filled with hundreds of shelves of ancient texts and scrolls. There were also more shelves underground, below the crystal floor—Elise had no idea how many. Onoskelis had made it clear that nobody was allowed down there. Even the woman currently in charge.
“I’m going to lose control of the Palace if I don’t figure out warlock magic,” Elise said.
Paimon licked his thumb with a skinny tongue, shuffling through the corners of a few pages, as if to make sure they were in order. “The administration changes frequently.”
And apparently he didn’t care who was in charge. Onoskelis had usually seemed to be of a similar opinion. Sometimes, though, Elise had thought—or at least hoped—that the enigmatic librarian supported her. Stupid hopes. She hadn’t supported Elise enough to continue staffing the library, much less help her find the information she needed.
