Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5)

by S. M. Reine

  If Volac was allied with Belphegor, Elise had bigger problems than a lost warehouse. The whole city might starve.

  That meant she couldn’t kill Sallosa. She needed to win her over.

  Easier said than done.

  “I’ll talk to the centurion. But first…” She gave Gerard the stack of paper that she had printed from Summer’s computer. “I want you to disseminate this list of names among the former slaves. If anyone recognizes a name on it, I want them sent to me immediately.”

  Gerard rubbed a thumb along his eyebrow as he took a quick look over the list. “Lots of names.”

  “Yes. Thousands.”

  “Who are they?”

  “That’s what I need to know,” Elise said. “I suspect they might be humans that were brought down to Hell for slavery, food, or…” Maybe something worse. Demons were creative. “Just make sure everyone reads the list.”

  “Consider it done, ma’am,” Gerard said.

  She took a step toward the stairs, and then paused. “Why did you contact Lincoln without asking me?”

  His eyes widened. “Neuma asked me to do it. I thought it came from you.”

  So it hadn’t been a stroke of Gerard’s brilliance after all. “Forget about it.” She’d ask Neuma about it later, when she wasn’t preoccupied.

  He swept a hand toward the stairs. “Want to talk with Sallosa?”

  There were few things that Elise wanted to do less right at that moment. “Lead the way.”

  The centurion had taken the entire top floor of the building as her quarters. Her furniture all looked like Walmart specials—a couple of fake potted plants, a tacky leather sofa, that kind of thing.

  Sallosa herself didn’t suit the setting. She was a full head taller than Elise, ripped with muscle, red-skinned, and hoofed. She looked elegant in a linen shift. A pile of plate armor had been arranged on the floor nearby by a servant, who was tying the back of Sallosa’s dress.

  “Father,” Sallosa said, bowing briefly. Her servant kneeled to place the shin guards over her furry legs. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

  “The warehouse. I need to know how the insurgents burned it when I’ve ordered double patrols around all supply stores.”

  “I’ve already spoken to Gerard,” Sallosa said.

  Elise had left him outside the door with his squad, just in case it got ugly with Sallosa. She didn’t want to have to worry about accidentally devouring the wrong people. “I want to hear it from your mouth.”

  Sallosa spat. “Waste of my time.”

  “Tell me.”

  She huffed as the servant wrapped a heavy belt around her waist, strapping the cuisses into place. “As I told Gerard, the insurgents have simply become more cunning. We have patrolled as ordered. My men are doing exactly as they should. How they slipped past us remains a mystery, but it’s not because of a flaw in methodology on my part.”

  Elise disagreed. However the supplies had been lost, it most definitely was Sallosa’s fault. The scent of a lie rolled off of her.

  “We caught Gremory attempting to take a centuria to the House of Volac,” Elise said. “Do you know if Belphegor’s been in contact with your family?”

  Sallosa had the nerve to look offended. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Belphegor and the House of Volac haven’t been allied since Aquiel ruled the Palace. We have major philosophical differences.”

  The headache throbbed in Elise’s temples. “Whatever he’s offered you guys, let me counter it. I can do better. Is he giving you more farmland? Artifacts? Slaves?”

  “You offend me,” Sallosa hissed.

  So much for trying to win her over.

  Elise couldn’t focus through the pain stabbing into her skull over and over. She needed someone smarter, someone charming, someone who could figure out what Sallosa wanted and promise it to her. Someone like James.

  Since that wasn’t going to happen, Elise would just have to deal with what she had. Not charm, but brutality. “I’m going to remove your century from this part of the city. I’ve sent the twenty-sixth into the wastelands, and I want you to accompany them.”

  “The wastelands?” Sallosa scoffed. “You can’t send us into the wastelands.”

  “Afraid?” Elise asked.

  “You insult me. You insult my family and my honor.”

  Sallosa wasn’t done talking, but Elise was done listening. Her head was throbbing double time now. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it all the way back to the Palace to feed if she didn’t head back soon.

  “The wastelands,” she said firmly. End of subject.

  The door behind her opened.

  Elise didn’t turn quickly enough.

  Metal prongs dug into her back. Electricity followed an instant later.

  It coursed through her body, blanking her mind, crowding her vision with stars. Her teeth felt like they were about to pop free of her skull. And her hands—she could see the bones through her skin.

  Sallosa moved swiftly, drawing her flamberge. “It was never about those fucking supplies. It was about getting you alone, away from the Palace.”

  And she shoved the blade through Elise’s chest.

  At another time, when she hadn’t been forced to resort to using ethereal magic, a little electricity and a sword to the heart would have barely staggered her.

  She was already hungry. Weak.

  Elise fell under Sallosa, out of mind, riding on a flaming ocean of agony.

  She heard something wet and meaty. Her corporeal body jerked. Sallosa was stabbing her, trying to pulverize her organs, doing her damnedest to kill a demon that couldn’t die.

  It wasn’t working, but it didn’t feel good, either.

  Elise’s muscles burned as her skin faded away. She was peeling inside out. Losing her body.

  As she faded, her warding ring fell from her shriveled hand. Clattered to the floor. Her mind opened wide.

  Elise…

  She glimpsed a mirrored hall, wooden floors. The black and white keys of a piano. Long fingers poised to play.

  James’s presence brushed against her skull. It was a bad time for the fissure’s currents to open enough for them to make contact through the bond. Don’t look, she told him.

  Of course he pushed against her harder, trying to see. Why?

  Trust me. Don’t.

  Then she let herself go.

  Elise relinquished her physical form, succumbing to the shadows.

  She filled the room with herself—not deliberately, but because she was incapable of doing anything else. Elise was the flood. She occupied every inch of air and light and drew it within her.

  Elise felt her incorporeal form being sucked deeper into Hell. She was too weak to remain in Dis, and if she didn’t act fast, she was going to fall into Hell’s darker pits. Maybe to Malebolge, where nightmares were formed. Maybe somewhere else she hadn’t yet seen.

  Maybe nowhere at all.

  No. Elise railed against it. Fought to stay in the room.

  But she was weak. She couldn’t fight for long.

  Sallosa nearly killed me.

  The fury gave her enough strength to wrap around the centurion of the thirtieth century, slither down her throat, and engulf her body in darkness. Sallosa tried to scream, but choked on the smoke.

  She kept growing. She seized Sallosa’s servant.

  Once they were tangled inside of Elise, she inhaled.

  For the briefest moment, Elise could feel the other demons writhing, silently screaming their anger. Then Sallosa and her servant died within her body and went limp.

  Eating them was almost as good as devouring mortal life—not quite, but almost. It was enough for her to draw her body in on itself, withdrawing her tendrils from the corners of the room, allowing the hazy red light of the desert to reappear. With concentration, she reformed her limbs, and then her core.

  Her hands flew to her breast. The first stab wound wasn’t gone. Sludgy amber blood oozed down her stomac
h.

  “Fuck,” Elise whispered, lifting her eyes to the room.

  Sallosa’s bloodied sword was at her feet on top of a pile of plate armor. There was no hint of any bodies. She had consumed every last atom of them. Still not enough to heal herself.

  Elise pulled her clothes back on, shoving the warding ring into place before James could try to look in on her again. She winced at every movement. Blood began seeping through her shirt.

  The assassination attempt had done much more damage than it should have. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this: truly wounded, unable to heal.

  People were screaming out in the hallway. The sound settled over her slowly, taking almost a full minute to penetrate her consciousness after the haze of darkness.

  Those were mortal screams. An attack.

  Seizing Sallosa’s abandoned sword, Elise pressed her fist against her chest wound to stem the flow of blood and flung the apartment’s door wide open.

  Gerard and his squad were cornered by members of Sallosa’s century in the hallway outside. Two were dead. Elise’s livery was smeared with cherry-red blood.

  Rebellion.

  Sallosa’s soldiers turned at the sound of the door opening, but before anyone could so much as look at her, Elise was smoke again. Sallosa had primarily controlled lesser demons—nothing that could fight back against her. She filled herself with their blood. She consumed their flesh. It was good, but not enough.

  There was other blood in the hall. Sweeter blood.

  Mortal blood.

  Elise reached for the source, so very hungry, still starving for energy.

  “Hey!” Gerard kicked at her as she snaked around his calf. “Watch it!”

  His voice woke her up. These were her allies. She couldn’t eat them.

  But they smelled so good.

  She reformed into her corporeal form before the temptation could overtake her. Elise had devoured half the century in a few swift gestures, leaving the mortals standing agape. And she noticed, with no small amount of nausea, that she had sucked away the dead bodies of her guards, too.

  Gerard reached for her. “Jeez, Elise, you okay?”

  She looked down. Her shirt was drenched in her own blood.

  The weight of consuming so many demons sickened her. She swayed on her feet. “Take me back to the Palace, Gerard,” Elise groaned. “But don’t—don’t let anyone see.”

  Then she fell.

  Five

  NORTHGATE HAD NEVER really recovered from the fall of Shamain. The wind had been strong enough to knock over half of the buildings downtown, and there wasn’t enough scrap left to rebuild. It wasn’t the postcard town it used to be back when Abel and Rylie had first selected it as the location of their new werewolf sanctuary.

  Worse, it was still occupied by the Apple. Their barricades stood strong around the statue of Bain Marshall. They’d added more fencing around the town’s perimeter, too.

  They couldn’t rebuild the homes that had been lost, but they could add more fucking security to a town in the middle of mountainous nowhere that didn’t even belong to them.

  Not that Abel was bitter or anything.

  He shifted back into his human form just outside town, hanging back under the cover of trees. He skirted along the perimeter to watch the Apple’s patrols through the fence.

  The cultists had stopped pretending to be the Union. They still drove the SUVs and carried the matte black guns, but they wore normal clothes. It was impossible to tell the difference between the Apple and the Scions. Or maybe there wasn’t a difference anymore. They’d been coexisting in Northgate for so long that the lines separating them had become awful hazy.

  Abel walked along the fence until he reached the backside of St. Philomene’s Cathedral. Pretty grand name for a ramshackle old church. The cross on its spire had been blown off during the fall of Shamain, and someone had thoughtfully jammed the base into the ground so that it stood like a sign by the front door.

  Closing his eyes, Abel inhaled deeply, scenting all the layered odors new and old. He could smell Isaiah, the witch that used to live in St. Philomene’s, but that was one of the old smells. Isaiah had refused to work with the Apple and returned to Dis.

  Levi Riese’s smell was a lot more recent.

  Abel became aware of someone joining him and knew by the scent that it was his son, Abram. In a lot of ways, Abram smelled like Seth used to, always haloed by the tang of gun oil and leather. Seemed like he had been smelling more and more like that ever since Uncle Seth kicked the bucket, too.

  “Surprised to see you in town,” Abram said, ever the man of minimal words.

  Abel narrowed his eyes at the cathedral. He could see motion through the windows. Probably Levi walking around with some of his lackeys, plotting more cultish evil. Something to do with treating Heaven like a piñata or mixing up a special batch of Kool-Aid or something. “We’ve gotta do something about these people.”

  “I agree.”

  He turned to his son in surprise. “You do?”

  “Yes,” Abram said, cracking his knuckles. “They’ve overstayed their welcome.” There was a threat in his rumbling baritone. He definitely looked a hell of a lot more threatening than Seth ever had. He was a big guy, Abram Gresham, and not a real emotional one. The stony-faced look made it impossible to tell what he was thinking, so it was easy to imagine he was plotting murder.

  Abel approved.

  “Rylie’s not going to want us to do anything.”

  “Is that a problem?” Abram asked.

  “Nope. Just telling you, Mama’s not gonna be happy when she finds out what we’re doing.” Abel hadn’t decided what they were going to do yet, exactly, but he knew that it was going to be something that Rylie didn’t like. Something violent. Something that would show the entire pack, the Apple, and the Scions who the real Alphas were.

  “We’re not killing anyone,” Abram said.

  “Not if there’s a better way.” He needed plausible deniability to keep Rylie from booting his ass to the couch. “I’m not ruling it out, though. Especially if they try to kill me first. ‘Course, the Apple has already tried to kill me more than once or twice. Maybe it’s already fair game.”

  Abram didn’t argue. “We’ll see.”

  It was starting to drizzle. Rain pattered on the leaves above them. Abel’s skin was still hot from the change back from wolf to man, so it didn’t chill him, but Abram zipped his jacket shut.

  Hunting was always harder when it rained. It washed away the scents. Made it tougher to distinguish old and new.

  Could make it more fun, too.

  The door to the church opened and a young man stepped out. He was thin, bronzed by frequent runs through the wilderness in nothing but his skin. He was already shirtless and unbuckling his pants.

  Abel felt a growl rising in his chest. That curly-haired fucker was Levi—the would-be Alpha himself. He was about to change into his wolf form, judging by the striptease.

  He’d be vulnerable while shifting, but Abel would have to move fast to use that advantage. He took two steps before Abram caught him.

  “I’ll take care of Levi,” Abram said.

  Abel frowned. “You sure? He’s big game.”

  “Not that big.”

  That was fine. The open door of the church had wafted the smell of even bigger game out into the forest—the scent of the woman, a strawberry-blond witch, who shouldn’t have been in town. Stephanie Whyte had returned to Half Moon Bay weeks ago.

  Yet she was back again. And she, as high priestess in charge of this branch of the Apple, was the biggest game of all.

  “Fine,” Abel said. “I’ll see what I can do about the others.”

  Abram nodded once and melted into the forest, disappearing as smoothly as any one of the wolves. Though he couldn’t change into an animal, he still had a few tricks of his own. He’d need a lot of them if he thought he could get Levi out of the way. It’d been a long time since a Wilder had needed to hunt a werew
olf, and it had never been easy.

  Almost made Abel warm with fatherly pride to think of his son putting a bullet in that wolf’s skull.

  The cathedral’s door shut again. He hadn’t seen who’d closed it. Stephanie must have still been inside, but now she didn’t have her pet dog.

  The fence was twelve feet tall and topped with barbed wire, but that wasn’t anything to deter a determined Alpha. Abel jumped up, grabbed a branch, hauled himself into the top of a tree. He leaped over to the other side without even scraping himself.

  He landed in wet grass that squished underneath him.

  And then he heard a very distinctive click, like the hammer on a gun being cocked.

  Exactly like the hammer on a gun, actually.

  Abel froze.

  The smell of silver followed that sound a moment later. Its distinctively sour stench burned in his sinuses. Whoever had come up behind him was prepared.

  “Turn around,” said a man. “Slowly.”

  Abel twisted, tension coiled in his muscles. It was Seth’s former best friend, Yasir. He was a tough-looking guy with scarred skin and thick eyebrows. He’d only gotten tougher in the last few years. That said a lot, considering the former Marine hadn’t ever been marshmallowy soft.

  Stephanie Whyte stood beyond him with a disapproving frown, arms folded. It pissed Abel off to realize she wasn’t even armed. Couldn’t do the dirty work herself.

  “We have these fences up for a reason,” Stephanie said.

  He tried to say, “Can’t imagine why.” All that came out was a growl. He was pulling a Rylie, on the verge of shapeshifting.

  “Yes, fascinating, thank you,” Stephanie said. “I take it you didn’t come here to open discussions as Levi requested.” He couldn’t manage an articulate response, and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of growling again. She arched an eyebrow. “Well, best to make lemonade. Darling, could you please bring the Alpha into the cathedral? It’s obviously time that he and I had a talk.”

  The Apple’s stench was all over St. Philomene’s Cathedral, with all their guns and body armor and rubber and artifice. Abel couldn’t help but curl his lip at it.