by S. M. Reine
She smeared the blood across the floor in a wide circle even as she reached out with her mind.
James. I need a warlock rune.
His consciousness fluttered against hers. He was on the move. Still in New Eden, and trying to reach her. You need what?
Warlock rune. Now. Needs to be big and mean.
To his credit, he didn’t ask why. He simply formed the image of a warlock rune from Onoskelis’s book in his mind. She could see the visualization as clearly as though it were written in front of her.
Elise smeared her blood quickly, drawing the sharp lines and jagged spikes.
I need the word, too, she thought at him.
The word filled her mind with a sense of pressure, as comforting as being wrapped tightly in warm blankets, as hot as standing on the brink of Dis’s wasteland.
Elise whispered it as she continued to draw, suffusing the rune with magic.
It didn’t come out right. She could tell immediately. The power wavered within her, uncertain and weak.
If she hadn’t known any better, she might have prayed for the spell to work.
She splashed the last spot on the ground. The rune was completed.
Orange-red light exploded around her.
“Shit,” she gasped as the rune blazed with fire, filling the cavern with a brilliant glow that Nash was sure to see. It painted all of the eggs around her in shades of gold. Her shadow was cast on the distant earthen roof a thousandfold—a beacon directing Nash to her position.
The wind beat around her. He was moving in.
Elise gathered the magic in her arms as she stood.
Nash descended. He held the flaming sword in one hand and one of the stone roots in the other, snapped off of a slab and uplifted like a spear.
His expression was drawn, regretful. He was prepared to kill her. Ready to send her spiraling to the darkest pits of Hell from which she might never return.
She shoved her magic at him.
A column of fire gushed into the air, thicker than the redwoods and so hot that its core was white. In the instant before it hit the angel, Elise almost regretted casting the spell—she had told James she wanted big and mean, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it that mean.
The flames engulfed him.
Nash’s wings caught instantly. They bent behind him, and he plummeted to the ground with a cry of pain, devoured by fire. Momentum carried him all the way to her. His body hurtled into hers.
And the stone spear plunged into her ribs.
The pain wasn’t as shocking as the impact of it. Like being struck by a train. She staggered, back striking one of the slabs. Elise tasted her own blood when she gasped.
“Fuck!” she hissed, wrapping a hand around the spear near her body. Just the touch made the wound burn worse. It had punctured something important—a lung, maybe. She didn’t dare remove it yet. She snapped it off so that only a few inches protruded from her side.
It had been a smart move on Nash’s part. A wound from a piece of Heaven would slow her healing, make her weak, maybe allow him to kill her.
Too bad that her final move had been better than his.
He was devoured by flame on the ground. He screamed as he thrashed, beating at his arms and chest. Elise’s heart ached at the sight of him burning. She was momentarily tempted to throw her jacket on him, smothering the flames, saving him from the fires.
But Nash had been prepared to kill her to preserve the secret of New Eden. He must have been prepared to die for it, too.
Elise ran to Benjamin Flynn and picked him up. He wasn’t heavy, but he was much taller than her, and it made him difficult to carry. She rushed past Nash, still thrashing on the ground, with Benjamin dangling from her arms. Every step jolted the spike in her ribs. Her heart pounded, and blood dripped down her leg.
Elise thought she heard Nash shout at her, but she didn’t stop to listen.
The sense of ethereal power was growing, pushing hard enough to make her head throb. The angels had realized that Benjamin Flynn was gone from the graveyard. They had probably sensed her casting warlock magic, too.
They were coming.
She phased to the wall with the portal back to Malebolge.
James, where are you? We have to leave. Now.
I’m coming for you, he replied.
Did you get everyone?
No. He sounded tense. Whatever had happened, it was bad news.
Elise opened herself to him. He was just a few hundred yards away. He must have been leading Abram—she couldn’t see the younger man in his field of vision.
She moved to meet them at the mouth of the tunnel. James and Abram emerged as she approached them. She’d expected—or at least hoped—to find them guiding some of the pack back. But they were alone.
“What happened?” she asked.
James’s gaze fixed on her bloody jacket. “I could ask you the same.”
White-blue light flickered in the stairwell, and a cluster of angels entered. They blazed so brightly that they looked like a dozen burning stars.
“We’ll catch up later,” Elise said.
James took Benjamin from her. Without his weight, she was a little faster. They rushed toward the portal.
The newly-arrived angels closed in on Nash first. There was a good chance that they’d be able to save him if they acted quickly enough, and Elise was frustrated by how much relief she felt at that. She was even a little bit happy to see her children approaching, even after what they had done, and even though it meant potential death. Eve’s love really was limitless. Dumb bitch.
“How do we get up there?” Abram asked, craning his neck to look up the portal.
“Elise?” James said.
She prepared to phase. “Hold your breath.”
But then a trio of angels broke free of the others and shot toward them with shocking speed, bathing her in light. Her skin ached. Her head throbbed.
She couldn’t phase.
“Elise?” James asked, edging to her side.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the light. It took all of her strength not to cry out. “Can’t,” she said through gritted teeth.
Benjamin’s eyes cracked open. His irises were warm and brown. He glanced around the room, taking in the approach of the angels, the eggs surrounding them, the portal on the wall high above them.
“Grab me,” he croaked.
Elise didn’t think twice. She seized his wrist, and then Abram’s.
Reality distorted.
For a breathless minute, Elise felt like she was standing in two places at once. New Eden and the Dark Man’s basement folded in on each other. She could see, smell, and hear both simultaneously. Darkness and light. Hell and Heaven.
The three angels approaching looked shocked and angry. It was Uriel, Azrael, and Sandaramet.
“They’re leaving!” Azrael roared. “Stop them!”
Elise’s view of the cavern snapped. It vanished.
They were left standing a few feet from the portal in the Dark Man’s basement, alone in silent darkness. Abram collapsed. Started vomiting, just like people always did when they shifted dimensions.
But how the hell had they just done that?
James dropped to his knees, struggling to hold onto Benjamin’s weight in Hell’s increased gravity. Elise sank with them. Clutched at Benjamin’s hand.
“How did you do that, Ben?” she asked. He didn’t reply. She smoothed a hand over his forehead. “Ben?”
He was unconscious again.
A cracking sound drew Elise’s attention to the archway. The image of New Eden wavered, flickered. Then, with a mighty groan, the stone around the edges cracked. The portal vanished. The hallway went dark.
The only door Elise knew could reach New Eden was gone.
Twenty
“FUCK,” ELISE GROWLED, jerking away from James’s touch. “That hurts.”
“Sorry. Almost done.” He pulled and twisted. The fragment of the stone spear wrenched out of her
side with a slick, meaty sound. She groaned, eyes shut, fingernails digging into her kneecaps. James set it on the desk next to Elise’s thigh.
Lincoln Marshall immediately picked up the bloody piece of stone. “What is this?”
“Don’t know what it’s called. It’s ethereal.” Elise grimaced as she probed the edges of her wound. It seeped amber blood.
“Looks like it messed you up pretty good,” Lincoln said.
She grunted again. “Nothing I can’t heal. Speaking of healing…”
He didn’t even let her finish. “I want to do it,” he said firmly. “I spent the time you were gone praying for wisdom, and I haven’t changed my mind. I want James to cure me.”
Praying? James covered his mouth with his hand and concealed his laugh by coughing. Elise caught his eye. She wasn’t smiling—she didn’t find it remotely funny—but he could feel her agreement through the bond. It was nice to have reached a consensus on something.
“Fine,” Elise said. She brushed her hand over James’s knuckles, then jerked her hand back, as if only realizing that she had touched him after the fact. He was sitting in her desk chair, at eye level with her wounded side. He focused on her knees and tried not to smile. “How soon can you attempt to heal him, James?”
Lincoln didn’t have much time. A few days before he went comatose again, if he was lucky. A few more days after that before the anathema powder sucked his life away. James would have to write a spell as quickly as possible.
“Two days,” he decided. “In the meantime, I have to ask that you remain prone as much as possible and remain well-nourished, Lincoln. Feed frequently.” He chose his words carefully. He didn’t exactly want to encourage the man to eat like a megaira did, but Lincoln wouldn’t have a lot of alternatives if he hoped to survive.
“Will do,” Lincoln said. “Except Gerard’s asked me to go to a meeting this afternoon. Says he wants my help getting ready for a war. Any reason why he thinks we’re going to war?”
Elise’s lips pinched into a frown. “Go to the meeting. Tell Gerard I’ll have a decision soon.”
Lincoln tugged her off the desk, drawing her into a corner of her office—away from James. He spoke in a low voice, quiet enough that James shouldn’t have been able to hear him, except that James could listen through Elise’s ears.
“What happened down there? Nobody’s talking.” Lincoln sounded like he was trying to be so damn private. As though it was his right to speak to Elise like that.
She remained stiff, her hands limp in his. Her side was throbbing. “That’s because nobody knows what happened yet. I have to make a decision, Lincoln. You’ll be one of the first to know the outcome. For now, leave me the fuck alone.”
Lincoln’s grimace flashed through James’s mind, as seen through his kopis’s eyes. But he nodded and left.
Elise didn’t return to the desk to let James bandage her. She slipped into her bedroom.
The precognitive, Benjamin Flynn, was lying in her bed with the silky black sheets pulled up to his chin. Elise had insisted on having him put in her quarters where she could watch him. The cells where Rylie and Abel had been kept weren’t good enough. It had to be her room, and Elise guarding him.
Dwarfed by the black iron bed, Benjamin looked young—no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, even though Elise had said that she thought he had to be an adult by now.
“Who is he?” James asked, hovering behind her as she sat on the side of the mattress.
“He’s a prophet.”
“I know that part.” James had once possessed a book of Benjamin Flynn’s prophecies, and he knew how chillingly accurate the boy’s precognition and retrocognition was. “Who is he to you? Why is he the one you insisted on dragging back from New Eden, of all the victims?”
“Because,” she said, sinking on to the mattress beside Benjamin, “he knows everything about me. Everything. When he wakes up, he’ll be able to answer any question.”
She stroked a curl out of Benjamin’s face. The look she gave him was impossible to interpret, even with the emotional feedback through the bond. There was definitely a mixture of worry and fondness. But even Elise didn’t seem to understand her feelings.
“Is he going to die?” she asked James.
“I have no way to be sure.”
“Alert me through the bond if he wakes up. And work on finding a way to block his premonitions while you’re at it, because it’s the only way we’ll be able to keep him sane once he’s conscious.”
First she wanted a way to heal Lincoln. Now she wanted a way to heal Benjamin. It should have irritated James to have her make such demands as if his time and knowledge were infinite, but it didn’t. If anything, he found it exhilarating.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He hesitated. “Elise…about what we were discussing earlier…” He couldn’t bring himself to say “feeding” in regards to their relationship. “I spoke more harshly than I intended. There must be some kind of compromise. Something we can both tolerate.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. He could feel her growing headache through the bond. “I just don’t want you to give up yet.”
“James,” she sighed.
“What?”
“Is that what you’re worrying about right now? Of all the things?” All her other worries cascaded between them: New Eden, approaching war, Lincoln’s imminent death, the boy in the bed.
“Elise, there will always be something else. There always has been.” He traced the backs of his knuckles down her side, gently brushing the edge of her wound. “None of it matters nearly as much to me.”
She caught his hand. Pressed it against her side, where her shirt was sticky with blood. She was watching his face for a reaction. “I don’t have the time or desire to negotiate with you.” The words were harsh, but her voice was soft. “I don’t think there’s a compromise. If you decide you want to be with me, you know what you have to agree to.”
“We don’t have to hurt each other,” James whispered.
“There are worse things than pain.” She pulled a new jacket on over her bloodied shirt and zipped it up tight. “Watch Benjamin for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking Ace for a walk.”
“But you’re still injured.”
“I’ll take care of it. You’ve got bigger problems to fix.” She took a last, lingering look at Benjamin, then vanished into smoke.
James would never get used to that. He wished she wouldn’t do it where he could see. It was a constant reminder that Elise had changed in a very permanent way that even he couldn’t heal.
He spent the next several minutes spinning spells, weaving them together, and allowing his magic to settle into Benjamin.
The physical repairs were relatively minor. The boy was low on blood. Bolstering its production was a complicated spell, but fortunately, James already had it under his left glove. The minor head trauma was much easier. But once he fixed those things, he didn’t know what else to do. Benjamin Flynn was still unconscious.
James grabbed a notebook from Elise’s desk and started drawing. He’d need a new spell to block premonitions. Something no witch had ever done before, as far as he knew.
“James,” Benjamin croaked.
He almost dropped the notebook. James ripped his reading glasses off to look at the boy, whose eyes were just barely open. “How do you know my name?” James asked, before realizing what a stupid question that was.
When he wakes up, he’ll be able to answer any question.
Elise would want to know. She would phase to them instantly so that she could question him.
But surely she wouldn’t allow James to ask a question first.
“Before you ask,” Benjamin said, his voice barely any louder than a whisper, “the Cubbies will never win the World Series. They always want to know that. It’s not happening.”
James hardly cared for baseball. Maybe Benjamin wasn’t that prescient after all, if he didn’t realize that.
“You’re in the Palace of Dis, Benjamin,” James said, even though he hadn’t asked. “Elise Kavanagh rescued you from New Eden. You’re safe here.”
“I know,” Benjamin said.
“Yes, I imagine you do.”
His head lolled on the pillow, eyes sliding shut again. Benjamin was slipping quickly. The boy was going to be gone soon, and James didn’t know when he’d be able to revive him.
If he wanted to ask a question, he needed to do it now.
The problem was that James had so many questions for him. Not just questions about the future, but the past. How and when Benjamin had been taken to New Eden. What the angels were doing with him. How he could have possibly been communicating with Elise, even as he was lost in prophecy in another world.
But none of those questions made it past James’s lips.
“Am I somehow a reincarnation of Adam?” he asked. Benjamin struggled to focus on him, eyelids fluttering. “I’ve been having dreams of his memories. The magic of Shamain recognized me as though I were an old friend. And Elise called me…” He swallowed hard. “She called me Adam.”
“You were possessed by God for a few minutes. The most powerful entity in the universe, at the time. It leaves a mark. But no. You’re not Adam. Adam is dead, and has always been dead.”
Relief mingled with confusion. “How has he always been dead?”
“He was severed from the universe,” Benjamin said. “His thread was worn out, and now it’s gone. Permanently. He won’t be back.” His eyes fell closed. “You have to tell Elise something. Please. It’s important. She needs to know this.” He was so quiet now that James could barely hear him.
James leaned in close. “What? What do I need to tell her?”
“Marion’s in New Eden,” Benjamin whispered.
The name meant nothing to him. James frowned. “Who’s Marion?”
The precognitive didn’t reply. He was gone.
Rylie had been through so many homecomings now that she could sense people approaching the fissure. The wind became hotter, the smoke thicker. It was like the entire world held its breath in anticipation of people crossing between dimensions.
