by Reine, SM
There was nothing powerful enough to restore a limb in the Book, but there was one more healing spell. She tore the page free. It was harder with one hand than she had expected; she had to lean her knee on the notebook to hold it still.
Elise pressed her clammy forehead to the bar of the scaffold, clamped her teeth down on the thumb ring, and wiggled the gold band off. James must have still been wearing his ring. She couldn’t feel him, which meant he couldn’t feel her, either. Small mercy.
It took three tries to utter the word of power. The magic sputtered rather than spilled—it pulsed like the flow of blood and showered yellow sparks down her body.
The wound blackened, then began to pale, and new skin inched over the edges. It wasn’t much—she was still bleeding, still hurting, still without one of her arms—but it was enough to clear her head.
Enough to stop Yatai.
Elise abandoned the Book and stood on trembling legs.
The darkest gate hummed as Yatai circled it. Lightning leaped to life within the archway, making Elise’s palm burn with fresh pain. She ignored it and grabbed the ladder leading up to the scaffold, hooking her elbow over a rung and climbing behind it.
She inched up the ladder one step at a time and rolled onto the scaffolding’s platform. The street could have been miles away, for all she knew. She couldn’t focus that far beyond the grates.
Yatai hovered by the base of the gate, tilting her head to examine the symbols lining the bone. Energy haloed her head with darkness.
Elise crawled through the battering wind.
Only another twenty feet.
The demon peeled the glove off of her stolen hand and wiggled her fingers. “To think He would be the vehicle of our liberation,” Yatai murmured, her voice carried on the electric wind.
Belly to the platform, Elise slid until she was underneath the demon—only five feet away. She levered herself to her feet using the scaffold and climbed that short distance toward the chimeric demon, who only looked more and more amused as she approached.
Yatai smiled with Yatam’s lips. “What do you think you’re doing?” Elise drew her knife. “Charming.”
Stretching out her arm, the demon prepared to press her splayed fingers to the dark gate.
Elise threw the knife.
It buried in the back of Yatai’s hand an instant before she could touch the gate. She reared back with a cry and wrenched the blade from her flesh.
The wound didn’t close.
Yatai froze, marveling at the injury. Elise’s aim was good, despite the blood loss—she had driven the knife straight through the center of the mark on Yatai’s palm. Blood dripped down her wrist.
Red blood.
Bracing her knees against the scaffolding, Elise inched higher, drawing level with Yatai, and she pulled the obsidian falchion from its sheath.
“My brother made me mortal,” Yatai said, gazing upon the wound with wonder. “His face—he carried your blood—”
Elise drove her sword into the demon’s gut.
Her brown eyes went wide. Blood dribbled from one nostril.
The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile.
Elise pulled the sword out and stabbed again, and again. It made a meaty sound, like hacking at steaks.
Nukha’il’s wing wilted. Yatai’s expression slackened.
She drooped, her head rolled back, and her arms swept wide.
Like a feather, she fell.
The light of five thousand years blinked out, and Elise felt a great emptiness open in her senses where Yatai had been. The places her energy pervaded—the ichor that devoured the ruins, the darkness in Reno, her spirit within Anthony—vanished in an instant.
Elise clung to the scaffolding and watched as Yatai, with Yatam’s head, Nukha’il’s wing, and her own arm, hit the pavement.
A sob tore from her throat. She pressed her face to the bar.
The gates weren’t open. The city was safe. Anthony would be safe.
And she was still bleeding.
She slid down slowly, the metal slicked with blood from her climb. Breathing was so hard, and she wasn’t sure if it was due to the elevation or her exhaustion or the blood loss.
Elise made it across the scaffolding—a few levels and a ladder away from safely reaching the condominium. But holding her balance on the metal bar without a hand was too difficult. Even with James’s magic healing her, she couldn’t keep her balance.
Her foot skidded on a slippery bar.
Elise felt the rush of falling.
She didn’t feel the landing at all.
It took her a long time to process what had happened. She had been looking at her fingers curled around the scaffolding one moment, and then suddenly she was staring up at the statue of Nügua; how she had crossed the hundreds of feet between the ruins and the condominium, she wasn’t sure.
She couldn’t feel anything below the neck, including her severed arm and what must have been a broken leg. Elise could see her foot twisted strangely out of the corner of her eye, though she couldn’t move her head to inspect the damage. That was probably a bad sign.
Come to think of it, she couldn’t feel her chin, either. Or her throat as she tried to breathe.
Maybe she wasn’t breathing.
Everything was so distant.
Her eyes closed on Nügua’s benevolent smile. Elise’s last breath drifted from her lips, and her lungs didn’t fill again.
XVIII
By midnight, the energy pouring off of the gates died down enough for Union witches to contain them. It took about six hours to construct the warding spells and execute them properly. An hour after that, a kopis reported that all of the possessed fiends were dead. And when the sun rose around eight o’clock in the morning, it was on clear streets and a silent city.
Once Bellamy confirmed that all the demons were contained or dead, Malcolm finally entered what Union HQ was already referring to as Ground Zero. His unit combed Reno for survivors, and he wanted to be there to see what they found. It was against Union regulations for a commander to take point in recovery efforts, of course, but HQ couldn’t get mad about what they never discovered.
Trackers noted activity at a condominium downtown when the gates closed, so that was the first place Malcolm visited. He took his sidearm. Not that he didn’t trust Bellamy’s detecting spells, of course, but being paranoid had kept him alive to see thirty. Not many kopides could say that.
Malcolm limped across the top floor of the condominium to meet his aspis. “Report?”
Bellamy’s spine straightened. Military instinct was impossible to beat out of a man. “We lost more than two dozen good Union men and women, sir. And we also recovered three other bodies.”
“Three?”
“Two demons and a human.” He hesitated. “An unassociated kopis.”
Oh, hell. Malcolm scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Which two demons?”
“Heather blew her magic out trying to identify the bodies,” Bellamy said, referring to a witch on staff whose sole expertise was demonology. “They were more powerful than anything she’s ever seen. Maybe the most powerful demons on Earth. Not much left of them, though.”
At least they were dead. The names weren’t too important. “And the human?”
Bellamy gestured to the edge of the condo.
There was only one thing in the otherwise empty room: a statue of a snake-woman atop a broad stone basin. The entire thing was made of baked clay, and perfectly untouched by the destruction.
Except for the corpse inside.
Malcolm knew who it would be before he looked, and he gave brief consideration to ordering the body’s transport without confirming his fear. But his curiosity won out.
It was Elise, of course.
He kneeled by her body to gaze upon her face, slack and calm in death. There was no hint of the cold fury he had once found so sexy. Her head had been cracked open on the side of the basin, and brain matter leaked from the back of her skull, making
her auburn curls clump together with glossy gray fluid. That was probably what killed her, but he doubted she would have survived bleeding out from the artery in her arm, either. The fall just got to her first.
Gary Zettel brought over a stretcher. “Sir?”
Malcolm stepped back to let him lift her onto a gurney. Gary was actually smiling—the bastard.
Malcolm stopped a passing witch. She was new to the Union, and wouldn’t know who Elise was. “Bring the truck around and take this body to the medical bay. They’ll want to autopsy her.”
“I can take care of it, sir,” Gary said.
“No, you can’t. Go find something better to do.” The former commander glowered at him, but moved on, leaving Malcolm alone momentarily with Elise.
He was surprised to find no sadness within himself at her death. Some part of him liked to think of her in a warrior’s heaven—a Valhalla where she could battle eternally without the troublesome complications of reality and relationships.
Her eyes were still open a fraction. He smoothed his fingers over her eyelids to close them, and then pulled the white sheet over her face.
The intact left arm hung out from under the sheet. Her hand was still gloved.
Malcolm had never seen what was under those gloves before. She wore them all the time, even when they had sex, and she had traded them out for bandages when she showered. He had seen every other inch of her, but that specific area was a mystery to him.
“Why not?” he asked her shrouded profile.
He peeled off Elise’s glove and turned the palm over.
Nothing. Her hand was utterly unremarkable. A little scarred, a few too many calluses on her knuckles. But it was only a hand.
“You were one crazy bitch,” he murmured, sliding her arm under the sheet.
The witch initiate returned a few minutes later, and he watched as she carried the gurney away. Malcolm heaved a sigh.
He felt his aspis approach. The slender man stood by his side silently for a few long minutes as Malcolm watched the rising sun inch toward the ethereal ruins. “So Elise Kavanagh died last night,” Bellamy said. It almost made Malcolm laugh to hear him say her name with such unfamiliarity, like she was a celebrity—or legend. “You had a history with her, didn’t you?”
“Ancient history.” He walked around the statue. There wasn’t a single drop of blood to be seen.
“Need me to do anything for you, sir?”
“Nah.” He kneeled by the basin and ran his hand over the smooth stone. It left a faint residue of dust on his fingers.
When he turned his hand to study the sandy residue on his hand, the recent scar from his binding to Bellamy caught his attention. He rubbed his fingers on his forearm.
“Actually, scratch that. Get me James Faulkner’s phone number.”
James had a long time to study the destroyed region on his way out in the helicopter.
They flew low over Sparks and buzzed the edge of the ethereal ruins, using it as a windshield as they headed for the pass. The snow was becoming too thick to tell what the Union was doing downtown, but he made out a few things in the darkness.
His heart ached as he spotted the empty pits that used to be familiar landmarks, but were now destroyed—casinos, the new ballpark, and even Rancho San Rafael park, where the fields had caved in from Yatai’s merciless tunneling. They were scars on the face of the land, black areas of blight, as though she had dragged razors through the earth.
There was no sense to any of it. It was the embodiment of Yatai’s suicidal despair, and nothing more. She had left so little behind.
They passed on, flew higher, arced over the mountains. Aside from the empty freeways, there was no sign of destruction once they reached the thick trees and ski resorts. Empty and peaceful.
There was sunshine on the other side of the mountain. A thick yellow haze turned the sun red where it splashed on the asphalt, and it smelled of forest fire, but everything was otherwise normal—untouched by the evil across state lines.
They touched down in an industrial area north of Sacramento. Everyone, aside from James, wore Union black. The trucks were even UKA branded. He stepped onto the tarmac and gazed at the sun, trying to remember the last time he had seen it.
“James Faulkner?”
He turned. A young man with red hair waited behind him. “Yes?”
“I’m Remington Boyd. I’m under orders to hold you until I get further instruction.”
“Malcolm agreed to send me to the airport so I could get to Colorado,” James said. “The flight is already arranged.”
“This order comes from HQ. Your evacuation was conditional on Kavanagh going with you, and she’s still in Reno. Until she’s contained, I have to keep you here.” Remington shrugged. “It’s nothing personal.”
“I’m sure.”
James spent a few hours pacing in an empty room with a locked door, twisting the gold band on his finger, probing the magic, considering reaching out to a silent Elise. But what if he distracted her at a critical moment?
He sat down and occupied himself by copying spells on blank pages of his new Book of Shadows. He tried not to think about Elise. He tried not to think about frozen beaches, smooth lips, or sad smiles.
But he thought about nothing else, really.
When Remington returned, it was only to move him to a private room in the barracks for the night.
James thought he would never sleep, but he must have passed out at some point, because he was jolted awake by a knocking at the door. He was surprised to find that the time had somehow jumped from midnight to nine in the morning.
Time wasn’t the only thing that had changed as he slept. Remington entered, freshly shaven and smiling. “Morning! I’m here to take you to breakfast.”
“Has Elise been secured?”
“I don’t know. But we won last night—that demon is dead, the city’s safe, and you’re heading out this afternoon. Come on, aren’t you hungry? We’re having a party in the mess hall!”
James’s cautious optimism didn’t last long. “No. Thank you. I’ll wait here for now.”
Remington shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned to leave, but stopped before he could close the door and put two fingers to his earpiece. “Boyd here. Yeah… Understood. Yes, sir.” He refocused on James. “There’s a phone in the cabinet by your cot. The operator’s forwarding a call in here.”
“From whom?”
But the young kopis was already gone.
The bedside table chimed. James pulled open the drawer and found a plain black cell phone. Did everything the Union made have to be so damned black?
James answered it. “Yes?”
“Hey, this is Malcolm.” His tone was unusually muted. All the humor had gone out of his voice, and it immediately put James on high alert.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, even though he knew there was only one reason that Malcolm would call. James held the phone between his shoulder and ear as he twisted the golden band off his finger again.
The commander let out a sigh. “Listen, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but… How do I say it?”
James slipped the ring free, and felt… nothing.
A gnawing emptiness gaped in the back of his skull. It was like losing an entire hemisphere of his mind—or half of his heart.
“We recovered Elise’s body this morning. I knew you would want to hear immediately. I’m sorry, mate. If it makes you feel any better, it looks like she went out fighting. Can’t imagine she’d want to have it any other way.”
James tried to sit down and missed the chair. His back struck the wall. He slid to the floor.
The phone bounced and landed near his foot.
Malcolm’s voice, tinny and small, continued to speak.
“Hello? You still there?”
James turned the phone off and sat in silence.
DECEMBER 2009
After too many long days of panic and blood, the Union’s infirmary was finally getting quiete
r. Anthony awoke from his drugged haze with a nurse standing by his bed and Christmas lights wrapped around the foot of his bed.
“What date is it?” he asked when he could finally speak.
“December third,” said the nurse. “Don’t move.” She left him and didn’t return. A dour witch whose nametag read “Allyson” replaced her.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Allyson asked without preamble.
Anthony struggled to remember, but his recent memory was blank. “No.”
So Allyson told him. She told him everything. That he had been demon-possessed and killed people. That they had been keeping him under sedation until they could be sure he was safe. She also told him that Reno was destroyed and he wasn’t going to be able to return.
And then she left, too.
He was stunned. But that didn’t last very long. Bound to his bed by the wrists, Anthony had no way of entertaining or distracting himself. Once he confronted the horror of waking up a homeless murderer, it got kind of boring.
A day passed slowly, and then another. So he watched people move through the ward instead.
He caught a couple familiar faces, covered in soot with bruises and lesions, but they were just classmates or old customers. Nobody he cared to talk with. And none of them stopped to look at him. They probably didn’t recognize him with two weeks of beard growth and crazy hair—he didn’t recognize himself in the reflection in the steel table beside the bed.
Nobody but Anthony lasted long in the infirmary. One short check-up, and each patient moved on—either to a hospital, or to another Union facility, depending on the type and severity of the wound.
A lot of corpses passed him, too. Apparently, the morgue was just beyond his bed.
Anthony tried to catch glimpses of them, but most were covered in sheets or zipped into plastic bags. Sometimes he saw a bare shoulder, or a foot. He saw a couple of unfamiliar faces as doctors checked the identity and moved them along. If Anthony had killed any of them, the memories weren’t accessible to him.
