Sins of Eden

by SM Reine

  At least, the ones that he could read were about geneses. Many were in languages he didn’t understand, and many more in languages he didn’t even recognize.

  Books that had survived the last genesis. The world before Adam, Eve, and Lilith.

  The collection was beyond priceless, and judging by how hard the tower was shaking, he was running out of time to explore it.

  Ace’s chain rattled when James returned to the table he was using as home base. The dog was straining to reach him again, straining against the end of his tether. Fortunately, the leg of the table was obsidian, like many other things in Hell; it withstood the dog’s efforts at escape, and all James needed to do was take a seat outside of Ace’s bite reach.

  “Genesis, genesis…” James muttered to himself as he opened another book, tugging on the collar of his shirt. The heat from the fires below was funneled directly toward him like the constant exhalation of a massive beast.

  This book was a lengthy list, like an annotated book of laws. It was written in the ancient ethereal language. The first item on the list said, “Once begun, the genesis must be completed.”

  “Shocking,” James remarked.

  The tower groaned overhead. James looked up to see the crystal floor—a roof to him—shivering as though it were going to break.

  He held his breath. The floor didn’t shatter.

  After an agonizing pause, James bookmarked the list of laws, then set it on the stack he wanted to keep for later examination.

  James unfurled another scroll. He couldn’t read it. He started to set it aside.

  “It’s about avatars,” said a boy. “I can read it.”

  A chair across the table was suddenly occupied. Benjamin Flynn was dusty with ash. Exhaustion rimmed his eyes. The dog was going wild, snapping and snarling, but Benjamin had cleverly chosen one of the only other seats beyond Ace’s reach.

  “How in the world did you get in here?” James asked, hands tensing on the scroll.

  Benjamin jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Sinkhole. I can see the fraying cables between all the universes, and I’ve been exploring them for a while, so I’ve gotten pretty good at finding my way around. Better than I used to be. It’s easier to actually go places instead of just seeing them in my mind.”

  “Those sinkholes have only been forming for a couple of days.”

  “Really? It feels like it’s been…” His eyes were chilling as he lost himself in distant thought. “Forever.”

  Maybe for Benjamin, it had been.

  James looked down at the scroll again. He still couldn’t read it. “Avatars?”

  “Right now, with Eden cracked open, the triad of gods can go wherever they want. But they usually need avatars. They’re not supposed to interfere directly with Heaven, Hell, and Earth.”

  “Avatars are, what, representatives?”

  Benjamin glanced at Ace. The dog stopped barking. “Incarnations.”

  “The gods can give themselves rebirths on Earth when they want to get involved, is what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah,” Benjamin said. “Kind of. It’s complicated. There’s a cost.”

  “Are you my son? I mean, are you his avatar?” James asked.

  It felt like such a ridiculous question. This young man couldn’t be his son. Didn’t look anything like him.

  “Yeah,” Benjamin said. “I think I am.”

  That answered the “how” of it. But there was still another big question. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m here, in the flesh, and sometimes I’m just seeing it.” Benjamin tapped his temple. “I see a lot of things. I know I must have come here for a reason. I had good reason to send myself into this time and place.”

  “Rylie,” James said. He cleared his throat. “You, ah, seem to have been involved with what happened to Rylie. Does that help you recollect anything?”

  “Elise needs her. Sometimes I almost think…” His face twitched. “I’m not sure. Like I said, there’s a cost. Avatars come back different, without all of our memories. Makes it harder to interfere. You know? You probably don’t know; even I don’t know.” One hand crept over his forehead, pressing tightly to his skull, as if to contain his thoughts.

  “Benjamin,” James said in a low, urgent voice, “you came here for a reason. Think hard. Figure it out. Rylie Gresham. Werewolf Alpha. You wouldn’t have given Elise the falchion back and demanded that I use it on her body if it weren’t for a good reason…right?”

  “Probably.” Benjamin was rocking in his chair, forehead pressed to his knees.

  His son reborn. Not James’s child in body, but in spirit. A different man grown from the same seed.

  James’s heart was hurting. “Where is Nathaniel?”

  “I can see what Nathaniel sees sometimes, now that he’s loose. I saw fire. I saw a tidal wave. And now I see…” Benjamin shut his eyes, pressed his hands over his ears. “I’m at her grave. I feel so alone. I just don’t want to be alone anymore. I need you to come find me. That’s why I came—because you needed to know. Come find me where we buried her.”

  The tower shook again. One of the shelves tipped over, showering books onto the floor—where they immediately vanished.

  A sinkhole formed inches from James.

  James leaped to his feet in time to untether the dog, dragging him away as chairs vanished into the sinkhole. Ace was smart enough to know that this wasn’t a time for biting James. He lunged to the other side of the floor.

  The shelves shook as the sinkhole widened, exposing the Earth far, far below, as though James were looking down on it from an airplane. There was a coast, a roiling ocean, burning cities. The wind that whipped through his hair and shirt smelled like acid rain.

  “There,” Benjamin said, shockingly close to James. He had gotten up quietly and left the table. “There it is.” His jacket billowed around him, short curls swaying.

  And then Benjamin jumped through the sinkhole.

  James didn’t even have a chance to react. “Nathaniel!”

  He was gone. It didn’t matter how hard he strained or how desperately he wished for it to change—his son was already gone.

  James was temped to jump after him.

  One last fall.

  Hands crept over James’s shoulders. They pulled him away from the sinkhole. He looked down to see pale, slender fingers with black nails, and for an instant, he believed that it was Elise.

  But the strength of anger that crawled over him couldn’t have come from her. It was sickeningly powerful, evoking thoughts of beating Benjamin, smashing his head against the wall, making the boy pay for how much he had scared James.

  Ace was growling, slinking into the corner of the library until the chain at his neck strained, strings of saliva drooping from his jaw.

  He turned to see a woman who superficially resembled Elise standing behind him. She had the pale skin, the black eyes and hair. She wore black leather that framed her cleavage in a diamond, a snug corset, and black jeans. She even carried a sword. But that was not Elise’s falchion, and the demon was not Elise.

  James’s thoughts went wilder still—far past Benjamin, to how frustrating he’d found working with Brianna Dimaria, or the moment he’d realized Stephanie and several members of his coven were with the Apple.

  The thoughts of retaliation that followed were so violent that they shocked him. He imagined shotguns and garrotes, magical fires, crushing bones into dust with the force of magic he no longer carried.

  It was because of the demon. She looked beautiful, like a succubus, but she was something terribly, terribly wrong.

  She didn’t make him lust. She made him hate.

  Her hands closed around James’s throat.

  He jerked away from her and almost tripped into the sinkhole to Earth. The only thing that spared him was hooking his arm around a bookshelf, but one foot still slipped over the edge. His shoe fell off. The wind yanked it away.

  “No,” the demon said softly, pulling h
im back toward her gently. “Come here. Come to me. There’s so much anger in you.”

  James imagined throttling her. Throwing her to the floor, pressing all of his weight against her throat.

  He had never been so furious in his life. He choked on it, unable to breathe.

  The demon whispered soft nonsense words to him as he fell to his knees, weakened from slow asphyxiation. All he felt were fingers on his shoulders. And the hate. So much hate.

  The library tower shivered. Another bookshelf toppled behind James with a resounding crack.

  If Elise hadn’t been in Dis, she never would have been poisoned by the anathema powder. He wouldn’t have needed to heal her. He could have still had his magic, reached Eden, entered the Origin, fixed all of this.

  The destruction was her fault.

  Another hand seized upon the demon’s arm, wrenching her away from James.

  The instant their contact broke, the hatred evaporated, leaving his muscles liquefied. He collapsed, grabbing the table at the last moment.

  A pair of leather-clad legs moved to stand between James and the demon. His eyes tracked up from her bare feet to her knees, her hips, her back. This was Elise, and she looked just as powerful as the creature that attacked James. She didn’t need another demon’s thrall to evoke her rage.

  “Let me have him,” the other demon whispered. “I see how much you hate him. Let me take him away.”

  Elise visibly bristled. Energy lashed around her in spikes. “You can’t have James.”

  “Please, try to stop me.”

  Anger smoldered in Elise’s flesh. “Okay.”

  It was only then that James realized that Abel stood behind Elise, accompanied by the swirling wolf spirits. The Alpha pointed. “That one,” Abel said.

  The demon gave a battle cry, but it was immediately cut off when a wolf’s jaws snapped down on her barely corporeal arm. Smoke gushed from the wound.

  Elise looked triumphant. “It works,” she hissed. “All of you Fates are going to fucking die.”

  The other wolves leaped, slamming into the Fate.

  She fell under the assault. Her body vanished among snapping jaws and shimmering fur, but her scream was carried through the library on torrential winds from the sinkholes.

  Elise flashed across the tower and wrenched James to his feet. She clutched his face in both of her hands, and the desperation in her expression sucked away what little breath remained. “Are you okay? Did Atropos hurt you?”

  “Fine,” he squeezed out. “But—your powers—”

  She embraced him tightly for an instant, pressing her ear to his chest as if to listen to the beat of his heart. Her fingers clutched at his back so tightly that it hurt, even beyond the strength of her infernal power.

  The demon called Atropos beat away the wolves. Smoke streamed from every wound. As James watched, the injuries struggled to heal slowly—so very slowly, for a creature like her.

  The flesh had been completely stripped from her right arm. There was nothing but bone and ichor underneath.

  “What in all the hells are you?” Atropos snarled, hand lashing out to seize one of the wolf spirits by the throat.

  She could touch it as easily as it touched her. She ripped its throat away.

  Elise smashed into the other demon. They pitched over the railing, tumbling toward the fires. The howl of the wolf spirits swirled through the tower as they chased Elise down.

  Abel stood on the edge, hands gripping the rail. It didn’t look like his mind was with his body—he stared blankly down into the thrashing darkness. Sweat soaked through the collar of his shirt.

  James rubbed his throat, sore from the demon’s grip, as he staggered toward the Alpha. “Abel? Are you all right?”

  Darkness surged over the side of the mezzanine.

  Atropos’s face reared over James, too huge, her eyes vast pits and her mouth gaping. She had broken free of Elise and the wolves’ assault. “Kill the witch!” she shrieked.

  Her barely corporeal form smashed into him.

  James choked on the anger. The thoughts that struck him weren’t rational. Weren’t even his thoughts.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking of how Elise was always fucking so many other people, trying to make him jealous. Malcolm. Anthony. Lincoln. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t worked, if she hadn’t known how much it would hurt—and he would have to kill her for it.

  He was going to kill her.

  James stumbled backward, overwhelmed by the image of attacking Elise, hurting her, killing her.

  No. It’s the demon. It’s just the demon.

  He could see nothing but Atropos and Elise’s swollen, bloodied face.

  She deserved it. She deserved every ounce of pain.

  James didn’t even feel it when he stumbled through the sinkhole to Earth.

  His feet slipped. The library vanished around him. His heart lifted into the back of his throat and he tumbled into the night, just like Benjamin had.

  So many miles down.

  As soon as James was on the Earth side of the sinkhole, Atropos’s thrall lifted.

  It was a long way down.

  He had endless seconds to feel guilty for thinking violent thoughts about Elise. Long enough to realize that the burning coastline was rushing up to meet him. Long enough to wonder if his dying thoughts would be anger at everything that happened in his life.

  He couldn’t seem to draw a full breath, so he didn’t try. James closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the ground strike.

  But darkness consumed him, and he never hit.

  James landed safely amongst a torrent of papers from the Library. Not as hard as he would have landed if Elise hadn’t caught him, but hard enough that the impact jolted through his spine like an iron spike.

  The pain was good, in a way. It meant he was alive.

  Small comfort.

  “Good God,” he groaned, rolling onto his back.

  Elise and Abel’s landings were far more graceful. The werewolf managed to stay on his feet, spinning with his teeth bared, searching for the Fate that they had left behind. “Where’d she go? Where’s the bitch?”

  “She’s gone,” Elise said curtly, grabbing James by the wrist and yanking him to his feet. “The whole Palace is gone.”

  She swung a kick at one of the books that she had carried out of Dis, sending it flying across the street. It almost hit Ace, but the dog was fast enough to dodge it.

  James scanned the street for bloody remains. There was no sign that Benjamin had struck anywhere near them—thank God.

  Beyond that, James wasn’t entirely sure where they had ended up. It was some kind of coastal American city. He could smell the salty bite of the ocean. The empty street was buried under inches of muddy ash, most likely as a result of the Breaking.

  There was newer damage, too. Fragments of ethereal architecture had crashed into the skyscrapers, pulverizing at least two structures that James could see. The streets were filled with rubble—some ordinary brick, some of it that white cobblestone. Two blocks down, James could see the glow of flowing magma.

  The only reason that he had lived to make it back to that desolation was Abel’s intervention.

  “Thank you,” James said, extending a hand toward Abel.

  The Alpha grunted and walked away from them. When he passed Ace, the dog growled and barked.

  “Not now, boy,” Elise said, dropping to a crouch with her head cradled in her hands. The pit bull trotted over and licked her. She didn’t react, not to pull away or smile or even attempt to pet him.

  James watched Abel’s back retreat. He seemed so defeated, like he had somehow become physically diminished in the loss of his mate. When he shapeshifted into his black wolf form, even that seemed smaller.

  Rylie had made him stronger. Now he was weak.

  Abel raced away. Neither Elise nor James tried to stop him.

  James started picking up books and stray papers. It looked like Elise had grabbed
everything off of his worktable before chasing him down, but it was scattered over the entire block. “Are you all right?” It felt like a strange question to ask, considering that he’d been the one a few seconds from pancaking on the ground.

  “No,” she said.

  He gave Elise a real look for the first time since they’d landed. She was barefoot. Her leather pants were slashed open, her shirt filled with holes, like it had been melted away. And even though James could tell that she was as strong as ever, she was completely beyond self-control. Her hair streamed into the darkness. Her eyes were pits.

  “Good Lord,” James said. “What happened to you?”

  She laughed bitterly. “What happened to me?”

  “It’s the army, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s the army. Belphegor turned them around on me and slaughtered almost every single person that I tried to save. For all I fucking know, he did kill them all.”

  “You left in the middle of a battle?” James asked.

  “For fuck’s sake, someone had to save you,” Elise said. “I had to be able to save someone from Belphegor.” It came out ragged, almost like a sob, even though her cheeks were completely dry.

  “Why would Belphegor want to kill me?” James asked. “I can’t do anything for you anymore. I’m not even your aspis.”

  “But he wants me to be less spirited. That’s what he said. I’m too spirited. He’s going to kill everything and everyone on Earth if that’s what it takes.” Her aura lashed out strongly, dragging her anger through him as painfully as knives.

  “Wait.” He hesitated, and then touched her arm.

  “Don’t touch me,” Elise said, jerking away from his grip.

  He wished he could. It was sensory overload just looking at her; the actual contact of skin on skin was like giving her a direct line to his emotions. Now, especially, her anger was toxic. It felt like he could drown in it.

  But that was neither her fault nor her choice. He forced himself to touch her again, and this time, he didn’t let her pull away.

  She finally stopped pacing. Elise’s shoulders sagged.

  “He killed her, James,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Neuma. She’s dead.”