by SM Reine
“Tell me you’re not going to die.”
It was a lie. They both knew it was a lie. Even if Belphegor didn’t do the deed, even if the world didn’t end, he only had decades. A mortal lifespan.
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” James said. “I swear.” Although there was a very good chance that she might give him a heart attack before Belphegor got a shot of his own.
Before he could lose control, she pushed his pants down, letting him step out of his shoes. He felt strangely exposed like that—fully naked while Elise was still clothed, still in control. But at least he didn’t feel cold anymore. His blood was running far too hot for that.
He scooped his hands underneath Elise’s thighs, lifting her easily. She wrapped around him, legs twined around his waist, arms around his neck. She adhered to him like shadow to the dark side of the moon, curving perfectly around his body.
James carried her across the room, setting her on the edge of the desk. This time, she didn’t fight him when he lifted her shirt, exposing the destroyed black bra underneath. There were slices along the band, on the sides of the cups.
He slid the one intact strap down, brushing his thumb over the skin it exposed at her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against her throat, tasting the skin in a line down to her collarbone. “I’m so sorry.”
He wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for McIntyre and Neuma or for what he had done to her over the years, or something else entirely. Maybe his mortality.
The bra slipped away, and her head fell back as he palmed her breasts. Lord, but they were perfect. Genuinely perfect. The sight of them was almost overwhelming, just like her hand on his erection had been.
They were soft, the nipples dark peaks, almost reflecting the color of her blood-red lips. The swells curved down into the narrow pinch of her waist, the lines of her hips still encased in leather, the curve of her thighs.
There was no way James was going to last long like this, when merely looking at her was enough to bring him to the brink. He was just too damn human. And she was—well, she was virtually a goddess.
She could also, humiliatingly, tell that his stress levels were rising. She rubbed her face against his neck. More of a comforting gesture than a sexual one. “I told you to relax, James.”
But she needed him. He wanted to make her feel good enough to forget everything, even the end of the world.
Elise seemed to know that he was thinking that, too. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, embracing him hard, and after a moment he returned the gesture.
It was strange to hold her, and be held, and feel such comfort. The one thing that he had never thought Elise was capable of providing or experiencing.
He wasn’t cold, but she was shaking.
“Lord, Elise,” he murmured into her hair.
It was reminder enough of what she was doing—why she was doing it—to get himself under control. He pulled the remnants of her leather pants from her body and cupped her bared thighs in his hands, feeling the silk of her bare skin, the inhuman smoothness of her calves and ankles.
Once she was naked, he let himself look at her. She was a thousand times more beautiful than he remembered.
Elise ducked her head. “Stop thinking like that.”
“You can read my mind?”
“Not exactly.” She slid her fingers up his abs, his pectorals, scraping the hair lightly. She still wore fingerless gloves. It was strangely arousing for her to be naked aside from the gloves. “With humans, I can kind of read the hormones. The chemicals. The way that thoughts travel over your mind.” Elise pulled his head toward her. “I can tell that you’re thinking about me like…that.”
“But you are perfect,” James said, and he kissed her, mouths slanting together.
His hands slid up the insides of her thighs, moving to the apex of her legs so that he could stroke her, prepare her as she had prepared him. But she pushed him away. Her hand slipped between them again, guiding his body toward hers. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t need to.”
James slipped against her wetness. She really was ready for him, burning hot, threatening to consume him.
So he let her.
He sank inside of her, and it was more than just a relief—not just the sensation of rightness, of being completed again, but a feeling that felt something close to nirvana.
Elise’s breath was choppy in his ear as he began to move, her knees squeezing so tightly against his ribs that he could barely breathe. Her fingernails dug furrows into the muscles of his back. For the first time, the bite felt good, and he thought he understood why Elise had always preferred to take her pleasure with pain.
But he wasn’t a witch anymore, nor did he have any angel blood. He was mortal. Just mortal. And Elise felt incredible.
“Elise,” he groaned, “I don’t think I can—”
“Do it,” she whispered.
The words sent him over the edge. He gripped the edge of the desk on either side of her, thrust deep, and emptied himself inside of Elise with a roar that he knew was too loud. The sensation was blinding. The world around him went white.
For a moment, it was easy to forget the world was ending.
Fourteen
Eventually, Elise and James ended up in the relative warmth of the bed, burrowed underneath the stained comforter with books from the Palace of Dis.
James had expected her to leave quickly once she was done with him—which hadn’t been for well over an hour—but she remained to read through the books in silence. They each had separate papers to take notes on. The only sounds in the room were the scratching of pen against paper.
Preparing gaean magic with Elise curled naked against James’s side was as near to perfection as he could imagine—aside from the whole impending genesis thing.
He realized that his pen was the only one moving. Elise had only drawn a few parts of the circle, and now she stared vacantly at the wall.
James leaned over to kiss her shoulder. “You didn’t tell me that you planned to enter Eden because you thought I would want to get into the Origin. Didn’t you?” It was hardly pillow talk, but the thought had been nagging at him.
The question stirred her from her reverie. “Was I wrong? You weren’t exactly subtle about how much you wanted to become God yourself.”
“I didn’t know there needed to be a three-person pantheon.” James kissed her shoulder again as he thought, softer than before. “No. I think entering the Origin would be a mistake now.”
“But only now. Only because Belphegor’s gone in.”
“Can you tell me that you feel no temptation to become omnipotent and set all of these wrongs to right? Is there nothing you would do with the power of God now?”
She bit down on the end of her pen hard enough to dent the plastic.
After a moment, she began to draw again without responding.
“You really aren’t tempted,” James said. “You don’t want the power.” It was kind of impressive, actually. Everyone wanted something selfish. Elise just wanted to save the world.
“Tell me what we’ll do afterward,” she said, changing subjects. “After Belphegor’s gone. After we heal Nathaniel. After we save the world.”
James frowned. “Really?”
“Yes,” Elise said.
“Feeling sentimental?”
“Humor me.”
He pushed a book out of his way and rested his chin on his arms, watching Elise from the corner of his eye. “Well, it’s impossible to say what the world is going to look like after it’s been ‘saved.’ Assuming we can restore it to some semblance of its previous condition, I suppose I’ll need a new job. I could teach again.”
“Dance lessons are sure to be a priority after the apocalypse.”
James amended that to, “I could teach magic. Those who can’t do, you know.”
Elise rolled onto her back, tucking her arms underneath her head. The sheets had slipped back down to her ribcage. He shamelessly enjoyed the sight
of her exposed body. “I could help you.”
“Could you, now?”
“Nathaniel will also need somewhere to live,” she said. “He’ll need to relearn being human. Or how to control himself. I can help with that, too.”
“You’re suggesting we all live together? You and me and my son?”
She painted a threateningly domestic picture. If Elise had slipped away from visions of a future that weren’t drenched in violence, then she simply wasn’t being serious.
James went back to his notebook. He was almost ready to draw the actual circle for the spell to cure Nathaniel of godhood.
“I mean it.” Elise rested her fingertips on his wrist. “Really.”
A sad smile crept over his lips. “I like the idea of it.” But both of them knew that’s all it would remain: an idea. The chance that they would actually both survive Belphegor, much less save Nathaniel and leave the world in some livable condition, seemed increasingly small.
Sobering, he grabbed another book from the Library. “It’s strange,” James said. “I don’t find this as exciting as I sued to. Any of it. It doesn’t feel good to read these books, even though I should be virtually euphoric.”
“That’s because you’re not ethereal Gray anymore. You cut off the angel parts of your heritage along with the magic, and that means you don’t get a high off learning.”
“I always enjoyed learning. Even before I entered the garden and was changed.”
“You had the blood. You had the need. Now you don’t.”
“Powerful magic,” James said softly. Hopefully, it would be powerful enough to save Nathaniel, too.
“Rylie described it as an addiction, the way that angels feed off of knowledge,” Elise said. “You’re just not addicted anymore.”
He kept his gaze fixed to the book in front of him. “I suppose not.”
“Wait. Where did you get this one?” She pulled the book away from him. The small, leather-bound text had loose papers clipped to the covers and notes scrawled in the margins.
James hadn’t looked at it that closely before, but now he recognized Elise’s handwriting on those pages.
“I got it out of the Library, like the other books,” James said. “I must have. I couldn’t have gotten it anywhere else.”
“But this is mine. I mean, one of the librarians gave it to me.” Elise frowned as she pulled one of the papers out and unfolded it. James leaned over her shoulder to look. It was a map of Dis, although it was either poorly drawn or outdated. The districts were arranged incorrectly.
“This here,” he said, pointing at a crease in the page. “Does this indicate…water? In Dis?”
Her hands tightened on the page. “I don’t remember where I left this, but I know it wasn’t in the library.”
“So one of the librarians reclaimed it. Is that so strange?”
“Reclaiming it? No. The fact that they reclaimed it and then you picked it up at random? Yeah, that’s really fucking weird.”
“A coincidence,” James said.
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Neither did he, now that she mentioned it. He looked over the map again with new eyes.
An ancient map. Water in Dis. Strange, unreadable markings.
“It could be fabricated,” he suggested.
“I don’t know. An old shapeshifter told me that the world was different before the Treaty of Dis. She said that there were a lot more gaean species, for one. Shapeshifters other than wolves. More sidhe. That kind of thing. What if the world was different in other ways?”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering where this spring would be now,” Elise said. “And what I might find there if I looked.” She took a final, long look at the map, folded it, and set it aside.
James flipped through the journal. The language looked familiar, but he couldn’t read it. “This resembles the ancient ethereal language. I wonder if this would have been legible before I cast that spell to heal you.”
“Do you regret it? Giving up all of your magic and abilities?”
“Yes,” James said. He didn’t even have to think about the question.
She sat up, letting the blankets fall around her waist and leaving a cold gap under the sheets. “I see.”
He hooked his arm around her waist and dragged her back. “But I would make the exact same choice again. I’d do it again a thousand times for you.” She allowed him to push her flat against the mattress, rolling his weight on top of hers. Elise looked slightly mollified. “Only you, though.”
“I’ve hated you for years.” She shoved a book out from underneath her head. “That’s a big sacrifice for someone who hates you. Almost makes me think that you did it because you want something in return.”
“If you think that I saved you because I wanted you to owe a debt to me,” he said, “then you’re delusional. I saved you because I love you. I never stopped loving you.” James propped himself on one elbow, catching a lock of Elise’s hair between two fingers, letting the silken strands fall to the bed in a shimmering wave.
“That’s pathetic.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
Elise shrugged, but she didn’t look annoyed anymore. “I don’t hate you right now.”
“Is that your way of saying that you love me, too?”
“No.” The corners of her lips drew down in a frown. “Everyone I love dies.”
James brushed a kiss over her chin, right where the edge of her mouth wrinkled slightly from her sadness. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Did you miss the part where I said I don’t love you?”
“You’re lying.” He didn’t manage much conviction when he said it. He’d assumed Elise loved him from the first time that she tried to kiss him, and the fact she’d let him live despite his numerous betrayals seemed to confirm that. But she didn’t look particularly loving at that moment. She’d definitely never said the words.
Elise shrugged again and left it at that. Instead, she let her hands do the talking, roaming up the muscles of his chest, scraping the white stubble that was beginning to grow on his neck.
Her knee slipped up his side, parting her thighs to make it easier for him to slide against her.
James pressed a hand to her hip to still her movements. “I hate to disappoint, but you’ve worn me out. My humanity comes with more than a lack of magic. It comes with a highly mortal, highly disappointing refractory period. It’s miraculous you didn’t kill me after the first three times.”
Elise lifted an eyebrow. “Now you sound as old as you look.”
“I am old,” James said, nuzzling her jawline.
“Not that old.” She trailed her fingernails down his back, sketching invisible lines along his spine. “I was taught how to use succubus powers by Neuma. I have tricks.”
“You should probably save all your demon tricks for Belphegor.”
“That’s repulsive, James.”
“I didn’t mean those ones. I’d prefer to keep those to myself, thank you.” It was becoming increasingly difficult to think again as she pushed him onto his back, moving her lips over his collarbone and down his chest. “You’ll need your strength.”
There was something a little bit mischievous to the glint in her eye as she licked a line down his body. Mischievous, and almost affectionate. “It’s not my strength you should be worried about, human.”
Elise was right about one thing. Neuma had taught her tricks. Several of them, in fact. And she didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to cast that gaean magic.
James could have stayed in bed with Elise for eternity, given the choice.
But they didn’t have the choice.
At some point, as though she had been waiting for a specific time, Elise finally got up to leave, suddenly serious again. She dressed in old clothing without looking at him. Her last kiss was brief and distracted.
It felt very much like a goodbye.
Anthony had found cigarettes for E
lise somewhere. She didn’t care where they had come from—only that there was a pack waiting for her when she finally got dressed and left James working in the bedroom.
“Thank fucking God,” she muttered, knowing that there were no gods worth thanking in Eden.
She snatched the cigarettes off of the box Anthony had left them sitting on—a box that was just a few feet away from Rylie’s shrouded body—and went outside.
Elise didn’t have a light, but she didn’t need it. There was still a fire rune on her hand. It was probably overkill to use it on one little cigarette, but she needed the smoke.
She stood atop the crevasse, looking down at Brianna and Anthony’s work, as she took a deep inhale of the cigarette.
The circle was almost done.
Elise couldn’t find any satisfaction in that, or the smoke filling her lungs.
Belphegor would be watching her, even now. He’d want to see how close Elise was to snapping. Maybe hoping she had already snapped. The fact that he wasn’t attacking only meant that he was waiting.
It didn’t matter how quickly they prepared to open that gate. They weren’t racing against Belphegor.
He was allowing them to do it.
Elise’s cigarette tasted a little worse after that thought.
A soft noise drew her around the building to a set of stone steps, where a child was sitting in a bundle of furs. Dana McIntyre was alone. She must have escaped Summer’s smothering comfort, since Elise highly doubted that the shapeshifter would have allowed the child outside on her own.
Elise didn’t want to talk to Dana, but she felt words trapped in her throat and knew she needed to say something.
She sat down beside the girl and stubbed her cigarette out in the snow. The McIntyres had never let Elise smoke anywhere near their kids. They couldn’t yell at her for it now, and Dana’s chances of surviving long enough to develop lung cancer didn’t look great, but she still couldn’t bring herself to finish the cigarette.
“Everyone’s going to die,” Dana said. “Aren’t they?” She was looking up at the sky. Heaven was on the other side of those clouds—or something very much like it, perverted by Belphegor’s grasp.
