by SM Reine
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you there,” Elise said.
“Where?” Lincoln asked. “When?”
But she was gone.
He couldn’t have looked away for more than a half-second—the length of time it took to blink—but the woman had vanished. The cigarette smoldered in the dust at his feet. McIntyre stubbed the embers out with his toe, wiping his hands off on his jeans.
“I’ll call you later to arrange payment,” McIntyre said. “You know it’s not free, right?”
“I know,” Lincoln said.
“Cool.”
McIntyre sauntered away—not toward the bar, but toward the lake.
Lincoln was alone, but he didn’t feel alone. Invisible eyes made his skin crawl. He put his crucifix around his neck again and walked back to The Pump Lounge, barely resisting the urge to break into a run.
When he arrived, he found the building dark. There was no music, no shouting, no clinking of glass. He pushed the back door open.
The stage was uninhabited, the bar was dusty, and everything was coated in sulfur.
Empty.
In fact, it looked like it had been empty for months. The desert had begun to reclaim the property. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, which had holes the size of Lincoln's Toyota in it. The roof was rotting away.
His heart pounded in his throat as he backtracked to his car. The trucks weren’t rocking with the ministrations of the women anymore, and Lincoln wondered if he would find dead truck drivers inside if he looked.
He didn’t look.
Lincoln got behind the wheel and drove.
TWO
ELISE DREAMED OF Hell.
She drifted over an endless wasteland. Black mountains lined the horizon, so distant that she couldn’t have reached them if she ran for a hundred years. An obsidian city belching cones of smoke, glistened underneath her. The buildings, the streets, were laid out in the pattern of a spiderweb.
The sky was the crimson of blood spilled on lava rock. Ragged gashes in the desert flickered with occasional flame. Screams drifted on the rippling heat.
The City of Dis. Home. Her heart ached for it.
Elise woke up in a closet on Earth, not in Hell. It was barely big enough for her to sit inside, though her muscles registered no discomfort when she stood, using the ironing board for leverage. A clothes iron hung on the wall. Empty hangers dangled in her face.
She stretched her arms across her chest, rolled her neck on her shoulders, and stepped into the motel room.
“This is a bad idea,” Anthony Morales said by way of greeting.
He sat on the end of Elise’s bed. She hadn’t slept in it once during her stay at the motel, but evidently he had; the imprint of a pillow still marked his left cheek. He was shirtless, shamelessly revealing the sculpted planes of his chest, and his muscular thighs were bared by snug gray boxer-briefs.
Anthony and Elise used to date, although “date” wasn’t the best descriptor of their former relationship. Elise had used him for sex. He had pined for her love. Unsurprisingly, she had ended up breaking his heart—but more surprisingly, he had come back, and their friendship had been the better for it.
He was now Elise’s eyes during the day, though he often slept through afternoons so he could help her hunt at night. And he already had the coffee brewing for her. Good man.
Fading daylight touched the edges of the motel curtains. A single sunbeam splashed on the wall behind her. Elise avoided it as she went to the coffee maker, tugging her underwear out of the cleft of her ass. Black lace—why was she wearing black lace? Must have been laundry day.
“Someone’s obviously trying to lure you to Grove County,” Anthony said. “Don’t go.”
“Can we talk traps after caffeine?”
His lips pressed into a disapproving line. “Okay. Caffeine first.”
He had recently begun cultivating a pencil mustache that Leticia McIntyre generously described as “the Ricky Ricardo.” Her husband, Lucas, had said, “It makes you look like a fucking beaner.” Which had led to yet another fistfight. But Anthony’s black eye was healing great. Elise could barely even tell he was injured anymore.
The coffee tasted like burned paper, but she decided to be grateful that this motel actually had in-room coffee. The last two hadn’t, and those had been two very long weeks.
Elise tossed back the first eight ounces and poured the next.
“All right,” she said, wiggling back to sit on the counter. “It’s a trap. That’s obvious. Why do I care?”
Anthony pulled on a pair of oil-stained jeans. “Why do you care?”
“Don’t just repeat my questions.”
“Lucas told me everything. He wanted to know why Lucinde Ramirez’s name got you interested.” He tugged a shirt over his head, letting the hem fall over his abs. “You know as well as I do that there’s no way Lucinde Ramirez has gone missing in Grove County.”
There were a lot of people that Elise had failed to save in her career as a demon hunter. And her memory was excellent now that she had died and returned as a demon. She remembered every single failure with crystal clarity.
Lucinde Ramirez was one of those failures: a five year old girl whose stepmother, Marisa, had offered her soul to a demon. Lucinde had been dying of a heart defect, and Marisa had hoped that possession would save her life. When Elise had killed the master demon, the girl hadn’t survived.
Five years old. She’d had glossy black ringlets and a stuffed rabbit.
“She would have been nine this year,” Elise said, tracing her finger around the rim of the coffee cup. Her nails were black today. She hadn’t painted them.
“But she’s dead,” Anthony said.
Elise suppressed her annoyance. “Yes. I know.”
“I feel like I’m going in circles here.” He shoved a hand in her face, ticking off one finger at a time. “She’s dead. Someone’s using her name to get you to Grove County. It’s a trap.” He spoke slowly, patronizingly, as if she were a five year old herself.
“The question is, who?” Elise asked, pushing his hand away. “Who’s placing the trap? Who’s got the balls to summon me now?”
“Maybe Death’s Hand,” Anthony said.
Death’s Hand was the demon that had possessed Lucinde. To be fair, it wouldn’t be the first time that Death’s Hand had returned from the dead to ruin Elise’s day. But she was confident that she had destroyed that demon on her second try. Elise had paid a high price for that kill.
“I don’t think so. This isn’t her style.” She stood, shedding her underwear. “Laundry?”
“Here.” Anthony grabbed a trash bag from beside the door and tossed it to her.
She didn’t bother with much of a wardrobe anymore. There were a couple clean pairs of underwear, a pair of jeans, a couple shirts, some leggings. Elise donned the first outfit that she laid hands on and kicked the rest of it under the bed. “Will you check out of the motel for me?”
He folded his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge. “You’re not invulnerable.”
“Actually…” Elise gave him a thin smile.
“Everyone has a weakness. If someone’s asking you to pay them a visit, you can’t trust that they’re not going to be ready for you.”
“I’ll be fine.” She buttoned her jeans. “But I take this to mean that you’re not coming.”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“All right.”
Scant as her personal belongings had become, there were two things that Anthony took to every motel for Elise: a single-edged sword with a blade two feet long, which looked like it had been cast from obsidian, and golden chains dripping with charms. Elise had been forced to remove a few of the charms when she discovered that they stung her skin—the Star of David, for instance—but the pentacles, ankhs, and various other symbols remained intact.
She looped the chains around her neck, then shrugged into the straps of a s
pine sheath like a backpack. The hilt of the falchion hid neatly underneath her inky black hair.
Anthony watched her prepare with annoyance tightening his shoulders. “We’ve had something good here. Being hired guns is good money. The tithes are great. We’ve got the McIntyres a phone call away. We haven’t seen a hybrid in an entire year. We’re as safe and settled as kopides get. I can’t believe you’re blowing it off to chase ghosts.”
“Werewolves, Anthony. Werewolves. Maybe it’s a different Lucinde Ramirez.”
“Do you really believe that?” Anthony asked.
No. She didn’t.
Elise stroked his cheek with her fingertips. Anthony wasn’t afraid of her anymore. He didn’t pull back at the contact of her skin, no matter how much it had to drive his kopis senses crazy.
Kopides were supernaturally-strong, legendary hunters. The class had been created in ancient times to preserve the balance between angels, demons, and humans, so their senses were attuned to threats like Elise. Everything about her infernal energies could make a kopis go haywire.
But Anthony actually leaned into her touch, putting his hand over hers.
“I’m worried, Elise,” he said. “Lucinde Ramirez. That’s a whole other life.”
A life that she was glad to have left behind. Her perfect memory wouldn’t let her forget any of it—all the miserable lies, betrayal, violence, and death. The people she had lost. The mistakes she had made. Hearing that name dragged her human past out of its grave like a shambling zombie. Elise had to lay that zombie to rest. She needed to know who was fucking with her.
“Yeah,” she said, grabbing a pair of biker gloves off of the counter. “I’ll call you.”
They embraced, but didn’t say goodbye.
She felt, rather than saw, the sun slip behind the casino across the street. That meant it was safe for her to leave. Anthony sat on the bed again, and Elise left, stepping onto the sweltering porch outside the motel. Even at night, the oven-dry heat had a way of clinging to the city. It was smothering. Oppressive. It felt good to her demon lungs.
The motel that they had been staying in that week was just off the Strip, where it was never truly night. The light from the pinnacle of the Luxor pierced the cloudless sky. Casino lights flashed over her, dappling the pavement in dancing patterns of red and gold. Sirens wailed a block away. A thousand hearts beat within the radius of a city block, some pounding with adrenaline, others with disappointment.
Elise pushed away her senses, ignoring the call of human life—and the demons that dwelled in the tunnels below. Instead, she focused herself on the job to come.
Werewolves. Man, she hated werewolves.
She spread her arms wide and let the night consume her.
THREE
ONE MILE OR a hundred, it didn’t seem to matter. Once Elise bled into the darkness, the entire world was no more than a thought away.
Well, the entire world that didn’t face the sun was only a thought away, to be exact. Once, she had tried to cross the globe, only to smack into morning a few time zones east. That had been her first, extremely miserable taste of being exploded into a thousand incorporeal fragments. It had taken almost a week to piece herself back together. Anthony and McIntyre had laughed at her when she returned, like it was some kind of silly mistake that could happen to anyone, but they had looked worried.
Elise didn’t fuck around with sunlight anymore.
Her new life was three years old now. Three years since she had shared blood with Yatam, the father of all demons, and lost her human body. Elise had been remade in his image, with all of a demon’s strengths and weaknesses. But demons were a diverse class of creatures. She didn’t know what type of demon she was, or if there even was another demon like her at all, and she was still trying to learn her limitations.
She was obviously a creature of night: pale-skinned, dark-haired, and easily cloaked in shadow. Elise looked like one of the thousands of succubi descended from Yatam’s line. If she had possessed an unusual thirst for sex, she probably would have believed herself to be a succubus. But she didn’t crave flesh. Not like that.
Elise had seen Yatam in daylight a dozen times, too; he hadn’t been burned by the sun the way that she was. She was optimistic that her imprisonment in night was temporary. After five thousand years, there had been a lot of tricks up Yatam’s metaphoric sleeve that Elise hadn’t learned yet.
But darting over a country swathed in night was easy. Elise simply closed her eyes on Las Vegas and opened them on a gas station thousands of miles away.
Her ability to fast-travel was good, but her ability to find places she had never been before was not. She had no idea how to find the sheriff’s office in Grove County. All-powerful demon or not, she needed directions.
The gas station door had an advertisement for churro nuggets plastered at eye-level. It was a temporary fixture, no more than a fancy sticker. But below that was an even more recent sign: a handwritten note on lined paper that said, “We Report Preternaturals.”
Elise stopped cold, hand on the doorknob, and stared at that sign.
“We Report Preternaturals” had become the battle cry of terrified humans that supported the Office of Preternatural Affairs’s policies—an oath to report non-human customers to the census for cataloging. Similar shows of support were unheard of in Las Vegas. Northern Nevada had been under military occupation since the winter of 2009. The OPA didn’t need propaganda where the citizenry already lived in fear of another demon apocalypse.
With all of her motel-hopping, the OPA’s census personnel hadn’t located Elise for cataloging. She hadn’t gone out of her way to register, either.
She ripped the lined paper off the door and trashed it.
The bell over the gas station door jingled when she entered. The polished brass bell was shiny and new—the only shiny and new thing in the cramped, grimy station.
“Can I help you?” asked the clerk. He was a squat black man with a flat nose, much like a toad. His name tag said, “Hello! My name is Brick. Please tell me what I can do to assist you!” The name was written in black permanent marker, with an angry slant to the “K.”
“Sure,” Elise said, sauntering up the aisle. “I need to find the Grove County Sheriff’s Department.”
Brick gave her a long look from head to toe. His mind was a mess of disorganized electrical signals, but Elise could taste the judgments streaming across his mind. Knee-high boots, hip-hugging jeans, leather jacket? Godless whore. She was confident that he would have found the truth of her nature far more terrifying.
“Why are you looking for the GCSD?” he asked.
She plucked a newspaper off the stand and unfolded it. The serial killings were front page, above-the-fold news. Elise flipped through to the crime section in the back, where she found a picture of the missing thirty-three-year-old man. No mention of Lucinde.
“I want to visit a friend,” she said, tossing the newspaper onto the counter.
“I didn’t see your car pull up.”
Elise stared at Brick, letting him feel the full weight of her black-irised gaze. His mind crackled with stubbornness and prejudice, bending under the weight of her presence. But he couldn’t win a staring contest with Elise. His eyes dropped first.
Brick grabbed a map off the stand, unfolding it across the counter. “Lemme see.”
She tilted her head to study the unfamiliar region. A river ran northeast-southwest, breaking into a fork midway down the county. A town called Northgate was nestled in the junction.
“We’re here,” he said, pointing at a dot on the north end of the river. “GCSD’s main station’s in Northgate…here. Want the map?”
“No.”
“Want churros? Got a deal on ‘em. Three for two dollars.”
It had been a long time since Elise bothered eating food. “No.” She watched Brick fold the map and return it to the plastic rack. A subtle tremble touched his fingers, and she didn’t think that it had anything to do with sick
ness. The green haze of fear tinted his mind. “Are you open all night, Brick?”
He started at the sound of his name. “We close at eleven, and we’re not open on Sundays.”
So it was one of those towns.
“Thanks for your help,” she said flatly.
Brick barely waited for the door to shut behind her before picking up the phone. Elise’s curiosity was piqued. Who was he calling—the sheriff?
She stood outside the door, back to the window, and listened. Her hearing was excellent. Through the single-paned windows, she could hear Brick moving as clearly as though she stood behind him. Plastic creaked. A finger pounded the rubber numbers on a phone.
When the ringing cut off, he said, “She’s here. She’s going to Northgate.”
He hung up without waiting for a response.
Elise slunk around the back of the gas station, stalking Brick through the grimy windows. He locked the front door first. Then he turned the “open” sign off. And then he stepped into the back room and started playing with something that looked like a security system.
Through the window, she could see a clock that said it was only nine forty-five.
“Closing shop early, aren’t you?” Elise said softly.
She let herself bleed into the darkness. It welcomed her with open arms. No matter where Elise went, no matter how different from her usual home base in Nevada, the night was a familiar companion.
Her hair bled into the shadows behind her. Her skin faded.
Elise ghosted along the line of autumn-bare trees, far beyond the last line of gas pumps, and waited for Brick.
He emerged minutes later.
Brick hugged a padded manila envelope to his chest. He limped toward the only car in sight—a red Chevy pickup. The fog of fear chased him, sour on the night air.
Elise met him at the driver’s side door and grabbed his wrist. His sallow face grayed with shock. As far as his dull human senses would know, Elise had appeared from nothingness.
