by Deanna Chase
Elise glanced around, taking quick inventory of the room now that she had human eyes and a human mind again. It was easier to make out detail when she wasn’t omnipresent. The ugly brown carpet matched the cheap fake-wood wall panels and was slicked into muddy spikes by their footprints. Father Armstrong’s couch looked secondhand. Everything was thrift shop cheap, with the aura of furniture that had lived a dozen lives in a dozen homes.
“Bet there’s a special place in Hell for people that fuck with priests,” Abel said, shifting uncomfortably on his feet by the door, as if reluctant to move deeper into the room.
“No, but there’s a place for thieves, child molesters, and guys who shoot other people in the face,” Elise said, opening the refrigerator. Eighteen eggs, three drawers filled with fresh produce, local raw milk. He might not have cared about his trailer, but he cared about his diet.
Abel smiled unpleasantly at Elise. “You didn’t take that personally, did you?” She closed the refrigerator, folded her arms, fixed him with a glare. “You shouldn’t have been lurking in my territory.”
“That didn’t sound like an apology,” Elise said.
Rylie rolled her eyes. “Save it, guys.” She managed to make that casual command sound like an actual order—like there was no doubt in her mind that everyone would always do exactly what she told them, when she told them.
Surprisingly, Abel didn’t say anything else.
Elise reached into the sink. The spider’s long legs scrabbled uselessly against the drain, unable to get traction. She allowed it to crawl onto her finger, then deposited it on the windowsill. “There’s also a place in Hell for liars.”
“Hey,” Rylie said sharply.
“I’m not talking about you guys. I’m talking about Father Armstrong.”
There was a laptop sitting on the arm of the couch. Elise opened the lid and tried to log in. It was password protected.
“What do you mean?” Rylie asked.
Elise wasn’t sure yet, but there was an unpleasant taste on the back of her tongue, a lingering headache. She didn’t think that it was from exposure to the sun.
She set the laptop down again, opened the bedroom door. The rumpled bed was the only messy thing in the entire house. He must have left in a rush that morning.
Elise whipped back the comforter. Blood stained the fitted sheet in palm-sized patches. Father Armstrong liked it rough.
Or the woman in his bed wasn’t willing.
“What are you even looking for?” Abel asked.
Elise wasn’t sure. She had been kind of hoping to find the coroner, Stephanie Armstrong—or proof that she was connected to Father Armstrong, at least. She would have liked to find a pit bull chained up in his closet even more. Any smoking gun. But the blood on his sheets wasn’t enough on its own. When Elise had a one night stand, her bed was usually bloody by morning, too.
“We’ll have to come back later,” Elise said reluctantly, stepping out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
Rylie sniffed the air. “What’s that?”
“The blood?”
“No, that other smell. Like…herbs or something. Do you smell that, Abel?”
His hand was in his jacket again, probably on the butt of his gun. Tension corded his neck, his shoulders. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
Rylie crossed the room, standing over the Bible. It was on its own table in front of the window, almost more like an altar, and it looked like the oldest thing in the house: heavy leather-bound cover, yellow pages, and a fraying ribbon as bookmark.
She rapped her knuckles on the cover.
It sounded hollow.
“Stand back,” Elise said, pushing Rylie gently aside.
“What do you think it is?”
Elise placed a hand on the cover. Her headache intensified as a strange flavor flooded her mouth—musty and dry and dirty, like licking a cellar door. Or the lid of a coffin.
She opened the Bible.
And then she disappeared.
Sheriff Dickerson was four feet, eleven inches of terrifying. She was stacked like a brick house, all straight lines from shoulders to hips, with the kind of legs that could crack skulls. Her unsmiling face was granite. Some of the deputies joked that her sports bra had consolidated her bosom into a solid mass thick enough to stop bullets. If violent crime ever found its way to Northgate, the sheriff already had bulletproof breasts.
When she was in the office—which was seldom, because she preferred to prowl her town like a cougar protecting her cubs—trying to avoid her withering attentions was always high on Lincoln’s priority list.
But there was no sign of her Medusa glare today. Sheriff Dickerson had rushed into the office late and was all smiles, obsequious and oily. She did everything but drop a fucking curtsy. “Thank you for coming here today, Father,” she said, hands clasped to her heart.
Father Night returned her smile with one of his own, soft-eyed and kind. The shepherd admiring his sheep. “It’s my pleasure, Sheriff. Where would you like to…?”
“My office, please,” she said, holding the door open for him.
Lincoln poured himself another cup of water at the cooler, watching the two of them over the rim. They were, more than likely, discussing the case again. It was the only thing that the sheriff’s office seemed to care about anymore. They had dedicated all of their manpower to it.
All of its manpower except Lincoln.
Father Night glanced at Lincoln as he shut the door.
Was that pity lingering around his eyes?
Door closed.
Lincoln fisted his hands at his sides, crushing the paper cup into a tiny ball. That damn priest knew more about what was happening than Lincoln did.
He flung the cup into the wastebasket and stormed into his own office.
A man was waiting for him there.
Lincoln almost backed right out again, terrified that Orpheus had come to make good on his threats. But his moment of panic faded when he realized that this man was too short, his hair red, and he wore a collared shirt much like Father Night’s.
“Father Armstrong,” Lincoln said, leaving the door open as he stepped forward to offer a hand. The priest shook it. “Can I help you with something?”
“I’m actually here to help you, my son,” said Father Armstrong.
Lincoln blinked. “Okay. Take a seat.”
The priest shut his office door before sitting in the chair across from the desk.
“You’ve been seen around town with a visitor,” Father Armstrong said. No beating around the bush. Straight to the point. “A young woman.”
“A college friend,” Lincoln said.
“A private investigator with the Hunting Club.”
Well, he hadn’t been expecting that. He shuffled the papers on his desk to give himself a moment to think, pretending to sort everything into his inbox and outbox. “Like I said, a college friend. Her employment back home is none of my business.”
“You were at the crime scene with her earlier,” Father Armstrong said, with a tone of paternalistic admonition.
Lincoln had been expecting to hear about that. Someone was bound to have noticed that he had gone to the morgue and a crime scene with her. But he had been expecting to earn the wrath of Sheriff Dickerson over it. Not the priest in training at St. Philomene’s.
“Pardon me, Father, but I can’t discuss official business,” Lincoln said.
“Official business? I thought you said that she’s a college friend.”
Was it hot in the office? Anger was clawing at the inside of his throat, climbing his tongue. Lincoln stacked the papers again, neatening the edges so that they were aligned.
“She’s a friend of Father Night’s, too,” he pointed out.
“Which is why we’re concerned. We know who she is.” Father Armstrong’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “We know what she is. Do you?”
The memory of Elise straddling his hips, hand down his pajama bottoms, mischief on h
er face, flashed to mind. It was mixed with his mental image of the Devil, red-lipped and black-nailed in a bed of fire. “I’m not sure why we’re having this conversation,” Lincoln said.
“Where Elise Kavanagh goes, darkness follows. It’s not in the town’s best interests for her to be involved in this investigation. It’s not in your best interests.”
Lincoln straightened in his chair, trying to look more official, more imposing. “She’s a consummate professional, and her expertise could save lives. I brought her here to solve a case that my department isn’t capable of solving. She’ll be gone as soon as she’s done.”
Father Armstrong looked surprised that Lincoln had dropped the pretense, but only for a moment. It was quickly replaced by another look of deep concern. “You’re a good, God-fearing man, Deputy Marshall. I’m surprised to hear you’re making deals with the Devil. How have your dreams been, my son?”
A chill washed over his skin. “What?”
“Your dreams, deputy,” Father Armstrong said. “Have you been having nightmares? Dreaming of darkness, hellfire, sin?”
“How did you…?”
“You think that you know what Elise Kavanagh is, but you don’t. The Devil comes in many forms, and some of them are more tempting than others.” Father Armstrong strode around the desk, withdrew something from his pocket and set it on the corner of the desk. He kept his fist closed around it. “Demonic possession takes time, Deputy. By the time you realize something’s happening to you, it’s too late to save your soul. Don’t let it get that bad before you come to me for help.”
He stepped away. Lincoln looked down at what he had left on the desk.
It was a small gold crucifix on a delicate chain.
Lincoln’s crucifix.
His hand flew to his neck. “How did you get that?”
“I’m not the one you should ask that question,” Father Armstrong said. “My doors are always open.”
He left the office. Lincoln was too stunned to follow him.
Moments after Father Armstrong disappeared from his doorway, he was replaced by Sheriff Dickerson. She was short enough that Lincoln could have used the top of her head as an elbow rest, yet she still seemed to fill his entire office.
“You’re suspended for two weeks,” Sheriff Dickerson said without preamble. “Clear out, Linc.”
He had been in the middle of clasping the crucifix around his neck again, but the chain slithered from between his fingers at her voice. “Suspended? On what grounds?”
“Professional misconduct. Interfering with an ongoing investigation. Tampering with evidence. Pick your poison.” She rapped a knuckle on the edge of his desk. “Leave your badge and firearm and get out of my sight.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elise drifted over the wastelands of Hell. The air was warm as liquid magma; it buffeted her with gentle turbulence, carried her on its tides, drew her toward the obsidian slabs of the mountains. She watched gashes of flame spread below. Human hands stretched toward her, screaming for mercy until enveloped by curls of black smoke.
Herds of demons swept over yellowed earth, a creeping plague that left rot in its wake. Father, they said, it’s been too long.
Love us.
Be with us.
But Elise drifted on, as untouched by their pleas as she was the screams of the damned.
She knew peace, soaring above Hell. Serenity.
Elise wasn’t supposed to be there.
It should have only taken a moment’s thought to return herself to Earth. Waking up from Hell was unpleasant, but easy. Yet she thought, I need to get back to Earth…and nothing happened.
An electric shock jolted through her.
She was trapped.
Elise.
The wasteland fuzzed. Wind smashed into her, blasting her toward the ground.
Elise, come back.
That voice was familiar—more familiar to her than her own body. It was masculine, carefully-articulated, almost professorial. And he sounded as though he shared her fear.
I can’t, she thought. I’m trapped here.
I won’t allow that, he replied.
Another shock of electricity.
Hell blinked out of view. Trees reared above her, piercing a navy-blue sky with their jutting branches.
It was night. The moon had waxed to a fraction less than full, and its brightness bore down on her, a disapproving gray face that reflected sunlight onto her tender skin.
Her flesh solidified. Her bones became whole.
Elise had returned to Earth. Hours had passed, and it was night again. But something was wrong. Her corporeal form hadn’t been restored with her clothing and weapons intact.
Naked on the forest floor, Elise’s skin was bared to a merciless moon.
And she wasn’t wearing her warding ring.
Elise!
Another mind drove into hers like two cars colliding at high-speed. Magic blazed in her vision, illuminating the night with arcs of gold and blue and bronze. A lacework of veins traced through the trees, the earth, and climbed Elise’s flesh, patterning her skin with the images of lightning bolts.
She could see magic. But worse than that, she could see through another person’s eyes.
He was in the forest, too. He was running, beating away the branches that reached for him with pine fingers, desperately seeking Elise. The mud sucked his feet under with every step. He knew that she was close, because he could see through her eyes, too.
It was James.
Elise fought to sit up, struggling to make sense of what she saw around herself in the forest. She couldn’t separate her sight from James’s. The trunks swirled around her. Earth and sky inverted, spreading the clouds underneath her like a distant carpet, before everything righted itself again. Her head throbbed.
I’m coming, Elise.
It was meant to be a promise, but it sounded like a threat.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” she said aloud. Her own voice throbbed in her chest, her skull, making her eardrums pound.
I’m almost there…
The sun reflecting off of the moon burned her. She was coming apart.
And James was looking for her.
Elise had to get the ring back on her finger.
She spotted her clothing tangled in the high branches of a tree. Her charms were snagged on a lower bush. The falchion was on the ground, blade halfway out of the holster, obsidian gleaming in the moonlight. Magic was tangled around the sword.
Scrambling on her hands and knees, she fought against the tilt of the earth to reach the falchion. Elise clutched it to her chest.
What had happened to her? One minute, she had been in Father Armstrong’s mobile home behind the church, Rylie at her side, the Bible in front of her on the altar. And then she had opened the cover of the book, and…what? Somehow she had ended up in Hell, then snapped back to Earth without managing to reassemble herself properly.
But she had her sword. It was a start.
In her mind’s eye, she watched through James’s eyes as he scaled a cliff, hands swift and sure on the rocks. She could feel that he was less than half a mile away. Given how quickly he was moving, even with the obstacles between them, he would be there in no more than five minutes.
Where the fuck had the rings gone?
She wrapped the charms around her bare neck. James’s warding ring was tangled with them. She jammed her thumb into it, but it was much too large, and the ward wouldn’t stick.
Elise leaped to grab her shorts. They were stained with ichor, black and sticky. She pulled her underwear out of the tangle of cloth and donned them. The shorts were a loss. She discarded them.
If the sword and charms had ended up close together, then the warding ring had to be somewhere nearby, too. It had to be.
“Come on, come on…” she muttered, searching through the bushes.
James was at the top of the cliff. He was only a short run away.
Elise’s heart pounded in her throat,
and part of her was tempted to give up the search, sit down, and wait for him. But it would mean facing what he had done again—and the idea ripped her heart in half, making grief and anger and betrayal surge through her blood.
There was no way in any of the seven Hells that Elise was going to let him reach her.
But she didn’t dare fade into the darkness again. Her corporeal form felt tenuous, heartbeats away from shattering. She hadn’t been able to return to Earth on her own the first time. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to come back at all a second.
James’s guilt tasted bitter on her tongue. His thoughts were a constant stream tangling with hers. Stay where you are… Don’t move… Dark in the forest, people out here tonight, danger…
An engine roared. A motorcycle was incoming from the opposite direction as James.
Hide! he thought.
“Fuck you,” she said.
Elise jumped, catching her shirt where it hung from the branch with one finger. She ripped it down. Pulled it over her head.
The motorcycle’s headlight splashed over her, and Elise shoved her wrist in her mouth so that she wouldn’t cry out. If the moon made her ache, then the brilliant headlight set her on fire—she was seconds away from turning incorporeal again.
But the light turned off almost as soon as it hit her.
A man climbed off the bike, kicking the stand into place. Black hair, dark-skinned, leather jacket—Seth Wilder, the kopis with the werewolf pack. “There you are,” he said, swiping his bangs off of his forehead. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Elise knew that James was looking through her eyes. She knew that he saw Seth. His despair welled up inside of her as if it were her own, and Elise staggered, gripping her head in both hands. “Ring,” she said. “Find a ring, a gold band, it has to be close.”
Seth didn’t ask what it was or why he needed to find it. He grabbed a flashlight off of the bike and shined it on the ground.
She jumped behind a tree, clinging to the shadows, trying not to let the light touch her.
Get away from Seth, James thought. He was close—too close.
Seth exclaimed. “I found it!”
“Get on the bike,” Elise said, coming around the tree and pushing him toward the motorcycle. “Get me out of here.”
