by Deanna Chase
Shit.
Seth lunged for his rifle, but another hand landed on it at the same time that his did: a hand corded with veins and stained with blood.
He elbowed Lincoln in the face. The deputy responded by biting his elbow hard, digging his square teeth into the meat of Seth’s forearm. He cried out as he ripped free.
His pounding heart sped to fill his ears.
You will die alone, pretty kopis.
That wasn’t his thought—it belonged to a sensual female voice, like the very best phone sex operator on Earth, and with it came waves of fresh fear.
Seth could imagine Rylie writhing on the ground, wracked with the pain of silver poisoning. Abel was already dead. They were skinned and bleeding and there was nothing he could do to save any of them, because he had failed—
The images vanished.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux!”
Lincoln screamed with twin voices, one masculine, one feminine. He reared back on his knees, gripping his head in both hands.
Beyond him, James emerged from the smoke of the burning cottages, sword in hand.
Seth had seen Elise’s obsidian falchion. This sword looked to be its twin, though it was from much more ordinary components—steel, he thought, although he had never seen steel glowing with its own internal fire before. Religious symbols blazed over the flat of the blade.
James stood over Lincoln, pressing the flat of the falchion against his face.
“Non draco sit mihi dux—Seth, grab the pistol!”
Seth felt lost and scared and confused. But he was starting to understand that the fear wasn’t his. It belonged to the demon. It was the same thing that had made Abel run from the mobile home, and no matter how real it felt, it wasn’t his emotion.
“The pistol!” James yelled again.
Right. Seth ripped it out of Lincoln’s belt, ejected the magazine, and threw them both in separate directions. He hoped that the magazine would land in one of the fires. Silver was a soft metal; it would melt easily.
James wasn’t trying to cut Lincoln with the sword, but whatever he was doing looked like it hurt as badly. The blazing falchion left a raised welt on Lincoln’s flesh. The deputy’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he shuddered.
Seth grabbed his rifle and aimed it down at Lincoln’s skull. He only shook a little bit.
“Shoot him,” James said.
“What?”
“Do it!”
Seth didn’t squeeze the trigger.
Was that the right thing to do to someone possessed—kill them for the crimes of the demon? Lincoln was kind of a prejudiced dick, but he wasn’t evil. He was a deputy. He protected people.
“Can’t you exorcise him?” Seth asked.
They had stalled too long. Lincoln’s hand clamped around James’s wrist, forcing the sword away from his cheek. James’s muscles shook with the strain of trying to hold the falchion in place, but the demon was stronger.
“I don’t think I like you, angel-heart,” Lincoln said with a moue of distaste.
He shoved James and shot to his feet. The instant that they broke contact, fear erupted over Seth again, boiling magma-hot over his flesh.
Lincoln shoved Seth. He fell, unable to fight back.
“No!” James roared, swinging the sword.
But Lincoln didn’t stop to fight them again. He ran with inhuman speed, flying across the sanctuary and into the mountains.
Only when he vanished did the grip of fear release Seth’s lungs. “What the hell just happened?” he gasped, getting to his feet, gripping his chest in both hands.
“Nightmare demon,” James said grimly, reaching back to sheathe the sword. Like Elise, he had a scabbard on his spine, hidden by a loose button-down shirt. “Fuck me, I didn’t think…” He shook his head. “We have to catch him before he reaches Northgate. Are you coming?”
“Wait,” Seth said.
Two of the werewolves, Crystal and Reese, were pulling apart the walls of the cottage that Trevin had fallen into. Seth hurried over to help, but they had already ripped into the building with super-strength, extracting Trevin from its depths. He was ashen, singed—but breathing.
“I’ve got him,” Crystal said, hugging Trevin’s shoulders tight to her chest. Her manicured fingers stroked the sweaty hair off of his forehead. “Get that thing.”
“The fire,” Seth said, staring at the sanctuary. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he had thought at first glimpse—the cottage that Trevin had been in was the worst, but the others were barely smoldering. The fear radiating from the nightmare had made it look worse. Thank God that Rylie had splurged on the best flame-resistant building materials.
“We’ll rally the pack and take care of it,” Reese said. “Go, Seth.”
He turned to see that James was already sprinting after Lincoln. Muttering a curse under his breath, Seth followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Elise braced herself for what she would find at the center of the magical hurricane in Northgate. She expected to find another arm of the cult evoking another demon, or maybe a portal to Hell with demons and fire raining upon the town. Or both, even—the amount of magic thickening the air suggested that something terrible was going down.
But when she reached the square, she didn’t find demons, portals, or cults.
She found Dr. Stephanie Whyte at the base of the Bain Marshall statue, in all of its three-story marble glory. And she was grappling with… Wait, is that Father Night?
Elise couldn’t remain shrouded in shadow with so many currents of magic twisting over Northgate. So much energy seemed to invert the night, turning the sky pearlescent cerulean, and making the stars black punctuation on a pale sheet.
She coalesced on the edge of the broad lawn surrounding the statue, arms wrapped around her body, struggling to hold onto her skin. It was almost bright enough to make her vanish completely.
With human eyes, she could see that it was definitely Father Night beside Stephanie. He was almost unrecognizable with tousled hair and a t-shirt. There was no priestly raiment now. Only the trappings of an ordinary man.
Stephanie held the cult’s ravaged Book of Shadows under one arm, a page clutched in her fist, hatred in her eyes. Father Night backed away from her.
“Please, Stephanie,” he said. “You don’t want to do this.”
Elise trudged toward them, struggling to get closer to the nexus of magic—the Bain Marshall statue, which had an altar erected between his feet.
“I will kill you,” Stephanie said, voice trembling. “I will.”
What the hell was going on? How was Father Night alive, and why was Stephanie attacking him?
“Hey!” Elise barked, grabbing Stephanie’s arm. The doctor jerked with surprise. She must not have heard Elise’s approach. “Someone tell me what’s going on here, or I’ll eat the both of you and save myself a headache.”
“She’s gone insane,” Father Night said promptly. “She’s trying to kill me.”
A sob ripped out of Stephanie. “He’s the one that captured me. He fooled me into thinking—he made me think—” It seemed too difficult to say. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He led the cult, Elise, and now he’s going to open a portal to Hell.”
“Don’t believe her,” the priest said.
Elise would have liked to believe that Stephanie was insane. It would have been sweet justice after how much the doctor had driven Elise crazy. But while Stephanie was a bitch, she also had a sense of noble honor. She had stayed at the emergency room through apocalypse, risking life and limb to try to save people that couldn’t be saved.
Which meant that Father Night was lying.
She dropped Stephanie’s arm. “Go ahead,” Elise said. “Kill him.”
The priest’s eyes widened to circles.
Stephanie said a word of power, trying to unleash the magic contained within the page she held.
But the spell fell flat. Nothing happened.
The page evaporated i
n her hand, and Stephanie cried harder as she watched the ash drift away. She wasn’t as strong as Sheriff Dickerson. She couldn’t cast paper magic. “No,” she said, sinking to her knees, book clutched to her chest. “No.”
Father Night didn’t relax. He watched Elise from the corner of his eye warily as he backed toward the altar.
“Well, Father,” Elise said, “would you like to confess your sins?”
“I haven’t sinned.”
“Everyone’s a sinner, Mikhail. And all of those dead people didn’t sacrifice themselves.”
“That was the sheriff,” Father Night said. He faltered as Elise approached him. He stumbled over the first step leading to the statue, landing on his ass. “I may have guided them somewhat—”
That was enough of a confession for Elise. She lunged at him with shamefully human slowness, seizing his shirt in her fists, jerking him close.
His voice rose an octave. “It was for good reason! Blood had to be spilled, but they’ll be resurrected when He returns!”
“Who?” she growled.
Father Night fumbled with the hem of his shirt, lifting it to show his hip. There was a bloody apple tattooed beside his navel, half-hidden by hair. “We’re not opening a gate to Hell. We’re trying to open Heaven. The Lord’s been trapped for millennia, and he’s waiting on the other side. We will all be absolved of our sins when I open the door.”
He didn’t even know the truth. He thought God could save them.
She laughed a smoker’s laugh, low and raspy, dropping Father Night on the steps. “You’re wasting your time, Mikhail,” Elise said. “The garden’s been moved, and there’s nobody inside. You would be disappointed if you even managed to open a portal to it—which you can’t.”
He looked stricken. “Eden’s been moved?”
“Wait. You’re trying to get to Eden?”
If that was the case, then Father Night wasn’t just a little bit behind the times—he was centuries behind. Eden had been burned in the old war, and God had been imprisoned in Araboth. There was nothing in Eden. It was a charred wasteland.
Father Night was crawling up the steps, trying to reach his altar. It had candles, a bell, a wooden pentacle. But the altar was only tangential to the power in the square, not the nexus.
“Who told you to open a gateway to Eden?” she asked, closing the space between them so that he couldn’t run.
“An angel,” he said.
“Metaraon?”
“Orpheus,” Father Night said.
Elise’s jaw clenched. Her fists trembled.
James fucking Faulkner. It shouldn’t have surprised her to find him at the center of it all, pulling everyone’s puppet strings. He had been pulling hers for a long time. But she hadn’t believed he would be willing to kill humans—innocent humans—to achieve his goals. Ruthless, yes. Cruel, never.
“Did he tell you to sacrifice those people?” Elise asked. It was all she could do not to scream the question.
Father Night seemed to realize that the question had shifted her anger away from him. He straightened, speaking with more confidence. “No. The angel told me nothing except where to find the door.” He gestured at Bain Marshall. “That’s why I had to evoke a demon. This nightmare knows how to get to Eden.”
“Nightmare?”
“I exorcised her after she killed Father Davidek, but she continued to speak to me in dreams. She told me that she could help me open the door. All I had to do was give her a body.”
“Why Lincoln?” Elise asked.
“Because he has God’s blood,” he said, pointing at the statue of Bain Marshall again. “And only God’s blood can open the door.”
“Elise!”
Her head whipped around at Stephanie’s scream. The doctor was pointing beyond the statue, face pale.
Northgate was burning.
Smoke rose from the roofs of the buildings in white spirals, inverted against the pale, magic-drenched sky. If Elise focused, she could feel rippling heat from the infernal energy behind it, but the magic drowned it out. It was overloading her senses, blocking everything else out.
The nightmare was coming, bringing Lincoln’s body to Elise. Whatever horrors had been committed at the sanctuary were over now. It was too late to save the pack.
Father Night tried to stand, but Elise shoved him down, letting the back of his head smack into the altar. He cried out.
She straddled his lap, knees pinning his hips to the ground, cradling his skull in her hands. Elise had always thought that Father Night was a handsome man, as far as fusty, infuriating old priests went. But she felt no attraction to him now, and no sympathy.
“Orpheus didn’t tell you to kill,” Elise said, stroking his hair out of his face.
“No—and I didn’t tell the cult to kill, either; that was merely how they chose to evoke—”
She fisted his hair, silencing him. “This door that goes to Eden. It’s in the statue?” He nodded fractionally within her grip. “And the spell to open the door is already finished?”
“Almost, but we need the blood of—”
She jerked his head back, silencing him again. That was everything she needed to know.
Elise traced a fingernail down the pulse leaping in his throat, strangely entranced by the sight of the blood coursing underneath the surface. We need the blood, Father Night had said. It sounded like an appealing idea.
The nightmare was close. They didn’t have much time.
Eve would have shown mercy to the priest. For fuck’s sake, Eve wouldn’t have even hurt the cult, much less killed them. She would have joined hands with those sick fucks, asked them to be nice in the future, and encouraged a group hug.
After hearing what he told her, Eve would still believe that Father Night was redeemable. She would have somehow found love in her heart for him. For all of them.
Elise wasn’t Eve. She could never be Eve.
She snapped Father Night’s neck.
Elise had enough time to break a window and shove Stephanie inside of the consignment shop before Lincoln arrived. It was on the opposite end of the square from the nightmare’s approach, so the shop was probably as safe as anywhere could be in Northgate. Lincoln would have to kill Elise to reach Stephanie. The doctor would have much greater concerns than a few fires after that.
The demon’s energy singed her back like an iron pressed to her spine. She was surprised to see that Lincoln was still on the far side of the Bain Marshall statue when she turned, a nimbus of black energy haloing his tawny hair and blood dripping off of his chin.
Elise drew her sword and met him at the center.
“What’s your name?” she asked, separated from Lincoln only by a couple of charred flower beds. The petals curled at his proximity.
He tipped his chin down with a devilish smile. “Don’t you recognize me, lover? Your dear, noble Deputy Lincoln Marshall?” It didn’t sound remotely like him. Even if Elise hadn’t exorcised a dozen demons in her life, even if he didn’t bleed from his tear ducts, she would have known that he was possessed in an instant.
With his head turned, she could see an imprint of a cross on his cheek. Elise turned her falchion to look at the blade. His cross matched hers. Lincoln and James had already had one encounter that night.
The fact that Lincoln stood in front of her now didn’t bode well for James. Elise wasn’t sure if that pleased her or not.
“Give me your name, hellspawn,” she said, lifting her chains of charms over her head, looping them around her fist.
“That’s rich, coming from you, Father,” Lincoln said. The honorific irked—a reminder that the demons in Hell regarded Elise as one of their own. She had accepted her powers, accepted that she was no longer human, but loathed the idea of being infernal royalty.
Her fist tightened on the falchion. “A name,” Elise repeated, and this time, there was force behind the command.
Lincoln’s jaw worked, as if chewing on the name. But the demon couldn’t resist the de
mand. Elise had always been good at her job as an exorcist, and now she had the force of gods behind her.
“Judy,” Lincoln finally said.
Elise blinked. Her falchion swayed. “…Judy?”
“Right, like ‘Elise’ is such the badass name,” he snapped. “Look, I was trying to modernize. It’s difficult to convince a priest of one’s benign intent with a name like Kolbach the Blood-Bringer.” Lincoln’s eyes skimmed past her. “Speaking of priests…”
“He’s dead. You’re next.” It was a statement of fact, not a threat.
Lincoln grinned. His teeth were stained with blood. “You want to try me, Father?” He extended his hand. “Go ahead. Let us battle on even ground.”
The demon probably thought it was a trap—that in a confrontation of powers, the demon-possessed mortal would win out against Elise. If they were both nightmares, it would have been true. A nightmare possessing a human was much more powerful than a merely corporeal nightmare.
But Elise wasn’t a nightmare.
Keeping her grip tight on the falchion, she clasped Lincoln’s wrist, almost in a handshake. His bleeding eyes locked on Elise’s. And their minds opened to each other.
Elise blinked. When her eyes opened, she found herself standing on the vast wastelands outside an infernal city built into a giant, craggy cave. It must have been Malebolge—the birthplace of nightmares.
Judy stood before her. She was a skinny creature with sagging breasts, stick-like legs, a skeletal leer. Her sallow flesh was paper-thin. Her teeth looked like they were on the verge of rotting from her mouth, enamel cracked and gums black. She wore a spine as a belt and not much else.
In contrast, Elise was in full demon form: translucent skin, inky hair streaming into the shadows surrounding her, bare body ripe with eternal youth. Attractiveness was the gift of the father of all demons. Any life he had produced looked much the same. Judy obviously didn’t have a drop of his blood in her veins.
Between them yawned a vast chasm—a pit of fire from which screams drifted like curls of smoke. But Elise knew it wasn’t real. They hadn’t left Northgate. They had entered the arena of their minds.
“I wasn’t planning to open a door to Eden, by the way,” Judy said. She didn’t have to raise her voice for it to echo across space. “I gave Mikhail and the rest of those idiots an all-purpose portal spell. The blood is the key and the rudder. With the great-grandson of Bain Marshall’s blood spilled on the statue, it will open a door to Malebolge. A convenient highway for my nightmare sisters, don’t you think?”
