by Deanna Chase
“Why does Lincoln’s blood open a gateway to Hell?”
“Ask him yourself.” She grinned. “Oops—you can’t.”
“Give him back to me,” Elise said.
“Take him.”
Elise nodded. Challenge accepted.
She leaped. Judy met her halfway. They collided in the space above the fires, a tangle of shadow and slashing fingernails.
Thunder clapped at the place their bodies met, making the fire spew fresh clouds of ash, sending shockwaves through the earth. Judy moved too quickly for Elise to react on anything but instinct. She slammed the nightmare’s arm away, only to get a fist in her face, her gut. Elise kicked out and hit nothing.
“I will crush you and drink your blood, Father,” Judy said, wrapping her hand around Elise’s throat. There was glee in her face. Damn, but she was fast. “I’ll walk the planes of Hell wearing your skin!”
Elise couldn’t win a confrontation between their corporeal bodies. She erupted into darkness, filling the cavern with herself.
Judy tried to chase Elise into the shadows and couldn’t—Elise was the shadow.
Forced to remain solid, Judy thrust her fists into the sky. Plumes of flame shot from the crevasse. They licked the roof of the cave and spread light over the wasteland. Elise raced away like black lightning, jolting from one spot of darkness to the next.
But the fire brightened the darkest corners and left nowhere for Elise to hide.
Nowhere but within Judy herself.
Elise plunged into the nightmare, curling herself in the darkness of her chest cavity. She felt Judy’s shriek in the trembling of her shriveled lungs.
She wrapped a fist of shadow around the nightmare’s heart and squeezed. Let Lincoln go, she commanded, putting all of her will behind the words.
“If you kill me, I will drag him into death with me!” Judy gasped, voice echoing inside her body.
Elise held tighter, tighter.
I’m willing to find out if that’s true.
Judy tried to scream, but Elise gripped her lungs, too, pressing out all of the air. She weighed heavy on the diaphragm, expanded to push on the inside of her ribs, and crawled up her throat to fill her mouth.
Let him go…
The nightmare thrashed. Fingers slid into her mouth, trying to make herself gag and purge Elise’s shadow.
Elise expanded. Swelled.
Judy erupted.
For an instant, Elise saw shreds of flesh slapping against dirt, the spray of ichor, and an organ that might have been Judy’s brain falling into flame. And then the illusion of Hell was gone.
Elise was suddenly back in Northgate.
Lincoln dropped Elise’s hand, stepping back with a gasp. Elise lunged, swinging a hard uppercut. She connected with Lincoln’s chin. He dropped.
Elise stood over his body, shaking out her fist and trying to catch her breath.
It was still too bright in Northgate. The spell was waiting for the final ingredient to open the gateway. Fires were spreading across the rooftops. The entire western half of the town looked to be on fire.
James and Seth staggered into the square.
Elise forgot Lincoln immediately. “You,” she hissed, stalking toward James. “You did all of this!”
She swung the falchion.
Obsidian met steel, crackling with energy. James had the other falchion in his hands. He shoved, and she shoved back, pushing together until they were hilt-to-hilt.
James was a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier, but Elise was a match for him—barely. They strained against each other. Sweat beaded his forehead.
“I can explain if you let me,” James grunted.
She didn’t want to hear more lies. She shoved, throwing him off of her.
“Stephanie’s in the consignment shop,” Elise told Seth, keeping the falchion between her and James. “Make sure that she’s okay.” She was going to have to beat the shit out of James and perform an exorcism on Lincoln, and she wanted as little potential for collateral damage as possible.
“But—” Seth began to protest.
“Now,” she snapped.
He started backing away from them, rifle at the ready, prepared to shoot without any target. “It’s just—”
“What?”
Seth pointed. Elise turned.
Lincoln was still possessed. But he wasn’t where Elise had dropped him. He had dragged himself to the statue of Bain Marshall, and as Elise watched, he wiped the blood off of his cheeks and smeared it on the altar.
The spell was complete.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The statue of Bain Marshall trembled. The magic drew inward, as though inhaled into marble lungs, and collected on his surface until he glowed.
With a groan, the statue’s uplifted hand turned to face the ground. His fingers spread. Electricity lanced between his palm and the earth like a lightning bolt, gushing light over the town square.
The electricity spread, split, arced. It opened into a wide sphere, through which Elise could no longer see the other half of Northgate. Crimson light, like blood lit aflame, splashed onto the surrounding lawn. The grass instantly curled and shriveled.
Lincoln had opened a gate to Hell.
But it wasn’t Judy’s nightmare brethren passing through the portal. Massive silhouettes moved on the other side, much larger and more tangible than any nightmare should have been. It was something else—something more terrible. And they were coming closer.
“I can close it!” James shouted over the buzz of magic. He jerked one of his leather gloves off with his teeth. “Hold the demons!”
Easier said than done. A long, leathery leg slid through the portal, capped by a cloven hoof. A hand as wide as Elise was tall followed, resting on the grass for balance.
She recognized what was emerging. She had seen his etchings in books, heard demons whisper his name with fear. He was a creature that never should have walked where mortals dwelled: Aquiel, the demon prince of nightmares.
He was much taller than the statue of Bain Marshall, so he practically had to crawl between Hell and Earth. He struggled to squeeze his massive form between dimensions, twisting to force a shoulder through.
For a breathless moment, Elise watched him push forward, hoping that he would have to turn back.
Yet somehow, he fit.
Perfect. The night kept getting better.
Elise jumped when a hand gripped her bicep. She looked up to see Seth hauling her to her feet, looking ashen-faced, but determined.
“You should run while you have the chance,” Elise said once she regained her footing.
He handed her the obsidian falchion. She hadn’t even noticed that she had dropped it. “I’m not going anywhere,” Seth said, loading his rifle. “How do I kill that?”
“If you can remain conscious through the fear that will follow it through the portal, you’ll want to shoot it between the wings,” Elise said, recalling what her father had told her about demon princes. “It’s the only vulnerable place.”
“And that will kill it?”
“No,” she said. “But it might make Aquiel take longer to kill us.”
“You suck at motivational speeches,” Seth said.
She hadn’t been attempting one. There was nothing motivational to be said about a master demon crossing over to Earth. It was the kind of thing that would inevitably result in a lot of screaming and death and bloodshed, possibly on a nation-wide scale.
They didn’t need motivation. They needed a miracle.
“Between the wings,” Elise reminded him as she stepped back.
She searched the area for a hint of shadow. It was starkest behind the buildings ringing the square, but there was too little darkness between the road and the statue. She would have no way to cross that distance. Elise wouldn’t be attempting to swallow the prince of nightmares that night—not that she had much hope it would work anyway.
Aquiel was still struggling to emerge, one shoulder and leg stu
ck on the other side. They had mere minutes until his body reached Earth fully and his powers were unleashed.
Elise ran to James. He couldn’t reach the altar with Father Night’s body on it.
“What did you do?” James asked, staring at the priest.
She shoved the body onto the steps. “He earned it. Trust me. You need to close the portal now.”
“Yes, I see that.” He sank to his knees. Cracked his knuckles. “I would be stronger if you removed your ring and allowed me to draw energy off of you.”
No chance of that happening.
She hurled herself at the portal, sword in hand, determination a knot in her stomach.
A pair of wolves beat her there.
They leaped onto Aquiel’s emerging arm. One was gold, and one was black, like the midday sun and the darkest night.
Rylie and Abel.
They were tiny in comparison to the demon prince. Chihuahuas trying to topple a sumo wrestler. They dug their claws into Aquiel’s hide and climbed his body together, side-by-side.
Elise skidded to a stop, staring up at the werewolves as they ripped into Aquiel’s exposed arm. The way that Rylie had attacked Elise was nothing in comparison to the wolf’s fury now. There was no hint of the shy, blushing blond girl. The wolf was practically a demon herself.
The portal pulsed, contracted. Aquiel’s muffled roar shook through the earth under Elise’s feet. He thrashed and almost flung Rylie and Abel off of him.
But the portal didn’t close.
James was working hard over the altar, making broad gestures. Flames traced from the tips of his fingers, creating blue patterns that hung in the sky, formed by the words that fell from his lips. It was a kind of magic that Elise had never seen before.
The symbols settled over the altar. The tenor of the buzzing changed, and Bain Marshall glowed more brightly.
The door’s aperture pursed again, stuck around Aquiel’s form.
“I need more power to finish this!” James shouted.
Elise growled. “Of course you do.”
She ripped her ring off.
Opening herself to James was no easier than it had been after her exorcism. He filled the spaces in her mind, pressing against the inside of her skull, like trying to fit into a shoe that was two sizes too small.
The colors of the magic brightened. Elise saw the tangled web of power in a thousand colors that no human eyes were meant to witness—a full spectrum of invisible lightning that lashed between the statue and the portal.
James’s thoughts rushed through her in a chorus of whispers. Willow root, powdered dragon’s blood, this candle won’t work…new power, Elise?…Lincoln’s blood to open, Aquiel’s to close…Elise…where are you?
I’ll get Aquiel’s blood, she thought back, focusing the words on him to make sure that he would hear it.
Gratitude flashed between them.
Elise rushed at Aquiel’s leg, scrabbling for grip on the asphalt. It lifted from the pavement with a gust of air, then swung over her head.
“Watch out!” Seth shouted, firing a shot at the demon’s calf. He might as well have been firing blanks. It did nothing.
Meanwhile, Aquiel was trying to step on her.
Elise tucked her limbs in and rolled. The wind of the passing hoof ruffled her hair. It caught the hem of her pants, and she had to rip them free to stand.
She slashed at the hoof with her sword, but drew no blood. She was too short to reach his flesh.
Elise had fought things bigger than her before—as big as gibborim, the smallest of which were over seven feet tall—but never something on such a scale. Maybe she would have stood a chance if she could have gone incorporeal and appeared on his back. But there was no chance of that with so much light pouring out of the door. Elise was useless.
Fortunately, there were two wolves with massive claws that weren’t nearly as limited as Elise.
She stepped back, dodging another crushing blow from Aquiel’s hoof, and searched for signs of the wolves. Abel’s black form was on his knee. Rylie was all the way up on his shoulder, ripping into the tendons, making blood splatter over his skin.
His blood.
Elise cupped one hand beside her mouth. “Hey! Rylie!” The wolf’s ears perked. Golden eyes focused on Elise far below.
Rylie leaped, thudding to the ground beside Elise on all fours. Her muzzle was soaked in blood.
Her lips peeled back in a growl.
“Hey, whoa,” Elise said, stepping back, lifting her hands between them. “It’s me.”
There was no recognition in the wolf’s eyes. Only the beast.
She lunged at Elise.
The breath knocked out of her lungs in a gust. Her back scraped pavement. Elise threw her arms over her face, trying to protect herself against Rylie’s bite—but it never came.
Aquiel’s hoof crashed into the place that Elise had been standing moments earlier.
Rylie climbed off, allowing Elise to push herself onto her elbows. “James needs you,” Elise said. “The blood on your face, actually. Right now.”
With another strangely-human nod, Rylie sprinted to the altar. James wiped blood from her face onto the pentagram.
Magic shoved through Elise and James and focused on the portal at the center.
The door began to close.
“Abel! Get down!” Seth yelled, waving an arm over his head. The wolf didn’t seem to hear—he was too distracted by tearing into every inch of Aquiel that he could reach.
The energy of the portal cut into the demon prince’s flesh as it contracted, leaving angry red stripes on his shoulder. He roared. Northgate trembled.
Aquiel began to withdraw.
With a final thrash, he loosed Abel from his leg. The wolf hit the lawn a hundred yards away, bouncing and sliding. Aquiel’s hand slid through the energy of the portal as it snapped shut again.
The fires of Hell had vanished. The demon was gone, and the town was safe.
But the energy was still banding the statue of Bain Marshall.
Elise watched it for a moment, breathless, waiting to see if it would disappear. Nothing happened. Magic continued pulsing around them, flooding the world with color.
James’s thoughts were still a muddied rush. Quartz, where is it?…got to harness this…more…almost time…
“What’s going on?” Seth asked, backing up to James. “Why won’t it close?”
“I’m working on it,” he said. “I need your help.” Just come closer…
Elise followed Rylie to Abel’s side, dropping to her knees next to him. His chest was rising and falling with rapid breaths. The Alpha was alive, but stunned.
Rylie whined and licked his face.
“He’ll be fine,” Elise said. “He’ll heal.” She took a quick inventory of her body. Aquiel hadn’t managed to step on her. The struggle with Judy had been entirely internal. And the cult hadn’t managed to damage her, aside from a few burned locks of hair. Somehow, she had escaped unscathed. “I think we’ll all be fine.”
As if to contradict her, Seth gave a cry of dismay.
Elise spun, expecting to see him under attack by Lincoln. Instead, she found James slashing a dagger across the wound on Seth’s forearm.
James was still a master of concealing his thoughts from her. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing, or why. He was simply acting. The undercurrent of his thoughts was meaningless. Need to find him…still trapped…so close…
She saw James lower his bloody dagger toward the altar as if in slow motion.
His eyes met hers. One thought rang out clearer than the rest: I’m sorry, Elise.
Seth’s blood dripped on the altar.
The door opened again.
“No!” Elise shouted.
Energy smashed through her. She saw nothing, heard nothing. She was a vessel for the magic. Runes flooded her mind, each resonating at a different pitch deep in the core of her being.
The hurricane of magic seized her. She was battered a
gainst the shore of James’s mind, helpless to do anything but ride out the storm.
And then, suddenly, everything was silent.
Elise opened her eyes. Somehow, she had moved away from Rylie and Abel to stand at the feet of Bain Marshall. And now she stood on the brink of the door, gazing up at her first glimpse of Eden.
When she had left Araboth, the Heaven that had imprisoned God, it had been dying. The Tree had been severed down the center. Smoke had blackened the sky as flames devoured the desiccated orchards.
That was how she had imagined Eden, too: a burning corpse.
Instead, she saw lush, endless forest, as though the portal looked down on it from the peak of a mountain. A breeze gusted through, smelling sweetly of sun-ripened fruit. Elise hadn’t seen sky such a bright shade of blue since the time before she died and returned as a demon. It filled her with an unexpected ache of longing.
And there was someone inside. A boy—a teenager, almost a man—walking among the trees.
The door slammed shut with a final buzz of electricity, and the night was dark.
Had Elise survived?
She rubbed her eyes. Her vision was spotted with green shapes as it struggled to adjust to the sudden darkness. The fact that she could rub her eyes meant that she did have hands and eyes—a good sign that her corporeal body was intact.
Elise pushed into a sitting position. She was underneath Bain Marshall’s downturned hand. The earth was a scorched circle beneath her.
Rylie sat beside Abel a few feet away, arms wrapped around his shoulders. They were both bloody, but alive, and backlit by the spreading fires over the roofs of Northgate.
“What happened?” Elise asked.
“The door opened, it got really bright, and the door closed,” Rylie said. Her voice was hoarse. “If you didn’t close it, then I don’t know why that happened.”
James would know, but he was gone. The only other people in sight were Seth and Stephanie. He was half-carrying the doctor out of the consignment shop, although he looked so worn down that he probably needed the support as much as she did.
