by S. M. Reine
Failure.
She drifted. She bled.
Elise woke up fully healed with the sour aftertaste of magic lingering on her tongue. “There,” said the witch, sitting back on her heels. She was an elegant older woman with gray-streaked hair sleeked into a bun, and she wore a silk bathrobe, like she had just stepped out of a spa.
“Thank God for you, Pamela,” Mom said.
Pamela grimaced. “Well, don’t do that. You never know who’s listening these days.”
Elise peered at her mother through bleary eyes. Mom’s cheeks were wet and her nose was running, but she still managed a grateful smile for the witch named Pamela. “I would have taken her to the hospital. I know we should have. But Isaac thought that—”
“You did the right thing. We’re far too invested in Elise to allow her care to fall to mundane doctors.”
“Will she become a werewolf?”
“No. Claws don’t transfer the curse. Many kopides are immune anyway.” Pamela finally noticed that Elise had opened her eyes. She wiped the blood off of Elise’s stomach with a damp cloth, and the skin underneath was undamaged. “How do you feel, Elise?”
“Fine,” she said, because Dad would have hated it if she had complained about her sore back and the strange taste in her mouth.
Elise pushed her mother away and sat up on her own. She was surprised to find, as her senses returned to her, that she was outside in a forest. The only light came from a bonfire that Elise glimpsed through the trees. Silhouettes of dancers flitted around the flames to the slow beating of drums.
“It’s Litha,” Pamela explained at Elise’s confused expression. “Midsummer. My coven is celebrating the sabbat tonight. Would you like to see?”
“But the hunt,” Elise protested. “The werewolf’s body—I have to get back.”
“Your father has returned to take care of the dead,” Mom said, smoothing her hand down Elise’s hair. “We have nothing else to do there.”
Elise hung her head.
Isaac had left them rather than wait for his daughter to be healed. He must have been even more disappointed than she feared.
She nodded, resisting the urge to wallow. Dad wouldn’t have wallowed.
“I’m going to join the circle,” Mom said. She stood and—to Elise’s surprise—began to strip.
She abandoned her skirt and blouse on a tree, like the branch was a hanger. She fluffed out her curls, smiled at her daughter, and stepped into the clearing.
Pamela washed Elise’s blood off of her hands with the remaining water.
“Many rituals are performed skyclad,” the witch explained. Pamela sounded like what Elise imagined a teacher would sound like, though Elise had never been to school. “It helps witches feel connected to the elements. Young and old alike participate. Strange as it seems to the uninitiated, it’s not sexual.”
The idea hadn’t even occurred to Elise, but having Pamela mention it brought heat to her cheeks.
“I’m not getting naked,” she said, folding her arms tightly across her chest. She didn’t have any of her mother’s physical features yet—and, hopefully, never would—but she wasn’t prepared to advertise their absence, either.
Pamela rubbed her back. “You’re not a witch. Nobody would expect you to join the ritual. But you can’t stay in the trees unsupervised, and I’m not babysitting you. Come, you can sit on this log over here.”
Elise would have preferred to face another werewolf than enter that clearing. But Pamela drew her onward, guiding her to a fallen tree at the edge of the meadow, and sat her down on the tree.
Mom had jumped in with the other witches as if she belonged there, and they greeted her with cheers of joy. The coven already knew her.
The shouts and cheers of the coven sounded a lot like the yipping of the werewolf as they had hunted it through the Kansas strip mall. The witches were more animal than human. Beasts of the earth and trees. Mom’s magic had never been like that before—it was a sedate, passive thing, best for making potions and poultices. Elise wondered if it was her mother who was strange, or the coven itself.
That was Elise’s first real impression of witchcraft: naked bodies dancing around the fire to the beat of primal drums, with the taste of blood and magic at the back of her throat.
But not everyone around the circle was a joyful participant in the bacchanalia. A man stood on the opposite side of the bonfire, occasionally visible through the licking flames. He wore a button-down shirt. His hair was charcoal black, like Pamela’s must have been when she was younger. And he was deep in argument with a naked old man whose skin was like leather.
“Who’s that?” Elise asked, tugging Pamela’s sleeve.
Pamela turned to see whom Elise was referring to. The younger man was shaking his fist in the face of the older man, silently threatening, even though Elise couldn’t hear the words over the drumming.
“That’s my nephew, James,” Pamela said. There was a strange expression on her face. Somewhere between wistful and worried. “I think you’d like him. Would you like to be introduced?”
How could Pamela possibly know what kind of people Elise would like? They had never even met before.
As frightening as the coven’s weird ritual was, the contrast between their joyous shrieks and James’s anger was stark. Among all of them, this was the man with the real power—the only one of them that didn’t succumb to the crowd’s energy, and was unafraid to stand apart. Of all the witches she faced that night, he was the one she would least want to fight.
“No,” Elise said. “I’m staying here.”
Pamela looked relieved. “Probably best, for now. Plenty of time for that later.” She let the robe fall from her shoulders, then joined the circle again.
Power drifted into the sky, gathered from motion, dance, and drums. Elise sat on the log and tried not to show her fear.
The next time she looked through the flames, James was gone.
Dad came back for Elise the next morning. The Desert Eagle was gone. The blood had been scrubbed out of the truck. And the first thing he said to Elise was, “What did you learn last night?”
“Never underestimate,” she replied promptly.
She didn’t just mean the werewolf that they had failed to anticipate. She couldn’t shake the image of her mother with those pagans, or her father calmly shooting Fidel in the face. She understood now that there were many things she didn’t know about her parents and the world at large—and many of those things were likely to be bad.
“Good,” Dad said. “Very good.”
JANUARY 1995
Pamela Faulkner was a woman of rules. Her house was full of them, and she made sure to lay them out clearly from day one. “Just so that there won’t be any confusion,” she had said, handing Elise a laminated card with bullet points printed on one side and emergency phone numbers on the other.
No swordplay inside.
No drills until after breakfast.
No interfering with Pamela’s spellwork.
No foul language.
No staying awake past nine o’clock.
Elise Kavanagh, daughter of a wandering demon hunter, had never had a place to call home, much less a home with rules.
She was not a fan of it.
Pamela called it “structure,” claiming that it was the kind of thing that a “wayward teenage girl” needed in her life, but Elise recognized it for what it was: a desperate desire to be in control. And only someone who feared the consequences of losing that control would be so obsessive about keeping it.
Ultimately, it did not make Pamela strong to have so many rules to exert over Elise; it made her weak, brittle, breakable. And it just wasn’t fair. Elise didn’t even like eating breakfast.
But when Mom and Dad left Elise in Pamela’s care, they told her that she was to follow the house rules, obey orders, and be polite. This was unusual advice, especially coming from Dad, for whom law breaking was an art form.
“How long?” Elise had asked he
r parents as they walked out Pamela’s front door. They didn’t stop to answer her, so she jumped down the stairs and grabbed her father’s elbow. “How long do I have to put up with this shit?”
“For as long as it takes,” Dad had said. “And don’t use that language.” He had never cared if Elise used swear words before. It felt like a betrayal to be admonished for it now, when they were leaving her.
Mom had sobbed, hugged Elise again, and waved goodbye.
Elise didn’t wave back.
“As long as it takes” turned out to be several months.
Twenty-three weeks after her parents left—not that Elise was counting—she was still doing her best to follow Pamela Faulkner’s megalomaniacal rules. She didn’t unsheathe her falchions while she was inside, ate breakfast before practicing her fighting techniques, and retired to her bedroom at nine o’clock every night, even though it was stupid for a fourteen-year-old to have a bedtime.
A bedtime, for fuck’s sake.
Restrictions aside, the days weren’t too bad. Pamela wouldn’t let Elise go into town or meet any of the teenagers in the coven, but she had free reign of the surrounding forest. Swimming in the river, climbing trees, and lifting boulders were all great ways to remain conditioned. When Dad came back for Elise, she would be in the best shape of her life. Their next hunt together would be killer. Literally.
But weeks wore on with no sign of Elise’s parents, and Pamela started inviting her to go on walks together. Elise couldn’t exactly say no. She spent all day outside anyway.
A daily walk became routine, during which Pamela taught her about herbs and flowers. Elise tried to pretend that it was boring, since it didn’t involve punching anything.
About a month later, Pamela invited Elise to help with a spell. She asked Elise to read from the Book of Shadows as Pamela performed the ritual. The old witch even let her watch while magic and light swirled through the air. Elise tried to pretend that was boring, too, but it was hard. Pamela was so much better at magic than Mom had ever been, and the process was fascinating.
Then Pamela started asking Elise to join her in front of the fireplace for shared reading time after dinner. They didn’t talk during this particular activity. They just sat together on the couch and read until the stupid nine o’clock bedtime.
This was the quietest of all special activities, yet Elise thought it was fascinating. She had never really read books before. Nothing that wasn’t about history, demonology, or fighting techniques, anyway. Elise liked fiction. It was fun.
But more than that, Mom and Dad had never gone out of their way to spend time with Elise. It was weird having an adult treat her like she was a teenager, a family member, and not a weapon.
Sitting in front of the fireplace with Pamela was the best part of the day.
“Can I read in bed?” Elise asked one night. It was nine o’clock, but she only had two chapters left—she couldn’t put the book down now.
This question seemed to please Pamela. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, licking her thumb and turning a page. “It’s time to sleep. But you can finish reading it at breakfast.”
While Pamela’s laws required Elise to be in bed at nine, even the most stringent rules couldn’t force her to go to sleep. She pretended to put the book back on the shelf, then tucked it under her shirt and took it to bed instead. She finished the romance novel by moonlight, holding the book open with the weight of a dagger while her hands were occupied by sharpening the falchions. She was quiet about it. Pamela never knew.
Sneaking a book to bed and reading until midnight became the last special activity Elise had at Pamela’s house, but it was definitely her favorite.
Even when she was reading in bed, Elise kept her ears perked for hints of motion in the forest outside her open window. When hunting with Dad, one of them had always been awake at any given time. They had to be prepared for anything. For the first twenty-three weeks with Pamela, there were no attacks or danger at the house to watch for, but habits were hard to break.
On the twenty-fourth week, Elise broke the habit. She fell asleep early, at nine o’clock sharp, facedown in a book.
That was why she wasn’t awake to see Pamela’s killers coming.
Elise awoke to the sound of her bedroom door opening.
She sat up, shocked and confused, head foggy, mouth dry. The room was darker than usual. Pamela had always left a light on in the hallway in case Elise needed to navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But that light was extinguished.
Elise could barely make out the shape of a figure stepping into her bedroom, broad-shouldered and tall. Her first wild thought was that her parents had finally come back for her. But this man was much too tall to be Dad.
Men didn’t visit Pamela’s house. Especially not men with wings.
Dad’s voice rolled through her mind as she leaped out of bed, allowing her muscles to activate on instinct.
You fell asleep, you useless piece of shit.
Elise’s weapon safe was locked with the falchions inside. She grabbed a knife off of the dresser.
You let your guard down.
The angel was within arm’s reach. She swung the knife for his heart, using every ounce of speed she could muster in her sleep-sluggish state.
He caught her wrist with a crushing grip, squeezing until he dropped the knife.
Your enemies never sleep.
He brought his other arm from behind his back, and Elise realized that he was holding a sword: a blade as long as his arm with a single edge, curved and wicked. It was larger than one of Elise’s falchions, more like some kind of saber. It would be slower to swing, and useless for thrusting. She needed to get in close.
Elise drove her knee between his legs. Stomped on his instep.
He didn’t even grunt.
If you get caught sleeping, you deserve what’s coming to you, Dad whispered.
Elise attempted to disarm the angel, to take the sword for herself. But when her fingers brushed the hilt, they flamed with pain. She cried out.
The winged man forced her to her knees and backhanded her. Her lips tasted like blood.
“Pamela!” Elise shouted.
You failed, kid.
But in her lessons with her father, there had been second chances. She had been able to recover from the fights and try again. Dad said that she should remember that real fights never had do-overs, and that if she failed in reality, it was a permanent failure.
It was one thing to be told she would have no second chances, and another to have a booted foot driven into her face.
A flickering light filled the room. The man’s sword had ignited with flame. Though he held it several feet above her head, it scorched the finest hairs on her face. A lock of auburn hair near her eye curled with the heat. Elise twisted under the boot to see the man’s face illuminated by the sword. It was impossible to make out any details, but she could see one thing: the angel’s eyes were a very pale shade of blue.
He slammed the pommel of the saber into her skull, and her head bounced off of the floor.
Dazed, she couldn’t move as he dragged her out the door by the ankle.
The office door was open. Elise could see Pamela’s feet on the other side of the desk, as if she were asleep on the floor beyond it. Pamela was dead. Her rules didn’t apply anymore.
Elise’s head cleared enough to realize that she was still being dragged.
Never let them take you, Dad had said once. If the enemy takes you off of the battlefield, you’re dead.
She was in the living room now. The front door was open. Darkness and death waited on the other side. Elise kicked and struggled, trying not to allow herself to be dragged any farther. She grabbed the couch as they passed, and her fingers slipped, tearing free. The man with the sword and the mighty wings was too strong to stop.
Dad would have been so annoyed with her.
You deserve whatever is coming, his voice whispered in the
back of her mind.
The angel dragged Elise through the front door.
But it wasn’t darkness waiting on the other side. It was gray light, so impossibly bright, and there was someone waiting for her within it.
The door closed.
PART TWO
The Bride
I
JANUARY 2010
Elise Kavanagh was burning.
The flesh peeled from her body. Flaming fingers drove into her skull, plucked out her eyes, and pierced her brain. She arched her back and screamed until there was no breath remaining in her lungs.
It was gray. Everything was gray. She was going to die.
Why haven’t I died yet?
Hands hauled her through the light. She lashed out with booted feet, kicking and thrashing and trying to find some way to dig in before it was too late.
Her vision swam with green shapes in the wake of passing through the void, much too bright for her demon eyes to process. Even before she could see, she smelled burning leaves, heard the shifting of branches, felt the dead weight of the air.
The last thing that she remembered seeing was the reception area of Motion and Dance. The desk where she used to do the accounting had been dusty. The blue carpet and curtains had been bleached by sunlight. Outside, there had been snow on the ground, dead trees, the staring faces of empty buildings—hallmarks of a now-desolate Reno, Nevada.
She hadn’t cared about any of it. Elise had been heading upstairs to join James for breakfast, and even though her body was sore from recent fights, she was the happiest she had ever been.
Until she had stepped through the front door.
Elise’s eyes cleared, letting her watch as she was dragged underneath a stone arch into a different world.
She wasn’t in Reno anymore.
Elise was in the garden.
A pair of cherubim held her in an iron grip. Their eyes were empty holes, and silver blood tracked their cheeks. Swords hung from their belts.
The gate retreated as they carried her away. There were only a few yards of grass between the edge of the world and the garden wall. Vines gripped gray stone, punching through slivers in the brick, just like she remembered from the last time she had been trapped there.
