Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3)

by S. M. Reine

  “They’ve spent years enjoying the TLC of Hell, they’re broken, they need to be fixed so they can get the revenge they’re desperately craving. Are you going to help me or not?”

  Nash glared. “Whatever happens, you must promise to disassemble the bridge. I can’t touch it, nor can the wolves. We need a demon to do it.”

  “The humans want me to leave the bridge intact so the slaves can escape.”

  “I won’t touch a single slave mind unless you agree to it,” Nash said. “I can’t guarantee help from the angels. But if you agree to disassemble the bridge, I’ll protect your little ‘army’ from nightmare coercion, and…” He drew in a steadying breath. “I’ll ask the ethereal coalition to come to Earth.”

  Her jaw tensed. “Fine.”

  “There are hundreds of them?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “You realize that the bridge is already complete. The Palace could be sending demons to Northgate at this moment. Healing hundreds of minds will take time that we don’t have.”

  Elise smiled thinly. “Then you’d better get started.”

  Fifteen

  Elise didn’t watch Nash work on the slaves for very long. Three hundred people were going to take a lot of time to heal, and she had better things to do than watch. Most of the humans had broken down and cried the instant they saw him. He was a beautiful fragment of Heaven against the horrors of Hell—a reminder that there was something better beyond the black walls containing the House of Abraxas—and many were downright worshipful to see him. It was going to be a slow, tedious process.

  After Nash had worked on the first dozen slaves, Elise left and prepared herself to jump to Earth. Neuma had found armor for her among the warehouse where the slaves had picked their weapons, but she set that aside for now—if she was going to stop off in mortal-occupied areas of Earth, she needed to pass for mortal. Instead, she donned a leather jacket, hid Seth’s pistol underneath, and tied her hair back.

  Neuma had moved the ethereal artifacts from the warehouse into Abraxas’s office for safekeeping, and the fragments hummed as Elise walked around them. They were responding to the ethereal mark hidden under one of her gloves. Like they were asking her to assemble them into a gate and open it wide.

  Elise ignored the request.

  She was surprised to see that the gate’s pieces weren’t the only ethereal artifacts on the pile, though. There were also an assortment of maps and a chest of smaller objects—bejeweled chalices, gold-bladed weapons, some jewelry. Abraxas must have been collecting for a long time. Maybe since the First War. Elise grabbed one of the golden knives and tucked it into her boot.

  As she rose from her crouch, something far more mundane caught her eye.

  Neuma’s envelope was still on the desk.

  Elise traced its edges with her fingertip. She was going to have to go back to Earth to pick up batteries anyway. It wouldn’t take much longer to phase between the hardware store and the address that Neuma had given her.

  “You win, Neuma,” she muttered, tucking the envelope under her arm against her better judgment.

  Her door opened and Nash entered, stepping in at an angle to avoid bumping his wings. He glanced around the office with obvious disdain. He wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore, revealing a bloody slash in his shirt.

  It had only been a few minutes since she left him. Elise frowned.

  “Are you already done?” she asked.

  He looked like he was about to reply, but was distracted by the sight of the ethereal artifacts behind her. Nash walked toward them. “What are these doing here?”

  “They were collected by the last guy who ran the House. I can only think that he wanted to use the gate to cross into Heaven.” Elise shrugged. “I’m not going to assemble it. You don’t need to worry.”

  “These artifacts belong in Heaven.”

  She scooped a ring out of the box and lobbed it at him. “Take them. Take anything you want. I don’t care.”

  “Eve’s ring,” Nash said, turning the delicate jewelry over in his hand. She didn’t bother looking closely enough to see if she recognized it.

  “Are you done?” Elise asked again, sharper than before.

  “I’m resting,” Nash said, pocketing the ring. “Protecting the minds of the slaves is more difficult than I expected. What did you do to these people?”

  “Nothing except free them.”

  “It seems that they’ve been significantly damaged, and not by typical trauma,” Nash said. “They show signs of being fed off of for months, perhaps years, by an extremely powerful demon. Some are hardly even human anymore.”

  An extremely powerful demon? Elise didn’t think that Belphegor had been into that kind of harm. Maybe Aquiel hadn’t just been sending slaves to Abraxas’s lab—Abraxas could have been letting Aquiel eat from his collection, too.

  It was worse than she had imagined. She sank into Abraxas’s desk chair, leaning her elbows on the desk. “Can you fix them?”

  He frowned. “No. I can’t fix them. I believe I can prevent further damage, but what good will that do? You can’t allow these people to approach the nightmares beyond the wall. Despite my best efforts, you may shatter their minds permanently.”

  “How many are that bad?”

  “Almost half.”

  There were already so few slaves. Elise shook her head. “If they want to go, I’m not going to stop them. It sounds like they need to get to Earth as quickly as possible anyway.”

  Nash paced the room, frustration turning his movements short and jerky. “Then let’s take them back ourselves, you and I. If we both worked at it, we could do it within a matter of hours.” He was walking from Seth’s body and back to the opposite wall again. Elise grew tenser each time he approached the table on which Seth rested.

  “That would take too long, and it would be exhausting. We’d be useless in the fight,” Elise said. “No, Nash. Just patch them together. Do whatever you can and don’t worry about the rest.”

  His wings snapped out wide. “You foolish demon—”

  He cut off, mouth dropping open.

  Nash’s wing had brushed the shroud and swept it off of Seth’s feet. Before Elise could stand, he whipped the blanket off of the body.

  She held her breath as he looked over Seth.

  “My God,” he said. “Is this…?” Elise couldn’t bring herself to respond, but it didn’t seem to matter. A look of mingled horror and disgust twisted Nash’s features. “This is Lilith’s curse. How is this possible?”

  Elise steepled her fingers behind the desk, working the response over in her mind. Lilith’s curse. There was a name for it after all—a name that Onoskelis might recognize. “He was injured by a weapon that carried the…curse. It wasn’t the wound itself that killed him.”

  The angel’s hand fell on Seth’s stomach, where the gash was immortalized in stone. “A sword.”

  She swallowed down the shards of her regret. “If there’s a cure, it’ll be in the Palace library,” Elise said. “After I’ve let the slaves out and closed the bridge, that’s going to be my first priority. I’ll find a cure.”

  “A cure?” Nash barked a harsh laugh. “A cure for Lilith’s curse?” He rounded on her, bracing his hands on the edge of her desk to stare deep into her eyes. “There is no cure for Lilith’s curse.”

  Elise glared back at him, hand creeping toward her pistol. “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “She swept over Shamain like a plague,” he said. “She came upon us with her children, those twins—Yatam and Yatai. The man fought like nothing I had ever seen, but the women were something else entirely. Lilith and Yatai didn’t need to fight. They only needed to touch my brethren with a lick of shadow and turn them to stone. They killed a hundred of us just like that.” Nash jabbed a finger at Seth’s body.

  Elise could almost see what he was describing as though she had witnessed it—not the battle itself, but the aftermath. She could imagine Shamain’s shimmering silver towers am
ong emerald green forests, the streets of glossy white cobblestone, and the broken wings of angels who had died upon them. Eve had been there.

  “There is no cure, Godslayer,” Nash said again, with finality in his voice. “We ripped apart Heaven and Earth in search of one—and Hell, too. Nothing short of Adam’s blessing could revive those cursed by Lilith. Nothing could heal the harm that they rained upon us.”

  He swallowed hard, his throat working. He straightened. Loosened the collar of his suit shirt.

  Dangerous silence stretched between them as he paced to Seth, hovering a hand over his body again.

  “I had never seen Lilith’s curse take a weapon before,” Nash said without looking at her, “but if it had, I imagine it would have looked very much like your obsidian blade.” His fingers rested on the wound for a brief moment.

  She lifted an eyebrow. Had Rylie not told the pack what Elise had done? It sounded like Nash was guessing.

  “You need to send him home,” he said.

  “I’ll take him there after I cure him.”

  “No,” he said. “He’s dead, Elise, and his family needs him now. They need a chance to face what happened and be at peace.” Nash folded his wings back as he faced her. “When I return to Earth, let me take Seth’s body home.”

  “You’re not going back to Earth. You’re going to Heaven to get the angels for me.”

  “You’re a fool if you think they’ll come,” he said.

  Elise pushed back the chair and stood. “And you’re the fool who agreed to try. I need to pick up supplies for the army. You need to finish working on them. We’re short on time, Nashriel—stop wasting it.” She took the shroud from his fist and settled it over Seth again.

  Gerard was waiting for Elise outside the office. “The nightmares are right outside our walls now.”

  “How close?” she asked, ignoring Nash as he followed them down the hall.

  “Inches,” he said. “It’s like they can’t touch us.”

  The wards were holding strong. If Elise couldn’t even feel their assault, then it meant they were doing even better than she expected. She glanced out the hallway window at the battlements. Darkness churned beyond the crenellations—close but harmless.

  “Also, Tina’s gone missing,” Gerard said.

  Elise frowned. “Tina?”

  “One of the witches that was going to enchant the weapons. Josaiah’s doing fine on his own, but I’m worried. I don’t know where she could have gone.”

  Maybe she had decided to run rather than face the fear of battle. There was no point in trying to track her down—she couldn’t have gone far. If she didn’t want to fight, that was her business.

  Elise strode toward the kennels, still holding the envelope, and glanced back at Gerard. He looked as prepared as any of the humans could have been. He had strengthened from the extra food and water and exercise over the last few days, and now he stood a little taller than before.

  “I have to go to Earth in a minute,” Elise said. “I’m not strong enough to take everyone back, but I could drop you off.”

  The offer startled him. Hopeful eyes flicked toward the fissure. “On Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why me? Why not someone else?”

  “You’ve served your time,” she said. “You helped me at the lab. You’ve organized the army. You don’t need to risk your life more than you already have.”

  He lowered his gaze again, jaw set and shoulders squared. “With all due respect, ma’am, I’d rather lead my friends into the Palace and see them up the bridge myself.”

  Elise shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She stepped into the open air. It was warm and welcoming, though she could smell rain faintly on the wind—an unpleasant indication of the weather beyond the fissure.

  The slaves had been organized into groups by Neuma and Jerica near the front gate, and they were all working on assembling their weapons now—wrapping wire around spears and shields, creating weapons that would be able to cut through nightmares as soon as they had a charge.

  Nash strode toward them, wings lifted again, ready to continue his work on the slaves.

  Elise caught Neuma’s eye around his shoulder and lifted the envelope. The half-succubus mouthed, “Thank you.”

  Then Nash extended his wings, blocking her view of Neuma.

  Elise closed her eyes and jumped to Earth.

  Elise appeared on Sun Valley Boulevard—a deceptively fancy name for a road cutting through the heart of a miserable town. There was a locals’ casino to her left and a gas station to her right. The prices on the sign had been ripped down to bare the light bulbs inside. The parking lots were empty. The sunset was spotted by orange-tinted clouds, as if they were on the verge of raining blood. The buildings were dark.

  Her boots ground on broken glass as she headed north. There were cars abandoned on either side of the road in frozen, bumper-to-bumper traffic. All of the cars were missing headlights and windshields. Many were missing the hoods, as well, with their innards picked apart for scrap. It felt like standing on an avenue of the dead, only slightly less miserable than Hell itself.

  She checked the address on the envelope again and walked faster.

  Sun Valley, like Reno and Sparks, should have been empty. The smoke that clogged the air had hung over the region for years now. It had nothing to do with the fissures and everything to do with the destruction that had been wrought in Reno in 2009. There was no electricity or jobs or anything else required for civilized life to continue.

  And yet there were still people in Sun Valley. Elise saw children playing in the street farther up the hill; they kicked a soccer ball missing half its patches between them, oblivious to the desolation and creeping approach of darkness.

  A woman shouted, “Night is coming!”

  The children picked up their soccer ball and hurried inside. Elise watched until they vanished behind a screen door before continuing down the road.

  People shuffled from empty building to empty building, casting furtive glances at the mountains, checking the position of the sun. Trying to get home before dark.

  The streets rapidly emptied, except for the parking lot of what had once been a Scolari’s grocery store. A line of people stood behind barbed wire fencing, supervised by men in large black pickups. The Union must have been bringing supplies into town, feeding the people that hadn’t left—either by choice or because they had nowhere to go.

  Elise jerked the lapels of her jacket up to hide her face. The condition of her clothes was too good for her to pass as one of the survivors. She wouldn’t fool anyone. She could only hope they wouldn’t notice her.

  A Union official standing near the doors looked at her. She felt his eyes cut through the night.

  Elise blinked out of existence and reappeared on the corner of Fifth Street, putting a discount shopping center between them. She didn’t linger to see if he would come looking.

  Lupin Drive was a few blocks up the hill to the east, beyond miles of broken fences and boarded-up windows. It was hard to tell the difference between the places that people lived and the places that had been taken by squalor. There was one mobile home entirely hidden by piles of trash bags, but she could feel an entire family living inside it.

  Door locks clicked as she passed many of the homes. She caught several frightened faces staring at her through windows before curtains were drawn, too. As if the people recognized her.

  They didn’t recognize her. They recognized her pale skin, her black hair, the leather. Reno was still inhabited by many of the demons that had destroyed the city in 2009.

  According to Neuma, the evenings were owned by nightmares—not just the corporeal kind, but the incorporeal shadows that swarmed in the darkness, shattering any mind that dared pass through. They thought she was one of them. They thought she was going to hurt them.

  It was full darkness by the time Elise located the address on Neuma’s makeshift envelope.

  For as long as Elise had known th
em, the McIntyres had lived in a mobile home. It was a well-maintained singlewide that was aging gracefully; they replaced the carpet every few years, had new furniture, kept the windows modern. 1014 Lupin Drive was nothing like the McIntyres’ home. A low wall circled the property, covered in years of gang tags and spray-painted curses. The lawn was a tangle of dried foxtails. The windows on the west side were missing, replaced by trash bags that fluttered in the wind. A screen door whined on its hinges with every gust of cold wind.

  Neuma had told Elise to put the envelope in a mailbox, but all she found was a shattered stump of wood jutting out of the dirt. No mailbox.

  Elise pushed open the gate and stepped through. The stairs groaned under her feet. There were minds inside, human minds, although they left a strange taste on the back of her tongue. Almost like the slaves in the House of Abraxas did.

  Elise knocked on the door.

  After a moment, it opened a sliver. An eye peered through the crack. “Neuma?”

  She lifted the envelope. “Neuma sent me.”

  The door opened.

  The man on the other side had to be at least eighty years old. He was a man with Latino features, a fringe of white hair, and a graying beard. “Come on in,” he said, glancing up at the darkened sky.

  Elise stepped in and he shut the door behind her. She couldn’t stop staring at the old man. She recognized the shape of his nose and the twinkle of humor in his eyes.

  “Are you…?” She couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. This man was so old, so fragile. Absolutely nothing like the woman that had followed Elise to Hell and helped her take the House of Abraxas.

  He gave her a squinty-eyed stare. “You look a lot like Neuma.”

  “You too,” Elise said.

  He barked a laugh. “I should oughta. She’s my big sister.”

  Big sister?

  Elise looked around the mobile home with renewed interest. The walls were decorated with vintage posters, pin-ups, a photo of an old drive-in lit by neon in front of a starry sky. The appliances were relatively modern. There were magnets advertising Craven’s Casino on the refrigerator. The bread on the counter was covered in fuzzy green mold.