The Darkest Gate

by S. M. Reine

  One by one, the slaves fell silent, and a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on her.

  Their lips moved in unison to mouth a single word with three syllables. She didn’t hear them, but she knew what word it was, and what it meant.

  “This was a mistake,” Elise said.

  “A calculated risk.” His hand curled around her wrist. “And now we must run.”

  Her eyes lifted to the opposite balcony. A gaunt man with shaggy brown hair stood on the other side, and hatred carved furrows into his sagging face.

  The years hadn’t been kind to Alain Daladier. He looked like hell.

  Elise retreated into the shadows, but it was too late to hide. He reached into his jacket.

  Thom flashed down the stairs, and she ran after him.

  A gunshot rang out above them. A bullet smacked into the railing. Wood shattered.

  The angels didn’t react, but the humans did. Bleary eyes stared around for the source of the gunshot. Someone cried out in surprise as Elise shoved through the room. Her knee bumped a table and sent the hookah crashing to the ground. A man tumbled off his pillow, and she jumped over him.

  Still, the angels didn’t move. Their eyes tracked her across the room.

  Another gunshot cracked like thunder. It shattered a wall sconce as Elise passed it, raining glass into her hair.

  Thom ran like the wind blew, shoving open the front door and disappearing into the night. Elise flung herself around the side of the door, drew her knife, and dropped into a crouch instead of following him.

  Her heart wasn’t even beating hard. She felt calm, focused, like she was floating apart from her own body.

  People screamed inside. She waited.

  Footsteps pounded through the entryway. Her fist tightened on the dagger.

  Alain took two steps out the door, and Elise jumped on his back, bringing her arm around his throat. His skeletal body buckled under hers. He gave a strangled grunt as they fell down the steps and hit the driveway face-first, tossing her off his back.

  She rolled. Got to her feet. Pressed the knife to his belly.

  Cold metal pressed into her temple before she could stab.

  Alain bared his teeth in a vicious growl as he held the gun to her skull. “Va te faire foutre,” he spat, and she felt his arm tense as he squeezed the trigger.

  Elise dropped.

  The gunshot blasted over her head and shattered her hearing into a thousand shards of glass. The ringing almost muted Alain’s shout.

  Thom had appeared, shoving the wrist holding the gun so it aimed skyward. Another shot flashed and filled the air with the metallic tang of gunpowder. Thom twisted Alain’s arm around, smashed it into his knee, and forced him to drop the gun.

  Even while grappling, Thom looked peaceful. Almost amused.

  He shoved Alain to the ground and planted a foot in his chest. Elise grabbed the gun and dropped the magazine.

  Mr. Black’s aspis looked so much older than he had ten years before. There were burn scars on his neck, purple spots on the backs of his hands, and scruffy white stubble on his jaw. But some things didn’t change. His mouth twisted when Elise came to stand over him.

  “You burned my office,” she said, barely able to hear her own voice over the ringing in her skull. “You stole all my money!”

  His mouth moved with a response. She was sure it would have been scathing if she could have heard it.

  And then there was suddenly a second gun in his hand.

  This time, Elise moved faster than Thom. She threw herself out of the way, instinctively shielding her face with her arms—though there was little she could do about a bullet aimed at her skull.

  The bullet hit Thom. He fell to the lawn.

  Alain scrambled to his feet and vanished into the trees.

  Elise was a heartbeat behind him. She crashed into the edge of the forest.

  His back darted between the tree trunks. Branches scraped against Elise’s bare legs. Her strappy sandals caught on a bush, wrenched her ankle to the side, and sent her stumbling.

  “Shit!”

  Her knees smashed against rocks. Pine needles stabbed into her gloves.

  She righted herself, staggering around a tree to pick up the knife she dropped. By the time she found it, it was too late—the night was dark and complete, and Alain Daladier had vanished.

  Elise swore as she ripped the shoes from her feet and flung them into the night.

  She limped back to the lawn after a few more minutes of searching, working her jaw around to clear her ringing skull. Kopides had improved healing in comparison to other humans, but the whine in her ears didn’t make her optimistic about her ability to hear that pitch ever again.

  Thom met her at the end of the driveway. His hair was still in a neat ponytail. There wasn’t so much as a single grass stain or a drop of blood on his tidy clothes. “You’re alive,” Elise said, a little disappointed. “Where did he hit you?”

  “You must be confused. I wasn’t shot.”

  She frowned. “But you fell.”

  “Perhaps I was surprised,” Thom said. He kept one eye on the house as though waiting for another attack. “Come. We must hurry to use our brief advantage. If Mr. Black and Alain realize what we’ve learned, their plans will surely change.”

  He set a swift pace to the SUV, which was parked with other cars at the side of the house. Elise lengthened her stride to keep up with him even though it made her ankle twinge. “The Night Hag should send someone to protect Portia. When Mr. Black finds out—”

  “She’s not your concern.”

  The fluttering of curtains caught her attention, and Elise faltered mid-step.

  Angels watched through the windows. They had lined up along the bottom floor shoulder-to-shoulder, silent and calm, and every one of those pale blue eyes was fixed on her. Or, to be more specific, her gloved hands.

  Waiting. Expectant.

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Fuck you guys, too.”

  VIII

  Betty dozed in a drugged haze. Pain kept her on the edge of consciousness. The saline drip was cool where they had taped it against the inside of her arm. The bed hissed and swelled as the mattress inflated, and then sighed as it deflated again. The machines by her head occasionally beeped.

  She drifted through dreams of fire and smoke. Occasionally, a nurse would wake her up, but she never opened her eyes. It was too hard. It felt like all the moisture had been sucked from her eyeballs.

  A dry cough made her chest hitch. Her fingers twitched for the nurse call button.

  Morphine. Her bag had run empty, and she could feel it wearing off.

  Metal rattled, and a sliver of light fell on her face. Betty finally peeled open her eyelids. Someone was moving around the foot of her bed, but she couldn’t tell who had come to torment her with more diagnostics in the middle of night.

  “What time is it?” she rasped.

  Footsteps tracked past the sink. Cabinets opened and closed.

  She let her eyelids slide shut again.

  “Stephanie—Dr. Whyte—said no more tests until morning. I’m resting ‘under sedation.’ Supposedly,” Betty said. Her irritated throat tickled. Another cough. She stretched a hand toward a glass of water, but couldn’t reach. “I’m leaving in a few hours. All I want is sleep and more painkillers and no more shots in my ass.”

  Plastic crinkled, and then the door to the hallway closed, leaving the room in darkness.

  Betty sighed in relief. It burned all the way down her chest.

  But the visitor hadn’t left. The curtain closed around her, and someone stepped up with a spare pillow from the wardrobe by the window.

  Her fingers fell on the remote. She clicked on the overhead light.

  The person at her bedside wasn’t any of the nurses who paraded through in the last day, though she wore scrubs patterned with red geometric shapes. She was silken-haired with windblown features and delicate hands, which were wrapped around the pillow. Her pupils didn’t dilate at t
he sudden light.

  She was sober enough that the strange gaze struck a chord. “You’re not here with morphine… are you?”

  The nurse lifted her arms.

  Betty realized what was about to happen an instant before the pillow mashed against her face and cut off her air supply. Her chest hitched as her lungs struggled to expand, but there was nothing to fill them.

  She tried to scream. It came out as a muffled squeal.

  The nurse pressed harder. Betty fumbled for the nurse call button and knocked the remote off the bed. Even though she had a full breath of air, sudden adrenaline killed all rationality.

  She beat against the arms pinning her down. They felt doughy, boneless, but somehow as immobile as steel. Her hazy head grew thicker. Her pulse pounded in her temples. White noise roared through her ears.

  The mattress inflated around her and deflated again.

  Betty felt oblivion creeping up on her as her oxygen ran out. If it took her, she didn’t think she would ever wake again.

  She tried harder to fight, but her arms were heavy and weak. Betty’s blood grew sluggish. Her limbs went limp. She screamed and screamed on the inside, but it didn’t make any difference—and soon, even that grew faint.

  This never would have happened to Elise.

  “Hey—hey! What are you doing?”

  And all that weight was suddenly gone.

  Betty shoved the pillow off her face. Color rushed into her vision with a huge gasp of air. She gripped her chest in both hands, making the IV twist in her vein. Oh God, that hurt.

  Black stars cleared from her vision. The nurse had plastered her back on the wall between two cabinets, and Betty realized with a jolt that her feet weren’t on the ground. She was halfway to the ceiling like a bug on a window.

  Anthony lunged for her. The nurse scrambled higher on the wall with jerky motions, then leaped and landed behind him.

  He spun, swinging a hard right hook. His fist connected with the nurse’s jaw.

  Her head snapped off.

  Betty shrieked, hands flying to her mouth. The nurse’s body collapsed like an empty skin suit, and Anthony hollered as he jumped back. “What the fuck?”

  The head rolled under the cabinet. Empty eyes glimmered at them.

  A bulge shifted inside the body, like a balloon inflating inside what used to be the belly, and Anthony grabbed the chair from the bedside. He lifted it over his head and brought it crashing down on the pile of scrubs.

  Something squealed and popped. Black fluid gushed out the neck hole.

  “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ!”

  He smashed the chair on it again, and again. And then he slammed his booted foot into it for good measure.

  Then he stepped back, shielding Betty with his body, and held the chair in front of him like a lion tamer. But the body didn’t move again.

  He dropped the chair and fell into it, face pale.

  “Are you okay?” Anthony asked. He was surprisingly calm, considering he had just decapitated an evil assassin nurse.

  “Someone just tried to kill me,” gasped Betty. The truth of it sank in, and tremors shuddered through her entire body. “Oh my God someone just tried to kill me! Why would someone want to kill me? I’m just a—I mean—”

  “Hey, relax, it’s okay.”

  Betty leaned forward to grab his shirt in both hands, dragging his face close to hers. “You don’t get it! Somebody wants to kill me!”

  “I heard you the first six times. Take a deep breath and lie back before you hurt yourself.”

  She shook him. “Don’t you try to act like this isn’t a big deal!”

  Anthony gently disengaged her fingers from his shirt. “I know it’s a big deal, but it is okay because they didn’t succeed. You’re alive. All right?”

  “No! Not all right!”

  The door opened. Anthony shifted his chair on top of the flesh pile on the floor as a man stepped into the room. Betty saw scrubs and shrieked.

  “What’s going on?” asked the nurse. He had brown eyes, three chins, and greasy skin. Just like a human should. Totally normal. The empty, rubbery arm of the body was still visible, so Anthony kicked it under the bed.

  “Night terrors,” he said.

  “I thought I heard something fall.”

  “Nope,” Anthony said, his voice an octave too high. “Just night terrors.” He plastered a grin on his face. Betty followed suit.

  The nurse obviously didn’t believe them, but seemed too tired to push it. “Try to keep it down. People in the ward are sleeping.”

  “I want to check out,” Betty said.

  “It’s after midnight.”

  “Yeah, but I’m ready to go now. I’m feeling much better!” She was certain her grin must have been manic and ridiculous. “This hospital sure is great!”

  He looked dubious. “Let me go talk to the doctor.”

  The nurse left. Anthony and Betty both sagged.

  “I’ll call Elise,” he said.

  Betty snorted. It hurt her raw nasal passage. “Yeah. Obviously.”

  Anthony half-carried Betty up the stairs to the apartment above Motion and Dance. She was still too woozy from the leftover morphine to navigate the steps herself.

  “I must be important,” she said again. “They don’t try to kill the unimportant people.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You are very important.”

  “Maybe I’ve scared someone. You know, I’ve been working on my magic.” She wiggled her fingers at him, like she was pretending to shoot lightning from her fingertips. “Oh yeah. Bet someone caught wind that there’s a powerful new player in town. Wicked witch of the west. Protégé to James Faulkner, the greatest aspis in the world.”

  “You’re about as wicked as a ball of yarn,” Anthony said. He knocked on the door and propped Betty against the railing to wait.

  “A ball of yarn who can light a candle with her brain.”

  “I thought you inhaled too much smoke to speak.”

  Betty stuck her tongue out. “Sure, you’re not afraid now, but just wait. Candles today. Whole cities tomorrow.”

  Elise opened the door. She took one look at them and went rigid. “Get in,” she said, grabbing Betty’s arm to pull her inside.

  “I’ll be right back,” Anthony said.

  He ran downstairs and grabbed the trash bag out of his trunk. Sneaking a boneless corpse out of a hospital had been easy at two in the morning. Getting Betty out had been harder. Finding someone to disconnect her from the IV had taken an hour, and Anthony kept expecting another creepy flesh-sack to attack in the meantime.

  The body in the bag had begun to smell on the ride home, and now the entire Jeep reeked of sulfur and rot. His hands slipped on the plastic when he grabbed it.

  “Oh man,” he groaned. Some of the black fluids had eaten holes in the bag. His skin tingled on contact.

  Elise met him at the top of the stairs. “Bathtub.”

  They dumped it in the bathroom without opening the bag. She turned the on the sink so hot it steamed the mirror and sprayed soap in Anthony’s hand. The tingles were starting to become a painful itch. His skin was raw and red underneath.

  “Did we wake you up?” he asked, shutting off the faucet with an elbow and drying off using embroidered hand towels cannibalized from the studio downstairs.

  “No,” Elise said.

  He stepped back to take a look at her. She was beautiful with her red-brown curls piled on her head and a dress that hit just above the knees. “I guess we didn’t. What were you doing this evening?”

  “There’s a dead body in the tub and you’re interested in my night. I’m a bad influence.”

  Anthony plucked a piece of glass out of her hair and dropped it in the sink. “You look great.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Betty was half-asleep on the couch in the living room. “They tried to kill me. I must be important,” she mumbled. Her injuries from the fire were covered in some kind of plastic, and the skin beneath it w
as completely raw.

  Elise and Anthony went to a corner of the kitchen to talk without disturbing her. “Tell me what happened.”

  Anthony whispered a quick and dirty rundown, and by the time he finished, Elise was pacing. Her face was drawn into a grim mask. Her lips were white around the edges. “You’ll have to stay here until I take care of this. Both of you. You can’t leave the warded perimeter of the studio. It’s not safe.”

  “But my job—” Anthony protested.

  “They’re watching me. They know who I’m spending time with. You can stay here or die.”

  “Why? Who is ‘they’? What do ‘they’ want?”

  She frowned. “That’s not important right now. I have to do an autopsy before the acid destroys my evidence. We still have plastic sheeting from renovating the garage. I’ll be right back.”

  Elise ran downstairs.

  “Why does she always do that?” Anthony asked the closed door.

  Betty hugged a pillow to her chest as she sat up. Her face was still all puffy from the saline drip. “What, pretend you’re too dumb to understand what’s happening?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Maybe because we’re too dumb to understand what’s happening.”

  “You’re lucky you almost died or I’d kill you myself,” Anthony muttered.

  When Elise came back, she cut wide swaths of plastic sheeting off the roll and laid them across the kitchen floor. He would have liked to help, but Betty had woken up enough to become demanding again. She had a whole list of things she “needed,” which included a glass of water, Tylenol, and a snack. Preferably cookie dough.

  “What do you want now? Your teddy bear?” Anthony asked, exasperated.

  “Do you think I’m twelve or something? I’ll settle for a shot of tequila.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Woo, those IV fluids aren’t joking around. You could float me over a football stadium right now. I’ve got to pee like a pregnant woman. Help me up?” Betty stretched her hands toward Anthony. He obediently hauled her to her feet and watched to make sure she arrived safely at the bathroom.

  “Two assassination attempts, and Betty’s still Betty,” Elise said, unrolling another yard of plastic and slicing it with a box cutter. She actually sounded affectionate.