by S. M. Reine
“Yes, yes. David Nicholas’s suffering has put me in a good mood, so I’ll send along your winnings from the cage fight. Does that mollify your greedy soul?” She didn’t wait for an answer before waving her hand again. “Get out of my sight.”
Thom glided to the door, and Elise followed him. She felt odd without David Nicholas’s taunts to follow her—odd, but satisfied.
The Night Hag called out.
“Remember, kopis. If you piss me off, that will be you next time.”
And with that friendly reminder, Thom closed the doors.
She strode briskly toward the elevator.
Thom stepped close, blocked her path, and stared at her with gleaming eyes. No, not at her—at her charms. “Interesting,” he said.
“I want to go home.” She took a quick step back when he reached for the chains. “I told you not to touch those again.”
His hand dropped. “I suppose I would be defensive if I had a critical piece of angelic ruin around my neck as well.”
Elise clenched her fists.
He knew.
The soapy white stone was the size of her thumbnail, suspended between an ankh and a Star of David, and completely innocuous. There was no way to tell that it was part of the bowl she had retrieved for Mr. Black a decade before. A kopis might have recognized it, if he knew what he was looking at, but a witch?
“Have you told her?” she asked.
“No. But she will seek it when her gate does not work.”
“You know, when I was in Mr. Black’s penthouse, there was a map of old mine shafts,” Elise said. “He’s found a way into the Warrens. The gate isn’t safe here. She shouldn’t assemble it.”
“Interesting. But hardly my concern.”
“Why did you send me there if you don’t care?”
He bent down to whisper in her ear. “Because I wanted to see what you would do.” His mild tone sent shivers down her spine.
She stepped around him and set a fast pace to the elevator. She hated having that witch behind her, but her urge to leave overruled everything else. He was so quiet at her back that she thought he had fallen behind, but when she turned to shut the elevator door, he side-stepped in before she could close it.
Thom pulled the lever. The elevator lurched into motion. He never stopped staring at her.
They ascended slowly, inch by inch, and the rock slid past them outside the cage. The lone bulb flickered. It cast strange shadows on Thom’s face, making him look more like a statue than a human.
Her back hit the railing. She didn’t realize she had moved away from him.
“Careful,” he said in that mild voice.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Elise’s hand tightened on her mother’s cross, where it dangled beside the charm of St. Benedict. “Like you’re going to eat me.”
He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his slacks. Jutted his hip to the side. Tilted his chin. It was a look of pure seduction, but those eyes—those black eyes—completely ruined it. “Would you prefer this?”
She drew her sword in response.
The elevator shuddered. The light went out.
Her heart pounded and her nerves rang like a cracked bell struck with a mallet. It lasted only a second, maybe two.
When the light came back on, Thom had vanished.
Elise whirled, searching for him in the little six foot by six foot box. There was nowhere to hide. He had transported himself away again.
The lift stopped, and she kept her sword at the ready as she opened the door and moved into the hall behind the DJ booth. Someone had turned off the house lights in Blood again. Only a thin neon strip by the floor lit her path.
She couldn’t see Thom, but he spoke. His voice came from the end of the hall. The only way out.
“Accelerated heartbeat. Vasoconstriction. Auditory exclusion. Loss of complex motor control.” He gave a low chuckle. “I see how you move, hunter, I read your body signs. That is fear. Arousal.”
Another step forward. There was nowhere else to go.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I said I’m leaving, and I’ll go through you if I have to.”
“It takes so little to disturb humans. Nothing more than a few tricks of light. After what I heard of you, I expected you to be different.”
Elise reached the end of the hall. She eased around the corner, back to the wall, and faced the DJ booth.
Nothing.
“But you are what you are. There’s no mistaking that.” Thom’s voice dropped, assuming that husky tone again. “I need you, and I will have you.”
She didn’t bother responding. Instead, she drew her other sword and stepped around the DJ booth.
Thom lounged by the cage, studying his fingernails. He didn’t look the same as he had in the earth below. The shift was subtle, but distinct. A strange glow had come over his flesh, and his hair had turned to ink. It was as though he was airbrushed smooth, a dream walking on earth, and it was hard to look at him for very long.
“What the hell are you?” she whispered.
“That isn’t relevant. What matters is that I know who you are.” He pointed to her gloved hand without touching it, and his lips formed a single word: “Godslayer.”
Elise stiffened. “Where did you hear that?”
Thom pointed to the sky.
There was nothing above him but a roof painted black, smeared with sticky fluids that might have been cooking grease or blood or both. But she knew what he meant. And she felt cold, so horribly cold, like the chill that accompanied death had settled upon her.
Such knowledge was dangerous. Too dangerous.
Elise lunged.
The blade sliced through empty air. Thom darted to the side, and she spun and swung the sword again in a wide arc. But he was gone again, and again. Elise twisted and jabbed, sinking her falchion into nothing every time.
When she missed her third thrust, she unbalanced and staggered. Her left knee connected with the ground. The impact jolted up her hip.
Thom stood just out of reach, arms folded, completely composed. “You would kill someone for simply speaking that name.”
“I have before.”
“You could never kill me. You are weak.”
Elise gritted her teeth. She threw her entire body into her dive, slashing and swinging. Thom stepped aside. The breeze ruffled his hair. Jerking her second sword free, she brought them both in a high arc. Elise cut across his body.
He was suddenly on the bar, and she hadn’t seen him climb it. Elise leaped onto a chair, a stool, and onto his level.
Elise was a blur of motion as she moved on instinct. She had never been so fast in her life. But Thom was faster. She kicked glasses out of the way and they shattered on the floor. Another thrust. Another calm step back. Her swings were completely ineffective.
He landed on the floor again. She seized a bottle and jumped over him, knocked a table over, landed with a thud. She kicked the table toward him.
Thom moved just a tiny bit slower that time. It almost tripped him.
She rose to her knees and chucked the bottle at his head. It cracked into his shoulder, and he flinched—the barest reaction. Elise brought the glass bottle down like a club. She saw him duck out of the way. Another miss.
He spun and twisted behind her. He didn’t trip on the fallen table. She reached for him, flinging her free hand out, and her fingertips brushed silk.
She knew a moment before he disappeared again that he would reappear on the other side of the table.
Her sword was there when he stepped back.
Thom looked down at her fist pressed tight against his side. The blade jutted from his back.
Blood rushed in Elise’s ears, a roar of white noise that drowned out her breath. Satisfaction surged through her. She saw nothing but Thom’s pale, surprised face, and the genuine shock in his black eyes.
“Good,” he said, and her satisfaction vanished. Thom stepped aw
ay from her. The blade exited his body as smoothly as it had entered, and he didn’t show any signs of pain. Her fingers went slack with shock. She almost dropped her falchion. “Clean your blade if you want to keep it.”
When she didn’t immediately move, he plucked it from her unresponsive hand and wiped it off on his shirt. He lifted the sword to study it in the bar lights.
Once he was satisfied it was clean, he returned it to her. She missed twice before sheathing it.
“What are you?” she whispered again.
“I am very many things. I have been sent to assist you.”
“Sent by whom?”
He pointed to the ceiling again.
“You are not the only one who wants Him gone,” Thom said. “How do you kill something immortal? Truly immortal? When man has no weapon that can touch it, when no wound can injure it, when it possesses no soul to exorcise… what do you do?”
“You stay the fuck away. That’s what you do.”
“But there is a solution. An ugly solution, no doubt, something intolerably wrong—but you are the key. You are the—”
“Don’t say it again,” she interrupted.
Thom inclined his head in acceptance. “You have been marked as different. You must be able to kill that which cannot be killed. You are the one who will end Him.”
She shuddered, shutting her eyes to block out the sight of him. But that couldn’t block her memories. “I’ve tried before. I don’t know how.”
“Not yet,” he agreed, his voice heated. For the first time, she saw real emotion in him. It was uncomfortably similar to the desire in Anthony’s eyes when she stretched naked in his bed. “But you will. When you do…”
He leaned toward her as if for a kiss.
She didn’t wait to see what he had planned. Elise swung a hard right hook, and her fist landed on the wall. Thom was gone.
PART FIVE
Burn
JUNE 1999
Mr. Black was not a good man, but he did have some honor—perverse as it may have been. Elise had told him she wanted to be there when he used the bowl, so he contacted her about it a few short weeks later.
The message arrived on her anonymous voicemail service, which she had just established using the money she earned for retrieving the bowl. She hadn’t even shared the number with anyone yet.
“Hello again, my dear,” said Mr. Black on the message. “I have put together a little something at my house using your kind donation to my private collection. Seeing as you expressed interest in it, I hope you’ll join me for the activation next Saturday. I’ll send a car. Don’t be a stranger.”
Elise played it again for James that night. He had sequestered himself in his room for three weeks to craft paper magic, and his Book of Shadows was bulging.
“Donation,” he repeated with a scoff.
Thanks to the generous payment, they had moved from their stuffy motel to an upscale hotel. Their suite had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and room service. Elise had never stayed anywhere so plush. She was actually bathed, well-fed, and had put on some muscle.
But she was not one to sit idle for long. Waiting for James to assemble his spells was killing her, especially when she knew Mr. Black would soon make his move.
“Will you come with me?” she asked when she finished dressing and emerged from the bathroom, fresh-skinned and smelling of peach soap. Elise latched her mother’s cross necklace at the back of her neck.
James flipped through his Book of Shadows as if checking its progress, but she thought he might have been hiding a smile. “Of course.”
Their reservation was under a pseudonym, but a car was indeed waiting for them when Saturday morning arrived. James stayed in the lobby as Alain parked and got out to open the back door.
“I will check you for weapons,” he said.
Elise took a big step back. “Don’t touch me.”
“You cannot see Mr. Black armed. It will only take a moment. Lift your elbows.”
Reluctantly, she obeyed. He gave her a short pat down with the backs of his hands, missing the slender notebook in her back pocket, and then nodded. Elise didn’t have any knives for him to find anyway. She didn’t need blades to kill.
He waved her into the car.
“It is a long drive,” he said in French as he took position behind the wheel again. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She sat stiffly in the back and didn’t put on her seatbelt.
They took a direct route out of the city and exited onto a rural road that wandered through lush green hills. Elise didn’t try to see if James was following. He had tagged her with a tracking spell and would be miles behind them.
Alain had to go through two gates to get to Mr. Black’s property, which was set in the very center of a huge field of grapevines. It felt strangely empty—there was no harvesting equipment or workers. The manor was huge and sprawling. It looked like a plantation taken directly from the South.
Mr. Black stepped onto the stairs in front to greet them. “You made it!” he exclaimed, as though it was a surprise to see her.
Elise got out of the car, and he took her hand like he was escorting a debutante to a ball. She recoiled. He didn’t seem to care. “Not comfortable with contact, are we? My sincerest apologies. I’m so thrilled you could join us. Just so thrilled.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Straight to the point! Won’t you let me give you a tour first? I don’t get many visitors, and I love an opportunity to show off. You understand.”
She nodded reluctantly. Each step she took toward the front door made pressure build in her skull, as though her brain was swelling. Her blood pulsed in her temples.
The gate was complete, and it was near.
She felt drawn toward the east wing of the house, but Mr. Black led her in the opposite direction. “This way!”
He had done well for himself indeed. Elise hadn’t met many other kopides, but those she had met lived in squalor. The life of a demon hunter wasn’t one that lent well to being a productive member of society. But Mr. Black’s choice to settle down and start his businesses had obviously borne fruit. His floors were polished wood, the architecture was spacious, and each of his rugs must have cost at least half of what he had paid her to retrieve the bowl.
She glimpsed more fields through the arched windows in a kitchen lush with marble fixtures.
“Is there a point to this?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck to try to relieve the pressure.
Mr. Black beamed. That broad smile somehow made his handsome face a shade uglier. “Just showing what’s possible when you put your mind to it, my dear. This has all been built with my hard-earned money, from foundation to rafters to those pretty pillars you see out back. Such good fortune is humbling.”
That was a word for it. He made a big show of leading her into a wine cellar, picking out a bottle, and pouring two glasses for them. He held one under her nose. It smelled woody and peppery, more spicy than sweet. “Do you like it?” he asked, pushing it into her hand. “We grew it ourselves. Come, my dear, take a look.”
He led her upstairs again to French doors at the back of the house, where a patio overlooked a field of terraced grapevines. The hill sloped steeply down, and the haze of the sun cast violet shadows on the vines. There were no more houses behind them—just rolling hills, golden brush, and a distant lake.
It was easier to breathe outside, but it had nothing to do with the fresh breeze that stirred against her legs. There was a palpable difference in tension walking over the threshold. Alain must have cast wards all over the manor to retain the power of the gate.
Elise scanned the doorway. The marks were small enough to be unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t searching for them. A thin stripe crossed the patio, curved around the bushes, and vanished at the end of the wing.
“The equipment for producing the wine is in the shed out that way.” He waved casually toward the east, drawing her attention back to him. Shading her eyes, sh
e saw a sprawling building that could have passed for a small factory. “We’re no major operation, but we make do. There was a time I would have been able to work the fields myself, but…” He lifted his hands. The skin was rough over the knuckles from fighting. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Don’t you think it’s a shame we should only know such wealth when we’re too old to enjoy it?”
Elise gave his broad shoulders a skeptical look. He may have been old for a kopis, but even in his fifties, he was in good condition.
“Sure,” she said.
His smile grew fixed. “Of course you don’t. You’re young, and you’re the ‘greatest.’ Your legacy is secure.” A strange light filled his eyes for an instant, but the moment quickly passed. “There’s plenty more to see. The main feature is yet to come.”
Mr. Black ushered her inside. Elise dumped the wine in a potted plant when his back was turned.
He took her into his study. James would have been jealous. Every wall was covered in oak bookshelves, and there were statues in each corner that wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum. A lockbox sat next to his desk. When he caught her looking at it, he nudged it under his desk with a foot.
“Let’s be frank, Miss Kavanagh. You know why you’re here.”
“You said you were going to kill Him,” Elise said. “I could help.”
Mr. Black nodded and sat behind his desk, steepling his fingers. “Surely you must wonder why I would have such lofty aspirations. Killing a god. It’s no small task. Have you heard the legends? The power that can be gained?”
“I have no interest in power.”
“Charming. Really. Very charming. And humble—but that won’t take you far.” He leaned on his desk to give her an intent stare. “There’s some way to harness that power. It involves the artifacts—including the bowl you retrieved—and ethereal beings. But I’m not sure how. Since you’re so humble, I’m sure you don’t care about eternal youth, immense strength, control over the domains of Heaven and Earth…?” He trailed off, waiting for a reply. Elise only glared. “No? You don’t want to live forever?”
