by S. M. Reine
“I just want to stay away from Him. I don’t care what it takes.”
Mr. Black studied her for a long, silent moment. The smile faded. “Why you?” he murmured. “What makes a young girl so special?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I have a book that might interest you. See here, my dear.”
He led her to a glass case at the back of the room. It held an ancient tome bound in leather and wood. Mr. Black lifted the glass and handled the pages tenderly, touching only the very edges as he flipped to a bookmarked section.
“This is where I learned of what could be gained in His death. It’s a record of prophecies. Look—this one is from the days of Apollo and Pythia. History says that he spoke the future through a mortal vessel for the benefit of farmers and kings, but some scholars believe it was truly about love. Isn’t that touching?”
“No,” Elise said.
“Imagine that. A god so enamored with a mortal woman that he needed to possess her body and mind. Think of the legacy that woman would leave behind.”
She glanced at the exit to the room. He seemed pleased by her discomfort.
“There’s a precedence for it, you know. See these prophecies? Hundreds of years old. They speak of Durga, a living weapon of Shiva, and Mahishasura—a demon god. She was so beautiful and desirable that he ripped apart the world to have her. And you know what she did?”
“She killed him.”
“That’s right. She killed him.” Mr. Black turned a devilish grin on her. “Do you know much about Durga and Pythia?”
She stared at him blankly.
“The power of woman over man is an amazing thing. It’s the stuff of legends.”
“Where is the gate?” Elise asked.
He shut the book. “No curiosity. Shame. Very well; let’s move on.”
The east wing was populated by guest bedrooms, each of which was as mundane as the last. They weren’t as well-maintained as the rest of the house. There was a layer of dust on the fixtures, and a faint, musty smell of places no human had been in months. Mr. Black didn’t take long to pass through it.
But the further they moved down the hall, the heavier the pressure in Elise’s skull grew. Something was humming. She took the notebook out of her back pocket and clenched in her fist.
“I’ve converted the largest of the guest bedrooms to accommodate my… shall we say, unique art collection?” He chuckled. “Not that I need to deceive you, of course. You know what I have. Don’t you?”
Elise nodded once, lips sealed tight.
Mr. Black stopped in front of the last room. The hallway felt darker at the end, even though the windows had been opened to the hot summer air.
“Here we are. The pièce de résistance, in a manner of speaking.” He pushed the door open and stood back for Elise to go through first.
She set the notebook on a table before entering.
Mr. Black hadn’t just converted the room. He had knocked out the walls between several of the bedrooms, as well as the ceiling between the first and second floors. It created a cavernous space that took up almost the entire wing. They had somehow fit a mechanical crane inside. The flooring was removed, too, and poured concrete sat exposed.
And on top of that stood a finished gate.
It hummed when she walked into the room, as though the stone recognized her. The graceful loop of the arch almost reached the top of the second floor. Sinewy lines banded it from bottom to top. The stone appeared to be braided together.
The bowl she had retrieved formed the capstone of the arch, and the air around it vibrated. Elise swallowed a swell of nausea.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mr. Black asked.
She had to take a long, deep breath before she could respond. “It’s a monstrosity.”
“Yes, I could see why you might think that. You’ve been through one of these before. Haven’t you?” Elise gritted her teeth and didn’t respond. “Does it surprise you that I know that? No? But I know a lot about you, my dear—even more than you would expect. I’ve done my studying.”
She paced around the gate, scanning the symbols carved into the floor around it. Alain had been busy. There were twelve parallel lines of magic runes like the ones outside the house, most of which she didn’t recognize.
“Will these kill Him when he passes through?”
Mr. Black gave her a wan smile. “No… no, I’m afraid not. Killing God isn’t so easy. I’ve learned a few fascinating things about ethereal artifacts these past months, though—would you like me to share?”
“No.”
He ignored her response. “All this isn’t really made of rock. It’s ossified bone. There are animals on the heavenly planes you can’t even imagine—these mighty beasts that walk on air and exist beyond time. Truly amazing. And the angels slaughtered them to build with their bodies.”
Alain was pacing, too, staying opposite Elise on the marks. She didn’t cross the line. Every time she took a step, the gateway pulsed. Her palms itched.
When she passed by one of the windows, a shape flitted past the bushes. She only saw it for a half second, but she knew it was James. He had honed in on his notebook and found her. He flashed by a window further down, tagging it with a paper spell before moving on. He had prepared three dozen fire runes just for the cause. Once they were triggered, the entire home would be set aflame—including the east wing, judging by his trajectory.
Only Elise had seen him. Mr. Black went on, waving at the gate with a wine glass as he spoke.
“The truly terrible part is that these creatures would be eternal if not slaughtered, like all angels. Did you know that’s one of the things that the Treaty of Dis only gave to angels? Immortality? They’re so very difficult to kill. And the greatest angel—the one you might call ‘God’—can’t be killed at all.”
“You said you were going to kill Him,” Elise said.
“I did, didn’t I? But that’s another one of the things I learned about angels. No human can kill God, but we can summon Him, and contain Him… and with the right gate, use His power.” Mr. Black’s eyes glowed with a hungry light. “Maybe even become immortal.”
“So this has always been about immortality.”
He drained the last of his wine and set the glass down. “You’re still young. Powerful. The greatest, they say. You have no clue what it’s like to feel your body dying.”
Alain started to move for Elise. She quickened her step to stay on the opposite side of the gate. For a moment, she glimpsed him through the twin pillars of bone, and the air was distorted between them. The air vibrated with flashes of light.
“See that symbol on the top of the gate, my dear? That’s a mark. You should recognize it. It takes three marks to open a gate and cross from one dimension to the next. It’s somewhat of a safeguard against the wrong people using it. There’s one mark on the gate, and one mark per angel. So it takes at least two angels to cross over with the help of a gate. Or…”
Alain darted around the circle, fast as a bullet. Elise didn’t expect it.
He snatched at her, and she stepped aside fast enough that his swinging hand caught her necklace instead of her arm. The chain snapped. Her mother’s cross vanished into a hole in the floor.
His second attempt to grab her succeeded. His fingers dug painfully into her bicep.
“Or one gate and one Godslayer with two marks,” Mr. Black finished. The word shocked through her.
Elise twisted out of Alain’s grip and made a break for the door, but the older kopis was in the way. Mr. Black blocked her with his body. She swung a punch, but he ducked.
She heard the click of a gun behind her.
Elise threw herself to the ground before Alain could fire, sweeping a leg out to hook it behind the witch’s ankle. He dodged her, and Mr. Black was suddenly on top of her, pinning her to the ground with his hand at her throat.
There was no hint of the Southern gentleman in him when he struck her across the face har
d enough to scatter her vision with black stars.
“The crane,” he said.
Alain disappeared, and she heard the whirring of a machine a moment later.
She threw her weight into him, shoving Mr. Black onto his back. He grabbed her calf and forced her to the ground again when she tried to stand.
He fisted her shirt, lifted her head an inch off the ground, and punched her so hard her skull bounced. The world fuzzed around Elise.
Mr. Black sat up. Her limbs were too heavy to respond. He smoothed graying hair off his forehead. Gestured to Alain beyond the line of her foggy vision. Stood up, kicked her in the ribs. She folded around the blow as pain blossomed in her side.
“‘Greatest,’” he said scornfully. “A travesty.”
Blood pulsed through her veins, clearing her head with the speedy recovery of a kopis. But it wasn’t speedy enough. A metal hook descended toward her face.
Elise took a deep breath, jumped to her feet, and made another dash for the door.
Her throbbing head made her too slow. Mr. Black caught her in a bear hug, and it turned out he was exactly as strong as he looked. Despite his age, he was easily Elise’s match—except that he had a good fifty pounds on her, and in such close quarters, size would always win out.
She stomped on his instep and drove her elbow into his gut. He grunted, but didn’t let go.
Alain forced her wrists together, pinning both of her arms under his while he wound rope around her hands. Then he peeled the glove off her right hand, and she spit in his face. Phlegm slapped in his eye.
“Get the other one,” Mr. Black said.
She tried to twist her arms away, but there was nowhere to go. Alain removed the other glove.
“No!”
Elise clenched both fists shut. It was like trying to close her hands over crackling balls of electricity. Her skin tingled and burned from fingertip to wrist.
The marks on her palms had minds of their own. They longed to be united with the symbol on the gate, and the harder she fought to keep them contained, the worse it burned.
“To the crane, please, Alain.”
The aspis went to the control panel again and swung the crane six feet clockwise, within Mr. Black’s reach. He let go of Elise long enough to grab the hook and loop it through her ropes.
Alain flipped a lever. The crane lifted with a squeal to drag her arms over her head. Gravity strung her body into one long line. And then her feet were off the ground, and she was swinging toward the gate.
She jerked to a halt an arm’s length from the capstone. The stone vibrated, giving a low buzz that dug deep into her skull, and it was hard to breathe or think or move. Her spine and shoulders ached from the suspension.
“Wonderful,” Mr. Black said, dusting off his hands as though he had just cleaned something filthy. “And now the wards, please.”
Alain knelt by the curved lines of symbols and touched them, whispering words of power.
Light flamed to life around the gate. Heat flushed into the air, sweeping Elise in a torrent of flame and power. The marks on her hands were too strong to control. An electric shock of pain lanced down her arms.
Her left hand popped open and wouldn’t close. Blood trailed down her wrist.
“No,” she ground out through gritted teeth.
Where was James?
The fingers on her right hand trembled, and the gate glowed with life.
From her point of view near the top of the gate, Elise saw something stir beyond the line of light glowing from Alain’s binding spells. Wisps of black smoke curled under the door to the hallway.
Mr. Black hadn’t noticed. “This would go much faster if you relaxed,” he called.
Alain crossed the other side of the power circle and touched it again. It pulsed with light. “It is ready. We can open the gate.”
“Miss Kavanagh, would you be so kind?”
“Turn around,” she yelled back.
He spun and saw the door. “What the—?” Mr. Black flung it open, and black smoke poured into the room. He coughed and threw an arm over his face. “Alain! Fire!”
The witch drew his gun and plunged into the hall.
Her right hand burned and her fingers twitched. The gate’s hum had grown louder with the sense of her presence, and the air within rippled and swirled.
She could hear her name. Someone was calling to her.
Elise…
And then her right hand opened.
Her palms pressed together in a position of prayer. Blood spurted from the marks. Power erupted between Elise and the gate to form a thick cord of energy that shocked her deep into her bones.
Suddenly, there was no noise. No shadow. She floated in a white void with no arms, no dangling legs, no skin or body or marks.
A wistful, distant sigh pierced the emptiness.
Elise… is it really you?
Her eardrums rocked with the voice. Her skull split in half. She was falling apart, and it was all she could do to scream and keep breathing and stay within her mind. It could have been seconds or years, or no time at all.
Oh, Elise…
Eternity stretched in front of her: the severe, frowning face of her father the last time she saw him; a cold expanse of Russian tundra; rain spattering against glass as a train rushed her through green pastures; pale white hands stretching toward her, stroking her cheek, touching her hands…
But just as suddenly, the void vanished.
Someone was screaming, and it wasn’t Elise. She gasped and choked on smoke.
Fire consumed the east wing of Mr. Black’s manor.
She blinked watering eyes, struggling to focus through the fire to the fight below her. The circle of power had failed. James straddled the lines with several paper spells clutched in each hand, and flames shot up the walls and devoured the exposed beams of the ceiling. Alain was unconscious at his feet.
“You idiot! Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” Mr. Black shouted, but his voice was lost in the crackle of his burning home.
Elise recovered enough to swing her legs forward and then back, throwing her entire body in a wide arc. Then she flipped her feet up, kicked off the gate, and levered herself to crouch on top of the crane. Lowering her arms felt painfully good.
Where her foot had connected with the gate, the ethereal stone cracked. The bowl split.
Clenching her knees tight on either side of the crane’s arm, she reached over and clawed at the capstone with both hands. There was barely enough slack for her to reach. Even though it was old and crumbling, she only managed to wrench a small piece free—hardly bigger than a fingernail.
It was enough. The gate stopped humming and glowing.
With an almighty groan, it began to collapse.
One pillar separated from the second. Elise had half a second to realize that it was falling toward her before it crashed into the arm of the crane.
Her stomach flew into her throat as she tumbled toward flame.
The crane smashed into a wall, and she was flung off the top of it. Her arms were nearly wrenched from their sockets. She cried out. Her legs dangled a few feet off the ground.
The fire crawled toward her, consuming the remaining floorboards inch by inch. Plumes of smoke and burning air swept up her body as the second pillar collapsed into the opposite wall and shattered windows.
Wind blasted more heat toward her, and she kicked her legs up, trying not to get burned.
“James!” she shouted.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, mouth opening in surprise—and Mr. Black seized the opportunity to lunge.
Both men went rolling across the torn floor and vanished down a hole.
Elise groaned, twisting her wrists in the ropes again. They rubbed against her slick, bloody skin, but the loops were too tight to slip free. “Come on,” she grunted, twisting her arms as hard as she could. The flames licked at her feet.
And then James staggered out of the smoke. He held a knife that looked like
it belonged to Mr. Black.
He stretched on his toes to slice the ropes at her wrist. Elise collapsed, and he caught her. After having her wrists bound for so long, her arms tingled and burned with pinched nerves.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
She nodded. He set her on her feet.
“Mr. Black? Alain?” she asked.
“Unconscious. Hurry!”
They found the door to the hall more by luck than by sight. James’s spells had done the trick. Each of the external walls was consumed in fire, and they had to crouch low to keep breathing.
When she moved for the entryway, he pushed her in the opposite direction.
“This way out!”
They found an open window in one of the bedrooms—likely the way James had entered—and climbed onto the lawn. Sucking in fresh air was a huge relief to Elise. But she didn’t stop to enjoy it.
She ran for the front door.
“Where are you going?” James asked, halfway down the path. “Elise, don’t!”
She shoved into the building again and ran for the burning study, covering her nose and mouth with the crook of her elbow. Ash swept into her eyes, sending tears cascading down her cheeks.
Elise didn’t need her eyesight to find the lockbox she had spotted on the earlier tour of the house. She remembered the position of the desk—kitty corner to the door, opposite the passage to the kitchen—and pushed blindly through the smoke to find it.
She heard James calling her from the entryway and ignored him, searching blindly under the desk with one bare hand while the other was still pressed to her side in a fist.
Her fingers touched metal. She closed them around the handle.
The lockbox was heavy and awkwardly large, but she hugged it to chest and barreled out of the office again anyway. James looked relieved to see her, but he didn’t waste time asking where she had been. He grabbed her arm and hauled her outside.
The roof of the entryway collapsed behind them, sending billowing clouds of dust exploding out the door.
All the smoke she inhaled caught up with her two steps later. Elise fell to her knees, lockbox cradled in her arms, and hacked something thick and black onto the grass.
