by S. M. Reine
“Are you okay?” James asked, kneeling beside her.
She nodded without speaking.
Elise turned to take a last look at Mr. Black’s manor. The entire manor was consumed, as were half of the trees and grass around it. The level of power required for such magic was staggering.
He gave a guilty smile. “I had to make sure,” he said.
Elise recalled the gate and the voice and felt no shame. “Good. Help me up.”
She shifted the weight of the lockbox under one arm, and James slung her other arm over his shoulder, bending over to lift her to her feet. Together, they staggered down the path to the gate.
She was never sure if it was her imagination or not, but she thought she heard Mr. Black screaming behind them.
It took them three weeks to figure out how to open the lockbox.
First, James and Elise moved to another city—another country, as a matter of fact. They ate good food, drank water until their throats no longer burned, and enjoyed the comforts of a nice hotel. And then they set their minds to the task of the box.
The combination dial wasn’t the difficult part, nor were the double keys on the back. Spending months scrounging for survival and stealing to eat had taught them a few unsavory tricks for opening things that were meant to stay closed. Yet even when the tumblers were in place and the dial was broken, the lid still wouldn’t open.
“Magic,” James said, showing Elise a rune on the bottom of the box. “That damn Alain Daladier was a master of the binding spells. If anyone could contain a deity behind magic walls, it might have been him.”
“Can you undo it?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
So for weeks, James worked. Elise bulked up on protein and bought lots of spare gloves.
And then, one Thursday morning, he gave an excited shout. Elise hurried inside from their balcony, where she had been staring at Vancouver and doing her best to think of blissful nothingness. She had finally grown comfortable enough with James to ignore him and relax, which was more than she could say about anyone else.
Elise stopped on the edge of his circle of power, which took up most of the hotel room. He was seated on a cushion with an array of crystals and a poultice that reeked of dragon’s blood. “Well?”
“I think I’ve done it,” James said. “Watch.”
He passed a pearl over the rune, and the lid swung open. He looked inside. His mouth dropped open.
Elise’s heart beat a little faster. “What is it?”
With one hand, he pulled out a stack of cash. With the other hand, he pulled out a diamond necklace. “I think everything is about to get a lot easier,” James said.
She forgot that she wasn’t supposed to break the circle and jumped on him. They hugged, laughed, and counted their cash.
It was the first time they were genuinely happy together, and it was far from the last.
PART SIX
He Comes
XIV
JULY 2009
Elise found herself walking by the river as morning dawned instead of returning to her car. She should have gone to bail James out of jail and check on Betty, but the idea of going to Stephanie’s house was unbearable. That woman would blame her for everything. And she would be right.
She could still hear Thom’s voice whispering from the recesses of her memory.
You are the one who can kill that which cannot die, he had said. Godslayer…
Elise stared at the river as it bubbled past, sloshing over rocks and forming eddies in the shallows at her feet. The pink light of clouds at sunrise painted the surface with shifting shades of crimson and violet. Further upstream, someone was already lounging in an inner tube and drinking a beer—getting an early start on summertime laziness. They bobbed toward her. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and headed downstream.
When she found a quiet spot under the bridge, she sat down on a rock and pressed her forehead to her knees. When was the last time she slept without dreaming of that damned gate? Days? Weeks? It felt like she might never sleep restfully again.
The weight of everything pressed against her. The spider-demons. Those staring angels. Thom’s forbidden knowledge. All the things she tried to escape by retiring.
“There is no escape,” she whispered to the water.
A homeless man stirred under the bushes nearby, poking his head up to give her a slit-eyed stare. When he saw her bruised face, he dropped back under his makeshift tent. Wonderful.
Her phone rang. She didn’t check the number before answering. “What?”
“Is this Elise Kavanagh?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Portia Redmond. We met at my house party the other night.” Her voice was so soft and quavering that it was hard to hear her over the rushing water. “I need your help.”
It took Elise a moment to put a face to the name. “Portia. Right. What’s wrong?”
“I have one of the missing pieces of the gate, but I don’t want to see that man. That witch. He can’t know about this. Thom and the Night Hag would only attempt to exploit it.”
“I’m in a contract with them. Why would you trust me?”
“You’re a kopis,” Portia said in a soft, pleading voice. “Unlike Mr. Black, you’re neutral. I know you can help me.”
It was hard to argue with someone who sounded that pathetic.
“I can be there in an hour.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she hung up.
Elise climbed the riverbank to street level and retrieved her car from the parking garage. She sat behind the wheel for a few minutes without moving. She couldn’t seem to work up the energy to put the keys in the ignition.
She had several hundred dollars cash in her pocket and extra tanks of gas from the trip to the desert. She didn’t have to go to Portia Redmond’s house. Elise could head east at breakneck speed and lose herself a few states away. Or Mexico was only a long day’s drive away. She hadn’t been there since she retired with James.
Even though she had her fair share of enemies in Mexico, nobody had the power to destroy her life like Mr. Black. And best of all, nobody would have ever heard the word “Godslayer.”
The brand on her shoulder itched.
She started the car. Her enemies wouldn’t care if she was hundreds or thousands of miles away. Distance meant nothing to them. Someone would find her. They always did.
Elise made the drive to Portia’s house and found the gate unlocked when she arrived. It was cracked open. Every light in the house was turned on, even though daylight had arrived. Another party? There were no cars outside.
She parked in front of the patio and got out, alert for movement in her peripheral vision as she knocked on the door.
It wasn’t fully closed. It swung open.
Elise stepped into the entryway. The smoke from burning incense wafted around the hall, masking the scent of lethe that should have been hanging around after the party. That stench never came out of upholstery.
A small speaker mounted on the wall played “F�r Elise” at top volume. The piano strains drifted through the entire house. James had thought it was funny to choreograph a student performance to that song when she still handled the grade school dance classes, so she knew it by heart. And she still hated it.
Unease crept over her. Elise stretched out her senses.
There was nothing infernal or ethereal in the area, but there were a lot of ugly human things that could be waiting, too.
“Portia Redmond?” she called, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “This is Elise Kavanagh.”
No response.
The party room had been restored to what she assumed was its normal condition. Cushions and hookah pipes had been replaced with elegant couches and house plants. The curtains were parted, the windows were cracked, and a summer breeze ruffled a fern’s leaves.
Something creaked on the second floor—a door opening from shifting air pressure.
Elise mounted the sta
irs. Beethoven grew louder until she couldn’t hear herself over the pounding piano.
Light spread in front of a door at the end of the hall, broken only by the dappled shadows of a plant swaying in the breeze. The wind picked up and the door closed an inch again. Her hair was blown back from her face.
She stretched out a hand to push the door open, but something on the knob caught her eye. A smear of blood.
Elise drew her sword as the piano crescendoed.
She kicked the door in.
The room was motionless beyond the swaying of the trees outside Portia’s windows. A thin trail of blood led to the bed. It was big enough to sleep five people, covered in plush pillows, and drenched in a sticky black puddle.
Elise felt nothing as she surveyed the body resting neatly atop the comforter. It belonged to a slender woman with her brittle hands folded neatly over her chest, and she thought she recognized Portia’s jewelry, even though she had no head. Her wrists were slit, and if the staining on her dress was any indicator, they had pierced the femoral artery as well. The scent of iron and meat was rich in the air.
Anger crept in a few seconds later.
“Damn it,” she muttered, sheathing her sword in the spine scabbard again. She couldn’t even find it within herself to be disgusted now that she had seen the slimy mass that had once been David Nicholas. A decapitated corpse was downright cheerful in comparison—and definitely more the style of Mr. Black than the Night Hag.
So he had her phone tapped. Or maybe Portia’s phone. Either way, he had been listening, and he had gotten there first to leave a message.
She searched the room for Portia’s missing head. It had been set on top of a dresser next to a vase of roses and a half-empty bottle of wine. It was a tidy tableau: No blood splatters, or even an errant smear. All of the blood was contained on the bed. Portia would have been drugged before they dismembered her. Her makeup was garish in the daylight.
A sealed manila envelope with Elise’s name written on it in looping calligraphy was propped against the vase. Her wrist brushed against Portia’s neatly-coiffed hair when she picked it up.
A letter and a few photos tipped out of the envelope when she opened it. The note had been typed with careful precision. Not a word was crossed out or rewritten. But the hammers had struck so hard in some places that they tore the page.
Good evening my dear:
So sorry to have missed you this afternoon. Given the state of the nearly-assembled gate, I hoped our long-awaited reunion would be imminent, but a complication arose. It seems one of my suppliers is trading with a competitor. Shame to lose an old friend to such disloyalty! Rest assured I’ve taken care of my supply chain issue and everything is back on track.
In the meantime, I hear you’ve made a new friend; a certain fragile old businesswoman in direct competition with my interests. How well do you know your friends? Trust is so important in any relationship, don’t you agree?
Find attached some pictures of interest. I’ll spare you a narrative.
Dreaming of the time our paths will cross again,
Yours truly, Mr. Black.
She examined the glossy, eight-by-ten photographs underneath. The first one was of one of the same daimarachnid breed she had hunted in the desert. The second was unmistakably of David Nicholas with the Night Hag surrounded by more of the spider-demons. They were deep in conversation and didn’t seem to realize they were being photographed.
The question of how Mr. Black could have gotten pictures from inside the Warrens was not as pressing as the implications of it.
Clarity descended on Elise. Her pulse accelerated.
She examined the final picture. The almost-finished gate filled the right side of the frame. The image had obviously been taken by a digital camera, because the waves that came off the stone were powerful enough to distort and pixelate half the image. Nevertheless, a huge form lurked beyond it—something with eight thick telephone pole legs.
Elise crumpled Mr. Black’s letter in her hands.
“It’s a trap,” she said to Portia’s head. “He just wants me to kill the competition.” The corpse didn’t reply, but her silence was a compelling argument on its own.
The Night Hag knew Elise still had a piece of the gate. That was why she had sent the spiders into the studio, and it also explained how they had gotten in. James had bound the wards with Elise’s blood. Now that she was marked with the overlord’s brand, none of those wards would work against her.
It also meant she had tried to kill Betty. The reasons why didn’t matter.
The Night Hag had to die.
Sudden footsteps pattered in the hall outside the door. She whirled.
A man stood in the doorway. He had bronze hair that brushed his shoulders and an elegant way of moving that brought to mind flags rippling in a breeze. An angel. But not just any angel—the one the Night Hag had building her gateway.
Elise waited for him to attack. But he didn’t move.
“What do you want?”
He spread his fingers out to show he had no weapons. “My name is Nukha’il. The Night Hag sent me to watch you.”
“That’s not a job I would volunteer for,” Elise said. “You know what I did to him?”
“Have mercy on me.” He sank to his knees and bowed his head so sheets of shimmering hair fell over his shoulder. “I know who you are and what you can do. We whisper your name and carry it through light and shadow. You are—”
She raised a hand before he could say it.
“Shut up. Right now.”
He crawled toward her, and she reacted on instinct. She drove her knee into his face with a crack. Angels didn’t bleed like humans did, and he didn’t cry out. His elbows hit the floor. His head hung between his shoulders.
“Why would you want mercy from me?” Elise demanded, voice cracking. “Don’t you know that He’s after me? Don’t you know I’ve killed dozens of you to escape Him before?”
When Nukha’il looked up, she aimed the falchion at his face. But he didn’t fight back, and his expression was not as subservient as his posture. The hands he stretched toward her were clenched into fists. “I know, and don’t care. Mr. Black has clipped my wings and made me a demon’s slave. The things the Hag does to me for amusement… I don’t want to know this life anymore. I hate the earthen planes. I hate them! I need your blade to give me mercy.”
Her blade wavered. “I won’t kill you.”
Surprise sparked in his gaze. “I’m not asking for my death. I’m asking for theirs. That demon, Mr. Black, his aspis—all of them dead at my feet.”
Elise nodded and sheathed the falchion. “That’s the plan. You don’t have to beg.”
“Restore my wings. You have her brand; you can release me. I can liberate the other angels and collect an army one hundred strong. We will kill them all together.” He clawed at the necklace on his throat.
A hundred angels. That would be an incredible army. With that many ethereal creatures at her back, she could take down a lot more than the Night Hag. She could take down civilizations. And the whole time she marched, the angels would stare at her with those desperate eyes.
Her stomach twisted in on itself. “Sorry. I don’t ally with angels.”
“Then let me go, at least. Free me to exact revenge. Please.”
Elise hesitated. She didn’t want to have anything to do with anything ethereal—not those ruins, not the things that lay beyond, and definitely not angels.
He gave her such a wretchedly hopeful look when she stood over him that she almost reconsidered her decision. But when she spoke, her voice was hard, and it didn’t waver. “Don’t follow me. Stay here until sundown, and don’t tell the Night Hag I saw you.”
Horror dawned in his eyes. If Elise could remove the collar, then she could also give him orders. The muscles in his back flexed as though he was going to stand, but he didn’t budge. He couldn’t.
“Mercy,” he whispered.
“I’m all out of tha
t for the day.” She took a step away, but paused. “You should know… Itra’il is alive.”
He sucked in a hard breath, gripping his chest as though his heart hurt. “She’s alive?”
“Yeah.” Elise brushed past him. “Sorry.”
The police allowed James a courtesy call when eight o’clock rolled around. He drummed his fingers on the desk by the phone for almost five minutes before deciding what number to dial.
It took Anthony two hours to show up with a stack of money fished out of James’s safe at Motion and Dance. He stared around at the police station like he couldn’t quite believe he was there. “Thank you,” James said. “I can explain.”
“Yeah, I think you’d better.” The beaten old Jeep waited outside in the parking lot. It was a welcome sight after a night trying to sleep on concrete. “Where should I take you?”
“The parking gallery, please. My car was left there overnight. You can go back to work afterward.”
“It’s fine. I should check on Betty anyway.” He put the Jeep into gear and shook his head. “You know, I’ve seen some weird stuff since I started dating Elise. Zombies. Giant spiders. Exorcisms. But when I’m halfway through rebuilding the transmission on a VW and I get a call from you—you, of all people—asking me to bail you out of jail… that’s got to rank at the top of my ‘shit I never expected to deal with’ list. You don’t even like me. Why didn’t you call Elise?”
“And that would be part of the story. I’ll tell you everything. Later.”
It was the longest, most awkward ride possible back to the parking garage, even though they were only a few blocks away. And true to his word, Anthony followed James all the way to the suburbs north of Reno.
“So?” Anthony demanded as soon as they met at the front door.
James sighed. “Is now really the time?”
“I missed half my shift at the shop because of you. This is a great time.”
His upper lip twitched. “Fine. Let’s go inside, at the very least.” It was a small mercy that Stephanie was nowhere to be found, and that Betty was still sleeping on the couch. James brewed a pot of coffee, uncomfortably aware of Anthony leaning against the opposite counter with his arms folded and an expectant look. “Do you take cream?”
