by S. M. Reine
“I killed him.”
Betty’s mouth opened in an “o” of surprise.
A quick search of David Nicholas’s desk yielded a key ring and a dusty flashlight. She unlocked the door he used to get to Eloquent Blood, propped it open with her foot, and studied each of her friends as they passed through. They didn’t look like much of a team. Anthony was greasy and exhausted. Betty wheezed when she walked. And James was still pretending to be absorbed in his Book of Shadows. She wasn’t much better. She couldn’t put any weight on her bitten leg.
They made it halfway down the stairs to Blood without seeing anyone. When they passed the ground level, Neuma rushed toward them.
Her shorts and pink tank top were so different from her normal clothes that Elise didn’t recognize her until she smiled. She wasn’t even wearing makeup. “Elise!” The half-succubus suddenly noticed everyone else, and her smile faded. “What’s going on?”
In the corner of Elise’s vision, Anthony had gone rigid. Even in her lazy day clothes, Neuma’s sex appeal was enough to instantly decimate the brain cells of any red-blooded human in her vicinity. Fortunately, she didn’t have the charm turned on.
There was no point in lying. “I’m going to kill the Night Hag.”
Her face went slack with fear. “No—oh, no, you can’t do that!”
“I’ve got two swords, two witches, and a shotgun. I’m not feeling bad about my odds,” Elise said. Betty grinned at being included in the list of weapons.
“It’s not like that!” Neuma grabbed Elise’s hands and lowered her voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “You’re branded.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Even if she doesn’t kill you on sight, which she totally can, the Night Hag owns everything in the city. You know what happens if she dies? Have you seen what happens in a territory without an overlord?”
She freed her hands. “Consider this fair warning. It’s about to get ugly. You can stick around to deal with the fallout, or you can run.”
The bartender glanced nervously at the others again. “Been nice knowing you, hot stuff.”
Anthony watched her ass as she fled up the stairs. Betty smacked him in the arm, and James coughed into his hand.
“Come on,” Elise said.
It wasn’t much farther to the club. There were no waitresses in sight to distract Anthony, and the cleaning crew was absent from the floor as well. Their shuffling footsteps echoed. “Nobody here? This will be easy,” Anthony said with a nervous chuckle.
Elise wasn’t as optimistic. They would only get as far as the Night Hag wanted them to go. She had to have realized her daimarachnid guard was dead and connected it with Nukha’il’s failure to return. If she was letting them pass unobstructed, it was because she wanted it that way. But she didn’t need to scare everyone by saying it.
“Stay close.”
The elevator into the Warrens stood open. The bulb had even been replaced. It didn’t flicker anymore.
“So what’s the plan?” Anthony asked as they approached it.
Elise blinked. “Plan?”
He gave that nervous laugh again. It was starting to get annoying. “It’s not like we’re going to walk into some demonic overlord’s evil underground lair and expect to kill it without a plan… right?”
“Actually…”
“Just a moment, please,” James said. He led Elise around the corner of the DJ booth. He glanced at the place the cage had stood the night before and pulled a face. “I know you didn’t want me to say that I told you so—”
“And I still don’t.”
He folded his arms tight across his chest. “I know what that scar on your shoulder means.” The brand ached as though it knew they were talking about it. “You can’t confront the Night Hag like that. She can kill you with a thought.”
“I know. That’s why I thought we would piggyback.”
“Are you certain that’s a good idea?”
They hadn’t joined in an active bond since the spring, when Elise used their shared power to exorcise a child. It made both of them stronger, but only briefly. And sharing their powers always came with the risk of burnout.
“I’m not sure it will even work when I’m branded,” she admitted. “But having an aspis is supposed to protect me from things like getting killed with a thought, so it’s all I have. If it doesn’t work, this could be a really short fight.”
“We don’t know if joining while you’re branded will make you impervious to her, or make her impervious to us.”
“I know.”
He grimaced. “Then I won’t do it.”
She massaged her temples. Pressure was gathering in her forehead, and she wasn’t sure if it was because they were so close to the Warrens or because James was stressing her out. “I know you’re mad at me…”
“That’s a word for it.”
“But what other choice do we have?”
Elise glanced around the corner. Betty and Anthony were just a few feet away, pretending not to listen. When they realized she saw them, they turned away with nearly identical expressions.
“I’ll do my best to shield you, but it’s too dangerous to piggyback. I’m sorry, Elise.” James marched toward the elevator. She had no choice but to follow him.
Fitting four adults into a small metal cage was cozier than Elise liked to get, but with awkward maneuvering, they managed to shut the door and flip the lever.
Something hard and intangible pushed against the back of her skull as they descended. Even the Percocet haze couldn’t block it out. A sense of unease crept upon her. The pressure in her skull was growing stronger, and she thought she recognized it now.
It wasn’t the feeling of a powerful infernal presence—it was ethereal.
The silence in the elevator was unnerving. Even Betty seemed to have run out of things to say. She gave an occasional cough that rang out in the too-quiet air, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. Anthony gazed at the darkness above the cage. They could only see the walls a few feet above them before they were swallowed by shadow.
“So… demons use mining shafts. Why am I not surprised?”
Nobody responded. He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his feet.
When the elevator finally reached the bottom, Elise held up a hand to indicate that they should wait. A soft hum filled the hall. Betty shone the flashlight around the rock walls, but there was nothing to see.
“Maybe the Night Hag isn’t down here. It’s awfully empty,” Betty said.
Elise shook her head. “She’s here.”
They walked down the long, empty hallway. Nothing was guarding the entrance into the chamber where the gate had been constructed.
Elise edged around the door. The gate had been finished, the empty crates had been carried away, and the working demons were nowhere in sight. Only a single figure stood in front of the door in a long black gown. It looked like the Night Hag was taking a solitary vigil.
“That’s the overlord—the old woman by the gate,” Elise said, pointing into the cavern. “I don’t know where Thom is, but he has to be around. Watch for him. They say he’s a witch, but he’s much more powerful than that.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Like a supermodel. You’ll recognize him if you see him.”
She took another long moment to study the cavern and the gate. Instead of having the bowl fragments at the capstone, the Night Hag had redesigned it so that it was at the base instead. It wouldn’t require wings to open the gate. Elise could walk down, touch the stone, and pass through to the ethereal ruins… if she wanted to. But she didn’t plan on letting it get that far.
Elise gestured. They edged down the path with their backs against the wall.
She didn’t make it six feet before the Night Hag looked up. Betty gasped.
The overlord wasn’t alone after all.
Nukha’il knelt on the floor on the other side of the gate, hidden by its shadow. He glared at Elise with bitter fury.
His face was swollen and bruised from a thorough beating, and chains at his wrists pinned him to the floor.
“This is a trap, isn’t it?” Anthony asked.
An instant later, something massive dropped from the ceiling and pinned her to the ground.
Her injured leg couldn’t take the impact. Her body struck dirt, and Anthony jumped back with a shout. A daimarachnid reared over her.
Elise drew her sword ly. One of its legs crushed her arm to the dirt.
It didn’t try to bite her. Instead, its mouth descended on her throat and snagged the chain of charms almost delicately.
The spider broke the chain and jumped off the ramp.
James grabbed for the charms and missed.
“No!” Elise shouted, scrambling on her knees to the edge, but it was already gone. It took the charms to the Night Hag like a dog fetching a bone.
“You have been very helpful!” called the overlord as she picked out the bowl fragment and threw the rest of the charms aside. “Shame that you should bite the hand that feeds. You are an incredible weapon. I would have loved to wield you.”
She extended a pale, slender hand and inserted the pebble into the crack.
Elise felt like she had just jumped off a bridge. Her pulse thrilled. Her stomach leaped into her throat. Sudden wind whipped her hair around her face, battering her body, and all she could do was dig her fingers into the ground to keep from getting ripped off the side.
The gate was complete.
“Bring them down!” ordered the Night Hag.
A dozen more daimarachnids emerged from the other side of the cavern and scuttled toward the ramp.
Elise tried to get to her feet, but her leg completely gave out. She struck the ground on one knee. Pain arced from hip to shoulder, and spots of blood dotted the bandages.
“James!”
He was beside her in an instant. “We should run—”
The spider-demons were rushed toward them. Every rustling motion echoed off the high cave walls. She grabbed his arm, dragging his face down to her level.
“Piggyback,” Elise said. “Now.”
“Elise—”
“Just do it!”
The blast of the shotgun roared above them. One of the daimarachnids had skipped the slope and climbed beside Anthony and Betty instead.
James swore and held Elise’s face between both of his hands. A bolt of power shot through her. “Hang on,” he said. She felt him open himself to her. Magic pulsed around them. He extended it to her, pale eyes glowing, and she opened herself to take it.
And then they both blacked out.
XVI
Anthony thought he coped pretty well with the whole demon thing. He didn’t have a nervous breakdown after the zombie attack, which was pretty good considering he hadn’t even believed in ghosts before that. When he went camping with Elise, he took a spider down on his own. Mostly. And he’d become pretty good with the shotgun. As far as “people who can’t turn paper into fireballs” went, he would definitely say he was a useful team member.
But nothing could have prepared him for the moment Elise and James went limp on the ground and left him alone with his wheezing cousin, a demonic overlord, and a gateway into an angelic city.
He stared at their bodies.
“Oh no,” Betty said.
They didn’t have long to be shocked. A dozen daimarachnids reached the bottom of the ramp, which gave them about twenty seconds before they were overtaken. Anthony pumped his shotgun and stood over his cousin while she examined their friends.
“She’s not responding!” Betty cried, jamming a knuckle into Elise’s breastbone. The pain from that should have been enough to wake the dead.
He stepped around her, angled the shotgun down, and fired off a shot. The spider-demon in the front lost its eyes in a cloud of blood. It collapsed and tripped the spider right behind it.
Anthony didn’t get a chance to fire again.
“Bring them down.”
The spider-demons lifted James and Elise’s bodies in their mouthparts. Their gentleness was surprising.
But the demons didn’t try to be nearly so gentle with Anthony and Betty. They drove into the back of his legs and shoved him down the path. “Hey!” he protested, twisting around to aim. They rewarded him with another, harder shove. He lost his balance and fell onto all fours.
The shotgun flew from his hands and dropped over the side of the path.
The spider-demon that had pushed Anthony seized him with its forelegs to lift him over its head. Its grip dug into his back and sides. When he was seventeen, he had body-surfed at a music festival after too much weed, and it felt a lot like that—except nobody in the mosh pit had pincers. He stared at its glistening eyeballs as it hauled him toward a woman he was pretty sure planned to kill him.
“It’s okay, Betty, we’ll be okay!” he yelled, trying to comfort his cousin. When she didn’t respond, he twisted in the spider’s legs to see what she was doing.
Betty was still at the door, kicking and punching and generally making herself impossible to grab. “Fuck you! Yeah! And fuck you, too! Ouch—hey!” Two of them finally jumped and pinned her to the ground. They dragged her down the slope. “Let go of me, you ugly bastards!”
At any other time, he would have laughed.
Each step of the spider beneath him was uneven and jolting, like riding a horse with too many legs. The demon holding Elise drew level with him. The hilt of the falchions jutted over each of her shoulders, and blood dripped from underneath the gloves. Her arms and legs dangled uselessly. So much for hoping she was only pretending to be asleep.
“Anthony? Anthony!” Betty wailed.
“Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine. We can—”
“Optimism. How sweet,” said the Night Hag as the spiders dropped all four of them in front of the dais and stepped back to form a loose circle.
Anthony eyed Elise’s swords. They were the only weapons left now, but he hadn’t even touched them before. He played baseball in elementary school, though. How much harder could it be to swing a sword?
Before he could decide if he wanted to make a move, the Night Hag descended to examine him like he was a piece of dog shit on her kitchen floor. Her nose wrinkled.
She snapped her fingers, and a beautiful man appeared at her side. He had full lips, long black hair, and no shirt. Anthony found himself gaping and had to shake free of it. The new guy had to be Thom.
“What is this?” she demanded. “What are they doing here?”
“They are friends of Elise’s.”
“Idiots. Amateurs! You would think a kopis would know better than to bring children with her!”
“Hey!” Betty complained.
The overlord ignored her. “At least she came at all. Strip her gloves and open the gate.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Thom said.
She spun on him. “Are you challenging me?”
“I have obeyed your every other order, but I will not expose her hands.” He hooked his thumbs in the waist of his slacks. “Make of it what you will.”
Several tense seconds passed.
Surprisingly, it was the Night Hag who looked away.
“Nukha’il!” she snapped. “Come here!” The chains fell away from the man on the other side of the gate. He stood slowly, as though he had been forced into a kneeling position for so long that he could barely move. He joined her on the dais. His wrists, rubbed raw by metal shackles, looked like they had delicate bird bones inside. “Grab the kopis. Remove her gloves. Open the gate. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
He glared, but he stepped down from the gate without arguing and knelt to grab Elise. Betty shielded her body.
“Don’t touch her!”
He shoved Betty with one hand. It was the smallest of gestures, but she went flying as though he had thrown his whole body into the punch. She cried out. Anthony barely caught her before she hit the ground.
Nukha’il scooped Elise
from the ground, propping her awkwardly against his shoulder so he could peel off one of her gloves. Crusty blood made the material stick to her hand, but when he ripped it free, Anthony saw that the black symbol wasn’t black anymore. It glowed with the same faint, silvery light as the gate. Fresh blood dribbled from the center, as if she had been stabbed.
“Hurry,” the Night Hag said, gesturing impatiently. “Do it now.”
With an arm slung around Elise’s waist, he lifted her hand to the gate.
Anthony had to do something. Before he could reach the first step onto the dais, he caught the beautiful witch watching him. Thom gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The intent was clear: Don’t do that.
Nukha’il pressed the mark on Elise’s hand to the mark on the stone with his fingers spread behind hers.
The glow went out of the stone.
He stepped back, leaving a bloody handprint where Elise’s fingers had been.
Anthony was suddenly face down on the floor and had no idea how he had gotten there. He felt the pain an instant later—a splitting in his skull so much worse than having a wrench dropped on his head, worse than getting smacked in the nose with a baseball bat in Little League, worse than being tackled by spider-demons. It blinded him with white light.
He couldn’t see. Couldn’t think.
“Anthony!” Betty gasped, dropping at his side. “Oh my God, what—?”
The Night Hag was cackling, but Anthony couldn’t focus on her. He could barely see past Betty’s feet. “It works! Now, my angel, go through the gate. Make sure it’s safe.”
“No,” said a soft voice that had to belong to Nukha’il.
A cry of pain.
“I am getting sick of all this defiance!” she spat. “Go through the gate! I will kill you if you don’t. Make your decision.”
Anthony squinted at the dais. There was so much light pouring from the stone arch that he could only make out the shadowy backs of the overlord and her minions. Why wasn’t Betty screaming? It hurt so much.
Nukha’il dropped Elise. She tumbled down the steps and rolled to a stop beside Anthony.
“As you demand,” said the angel in a low growl.
