by S. M. Reine
He flung up a hand to shield his eyes, but it did nothing for the painful brilliance that burned through Elise’s skull.
Her hands were stretched toward the pillar, dragging her forward inch by inch.
James and Elise’s eyes met through the light. He knew she could see and feel the way he did, sharing every thought and sense between them. Something had happened when they piggybacked—something wrong. She shared his sore neck. He felt her grief at Betty’s death, and the marks on her palms burned on both of their hands. He felt the pull as strongly as she did.
And he felt the moment she made a horrible decision.
“He can’t have me,” she said. “I’ll never go back to Him.”
“No,” he whispered. He didn’t have to raise his voice for her to hear it.
Elise drew one of the falchions. “Sorry, James.”
She plunged it into her gut.
Pain ripped through him as though he had been stabbed, too. A scream tore from his throat. He fell to his knees. At the same time, Anthony yelled—but it was all so distant, so meaningless. James’s palms burned and the gate throbbed and he could feel the blade scraping bone.
Mr. Black ran to the edge of the ribbon. “No!”
Elise hit her knees. Fell onto her side. Released the sword. The power rushing through the gate immediately faltered.
James felt death creep toward them.
Her vision dimmed, and she felt satisfied.
He didn’t stop to consider the ramifications. He shoved past Mr. Black, jumped over the ribbon line, and fell to his knees beside Elise. She swatted weakly at his arm, as if to push him back, but there was no strength in it. She was bleeding out too fast.
His Book of Shadows was still in the Night Hag’s cavern. There was no time to cast a spell. James was one of the most powerful witches in the world, and yet his kopis was dying in front of him, and there wasn’t anything he could do. “Goddamn it, Elise!”
She smiled to see him. “Hey,” she said. Her vision snowed.
Elise’s eyes unfocused. Her chest hitched.
No.
He ripped the second glove off her hand, baring both bloody marks, and pressed them to the angelic stone.
Energy shocked through them. A mighty bell chimed.
The gate opened.
XVIII
Dying was a lot more painful than Elise expected.
She had given the subject a lot of thought over the years. Kopides seldom lived past thirty, so it wasn’t a question of whether she would die a violent death or not—it was a question of when.
Since fights were seldom painful while she was in the midst of it—the adrenaline and endorphins took care of that—she expected the act of dying to be relatively painless, too. She thought she would go into shock. She might even be dead before she knew it was going to happen.
All of that was completely wrong.
The sword hurt as it was punched in, and it hurt just as much coming out the other side. Elise felt a twinge of sympathy for all the demons she had killed in that fashion.
But then she was falling, and she didn’t really feel much of anything except the pain.
There was a commotion around her. People yelling. The towering bone pillars of the gate beginning to shake. She could see it all through James’s eyes—including Mr. Black’s horror as he rushed to the edge of the circle.
Good. Let him despair.
The blood loss caught up with her a few moments later, making the last vestiges of rational thought fade. A gray haze filled her vision.
Scraps of random thought flitted through her mind. She wasn’t in the angelic city—she was buying the studio with James, bumping her shoulder against his and enjoying the glow of companionship. She was meeting an incubus in her new office, hoping to acquire her first client. She was taking a test with Betty in a lecture hall at the university. She was sinking deep into the snow…
Cold.
She was so cold.
Elise remembered running.
Her bare feet slapped against white cobblestone as a pale dress streamed behind her. Angels flanked her to either side. “Help me!” she had cried, and they rushed in to take her hands. She was a little smaller, in those days. Thinner and less muscular. Younger. But not weak.
“He will be so angry when He realizes you’ve gone,” one of the angels told her. “He will tear apart the world to find you. He will destroy everything to bring you back.”
“Let him,” she said.
So they ran—Elise and twelve angels.
She had only been sixteen years old. She hadn’t deserved what He did to her. She didn’t deserve to be trapped in a black garden where light and hope did not exist.
There was a gate then, too. The angels took her there.
She had put her bandaged hands upon it. Her palms bled, the gate opened, and she jumped through to the other side.
Those were the facts. She understood that was what happened. But she didn’t remember any more.
Hazy memories. Scraps of time drifting on the wind.
She could see the pale hands reaching for her and hear His voice as He shouted for her.
Elise!
And when she awoke again—only for a moment—it was in the depths of snowy winter with James kneeling over her.
At the time, she thought he was another angel who had come to rescue her from His grip. She had been trapped for months—month upon month of torture, insanity, and pain under the guise of loving care. It only ended when James took her away.
She tried to forget. It was better to forget.
The concerned face of her aspis loomed overhead. “Goddammit, Elise,” he muttered from a million miles away. He was turning her over, helping her face a sky filled with white light.
She wished he wouldn’t look so sad. She reached up to touch his cheek, but her hand was too heavy.
“Hey,” she said. She wanted to add, It’s okay.
Feathers drifted through space.
It was so very cold.
James saw the instant that Elise lost consciousness. Her eyes went empty. The lids fell shut.
A moment later, the world flipped upside down.
For a horrifying moment, he dangled from the roof of the parking garage and stared at the real city beneath him. His stomach rose into his throat. His feet lifted from the cement, and he clutched Elise’s limp body to his chest as if he could save her from the fall. But then pressure built within the barrier of the ribbons that pinned him in place.
A fissure appeared in the air between the gate’s columns like a lightning bolt suspended in midair.
It split open.
Black, yawning darkness waited on the other side of the gate. It was pure nothingness, colder and emptier than the void of space. Like staring into the nonexistence of death.
He is coming.
Although He was pure energy—and inconceivable to the human mind—James knew the instant that He stepped through the door. Everything within the ribbons turned to white fire. The air scorched his flesh. He folded himself over Elise to protect her, but she was burning, too. All of the oxygen vanished. James tried to suck in a breath—and failed.
The magic on the ribbons flared with power, straining to contain Him.
Beyond the ribbons, Mr. Black had fallen to his knees. He mouthed words that James could not hear.
James gathered Elise in his arms and struggled to stand. She should have been light. He always thought of her as hollow-boned, like a bird, and through a thousand rehearsals and a hundred thousand dance lifts, he had never had to fight to lift her. But now he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
Ridiculous thoughts to have in the face of their greatest enemy.
His muscles trembled. “I have Elise,” he gasped. He felt the voice in his throat, and the spasm of his lungs as they struggled to breathe, but his words were sucked into the abyss. “Now heal her!”
The light faded as he rushed toward unconsciousness. James fell, unable to support Eli
se’s weight.
Heal her… save her life…
He wasn’t sure if it was his thought, or if it belonged to the vast entity surrounding him. The light faded as He realized he was trapped. He wouldn’t cross the gateway into a cage.
“You can’t go until you heal her,” James croaked, doubling over. “You can’t…”
Another figure moved behind Mr. Black’s shoulders. It wasn’t one of the enslaved angels. It was a man that burned with inner light, despite the overbearing light of God, with broad silver wings stretching behind him.
He landed at Mr. Black’s side and seized his arm.
James didn’t need to hear him to read his lips: Burn in Hell.
The angel smashed Mr. Black’s silver cuff.
The outermost ribbon ignited, flashing with flame and turning to ash. The pressure eased off James. Oxygen rushed into his lungs. All sound resumed.
Mr. Black’s influence lifted from the angels on the rooftop. A couple of them looked around as though they had just woken up. The one who had been holding Anthony sank to his knees and began crying.
The rest went insane.
The angels attacked each other. From the other side of the ribbon barrier, they were an indistinguishable mass of seething bodies. James couldn’t see any detail through the brilliant light, for which he was grateful—but there was no way to drown out the sounds. Screams tore the air. Slick crunches and thick splats punctuated every cry.
“Anthony—run!” James yelled.
He rushed for the stairs at top speed, fists pumping and feet pounding against the cement. He jumped over the rail to the level below. Mr. Black followed suit and bolted—but much slower.
His motion caught the attention of the angels that had gone mad.
They flew at him with wings that were beginning to blossom again and fell upon him before he could take three steps. They dragged him to the ground just a few feet away from James. He saw everything.
Teeth sank into Mr. Black’s shoulders. Clawed fingers dug into his belly. The suit was stripped from his body, and then the flesh from his bones in a spray of blood.
An angel tore the jaw free of his face. Hands pressed against the sides of his face and crushed his cheekbones. One eyeball bulged, then exploded. White matter splattered against the invisible barrier over the ribbon. The attackers dug elbow-deep into his body to yank viscera free.
James saw the copper-haired angel descend and remove a female from the fray. Her lips were stained with Mr. Black’s blood.
“Itra’il!” he cried.
She struggled against him, but he lifted her into the air as though her kicks and punches meant nothing. Another angel took her place over Mr. Black’s body as both disappeared into the glowing sky.
The rest of the ribbons caught fire and disappeared. A line of blood spilled across the place the barrier had been a moment before.
James wasn’t going to wait for the angels to notice.
He threw Elise over his shoulder and ran for the stairs. Nothing stopped him. Every ribbon was broken and his path was clear. Carrying her body made him even slower than Mr. Black had been, but the angels were so preoccupied that it gave him a few seconds’ head start.
They reached the top of the stairwell before the angels began alighting on the wind. Massive wings whipped behind them, only a shade darker than the light from the gate.
James didn’t watch.
There was no sign of Anthony as James rushed through the streets with Elise hanging over his back, and he didn’t dare search for him. Angels swooped overhead with wailing screams.
The windows in every shop had shattered when the gate opened, leaving shards of glass scattered on the sidewalk. His every footstep crunched. There was nowhere safe he could hide from the angels with the shops open—and he didn’t dare pass through one of the gates.
But the river wasn’t far. He could hear it roaring less than a block away.
James rushed around the corner, across a brick plaza, and down white stone steps toward the water. Angels wheeled around the buildings. One passed so low that it ruffled his hair. Feathers snowed around him, loosening from ethereal wings that had sprouted anew, but he didn’t look up to see if they were coming for him.
The Truckee had risen on its banks to swallow the walkways that surrounded it. James’s foot slipped and he sank knee-deep in water. It was so cold that it burned.
He sloshed through the shallows to shelter under the bridge as another angel shrieked past. James set Elise’s body on a narrow strip of rocks and climbed beside her, crouching under the low shelter of stone. She stayed dry, but he was wet to the hips.
James peered out at the blazing white sky. He couldn’t see the gate from their hiding place. Was it still open? Had He gone back, or was He in the city?
There was no way to tell. He turned his attention to Elise.
Her skin was colorless. James pressed his hand to her throat and found her pulse sluggish—and slowing.
Something splattered on the opposite bank.
James moved to shield Elise, but it wasn’t an angel, and it didn’t move to attack. It was a lumpy red mass—what remained of Mr. Black’s body. The angels had dropped it on them. His blood clouded the water.
He scanned the sky. The angels spiraled overhead with no indication of dropping. Everything was bright and colorless, as though He should have been close. James was so certain that He wouldn’t be able to resist Elise. It was the only way to heal her. “Come on, where are you?” he shouted to the sky. “Why won’t you heal her? She’s going to die!”
Something shifted behind him. James turned, expecting to see Him. Instead, he saw the shattered husk of Mr. Black getting to his feet.
It should have been impossible to move. The muscles had been ripped from his right leg, leaving the bones exposed from hip to ankle. There were deep teeth marks in his femur. The cavity of his skull dripped onto his shoulder. Parts of his spine were missing.
But still, he stood. And what remained of his face was trying to smile.
“Hello,” he rasped through a flapping esophagus.
Another voice echoed behind Mr. Black’s—one greater and far more terrible.
Hello.
That single word felt like having a stiletto driven through his ears. It resonated in James’s chest. For an instant, his heart did not beat.
Mr. Black’s arms stretched out.
“You’ve brought her to me. Thank you.”
Thank you.
James’s teeth vibrated in his skull. A sharp pop against his cheek told him that a filling had exploded. The scar on his shoulder blazed with white-hot pain, and it took all of his strength to respond. “She’s dying. You have to heal her—I know you can do it, you can do anything—”
Mr. Black splashed forward, and his bleeding fingers stroked Elise’s shoulders. Shredded skin hung from his wrist. A fingernail was missing. “Yes. I will take care of her.”
She’s mine, mortal.
This time, the voice did not just hurt James. It stirred Elise.
Her eyes opened to slits. She looked up and saw Mr. Black. Their bond was so strong that James could see through her eyes as though they were his own, and she did not see a corpse. Instead, He looked like a glowing man, taller and brighter than the sun, with endless voids where His eyes should have been. He smiled for her.
She knew Him.
And she mumbled a single word: “Thom.”
A shadow moved over them. The light was eclipsed by a mighty darkness—a black fog that oozed from the empty windows and doors of the angelic city.
“No!”
The responding echo was weaker than it should have been. No…
A new man stepped from behind the bridge.
Thom had changed since they met at the police station. His hair extended into shadow, vast and infinite. Fire burned in his eyes. He was as beautiful as Mr. Black’s body was hideous, and when he turned to appraise the situation, James saw a sweep of translucent black w
ings at his shoulders.
“I’ve been summoned. What is this?” he asked, his tone far too mild for the situation.
“Get away,” He said from within Mr. Black’s body.
She’s mine.
“Is that so? I don’t believe that’s true—yet.” Thom tapped his chin with a finger. “You were already barely in this dimension, and now you’ve taken a tangible body. What a terrible idea. You didn’t give that decision much consideration at all.”
You know who I am.
“Yes.”
You are not my match.
“No, of course not. Not when you’re in your true form. But this…” Thom waved his hand at the body. “As I said—terrible idea.”
He rushed toward Mr. Black.
Shadow clashed with light, and James’s mind completely refused to process what he saw. It couldn’t handle the information. His vision blanked, and his ears filled with a dull buzz.
When his senses cleared a few seconds later, he saw Thom seizing Mr. Black’s shoulders and lifting Him into the air.
They blasted through the sky, receding into a pinpoint between the parking garage and its mirror. Both Thom and Mr. Black’s body vanished through the dark gate.
The air was rent by the sound of a door slamming shut. It resonated through the entire city, sending a wind sweeping along the streets that kicked up glass shards and blasted away the light.
All the pressure vanished. The distant chimes went silent.
It was over, and He was gone.
Elise was still pale and unmoving, and the wound on her stomach wasn’t bleeding anymore. He didn’t have to check for a heartbeat to know she didn’t have one. He felt it in the way his own heart shattered. “No,” he said, smoothing a hand over her forehead. “Please, Elise…”
He searched inside himself for something from her. A hint of thought, a memory, a single neuron firing… anything. But he had nothing. His mind was empty where Elise’s presence should have been.
