B7 Ascension

by Sins of Eden

  “The fissure into Eden has been under the House of Abraxas the entire time,” Elise said, staring at the water with the look of someone who was about to throw up. “That’s what Onoskelis was trying to tell me.”

  Abel stared between them like he was watching the most surreal tennis match he’d ever seen.

  The conversation was going right over his head.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Eden wouldn’t have been accessible until the gates were opened,” the unnamed man went on. “Quarantine, you know. Similar quarantine to the one that used to be around Araboth. Even a fissure can’t supersede that. But now they’re open, and Belphegor probably doesn’t have this entrance locked down.”

  Probably. That inspired confidence.

  Abel tried to work through the conversation—fissures, quarantines, Eden and all. It still didn’t make any sense, but he latched on to one thing the other guy had said. “If this was the first offshoot from Eden, then you’re telling us that the whole universe basically started off with Hell.”

  “This part of Hell, yeah.” He smiled weakly. “It was grassier then, I think.”

  Why did that man look so familiar? Abel just couldn’t put his finger on it.

  That smile…

  “So there’s a fissure here,” Elise said. She passed the girl off to Ariane.

  “Somewhere,” the young man agreed.

  Elise kneeled by the spring where it bubbled from the floor, studied the crack for a moment, and then slammed her fist into it with a hollow thud.

  The crack widened.

  With another punch, light began shimmering in the water, sparkling like distant starlight. Elise seized the edge of the rock and pulled hard on it.

  “Abel?” she asked.

  He dropped down beside her, widening the hole in the ground by pummeling the stone and tearing at it in turns. As it enlarged, the light got brighter and brighter, until Ariane’s potion was nothing more than the faint flickering of candlelight in comparison to the blazing sun underneath the chamber.

  They exposed a bright, flooded tunnel underneath the ground that was about as wide as a car and too deep to see the bottom. All Abel could tell was that it was glowing down there.

  Water gushed freely from the spring, sluicing over Abel’s feet. It was cooler than he expected. Almost icy. The rock crumbled away more easily as the water poured out faster.

  “Eden,” Elise said.

  Abel wiped his hands dry on his jeans and edged away from the tunnel. “I’m not going down there.” He’d kind of figured out how to swim in the lake they had at the werewolf sanctuary, but he still wasn’t very good at it. He definitely couldn’t hold his breath long enough to reach that light at the bottom.

  “You’re not coming,” she said. “None of you are.”

  “You need backup,” Abram protested.

  She shook her head. “You’ll all get killed. No, no more deaths if I can help it.” Elise looked over all of them, gaze lingering on her mother and sister. “You guys need to find somewhere safe and wait. There’s nothing else you can do.”

  Abram looked almost offended that Elise didn’t want them all diving in after God to get themselves killed. “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.” Elise tied her hair into a loose knot, stripped off her over shirt, kicked her shoes into the corner.

  More pounding on the other side of the door. The smell of demons was stronger, and Abel knew that the entrance had been cracked. A few more hits of the battering ram and Atropos would be inside.

  Elise hesitated, teetering on the edge of the spring.

  “What are you waiting for?” Abel asked.

  “Nothing.” She said it with conviction, but she still didn’t jump.

  “You do have a plan to kill this Belphegor thing, right?” Levi asked.

  “Yes,” Elise said. Abel smelled the lie on her.

  No wonder she was hesitating.

  The Godslayer had no idea how she was going to kill a God.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  Which was when the door to the cavern burst open and the army poured in.

  Elise had her swords drawn an instant before the first demon hit her.

  It was a fiend, probably from the former fifty-ninth centuria if its uniform was any indication. Cannon fodder for the first wave.

  The stupid thing wasn’t ready for Elise. She sliced upward, catching it in the groin and cutting neatly through the nether region, the stomach, and chest until her blade caught on the breastbone.

  Smoothly, she pivoted, thrusted, and buried both falchions in the throat of a second demon. Elise ripped them wide. Plunged the points into two more oncoming fiends, skewering their hearts.

  Blood and ichor sprayed. She was bathed in their fear, their fluids, and their organs.

  She only glimpsed her other allies through the flailing limbs of the attack. Abram with his sidearm drawn, mouth opened in a shout that was drowned out by gunfire. Levi shapeshifting behind him. Abel with one fist clutching the face of a fiend, his fingers collapsing the skull.

  Ariane retreated to the corner with Marion in her arms. Elise hamstrung a demon before it could leap toward them.

  Benjamin. Where was Benjamin?

  “Get out!” Elise shouted to Ariane, unsure if her mother would hear.

  Darkness swarmed with the buzzing of flies. Atropos suddenly stood between Elise and her next quarry. The Fate was bleeding everywhere, but she didn’t look weak. She looked pissed.

  Atropos lunged.

  Megaira and Elise met, crashing together with a hot thunder of energy, aura against aura.

  As Elise thrust against her with willpower and blade, she glimpsed images of Atropos devouring the army—swallowing fiends the way that Elise could, sucking anger from the marrow of their minds as they died feeling bitterly betrayed.

  She was reading Atropos’s memories. The Fate had eaten half of her army to help herself heal from the spirit wolf attacks.

  Anger spiked in Elise’s heart.

  “Out!” she yelled again, hoping that her allies would listen. Benjamin had gotten Elise into the cavern—he would be able to get them out, too.

  At least, he’d better be able to get them out. Elise had seen the broken body of McIntyre’s youngest daughter too clearly, and it was easy now to imagine Marion—not much younger than Deb—with her heart ripped out, the fold of her wrist stained in blood, her curls matted to her back.

  The anger climbed to nauseating levels, and when Elise swung her falchion to block a punch from Atropos, her arm felt weak.

  Rage weakened Elise because megairas like Atropos fed on rage. As Elise became more infuriated, Atropos became stronger and healed her wounds more rapidly.

  If Elise wanted to survive a fight against Atropos, she needed to let the anger go.

  The falchion whistled toward Atropos. The demon caught that blade in her hand, and it didn’t even slice through her skin.

  Her smile was triumphant.

  “Yes,” she hissed, digging her fingernails into Elise’s wrist.

  Let the anger go.

  Elise breathed it out, pushed it away.

  All that remained behind that hard wall of anger was something much more vulnerable. Something that looked very much like fear.

  Atropos wasn’t a nightmare, so she couldn’t feed on fear.

  But Elise could.

  The megaira was forcing her memories on Elise, so she responded with memories of her own. She recalled Lachesis’s death, the way that she had melted away under the fiery light from the gate to Eden. Elise thought of Clotho’s sludgy remnants after McIntyre electrocuted her. She thought of Abel’s spirit wolves, even now fighting to hold the remainder of the army that was trying to force its way into the chamber.

  Elise forced it all on Atropos, remembering it without anger, but with grief. Another emotion that was useless to the demon.

  “You’ll die the way your sisters did,” Elise whispered without heat, hoping that Atropos w
ould be afraid.

  She was.

  Slowly, the energy between them shifted.

  Atropos’s cheeks paled, and new energy flowed into Elise’s arms.

  Elise locked her arm around Atropos’s throat and dragged her toward the light flowing from Eden. The demon began to phase away almost immediately, trying to escape both the brilliance of the fissure and Elise’s memories of the other Fates dying.

  “Elise!”

  It was Ariane. She had pushed Marion behind her into the corner, and both of them crouched behind Abram. She lobbed the bottle of light-emitting potion over the heads of fiends.

  Elise caught the potion, and, without hesitation, smashed the glass on Atropos’s face.

  Light gushed over them. The megaira shrieked in pain, clawing at her boiling skin.

  Her wild struggles made Elise lose her balance. Both of them tipped backwards over the edge of the cold spring.

  With the megaira still locked in her arms, Elise’s back smashed into the water. They sank rapidly.

  Elise kicked Atropos away and surged through the water, arms thrusting in front of her, shoulders flexing, legs kicking. The spring was flowing away from the fissure to Eden, so it should have been easy to propel herself back to the surface.

  Yet the tide refused to yield. No matter how hard she tried to swim, she fell toward the light.

  Atropos fell, too. Her boot lashed out and connected with the side of Elise’s skull. She caught Atropos’s ankle before she could kick again.

  With the contact of skin against skin, their thoughts freely intertwined.

  Aren’t you so angry? Atropos purred, even as she struggled to free herself of Elise’s grip. After everything you’ve suffered at Belphegor’s hands, aren’t you furious?

  McIntyre. Neuma. Gerard. James.

  Elise tried to push away the anger, tried to find a quiet core within herself.

  The surrender she had found moments before was suddenly gone.

  They were tumbling toward Eden, locked together in combat, and there was no retreat from the anger. Strength drained from her muscles as her fury about her dead friends grew. She sank toward Eden faster, weakened by Atropos’s feeding.

  Water flowed up her nose and down her throat and choked her. She wasn’t ready to go to Eden. She had no idea how to kill Belphegor. She wasn’t ready, it wasn’t fair, and this was all Atropos’s fault.

  At least, that was what Atropos wanted her to think, because it made her angrier.

  Elise glared at the receding circle of darkness that indicated the cavern above. Her mother and sister—finally, her sister—were up there, dying as Eden pulled her into its arms.

  Atropos gripped Elise’s throat in both hands and squeezed.

  You’ll never be able to kill Belphegor anyway, Atropos said. You’re too weak. You’re a failure. Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you hate yourself?

  They were so close to the fissure now.

  Fear crept in at the edges of Elise’s anger—true fear. The fear that James was already gone and that Belphegor would greet her with his bones. Or worse, that he wasn’t dead, and she wouldn’t be able to save him anyway. The fear that she wasn’t going to be able to save anyone, just as she hadn’t saved the liberated slaves, her friends, or so many others.

  The fear burned as badly as the light from the fissure.

  Elise clutched at it, trying to let it grow to overwhelm her and take away Atropos’s fuel.

  Someone help me, Elise thought in a rare moment of desperation, knowing that there shouldn’t have been anyone to hear her.

  She was shocked when another voice responded.

  Very well.

  That voice belonged to neither Elise nor Atropos.

  The megaira showed no sign of hearing it. Her pallid flesh was oozing into the water around her as she sank, but her grip on Elise’s throat didn’t falter. Atropos was using Elise’s body as a shield against the light from the fissure.

  Who are you? Elise asked the voice.

  The reply sounded amused. We are pieces of you. Relax, sword-woman—you won’t be alone in Eden.

  Her lungs ached as Atropos pushed her toward the light, the air on the other side, and the final confrontation with Belphegor. The megaira’s cheeks peeled away as the light from the fissure consumed them, baring a skeletal grin.

  Elise’s back brushed the juncture to Eden.

  Hell turned inside out.

  Eighteen

  Elise passed through the fissure, stretched like taffy, and appeared on the other side with more company than she had expected.

  Water gushed around Elise as she struck the grass. Atropos’s hands still pressed against her throat, her skull. The megaira’s knees drove into her back.

  “I never would have allowed her to get the better of me like that,” remarked a dry voice.

  Bare toes were nestled in the grass inches from Elise’s nose. She couldn’t turn to look all the way up to his face, but she could see legs wearing snug leather, narrow hips, the hem of a black silk shirt.

  It was Yatam, the original father of all demons.

  He had been dead for years.

  The kindly response to his complaint was just as impossible. “You never fought enemies as powerful as Elise has.”

  That sounded like Eve: first angel, Adam’s former consort, and also very much dead.

  Elise groaned out an incoherent question as Atropos’s hands squeezed. But the other demon was weakening, too. Her breath was growing choppy, her fingers losing consistency as the light from Eden sank into her flesh. It was gloomy underneath the trees, sheltered from the worst of the light, but still far too bright for one of the Fates.

  “I outlasted you by a considerable number of years, Eve,” Yatam said.

  Eve giggled. “We never fought, darling nephew.”

  “Nephew? Don’t insult me.”

  Two ancient dead beings were arguing over Elise’s head.

  It seemed possible that she hadn’t survived passing through the fissure with her sanity intact.

  Atropos coughed a lungful of fluid onto the grass next to Elise then rasped, “We made it. Belphegor’s going to end you and everything you care about.”

  Not only was it a pathetic attempt at evoking anger in Elise, but it told her something important: Atropos couldn’t see Yatam and Eve.

  With a hard twist, Elise flipped underneath the megaira. Her heart guttered at the sight of Atropos’s rotten face. Passing through the fissure had hurt Elise, but Atropos had been completely ripped apart.

  Elise kneed the other demon in the gut. It was easy to push her off. She wrenched free, drawing her steel-bladed sword as she stumbled to her feet.

  Atropos was slower.

  “You’ll never be able to kill her with that pathetic blade, Godslayer,” Yatam said. His thumbs were hooked in the low-slung waistband of his pants, dragging them dangerously low to expose the vee of hard muscle under his navel.

  He underestimated Elise.

  She hurled the sword—not toward Atropos, but straight into the air, using all of the strength that remained in her body.

  The blade ripped through tree branches, opening a hole to the bright sky beyond.

  A beam of light spilled over the grass with Atropos at its center.

  Elise leaped out of the way just in time, sheltering underneath a large root. She watched from safety as Atropos struggled to follow her, trying to run on legs that turned to steaming sludge with every step.

  Atropos’s feet melted into the grass. She ran on anklebones. And then the stumps of her fibula and tibia began wearing away, leaving her to try to escape on her knees, hands digging into the grass for purchase.

  “No,” she gasped.

  Atropos’s final cry was deeply satisfying.

  The splash of her ichor washed over Elise’s feet.

  “Impressive,” Yatam said. He stood in the sunlight. He had always been able to stand in the sun, despite the fact that Elise had inherited her vulnerabi
lity to light from him; after five thousand years, he had found some kind of trick that made him impervious.

  He was as beautiful as she remembered. His hair was matte black, his smooth skin creamy with olive undertones. Eden’s light glinted on the ridges of muscle down his abdomen and emphasized the hard cut of his cheekbones. Given breasts and a softer jaw, he would have been indistinguishable from his dead sister, Yatai.

  Eve lingered behind him, drifting through the grass. She was just as beautiful but much less showy. Yatam deliberately posed to encourage Elise to appreciate his form; Eve never had felt the urge to display herself. Now was no exception. Still, with her cascading brunette hair and perfect heart-shaped face, Eve was as gorgeous as she had ever been.

  “Ah,” she said. “Here.” She pointed into the bushes. “I found it. That’s where your falchion landed.”

  Elise gave them a wide berth as she collected it, rubbing fresh sap off of the blade with her shirt.

  She surveyed both from a safe distance. They looked real enough. Eve was tall, winged, and graceful; Yatam was a splash of unnatural darkness in paradise.

  They definitely didn’t look dead.

  “How?” Elise asked.

  Yatam rolled his eyes to the sky. “It isn’t difficult to figure out with a few moments’ thought.”

  “We are pieces of you,” Eve said. “You asked for help. We emerged.”

  “You’re not actually Eve and Yatam, though,” Elise said.

  “Tell me what you think, sword-woman. Your blood rendered me mortal, and my twin sister severed my mortal body into two pieces as you watched. Am I actually Yatam?” he asked.

  He was certainly almost as infuriating as the real thing. But Elise thought she understood: she had been given the powers of Yatam when she had been reborn. Then the garden had given her the blood of the Tree and pieces of Eve’s soul. She had been carrying the memory of both inside of her for years.

  Apparently, it was slightly more than memory.

  It couldn’t be accident that they had been invoked now.

  “How are you going to help me kill Belphegor?” Elise asked.