Ascension: Sins of Eden Part 26

Marion was smiling, like she was proud of herself for making that door. She was completely oblivious to her mother's horrified expression and the stunned silence from Abram and Levi.

"Looks like we've found our way out," Abel said.

He hauled Ariane to her feet, grabbed the little girl, and rushed for the door.

Sixteen.

James hadn't intended to fall asleep, but Elise had worn him out, and he was unprepared for the depth of the fatigue that would follow. He had just barely finished setting the gaean ritual to heal Nathaniel when he finally succ.u.mbed to the fog in his skull.

He woke up alone, draped in blankets that were crusted with months-old blood and unsure what had stirred him. He sat up, brushed the bangs off of his forehead, and shivered in the cold.

It was much too chilly to get out of bed naked. He slid from the mattress with the stained comforter wrapped around him as he scavenged for his clothing. Only his underwear and shoes seemed to be intact. Elise had shown little regard for everything else.

If he could gather enough of his dignity to find a way out to the trucks, there would most likely be spare clothing. It was going to be a very cold trip to make that happen, though.

Where was Elise now?

James opened the shutters on the window, peering out to the wind-blasted landscape. There was no way to see the gate from there; he had made sure of that when he selected the location to cage Elise. But there were a few werewolves outside the walls. Maybe one would take pity on him.

He was about to call to them when he realized that they weren't actually moving. One of them had stopped with his foot just a couple inches above the stone, caught in mid-step. A swirl of snow sparkled around them, as motionless as the rain at Hannah's grave had been when Nathaniel arrived.

"d.a.m.nation," he swore under his breath.

"Yes?"

Belphegor stood in the corner, hands folded in front of him.

James's eyes flicked to the spell he'd prepared. Everything was there: the runes, the circle, the anointing oil. If it would cure Nathaniel, it might cure Belphegor, too.

He was no longer a witch, but would he need to be a witch to activate a spell that was ready to be cast?

If he could just get that oil on Belphegor...

He edged along the wall as the demon strolled toward him.

"Just so you know, I have planned to kill you," Belphegor said. "You're part of my plan to bring Elise to her knees."

"Isn't that nice," James said, inching to the desk.

"I thought that your death would break her spirit and make her despair. Interesting, though, that she already despairs so deeply in the loss of her friends, even when you're alive. You do nothing to make her less miserable. You're an antagonizing influence."

"Historically speaking, our relationship has been somewhat fraught," James said, mostly as a way to keep Belphegor talking rather than acting. He wasn't interested in relationship therapy led by a s.a.d.i.s.tic demon.

He grabbed the bottle of anointing oil behind his back and unscrewed it.

"Love," Belphegor mused, his eyes skimming the rumpled sheets on the bed. "The most poisonous substance in all of time."

James began forming the words to activate the gaean spell in his mind-the Sumerian, the infernal, the ethereal. The verses carried no weight when he thought them now, but if they did trigger the spell, he would never be able to detect it. He no longer had the requisite senses.

He stood back on the outer edge of the circle, cupping salt in his left hand.

Belphegor looked James over as though a.s.sessing the quality of a side of beef. "You are almost what I sought in slaves, when I was still bound to Dis. You are strong. Healthy. I imagine you would have survived a long time in my play room."

The demon moved within arm's reach.

With a swift gesture, James tossed the salt along the edge of the circle to seal it-with both him and Belphegor inside-and splashed the anointing oil over the demon.

Belphegor didn't flinch. He looked down at his shirt as oil dripped from his chin to his chest.

The oil vanished without so much as a gesture from him, like he had never been touched by it.

"If you thought to test a 'cure' for your son on me, you have wasted time and supplies. You can't sever me from what makes me a G.o.d the way you can sever the Gray from their power."

Calm spread to his extremities, leaving James numb.

The spell had failed.

It was bad enough that it hadn't worked on Belphegor, leaving James defenseless in the face of a G.o.d, but the other implications were far worse. The spell had been Elise's only hope of curing Nathaniel. Now, he would have to die to be saved from madness.

Fortunately, it was looking less likely that James would survive to see that.

There was nothing he could do against Belphegor. Most likely not when he had been a witch, and certainly not now.

He could choose to die without screaming, though.

James set the empty vial on the table. His motions felt slow, like he was packed in cotton. "Then what will it be? A gruesome display of my body? Perhaps leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood on the floor?"

"My dear mortal," Belphegor said, "give me some credit. I'm somewhat more creative than that."

He extended a long-fingered hand to James, as though it was no more than a gentlemanly invitation to go for a walk.

What choice did James have? He shed the comforter on the edge of the dead circle and approached the demon.

He only took two steps before the world vanished around him.

A cold wind blew through the mountains. It whistled among stone and ice and whirled around Elise without touching her.

The hybrids were dead, and werewolves circled around the statue of Lilith.

Lachesis hovered between them. She melted within the light of Eden, shriveling away to nearly nothing.

You have tricked me, she hissed.

"d.a.m.n right I did," Elise said.

The Fate tried to phase away, but Elise reactivated Brianna's spell-specifically, the wards along the circle's circ.u.mference. The witch had cast those protections using one of James's older designs, and they were strong enough to erect magical walls that Lachesis would never be able to destroy on her own.

She was trapped. That meant that Elise was trapped, too.

But now the gate to Eden was open, and Elise didn't need to get out again.

Let me go, Lachesis said.

It almost sounded like begging.

This thing had killed Neuma and Gerard. Good people. Great people, in fact. Elise's lover and her praetor, people who had stood by her during the worst, who had given their lives in a futile attempt to save the slaves.

It wasn't Lachesis who had murdered McIntyre, Leticia, and Deb, but she would have done it just as readily if Belphegor had ordered it.

And Lachesis had the nerve to beg.

Elise leaped forward, seized the Fate, and dragged her toward the bright light streaming through the gate.

The demon thrashed against her as she smoldered. Gritting her teeth, Elise held her in place.

It burned. It burned so much to sink into Eden's glow instead of hiding from it. It was like trying to give Nash a big hug when he was at his most brilliant. Elise's skin burned, melting away almost as quickly as Lachesis's fog.

She managed to pin Lachesis to Lilith's tail. The Fate was nothing but a wisp now. A wisp with wide, panicked eyes in dwindling darkness.

Let me go!

"No," Elise growled.

With a scream, Lachesis's smoke dispersed.

Elise knew she was gone when there was no longer any resistance against her hands. She slipped forward, palms flattening against Lilith's tail. Ichor slicked her arms. It was the same sludge that Clotho had left behind after she died.

Two down, one to go.

Sinking to her knees, Elise bowed in front of the statue of Lilith, ducking into the safety of shadow, and pressing her forehead to the stone. It had been lovingly engraved to resemble the scales of a snake.

She didn't feel victorious in killing Lachesis. It didn't bring Neuma back.

Instead, in the absence of an enemy to fight, Elise was overwhelmed by grief.

She had been the one to kill Lilith. She had decapitated the ancient G.o.ddess using her falchions that rested in the circle now-the same G.o.ddess who had, with Yatam's help, turned Elise into a demon.

She had never known Lilith well enough to miss her, but in that moment, she did. Desperately.

Lilith had been the sculptor of life, master of death. She had been the architect of the universe. She had taken Elise's soul and given it new form.

If she had still lived, what would Lilith have been able to do for the McIntyres and Neuma?

What could she have done for Nathaniel's mother?

The uneasy shifting of the wolves and the cold breeze brought Elise back to reality. By the time she pushed herself to her feet, her shoulders were squared, and she was careful to show no emotion on her face.

She moved to the center of the circle, skirting the brilliant light from the portal, and picked up her swords.

"I'm going into Eden now," Elise said to the wolves. "I don't expect any of you to come with me. This is somewhere that only I can go." She didn't wait to see if any of them departed. The light was still making her skin ache, and she needed to get inside Eden.

But when Elise tried to jump into the gate, she came up against an invisible barrier.

Elise pushed her hands against it. The air did not yield.

The doorway to Eden was open. She could see the garden on the other side, just a few tantalizing inches away, yet she couldn't pa.s.s through.

Belphegor had somehow locked her out.

How? Why? If he could lock her out even once she opened the doors, why bother trying to kill Abram? Why sacrifice Lachesis and the hybrids in an attempt to prevent them from completing the ritual? It was like he was taunting her. It wouldn't have been surprising, considering Belphegor's sickening sense of humor, but that couldn't be the whole point.

Unless it had also been a distraction to keep her from seeing what else he was doing.

I want you to despair.

Her eyes swept over the wolves. There were ten of them remaining. Had any stayed behind to guard James?

"Get to the shelter," Elise said.

She smashed her fist into Brianna's altar, shattering it down the center. The wards broke.

Elise phased into shadow, rushing toward the building where she had been caged.

She couldn't enter the walls without turning herself corporeal again. James's old magic was far too strong. Giving herself a body again and running into the atrium only added a few seconds to her search, but it was a few seconds too long.

"James!" Elise called, standing on the threshold of the atrium.

Summer had remained to guard him-but apparently, she'd been left alone. The shifter woman was slumped on the floor among the boxes, just a few feet away from Rylie's body.

Elise leaped across the atrium to the bedroom door where she had left James. It was locked. She kicked it open, shattering the doorjamb, and pushed the pieces apart to enter.

The sheets were on the floor. Books were scattered everywhere. James had finished his spell, and by all appearances, he had also attempted to activate it, since the salt circle was closed and oil was smeared on the floor.

He was nowhere in sight.

She didn't need to search for evidence to know what had become of him. Her hands clenched into fists at her side.

"Belphegor," she growled, trying to summon him the same way that she had at Hannah's grave.

He didn't respond.

Elise only distantly registered that the werewolves were filling the atrium behind her, sniffing around Summer's unconscious body. She moved to the end of the bed. The fitted sheet was rumpled. Everything smelled of James's sweat.