Ascension: Sins of Eden Part 33

Twenty.

Eden was screaming. James didn't need to have any magic to know it. He felt the forest's stress deep within his body in the same way that he felt life leaking from his injuries.

The trees blossomed too quickly, erupting with flowers. The dangling moss grew lusher. Branches drooped with the sudden weight of flora.

Just as quickly, everything began to shrivel with the onslaught of autumn.

Roots lifted from the soil, tips curling back toward the trunks, showering moist soil over James and Nathaniel. Only the Tree itself didn't move except to pull its roots in tighter, as if sheltering the Origin.

Blossoms and dead leaves snowed from the branches. For an instant, they stood bare.

Everything began growing again before James could even take another breath. This time, there were apples with the blossoms. Big apples, each of them as big as James's two fists pressed together, red near the stem and green at the bottom. They swelled like balloons until they could grow no more, and then amber began dripping from the stems, oozing down the succulent flesh.

Droplets splattered onto James's cheek. One touched the corner of his mouth. The taste reminded him of Elise, as though she had somehow filled the entire garden with her blood.

And then everything stopped.

The falling petals and dripping amber froze in midair. The trees stopped swaying, the roots went still. Even James couldn't seem to breathe.

Only the Origin stirred.

A human hand erupted from the surface, slapping wetly on the sh.o.r.e.

Short fingernails dug into the bark of the Tree. Muscles flexed as the arm pulled, and a second hand smacked down ahead of the first.

A naked female body emerged, veiled in wet, streaming hair that hung limply over muscular shoulders.

It was a woman with broad hips, strong thighs, a lean torso. There was a deliberate kind of grace in her steps as she dragged her body out of the pool of light, as though every movement had been previously rehea.r.s.ed.

Fluid streamed from her elbows and chin as she got to her feet, slowly straightening her spine. White light limned her shoulders and hips, silhouetting her features.

James recognized that silhouette, but he hadn't seen it in years. From the curly hair to her slender ankles, he'd spent many long days and nights trying not to stare at that silhouette. He had seen it resting on the drawer of a freezer after she had died in the demon apocalypse many years earlier, too-the last time he had gotten to see that body.

The light faded a fraction once she emerged from it, and James found himself gazing up at Elise.

Not a demon. Not the Father.

Just Elise.

She ran her fingers through soaking curls that were wet enough to look brown, patted down her chest and ribs, spread her hands in front of her. Her skin was peach. When tanned, she would have dark freckles across her cheekbones and shoulders.

"Elise," he whispered.

Her gaze lifted to his. He expected that jolt of familiarity, the connection between two people who had known each other for so long.

Yet there was no recognition in her eyes. She didn't even seem to really see him. She saw through him, beyond the garden, into the depths of infinity.

She had become G.o.d.

It hurt to look at Elise's face, so much worse than it had before she had used the dampening spell to protect him from her infernal powers. She shone like starlight.

Elise stepped down the root and picked up the obsidian falchion from where it rested on a bed of moss.

She was still carrying the steel falchion, but it wasn't steel anymore. It was gleaming white metal just as bright as she was. Even when James closed his eyes against the brilliance of it, he could still see the shapes that had been engraved into the blade dancing behind his eyelids.

"How do you feel?" Belphegor asked.

"Better," Elise said. Her voice was strange, as though multiple people were speaking at once. There was a masculine undertone to it, and a much more feminine one as well. A choir singing instead of a woman speaking.

James could have sworn that his eyes were still closed, but somehow, he saw Elise drift across the garden to his side. Her feet didn't seem to touch the ground.

She flickered. James glimpsed a man with black hair and almond-shaped eyes, and he realized why the masculine undertone to her voice had sounded so familiar. That was Yatam, the demon who had given his life to make Elise into the inhuman creature she had become. The Father.

Another flicker, and she was herself again. Auburn hair. Bare, freckled shoulders.

"You may feel overwhelmed at the moment," Belphegor said. "You'll have time to adjust after the genesis."

She sank to her knees beside Nathaniel and gazed down at him with a face that wasn't hers. It was much softer, with lips shaped like a rosebud and sympathetic blue eyes. Eve's face.

Elise's hand smoothed the hair from his forehead.

A hand fisted James's collar. Belphegor had taken hold of him, dragging him to his feet. Pain flushed through his entire body. He couldn't even find the strength to groan anymore.

"Something isn't right," the demon said. For the first time, he sounded alarmed.

"You only just noticed?" James whispered with a weak smile.

"It appears that you don't have your infernal majority, Steward," Elise said. "Strange that this should be a concern at this point. I seem to recall binding you to h.e.l.l for the rest of eternity, and as far as I can tell, eternity still exists."

No, that wasn't Elise speaking. It was Yatam again. His cool, emotionless, unaccented voice. Sheets of black hair draped over one narrow shoulder. Yatam had always been slender for a man, barely distinguishable from his female twin in form.

Belphegor stepped toward her then hesitated. "What have you done?"

James wasn't sure if that question was intended for him or Elise, but he thought that he had an answer.

Elise wasn't a single soul. She was a triad of her own, intertwined in a single body: the Father, the First Angel, and the Greatest Kopis all in one. Demon, angel, human.

Entering the Origin hadn't completed Belphegor's pantheon. She had shattered the rules.

There had always been three-until now.

"I think you've made a mistake," James said.

Elise smiled at him. Or maybe that was Eve, or all three of them. He couldn't tell. "A mistake indeed." She leaned down to brush a kiss over Nathaniel's forehead, down the bridge of his nose, the lightest moment on his lips.

She raised the silver falchion high over her head.

James had known it would come to this the moment that the gaean spell failed against Belphegor. It still hurt to see her aiming the blade at Nathaniel's heart.

"Do it, and the man dies!" Belphegor roared, clasping his hand over James's throat.

There was no hesitation in Elise's movements, no regret in her eyes. Only apology as she gazed at James. "It needs to be done," she said. "It's the only way."

That was definitely Elise.

He wanted to tell her that he understood. If Belphegor ever allowed Nathaniel to reach consciousness again, it would be a life in servitude, a life beyond sanity. He was broken beyond repair. If Nathaniel couldn't be saved, then James wouldn't want him to live that life.

James, Elise, and Nathaniel were not going to come out of this genesis and spend their lives together.

Yes, he understood, but he couldn't breathe enough to speak. He probably didn't need to. There was nothing left to be said.

Elise brought the sword down, burying it deep in Nathaniel's chest. It wasn't blood that erupted from the wound, but brilliant, shining light that flooded Eden.

He didn't even wake up.

In the same instant, Belphegor ripped James's head off.

Becoming G.o.d was somehow less difficult than Elise had expected. She had thought that it would be difficult, overwhelming, confusing, just like when she had woken up with her demon powers for the first time.

This was much easier.

She sank into the Origin. It wasn't filled with water like the spring from the fissure; it was made of something denser than air, yet without any sensation of suffocation. It was bright but did not burn. The Origin felt like a blanket gently engulfing her body, wrapping her in perfect warmth, embracing her tightly.

It felt like coming home.

About d.a.m.n time, Yatam said.

Be kind, Eve said. Choosing to die is never easy.

Their voices remained even as Elise's body decayed.

Her skin stripped away, her physical form vanishing within the Origin, and she felt no fear.

There was no need for that mundane flesh, demon or otherwise. Her body was irrelevant. Her muscles melted into the warm fluid engulfing her and her bones flaked away. Everything was gone within seconds.

The Origin removed the things that made her weak.

What remained was beyond strong.

Eve and Yatam were with her there, gripping her hands, forming a triad of the most powerful of their kind. A triad beyond Nathaniel and Belphegor.

Eve pushed Elise gently toward Eden, but Elise didn't want to go. It was comfortable inside the Origin. Elise could see and feel everything simultaneously, from the smallest growth of moss to the whisper of water between two stones. She could see what remained of the Earth, burning within Belphegor's h.e.l.lfire, and the decaying sc.r.a.ps of Heaven.

It all hurtled toward the end.

Everything was dying, and it was good in the same way that losing her body had been good. The universe was shedding everything that was weak and leaving the energy at its core. Everything would be reborn fresh and strong.

Not yet, Yatam said. You're not done. There's more work to do.

He was right. With Nathaniel unconscious, Belphegor would shape the rebirth of the universe, using their power to construct an all-encompa.s.sing h.e.l.l. A universe broken to meet his whims, not a healthy new world.

Belphegor needed to be removed from the equation.

So Elise followed Eve's urgings and emerged from the Origin. That was easy, too. She willed her body back into existence-the illusion of a body-and found herself rising as a human.

Elise dragged herself out of the waters and stood on the roots of the Tree. Yatam and Eve stood in the same position. They moved as a single unit. Three people occupying a single position in s.p.a.ce.

The garden was frozen around her: Nathaniel asleep, Belphegor beside James, the whirlwind of blossoms and weeping amber frozen in midair.

She knew what she needed to do.

Like becoming G.o.d, killing Nathaniel was much easier than she expected, too.

James's death was equally simple.

In the moment that Belphegor killed James, Elise could see everything that he had ever done. She saw him christened by the White Ash Coven and lifted to princely status among witches. He'd been told from the moment he could open his eyes that he would be the greatest of them, a savior, a man of importance. He grew knowing that he was better than everyone else.

He weaved magic unlike any the world had ever seen, unconsciously tapping into the ethereal plane and proving his coven's suspicions correct.

And then she saw him abandoned by the coven. Left to hunt down Elise and deliver her to G.o.d. A king without kingdom.

The years of fighting, the tumult, the confusion, the pain. She had experienced so much of that with him the first time around. It was easier to watch it all like this, separated from emotion: their binding as kopis and aspis, his years of self-loathing, and eventual estrangement.

James had always been a deeply disturbed man. He'd never stood a chance at being anything else. And when he had tried to be the hero he was told he'd be, he'd become the villain instead.

Now he was dead, his head severed from his body, his intestines spilled across the soil of Eden.

There would be no more opportunities for him to redeem himself.

Elise lingered over the moment in time where they had decided to retire from the demon-hunting business and decided to open a dance studio. They had agreed to fund it largely through prize money rather than draining money they had stolen from one of their richer enemies, and James had started teaching her ballroom in earnest that night.

She watched the memory of James guiding her across an empty gas station parking lot, both smiling and laughing, and she couldn't maintain her sense of G.o.dly detachment.

It hurt.

"He had to die," Yatam said. It sounded like he stood behind Elise, just out of her eyesight, alongside Eve. "He was Belphegor's leverage-he and Nathaniel both. Without them, your power is flawless."

"I know," Elise said as reality faded back in around her. A cold reality where there was a dead boy in front of her and Belphegor with James's blood on his hands.

Elise understood that James needed to die, and yet she felt like she had already lost against Belphegor. Like there wasn't anything left worth fighting over.

Belphegor didn't look triumphant. He looked angry.

Angry, and afraid.

"Killing Nathaniel won't stop the genesis," Belphegor said. "Furthermore, you can't a.s.semble a new pantheon unless you kill yourself as well-and whatever else you have dredged from the Origin. The only way out of this is suicide. What's victory worth to you?"