Damnation Marked (14 page)

Elise got to her feet, wobbling on knees that couldn’t quite seem to support her weight. She steadied herself with a hand on the wall.

He was still standing too close. “Back up,” she said.

Thom smirked and took two steps away.

She finally left the hall to examine the place where Thom had taken them. It would have been a posh condo if it had had furniture. The living room was wide open, with tall windows that stared into the face of illuminated casinos. They were across the street from the downtown parking garage. In the mirrored city, the darkest gate stood on its roof. The sight gave her chills, so she turned from the window.

The only thing in the condo aside from Thom and Elise was a clay statue. It was shaped like a petite woman with a tiny waist and wide hips that tapered into a snake’s tail, and her arms spread wide over a basin of sand.

Elise stepped around the statue to see its face. The eyes were empty, and the expression was peaceful. It was so lifelike.

Thom watched her approach the statue, like he was afraid she might break it. His steps matched hers as they circled the basin. “We have to go back,” she said. “Yatai took Nukha’il. They’re inside the city.”

“You can’t go back to the cavern.”

“Just phase us through. I can handle it.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Thom said. “The cave has collapsed. There is nowhere to go.”

Her mouth fell open. “What? Then how…?”

“You can’t save Nukha’il.” Thom broke away to saunter to the window. His eyes were lidded and his lips were swollen, as though he and Elise had shared a passionate embrace. “A noble desire, I’m sure, but futile. The angel knew what he was doing. Don’t mourn him.”

“He’s not dead,” Elise said.

“Not surely, no. But very likely.”

She clenched her fists. Nukha’il couldn’t die—not that she cared about an
angel
, but he was Itra’il’s only guardian; if she broke free of her long sleep, she would be dangerous.

Elise couldn’t shake the mental image of Nukha’il trapped in the city. Alone against the darkest gate.

“I have to do
something
.”

His eyebrow quirked. “I could take you directly into the ethereal city, if you wished it.”

“No,” she said immediately.

“Then he is subject to Yatai’s mercies.”

Elise paced, arms folded tight across her chest. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. Let’s do it.” She moved for the hallway, but stopped when she saw Thom staring at his own hands. He didn’t seem to have heard her speak. “What’s wrong?”

He ran his hands down his chest. “You have weakened me,” he said, as though this was a marvel. “I took your blood into myself and have become… less.” He caught her expression. “Granted, when you are near-infinitely powerful, as I am, it is difficult to detect a modest change. But I know. I can tell.”

“You were probably injured by the shadow.”

Thom dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. “Yatai can’t hurt me.” His eyes sharpened. “But you—you have wounded me.”

In two long strides, Thom was in front of her. She couldn’t move fast enough to get away.

He took her arm again and gazed at the wound. His pink tongue darted out to wet his lips.

“What if I ate you whole?”

Elise shook herself free. “Let’s keep it academic.”

She returned to the hallway to grab her falchion. She hadn’t imagined Thom removing the shadow from the blade; it was shiny and clear, as though recently polished. Zohak had been consumed by the darkness, and he was a king among demons—so what the hell did Thom have to be in order to remove it from a sword, much less drink it down, without being hurt?

When Elise turned, he stood at her back. She hadn’t heard him approach.

“What
are
you?”

His secretive smile was distinctly feline. “I am a demon. A very ancient demon. There is no word for my species, for I am almost one of a kind, and the roots from which all other demons on Earth spring. The Gray call me their father. The humans call me Satan. I am the serpent, I am temptation—and fortunately for you, I am your ally today.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No,” Thom said. “I expect you wouldn’t.” He extended a hand. “Are you ready?”

Elise sheathed her sword and nodded.

Thom wrapped his arm around her and touched the red stone dangling from the choker at his throat.

Nothing happened.

He blinked. It was the barest show of surprise, but given his usual blank features, he might as well have fallen over with shock.

“What is it?” she asked.

His brow furrowed.

“I can’t phase.”

J
ames parked his
car on the roof of the hospital’s garage and checked his cell phone again. Nothing.

It had only been a couple of hours since he had picked up Stephanie’s order for lab work and had the draw performed for his karyotype test. He knew from his not-infrequent hospital stays that even rush orders moved with all the urgency of a glacier, so it wasn’t surprising. But impatience nagged at him.

James sat on the hood of his car as the engine ticked and cooled to watch the stars and wait.

It was a cold, clear night. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The forecast said there would be snow over Thanksgiving weekend, but for now, the stars were bright, his fingers were chilly, and he was much too wired to rest.

He took the Prophecies of Flynn from his back pocket, opening to the table of contents. His fingertip trailed over the section titled “Aspis.” If there were prophecies about Elise’s aspis—about
him
—then everything in that section would be about his future.

Did he want to know? Really?

All he had to do was locate page two hundred and thirty-six, and that gnawing curiosity would be satisfied.

“No,” he said aloud. “That’s a terrible idea.”

He closed the cover.

Then he opened it again.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

James started on the first page of prophecies.

The text was tiny, and riddled with codes and abbreviations that made no sense to him. He flipped to the back. There was no key.

He tried to read it anyway, but without understanding their acronyms, most of the lines were gibberish. The first paragraph of the introduction was half abbreviations such as “CEV” and half of Elise’s biography, which he could tell by the dates. Her birthday was mentioned, as well as the date her parents had left her to pursue their own ambitions.

James soon found himself on page two hundred and thirty-six, which was marked with the “Aspis” header. It was the only time he was referenced in such impersonal terms. The rest of the time, his name was annotated as “JF.”

He held his future in his hands—all the information that people weren’t meant to know about themselves.

“No happiness will come of this,” he said again.

He started reading anyway.

The entire first page was a disordered biography of James, and how he came to be Elise’s aspis. Even knowing what they were talking about, it was still difficult to follow. There were massive gaps in the information, and the level of detail was, thankfully, very brief and disjointed. They had minimal information on his time with the coven in Colorado. They didn’t seem to know about his connection to Elise’s parents, either.

He turned to the second page. James stopped a quarter of the way down.

24 - Events precipitated by the birth of JF’s offspring (V2:134:12) catastrophic; will lead to ‘unraveling’—BFU.

25 - UP: RA - Explore destruction of offspring as PM.

He read that line again.
Events precipitated by the birth of JF’s offspring.

JF’s offspring.

The line was embedded in observations about his studies of paper magic (lines sixteen through twenty-three) and the date the Union suspected that he and Elise bound as kopis and aspis (line twenty-six). Both of those had occurred well in the past.

“I don’t
have
offspring,” he said, as if that would change the words on the page.

His hand found his cell phone. Stephanie was on speed dial as number three.

“Hello, darling,” she answered, voice curt. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if…” He trailed off. Cleared his throat. “Did you get the blood work?”

“Not yet. Darling.”

Alarms squealed in the background of the call. That was never a good sign. Common sense told him to hang up, but now that he had her on the line, he had to ask. “I have a strange question.”

“Stranger than wanting a karyotype test?”

“I suppose not.” He hesitated. “Are you… pregnant?”

Stephanie gave a short laugh. “You have developed a strange sense of humor, my love. No. And if such a thing were to happen between my IUD and the condoms, it would likelier be the son of God than yours.” Her voice softened a barest fraction. “If you would like to have children, I’m happy to have that conversation in the morning, when two of my patients are not coding. Is there something
actually
important I can help you with?”

He forced himself to laugh, too. “Sorry, Stephanie. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“Okay. Talk to you later. Kisses.”

“Yes,” he said faintly, and he hung up.

Line twenty-three seemed bigger than all the other lines on the page, as if it was bolded and enlarged with flashing arrows aimed at it.
JF’s offspring.
His eyes dropped to the next line.
Explore destruction of offspring.

And to think that James had believed the Union might have friendly intentions.

He closed the book, returned it to his pocket, and fully intended on getting in his car to leave. But he didn’t move.

Instead, he picked up his cell phone again and scrolled through the contact list. He was meticulous about keeping his contact information intact over the years, even when he and Elise had been living out of one backpack between the two of them, so he still had the phone numbers for his former high priest and priestess. He still had the phone number for his friend, Grant, who he hadn’t spoken to in about seven years.

He also had the contact information for his ex-fiancée, Hannah Pritchard.

Before he could think too much about it, James hit the button to dial her number. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not when it turned out to be the number for a pizza delivery place in Boulder, which was, unsurprisingly, closed for business after midnight.

After hanging up, he double-checked his contacts. James hadn’t spoken to Hannah in so long that he didn’t have her email address, but he did have an email for the high priestess of the coven.

James drafted a short message on his Blackberry with a subject line that said “ATTN: Hannah,” and hit send.

VIII

E
lise paced the
length of the manager’s office in Craven’s with an unlit cigarette between her first two fingers. She had been trying to call Anthony for an hour and hadn’t gotten a response.

When she got his voicemail again, she flung her cell phone to the desk. The back popped off. “Goddamn it,” she growled, patting her pockets for a lighter.

Neuma hurried in, wearing a baggy t-shirt over her leather stripper gear, which made her look like she had just rolled out of bed. Considering that her idea of breakfast involved an hour of messy sex, she probably had. “What’s wrong, doll?”

“Nothing,” Elise said reflexively. She immediately amended it to, “Everything. I need you to get two teams together—one prepared to excavate a collapsed cave, and another with very bright lights and big guns to help me comb the Warrens.”

“Diggers and a search party. Right. Big teams?”

“As big as you can get, and as fast as possible.”

“Will do.” The half-succubus frowned. Her plump lips made the expression seem more like a pout. “Only problem is, the sun’s rising. We’ve pretty much only got whoever’s in Craven’s right now.”

“Then shut down the casino and get everyone equipped. Have Lock’s hardware store send us what we need—he owes us. They’re late on last month’s tithe.”

“We’ll lose a lot of money if we shut down.” At Elise’s look, Neuma’s held up her hands in surrender. “All right, all right.” She tucked the shift schedule for Craven’s under her arm and began searching the filing cabinet. “It’s going to suck getting anyone to volunteer, though—the last two never came back from dumping Zohak.”

“They ran away?”

“No, I mean, they went missing.” She pulled a Rolodex of phone numbers out of the drawer and perched herself by the desk phone. “Them, and the guy I sent searching for them. He called me to say he found tire tracks before his phone died. I think someone snatched them.”

Elise didn’t have time to worry about three employees. They were just demons anyway. “I don’t care what it takes to get people moving. Bribe them, threaten them, whatever. Are you calling Lock?” Neuma nodded, pinning the phone against her shoulder. “Ask him to bring his guys with the equipment. We can use the extra help digging.”

“Will do. What are we looking for when we get down there?”

She spotted a lighter that had been hiding under the Rolodex and took it. “Anthony. My boyfriend got lost in the Warrens.”

Neuma blinked those heavily lashed eyes. “Oh, no, he didn’t.”

Her thumb paused on the igniter. “What?”

“I saw him pass through Eloquent Blood a couple of hours ago. I asked what was up, and he said he was going home.” Her smile faltered. She covered the receiver with a hand. “That’s not good news?”

Elise lit the cigarette and took a very long drag. It wasn’t enough to calm her down.

“I still need the diggers,” she said, flicking the ash into the tray and heading for the door. “As fast as you can.”

Outside, the morning seemed darker and colder than it should have been, and Elise didn’t think it was because the nights had become so long.

Anthony went home?

She dropped her cigarette in the can outside the door to her apartment building before racing upstairs.

Elise slammed into the living room. Even with the curtains open and the eggshell walls, it felt like the sun had to fight to brighten the furnished apartment she shared with Anthony. It was always dim and gloomy—always. And aside from their combined laundry spread across the floor and the dirty dishes covering the counter, it was also completely empty.