Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (37 page)

“This could save Seth,” Abel said. “Let him fix it.”

Elise turned on the safety, gently pried her hands free of Rylie’s, and holstered the gun. “It doesn’t matter if I let him do anything. The problem isn’t with the spell. The problem is Abel.”

James stood. “What?”

“The falchion. Give it to me.”

He didn’t move to draw it. Elise jerked it out of the sheath herself. It was the mundane steel twin to the obsidian falchion she had left behind in the bathroom. “What are you doing?” James asked.

In two strides, Elise crossed the gate room to Abel and slashed the falchion across his chest.

He jerked back with a shout, even though the cut had been shallow and he healed almost instantly. She didn’t press the attack. She lifted the sword and licked the flat side of the blade, lapping up the drops of blood that had sprayed.

Seth’s blood had tasted unmistakably ancient. She had been able to taste Adam in him, and Elise had found it beyond energizing to the point of euphoria.

Abel tasted like nothing but werewolf. She tasted fur and fang and musk without even a hint of Adam. “His blood is mundane,” Elise said, ignoring the looks of revulsion she had earned from the others.

James swayed on his feet like a tree in a hard wind. “So that means that Summer…”

The shapeshifter girl was already moving. She bit the side of her hand hard enough to break the skin and squeezed it over the circle.

Two drops hit the altar.

And nothing happened.

Rylie found Abel
standing in the wreckage of Shamain’s temple district looking lost. It had been so long since he moved that his shoulders and hair were dusted with snow.

She gestured for Summer to hang back, approaching him alone.

He wasn’t looking at the city itself. His gaze was on the cornfields beyond the sagging ethereal buildings, and he didn’t even seem to see those. He was as rigid as any of the marble statues decorating the broken streets.

Rylie didn’t know what to say to him. She stood behind him with her hands outstretched, wishing she could touch him, but reluctant to break his reverie.

Abel spoke before she did.

“We’ve got company.”

He pointed, and she followed his finger to the sky. There was a helicopter coming in fast despite the brutal winds. Even at that distance, Rylie could tell that it was painted black. A spotlight swept over the ground, tracking paths into the ruined district.

Before they could hide, the helicopter was on top of them with a brilliant blast of light. Rylie shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at it.

A rope dropped from the helicopter and someone that smelled familiar slid down.

Summer brushed past Rylie and Abel.

“Abram!”

He landed in front of them looking wind-blown and exhausted, wrapped up in several layers of black jackets with headphones hanging around his neck. Summer clung to him immediately, smothering him in a hug.

Abram usually managed to smile for Summer, but not this time.

“Come on,” he said, holding the rope out. “We gotta get up there before the wind’s too bad to leave.”

“What the fuck is this?” Abel asked. “Are you fucking around with the Union, Abram?”

His anger didn’t touch Abram. “This isn’t the Union. It’s the Apple. I can’t explain now—there’s no time. But the rest of Shamain is going to fall, and we have to get out of the range of the city within thirty minutes if we don’t want to die. I came to save you.”

Rylie stared up at the sky. He was right. The gash to Heaven was still growing.

Thirty minutes, he said. She recalled the vastness of Shamain and thought it would take a lot longer than thirty minutes to escape being crushed. Even a werewolf couldn’t run that fast. The helicopter would be their only salvation.

Still, she turned back to the temple. She had left Elise and James staring each other down in there. She didn’t care if James got flattened, but she couldn’t leave Elise.

“I have to warn them,” Rylie said.

But Abram caught her and dragged her back toward the helicopter. “You want to get out of here now,” he said. “Trust me.”

Another rope dropped out of the helicopter, and two more people slid down.

When Rylie recognized Stephanie Whyte as one of them, wearing a Union flak jacket like it was couture, her jaw dropped open. “
Stephanie?
”

“I told you there was too much to explain now,” Abram said.

Stephanie hefted a sledgehammer to her shoulder and gave Rylie a thin smile.

“Save yourselves,” she said. “I’ll be happy to warn Elise.”

Sitting beside his
failed spell, James looked so very alone and tired. If he were smart, he would have been running or making portals or whatever magic it was that allowed him to jump across the Earth. He would have been several states away by now. Maybe even hiding in the cage that he had built for Elise.

But he didn’t seem to care. All the energy had gone out of him.

Elise stood just beyond arm’s reach. She folded her arms over her chest. Waited for him to acknowledge her.

When he finally spoke, he was quiet, unemotional.

“Adam’s lineage came through one of Eleanor’s husbands—Seth’s father,” James said. “It was in the journals. I assumed that Seth and Abel had the same father. I never realized…” He trailed off, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw as he stared past the altar, bloodied but inoperative, to Eve’s heartbroken face. “I sacrificed everything for this.”

He
had sacrificed everything? Elise could think of a lot of other people that had sacrificed far more than James had as a consequence of his actions. Their lives. Their sanity.

She drummed her fingers on her upper arm. “What have you lost, exactly? You never needed to find Nathaniel. If he wanted to leave Eden, he would.”

James looked at her, and she saw it in his eyes. He had wagered everything on becoming God and erasing the destruction he wrought on the path to power. Now he had nothing. Certainly not Elise’s sympathies. Even Eve was silent within her.

Still, Elise sighed, set down the falchion, and slid his glasses off of his face. She folded the arms and tucked them in his shirt pocket.

He enveloped her in his arms without standing, embracing her around her midsection, and pressed his forehead against her stomach. Elise didn’t immediately pull away. She ran her fingers through his hair, tracing the streaks of gray from his temples to the back of his head.

“Why did you leave me the falchion?” Elise asked. “How did you even get it?”

He didn’t look up at her when he responded. “You gave it to me years ago in Oymyakon.”

“Not that one. The obsidian sword.”

“What are you talking about?”

Elise’s hand went still. He hadn’t somehow retrieved the sword and left it for her in the bathroom of the cage.

“We could still go somewhere together,” James said quietly, fingers tightening on her back, seemingly unaware of her tension. “Not Hell, but…somewhere.”

It seemed like a mockery to agree to quit now, when it wasn’t really quitting at all. He had lost. He had failed. And he hadn’t wanted to leave with Elise until he had lost everything he was working for.

“That’s not how this works, James.”

He gazed up at her with empty, bruise-rimmed eyes. “No,” he said hollowly, “I suppose it’s not.”

Movement shuffled by the entrance to the room. Elise turned, expecting to find that the werewolves had returned.

Instead Stephanie Whyte stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, a single strawberry-blond eyebrow arched in disdain as she studied the wreckage. “Well,” she said, “it seems I missed the party.”

The spotlights hit Elise a half-second later.

Elise’s scream shook
James free of his haze in an instant.

He shot to his feet and stepped in front of her, trying to shelter her from the spotlights blazing through the doorway. But the lights were handheld, and two people had them. Stephanie and her partner stepped into the room and spread out to hit Elise from both sides.

James squinted through the eye-watering brightness of it all. Stephanie’s companion wore Union black, but he had a sledgehammer in his free hand rather than one of the Union’s usual machine guns. He could only assume that this man was operating as a member of the Apple, too.

“What in all of the seven Hells do you think you’re doing, Stephanie?” James demanded, grabbing the falchion off of the floor. Elise was doubled over behind him, arm over her eyes.

“Send her back now,” Stephanie said, sidestepping to keep Elise in her line of fire as James tried to move between them. “We won’t be able to hold her for long.”

“Back where?”

She looked impatient. “The cage, of course.”

Everything fell into place. Elise had reported being attacked by basandere. Stephanie had sent them after her to drive her toward Boulder—toward the trap that he had placed for her. Sophie and Isabelle had known that James was preparing a cage. They had told the Apple all about it.

Betrayal from all sides. Worst of all was the fact that they must have thought they were helping him.

“Step away from her, James,” Stephanie said.

He hesitated, arms still spread wide to try to shelter Elise. She clutched the back of his shirt in one hand.

Stephanie was right. Given a few minutes to work, he could draw another portal and send Elise back to her cage. James could contain Elise once more.

If he had been given the opportunity a few days earlier, he would have seized on it. It was a safe place for her to be. It protected Elise and everyone that she might hurt.

But he didn’t move.

“What are you doing here?” James asked Stephanie.

“We’ll have time to chat about that later, James, but not right now. We have to act quickly, lest the remainder of Shamain falls through the fissure and rips the world asunder.” Stephanie sounded so matter-of-fact about it. “If you don’t remove Elise, we will.”

Remove her
. Like she was some inconvenient insect.

Elise lowered her arm enough that she could glare at Stephanie. “You asked for my help in Northgate. I saved you. I thought we were on good terms.”

Stephanie’s glare was anything but friendly. “That was before I knew that you killed Adam.”

Elise couldn’t seem to respond. She was sinking to her knees, skin flaking away. Maybe only a few moments from disappearing entirely.

James could get her away from the lights if he put her in the cage.

But what was the point now? He would never get to the Origin. He would never be able to heal her of this infernal power that had consumed her life.

He had already hurt Elise enough.

James turned to face her, holding her by the shoulders to steady her, making sure that he brushed her bare skin. “Remember what you did to Leander?”

Anger sparked in her eyes. “You put me back in that cage, James, and I’m going to—”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You don’t need to touch anyone to do that again.”

Feed yourself,
James urged silently, hoping that their contact would be enough to allow her to hear him through the warding rings.
Make yourself strong enough to break free
.

She must have understood. Her expression suddenly went smooth.

“I couldn’t protect you from it,” she said.

He swallowed hard. “I know.”

“Cast the spell, James,” Stephanie said. She was holding a Taser in her free hand now. The threat was obvious: If he didn’t do something now, she would shoot Elise.

“This is going to hurt,” Elise told James, ignoring the others.

Fear swelled in the room.

It began slowly, rising like high tide to claw at James’s legs, squeezing his lungs tight.

Stephanie realized quickly what was happening. Worse, she knew that it was coming from Elise.

She lifted the Taser.

Elise clenched her fists. Shut her eyes. And fear punched through everyone in the room all at once.

Icicles jammed into his heart, making it skip a beat. He sucked in a shuddering breath, but it didn’t help—it felt like the air was leaving the room.

He was nearest to Elise, the epicenter of the creeping black nightmares that swept out of her. He was the first to hit the ground, clutching at his heart, gasping for oxygen that he suddenly couldn’t find.

Every one of James’s fears crashed over him at the same time.

Running through the garden, hunting white-furred beasts with flaming spears.

Nathaniel, winged and alone in the garden so many years later.

The moment that James had gotten the phone call telling him Elise was dead.

The moment that he had realized she had come back as a demon.

A thousand fights, near-deaths, and so much destruction. Fifteen years of it. Every awful thing he had ever endured since the moment that he found Elise in the Russian wilderness and permanently entangled their lives.

Elise was at the center of it all. He could feel her consuming it all, devouring his fears, drinking from Stephanie and the other man, drawing all of that energy into herself.

It was suddenly darker. James saw the handheld spotlights on the floor. The glass was shattered, the cables frayed.

“No,” Stephanie whispered. Her hands were empty and her eyes were focused on the ceiling, as if she saw something that wasn’t there. She didn’t seem to realize she had released her defenses.

Elise straightened. She smiled, and it was a deeply unpleasant expression.

James remembered how she had devoured several Union units in Russia once with barely a thought—filling the clearing with her form and sucking them into herself. It had taken only a moment. If she did that again, there would be nothing that James could do to stop her.

Elise was advancing on Stephanie and her companion. They were backed into a corner.

James’s vision blurred.

He was in the garden. In Hell. In Limbo.

He was alone.

His vision cleared and he realized that Elise had drawn her gun and had pinned Stephanie against the wall with its muzzle against her forehead even as the doctor hyperventilated, sweat pouring down her face. Elise was glowing with new strength. The fear was feeding into her, making her pale flesh shine and her black hair swirl as if she were submerged in water.