Damnation Marked (20 page)

His eyes curved up at the edges. His mouth was hidden, but she could tell he was smiling. “Jesus, it’s cold here. Let’s go back.”

T
he condo felt
different when Elise and James returned. The air was thicker, and not just because of the incense haze. She didn’t need to be able to feel magic to know that the circle was ready.

He patted his pockets, searching for a lighter. “Why don’t you get comfortable while I light these candles? The spell is going to take some time.”

She hung her jacket on the door and removed her boots, stripping down to her leggings and undershirt. Elise carefully stepped over the carved lines of the circle with her bare toes and settled on a pillow.

James found his lighter and shed layers of clothing until he reached his t-shirt and slacks. He flicked off the electric lights, lit the candles one by one, and muttered an incantation under his breath. Vapor spiraled toward a ceiling that was gray from the incense smoke.

He took one last glance at the book his coven sent before closing the circle with a line of salt. His eyebrows lifted. “That’s quite the circle.”

Elise glanced around the room. Nothing had changed. “So are we ready?”

He nodded and folded his legs beneath him. James held one of her knives. She had bought it to skin brands off of demons, but she hadn’t used it yet, and the blade was razor-sharp. The flat part of the metal was dotted with red oil.

James handed the knife to her.

“We’ll each need to open a cut on our arms.” He took Elise’s wrist and ran a finger from the inside of her elbow to her wrist. Her glove was in the way. He rolled up the end of it to expose the heel of her hand.

“You told me that before. I know what to do.”

She didn’t hesitate to drag the point of the knife up her arm, from the inner seam of her wrist to the joint of her elbow. The metal was sharp, and all she felt was a hot sting. A red line swelled on her pale underarm.

The pain took a moment to follow. A cold wave washed across her flesh and left goosebumps in its wake.

Elise handed the knife to James, and her arm dripped onto the circle. She put a hand under her elbow to catch it.

“Let it fall,” he said.

She flicked the blood to the pentagram. It puddled in the carvings like a slick red channel.

He hesitated, considering the bloody tip of the blade. Second thoughts?

“We can stop,” she said, gently flexing the fingers of her left arm to distract herself from the injury.

James’s eyes flicked to hers. His irises were the same shade of blue as the frozen ocean beyond the line of the beach, but they were darkened with thought. “That’s not necessary. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

She shook her head.

He slashed a matching line up his arm.

“Quickly,” he said, trading the knife for a roll of bandages.

Elise offered her arm. He gripped her elbow, and she curled her fingers around his upper arm. He quickly wrapped the bandages around both of their arms, then uncorked another bottle of oil with his teeth and spilled it over the cloth.

James spoke a word of power.

Elise folded inside out.

Power settled around her midsection, like a thick chain connected to her breastbone. She could see the line form between her and James, strengthening and thickening with every beat of her heart.

Their shared blood burned inside of her. It opened her skull and spilled her thoughts through the circle, dancing on the clouds of smoke.

And she could read James’s thoughts.

His arm ached and his pulse thudded in time to hers. He worried about her; he didn’t like asking her to spill blood. He was also totally certain that binding was the right thing to do.

So many feelings. Elise didn’t know what to do with them.

The circle sparked with colors she had never seen before. It swam with power, like a swirling bubble of energy around them that built in intensity by the second.

She felt dizzy. She was going to pass out.

“James…” she began, but he had already seen the thought.

He tugged her forward, careful not to break their grip, and moved behind her. It made him twist his arm uncomfortably. He didn’t really care.

James’s voice spoke directly through her mind.

I have a lot of work to do on the spell, but you can sleep
.

Elise sagged against him, but she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to watch the lights spark and cascade around them. She wanted to explore his thoughts and mind. But the dizziness overwhelmed her; her vision darkened at the edges, and it felt like the strength was pumping out of her arm.

“I don’t want to fall,” she mumbled, and she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud or not.

Relax
.

Her eyes drooped closed, and the magic carried her into oblivion.

A
fter he finished
the incantations, James drifted in and out of sleep for hours.

When he finally awoke, he became aware of three things simultaneously: first, that he was laying on a very hard floor, somehow having missed every single pillow; second, that the spell was complete; and finally, that they were not alone.

He opened his eyes. Malcolm was prowling around the circle’s perimeter.

James lifted his head enough to see Elise resting on his chest. Her face was tilted up, her eyes were closed, and she was snoring softly.

“How cozy,” Malcolm said. “Sleeping like precious babies.”

His voice was enough to make Elise stir. She shifted and sighed. Her eyes opened a fraction, and when she saw James, she smiled.

As soon as she saw Malcolm, the smile vanished.

“Don’t mind me,” he said, feeling a hand around in the air as though searching for a wall of power. He wouldn’t have known if there was anything there, but the sight of it irritated James.

Sitting up was complicated and required cutting open the bandages. James’s shoulder was stiff from keeping his arm around Elise for the length of the spell—according to the clock, a good eleven hours. He inspected his arm. The cut had already healed into a raised red bump.

“Did it work?” Elise asked, ignoring Malcolm.

James closed his eyes. He could feel her as a new presence in the back of his mind. “Yes. It worked.”

They were bound.

The dizzying mix of worry and euphoria was overridden by Malcolm stepping into the circle. “You lovebirds might be interested to know about what happened to all the pig farms in Denmark this week,” he said, picking up a crystal and rolling it over in his fingers.

Elise plucked it from his hand. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“You lost the trail?”

“No. He just didn’t bother with the pigs this time.”

He tossed a digital camera to Elise. She paged through the pictures, and her expression darkened in increments as she saw each one. James stood over her shoulder to look. His stomach churned when he saw the too-familiar bodies of infants. “Where did you take these?”

“All over the island,” Malcolm said. “The killer has gone mad. There are new bodies every day or two, and each cluster is centered on Copenhagen. I think it’s sticking around here.”

“He,” Elise said as James dampened a towel in the condo’s sink and wiped the blood off his arm.

“Pardon?”

“The killer is a ‘he.’ Not an ‘it.’”

Malcolm lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. “However you like it. Something’s changed. If you two are done casting epic magic and snuggling up for naps, we have some hunting to do.”

When Elise didn’t respond, James stepped in. “We both need a few hours and some fresh air in order to recover. We’ll have to ground ourselves after magic of that enormity.”

Malcolm nudged the bowl of salt with his toe. “Right. What were you doing, exactly?”

“I’ll meet you at the central station in Copenhagen tonight,” Elise said. “Eight o’clock.”

“Fine by me.”

She rolled her eyes, pushed him outside, and shut the door very solidly.

E
lise and James
walked along the frozen beach outside their condo, bundled tightly in multiple layers. The fjord was frozen solid, and the occasional snap filled the air as a new crack appeared. Their footprints left a wavering line in the snow behind them. “Remind me to never visit the Arctic Ocean during winter again,” James said, voice muffled by his scarf.

“Why? It’s nice.”

He glanced at her. Elise’s hair was frozen at the tips, but her eyes were bright, and she looked happier than he had ever seen her. “You actually like this?”

“It’s peaceful. I feel… good.”

“Are you certain that’s not the fresh bond speaking?”

“Maybe.” She hugged her arms around herself. “But the ice is pretty. It’s sparkling.”

James couldn’t help but smile. “Sparkles. In the two years we’ve traveled together, you have never struck me as the type to appreciate sparkles.”

“Only the pretty ones,” she said, her lips spread in a thin smile.

James turned to walk backwards for a few seconds, watching the frigid ocean retreating behind them. It reminded him too much of the Russian tundra. “I would give anything for sunshine and a drink that has an umbrella right now.”

“We’ll do that next. Maybe the Caribbean…after we find Samael.” The words fell flat in the cold air.

“We will find him. Nobody else is going to die.”

“What do I do when I find him?”

He didn’t think it was a question she intended for him to answer, so he didn’t.

They wandered on in silence for a few minutes, passing a dock with icicles the size of James’s arm glistening in the dim sunlight.

“I don’t think anyone understands me,” she said suddenly, surprising him. “Other than you, anyway.”

“I’m not sure I would say that I understand you. Your layers of mystery are one of your greatest charms.”

Elise snorted. “You’re also the only one who thinks I have any charm whatsoever.”

“Malcolm seems to find you very charming.”

“He’s a moron.”

“We’re of a mind on that subject.” James cast a sideways glance at her. “What brings this up?”

She shrugged. For once, she was so relaxed, so emotionally open, that it was almost like spending time with a normal person. The distinction was probably cruel—it wasn’t Elise’s fault that she was terrible with people and emotions, and as she said, nobody really understood her anyway. The fact that they had been able to share moments of companionship with her inability to communicate on a level that didn’t involve fists and blade was nothing short of miraculous.

But a pleasant walk along the beach was a world away from their usual dire situations. He could almost imagine life being normal.

“My arm itches,” Elise said.

“Mine as well. I imagine it will do that for some time.” He laughed. “Actually, I have no idea. Witches in my coven never bind to kopides. Your mother was an anomaly.”

The mention of her parents wasn’t enough to dampen her mood. Elise only rolled her eyes. “No kidding.” She sighed. “My dad would be angry if he heard I got an aspis. He didn’t want me to rely on anyone.”

He hooked an arm around her shoulders and hugged her against his side. “Regardless, I can’t think of anyone better to watch my back,” he said, giving her a tight squeeze and dropping a kiss on her forehead.

Elise stopped walking. Before he could let go, she stretched onto her toes, pulled down his scarf, and kissed him on the lips. Her face was chilly, and so was his. He could barely feel it.

The shock of it was so powerful that he completely froze, unable to respond or register any kind of rational thought. After a half-second of utter brain failure, a single thought rose to the surface, which was along the lines of a less coherent
what the hell?

His lack of response was apparently as good as a refusal. She dropped back. Cocked her head to the side. Her brow was furrowed, like she was only just giving thought to what she had done, and attempting to decide what James’s reaction meant.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “How—uh, what…?”

The corners of her mouth drew down. Even Elise could tell he was not pleased.

“Forget it.”

Once he was thinking again, a thousand things whirled through his mind: the fresh bond, the fact she had just turned eighteen years old (
good God, I’ll be thirty this month
), how difficult it had been to earn her trust, the enemies at their back, the enemies in their future, and how that particular line was not one that he would have ever, not in a hundred years, have expected Elise to attempt to cross.

She stood out of arm’s reach. He hadn’t noticed her back away.

“I’m sorry, Elise,” he repeated. “It can’t ever be like…
that
… between us.”

Her expression shuttered. The glorious moment of openness was gone, and Elise was dead-faced and distant again. “Sorry,” she said. He wasn’t sure if she was apologizing or echoing him.

“Elise—”

She walked up the beach toward town with long strides, putting more distance between them. Disappearing was her favorite way to end conversations, and he thought he had gotten used to it, but it suddenly filled him with powerful annoyance.

James ran both of his hands over his hair, cupped them behind his head, and blew out a long breath. He could still feel the surprising softness of Elise’s lips on his.

“Damn it all,” he said.

M
alcolm wasn’t the
kind of bloke who got hung up on dead people. He had seen a lot of bodies since he had claimed his territory at sixteen—it was just one of those things a kopis had to deal with. It was easier to laugh about it than get upset.

Sometimes, though, those annoying, niggling feelings of fear and regret and grief crept up on him, and he found that beer helped get rid of them. Good beer helped even more. And after all the tiny bodies he had covered with blankets that week, he found himself suddenly very, very thirsty.

Fortunately, the alcohol in Copenhagen was plentiful, and there was plenty of beer to be found. But three exceptionally large drinks later, he was still thinking much too clearly.