Death's Hand (27 page)

A symbol swam to life on his forehead and multiplied, spreading down his body. As it passed the painted marks, they flared with black shadows. The distant fires of Hell reflected on the marks.

The witch usually made a sound like chimes in Elise’s skull when he was around, soft and powerful. Now he thrummed with the power of
vedae som matis
, and the air around him trembled.

“James,” Elise whispered.

Part Three: Intermission

March 1998

Elise woke up five days after James found her in the forests near Oymyakon.

He knocked lightly and entered the room. There were no hotels in the small Russian village, so he had been staying with a family under the guise of a traveling laborer. Since bringing home the girl’s body, the family’s friendliness turned to uneasy whispers, and he seldom left Elise sleeping alone in the tiny closet.

James sympathized with the family’s wariness. Even he had to steady himself when he opened the door to find her crouched in the corner of her bed, and he was the one who had brought her there.

She stared at him with eyes rimmed by dark circles.

“The women told me you were awake,” he said. “They say you’re refusing to eat. Please lay down. You need to save your strength.”

She remained so still that she might have been a painting. There were three bowls on the rickety table by her bed. It didn’t look like she had touched any of them.

James pulled a stool to the side of the bed. “The stew is safe to eat, I assure you. Babushka is an excellent chef. I’ve eaten a dozen of her meals since I arrived, and she has yet to poison me.” Her gaze flicked to the table and back to him. “You’ve been asleep for days and haven’t eaten. You must be starving.”

It was an understatement. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in months.

James moved to sit on the stool, but he caught a glimpse of something shining amongst the sheets. She had somehow stolen a knife from the kitchen. He froze.

Tension hung suspended between them. She didn’t move to stab him, and he didn’t show his fear.

“My name is James Faulkner,” he went on after a long moment, speaking in the voice one might use to soothe an angry hawk. “The woman you were staying with, Pamela Faulkner, is my aunt. I found you three days ago. We’re in Oymyakon now.”

“Where’s Pamela?” Her voice was throaty and hoarse.

He shut his eyes. He could still imagine Pamela’s body as clearly as the moment he discovered her. She had been slumped against the wall as though she decided to rest for a few minutes, but blood stained her ear canals and only the whites of her eyes were showing. Her beautiful black hair, streaked with gray at the temples, was in its perpetual bun with only a single hair astray.

James had been very close to his aunt as a child. She was the high priestess of their coven, and she revolutionized ritualistic magic when she invented paper spells. Pamela had arguably been one of the most powerful witches in the world.

Very little could have caught her off-guard. Even fewer things could have killed her.

“She’s dead,” he said.

Elise didn’t look surprised. “She was nice to me.”

“Of course.” His voice caught in his throat. “She adored your mother. Pamela treated you like any of her grandchildren.”

This didn’t seem to cause any emotional reaction in Elise. She got to her feet, letting the sheets tumble to the ground, and the sight of her skeletal frame made James’s stomach flip. Even swathed in a simple dress borrowed from one of the village women, he could see every curve of every bone in her body.

She took a step toward the door, knife clutched to her side, and staggered. Her hand slipped on the dresser when she tried to catch herself.

James stood to help her back to bed, but the look she gave him burned with sheer loathing, so he hung back without touching her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She made her way toward the door, gripping the frame to lift herself to a standing position once more.

“Please, Elise, sit down and eat. I promise we’ll leave as soon as you can walk. If He doesn’t know where you are yet, then we’re a step ahead of Him, and we don’t want to lose this brief advantage.”

Her nose wrinkled, like the idea of going anywhere with him revolted her. He was almost offended.

She fumbled for the doorknob.

“It’s hundreds of miles to the nearest city. You won’t survive alone.”

Elise glared silently. James was struck by the feeling that she was more of a feral animal than a teenage girl. He probably wanted to be trapped with her as little as she did, but neither of them had a choice in the matter.

She opened the door. James stepped in her path.

She tried to shove him out of her way, but even though she was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like she should have been dead, he was stronger.

“Your parents asked my aunt to watch you until they came back. Since she died, the responsibility of your care falls upon me. I’ve sworn to keep you safe. I intend to keep that promise.”

She transferred her grip from the doorway to a fistful of his shirt. He felt metal press against his stomach through his parka.

The knife. He tensed.

It took all his strength to speak calmly. “I’m not safe now that I’ve found you, either. We need to stay together. It’s the only way either of us will survive.”

Elise radiated silent fury. He was struck by her resemblance to Ariane, although he didn’t recall the sweet witch who birthed her ever being so angry.

And then she released him and sat on the side of the bed, stubbornly ignoring his hand. With careful, measured movements, she lifted the stew to her mouth and drank its broth without dropping her gaze from his. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had killed all those people in the clearing.

When the bowl was drained, she ate each piece of meat one by one and set the bowl down again with hands that were no longer shaking. It wouldn’t be long before she was much, much stronger than him.

“I don’t trust you,” Elise said. “I will
never
trust you.”

It was the last thing she said to him for a very long time.

Part Four: Afterlife

XX

Death’s Hand surveyed Elise with James’s eyes.

She tensed, expecting him to attack, but he stared at her without moving. His face twisted with a tangled mix of emotions.

Emotions? Could a powerful demon
feel
?

The silence of the attic around them was broken by shuffling feet. The possessed ones left Anthony’s body to flank Death’s Hand, heads bent in submission. Lucinde knelt with her small head resting against his knee.

The fiends crawled on their bellies to his feet. They laved their black tongues along his ankles, his calves, pawing his hips and stomach. Death’s Hand didn’t acknowledge any of them. His gaze remained steady on Elise, as though he was in no hurry to do anything but
look
at her.

Vedae som matis
lifted a hand. She flinched.

Ann’s body lifted from the corner of the room behind the altar, where Elise had left her. Her limbs lifted, and her legs twitched, but her head remained slack on her shoulders.

She came forward without taking a single step. Her toes dragged against the ground. Ann’s face was blank and her mouth hung open. Her every motion was unnatural, as though she was a puppet with invisible strings. By the time she stopped moving just beside Death’s Hand, Elise was certain she was dead.

Ann spoke. The language that spilled from her lips made no sense to Elise, foreign and guttural and inhuman. Foamy saliva dripped from her bottom lip as though she were an ancient Pythia controlled by a demonic Apollo.

Death’s Hand gestured once more. Ann shivered, and when she spoke again, it was in English.

“Kopis,” she said. It came from her throat, her vocal cords, but the words belonged to
vedae som matis
. “I have been eager to see you and your aspis, who thrived as I struggled to rebuild my withered soul from the brink of nothingness.”

Another gesture. A fiend skittered from behind Death’s Hand and opened one of Ann’s drawers, withdrawing a long object wrapped in cloth. It supplicated itself at James’s feet. He took the item from the fiend’s hands, giving it time to scurry back before unwrapping it.

Steel glinted in the dim firelight.

“You recognize this, I’m sure,” said Ann’s body. Death’s Hand turned the sword in his hands, hefting it by the hilt to examine the line of the blade. Someone had cleaned the falchion. It was in perfect condition. “Here we are again. Little has changed in the ensuing years, except you are fleshier. You have fattened upon the spoils of victory and comfort while I have floundered.”

Elise finally found her voice. “You can’t have James.”

Death’s Hand made his lips smile. “No?” Ann’s chin quivered, and blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. “It is difficult to campaign on Earth. Things in Hell are much simpler. There are many complications. You and your aspis are a complication. What a coincidence that he would be a suitable vessel. It is fate.”

“Fate,” Elise echoed.

Blood pulsed in James’s veins. “Or something like that.”

“What about Ann?”

“She will survive in this form.” The gesture
vedae som matis
made with the sword encompassed James’s body, but not Ann’s. “I have absorbed what I need.”

“She was in love with you.”

He rested the sword behind him on the table, out of Elise’s reach. “She lives in me now. We are closer than ever before. She would prefer it this way.” There was almost a hint of love in that voice.

Elise took a step away, inching closer to her sword where it lay next to a bookshelf. She could feel the bulge of the charm-draped chain in her pocket. “Anyone that’s been possessed can be exorcised.”

Vedae som matis
nodded, acknowledging the challenge.

Ann’s corpse fell, no longer necessary. Elise threw a hand toward her engraved sword.

The room exploded into black stars.

Elise was smashed chest-first into a wall. Hands gripped her wrists, pinning her in place.

His face buried in her shoulder, and pain erupted in her collarbone. She screamed and tore free.

Elise put several feet between herself and Death’s Hand before she touched the wound on her shoulder—and realized she had been bitten. Blood gushed from the raw flesh underneath her fingers. The inside of her body felt like the inside of fresh steak.

She turned. Blood dribbled down James’s chin as a small chunk of her shoulder disappeared between his lips. His throat worked as he swallowed.

Elise lunged for her sword. She scooped it into her left hand and stood in the same smooth motion, twirling just in time to see James flying at her. She dodged and raised the sword. Her blade slashed across James’s arm in a spray of blood that splashed across her chest.

Vedae som matis
barreled into Elise and knocked them both to the floor.

She took their weight on her uninjured shoulder, trying to bring around the sword to slash at him again. Death’s Hand didn’t give her a chance. He grabbed her wrist and crushed it in his hand until Elise could feel something pop.

Her fingers went slack, and he ripped the sword out of her grasp, shifting his weight so his entire body pinned her to the wood. He stank of blood and decay and brimstone, and very faintly like Ivory soap.

Elise struck him with her right hand, but he grabbed her other wrist and pushed both of her arms to the ground. His body burned like a furnace.

She twisted her head away from his sulfuric breath. Death’s Hand buried James’s face into her shoulder, the same one he had bitten before. Elise fought harder, but it was like struggling against rock.

His teeth found her wound around the shoulder of her shirt. Something pinched, tore. She grit her teeth and refused to scream.

James’s weight shifted just slightly, and something pressed into Elise’s leg. Her charms. She squirmed around enough to see her jeans, and a glimmer of metal told her they were sticking just slightly out of her pocket.