Death's Hand (29 page)

The fiends yipped and growled as they scurried from the houses to the street.

Shutting her eyes, she rested her head against the side of the car and tuned out her pain to reach out and
feel
where the fiends were. She matched the noises—the scraping of claws, the brush of leathery flesh against branches—with the sensations in her gut that said they were behind her, just feet away. Something gave a heavy huff as it searched the air for her scent.

Elise eased around another car, trying to keep her feet from grinding against the grit of the pavement. Rain tapped out a rhythm on the sidewalk.

She peered around the tailgate of a truck, trying to see through the purple haze of night to the shadows she knew had to be there. Four fiends. There were four of them, even though she couldn’t see them.

Creeping out another inch, Elise turned to look on the other side of the truck.

A slathering mouth opened in a wide, hungry grin.

Elise jerked back with a shout. She went for her sword instinctively—wrong arm—and pain flared down her back.

She fell with a splash. The fiend lunged.

Planting a foot in its gut, she snapped a second kick into its chin. It screamed. She kicked again and got an eyeball this time. It exploded like a pustule and splattered all over its cheek.

A dozen other fiends scurried to life at its scream.

Elise clambered to her feet and ran. Every pound of her feet jolted through her wounds. It burned through her body, like little strikes of lightning on her nerves.

Behind her, fiends dug their claws into the earth in pursuit.

Too many cars. Elise had to weave in and out, and the demons were climbing over them. They were gaining.

She cut across into the parking garage, which was mostly empty now that the semester had ended, and emerged on campus on the other side.

For a half second, she thought that people were still awake. Human figures moved down the paths toward the university buildings, slow on their feet and unperturbed by the rain.

But then Elise saw that many of them had only rotten scraps of clothing, and that some of them were rapidly healing—muscles wrapping around exposed, dusty bone before fat and skin rippled down their limbs.

She had to stop and stare at the power of Death’s Hand. There were dozens of bodies—maybe hundreds—just where she could see. It was like they were being sculpted from flesh and blood as she watched.

And then the closest heard her running, heard the growls of the fiends echoing in the parking garage, and they turned to look at her.

Several hands reached for her at once.

Elise shoved them off. She elbowed a woman with no bottom jaw, kicked off a teenage girl with a gaping hole on the side of her head, and stumbled out into the open.

The healing corpses were sluggish, but their bodies made a great barrier between Elise and the fiends. She turned a corner around the building, leaving the demons struggling to get around the bodies.

There were more corpses further south. They were headed downtown. When Elise ran past them, they made half-hearted grabs for her, but she ducked out of their reach and was soon forgotten. They were too busy answering the same call she was—the call of Death’s Hand.

She left campus and went for the casinos. The lights were still on, marching in lines down the sides of buildings and flashing titles taller than she was. They cast colorful, dancing shadows on the immobile cars and slumped pedestrians.

The closer she got to him, the louder his voice became:
Sleep
.

It was James’s voice, but it was not James speaking. Anger knotted in her heart.

Elise didn’t stop to look at the mangled cars down on the freeway as she ran over the bridge, shoving past the body of an old man. He pitched over the railing.

She had almost run past a casino with corpses clustered by the front door when she felt the presence of Death’s Hand shift.

He was inside.

The servants of Death’s Hand had all stopped on the street to stare at the casino as though they could see through the walls to their master. They were spread out several blocks south as though they expected Elvis to burst through the front doors for an impromptu concert. None of them noticed her now. They were all absorbed by the silent call.

Elise tilted her head back to look at the glimmering sign over the door. Craven’s. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. Beneath her feet, deep under the streets, Eloquent Blood would be blasting music. And miles below that twisted the Warrens. Death’s Hand was marching for the ruins.

Elise stepped over the body of a security guard to get inside. There was a huge bite wound on his arm, much like the one on her shoulder. Blood shone on his shirt.

Inside, the air was thick with smoke and the molasses-thick sense of evil radiating from Death’s Hand. Slot machines jangled and clanged and sang enticing songs. The keno boards on the wall were frozen halfway through a game. Cocktail waitresses were sprawled out with drinks spilled in their hair and on their skirts.

Elise saw motion in one of the mirrored walls, and she jumped behind the bar for cover. She stepped on a bartender and he groaned softly.

“Sorry,” she muttered, crouch-walking to the end of the bar as quietly as she could manage.

When she made it to the end of the bar, she could see around the next row of slot machines, and the source of the motion became clear.

A broad, bare back was crouched over the body of an unconscious waitress. His shoulders twisted and jerked. The distortion of the mirror almost kept Elise from seeing what he was doing—almost.

Death’s Hand dipped James’s head again to rip into the waitress’s side, digging in and pulling back to swallow. Blood coated his face and hands.

His power grew with every swallow. He was stronger now than he had been in the attic.

Much stronger.

He straightened with a fistful of ragged flesh in his hands, studying it with calm, black eyes as though evaluating a cut from a butcher. The symbols on his flesh were so thick now that she could see almost none of James’s skin.

Death’s Hand reached out his other arm. She hadn’t noticed him take the stone staff when he fled from the attic. Maybe he hadn’t—maybe it had followed him—but he clutched it now, and it had
grown
. It extended from his right arm, as tall as he was and twisted with demonic runes. They grew from it like branches. The stone oozed over his knuckles and wrist like lava, melding with his arm so they were one.

He aimed the stone staff at the floor, and the building rumbled. The bottles on the bar rattled. The earth shook beneath Elise’s feet.

A mighty
crack
thudded through the air, and a giant slot machine with a colorful wheel shattered across the brightly-patterned carpet. The floor split. Death’s Hand gestured, and a chunk of floor the size of a sedan lifted.

Elise slowly drew one of her swords with trembling fingers. The blade whispered in its sheath, so softly that she barely heard it beneath the tearing of the earth.

Death’s Hand froze.

She tightened her hand on the hilt.

She saw him drop the chunk of flesh in the mirror. She watched him face the bar. She watched him move toward her one step at a time, his feet inches above the carpet. Her shoulder burned.

Elise couldn’t struggle with him. She would lose.

She only had one chance to end it.

“
Crux sacra sit mihi lux
,” she whispered, and her charms began to glow at her hip.

Death’s Hand stood on the other side of the bar.

Elise jumped to her feet, swinging her sword—and he caught the blade.

The force of his power slammed into her.

A cacophonous buzzing resonated through her skull. The sour tang of blood exploded in her mouth. Her teeth strained against her gums, trying to rip free of her jaw.

The muscles in her arms shook as she pressed against him. Her blade cut into his hands, sending blood dripping down his arm and onto the floor. It sizzled and evaporated.

Hatred filled James’s eyes. She felt the floor crack beneath her feet.

The bar fragmented and tore away from them. She couldn’t release her sword. Her muscles had locked up in the grip of the demon’s power.

Her vision darkened at the edges. Slot machines began falling behind him, but all she could see was his furious gaze and his bloody mouth and feel his hand gripping her shoulder. His fingers dug into the wound. Elise tried to cry out and found she could barely move her mouth.

He challenged her silently.
Try to exorcise me. Just try.

The energy between them swelled. Her intestines writhed within her like maggots. He pulled the blade forward, drawing her against his body, and his skin burned like fire. His sweat steamed.

“
Non—non draco—
” Her tongue was thick. She couldn’t speak. It felt like hot oil dripped off his flesh, spattering against her.

The stone of the staff began creeping over his hand to her skin, locking down over her shoulder.

Death’s Hand was going to take her. She could feel needles of stone piercing her skin. Ichor spread through her muscles.

The casino was suddenly gone behind him.

The edge of her blade bit into his stomach, and Death’s Hand smiled.

“
Non draco sit mihi dux—vade retro, Satana—
”

Her power slid off of him. He was impenetrable.

Plaster showered around them, and rain began to drip through the holes. The stone locked into her bones.

The symbols on her kopis glowed, and then flickered.

You’re out of time, Elise
, Death’s Hand said, and now he spoke directly into her mind. She could feel the weight of him oppressing her. He was going to kill her and fill her body and—

“—
nunquam—suade mihi—vana—
”

His fingernails scraped her wound beneath the stone.

“
Sunt mala quae libas—
”

Elise
couldn’t
kill James, she couldn’t do it, and Death’s Hand knew it. Her blade cut him, but it hurt her far worse than it could ever hurt him.

But it’s not James, not anymore, it’s a demon—I can’t do it—

His face spasmed.

For an instant—no more—Elise saw James in there. His eyes softened. His smile faded.

The power of Death’s Hand lifted for an instant.

It was long enough.

“—
ipse venena bibas!
”

Bile rose in her throat. The power shut her throat and plugged her nose, roaring like drumbeats in her ears, snapping over her skin.

She tore the second sword from its hilt and plunged it into James’s heart.

And everything became silent.

Death’s Hand’s eyes widened until she could see white at the very edges.

Elise,” he said in James’s voice, sounding stunned.

And then he threw his head back, and a soundless explosion rocked the ruins of the casino.

Waves of raw energy slammed into her, one after the other. Elise was flung against the wall as if swatted aside by a giant hand. Bottles of alcohol rained down on her, knocking into her elbows, her hips, and she threw her hands over her head to protect her head.

The mirrored walls fell. Glass exploded on the ground. The shelves slammed into her shoulder blades and pinned her to the floor.

A wind rose, knocking over the last of the slot machines. Dark energy blurred around James. A seizure shook his body. He clawed at his arms with fingernails as the black symbols cascaded off his flesh and vanished into the air.

James screamed wordlessly as the power of the exorcism rushed Death’s Hand toward the passages between Earth and Hell.

His fists slammed into the ground and an invisible string drew him up by the solar plexus, arching his spine. His heels kicked helplessly against the ground. Her sword jutted toward the sky, lodged in his breastbone.

With a sick popping sound, Death’s Hand was wrenched completely from James.

He stopped screaming.

Elise could feel the bodies animated by Death’s Hand throughout the city. She could feel the demon in them, the little bits of
vedae som matis
left behind. She fought to push herself onto her elbows, gripping her first sword, but she couldn’t support her own weight.

“Servants,” she gasped, and the words were whipped into the tide of power. “Return to the Hell in which you belong. Be gone!”

The cord binding Elise to James snapped, whipping away from her body and lashing into the ether. Death’s Hand faded away with a piercing scream. Every servant standing in the streets outside collapsed.

The wind died, leaving the casino in silence.

Elise fell to the floor.

And just like that, it was over.

Slowly, the city began to awake. Car engines came to life again. Pedestrians got to their feet and looked around in confusion.

Nobody moved in Craven’s. Not the sleeping gamblers, who died when Death’s Hand ripped the building apart. Not Elise, who was in too much pain.

What was left of the ground was cool beneath her cheek. Adrenaline drained slowly out of her in the space of many long minutes, leaving her muscles liquefied. The wall crushing her was heavy, and the shards of glass beneath her were little stars of pain in her stomach and thigh and arms.