Descent07 - Paradise Damned (17 page)

“Are you certain?” Metaraon asked.

Adam had grown still, motionless but tense, and there was death in His quietude. Elise realized that the conversation had suddenly taken a turn for the worse—much worse, in fact, but she wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Elise?” Betty whispered.

She shook her head imperceptibly, trying to tell her friend to be quiet, but it was too late.

Metaraon seized her by the throat and lifted her from the water. Betty clawed at his forearm, bare feet kicking, cheeks reddening as she struggled for breath.

“Look at how the presence of ‘some mortal’ has reinvigorated your bride,” Metaraon said. “You wanted her awake? She is awake. She thirsts in a way that she did not until I brought
her
.” He shook Betty. “Your ‘Eve’ will go through the door to spare this woman pain.”

Betty’s eyes bulged. A tear trickled down her cheek.

“You’re lying,” Adam said.

“Test her.”

Metaraon tossed Betty as easily as if she were a kitten. She cried out when she struck the cobblestone path, rolling to Adam’s feet.

Elise jerked, almost stepping forward—but she stopped herself.

No.
If she showed how much that bothered her, that would only trigger His wrath.

She schooled her features and didn’t move.

He kneeled beside Betty, stroking a hand down her cheek. “Be calm, my child,” He said gently.

Betty bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. But she was still watching Elise, and Betty was smart enough to follow her cues. She didn’t make a sound.

Metaraon was watching Elise, too. He circled around her, wings partially unfurled. Feathers swirled on the water’s surface.

“Is Metaraon speaking the truth, my beloved?” Adam asked. “Do you love her above me?”

Such an innocuous question, asked so calmly. Adam stroked Betty’s forehead, like a worrying father. She trembled.

And still, Elise kept her expression blank.

“No,” Elise said.

Adam broke Betty’s pinky. The crack of the joint bent the wrong direction was like a gunshot in the silence of the garden.

Betty screamed and arching away reflexively, but His grip was too strong to escape.

Elise wanted to kill Him. She imagined plunging her sword into His heart, twisting the blade, gutting Him like a slaughtered pig. She imagined the heat of His blood gushing over her arm.

And then she wiped her mind as clean as her face. She forced herself to think of something neutral—like jogging through the empty streets of Reno.

Adam broke Betty’s thumb. Her scream drove into Elise’s heart.

Adam asked again, “You don’t care about this mortal, do you?”

Elise fixed her eyes on Metaraon.

“No, I don’t care,” she said, and she managed to make it sound like she wasn’t dying inside.

Adam wrenched Betty’s broken fingers back, bending them until the tips nearly brushed her wrist. She kept screaming, and screaming, and
screaming,
but Elise’s mind was far away, with her sneakered feet beating a rhythm against pavement in the cool morning air.

“Cold,” Metaraon whispered over her shoulder. “Very cold.”

Elise shrugged.

Adam grew bored. He dropped Betty’s hand and straightened, seeming to forget about her instantly.

He looked surprised to see that Elise was there.

“You’re looking lovely today, Eve,” He said, running His fingers through her hair, like knives tickling her scalp. He smelled like blood and pain, and Elise didn’t allow herself to think about killing Him again.

She smiled, tilted her cheek into His hand, and stared over His shoulder at Metaraon. The anger seeped into her eyes—she couldn’t help it.

Metaraon glared back.
Stalemate
.

Adam brushed a kiss over her cheek and He drifted away, murmuring to the vines, the leaves, and the wind in the Tree.

VII

After all of
the screaming, the garden seemed even quieter than usual. Adam and Metaraon were gone. Betty sat on the wooden throne and Elise kneeled at her feet, preparing to fix the damage she had done.

She scissored at the seams of Betty’s slacks with her fingernails, trying to tear the cloth free to create a bandage. It was easier to pay attention to that than think of how much pain had been inflicted upon Betty for Elise’s sake.

She unraveled the seam and ripped, turning Betty’s slacks into shorts. They weren’t even.

Betty’s broken fingers were purple, swollen, bent the wrong way. “This will hurt,” Elise said, taking the tip of Betty’s thumb in her hand. “Get ready.”

She didn’t wait for Betty to acknowledge her before twisting the thumb into place. Betty smothered her cry with her undamaged hand, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Elise splinted the thumb to keep it in position and wrapped the bandages around it.

“I didn’t think it could be this bad,” Betty said.

“There are a lot of delicate bones in the hand. It’s a bad place to be injured.”

“That’s not what I meant.” All hints of Betty’s earlier cheer were gone. “When you didn’t tell me about everything that happened to you when you were younger, I thought…well, I
knew
it had to be bad, but this—”

Elise pulled the pinky finger back into place.

She had to pin Betty’s shaking hand under her arm to finish dressing the wound. As soon as Elise released her, Betty pulled it against her chest, giving her a mistrustful look.

“I’m sorry,” Elise said.

“Why didn’t you stop them?” Betty asked, voice thick with tears.

Elise climbed onto the throne next to her. The seat was wide enough that they could both fit in it, hip-to-hip. They used to sit in the oversized chairs at the student union like that while studying for finals.

“It’s complicated,” Elise said. “I did what I had to in order to save your life. I couldn’t stand to lose you again.”

Betty hugged her hand to her chest. “Again?”

Elise chewed on the inside of her mouth. Betty deserved to know the truth, no matter how unpleasant.

“You said the last thing you remember is going into the Night Hag’s cave, right?”

Betty nodded.

“You don’t remember anything after that because…” Elise swallowed hard. “You died there. Alain Daladier shot you.”

Betty’s cheeks were so bloodless that it looked like she was on the verge of dying again. She swayed dangerously at Elise’s side. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

Uttering that name made the Tree throb with a deep groan.

Betty clapped a hand over her mouth.

Elise waited for a minute to see if Adam would descend on them again, but He must have been preoccupied—the garden soon settled down again. She went on. “After you died, Anthony and I couldn’t keep it together. It’s kind of why we broke up. That, and…”

“You’re such a bitch,” Betty said.

She frowned. “A lot has happened after you died. It’s been hard.” Her voice broke. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Betty’s face softened. “What have I missed? Tell me about it.”

Where to begin? With the part where Betty’s parents had begged Elise to spread Betty’s ashes somewhere nice? The memorial service at the university, where everyone talked over Betty’s photo? All of the fights that Elise and Anthony had over Betty’s belongings?

Elise didn’t want to remember any of that.

Betty wouldn’t want to know how much darker the world had become without her. She’d want to know about the ass kicking, the fights, the victories.

“After we killed the Night Hag, Anthony got possessed by a demon,” Elise said. At Betty’s alarmed expression, she quickly added, “He’s fine now. But he was under the influence of the mother of all demons for a few days, and her brother—do you remember Thom?”

A faint smile twitched on Betty’s lips. “Insanely hot guy in leather pants.”

“Yeah, that guy. He was actually a demon, not a witch. His name was Yatam. He and I…”

Elise trailed off as she thought back to having sex with Yatam while the city was destroyed and the statue of the goddess Nügua looked on. There had been a knife and a lot of blood. Elise would have told Betty about any other tryst, but not that one—there was just no way that Betty could understand.

Realizing that she had lost the thread of conversation, Elise shook her head to clear it.

“We exchanged blood,” she said simply. “The swap ultimately killed Yatam, and made me into a demon when I died.” She grabbed a fistful of hair. “As you can see.”

“You died, too?” Betty asked dully.

“For a little while,” Elise said. She managed a weak smile. “Anthony came to get my body and helped me figure shit out.”

“After you broke his heart.”

Elise grimaced. “We both had problems, Betty. It wasn’t just me.”

“But mostly you,” Betty said. “You’re so cold.”

Elise dropped to her feet in the shallow water, pacing the cobblestone path.

She could have explained that she wasn’t cold—that she had always burned hot, too hot, but not for Anthony. That he satisfied a physical need, as well as the need for uncomplicated companionship, and that she appreciated how quickly he adjusted to killing demons. But all of it would have sounded like an excuse. Maybe it was.

“I loved James,” Elise said. “Always.”

Betty’s brow creased. She picked at the edge of the makeshift bandage. “I probably knew that. I just wish you’d told Anthony. Even if you didn’t love him, you liked him, didn’t you? Wasn’t he your friend? He deserved better.”

It was like a slap to the face.

“I guess he did,” Elise said, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat.

“When we get out of here, you need to apologize. Promise me you’ll apologize.”

“I don’t know if we’re getting out of here.”

Fierce optimism burned in Betty’s face, even now. “Just promise.”

“Okay,” Elise said. “I promise.”

Elise watched over
Betty as she slept through the pain. It didn’t matter whether or not Elise remained vigilant, but she feared falling asleep too much to relax. When she dreamed in the garden, she was never quite sure that she would wake up again.

They had climbed into the lower branches to escape the dampness of the tepid pool, and the Tree grumbled in deep, wordless voices as Elise settled in. Betty was using a pillow of moss to rest her head with her knees curled to her chest; one foot stretched out to touch Elise’s, toe-to-toe, as if she needed that reassurance.

As Elise waited, keeping one eye on Betty, her mind wandered. And she found herself thinking of Adam.

When she had first entered the garden, His touch had been agony. But it was getting easier all the time. She wasn’t sure if something about Him had changed…or if it was Elise doing the changing.

She almost wanted to touch Him again to find out.

It wasn’t His fault that His touch was sensory overload. It had been bad ever since He had entered the Origin and became omnipotent. Trying to concentrate that much power into a physical form was bound to have side effects.

If Elise concentrated, she could almost see the contrition in His eyes when He realized how much He had been hurting her when they kissed. She could hear the way He had whispered,
I’m so sorry, Eve
. And she remembered her heart breaking into thousands of pieces.

Wait.

The Origin
? What was the Origin?

Elise couldn’t possibly know when Adam had become God. It predated her first visit to the garden—hell, it predated all of humanity.

Which meant she had been having Eve’s thoughts.

Stomach churning, she climbed to the edge of the branch and looked down. The white door was waiting for her, as always. It was flat to the ground, facing up, so that she could have jumped and landed on it.

Elise hadn’t gone through the door yet, so why was she losing herself to Eve?

“Metaraon,” she whispered into the quiet of the garden.

He stepped from the bushes below to stand beside the door.

Betty stirred, rolling onto her back, bandaged hand cradled against her chest. Elise cast a glance toward her before climbing down the Tree.

She stood opposite Metaraon, the door between them.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I’ve decided that I’m going to kill Him,” Elise said. “But I need my swords.”

“Out of the question.”

“Do you think I can kill Him with my bare hands?”

“If need be,” Metaraon said. “I’m sure that you can accomplish wondrous things, given the…proper motivation.” His eyes flicked to the branches above.

Elise’s shoulders tensed. “If either of you touches her again, I’m going to—”

“Stand idly by and watch us kill her?” Metaraon laughed bitterly. “You prefer to allow your friend to be tortured than walk through a door. I’ve never seen such cruelty in a human before.”

Elise circled around the door to face Metaraon. “Give my swords back to me.”

Metaraon swept a hand toward the Tree.

“I’ll show you where they are.”

He led her down a dark path between the roots. The cavern underneath the Tree was as misty as it had been on her last visit. Metaraon led her down another path to the other side of the lake, far from James’s body.

When they reached the bottom, he pointed at the amber lake.

“This lake is a mixture of sap from the Tree, the waters of Mnemosyne, and ethereal blood,” Metaraon said. “It feeds the entire garden, including newborn angels, as you can see. Whenever possible, we retrieve the bodies of our fallen and return them here so that their matter can be recycled. We also dispose of our waste here. The clothing you wore into the garden was thrown into this lake—as well as your swords.”

Elise stared into the murky depths of the fluid. Her reflection on the surface was inky-haired and pale-skinned, as if Yatam were staring back at her.

“You threw my falchions into a lake of tree sap,” she said.

“Metals are slow to be consumed. If you’re lucky, they’re still somewhere at the bottom. Of course, inhaling too much of this fluid is likely to plunge you deep into insanity.”

The memory of having her head shoved under the surf sent chills rippling over her exposed skin.