Descent07 - Paradise Damned (26 page)

James lowered both of them to the platform. Where he touched her back, warm sap stuck to his fingers, gluing his body to hers. “Elise,” he said. “Elise, wake up.” He could feel her swimming through the haze, struggling for the surface, as if desperate for oxygen.

Her brow creased. Her eyelids fluttered.

Then her eyes opened.

She struggled to focus on him, and when she did, what little color remained in her cheeks drained to a ghostly pallor. “
James
?”

Relief swept through him. “Yes,” he said, “it’s me.”

Anger swelled within her, powerful enough that it coated his tongue with the bitter flavor of copper.

Elise pushed him. She was still weak from being contained within the Tree, so it was ineffectual. “Not this. Don’t you fucking dare,” she said.

James caught her wrists. “Stop fighting, it’s okay, you’re free—”

He tried to hang on, but even a weakened Elise was too strong for him in his current condition. She scrambled away from him on all fours, getting to her feet with the support of the Tree, and glared at him as if he had tried to stab her.

James stood slowly, hands extended in a soothing gesture.

“Whatever you’ve seen in there, it isn’t real,” he said. “Whatever you may think I’ve done, whatever you’ve experienced—it’s been an illusion. But I’m real, Elise. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Come near me, and I’ll kill you.” There was no real force behind the words. Her voice quavered, and she pressed one hand to her temple. “No. I’m not…” Elise shook her head. “Yes, I’ll definitely kill you.”

What battle was being waged in her mind? James reached out with their bond, trying to see inside of her thoughts, but she had locked down tightly. It was like tracing his hands over a blank stone wall. “We’re still bonded. You can look into my mind and know that it’s me.”

“I won’t go through that fucking door!”

He didn’t bother asking what door she was talking about. As far as James could see, there were no doors anywhere in the garden.

James kept his tone soothing. “That’s fine. No doors.”

She faltered.

“Everyone wants me to go through the door,” Elise said.

“But not me.”

Her hair shimmered and skin flickered, momentarily exposing the bone underneath. Her demon form wasn’t designed to survive in the ethereal lights of Heaven. It must have been agonizing. James couldn’t tell—she was still blocked to him, and it was painfully frustrating. “Relax,” he said. “Let me show you what’s happened.”

The walls surrounding her mind eased open a fraction. James took the moment of weakness to take her hand and open his mind.

He forced himself to remember everything that she had missed: spending months developing new magic in Fallon, his momentary incarceration with the Union, Hannah’s death, the journey through Heaven and Hell. He flitted through the memories in a heartbeat, like paging through a book.

By the time Elise jerked back and shut her mind again, he knew that she had already seen enough. It was probably too much to make sense to her. James could only hope that the imprint of his mind would be familiar enough to convince her.

Elise’s lips drew into a frown. Her black eyes searched his face.

“Wait,” she said, “let me see again.”

Hesitantly, she twined her fingers with his, pressing their palms together.

Elise guided herself through his memories. She focused on Malebolge and Coccytus, then jumped further back—all the way back to their brief time in Dis together. She lingered in the memories of the fires as if basking. Then she pushed back through his memories, much further back, and settled on his memory of finding her in Oymyakon so many long years ago.

Sadness touched her at the sight of the dead angels. That emotion didn’t belong to Elise or James. It was like a third person was looking in on the memory, lamenting the loss of life.

James pushed her away gently.

“It is you,” she said, sagging against him. James couldn’t hold her weight, slight as it was. He was too exhausted. They sank to the floor together, and Elise buried her face in his chest.

James pressed his lips to the top of her head. He wanted to tell her that it would be okay, but he couldn’t make the words come out.

It wasn’t okay. Nothing was “okay” in this gray, miserable place.

Yet holding Elise filled him with a sense of rightness, of being completed. The idea that a jealous God might find them at any moment seemed small in comparison.

Well, maybe not
that
small.

“We should leave while we can,” James said.

Elise gazed up at him, and James saw himself through her eyes. She thought that he looked younger. It was like the lines in his face had filled out, while his cheeks hollowed, and the rings around his pale irises grew darker. But his hair, to their mutual surprise, was completely white. She had to run her fingers through it to convince herself that it was real, like the rest of him.

For some reason, looking at James filled Elise with despair. She was imagining him dead. The garden must have warped her mind even more than he had feared.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll get out of here.”

James dipped his head and kissed her. Immediate shock jolted through Elise, followed quickly by fear of what would happen if Adam saw them. God filled her mind and heart, leaving no room for her to enjoy the kiss. But her hands clutched at the back of his neck anyway, in a gesture of desperation. James pulled her against him hard.

He wouldn’t have let go, given the choice—the thought of Elise was all that had carried him through Limbo, and he wasn’t about to allow fear of a jealous, tyrannical deity prevent him from enjoying their reunion. But Elise broke away quickly.

She stood on wobbling legs. “We have to go,” she agreed, letting their kiss pass without remark. “But first, we have to find Nathaniel, Ariane, and Betty.”

Ariane was no real surprise. But the other names…

“Nathaniel?
Betty
?” James asked, eyes widening.

She smiled weakly. “Yeah. It seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.”

They walked around
the Tree in search of the others, but the doors that Elise had used to get in and out of Ariane’s apartment was gone. That had been an illusion. Everything with Ariane had been an illusion.

But Elise’s mother was there. She was still certain that her subconscious would never summon Ariane from memory.

She was increasingly less certain of everything else.

They kept climbing, and Elise couldn’t tear her eyes from James as they searched for any sign of Ariane. If James was alive, and his body was under the Tree, then that meant he really was like Nathaniel. He had been sacrificed and bound to the garden.

Which meant that he had been there before she ever had.

Their kiss had left her lips feeling bruised, and Elise traced her fingers over her mouth, remembering the contact.

It was wrong. It was all wrong.

Oblivious to the direction her thoughts had taken, James said, “How did Betty get here?”

“Metaraon said that he brought her back to life to motivate me,” Elise said, and the words felt like a lie. That may have been Metaraon’s story, but there was no way that it could be true. She had just seen the ritual Metaraon used to bring people back to life. That definitely wasn’t what had happened to Betty.

“I encountered him on Earth before coming here,” James said. “He searched through my memories for a way to motivate you. He must have decided that Betty was ideal. I’m sorry.”

Sorry for what?
she wondered silently.

Elise searched his pale eyes—why hadn’t she recognized that color before?
—
for any hint of the truth. Did he realize what he had been through? Was James a victim, or had he deliberately deceived her?

“If Metaraon brought Ariane and Betty, then how did you get in?” Elise asked. Her fingers had been wandering toward James’s shock of white hair, but she stopped herself.

“Fissures. Junctures between universes. And…a lot of walking.” He smiled weakly. It barely lasted a heartbeat before slipping off of his face again. “Elise, I’ve searched for you for so long.”

His mind was blank of any kind of explanation for his eyes, his scar, the ritual she knew he must have undergone. How could he be in the garden again and not think of it?

The omission was as much a lie as if he had told her that it hadn’t happened at all.

“We should keep looking,” Elise said when he looked like he might kiss her again.

She walked on.

James had always been the one perfect thing in her life. He was her partner, her hero.

He’s tainted,
whispered a feminine voice in the back of her mind.
He’s been lying to you for so very long.

Elise was so distracted by the confusing tangle of thoughts that she almost walked past her mother on the highest platform.

Ariane was trapped against the trunk of the Tree, soaked in sap and utterly naked, just as Elise had been. The bark had all but crept over her face. Only the sphere of her pregnant belly protruded.

She touched her mother’s stomach. The baby stirred inside.

“She was on the verge of labor when I saw her,” James said. “I’m not sure how much time has passed, but it must have been…weeks, at least, if not years. Mnemosyne’s waters are holding her in time.”

Just like you?
Elise wondered.
How did you walk through Limbo for so long without dying?

She couldn’t bring herself to respond to him.

Freeing Ariane didn’t take long. Elise and James had only ripped away a few handfuls of bark when the Tree seemed to release her willingly. Ariane tumbled into Elise’s arms, eyes flying open.

A ragged gasp tore through her throat. “Elise!” Ariane said, face slack with shock. Then she looked over her shoulder and spotted James. The surprise turned to anger. Ariane’s expression was like a punch to Elise’s ribs, sucking all of the breath out of her lungs. If she hadn’t been certain before, she was certain now—there was something that James wasn’t telling her, and Ariane knew the truth, too.

“Where’s Nathaniel?” Elise asked. It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, but she would have to be satisfied with it for now.

“I don’t know,” Ariane said. “We were just in my apartment a moment ago.”

But Ariane’s apartment didn’t exist, so Nathaniel and Betty had to be somewhere else in the garden. Didn’t they?

What had been real? What had been illusion?

“Can you walk?” Elise asked.

Ariane took a few wobbling steps. She almost fell, but James pulled her arm over his shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

Ariane’s smile looked forced. “
Merci
.”

Elise picked up her pace as they headed down the Tree, mind whirling.

Angels didn’t have domain over life and death. They were meant to have escaped such petty mortal things as soon as Eve and Adam discovered how to pass immortality to their children. Bringing Nathaniel back from the brink of death by putting his soul into a duplicate body—that was the best that Metaraon could do.

Elise knew deep within that there was no way Betty could have been resurrected.

She’s a trick
, the feminine voice whispered.

As if summoned by her thoughts, Betty appeared around the curve of the Tree, standing on the next platform.

She still wore her tan slacks and the cleavage-emphasizing blouse. There wasn’t so much as a smear of sap on her cheek. Betty hadn’t been trapped in the Tree with Elise and Ariane at all.

“James!” Betty shrieked. “Oh my gosh!”

He looked stunned when Betty slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his chest in a tight embrace. “I’m happy to see you, too,” James said, although he sounded wary. Elise wasn’t the only one that had noticed the disparities.

Betty and James continued to talk. Elise thought that they were discussing escape. Mouths moved, but the words made no sense to her.

There were thousands of questions tumbling through Elise’s skull, crashing together and forcing out all other sound and thought, including James’s emotions through the bond. Only one thing pierced the confused disaster that her mind was quickly becoming: a soft, feminine voice that Elise thought belonged to Eve.

They’ve all been lying to you.

“Let’s find Nathaniel and go,” James said, drawing Elise’s attention back to him. He was addressing her directly.

Elise’s throat closed. She swallowed hard. “It’s not that simple. Adam—”

“Forget about killing Him,” he interrupted. “It was a suicide mission from the beginning. Let’s just leave.”

Why doesn’t he want you to kill Him?
wondered the voice.

“I don’t have enough marks to get through the gates on my own anymore,” Elise said, speaking over the voice in her head. The lack of marks didn’t matter now that Nathaniel was in the garden—
if
he was really there—but she wanted to see how James would react to that. If he were partially an ethereal creature, then he would probably already have one mark.

Elise was surprised when he peeled off a glove and showed his palm to her.

There was a mark on his hand, just as there was on one of her hands. Elise had to look down at her own palms to remind herself. One hand was blank. The other was tattooed with a black mark identical to the one on James’s palm.

“How?” she asked.

“I took it from the mother of all demons,” James said.

Which meant that it
was
her mark. One more piece of Elise permanently welded to James.

She tamped down her anger before he could feel it through their bond.

They couldn’t leave yet. Whatever James said—
Whose side is he on?
—Elise wasn’t done with her job. Adam still needed to die, and more than that, she needed answers. She needed to know why James had been lying to her.

You can have everything you want
, whispered that feminine voice again.

Elise had been fighting to ignore the pieces of Eve creeping into her soul, but this time, she didn’t want to.