Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) (21 page)

Elise skirted around them, trying to look like she belonged. The casual wear made her look mortal, not like a demon debutante of Hell.

Nobody stopped her as she mounted the stairs. She didn’t dare phase, just in case her glamor failed, so she ran. The steps were very shallow. An easy slope for an army to march upon.

The sounds of hammering and stone grinding against metal grew louder as she climbed the stairs. Above the seventh floor, the walls were open to the hot air; there was nothing between Elise and a long fall but a few slender ropes.

She crouched behind a stack of I-beams and let a handful of laborers pass before climbing higher.

The construction site for the edge of the bridge began on the thirteenth floor. It was blocked by armored nightmares. Elise hung back in the hallway, peering around the corner to study it.

There was no way that she could approach without being seen. As she had painfully learned at the lab, the nightmares would see her if she tried to sneak past as an incorporeal mist. And they were carrying more Tasers. If James’s glamor wouldn’t survive Elise phasing into shadow, it surely wouldn’t survive an electric shock to the gut.

If they were waiting with Tasers, then Aquiel knew that Elise was coming. She doubted that there were any other dissidents bold or stupid enough to try to face down an army of nightmares that they couldn’t even injure.

She waited until the nightmares were turned away and peered through the holes in the wall again.

What she could see of the bridge was an impressive construction, even more impressive than it was from the ground. The path that people would walk on glinted with magic. Not infernal magic, but human magic. The demons were working with witches, whether willingly or otherwise. The bridge thrust into the smoke in the highest levels of Dis’s atmosphere. A gust of wind momentarily parted the darkness. Elise glimpsed the fissure and sunny blue skies beyond. She pulled back into shadow again so it wouldn’t touch her.

Construction was almost complete. The stairs were already done—that would make it trivial for large numbers of demons to march there. The magic was already in place, too. The tower itself didn’t need to be completed. It looked like they were only clearing away supplies now, opening a path straight to the fissure.

Once Aquiel got his army to the tower, they could march on Earth.

Unless Elise took the Palace first.

“What do you mean, we lost Andrzej?” The voice was loud and angry and harsh. The hard edge to it wasn’t a demon’s growl—it was the sound of a human throat worn raw by the dry wasteland air. The sound of boot heels rang out on the crystal path of the bridge.

Elise glanced around the wall long enough to see a trio of men walking toward the tower from the direction of the fissure. She shrank behind the wall, making herself as tiny as she possibly could in the shadows. Her human skin felt like a bright flag announcing her position even though nobody was looking in her direction.

The conversation continued on the other side of the wall. They were shouting, so it was easy to hear them.

“He never came back from the lab,” replied a nightmare with a silky-smooth voice. “The slaves were gone, too. And it looks like Belphegor was never there.”

“Never there?
Never there?
” A man stepped into view, just inches from Elise, yet unaware of her presence. He was broad-shouldered and square-jawed, with the kind of handsome features that would have suited a movie star. But the features were ruined by the blood coursing down his cheeks, the imprint of a black rune on his forehead, the rashy redness of his flesh.

Anger surged in Elise’s stomach, and she almost forgot that she was meant to be hiding. She took a step before stopping herself.

She ducked behind the wall again.

Now she knew why someone had been killing people and making it look like an animal attack. She knew who had been signing the letter J on dead bodies. And she knew whom those perverse “love letters” were being left for.

Lincoln Marshall had been leaving them for Elise.

Eleven

James woke up,
which was the first indication that he hadn’t died. Waking up was always a good sign.

He peeled his eyelids open without lifting his head. The ground was rough and tan-orange under his cheek, and the sky above was steel gray. His gloved left hand was curled beside his head. James flexed his fingers to feel what he was lying on.

Sand. He was sprawled on sand.

Water rushed over his body and lapped his face. It was cold, so very cold, but he could barely feel it. His skin was numb. There was no way to tell how long he had been there, but it was definitely daytime. That meant that it had to have been at least two or three hours since Anthony tossed him off the side of the ship.

The fact that he didn’t remember the hours that had elapsed was an even worse sign than waking up on the beach. Any trauma that rendered an individual unconscious longer than a few moments hinted at major internal injury.

Anthony had been trying to kill him, and he hadn’t done a bad job of it. In fact, judging by how terrible James felt, he wasn’t going to rule out the fact that Anthony might still succeed.

He tried to turn his head the other way, tried to lift his chin out of the foamy waves that lapped at his face again, but his neck was stiff and painful. It felt like something in his shoulders or chest was broken. James held still, waiting for the numbness to leave and the pain to arrive. He could feel it lingering on the edges of his senses. He was still too stunned. Probably a mercy.

He wiggled the fingers on both hands, then his toes.

Not paralyzed. Excellent.

He could almost remember hitting the waves. It had felt like being dropped on concrete. But how he had made it from the bay to the shore was an utter mystery—one that he would have to resolve later. For now, the fact that he had survived would have to be good enough.

Another wave swept over him. He grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut at the sting of saltwater on his chapped lips. James couldn’t tell how much of the roaring he heard was water and how much was the blood rushing through his head. His vision was darkening again.

He blinked to clear his vision and realized that a blurry shape was approaching. Someone was striding toward him on the beach, still a few hundred feet away and well beyond his ability to focus.

His head swam and his stomach cramped as he tried to move again. He had to immediately give up the attempt. If it was Anthony returning to kill James, there was no way that he could defend himself now.

Unless…

He wiggled the fingers on his right hand again. They were bare. The cloth that Anthony had tied around James’s fist to prevent him from casting magic had been whipped away in the water.

He mentally inventoried the runes that should have been on his right hand. There were, unfortunately, no destructive spells—mostly wards, which would be useless against a human like Anthony. But James thought he had also written a few healing spells, tucked between his middle finger and ring finger. All he needed to do was remember the words.

He had drawn a pain relief spell. He knew that much.

The indistinct figure walked closer.

James snapped his fingers too weakly to make a sound. The pad of his thumb and middle finger rubbed together. He spoke a word.

Instant relief flushed through him, wiping away the fatigue and the cold. It sharpened his mind enough to remember two of the other healing spells he had written for himself, too. James had been saving those for a while, since healing magic was among the most difficult to cast and replacing them would be extremely time-consuming. But if he ever wanted a chance to replace them, he needed to get on his feet, and fast.

He spoke again and magic flared.

He heard a strange, muffled popping noise, and felt something similar to being poked in the side. His ribs were fixing themselves. Thankfully, the first spell had numbed that.

James’s head cleared as the spells continued to work, filling his vision with pale blue sparks. It completely obscured his vision for a few tense seconds.

Then he could see—and the stranger was upon him.

It was a girl wearing a skirt that fell to her ankles and a knitted sweater. She crouched to stick her face in his. She had ruddy skin covered in a smattering of freckles and a tangle of wild, strawberry blond hair. “Have you died yet?” she asked with a thick Irish brogue.

James wet his lips with his tongue and tried to speak. All he could get out was, “No.”

“Mum’ll be happy to hear that.” The girl didn’t sound all that impressed, though. She stood and turned away from him, waving both arms over her head. “Oi! He’s over here! Help me pick him up!”

He thought that he recognized the girl’s hair and stubborn chin, but it wasn’t until he saw the women that had come with her that he realized what had happened.

The Talamh Coven had found him.

The Talamh Coven
was, like many powerful covens, segregated from mundane society in a small neighborhood of their own. They were protected by a low stone wall and the kind of wards that made James’s hair stand on end.

The girl who had found him on the beach, Mary, turned out to be older than she looked—old enough to drive him to the house she lived in with her high priestess mother. Mary and Sheila lived in a prewar cottage with modern improvements, including solar panels on the roof and a small windmill in the garden behind it. Those, too, were enchanted. James wanted to stop to admire the complexity, but his new hosts wouldn’t let him.

“Techno witchery,” James observed as Sheila helped carry him into the house, his arm over her shoulders.

“We keep up with the times,” she said. “Mary, bring my herbs.”

“That won’t be necessary. I can heal myself,” he said.

“Aye, and draw the attention of the Union to us,” Sheila said, dumping him on her couch. She straightened with a sigh, adjusting her sweater and her hair, which was just as tangled as her daughter’s. She was a very distinguished fifty years old, aged by the labor involved with being a high priestess, and more handsome than beautiful.

“Have they a presence in Ireland now, too?” James asked.

“They’re everywhere,” she said.

Mary rushed out of the kitchen carrying a tote bag that smelled like sage and rosemary. “I found it, Mam,” she said. “Can I do it?”

Sheila sat in the chair opposite James. “As long as you don’t kill him.”

Mary grinned.

He held still as the girl worked on him, mixing herbs with a mortar and pestle and applying the paste to the worst of his injuries. There were few cuts, but many of his bones still felt broken in that numb, distant kind of way, and that was where Mary focused her efforts.

“We received Brianna at the docks this morning,” Sheila said. She clucked her tongue. “Nasty piece of work. We’ve put her in the guesthouse for now, and Declan is tending to her needs. She’s in good hands.”

“Are you capable of healing her?” James asked, lifting an arm to give Mary access to his ribs.

Sheila sniffed indignantly. “Of course we are. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you,” he said.

“I’ll make you some tea.” She rose and went into the kitchen.

“Well,
she’s
a good listener,” James told Mary.

“She’s the high priestess. She’s good at what she does, and that means leading, not listening.” It sounded like she was reciting something her mother had told her, probably grooming Mary for being coven leadership in the future. Mary pressed a little too hard on his ribs as she applied a poultice.

James sucked in a hard breath. “Be careful with those.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” She jabbed him with a knuckle.

“Oh, so it’s like that,” he muttered, flinching away from the gesture.

Mary wrapped bandages around him, affixing the herbs to his flesh. “This will sink in and do you up right in a few hours,” she said. “Nobody heals better than we do. Not even you White Ashers. Don’t touch it—don’t want you ruining my craic handiwork with your clumsy magic.”

She gathered the herbs and followed her mother into the kitchen, nose in the air.

Damn fledgling witches
. The White Ash Coven had never allowed their initiates to talk to full members like that.

Sheila returned in a few minutes with two cups of steaming tea. She set one in front of James—out of his reach until he was healed enough to bend forward again—and sat down with the second. “Connor’s going to want to talk to you,” she said over the rim of her cup, sipping it lightly.

He grimaced. “Will he, now?”

“You’ll talk to him before you leave. He has a right to know how his granddaughter is doing.”

“And how old is Connor now? He must be well over eighty,” James said.

“There’s no such thing as old enough that it’s polite to ask that,” Sheila said.

And, unfortunately, not old enough to have forgotten that his granddaughter, Elise, had been bound to an aspis from the White Ash Coven. James had never met Connor Kavanagh and didn’t want to. He had produced Isaac, a brutally hard man that James had always regretted getting to know. Any man responsible for raising Isaac was likely to be equally unpleasant.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, leaning forward with a wince to pick up his tea.

Sheila watched him move with a critical eye, as if analyzing the work Mary had done on him. “You’re healing quickly.”

“Only because of your daughter’s excellent care.”

“Keep your flattery to yourself, Mr. Faulkner. I’m familiar with your reputation.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I’m sure you can’t,” she said dryly. “The fact that you’ve built yourself into having a new coven just months after you shattered the last one couldn’t have anything to do with your charm. And the fact that you’re rumored to have the Half Moon Bay Coven under your thumb, as well, has nothing to do with seducing its new high priestess.”

“As absurd as I’m sure it sounds, I have a vision and a plan to achieve it,” James said. “People recognize worthy causes. It’s not difficult to rally support for something that’s so desperately needed.”