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

“She’s in,” Jerica said, chewing her last piece of bubble gum with renewed fervor. It was flavorless and tacky, but she didn’t want to spit it out until she found more. It was the only thing keeping her nerves settled. “It won’t be long now.”

Neuma couldn’t manage a smile at that. Instead, she fidgeted with the leash as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. The other end of the chain connected to the collar of a dog wearing a wire basket muzzle—a dog named Ace, which Neuma insisted was an ordinary pit bull, and not demonic at all. Jerica didn’t believe her. Ace had already bitten her twice, and jaws like that didn’t belong on mortal animals.

“Won’t be long now,” Neuma echoed.

What was and was not a “long time” was subjective. Time passed differently in Dis than it did on Earth; what felt like a single day passing in Hell meant that a week had disappeared topside. Jerica had spent the last five years on Earth and had grown accustomed to its timeline. It disturbed her to know that days were slipping past while she sat idly by in the alley outside the House of Abraxas.

It was almost another full day—a week on Earth—before anything happened. The slaves were taken on another run. Jerica and Neuma waited, rationing out water for Ace and watching for the sign.

There was no warning when it came.

The front gates opened with a
clank
and a groan. Jerica stood, drawing her knives, and watched as the gates on the next guard tower, and the next, also slid open.

The House of Abraxas was exposed.

She shared a long look with Neuma—the kind of look that said goodbye, just in case things went worse than they hoped—and then rushed the front gate.

The primary gates of the House weren’t expecting assault; they were guarded only by a pair of fiends with short swords. Jerica allowed all of her energy to pour out of her in a rush. Her own fear of what was surely a kamikaze mission multiplied exponentially as she projected it. As a nightmare demon, she could evoke fear in those near her as easily as she could feast on it.

Normally, the wards on the House walls should have protected the guards from an assault by her energy. But she saw the moment that fear came over the fiends. One of them dropped its sword.

So it was true—Abraxas
was
dead.

Chains jangled behind her, and Ace shot past Jerica, unleashed and unmuzzled. His muscles rippled as broad paws pounded against the stone ground. He leaped on the unarmed fiend. Those incredible jaws clamped down on the fiend’s throat and ripped.

Jerica didn’t watch the dog kill. She lifted her knife to block the swing of the second guard’s sword, then thrust her other blade into its gut while it was exposed.

The fiend fell, and she rushed toward the inner gates of the House.

Neuma matched her stride. “Over there!”

Jerica looked where she pointed. Two more guards were rushing them from the nearest tower.

They were better prepared than the first had been, weapons drawn and helmets shielding their faces. Other guards were rushing from the other towers, converging on the point of assault.

“Great,” Jerica said, and she meant it. It terrified her to see those things running at her. Fiends were mindless, gargoyle-like creatures with bulging eyes and a thirst for killing. Individually, they posed little threat; in groups, they were brutal. And they were gathering quite a group.

But her growing fear meant that her powers were growing, too. It surrounded her in an electric haze. The first fiend that hit it fell over catatonic in an instant.

Neuma distanced herself, standing aside as Ace rushed headfirst into the crowd of attacking fiends. The scent of blood and sounds of screaming filled the air.

Jerica slashed and cut, driving her knives between the clumsy plates of the fiends’ armor. She felt a blade penetrate her side, but registered little pain; stabbing wounds were ineffective against nightmares of her strength.

The second strike didn’t hurt, either, nor did the third. But there were too many fiends. Each one she felled was replaced by two more. The House of Abraxas had emptied its barracks to stop them.

Jerica moved forward a step at a time as she dropped each fiend, approaching the House inches at a time. She wanted to get her back to the wall. Keep the fiends from surrounding her. The fear she produced made them slow, but fiends were already slow-minded; once they knew to brace themselves against her, it wasn’t enough to cripple them.

Neuma and Jerica finally broke through to the front steps of the House. “Go!” Neuma cried, throwing her weight against the switch on the left side of the door. Jerica operated the right side.

With a groan, the door lifted, baring the foyer of pit glass beyond.

Mission accomplished.

But their moment of distraction had allowed them to become surrounded, and almost an entire centuria of fiends ringed the steps, closing in on them. Jerica couldn’t see beyond the barrage of leathery skin and short blades. There was no sign of Ace.

She glimpsed Neuma over the heads of the attacking fiends, and there was panic in her eyes.

A voice boomed over the din.

“Stop.”

That one word cut through all of the fiends, and they instantly froze.

Jerica jerked her knife free of a fiend and kicked it to the ground. Its blood was hot on her hand and slicked her blade. She turned to attack another—but it wasn’t even looking at her.

All of the fiends were staring at the door to the House of Abraxas.

A woman stood in the open doorway framed by the jagged teeth of bone adorning the entrance. She radiated with infernal glory that made her hair stream into the darkness surrounding them. Her flesh glowed with inner light. Even though Jerica had known her for years, had come to Hell at her request, she had never seen Elise Kavanagh quite like this.

She was the Father: the face carved upon so many idols around the wastelands of Dis, the origin of the species.

It was like glimpsing God.

Jerica dropped to her knees reflexively, bowing her head. With her gaze lowered, she realized that there was another demon beside Elise on the stairs: a sallow-fleshed creature wearing a Steward’s raiment, chained like a hog and contained by magic. It was Belphegor, legendary right hand of the Judge, and he was unconscious.

Which meant that Belphegor was defeated.

Ace trotted out of the crowd, oblivious to the awe that had seized the demons. His whiplike tail swished back and forth as he mounted the steps to the House. Blood coursed down a gash on his side and cuts on his muzzle. Most of the blood on his face didn’t belong to him. He sat beside Elise, tongue lolling, ears perked.

“Good boy,” she said with a half-smile, and then she turned to address the fiends.

Elise lifted the hand that wasn’t holding Belphegor’s chains. Her fist danced with magical flame. Runes slithered down her forearm. It was terrifying and unnatural to see a demon with mortal magic, but the fiends were too stupid to realize how strange it was; they were cowed enough by the sight of the Father holding Belphegor hostage.

“You’re all mine,” she said. It was so quiet that she didn’t need to raise her voice to be heard across the grounds. “Drop your weapons.”

The fiends, of course, obeyed.

With three demons and a dog, the House had been taken.

Two

The worst part
of the slave quarters was the pristine cleanliness of them. Belphegor and Abraxas had been attentive to the needs of the mortal inhabitants of the kennels, which meant that they had been directly involved in their care. They hadn’t set the humans aside and ignored them. They had reveled in the suffering.

Elise had been in Dis for almost a month on Earth, which felt like three days in Hell. Three days was more than enough for her to have seen the worst that the city had to offer, particularly since she had deliberately sought out the worst; she had joined the slaves sold to the House of Abraxas at the auction in the market district, walked past the butchers and the tanners, and spent a day caged as she waited for an opportunity to take Belphegor.

Now she was out, and things were going to change.

“Open the cages,” she told the fiend guarding the first floor of cages. The word “guarding” only applied very loosely; it was unarmed and unarmored, wearing nothing but scraps of a loincloth.

It didn’t move at her order.

Elise nudged it with her toe. “Hey. Open the cages.”

Even though she had barely touched it, the fiend drew away from her and bowed its forehead to the floor. All of the fiends did that. Even though she had pulled herself together to appear human again, they wouldn’t look at her long enough to see that she wasn’t glowing with demonic glory anymore. They also weren’t responding to commands.

She suppressed the urge to kick the fiend.

“I’ll help free everyone,” Jerica said, sauntering into the kennels behind Elise. The nightmare was wearing body armor they had stolen from the Palace supply sheds, just like Neuma, but it was in much worse condition than when Elise had last seen it. Wide gashes on the stomach and shins bared sallow, unmarked flesh underneath. Nightmares were more sponge than meat—virtually impossible to injure.

Jerica was a recently corporeal nightmare, not even ten years old, though she looked like she was at least twenty years old. The lopsided, angular haircut helped make her look youthful, despite her sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes. It was easy to tell young nightmares apart from the humans they mimicked. Their mouths were lipless gashes, and their eyes didn’t quite track right. It looked like she was a hollow shell still filled with the smoke that used to form her body.

She wasn’t strong, but she was a good fighter, and loyal to Neuma—who was, in turn, loyal to Elise. Right now, Elise needed all the loyalty she could get.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping over the fiend toward the right-hand row of cages.

Jerica went to the left, jamming one of her knives back into her thigh holster. “None of them are locked,” the nightmare said, lifting a strip of leather wrapped around the wire mesh of the cage door. It was loosely knotted, dangling between her fingers. “The cages are
tied
shut. Why don’t the slaves escape on their own?”

“Belphegor,” Elise said. His name was explanation enough.

As Elise began picking at the knot on the first cage, Jerica slashed hers open and moved on. The cages swung open one by one, dry hinges groaning.

No slaves emerged.

Elise bent over the first door she had opened, hands on her knees, to look inside at the inhabitants. There were two men inside. One was fat and white; the other was skinny and black. It was impossible to tell more detail underneath the layer of orange dust that had already begun to cover them since the morning’s baths. They seemed to be struggling to see who could get closer to the wall, clawing at one another to retreat to the rear of the cage.

A pang of familiarity struck her at the sight of the cage. It wasn’t because she had just enjoyed an entire day in a cell of her own. It was another memory, more distant than this one, of being confined with dirty, stinking slaves, and the desperate need to find someone.

She blinked away the moment of disorientation. That memory didn’t belong to her. She didn’t want to acknowledge that it had found its way into her skull anyway.

“Come out,” Elise said.

Much like the fiend, they didn’t respond. They had been in Hell too long. The fear of Belphegor—and everything beyond him—had broken them.

Elise straightened, fists clenched hard enough that her nails dug into her palms.

Jerica didn’t seem to be having any more luck. She had cut through half of the bindings on her row of cages, but even though the doors stood ajar, nobody had emerged.

“We could get Neuma,” Jerica suggested, gesturing toward the door with her blade. “She can do her…thing.”

As a half-succubus, Neuma could evoke arousal in humans. Elise doubted it would be strong enough to override the fear. And even if it were, she wasn’t sure that having a kennel full of horny, terrified slaves would be any improvement.

“Just keep opening the doors,” Elise said.

She pulled the second open, and the third, all the way down the line. Some of the cages weren’t occupied at all—some of the humans must have still been in the canteen for breakfast. Others had two slaves, and a few only had one lucky mortal, which would have afforded them just enough room to stretch out flat, had they not been cowering in the corner.

Elise stopped trying to ask them to emerge and started walking away as soon as she untied the leather cords.

The slaves seemed to have no urge to escape, to a kind of ridiculous extent. There had to be
someone
that clung to the determination to live—a slave that hadn’t had her sanity decimated by the sight of human meat butcher shops, the slave auction, and being forced to shit in front of hundreds of others for the amusement of Belphegor.

She followed Jerica downstairs to the first level of the basement and took the first cage that hadn’t been opened yet. Its inhabitant was a man, maybe fifty years old, whose arms were covered in faded blue tattoos from shoulder to wrist. It looked like he had been plucking out chunks of skin with his fingernails. His eyes brightened at the sight of Elise—probably because she was anyone but Belphegor—yet he still didn’t move.

He was the first that had actually seemed to see her. Elise reached a hand into the cage. “Come on.”

The man jerked as if struck.

Fuck this bullshit
. Elise hadn’t had high expectations for the gratitude of the slaves she was rescuing, but she had at least expected them to allow themselves to be rescued.

“Let me see,” Jerica said. She stooped to look into the cage. The lifeless pits of her eyes widened, and her mouth stretched into a broad smile. “Hey! It’s Second and Sierra!”

“The intersection in Reno?” Elise asked.

“Remember the homeless guy with the guitar?” Jerica made a strumming motion with her right hand. “I had to kick him off of the street in front of Craven’s a couple of times once Second and Sierra collapsed.”