Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) (31 page)

“Neuma wants you to have this,” she said.

He squinted at it. “What’s this? Wax?”

“Open it.”

Franklin broke the seal and looked inside. It took a long time for his expression to change, as though he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but then his features slackened. “Lord Jesus,” he said, setting down the newspaper so that he could pull out the money. Neuma seemed to have fit as many hundred-dollar bills into the envelope as she could. They were all crisp and new, probably never circulated on Earth. “Is this real?”

“Yes,” Elise said.

He put the money back. Closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

“Lord Jesus,” he said again.

“You can buy a car,” she said. “You can get to an evacuation point.”

He swiped a hand over his cheek, trying to hide that he was crying. “I knew baby girl would pull through. I knew it. I knew she wouldn’t leave us. Praise the Lord. Praise Jesus.”

“Praise your sister,” Elise said.

Franklin hugged the envelope, smoothing a wrinkled hand over the address. “You’re an angel. God sent you to us. Thank God for you.” She frowned as he yanked a photograph off the refrigerator and pushed it at her. “I always thought she was an angel. Look at her, beautiful thing. Look.”

It was an old, yellowing photo of a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old, in front of a farmhouse. She had glossy black hair, black eyes, and white skin—Neuma as a child. Just as Elise hadn’t given much consideration to how old she might be, she also hadn’t considered that a half-succubus must have been born at some point, been a child before she grew into the woman she had been for the last several decades.

What kind of life had she led, this half-demon raised by humans? Elise had known Neuma for years, yet…hadn’t known her at all.

“Can I keep this?” Elise asked.

“Yes, yes, please go ahead. Bless you,” he said. “Heaven above, bless your heart.”

He kissed her hands cupping the photo, fingers digging into her biceps, as if he needed to hold her for support. She tried to back away, but he was surprisingly strong for his age, and he only stepped forward to close the distance between them.

He tugged her down and kissed her face, too. His stubble was rough on her cheek. “I’ll pray for you, and—”

Elise never heard the rest of the sentence.

With a thought, she phased out of Sun Valley.

Sixteen

Nash returned from
Hell smelling of brimstone. The instant that he crossed the fissure, he was shocked by the cold, wet mountain air, and he lifted his arm to watch curls of steam lifting from his wrist.

The sky was redder now than when he had left, and smoke from the fissure was settling into the valley. Hell was bleeding into Earth faster. Elise was right—there was no time to waste. If he hoped to have enough time to coerce the angels into cooperating with him, it needed to be done
now
. But he needed one thing before he could go home to Shamain. Or, to be precise, one person.

At his feet, Ace growled and pawed at his nose, trying to remove the muzzle. Nash jerked the chain to make him stop.

Elise had mentioned that she wasn’t sure what to do with the dog in the coming battle, since his injured paw limited his mobility, and Nash had agreed to take Ace somewhere safe against his better judgment. He could think of no better place for the dog than a pack of werewolves.

Ace wouldn’t let Nash touch him, so they walked together to the sanctuary.

Rylie met them on the road into the valley as if she had known he was coming. She was looking pale and thin, but she still found a tremulous smile at the sight of him. “I was worried when you didn’t come back with Abel. I was afraid you were hurt.” She noticed the chain he was holding, and her eyes widened.

“Not hurt, but I come bearing bad news. Where is your mate?”

Abel strode down the path to join them. “I’m here,” he said. “Are you ready to go back to the bridge? Are we going to destroy the bridge?”

“Not yet,” Nash said, “but I’ve found someone who will. I’ve been in contact with Elise Kavanagh.” He jangled Ace’s chain. “Obviously.”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Rylie paled further at Elise’s name.

“What about her?” Abel asked, eyes narrowing.

Nash gave them a quick breakdown of the situation: the assault on the Palace, the slaves that were fleeing, the need to protect and relocate them. “And if by some miracle we accomplish all of that, Elise will disassemble the bridge,” he finished.

The Alphas exchanged looks. The distance between them was terribly conspicuous—they looked like they wanted to be close to one another, yet couldn’t bridge the long inches of air. “‘If’ Elise knocks over the Palace, ‘if’ the slaves get out, ‘if’ the angels help. That’s a lot of ifs,” Abel finally said.

“That sounds like a big battle,” Rylie said, chewing on her thumbnail.

“Northgate’s about to get ugly. I wanted to give you enough warning to evacuate the pack. I’ll leave the organization to you—I must get to Shamain.” Nash hesitated. “Will you take Elise’s dog with you?”

“Of course,” Rylie said, reaching for the chain. Ace growled at her as she took it. She gave him a sharp look, and he flattened his ears to his skull. Even a pit bull couldn’t stand up to an Alpha stare.

“Where’s Summer?” Nash asked.

A smile traced over Rylie’s lips, then faded. “Your cottage.”

Nash gave them a small bow in thanks. He could hear them arguing in low voices as he walked away, but he chose not to listen. Instead, he focused on the task to come.

He had been back to Heaven since his exile ended once, only long enough to gather a few of his old friends to try to save Las Vegas. But he hadn’t been before the ethereal coalition in far too long, and he also hadn’t been to Shamain, the ethereal metropolis. Nash didn’t
need
to take Summer with him to Heaven, but the idea of leaving her was completely unbearable—and the idea of facing the angels that had cast him into exile without her by his side even more so.

He made sure his wings were completely dimmed before entering the cottage. Summer wasn’t at her usual workstation in the server room, but he found her in their bedroom, curled up with her cat and a travel magazine. Sir Lumpy, the ugliest black hairball Nash had ever seen, was perched on her hip and purring loud enough to make the walls shake.

The cat stopped purring when Summer looked up.

She gasped, hands flying to her mouth. “You’re bleeding,” she said. When she stood, her cat fell from her lap to the floor with an annoyed squeak.

Nash looked down at his shirt. He had forgotten that one of the nightmares had gotten a lucky hit during the fight at the edge of the bridge. “Yes,” he said with mild surprise, “I was. I should be mostly healed now.”

She tugged the hem of his shirt out of his belt and lifted it up to look. She sucked in a hard breath when she saw the wound. It was worse than he remembered—it cut from his pectoral all the way down to the hipbone. “You got this when you went off fighting with Abel, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

Summer punched him in the arm, a good, safe distance from the wound. And then she kissed him just as hard. “Dammit, Nash, you didn’t even tell me that you were going off to fight with him, and you went and got stabbed while you were at it? You are
not
allowed to get stabbed,” she said, each word broken up by another kiss pressed to the corner of his lips, his chin, his cheek. “Do you hear me? No—more—stabbings!”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I impale myself on a nightmare’s cleaver,” he said, returning her kiss.

“Very funny.” She snuggled her head under his chin, arms wrapped around his ribs. Sir Lumpy walked between their ankles with chirping meows, as if to demand that they give him attention and affection, too. For once, Summer ignored him. “I should have been there with you.”

“That’s why I’ve returned. I have to fight another battle, and I want you by my side for this one.”

“But you haven’t let me come with you to any of these other battles,” she said.

“This won’t be a physical confrontation. I need to go to Shamain to appeal to the ethereal coalition. Allies in Hell are attempting to liberate human slaves and destroy the bridge, but they need help from the angels if they hope to survive the confrontation,” Nash said. “I want you to stand in front of the coalition with me.”

Summer’s face brightened. “You want to take me home to meet your family.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

She wouldn’t have looked nearly so cheerful if she considered that “meeting the family” really meant facing down an entire city of his brethren that still believed him to be a traitor—a loyalist to Adam, someone unbefitting the glory of Heaven. But she looked too excited by the prospect for him to want to remind her of cold reality.

“You can’t go up there looking like you lost a fight against a bum with a sharpened toothbrush,” Summer said. Her fingers flew down the buttons on his shirt to open it. The brush of her skin filled his mind with dirty thoughts—the kind of thoughts that his brethren would have found appalling.

Nash was far too tempted to act on his sexual urges. He took her wrists gently to stop her. “We need to make haste. If you undress me, we won’t be hasty.”

“You can resist my sexy body this once,” she said, but the press of her lips against his collarbone made it obvious that wasn’t the case.

At Nash’s gentle push, she stepped away, grabbing a fresh dress out of her closet. She dressed in the bathroom where they would be safe from what she liked to call their “wild animal urges”—the slightly cuter way of saying that they couldn’t keep their clothes on around each other for longer than five minutes.

He changed his shirt and paced through the server room as she prepared herself, rolling Eve’s ring over in his fingers.

Elise had thrown it at him without even a glance at it. She may have had Eve’s heart inside of her, but that, more than anything else, reminded him how far she was from Eve. When his mother received the gift, she had exclaimed over it as though it were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—as if the garden and the shining ethereal cities were nothing in comparison to this ring forged by one of her children.

Nash remembered giving the ring to her perfectly. He also remembered the long hours he had spent forging the metals in angelfire, twisting the wires in the band into elaborate curlicues, and selecting the perfect opal for its center. It had been the pinnacle of the years he spent learning the craft—and all to make Eve smile.

His fist clenched around the ring.

If Abraxas hadn’t already been dead, he would have killed the demon for insulting Eve’s memory by stealing it. The fact he had it meant he must have plundered Eve’s grave, her private rooms in Shamain, perhaps a museum. Nash wasn’t certain. He didn’t know where the ring had ended up after her tragic death.

And Elise certainly didn’t deserve it, no more than she deserved to carry Eve’s memories and voice.

Nash could only think of one person who deserved the ring.

The bedroom door opened, and Summer stepped out. Despite their rush, she had dressed herself beautifully. She wore a knee-length white dress that bared her shapely upper arms and had pulled her hair back with a few rhinestone clips. With her Amazonian height, she could have almost been an angel herself.

“Is it okay?” she asked.

He couldn’t resist it. He had to kiss her again. “You are perfection.”

Summer rolled her eyes, but he knew she liked it. She kissed Sir Lumpy on the top of his furry head. He nuzzled her chin and left drool behind on her skin.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Nash wrapped his arms around Summer, and for the first time in far too long, he stepped into Shamain.

“We’re going to
have to fight,” Abel announced.

The pack exchanged looks, seated in a cluster beside the lake. Rylie had seldom called meetings before, and Abel never had, not once. Nobody had known what to expect when he brought everyone together. And there was no way that anyone could have guessed it would be a declaration of war. For many of the werewolves, it was the first time that they had seen him since Seth’s death. Now he had returned with hate in his eyes and his blood boiling for violence. Backed by the crashing waterfall, he was an impressive sight to behold, pacing and tense with flashing golden eyes.

Rylie could only bring herself to glance at him occasionally. It was hard to look at him when he was this angry, like flying too close to the sun. And he had been like this ever since Nash left, when she and Abel had argued for over an hour. Rylie had agreed with the angel. She thought that it would be safest to evacuate.

Abel had disagreed. Vehemently. He had seemed affronted by the idea of backing away, like it was a personal insult.

“I can lead the pack to help destroy the bridge,” Abel had said. “I can be a good leader.”

He didn’t understand that wasn’t Rylie’s fear at all. No, she was worried that he would lead too well—and lead them all into death.

After Rylie gave up arguing with him, Abel had asked her to stand with him during this meeting. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to look into those forty trusting faces and tell them, “Yes, I agree with my mate’s bloodlust. Seth just died to protect us and I want to ruin his sacrifice by putting all of you in danger now, too.”

So she was curled on a damp, mossy rock a few feet into the lake, arms hugging her knees to her chest, trying not to listen but unable to tune out Abel’s growling baritone.

Crystal stood, breaking the stunned silence following Abel’s announcement. Even with the dropping temperatures of winter, she was wearing cutoffs and a tank top. It was a miracle she wore anything at all. She was naked more often than not these days. “Let me get this straight. You think that we should try to fight the demons pouring out of this crack that leads into Hell. That’s seriously what you’re saying?”

“What part of ‘we’re going to have to fight’ was hard for you to wrap your head around?” Abel asked, biting out each word.