Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) (7 page)

Four

It was daytime
on Earth. Standing underneath the fissure in the slave market, where the auctions were held, Elise could feel its rays beating down upon her. It wasn’t as powerful a sensation as it would have been if she were trying to stand in the sun at home, but it must have been a pretty clear day topside; her heart sped and sweat leaped to her forehead.

Elise mopped up the sweat with the back of her arm, keeping her attention on the auction. Last time she had been there, she had joined the lines of humans dragged from a cart delivering them to the market with her head hanging low, naked and indistinguishable from the mortals. She had been marched onto the stage at the center of the square alongside four other women. The ropes around her wrists—affixed by Neuma before Elise joined the others—had been lifted above her head and attached to a hook, jerked high to stretch out her body for display.

She had been expecting to be purchased by Belphegor and hadn’t been disappointed. Being elevated above so many other demons, seeing their faces tipped back to stare at her, knowing that any one of them might recognize that she wasn’t mortal at any moment—it had been tense. Fortunately, it also hadn’t lasted long. Two of the other four women had sobbed through the process, which took all of five minutes. A quick bid, and they had been put into a line with the rest of the humans bought by Belphegor.

Now Elise was seeing it from the other side, standing far enough toward the back of the crowd that she could hear the sizzle of meat cooking at a nearby vendor’s cart. Devadas was coiled at her side, a few inches taller than she was, with his arms folded. Were it not for the tremble in his shoulders, he might have cut an imposing figure.

It felt like she had been there before, standing at the back of the crowd, watching humans mount the steps to the stage. It was impossible. Elise had never watched an auction from the perspective of the buyers before.

Thinking was too difficult with the occasional flashes of sunlight. She wiped her forehead dry again. The motion drew her companion’s attention.

“Bid on this batch?” Devadas asked.

“No.” Elise wasn’t going to buy a single slave. She didn’t need any more mortals to feed.

She was only there to watch the buyers. There weren’t nearly as many as the square could accommodate—mere dozens, rather than hundreds. It was easy to tell the major House holders, dukes, and duchesses from the vendors and casual observers; most of them were strong enough to have taken human form, and all of them were dressed in the latest fashions. This week, it was high-waisted trousers and cropped jackets with shoulder pads, a sort of retro eighties look that wouldn’t pass muster at a downtown shopping mall, but signified the wealth of the demons. Only the most powerful in Hell could afford to look that trashy.

To Elise’s left stood a woman that appeared mostly human. She was old, with a heavily lined face and tight white curls. She wore a tan pantsuit. Her long fingers were curled around a sign with a number on it, and she watched the proceedings with hunger in her eyes. Not greed, but actual hunger. Elise could sense the sparks of it within her.

To her right squatted another demon that could have passed for a woman, were she to stand upright rather than dragging her callused knuckles along the ground. The greenish tinge to her skin was also a dead giveaway. She wasn’t native to Dis—she was more likely something that had been born of an Earth spirit and immigrated.

“Name them for me,” Elise said, affixing her gaze to the stage. “The others.”

Devadas glanced around at the demons surrounding them. “The House holders?”

“Yes,” she said.

He swallowed audibly. It was quiet in the auction square, despite the number of people there; a frightened hush had fallen over them all under the watchful eye of the fissure, and nobody dared speak more than it took to complete their transactions.

“Gretchen,” he said, indicating the old-looking woman. “Her House is to the east, on the edge of the wastelands.”

“Does she have any influence in the Palace?” Elise asked.

“No, she withdrew from the Council some decades back and never reasserted control.”

“And?”

Devadas lowered his voice and leaned in close. “What else is there to know? She’s a recluse. She doesn’t keep an army in her House—only as many brute guards as it takes to keep her slaves and walls held. She relies primarily on witches for protection.”

“When she was on the Council, was she important? Would she have been involved in the Palace defenses?” Elise asked.

“No.”

No knowledge, no army—not interested.

Elise nodded to the squat, troll-like woman. “That one?”

“Nivue. Lives in Phlegethon, actually. I’m surprised to see her here.”

Which meant that she also wouldn’t know the Palace’s weaknesses.

Elise’s eyes swept over the crowd as the bidding on the current batch of slaves was completed. They had been sold to a tall, slender man that looked very much like the iron trees decorating the streets: brittle, angular, skin blacker than pitch. He wore no robes to hide his unnaturally gaunt form. He didn’t seem to be concerned with fashion, Earth or Hell. He had just purchased four women.

“That one?” Elise asked.

“The Dark Man isn’t a House holder,” Devadas said. He slipped behind Elise, almost as if he were trying to hide behind her. “He’s a wanderer.”

“Then where does he keep the slaves?”

“He doesn’t keep them.”

Elise watched the women march off the edge of the stage. One of them was sobbing, shoulders shaking, but the others were silent and resigned. The Dark Man didn’t look like a butcher or a tanner. They were going to be used for some other purpose. Something that didn’t require keeping slave quarters.

Her stomach churned. “Not my problem,” she muttered, returning her attention to the stage as another group was brought up. Three men, one woman. “Not my problem…”

Devadas’s tongue flicked against her ear. “What do you say, Father?”

She elbowed him, and not gently. “I wasn’t speaking to you. And don’t call me that in public.”

“My deepest apologies.”

Elise tried to pick out the sight of other significant figures in the crowd, but there were so few, and her eyes kept slanting to the left, where the slaves were being held for The Dark Man. Two of them were crying now. He circled them, performing a silent inspection. The way he moved was almost insect-like, though he only walked on two of his brittle legs.

The next group was purchased by a man with cloven hooves and thighs covered in silky feathers. Some kind of satyr, most likely, although the wattle trembling under his chin hinted at a heritage crossbred with something far more powerful.

Devadas supplied her with the information without needing to be prompted. “Vassago. He holds a House much smaller than yours just north of the Palace. He’s a record-keeper, a librarian. Typically keeps a dozen slaves on hand. He has a small army—about fifty strong, less than a century, although very highly trained. As he does much of his work outside of the Palace, he requires good protection.”

Fifty strong. Not as many as Elise would have wanted, but better than the nothing she had now.

“Librarian,” she echoed. “He would know a lot about the Palace, wouldn’t he?”

“The librarians are rumored to know
everything
about the Palace,” Devadas said.

When Vassago’s new slaves were marched off of the stage, they weren’t replaced. The crowd began to disperse quickly with mutters, leaving Elise and Devadas standing alone at the rear of an empty square.

Humans were loaded into carts. Doors slammed, chains rattled, and wooden wheels groaned as they began to move.

“Was that all?” Elise asked. They had only auctioned off thirty or so people.

Devadas twisted his hands together, gazing up at the fissure. “Imports have been increasing in light of the war topside, but few are in condition for the usual reasons we auction mortals. Most are going to immediate processing.”

Processing
. The slaughterhouses. Elise glared up at the fissure, but she couldn’t see it through the smoke.

“But troop movements have been slowing,” she said. “How many humans could they be bringing down?”

“The spoils of war are being brought down by the usual means. They are brought through portals to Malebolge or Phlegethon and carried here.” Devadas cringed at her look, like he expected her to strike him. “It’s
war
, Father.”

A war she fully intended on stopping, no matter how many fiends and slaves ended up tied around her neck.

“Show me where Vassago lives,” Elise said.

It took
almost
an hour for Elise to realize that she had been followed out of the auction square. Normally, she would have been alert enough that she would have sensed the minds of her pursuers before they were even within viewing range. People trying to be sneaky gave off outrageously obvious mental signals. But she had been leading Devadas away from the square thinking about the slaves that had been purchased by The Dark Man. She didn’t hear them coming until they were already picking up their pace to intercept.

Elise glanced at Devadas first, trying to see if he was alert, if he might be an asset in the fight to come. He was withdrawn and fretting. Not enough time to warn him.

She listened to the footsteps—it sounded like four creatures, perhaps five, and moving quickly.

Ten yards away, five yards away.

There was nobody else in sight. Not a chance that they were there for anyone but Elise.

“Watch yourself,” she told Devadas, drawing her pistol from the small of her back.

He gave her a startled look. “What do you mean?”

Elise whirled and raised the gun in a smooth motion.

The demons approaching them looked human for the most part, although the waxen texture of their skin and gashed mouths gave them away. They wore the livery of another House—not the black Palace garments, but red robes tied with black cord.

Corporeal nightmares. Five of them. Elise wasn’t equipped to handle nightmares.

Damn.

Elise let her power flare as she had in the House of Abraxas, letting her skin glow and her energy leak. “Don’t come any closer,” she said in a booming voice that echoed over the street. It should have worked on nightmares—they were Yatam’s descendants and just as awed by the sight of the Father as anything else.

But they kept running at her.

She fired at the first one without any time to aim. The shot went wild. It missed the nightmare in the front and hit the woman behind him instead. It sank into her face, leaving a wound with ragged edges. But the injury didn’t last long. Even as Elise watched, the skin sealed shut around the bullet wound.

And then the nightmares were on top of them.

Two of them seized Elise’s arms, wrenching them behind her back. She heard a clatter of metal.

Handcuffs?

She scissor-kicked the third as he rushed her, using the grip on her arms as leverage. She had enough momentum to flip backwards, over her captors, and land on the street behind them.

Elise grabbed their heads and smashed them together.

An electric sizzling noise reached her ears. She turned to see another nightmare holding a black box—not a gun, but something long and square. Lightning arced from the metal prongs at the end, dancing in snakelike cords.

A Taser.

She fired the gun at his hand twice, trying to hit the device and break it. She missed. The bullets smacked into the building behind him.

“Fuck it,” she grunted, tucking the pistol away.

The nightmare swung it at her, and she ducked under it, pushing off of her rear foot to drive her shoulder into his gut. He grunted, absorbing the impact of the blow without staggering. He drove the bony spike of his elbow into her back.

Elise hit the ground. She felt a boot connect with the back of her head—not nearly as much of a worry as the growing sound of electricity above her.

Twisting onto her back, she flipped onto her feet again.

He thrust the Taser at her, and she leaped away, watching its prongs come within inches of her stomach. The sight brought sweat to the back of her neck. She had used electricity before to deliberately injure herself and knew that a strong enough shock could drop her like nothing else could.

The nightmare swung again. She slammed her forearm into his, knocking him off-target.

Elise wrenched the Taser out of the nightmare’s grip and shoved it in his mouth.

She hadn’t used such a device before, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how it operated. Push the button. Watch the fireworks. A low buzz crackled through the air, muffled by spongy cheeks. The nightmare somehow screamed around the Taser. It was an ugly, gurgling noise.

It exploded into a sticky smoke that reeked of brimstone.

Elise didn’t wait to see if it might return to its corporeal form. She swung the Taser, still electrified, at the next nightmare.

Her close-range combat skills were far better than her abilities with a gun. She buried it in the nightmare’s gut and watched it dissipate, too. The scraps of remaining ichor splashed at the ground and vanished at the contact.

“Help!” Devadas cried. The useless fuck had fallen to the sidewalk, arms covering his head as another demon kicked and stomped at him.

Elise rolled her eyes and jammed the Taser in its back. It disappeared as quickly as the first two had. It also had a Taser, which clattered to the ground at her feet.

There were still two remaining—but they were backing away now, eyes wide and hands raised.

“What do you want from me?” Elise asked, holding one Taser in each hand. “Who sent you?”

They turned and fled.

Devadas picked himself up slowly, coiling his tail tightly around him. Even upright, he was still tiny and shrunken with fear, barely to her shoulders. “Insanity,” he groaned, holding his ribs. He was covered in welts that would soon become terrible bruises. Unlike the nightmares, he was very corporeal and had plenty of bones to break. “Assault on another demon within blocks of the market. In the days of the Council, that
never
would have happened.”