The Darkest Gate (27 page)

She limped into the kitchen and took one of James’s dish towels out of the drawer by the sink, where he always kept them. The spider bite burned like a cigarette jammed into her thigh.

“We have three major problems,” Elise said, wetting down the towel and pressing it to the wound. “First: We just killed the spider guarding James, and Mr. Black is still out there, so he could jump on us at any moment. Second: We have to kill the Night Hag. And third: She’s about a half mile under the city, so we have to get in and out without dying.”

To Anthony’s credit, he barely blinked. “Okay. We’ll go together.”

She lifted the rag to inspect her wound. The flesh was shiny red in the center where her skin sloughed away. She squeezed bloody water into Stephanie’s stainless steel sink and wetted it down again.

“You can’t fight like that,” James said.

“I just need bandages. Anthony, wake Betty up. Tell her we’re getting out of here.”

He looked startled at the order. “Betty? Really?”

“We’re not leaving her alone.” Elise cast a disdainful glance around the kitchen. James might have organized it, but everything else was obviously Stephanie’s doing. Betty was right. The house reeked of bitch. “Where’s the bathroom?”

James pointed her down the hall. She limped through the formal dining room and helped herself into the guest bathroom. They had seasonal towels and decorative soaps in the shape of frogs. She grimaced.

“Just let me heal you,” James said from outside the door with exasperation. “This is ridiculous.”

She hopped onto the edge of the countertop. There was no bathtub where she could rinse her leg off; they had opted for a glass block shower instead. “I would need an antivenin before you could heal it properly. Tylenol? Advil?”

He opened the medicine cabinet and tossed her a bottle. She turned it over to read the label. Percocet. Nice.

She chewed a couple of pills and palpated the edges of the wound with her fingertips. It felt like getting bitten anew. James watched her splash water onto the wound with a deep frown.

“If you say ‘I told you so,’ I’m morally obligated to slap you,” Elise said.

He threw his hands in the air. “What’s the point? You won’t listen to me. You turned to demons for help and won’t let me heal you, so obviously you don’t want anything to do with me these days!”

“You’re the one who decided to move away from the studio we bought—together—without telling me. When you try to decide which one of us doesn’t need the other anymore, you should think about that. Where are your bandages?”

“We don’t have any.”

“How can you not…? Never mind. Old t-shirt?”

James left and returned a moment later with a Motion and Dance polo shirt and a pair of scissors. Elise cut it into strips and bound her leg. The painkillers were starting to take the edge off.

“I want to say, for the record, I think—”

She held up a hand to cut him off. “Does Stephanie make you happy?”

“We just killed a daimarachnid behind my house and are about to attack a demonic overlord. Is this the time for such a conversation?”

“Yes.”

Anger flashed across his face. “Well, believe it or not, I don’t have to confer with you to make every decision. So tell me what you want to hear, Elise. Do you want me to say that she makes me miserable? Would that satisfy you? Because you seem to have this sadistic urge to make me suffer alone, and if telling you that will make you leave me to live my life, then so be it!”

The question that had been bothering her for weeks—months—leaped out before she could give it a second thought.

“Why aren’t I enough?”

His face was inscrutable. “What?”

Elise shrugged and focused on cutting more strips. “You’re all the companionship I’ve ever needed. Going to college, getting a job, trying to make other friends… it kept me busy when I wasn’t hunting anymore. But I don’t need Betty or Anthony. I don’t need
any
of it.”

Just you
.

The last part was left unspoken, but it hung between them. He swallowed hard. “When you went missing over a decade ago—when the coven summoned me to find you—I had a life of my own. I had a home and plans to marry. Do you ever think about that?”

Anthony’s open, imploring face came to mind.
Do you ever think about the future?

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Well, I do. I’m almost forty. I can’t get back all those years I’ve lost. You don’t want a spouse? A home? Children? Fine. But most people don’t find comfort in a splatter of blood and the company of demons. Some of us need other people. Intimacy. A real life.” He waved a hand at the house surrounding them. “And while you’re seeking satisfaction at the end of a sword, I…” He finally noticed her expression and trailed off. “I’m sorry. I forgot you can’t—you know.”

Her mouth twisted. “Anthony asked me about…” Elise mulled the words over. Just thinking about it made her sick again. “Marriage. Kids.”

“After three months of dating? Ambitious.” He made it sound like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling. “Does he know?”

She washed her hands in the sink with soap and water, then swung her leg to test mobility. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. She couldn’t expect anything better. She also couldn’t seem to meet James’s gaze.

He stepped forward, reaching out to touch her shoulder, but changed his mind. He sagged against the counter beside her instead.

“Death’s Hand killed me, Elise. When I think back on that night—hell, on the thousands of nights like that one—I feel my age. You will not be able to save me every time. We were right to retire.”

She tipped her head back to study him in the mirror. His reflection wasn’t nearly as tired or aged as hers, even though she was twelve years younger. “You were the one who wanted to do it again.”

“Once. Just once. Only because we needed to.”

“Once for you, maybe. But that once was enough to ruin everything for me. I don’t have any choice now. Everyone knows where I am, and Mr. Black has taken everything.” She stuffed her hands under her arms, hugging her ribs tight. Her feet dangled over the side of the counter. “I can’t get out of this. Not anymore.”

“He hasn’t taken your friends. Or me.”

“No. You did that yourself.” James flinched as though she had punched him. A sick sense of satisfaction resonated through her. “So… does Stephanie make you happy? Really?”

“Yes.” He almost sounded sure of himself. “Yes. She does.” James brushed the braid over Elise’s shoulder, and his fingers paused on her skin. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but the sentiment stuck in his gaze without making it to his lips.

“Fine,” she said after a protracted silence. “Good. I’m happy for you.” She didn’t bother making it sound like she meant it.

“What is that, Elise?”

She had to twist around and look at her reflection to see what he meant. She had forgotten about the Night Hag’s brand on her shoulder. It had mostly healed and left a fresh pink circle marked with eight radiating lines.

She didn’t have time to answer. Someone knocked at the door, and James dropped his hand.

The door opened another few inches, and Anthony’s reflection joined theirs. “Betty’s awake,” he said. “We can go.”

Elise’s leg buckled under her when she jumped off the counter, but she ignored James’s attempt at giving her a hand. “Great. We’ll take the Jeep.”

“Family field trip,” James muttered. “What joy.”

G
etting into the
Warrens was the easy part. Craven’s was mostly empty in the afternoons other than the demon employees, who weren’t surprised to see four heavily-armed humans march through on a mission. They did, however, give them a very wide berth. Nobody tried to stop them as they ascended to David Nicholas’s former office.

His door placard was conspicuously missing, which left a blank beneath the “general manager” sign. Elise felt a faint twinge of guilt—but only a twinge. She made sure it was empty before letting everyone inside.

Where his office had once been filled with trash and bowls of masticated chewing tobacco, now it was nothing but a cavernous room overlooking the game floor. She found a light switch behind the desk. The overhead fluorescents cast the room in harsh blue light. “What is this place?” Betty asked. Going on the offensive had put a pink glow on her cheeks and a gleam in her eye.

“This is where the manager worked. There’s a back path down to the club here.”

Anthony cupped his hands around his eyes to peer at the tables on the floor. The dealers must have known David Nicholas was gone. They chatted and smoked around empty tables with their uniforms undone. “Where’s the manager now?”

Elise glanced at James. He was flipping through his Book of Shadows and pretending not to listen.

“I killed him.”

Betty’s mouth opened in an “o” of surprise.

A quick search of David Nicholas’s desk yielded a key ring and a dusty flashlight. She unlocked the door he used to get to Eloquent Blood, propped it open with her foot, and studied each of her friends as they passed through. They didn’t look like much of a team. Anthony was greasy and exhausted. Betty wheezed when she walked. And James was still pretending to be absorbed in his Book of Shadows. She wasn’t much better. She couldn’t put any weight on her bitten leg.

They made it halfway down the stairs to Blood without seeing anyone. When they passed the ground level, Neuma rushed toward them.

Her shorts and pink tank top were so different from her normal clothes that Elise didn’t recognize her until she smiled. She wasn’t even wearing makeup. “Elise!” The half-succubus suddenly noticed everyone else, and her smile faded. “What’s going on?”

In the corner of Elise’s vision, Anthony had gone rigid. Even in her lazy day clothes, Neuma’s sex appeal was enough to instantly decimate the brain cells of any red-blooded human in her vicinity. Fortunately, she didn’t have the charm turned on.

There was no point in lying. “I’m going to kill the Night Hag.”

Her face went slack with fear. “No—oh, no, you can’t do that!”

“I’ve got two swords, two witches, and a shotgun. I’m not feeling bad about my odds,” Elise said. Betty grinned at being included in the list of weapons.

“It’s not like that!” Neuma grabbed Elise’s hands and lowered her voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “You’re
branded
.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Even if she doesn’t kill you on sight, which she totally can, the Night Hag owns
everything
in the city. You know what happens if she dies? Have you seen what happens in a territory without an overlord?”

She freed her hands. “Consider this fair warning. It’s about to get ugly. You can stick around to deal with the fallout, or you can run.”

The bartender glanced nervously at the others again. “Been nice knowing you, hot stuff.”

Anthony watched her ass as she fled up the stairs. Betty smacked him in the arm, and James coughed into his hand.

“Come on,” Elise said.

It wasn’t much farther to the club. There were no waitresses in sight to distract Anthony, and the cleaning crew was absent from the floor as well. Their shuffling footsteps echoed. “Nobody here? This will be easy,” Anthony said with a nervous chuckle.

Elise wasn’t as optimistic. They would only get as far as the Night Hag wanted them to go. She had to have realized her daimarachnid guard was dead and connected it with Nukha’il’s failure to return. If she was letting them pass unobstructed, it was because she wanted it that way. But she didn’t need to scare everyone by saying it.

“Stay close.”

The elevator into the Warrens stood open. The bulb had even been replaced. It didn’t flicker anymore.

“So what’s the plan?” Anthony asked as they approached it.

Elise blinked. “Plan?”

He gave that nervous laugh again. It was starting to get annoying. “It’s not like we’re going to walk into some demonic overlord’s evil underground lair and expect to kill it without a plan… right?”

“Actually…”

“Just a moment, please,” James said. He led Elise around the corner of the DJ booth. He glanced at the place the cage had stood the night before and pulled a face. “I know you didn’t want me to say that I told you so—”

“And I still don’t.”

He folded his arms tight across his chest. “I know what that scar on your shoulder means.” The brand ached as though it knew they were talking about it. “You can’t confront the Night Hag like that. She can kill you with a thought.”

“I know. That’s why I thought we would piggyback.”

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?”

They hadn’t joined in an active bond since the spring, when Elise used their shared power to exorcise a child. It made both of them stronger, but only briefly. And sharing their powers always came with the risk of burnout.

“I’m not sure it will even work when I’m branded,” she admitted. “But having an aspis is supposed to protect me from things like getting killed with a thought, so it’s all I have. If it doesn’t work, this could be a really short fight.”

“We don’t know if joining while you’re branded will make you impervious to her, or make her impervious to us.”

“I know.”

He grimaced. “Then I won’t do it.”

She massaged her temples. Pressure was gathering in her forehead, and she wasn’t sure if it was because they were so close to the Warrens or because James was stressing her out. “I know you’re mad at me…”

“That’s a word for it.”

“But what other choice do we have?”

Elise glanced around the corner. Betty and Anthony were just a few feet away, pretending not to listen. When they realized she saw them, they turned away with nearly identical expressions.

“I’ll do my best to shield you, but it’s too dangerous to piggyback. I’m sorry, Elise.” James marched toward the elevator. She had no choice but to follow him.

Fitting four adults into a small metal cage was cozier than Elise liked to get, but with awkward maneuvering, they managed to shut the door and flip the lever.

Something hard and intangible pushed against the back of her skull as they descended. Even the Percocet haze couldn’t block it out. A sense of unease crept upon her. The pressure in her skull was growing stronger, and she thought she recognized it now.