The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1) (51 page)

“It’s probably fine. I’ll take you back to Stephanie’s house once you’re done.”

Betty frowned. “You’re kind of pale.”

“I’m fine. Check the wards.”

Elise sat in the shade under the Motion and Dance sign as Morrighan and Betty made a last lap around the studio. She turned Mr. Black’s journal over in her hands, considering the smooth leather and gold foil pages. It shouldn’t have bothered her to see him beating his slaves; they were hardly her problem, and far from allies. But she couldn’t seem to shake the sound of him punching the shit out of an angel on his carpet.

She shook her head and opened the journal. Much of it was handwritten, but he had inserted a few loose pages from the typewriter. Every entry was signed with the letter “P.” She wondered what that name was supposed to indicate. A quick flip through the pages didn’t give her any answers.

The first two entries were dull. He had written a short description of his initial deals with Portia, and outlined plans to assemble his gate in one of her warehouses.

The third entry was much more interesting.

Goddamn bitch
, it said, as well as,
She stole my collection
. He could barely put together a complete sentence, and his anger turned into a rambling diatribe about legacy, failure, and dying.
What makes a kopis great? Or the greatest? What is my legacy? Nothing left behind… can’t die…

She skimmed the long, unbroken paragraphs of ranting until she reached something more coherent.

I have the artifacts. I have the angels to operate them. Why don’t I have the power to summon Him?

“Looks good!” Betty chirped from across the yard. “Thanks so much, Morr!”

“No problem. I’ll see you at the next esbat,” said the other witch. She raised her voice. “Bye, Elise!”

She didn’t look up from the journal. Elise turned to the very last entry, where a folded paper had been inserted between pages. She opened it. A single word was typed across the top in all caps:
GODSLAYER
.

A hot breeze ruffled the page. She smoothed it down with a shaking hand.

If I can’t have the gate, I’ll use the hag’s. And I’ll use that Godslayer bitch as God-bait. Maybe then it will work
.

A shadow fell across the entry. “Why the sour puss?” Betty asked, flopping to the grass. When Elise didn’t immediately respond, she lost her grin. “Okay, you can’t fool me. What’s wrong? What are you reading?”

Elise snapped the journal shut.

“Nothing. Are you ready to leave?”

Betty sighed. “Yeah. Sure.”

Elise took her chain of charms and twin falchions from the safe before leaving. She didn’t trust Morrighan’s new wards to protect them.

Betty was smart enough not to ask any questions as they drove out to Stephanie’s suburb. Elise brooded in silence, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

While waiting at a stoplight on Vista Boulevard, the brand on her shoulder flared with white-hot pain, startling her from her reverie.

An instant later, her cell phone rang. She answered it.

“Get to Eloquent Blood,” David Nicholas said.

“Why the fuck should I? You still haven’t paid me.”

“Night Hag said it’s my job to handle your payment. Yeah? You want money, you get down here now.”

He hung up before she could ask anything else.

“Who was that?” Betty asked.

Elise set the cell phone on the dash of her car. “Nobody important.”

Stephanie’s house was exactly what Elise expected. She lived in an unfinished development bordered by golf courses, where the water traps doubled as duck ponds and biking trails wove in and out of each carefully-manicured garden.

James enjoyed the cooling air of sunset from the front step of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac, which had perfect green grass and a white picket fence. Elise felt something unpleasant clench in her throat, like being choked from the inside. It looked like the kind of place people raised kids. Big yard. Quiet street. And James fit in perfectly.

He stood when they pulled into the driveway, brow pinched with concern.

“Don’t leave here until I get back. You hear me?” Elise told Betty. She didn’t bother turning off the car. There was no way in hell she would go inside that house.

Betty climbed out. “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

She shifted into reverse, but James stepped into the drive before she could leave. He had a book tucked under one arm. The Book of Shadows didn’t fit his cozy domestic image. “Are you making another move against Mr. Black?”

“No.”

He leaned on her door. “I should come with you.” There was a faint hint of scarring near his hairline. Where did he get that one? Elise couldn’t remember. They had gotten too many scars together to distinguish them.

She snagged the journal out of the backseat. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see. Anyway, I’m just running an errand. I’ll call you later.” She waited, and he didn’t move. “Let go of my door.”

He stepped back. Elise turned the car around and gunned it.

She couldn’t get out of suburbia fast enough.

Downtown Reno was dirty and cramped, as though every casino rejected by Las Vegas had banded together to struggle for survival on the banks of the Truckee River. Even at night, when the neon overwhelmed the stained faces of aging buildings, it didn’t look like somewhere that fun things could happen. But whether it was the sticky heat or Elise’s black mood, it looked even bleaker than usual.

She parked in a half-empty garage and walked down to Craven’s. Elise left her swords in the car, but wore her charms like a necklace. They jingled as she passed through a casino and down the alley to Eloquent Blood.

Blood’s layout had been changed that night. Not only had the dance floor been cleared out and replaced with a huge iron cage, there were none of the usual humans hanging around seeking a quick thrill with an incubus. The patronage was distinctly infernal. The demons that hid in the Warrens had come out for a night of fun—the ones that looked like mutated sheep, the amorphous black masses of flesh, and even a Fury so tall that its head would have hit the top of the cage.

Inside, a succubus stripped to the waist took blows from a half-snake demon. It was an ugly, mundane fight. Knuckles connected with face. Blood spattered. They grunted, ducked, dodged, and struck again. Fist against flesh made a sound like pounding into a hunk of meat.

The snake flung the succubus against the bars. The cage rattled, and the crowd roared.

Moving through the crowd, which occupied every floor of Blood, Elise watched money exchange hands with envy. A nightmare threw a wad of cash at his companion when the succubus dropped to the floor with watery blood pouring from her nose. Waitresses hurried around to take formal bets. So much cash in one place.

For once, there was nobody at the bar except Neuma, who wore liquid latex smeared across her breasts. She hurried to fill drinks and drop them on the trays of passing waitresses. Her eyes lit up when she saw Elise.

“Hey, hot stuff! I have something for you! Jump on over.”

Elise climbed to the other side of the bar. “What’s going on?”

“It’s our monthly cage fight night,” Neuma said, blasting beer into a stein and passing it to one of her waitresses.

“How did I not know about this?”

“You’re a human. No humans allowed.” She pinched Elise’s shoulder gently. “Now you’ve got the Night Hag’s mark, it’s an all-access pass to our events. Fun, huh? Here, pour a few drinks and I’ll grab your paycheck.”

Neuma passed a bottle of tequila to her, leaving Elise to quickly fill a few shots. She could see the edge of the stage from her position back against the wall, and another scream from the crowd cued her to look down and see David Nicholas throw the unconscious succubus over his shoulder. She was completely limp and bleeding freely from the face. Half-demon Gray were fragile creatures with virtually no ability to heal. That broken nose was probably a mortal wound.

The bartender bounced back with an envelope a minute later and stuffed it down Elise’s waistband. “Here you go. Gimme that back.”

Elise handed her the alcohol, fished the envelope out of her shorts, and broke the seal.

The check was written out in David Nicholas’s distinctively hideous handwriting. There was a cigarette burn on the corner. And the amount was for two hundred dollars—barely enough to fill Elise’s car with gas all month.

David Nicholas strutted on stage with a microphone. “That useless cunt is down for the count!” he announced to renewed shouts as the snake demon pumped her fists in the air. “Anyone want to take the lamia? Can you beat this bitch?” A scuffle broke out on the bottom floor. Someone shoved a red-fleshed aatxegorri to the front of the line, and he scaled the steps to the cage with a cackle.

David Nicholas thumbed through a roll of cash before flinging it on the crowd. It showered like confetti.

“I’m going to kill him,” Elise said.

Neuma’s eyes widened. “What? No—no! Don’t go down there!”

She ignored the bartender and vaulted over the bar, shoving her way downstairs as David Nicholas returned to his perch in the DJ booth.

He stepped in Elise’s path. “The fuck are you doing in my club? You got your money. Get out of here.”

“Where’s the rest?”

“What you see is what you get. Not happy? Then you should have negotiated terms. No agreement about pay, you get what I give you.”

Elise shoved her face into his. “I deserve more than this, and you know it.”

David Nicholas gripped her shoulder, digging a bony finger into the brand. It felt like having a knife driven into the bone. “Challenging me? Again?”

She hauled back and knocked him across the booth with her fist.

He sprawled atop the sound board. David Nicholas scowled without getting up. “I’ll tell the Night Hag,” he hissed, upper lip curling to bare teeth yellowed by time and tobacco.

“Tell her what? That you’re skimping out on my pay?”

“I’ll tell her that you’re violating the contract. The part that says you and me aren’t allowed to kill each other.”

“I got you those ruins, I made an appearance at that party, and if you don’t pay me—”

He sneered. “Nobody ever said how much money you get. You deal with it, or you don’t get paid at all. No complaints from me if you want to call this truce off. I’ll kill your aspis myself.”

She grabbed his shirt in both fists and dragged him to his feet, then slammed his back against the panel. Elise shoved her face close to his. “Say that again.”

“Whoa! Hang on there!” Neuma grabbed Elise’s arm. “Let him go, doll.” She lowered her voice. “People are watching. Calm down. Have a drink.” She pried one of Elise’s hands off of David Nicholas’s shirt so she could shove a bottle of vodka into it.

Elise released him. She itched to turn his face into a pulpy mess, but it wasn’t the time or the place. And he was right. She should have known better than to not declare the terms of her contract in the beginning. But two hundred dollars wasn’t going to cut it.

She glanced at all the money exchanging hands below. The aatxegorri was completely destroying the lamia, and people were getting rich on it. The snake demon wasn’t fast enough to withstand his bull-like strength, and he had already ripped open her tail with one of his horns. Elise had fought an aatxegorri before. They were hideous, but slow. She could outmaneuver them in her sleep.

She turned on David Nicholas. He raised his hands to defend himself, but she didn’t attack. “Let me take the next fight. Hell, the next dozen fights.”

He grinned. His split lip bled something black. “Why? Is it my birthday or something?”

“No, Elise, you don’t know what you’re volunteering for,” Neuma said. “Drink. Drink!”

She took a swig. It burned hot all the way into her stomach. “I’ll take the next few fights. You know I’ll kick ass. Nobody expects a female kopis, so you guys can collect on all the bets against me—and I get a percentage.”

“Deal!” David Nicholas said before Neuma could open her mouth again. “Here’s the rules: You get in the pen and fight until one of you isn’t standing. No killing.” His mouth twisted. “Unfortunately. You keep at it for five rounds… or whenever you’re kicked shitless and can’t get up. I’ll send you home alive with a cushy paycheck. A thousand bucks, if you win them all.”

A thousand dollars. Her head buzzed, and she wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or excitement.

“Neuma, get cloth bandages. Now,” she said, taking another drink. “And I want to take you in the ring, David Nicholas.”

Neuma ran off. He dragged on a cigarette she hadn’t noticed him lighting. “Fuck no. My life’s worth more than that. You can have five percent of the bets.”

“Fifty. I’m the one fighting.”

“Employees got to get paid. Ten.”

“Twenty-five, or I’ll go to the Night Hag and let her pick an amount. I wonder what she would think of this.”

His mouth twitched. He smashed the tip of his cigarette on the sound board. “Fine.”

She stripped off her jacket. Neuma returned, and Elise took her gloves off one at a time, replacing them with bandages around her knuckles. In the cage, the lamia crumpled, and a waitress dragged her out by the tail.

The crowd started to cheer as soon as David Nicholas leaped onto the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fight!”

“N
o humans.”

James squinted at the bouncer blocking the door to Eloquent Blood. It was almost twice his height and had to stoop to fit in the doorway. Thick tusks protruded from either side of its mouth. He thought it was a female, but it was hard to tell if sagging breasts were a sexual characteristic on demons or a racial feature.

“Pardon me?” he said, realizing he had been analyzing its exposed breasts for too long.

“No humans,” it repeated, barely able to articulate English words. It crossed its massive arms over its chest. Each one was as thick as his waist.

“But this is the human entrance to Eloquent Blood. It even says ‘humans.’”

“It’s a cage fight night. No humans. Too dangerous.”

James stepped back with a frown, tipping his glasses over his nose to study the alley entrance to Craven’s again. If there were no humans allowed in Eloquent Blood on the night of a cage fight, then what was Elise doing?