The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1) (54 page)

Elise gripped her chain of charms. “You’re awfully confident you would win.”

“Keep that mouth shut, kopis, or I’ll rip it from your face. Remember who is branded by whom! Now. We have two things to take care of. Firstly…” She lifted a hand. Elise tensed.

Thom stepped forward to offer Elise an envelope. Her skin crawled when she took it.

There was cash inside. She took the time to count it without caring if it was rude to do so. “Five hundred dollars? I brought you a semi full of angelic artifacts.”

“No, you brought a semi
partly
filled with angelic artifacts. That’s a failure in my book. Don’t pull faces; you can earn more—much more. I’m not done with you yet.”

Elise stuffed the money in her back pocket. At least it was more than David Nicholas had tried to pay her. “What else?”

A smile grew on the Night Hag’s lips. It wasn’t a happy smile, and it made her gut clench like she was going to throw up again.

“The second thing, yes. Finish David Nicholas.”

He groaned.

“Nightmares can’t be killed,” Elise said.

“Exorcise him. Send him back to Hell. Let him float in a mire of souls for a few hundred years.”

Even though Thom didn’t move or speak, Elise suddenly felt compelled to look at him. Indeed, his absolute stillness was what drew her attention. His eyes glimmered. They were completely black, from pupil to iris and consuming the whites.

She had exorcised nightmares before and would do it again. But she didn’t want Thom to see her do it.

Elise thought of her empty checking account. The insurance company. Her landlords.

“Fine,” she said, unspooling the charms from around her neck as she stood.

She considered David Nicholas at her feet. This was the creature that had irritated her like a fly she couldn’t swat for months. He had refused to pay her. Treated her like shit. Abused his employees. Gathered his friends, jumped her in a parking lot, and tried to beat her to death.

He twisted, rolled over, and oozed a few inches to the right. His body left an imprint of blood and ichor. A fingerprint of misery.

A single eyeball rolled in the mass that was his skull. She thought it was glaring at her.

“Hurry up,” snapped the Night Hag. “I have better things to do than watch this.”

Elise wrapped the chains around her fist, then drew one of the falchions on her back and rested the flat of the blade against him. He thrashed weakly. “
Crux sacra sit mihi lux
,” she said, closing her eyes and focusing on her other sense. Those shattered yellow teeth were burned in her skull. “
Non draco sit mihi dux.
”

A light flared through her eyelids. The St. Benedict charm had illuminated.

She reached out with her mind to grasp the sense of the nightmare in front of her—a once-powerful demonic force that had begun fading like a dying heartbeat. He fought, of course. They always did.

Elise gripped him tighter. The mass on the floor grunted, bubbled, and fell silent.

“
Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana
.” A shriek. A twitch. “
Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas
.” Elise envisioned the gates to the infernal planes, and all the pain that would be waiting for him there. “Return to the Hell in which you belong, David Nicholas. Begone.”

It wasn’t as much of a struggle as it should have been. The light flared brighter for an instant, blotting out the shadow David Nicholas cast upon her senses. But when she opened her eyes, all that remained in front of her was the ichor stain. Her charms were smoking.

He was gone.

“The flame of a thousand years quenched in an instant.” The Night Hag grinned. “Fantastic.”

Elise sheathed her sword and stood, trying not to look at Thom even though she could feel him watching. She shook the charms loose from her hand and hung them around her neck again. “Five hundred dollars won’t last long.”

“Yes, yes. David Nicholas’s suffering has put me in a good mood, so I’ll send along your winnings from the cage fight. Does that mollify your greedy soul?” She didn’t wait for an answer before waving her hand again. “Get out of my sight.”

Thom glided to the door, and Elise followed him. She felt odd without David Nicholas’s taunts to follow her—odd, but satisfied.

The Night Hag called out.

“Remember, kopis. If you piss me off, that will be you next time.”

And with that friendly reminder, Thom closed the doors.

She strode briskly toward the elevator.

Thom stepped close, blocked her path, and stared at her with gleaming eyes. No, not at her—at her charms. “Interesting,” he said.

“I want to go home.” She took a quick step back when he reached for the chains. “I told you not to touch those again.”

His hand dropped. “I suppose I would be defensive if I had a critical piece of angelic ruin around my neck as well.”

Elise clenched her fists.

He knew.

The soapy white stone was the size of her thumbnail, suspended between an ankh and a Star of David, and completely innocuous. There was no way to tell that it was part of the bowl she had retrieved for Mr. Black a decade before. A kopis might have recognized it, if he knew what he was looking at, but a witch?

“Have you told her?” she asked.

“No. But she will seek it when her gate does not work.”

“You know, when I was in Mr. Black’s penthouse, there was a map of old mine shafts,” Elise said. “He’s found a way into the Warrens. The gate isn’t safe here. She shouldn’t assemble it.”

“Interesting. But hardly my concern.”

“Why did you send me there if you don’t care?”

He bent down to whisper in her ear. “Because I wanted to see what you would do.” His mild tone sent shivers down her spine.

She stepped around him and set a fast pace to the elevator. She hated having that witch behind her, but her urge to leave overruled everything else. He was so quiet at her back that she thought he had fallen behind, but when she turned to shut the elevator door, he side-stepped in before she could close it.

Thom pulled the lever. The elevator lurched into motion. He never stopped staring at her.

They ascended slowly, inch by inch, and the rock slid past them outside the cage. The lone bulb flickered. It cast strange shadows on Thom’s face, making him look more like a statue than a human.

Her back hit the railing. She didn’t realize she had moved away from him.

“Careful,” he said in that mild voice.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

Elise’s hand tightened on her mother’s cross, where it dangled beside the charm of St. Benedict. “Like you’re going to eat me.”

He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his slacks. Jutted his hip to the side. Tilted his chin. It was a look of pure seduction, but those eyes—those black eyes—completely ruined it. “Would you prefer this?”

She drew her sword in response.

The elevator shuddered. The light went out.

Her heart pounded and her nerves rang like a cracked bell struck with a mallet. It lasted only a second, maybe two.

When the light came back on, Thom had vanished.

Elise whirled, searching for him in the little six foot by six foot box. There was nowhere to hide. He had transported himself away again.

The lift stopped, and she kept her sword at the ready as she opened the door and moved into the hall behind the DJ booth. Someone had turned off the house lights in Blood again. Only a thin neon strip by the floor lit her path.

She couldn’t see Thom, but he spoke. His voice came from the end of the hall. The only way out.

“Accelerated heartbeat. Vasoconstriction. Auditory exclusion. Loss of complex motor control.” He gave a low chuckle. “I see how you move, hunter, I read your body signs. That is fear. Arousal.”

Another step forward. There was nowhere else to go.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I said I’m leaving, and I’ll go through you if I have to.”

“It takes so little to disturb humans. Nothing more than a few tricks of light. After what I heard of you, I expected you to be different.”

Elise reached the end of the hall. She eased around the corner, back to the wall, and faced the DJ booth.

Nothing.

“But you are what you are. There’s no mistaking that.” Thom’s voice dropped, assuming that husky tone again. “I need you, and I will have you.”

She didn’t bother responding. Instead, she drew her other sword and stepped around the DJ booth.

Thom lounged by the cage, studying his fingernails. He didn’t look the same as he had in the earth below. The shift was subtle, but distinct. A strange glow had come over his flesh, and his hair had turned to ink. It was as though he was airbrushed smooth, a dream walking on earth, and it was hard to look at him for very long.

“What the hell are you?” she whispered.

“That isn’t relevant. What matters is that I know who you are.” He pointed to her gloved hand without touching it, and his lips formed a single word: “
Godslayer
.”

Elise stiffened. “Where did you hear that?”

Thom pointed to the sky.

There was nothing above him but a roof painted black, smeared with sticky fluids that might have been cooking grease or blood or both. But she knew what he meant. And she felt cold, so horribly cold, like the chill that accompanied death had settled upon her.

Such knowledge was dangerous. Too dangerous.

Elise lunged.

The blade sliced through empty air. Thom darted to the side, and she spun and swung the sword again in a wide arc. But he was gone again, and again. Elise twisted and jabbed, sinking her falchion into nothing every time.

When she missed her third thrust, she unbalanced and staggered. Her left knee connected with the ground. The impact jolted up her hip.

Thom stood just out of reach, arms folded, completely composed. “You would kill someone for simply speaking that name.”

“I have before.”

“You could never kill me. You are weak.”

Elise gritted her teeth. She threw her entire body into her dive, slashing and swinging. Thom stepped aside. The breeze ruffled his hair. Jerking her second sword free, she brought them both in a high arc. Elise cut across his body.

He was suddenly on the bar, and she hadn’t seen him climb it. Elise leaped onto a chair, a stool, and onto his level.

Elise was a blur of motion as she moved on instinct. She had never been so fast in her life. But Thom was faster. She kicked glasses out of the way and they shattered on the floor. Another thrust. Another calm step back. Her swings were completely ineffective.

He landed on the floor again. She seized a bottle and jumped over him, knocked a table over, landed with a thud. She kicked the table toward him.

Thom moved just a tiny bit slower that time. It almost tripped him.

She rose to her knees and chucked the bottle at his head. It cracked into his shoulder, and he flinched—the barest reaction. Elise brought the glass bottle down like a club. She saw him duck out of the way. Another miss.

He spun and twisted behind her. He didn’t trip on the fallen table. She reached for him, flinging her free hand out, and her fingertips brushed silk.

She knew a moment before he disappeared again that he would reappear on the other side of the table.

Her sword was there when he stepped back.

Thom looked down at her fist pressed tight against his side. The blade jutted from his back.

Blood rushed in Elise’s ears, a roar of white noise that drowned out her breath. Satisfaction surged through her. She saw nothing but Thom’s pale, surprised face, and the genuine shock in his black eyes.

“Good,” he said, and her satisfaction vanished. Thom stepped away from her. The blade exited his body as smoothly as it had entered, and he didn’t show any signs of pain. Her fingers went slack with shock. She almost dropped her falchion. “Clean your blade if you want to keep it.”

When she didn’t immediately move, he plucked it from her unresponsive hand and wiped it off on his shirt. He lifted the sword to study it in the bar lights.

Once he was satisfied it was clean, he returned it to her. She missed twice before sheathing it.

“What are you?” she whispered again.

“I am very many things. I have been sent to assist you.”

“Sent by whom?”

He pointed to the ceiling again.

“You are not the only one who wants Him gone,” Thom said. “How do you kill something immortal? Truly immortal? When man has no weapon that can touch it, when no wound can injure it, when it possesses no soul to exorcise… what do you do?”

“You stay the fuck away. That’s what you do.”

“But there is a solution. An ugly solution, no doubt, something intolerably wrong—but you are the key. You are the—”

“Don’t say it again,” she interrupted.

Thom inclined his head in acceptance. “You have been marked as different. You must be able to kill that which cannot be killed. You are the one who will end Him.”

She shuddered, shutting her eyes to block out the sight of him. But that couldn’t block her memories. “I’ve tried before. I don’t know how.”

“Not yet,” he agreed, his voice heated. For the first time, she saw real emotion in him. It was uncomfortably similar to the desire in Anthony’s eyes when she stretched naked in his bed. “But you will. When you do…”

He leaned toward her as if for a kiss.

She didn’t wait to see what he had planned. Elise swung a hard right hook, and her fist landed on the wall. Thom was gone.

P
ART
F
IVE

Burn

JUNE 1999

M
r. Black was
not a good man, but he did have some honor—perverse as it may have been. Elise had told him she wanted to be there when he used the bowl, so he contacted her about it a few short weeks later.

The message arrived on her anonymous voicemail service, which she had just established using the money she earned for retrieving the bowl. She hadn’t even shared the number with anyone yet.

“Hello again, my dear,” said Mr. Black on the message. “I have put together a little something at my house using your kind donation to my private collection. Seeing as you expressed interest in it, I hope you’ll join me for the activation next Saturday. I’ll send a car. Don’t be a stranger.”