Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (8 page)

She took her son’s hand and was surprised to find that his palm was sweaty—he looked so calm. “You’ll be fine,” he said, squeezing her fingers tightly. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

She gave a shaky laugh. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

The corner of his mouth lifted and the corners of his eyes creased. A quiet Abram smile. “Let’s get down there.”

They stepped onto the bridge.

Rylie didn’t feel anything for the first step, or the second. By the third she became aware of the way that the black metal radiated heat through the soles of her sheepskin boots. The fourth was like stepping into warm, sludgy molasses.

She might have stopped or stepped back, but Abram kept going forward. With their hands joined, she had no choice but to stick by his side.

The air tightened around them as it slid up her calves, her thighs, her hips. It wasn’t liquid like an ocean tide. It was steel shackles. It clamped down on her ribs and squeezed the breath from her lungs.

Rylie shut her eyes and took the final step.

Time compressed. Her heart was beating too fast, her lungs fluttering with impossibly fast inhalations and exhalations. Her pulse throbbed in her temples. The wolf was momentarily smell-blind, and the loss of her most important sense peaked her panic.

It was hot. Too hot.

She tried to grip Abram’s hand tighter, but she couldn’t tell where he was. Everything was dark. Her hands were separate from her body. She had no feet or face or flesh.

Just as quickly as it had left her, sensation returned in a rush that overwhelmed her mind. It was still too dark to see, but she could hear—oh
God
, she could hear, and the air was filled with screams. The wolf knew what it sounded like when prey was dying, the way that it kicked and squealed, and this was nothing like that. It was a chorus of unending pain that wouldn’t be punctuated by merciful death. It was unnatural. Rylie dropped Abram’s hand to press her hands over her ears.

Heat washed over her skin. Dry air dried out her throat and made her eyes ache as they struggled to adjust to the dim lighting. She smelled sweet-fleshed meat. Not the smell of cooking beef or pork, but something much…stickier. It made her stomach turn with nausea almost as strongly as the overpowering stench of sulfur.

She didn’t like this—any of it—and neither did the wolf.

Rylie needed out.

She tried to backtrack, sliding her feet up the slick surface. She felt heavy and slow. The weight of her clothing seemed to have tripled.

Her heel caught the edge of the bridge. She flung out her arms, suddenly unbalanced—and Abram caught her wrist.

“Careful,” he said, and then he dissolved into a coughing fit.

Rylie froze and let Abram pull her back onto safety. She held his arm in both hands, probably too tightly, as she took her first clear look at the City of Dis.

The smoke spewed by the factories made it too hazy to make out much. The smog was tossed by wild gusts of wind that blasted red dust over Rylie’s jacket. It felt like sandpaper on her face. She was torn between shedding her winter clothes and pulling it tighter around her body, too hot for a coat yet too painful to expose skin.

She settled for lifting her hood and squinting against the dust. The black city was spread underneath them in jagged spires and fragmented neighborhoods. The streets were warped. Looking down made her dizzy because the crystal bridge that seemed so bright and shimmering from Earth was nearly transparent here, and it looked like she was walking on nothing.

Rylie couldn’t quite see the tower at the bottom of the bridge, but the occasional glimpses of a silhouetted obelisk were enough to make her start moving.

“It’s so much worse than I expected,” Abram rasped as they walked.

She couldn’t agree. The immense gravity, the brutal air, the smoke—all it needed was a few men with pointy red tails and it would be exactly what she had expected.

The walk down the bridge felt impossibly long. The city grew underneath them with every step, giving her a better view of all the mismatched buildings, the dirt and asphalt roads, the open fields that would have looked like farms if the soil hadn’t been so crimson. The tower finally peeked out of the smoke when they were halfway down. It was made of black brick that reflected no light, a flat rectangle topped by an iron spire. The floor where the bridge connected was entirely open aside from railings as thin and bent as spider legs.

They were almost there. They were almost off the bridge.

Rylie picked up her pace.

But then a pair of people stepped in their way, blocking the path at the very bottom.

They looked to be human enough, although Rylie had begun to mistrust her eyesight in that regard. She had encountered a few too many people that had turned out to bleed ichor. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction and she couldn’t pick up the scent of their flesh, only the scent of brimstone.

These people wore leather from head to toe: high-necked jackets with padded elbows, belts that hung heavy with shimmering gold charms, loose leather slacks, thick-soled boots. Veils covered their hair and jaws. There were red darts on the shoulders and hips of their uniforms. Both looked to be middle-aged and male. One had a beard halfway down his chest and the other was round enough that he looked like a boulder come to life.

Human or not, they looked convincingly intimidating. Abram stepped in front of Rylie.

“We’re here to see Elise,” he said.

After her moment of surprise faded, common sense took over. Rylie could heal almost anything these guards could inflict. Abram couldn’t. She pushed him aside gently.

The bearded guard gave her a skeptical look. “What’s your affiliation?”

“Affiliation?” she asked.

“Yeah, what’s your species and faction?”

Rylie frowned. “What are
you
?”

That seemed to be the wrong answer. Boulder Guy drew a hand from behind his back. He was holding an oversized Taser, the kind with a trigger that looked like it probably shot electrified spikes.

The wolf surged in her, responding to the unspoken threat.

Were they going to have to fight here, on a bridge with no railings and a thousand-foot drop off the side?

A woman spoke from behind the guards. “What’s going on here, guys?”

Beardy turned. “Intruders, ma’am.”

“Intruders?” The speaker strolled into view. It was Neuma, wearing a simple black mini-dress without shoes. She gave Abram a long, slow look from head to toe.

“We need to speak with Elise,” he said again. “The sooner the better.”

A lazy smile crossed Neuma’s face. “You want to talk with the prime minister? I can do that.” She waved the guards away. “Don’t worry about these puppies, boys. They’re with me.”

Neuma was not
a reassuring escort through the grounds of the Palace. She walked briskly without looking behind her to make sure they were following. Rylie kept stopping to look at stained glass windows, sconces carved out of bone, doorways that looked more like mouths wanting to bite. Only Abram’s nudges kept her from getting left behind.

The spiral path down the tower felt almost as long as the bridge had been. At least most of the walls were closed. Rylie shucked her jacket, folded it over her arm.

One of the open walls gave her a clear view of the Palace walls. The roads beyond were filled with tents—an encampment pressed against the battlements. Something big and black floated in the sky near the horizon.

“What is that?” Rylie asked.

“Kibbeth,” Neuma said. “Troop transport. Don’t worry, it’s going for another part of the fissure. We’ve got an eye on it.”

That almost made it sound like the thing was alive. Rylie was happy when they went down another floor and lost sight of it. “Where’s Elise?” she asked tentatively.

Neuma shot a glance over her shoulder, lips curved into a smirk, but didn’t respond.

They stepped out onto the bustling grounds of the Palace. Rylie could smell that most of the people walking along the black stone paths were human, but she had no idea what to make of the more exotic scents. So many of the creatures here smelled dry, dusty, ancient; others smelled like oozing sickness. Visually, she couldn’t tell most people in the crowd apart from one another. Most of them were in the black leather uniforms with red stripes. A few others were in street clothes, like anyone Rylie might run into back home. She figured that they had to be the humans until she passed a short man too close and got a noseful of brimstone.

Humans, demons. There was no distinguishing them.

Neuma led them around another tower toward a set of stairs sunk into the ground. Motion caught Rylie’s eye when they rounded the corner of the building, and she stopped in her tracks.

There was a garden between two of the structures, fenced off with more spidery iron that looked too fragile to support its own weight. The soft clay looked freshly tilled, watered, and labeled. Normal garden stuff, like they were preparing to grow pumpkins or something.

Except that each mound of earth had a human hand jutting out of it.

The fingers were spread wide, palms exposed to the sky. Each one had a slightly different skin color. One of them had manicured nails.

And they were…twitching.

Abram didn’t nudge her on this time. He had stopped to stare too.

Neuma noticed that she was alone halfway down the stairs and returned to Rylie. “Flesh gardens. Like ‘em?”

“Are there people under there?” Rylie asked.

“Wanna dig ‘em up and find out?”

The taste of bile welled up in the back of Rylie’s throat. “What is wrong with you people?”

“The problem’s thinking that we’re people at all.” Neuma’s tone wasn’t unkind, exactly. She slid a finger down Abram’s chest, from between his pecs to his navel, dropping off before reaching his belt. He was so stunned by the sight of the hands that he didn’t even react. “Look, those were left by the last guys. Me and Elise didn’t put them there. It’s not our style.”

“Why don’t you save them?” Rylie asked.

“This is the most humane way to leave them,” Neuma said. “Trust me. Still want to see the prime minister?”

The nearest hand strained toward Rylie, fingers swiping blindly through the air.

She covered her mouth with her hand, swallowed vomit that stung her sore throat, and followed Neuma down the stairs.

A few underground
paths and staircases later, they reached something that looked a lot like a throne room. High, arched beams crisscrossed the ceilings, each hung with velvet drapes that were long enough to brush the floor. The crimson banners were stamped with black X’s as tall as Rylie, and they fluttered in a wind that Rylie couldn’t feel. The flapping of cloth echoed in the silence.

A throne stood in front of a wall painted with a peeling mural. The seat was a stark black slab with a webbed iron back and toothlike spikes where the armrests should have been. Sitting on it would require extremely careful arrangement of limbs—and maybe full body armor.

Between the fiery light filtering through the frosted windows and the deep shadows behind the banners, the throne room was starkly beautiful. A work of art carved from gleaming obsidian and black opal.

Nails clicked against stone, and Rylie realized belatedly that Ace was chained near the throne. The pit bull had been given enough slack that he could pace back and forth across the end of the room, pink-lined ears perked and teeth bared in a growl. He had water in a crystal bowl and naked bones scattered around his bed.

Neuma all but skipped to the throne, keeping out of Ace’s biting range as she flopped onto the chair. She didn’t seem to be worried about the spikes. She placed her elbow between them without getting punctured, kicked her feet up on the other side, and gave a big smile. “You wanted to talk to the prime minister, and here I am.”

“You’re not the prime minister,” Abram said, his silver eyes flashing in the firelight.

“I am whenever Elise ain’t here, and I told you topside, she’s away on personal business.” Neuma flourished her hands. “But you got me. I’ve got all the authority she does, and I’m almost as sexy.”

Rylie’s heart twisted. She didn’t know this succubus, didn’t trust her. “When will Elise be back?”

“First day of next year,” Neuma said. “It won’t be long if you wait down here. Time’s been shifting between dimensions a lot lately. I’d bet if you wait about four or five days, January’ll come before you know it.”

By January, Abel would be so far gone that there would be no trail to follow. Rylie’s eyes stung. She blinked back tears. “I
really
need to talk to Elise.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“It’s personal.”

“Ain’t it always. Look—here, come on, sit up front with me. I don’t wanna have to yell at you from across the room.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Rylie and Abram stepped through the fluttering banners. There were tables and benches in front of the throne. Rylie sat down and set her jacket next to her.

“There,” Neuma said. “Better, huh?”

Abram stood behind Rylie, a warm presence at her back that smelled of annoyance. He wasn’t happy with any of this. Ace didn’t seem to be happy with it either. He had paced to the end of his chain until the collar dug into his neck.

“You’re wasting our time like this, leading us so deep into the Palace. How much time have you wasted on Earth? Is it deliberate?” Abram asked.

“Yeah, it’s deliberate. Not the time wasting. The room.” Neuma jerked her thumb toward the mural behind her. “This throne room ain’t been used in a long damn time. Way before the Treaty of Dis. You know what that is?” Rylie’s hesitation was apparently answer enough, because the demon explained. “It was a pact between angels, demons, and humans to end the First War. It kept angels outta Hell, demons outta Heaven, and it created kopides—demon hunters—just like His Royal Hotness here.” She smirked at Abram. “And after the Treaty, Dis’s monarchy was replaced by councils and shit. Elected officials. No monarchy, no need for a throne room.”

“But now you’re ruling,” he said.

“We moved back into this room because it’s safe,” Neuma said. “Way back in the past, warlocks magicked it so that nobody can listen in on conversations here. If shit goes down, this is where you want to be when it does.”