Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5) (10 page)

He used his grip to free himself from the werewolf and take a step back.

“One condition,” Abram said, breathing hard. “I’m only standing with you as long as it doesn’t hurt Rylie.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed, mouth twisting with distaste. “She’s no better than Abel. Maybe even worse.”

Abram gave him a blank look. That was his only requirement—that his mother was unharmed. Levi wouldn’t understand. He hated most of his family, begrudged them their affiliations with the Apple, even when he had ended up joining the organization himself. But Levi didn’t need to understand why Rylie was so important to Abram. He just had to agree.

“Okay,” Levi said. “Rylie’s not hurt. That’s fine. How about Abel?”

Abram didn’t even hesitate. “Abel’s made his bed. He’s fair game.”

ELISE BATHED IN
her rooms, alone and in silence. She had moved her guards out of the antechamber and into the hallway, putting walls between their beating hearts and her thirsting mouth. Keeping temptation out of reach.

Outside in the courtyard, Sallosa’s surviving attendants were being publicly executed and their heads mounted on the battlements. Elise wasn’t going to fuck around with the House of Volac anymore. If they were on Belphegor’s side, then so be it. She’d find someone else to run the flesh farms.

Normally Elise would have performed the executions herself, but she couldn’t let anyone see her until her wounds healed. She settled for enjoying the muffled sounds of their screaming through her windows.

Meanwhile, she hid, she licked her wounds, she tried not to lose her temper more than usual.

It wasn’t easy, but a hot bath helped.

Clean water was a luxury in the City of Dis. She was the only one who had access to potable water for anything aside from cooking or drinking. Selfish, maybe, but she had taken on a job with so many downsides that she didn’t see any reason to deny herself one of the few benefits.

She’d had the water carried to her rooms by her guards. It was heated with steam piped from within the ground below the tower, making it almost as hot as a kettle set to boil.

It felt incredible.

Ace snuffled along the edge of the bathtub, interested in the scent of her soap. She lifted a dripping hand. He shied back from the gesture. Ace still remembered being hit as a puppy, and he didn’t like hands. “Sorry,” she murmured as he slunk away.

Elise sponged her chest gently, dabbing around the edges of the stab wound. It had bruised—a strange sight on her skin. The breastbone was closing in on itself, but the skin was not, and she could see all the way down to glistening white through the cut, especially now that the flow of blood had slowed.

Sallosa’s flamberge had done a lot of very real damage to her. “The fucker,” she muttered, grimacing as she rolled the sponge down to the small of her back, feeling the tender spot where she had been Tasered. Sallosa had been prepared.

Worse, the only place that they could have gotten a Taser that functioned in Hell was by stealing one from the Palace.

One more worry to pile on top of the avalanche of others.

Ace turned a few circles by the door before curling up with his tail over his nose. He would protect her while she relaxed. If anyone broke into her rooms, she could trust that he would bite them long before they attacked her in the bath. She couldn’t trust the demons of Hell, but she could trust in Ace’s ill temper.

She held her breath and slipped under the surface of the bath, letting it fill her ears, mute the world, and encase her in weightless warmth.

The soap made her bathwater nearly opaque, allowing her to see only the vaguest outlines of her belly, thighs, and feet. It wasn’t as murky as the Amniosium in Malebolge. It also didn’t adhere to her the way that fluid had.

There had been so many voices inside the pit of nightmares. So many lives and memories. It had rolled down her sinuses, tasting of meat gone foul, a slurry of bodies and bones and souls.

Elise had felt elbows and feet brush her as she swam through it. There had been other things in the Amniosium. Semi-solid things. They hadn’t attacked, or even deliberately approached her—they had simply existed. Drifting. Pieces of a whole without individual consciousness, sharing only in the slow, aimless thoughts of the monoentity.

She’d found Jerica near the bottom.

Jerica hadn’t been turning corporeal yet. She’d been little more than a drop in an ocean. Even so, Elise had picked her out easily; her consciousness was distinctive enough that she only had to follow it down.

Until the moment that she dived into the Amniosium, Elise hadn’t known what to do, yet she hadn’t felt any doubt when she reached Jerica. She had simply reached out and grabbed her. Not with her hands, but with her mind.

Jerica had immediately begun to regrow.

Eve had done something similar to give consciousness to her angelic offspring. She had plucked souls out of the vast fabric of time and willed their bodies into existence.

While Elise sought out Jerica among her fellow pre-born nightmares, she had glimpsed something exhilarating. Something that was beautiful and breathtaking and wondrous, even in the blackest heart of Hell where terror was brewed. Something that reminded her of another lifetime, when her sole job had been to birth souls rather than to shatter them.

In the pit, Elise had glimpsed new life.

She pushed her hands against the tub’s tile floor, shoving her head out of the water, drawing in a breath of oxygen that she didn’t need.

Neuma was crouched by the door, petting Ace’s flank as she fed him scraps of meat. The dog’s tail thumped against the floor. Apparently, hands were okay when they were filled with food. Traitorous canine, thinking with his stomach rather than his usual deep mistrust of anyone vaguely human-shaped.

On another day, with the severity of her wounds, Elise would have immediately fallen on Neuma to feed herself. Now she studied the half-succubus with a critical eye. Neuma looked wan and tired, though it might have been that she was wearing less makeup than usual. Her heart beat as strongly as always. The sound of her blood roared in Elise’s ears.

“Jerica?” Elise asked.

“I had to take a break.” Her voice was light, but her smile failed before it touched her eyes. “I’ll be fine soon.”

Elise was hungry. So very hungry. Her chest ached, her bones were tired. But she smoothed the wet hair back from her face and said, “Get in here.”

Neuma edged away from Ace before standing up, careful not to alarm him, and began to strip. Pieces of her costume fell to the floor as she approached. She unclasped the metal fingers of her bra, slipped it down her arms. She tugged the pins from her hair so that it swung free. She stepped out of her shoes. There were faint indentations on her breasts and hips where steel had dug into her.

She dipped into the water. The bath was large enough that they could have both swum laps without touching each other, but Neuma settled between Elise’s legs and leaned back.

Elise squeezed out the sponge, dampened it again, rubbed it over Neuma’s shoulders.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Neuma asked. It came out like a purr. An invitation.

But she was shaking even though the water was over a hundred degrees and her beating heart was a little too fast. Darkness veiled her mind. She had stepped away from Jerica’s feeding, but the nightmares had followed.

“Not tonight,” Elise said, wrapping her arm around Neuma’s shoulders to wash her chest.

The half-succubus melted against her, submerged in the water all the way to her clavicle. She draped one leg over Elise’s. “I can tell you’re hungry.”

“Then we’ll bathe, we’ll sleep, and I’ll have the kitchens send breakfast.”

“You? Eat? Like, actual food?”

“No,” Elise said. “
You
eat. And then I’ll feed.”

“I’m all right, doll,” Neuma said.

Elise didn’t bother arguing with her. It was so obviously untrue. Neuma may have faked it well, but there was no concealing her brain signals. She was awash with stress. Exhaustion.

“How’s Lincoln?” Neuma asked when Elise remained silent. “Better yet,
where
is Lincoln, if you’re so hungry?”

He was in the Great Library with a pair of witches, Aniruddha and Isaiah, to try to figure out Onoskelis’s books. She didn’t know how he was doing. She didn’t care all that much at the moment. But Neuma’s question ignited a spark in Elise’s skull. “You summoned him to the Palace to be my food, didn’t you?”

“Can’t always be me.”

“But Lincoln’s Gray, like you. Not ideal food.”

“I didn’t know that when I summoned him.” Neuma snuggled against her, giving a contented sigh. “Always seemed to work fine for us, though.”

“Why Lincoln? Why not push one of the human guards at me?”

“You’re lonely without your aspis. I hate to see my girl lonely. After everything you said about Lincoln, he seemed like a good second choice, aside from the psychotic nightmare possession thing. But hey, everyone’s got baggage.”

Neuma wasn’t just trying to find new food for Elise. She was playing matchmaker.

From anyone else, it would have been annoying. But this was the woman who had followed Elise into Hell with barely a thought, sacrificed her girlfriend to the war, and offered herself up as food the instant that Elise needed it. At this point, she was willing to let Neuma commit virtually any sin.

“I’m not lonely.” Elise brushed Neuma’s hair over her shoulder and kissed the side of her neck. Neuma gave a happy sigh.

“You’re sweet,” she said, “but it’s not the same, and you know it.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Nobody is as good as James. Nobody.”

She gently bit Neuma’s shoulder. Very gently. She didn’t even draw blood.

Nobody was the same as James. That was true, and probably for the best. The world only needed one James fucking Faulkner.

He was her aspis. He would always be different to Elise. But he also came with guilt, and, to use Neuma’s word, baggage. Enough baggage to fill a fleet of freight ships. Just because Elise only wanted one person didn’t mean that he was what she needed.

Neuma was good to Elise. She was easy to be around, easy food, immensely loyal. Better than James in every way that mattered.

“I’m not lonely,” Elise said again, biting a little harder. She couldn’t help it. Her canine drew a thin line of blood, dark against Neuma’s pale skin, and she sucked it away. Neuma groaned deep in her throat.

The blood of a half-demon really wasn’t as filling as a human’s, and it tasted especially thin tonight. Jerica’s influence was all too obvious. Neuma didn’t have much of anything left over.

“You just need someone else now,” Neuma said a little more firmly, even as she stroked her hands along the outside of Elise’s thighs.

“You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?” She said it lightly, trying to make it sound like a joke, even though the idea was worrying. They had never really been in a relationship. Friends with benefits, not committed.

Neuma didn’t owe her anything. But Elise had gotten used to not having to worry about food.

“I’m only breaking up with you for now,” Neuma said. “Jerica needs me a lot more.”

“Jerica’s not the ruler of Hell.”

“You don’t get to be with me ‘cause you’re important. I feed you because we’re friends, is all. But…Jerica’s special.”

She was at that. If she hadn’t been, Elise never would have retrieved her from Malebolge. Elise rested her chin on the top of Neuma’s head, closing her eyes and sighing.

“Feed on Lincoln,” Neuma murmured. “Make him yours. Let him fill up the empty places.”

It was a tempting thought. And if Elise didn’t have anyone else to feed on…

She watched Neuma’s blood trickle down her skin and fog the surface of the bath. She was tempted to lick it again, drink deep, take what little Neuma had remaining and make it her own.

But she didn’t. Neuma had asked to stop, so they were done. Elise owed that much to her.

The fact that Elise was holding back in more ways than one didn’t escape Neuma. She slid her hand along the surface of the water, making the soap swirl. “Thank you.”

Elise resumed washing her in silence.

Something was amiss
in the Palace.

Elise slipped out of bed silently, careful not to disturb Neuma and Ace. The half-succubus was snoring lightly—blissfully unconscious. Elise had struggled to fall asleep and then drifted for a fitful hour, caught in dreams of amniotic fluid and skeletons wrapped in tissue paper skin. She wasn’t sure if the dreams were hers or Neuma’s. Either way, she wasn’t resting.

She stood in front of the windows with a crimson robe hanging open around her body, bone-dry after her bath. Water evaporated almost immediately in Hell’s dry atmosphere.

The city outside looked as unrestful as Elise felt. The courtyard crawled with workers cleaning up after the executions. Fresh heads were mounted on the spiked bridges between towers—a sight that gave her little satisfaction, but would definitely send a clear message to the House of Volac.

Beyond the battlements, factories were working overtime to supply her legions, belching smoke in thick plumes that rendered the skyline of the outer districts invisible. She could make out faint movement in the nearest streets. Probably her army patrolling. It was difficult to tell, since nighttime clung to the city like mold on rotting meat.

The difference between day and night had become more distinguished over the last few months, thanks to the fissure that allowed Earth to leak into Hell. In daytime, the light was almost violet. Now, after the sun had fallen topside, it was darker than dark.

It was normal for Dis’s nights to be unsettled. Most of its residents preferred the shadows.

Elise still felt strange, as if she were missing something.

She stared hard at the shapes of the buildings outside. Had any of them changed or gone missing? The city seemed to evolve when her back was turned.

Behind her, Neuma rolled over, hugged a pillow tightly to her chest, sighed in her sleep.

Elise stepped away from the window and hung her robe on a hook. She dressed herself for work: the leather slacks, ass-kicking boots, a holster for Seth’s Beretta.