Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5) (19 page)

If she had taken off her warding ring, she could have looked into his mind to see what he was thinking about her. But she didn’t need to. She knew James’s regrets and self-hatred and longing all too well.

“Have you been here since the fight at the Shamain gate?” Elise asked. It came out softer than she intended.

“Not the entire time. I’ve traveled a bit. You might say I’ve been doing some soul-searching.”

“Trying to figure out how much of your coven’s sworn oaths to the Apple, you mean.”

“I haven’t spoken to my coven at all.”

That was a surprise. Elise had expected James to be regrouping, figuring out new ways to achieve his goals. “Eden?”

“Paradise is lost. I don’t know what remains of me now. With no way to reach Nathaniel and the Origin, and without you…I don’t know what I want anymore.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Sometimes I feel like you’re haunting me.” His voice had become so quiet that the words didn’t echo in the empty dance hall.

Elise’s eyebrow lifted. “Then maybe you should stop hanging out in haunted houses.” She held out her hand. “Come with me to Hell. Lincoln doesn’t deserve to die—especially not when the assassination attempt was meant for me.”

His gaze sharpened. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

“Who isn’t?” she asked.

James contemplated her outstretched hand. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea, Elise.”

“It’s not like you’re leaving anything behind. Is it?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Think about having open access to the Great Library. Thousands of books you’ve never read before. Hundreds about warlock magic, which almost nobody knows how to cast. All of it for you—after you save Lincoln.”

He hesitated for another moment then laced his fingers with hers. The leather of his gloves creaked as their hands curled around each other.

“You don’t need to bribe me,” James said. “You know I’ll do anything for you.”

Her chest hurt, and it wasn’t just because she’d had a blade plunged through her breastbone. “You promised to stop lying to me.”

“Elise…”

She didn’t want to hear what else he had to say.

They phased.

Night had fallen
when Elise and James returned to the Palace of Dis, casting the city in violet-tinged twilight. Elise set down on a bridge connecting two of the towers. The view of her domain was best from there.

James released her hand to reflexively grab at the railing. “Lord,” he breathed. The word was sucked away by the wind. He ducked his head to shield himself from it.

Through the bond, she could tell that he felt like he had been tossed into the kitchen grinder. She stood beside him, untouched, and watched him struggle to breathe in detached silence.

They didn’t have much time to get back to Lincoln, but she couldn’t make herself pull James inside. Not yet.

He had been the one to teach her to perform. How to make herself look more impressive, more graceful, more intimidating. Now it was her turn to show him what she had learned.

More than that, she wanted to show him what she had accomplished without an ounce of his help.

“What do you think?” Elise asked.

He shielded his eyes and followed her gaze to the new tower and the crystal bridge arcing up to the fissure. Only the few hundred feet nearest to them were visible. The rest faded into smoke and shadow.

James turned to take in the entirety of the Palace, the city beyond the battlements, the army camped out on the street. Firelight dotted the streets. Dark spires formed sharp silhouettes along the horizon, and the wasteland was a stripe of distant yellow just beyond. From there, they could see all the way up Mount Anathema to the House of Abraxas, and all the way down to the edge of the House of Volac’s vast farmlands.

It was more than just a little awe-inspiring, and it was more or less hers.

“Let’s go inside,” James said, voice raw and rasping.

It wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for, although she wasn’t entirely sure what that would have been, either.

She glided to the archway.

Once they were inside, James leaned against the inner wall to collect himself. “What was the point of that?”

She gave him a blank look. “I’m staying in the former judge’s rooms. They’re this way.”

He followed her up the spiral staircase, through the antechamber, and into her bedroom. Lincoln rested on top of her black silk sheets, surrounded by the iron ribs of her bed frame.

Isaiah stood when she came in. He had a few witches’ implements spread on the floor beside the bed—some bowls of herbs, a couple of crystals, an empty vial. “How is he?” Elise asked.

“The deputy’s not waking up, but…” Isaiah rubbed his hands together nervously. His knuckles were so dry that they were bleeding. “I want to say he’s stable. I’m just not certain.” The sight of James had his blood pressure shooting through the roof. Isaiah wasn’t much of a witch compared to James—nobody was—but he knew enough to tell when someone with incredible power had just entered the room.

“Isaiah, this is Orpheus,” she said. “Orpheus, Isaiah.” She didn’t want Isaiah spreading James’s name around the Palace. The fewer people that knew she had dragged her aspis into Hell, the better.

“Nice to meet you, Isaiah,” James said.

The other witch didn’t look like he agreed. He edged away from them and the bed. “Elise, we’ve found the would-be assassin. He had this on him.” He handed a vial to her. Magic sparked inside when she shook it.

James was hovering beside the edge of the bed, gazing down at Lincoln. The deputy was still drenched in sweat, even though he had been stripped to his boxers. Elise hadn’t seen him naked since his return to the Palace. He looked so diminished in comparison to the strong, muscular body he used to have. Even the glow in his hands was fading now. It barely even flickered.

“That’s new,” James remarked.

“I think he’s manifesting megaira powers.” Elise pocketed the vial of powder before he could see it.

“He said that Levi Riese gave it to him.”

That werewolf bastard with the Apple? One more reason to kill him, as if she needed another. “Where’s the assassin now, Isaiah?”

“Dungeons. With Neuma.”

Neuma and Jerica. Elise would be surprised if the assassin was in a chatting mood by the time they were done with him. “Move him to the cells underneath the court. Keep him alive until I can talk to him.”

Isaiah nodded, abandoned his ritual space, and scurried from the room.

James peeled a glove off of one hand, exposing lightning-blue runes slithering between his fingers. A sigh of envy escaped Elise. She didn’t miss how much the magic had hurt her, but she missed the power.

“What happened to him?” James asked.

“He was poisoned. Can you help him?”

James flexed his hand. “I’ll do my best.” He brushed his fingers over the other man’s forehead.

He didn’t speak a single word of power, but several. The runes lifted from the back of his wrist and crawled across Lincoln’s skin.

Ethereal magic was always just a little bit off when it was cast in Hell—just a little bit dimmer, as if distorted through a tinted window. But James’s magic still radiated. Every single spell hummed with a different tone. Taken together, it was a symphony that touched the invisible fibers woven throughout the room, the Palace, all of Hell, and beyond. The magic stretched to the fissure. Elise wouldn’t have been surprised if James’s spells reached all the way to Heaven.

Color faded into Lincoln’s cheeks. His chest began rising and falling with heavier breaths. White-blue runes slipped down his cheekbones, raced onto his chest, grew to encompass his entire body.

For a moment, he glowed.

Then the symphony of magic was simply gone. James grabbed his glove and stepped back.

Elise watched Lincoln for signs of rousing. He was still unconscious. “What happened?”

“I can’t cure it,” James said. Her heart twisted. “The poison has already penetrated his marrow. What did you say he consumed?”

“We still don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I wasn’t aware that there was anything that presented such a threat to demons.”

Elise rubbed her stomach. She still ached from the poison herself. “Neither was I. How long does he have?”

“I’m not sure. The poison is reacting with his demon blood, and that is what will eventually catalyze and kill him.” James hesitated. She could almost see him performing the mental math. “He might have days.”

She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “After we exorcised him, I asked if he wanted to come to Hell with me. He didn’t. Lincoln just wanted to have a normal life without demons and angels and witches in it.” She glanced at James. “Sound familiar?”

Elise and James had tried to retire so many years ago that it was practically another lifetime. But neither of them had forgotten. She didn’t think either of them had stopped wishing they could quit, either.

James massaged his forehead. “Nobody gets out of this anymore, Elise.”

“He should have.” If it hadn’t been for James, Lincoln might not have been caught up in it in the first place. “Will he wake up?”

“He could, but his energy has been drained,” James said. “I doubt he’ll be fully rested before…”

He fell silent. Elise could still hear the unspoken words.

He won’t wake up before the poison kills him.

Elise sank to the bed beside Lincoln, pulled his hand into her lap. “I can feed him.”

“Feed him? How?”

She closed her eyes. It wasn’t hard to find anger within herself—she didn’t even need to dig very deep. Anger smoldered inside of her. She was constantly on edge, always two seconds away from shattering her veneer of calm.

Usually she fought it, but now, she fed into it.

Elise thought of the three thousand missing people and the brutality of a broken world that wouldn’t allow innocents to live in peace. She thought of the obsidian falchion in the chest in her bedroom—and what she had done to Seth with that blade.

She thought of all the Houses that refused to comply with her. Davithon, the demon in her dungeons, threatening her rather than listening to reason, forcing her to keep him confined. Volac’s steward driving a blade into Nikolaj’s back.

James’s betrayal, and the fact that Elise couldn’t seem to push him away despite it.

Her shoulders trembled. Her cheeks burned. She pushed all of that anger, the hate and frustration and exhaustion, toward the place where her hands joined with Lincoln’s.

Take it. Take it all.

It wasn’t like being drained. It was more like ramming the point of a dagger into a light socket. Elise’s energy scraped out of her in piercing lines and bled into Lincoln.

She faded, and he improved.

Her anger only intensified under his megaira influence, knotting in her stomach until it was too much, until she thought she might be sick.

Images flashed through her faster and faster. Adam in the garden, after He had gone insane. Eve’s eggs pulverized by Nashriel. Adam wrenching Metaraon’s head off of his shoulders.

Elise’s heart pounded. Her fingernails dug into Lincoln’s wrist.

His hand twitched on hers.

She wrenched free of him and stood, putting distance between them.

Her heart was hurting again. She peeled the neck of her shirt away from her chest to investigate the wound. Unsurprisingly, she was dribbling blood again. Lincoln must have fed deeper than she realized. She was getting better at moderating her own hungers, but he was still new to this, and too sickly to be the one to break away.

“What’s wrong?” James asked.

“Nothing,” she said, tugging her shirt back into place.

“You’re wounded.”

She ignored him and sat beside Lincoln again. The deputy was stirring.

Lincoln’s eyes opened. “God?” he whispered, trying to focus on her.

Elise smiled. “You almost had me worried, Deputy.”

When he recognized her voice, he relaxed back against the pillow. “Elise. What happened to me?”

The door whispered shut behind them. Elise glanced over her shoulder. James had left the room, and the space he had been standing looked so very empty.

She put him out of her mind.

“You tell me.” Elise offered him the vial. “This was found on the body of the man that tried to assassinate us. I don’t recognize the substance. I hoped that you would.”

He extended a hand. Elise dropped it into his palm. Instantly, his blood pressure spiked. “It’s Aquiel’s. He’s trying to fucking kill us.”

“Aquiel’s dead. He’s not giving anything to anyone.”

“But this looks like anathema powder,” Lincoln said. “This is mined from the mountain underneath the House of Abraxas.”

She remembered seeing all the stone discarded from the House of Abraxas mines, but she had assumed that it was waste, without any purpose. She frowned. “Why would stone from under Mount Anathema be poisonous to us?”

“It’s poisonous to all demons.” Lincoln gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Guess I’m demon enough for it to work on me now, aren’t I?”

“But
why
?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that black rock that the House is built on—this comes from deeper, down in the depths of the mountain. When I was possessed, I helped Aquiel coordinate its purchase from Abraxas.” He shook the vial gently. “See the way it shimmers? You can’t mistake it. It’s been activated by someone who can do magic. Belphegor used to do it, but human witches could, too.”

“How have I never heard of this before?” Elise asked.

“Because it’s a huge secret.” Lincoln rubbed his forehead, as if trying to push the memories into the forefront of his mind. “Even the librarians didn’t have a clue. Only Aquiel, Abraxas, and Belphegor knew how to make it.” He grimaced. “And me.”

“Then how the fuck did a werewolf get it? It was given to the assassin by a guy named Levi Riese.”

Lincoln sat up. “The Apple. Shit.”

“You know them?”

“The nightmare that possessed me did. We need to get to Northgate,” he said. “We need to get there
now
.”

The werewolves had
been in their beast forms for hours now, even though the full moon was several nights away. It wasn’t easy to be trapped within the wolf shape for so long—the smaller of them, Trevin, had passed out. Crystal stood guard over him. She snapped at Levi’s hands every time he tried to step closer. Wolf or not, she recognized the man that had just kicked their Alpha out of the sanctuary.