Authors: SM Reine
Elise’s eyes narrowed. “But?”
“Almost
all
of Earth is on fire,” the angel said. “It’s only a temporary solution.”
“And Heaven too,” Elise said. “Convenient how much you care about Earth’s condition once you have nowhere else to run.” She was only vaguely aware of Anthony and Abel—now human—moving up to flank her. The wolf spirits bristled between them.
Leliel looked at the wolf spirits like she had found their spoor smeared on her bare foot. She lifted her sword, its blade igniting with flames.
Elise drew a falchion. One of the wolves growled. No, not a wolf—Ace. Apparently he had decided that he was one of the pack and stood among the spirits. His weight leaned heavily against her calf.
“I’m going to take care of Earth,” Elise said.
“Why should we trust you?” Leliel asked. As the wolves had moved up to surround Elise, so had Makael moved to stand at Leliel’s side. Electric blue runes slithered up his arms. A silent reminder that angels had found their magic again and might pose an actual threat to Elise.
She didn’t need the reminder. Her skin still ached from the vibrancy of their glowing wings.
“I don’t care if you trust me or not,” Elise said. “I definitely don’t trust you. I am, however, going to fix all of this.”
“By becoming a god?”
“By killing him,” Elise said. Her wounded arm throbbed as she spoke, which dented her confidence only slightly.
“If you kill Belphegor, you’ll have to rebuild the pantheon from the beginning,” Leliel said. “Which angel would you station as the ethereal deity? Will it be Nashriel?”
The guy’s ego was big enough without adding godhood to the mix. “There’s already an angel in the pantheon,” Elise said.
“Is there?” Leliel frowned. “Who?”
“You don’t know him,” Elise said. “He’s not one of yours.”
“They’re all mine.”
What few of them remained. Elise’s gaze skimmed the angels surrounding Leliel, taking a quick mental inventory. At least three of them had been bitten by the wolf spirits in the scuffle. Even though they stood straight and tall, forming a united front, Elise could smell the blood and see the wounds reddening.
There were only a dozen alongside Leliel. These few survivors were all that remained of Eve’s once-massive family.
Elise felt a pang of grief and turned inward.
Eve? Are you still there
?
There was no response.
“This angel isn’t yours,” Elise said, realizing that she had been quiet for too long. “You don’t know him. Trust me.”
Leliel glanced over her shoulder. “Wait for me,” she told the other angels, and then she broke free to approach Elise.
Anthony aimed his gun at her. “Freeze, birdbrain.”
She didn’t stop. “We have to talk, Godslayer.”
Elise pushed Anthony’s arms so that he was pointing the gun at the other angels instead. “Fine. We can talk.” She leaned in close to Anthony’s ear. “If they move, start shooting.” She didn’t have to give similar directions to Abel. There was angel blood on his chin and murder in his eyes.
If anyone even twitched, they were going to find out exactly how much he was grieving his mate’s murder. And Elise doubted that she would be able to stop him a second time.
Leliel led Elise away from everyone else, stopping at the edge of one of the fields. The crops were flooded with water. Maybe some kind of rice. There was no sign of the farmers—they had been smart enough to hide from the conflict between the werewolves and angels.
“I’ll be brief,” Leliel said. “If Belphegor and an angel have already entered the Origin, you will have to kill both.”
Elise’s hand tightened on the falchion. It made the muscles in her arm spasm, aching where Abel had bitten her. “How do you know?”
“Metaraon and I discussed the next genesis frequently before he died. Despite my protests, he planned to collect a new pantheon. He would have been the lead, as Lilith had led Adam and Eve. He planned—”
“Wait. Lilith led the last pantheon?”
“Yes,” Leliel said impatiently. “She was the sculptor. She shaped the universe as we know it.”
“Everything I’ve seen suggests Adam was in charge.”
“The most vocal is seldom the most powerful.” She gave a delicate, disdainful sniff. “As I was saying, Metaraon planned to have his wife, Ariane, as the mortal god.”
Elise’s mother had been in line to become a god? She cringed to think of how well that would have gone. Ariane was weak. A doormat. She would have been crushed by the others.
“I disagreed, as I said,” Leliel went on. “Belphegor disagreed too. He fought the formation of a new pantheon. That was why I tried to ally with him—both of us wanted to prevent anyone from entering the Origin and triggering genesis. Or so I believed.”
“But he just wanted to be in charge himself,” Elise said.
“Evidently. However, Belphegor doesn’t know what Metaraon knew, and what I know.” Leliel fixed Elise with an intense gaze. “Once the formation of the pantheon begins, the only way to replace any member is to kill all of them.”
Elise frowned. “What if I just kill Belphegor?”
“Then only this mysterious angel will remain,” Leliel said. “But you can’t replace Belphegor until the angel dies, too.”
“And if I don’t want to replace him at all? If I just want to prevent him from causing more damage?”
Leliel smiled, like she approved of this answer. “When I built New Eden, I believed that we could postpone genesis indefinitely simply by never replacing Adam, Eve, and Lilith. If you prevent the triad from forming and kill Belphegor, I believe we could stop the progress of this…” She gestured disdainfully at the sky. “And reconstruct through other means.”
“You believe. Nice convictions there.”
“Nobody knows,” she said. “It’s never been done before. There have
always
been three. However, the world is safer without gods, and I’ll do what I must to prevent the genesis. What’s
your
plan, Godslayer?”
“Kill Belphegor. Save the angel. I’m looking for a cure, so to speak. Genesis isn’t on the menu.”
“Then perhaps we can help each other.” The angel glanced at the vehicles. “Where are you going?”
“I’m breaking into Eden through one of Metaraon’s gates.”
“Your journey to the nearest of them will take days like this. Judging by Earth’s degradation, you’re out of time.”
Elise gritted her teeth. “I know. Not a lot of alternatives.”
“We’ll take your people to the gate,” Leliel said. “My angels and I. We can easily transport everyone there directly.”
She didn’t even have to consider the offer. Like Leliel had said, they were out of time and without alternatives. “Fine. Carry everyone to the gate. If you can get us there, I’ll take care of Belphegor and the angel.”
“And you won’t permit genesis,” Leliel said.
“Not if I can avoid it.”
The angel looked grim. “Then we have a deal.”
“You’re fucking crazy,”
Anthony said.
Elise snorted. “Give me the bandages.” The bite wound Abel had delivered was still bleeding freely. She would need to feed before she could heal.
Anthony threw the bandages at her. They hit Elise in the chest. “Letting the angels carry us to the gate? We can’t trust them.”
“I know.” She sat on the tailgate of a pickup. “Help me wrap this.”
He huffed, but he still wound the bandages around the injury with quick, practiced hands. It was far from the first time that Anthony had been forced to perform basic first aid, though it might have been the first time he’d done it for Elise rather than McIntyre.
As he worked, Elise watched the angels preparing to transport the pickups. It was deeply unsettling to see someone other than James capable of performing magecraft, even if Makael looked much less confident of the technique.
Elise was relatively confident that they’d be able to kill most of the angels if they tried to pull anything. But she wasn’t sure about Makael or Leliel. They’d be challenging to kill if it became necessary.
“I have a plan,” she said in a low voice.
“Better be a good one,” Anthony muttered.
“Aren’t they all?”
“No,” he said, squeezing her arm a little too hard, reminding her that she’d thought it was a good idea to grab an angry werewolf.
She pulled her arm from him. “Thanks.”
Anthony just shook his head, muttering to himself.
Elise’s mother, Ariane, emerged from one of the houses in the village carrying a bag under one arm. She was smiling at the farmer that she left, speaking to him in Chinese. Elise understood enough of the language to know that Ariane was thanking him, but she’d had no idea that her mother spoke it at all.
Ariane set the bag on the tailgate of the pickup and opened it. “How do you feel,
ma fille
?”
Elise felt like shit.
No, not shit. Whatever was worse than shit.
Neuma and Gerard were dead because of her; the army that had remained loyal to them was also dead for it. She had watched a boy fail to resurrect his mother and surrendered him to the enemy. Then she’d topped it off by getting a bite wound she couldn’t heal, making an agreement with the angels, and earning the mistrust of her friends.
There really weren’t any words for how Elise felt.
“I’m great,” she said through her clenched teeth. “How about you?”
“Word of the angels’ plan to transport us has spread. I’m worried that my daughter might have lost her grip on reality,” Ariane said.
“Can we not talk about this, Mother?”
“Very well, but we do have to talk about something else.” Ariane lowered her voice. “There’s something that I should tell you. Perhaps both of you.” She beckoned Anthony closer.
He flopped beside Elise on the tailgate. “This is going to be good.”
“Metaraon and I spent much time talking at the end of my pregnancy, when he sequestered me in the garden. He was exhilarated by the knowledge that Adam’s death was near. He wanted to discuss what was to come next.”
“Next?” Anthony asked.
“Opening Eden,” Elise said. “Metaraon had intended to enter the Origin and trigger the next genesis.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah. That.”
Elise had filled him in on everything that she knew about the impending end of the world, including the part where she planned to open Eden using Abram’s blood. Anthony had taken the news pretty well. As well as anyone could take such a suicidal plan.
Mostly, he just seemed annoyed.
“Metaraon made it complicated to open Eden because he wanted to be the only one who could do it.” Ariane took Elise’s hand. “But he left a shortcut for himself to utilize. If you have a witch create the circle at every gate at the same time, you only need to spill the blood of Adam’s descendant upon one of them, and all will open.”
Elise sat up. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Anthony echoed, rubbing his chin.
She had been hoping that opening one gate would be enough to get them into Eden, considering how much the walls between universes were breaking down. Ariane’s shortcut was a lot better than wild guessing.
“How do you feel about travel, Mother?” Elise asked.
“I expected you to ask that. Chew some of this.” Ariane pushed the leaves into Elise’s mouth.
They tasted bitterly foul. She tried to spit them out, but Ariane held her hand over Elise’s mouth until she swallowed. “That’s disgusting,” Elise said, trying to wipe the dried leaves off of her tongue.
“That might accelerate your healing.”
Her arm didn’t feel like it was healing, but it wasn’t aching as badly under the bandaging. “What do you know about healing demons bitten by werewolves?”
Ariane’s look was withering. “I did serve in the Palace of Dis for years before you took it,
ma fille
. I know more than you’d think.” She wiped her hands off and cinched the bag. “As for Marion…”
That name left an even more bitter taste in Elise’s mouth.
“No leads,” she lied.
“I’m beginning to fear, Elise.”
“I promised to bring Marion back to you. I will.” Even if Elise hadn’t managed to save Neuma or the army, Marion would still be safe. She had to believe that was true.
Another man appeared beside them. Elise looked up and up to see Abel steaming in the cool air, every muscle tense. “I’m not going anywhere with those fucks,” he growled.
So he’d heard the news, too.
Elise seized his arm, leading him away from Anthony and Ariane, away from the angels, into the privacy of the darkness beyond the edge of the road. “Yes. You are.”
His eyes burned with hate. “They killed Rylie.”
“I know.”
Her composure seemed to just make his anger worse. His lips peeled back over his teeth, and Elise heard the muffled
pop
of bone from somewhere within his body.
He grabbed her arm, too. But his fingertips were now clawed. The sharp points dug into her flesh, leaving deep indentations that nearly bled. “They killed her,” he hissed. “They need to die. Especially that one.
She
ordered the killing.” He jerked his head toward Leliel. “I’m going to fucking kill her.”
“Could you win in a one-on-one fight? Could you win against all of them?”
“Does it matter?” His voice was ragged, like his chest had been ripped apart from the inside.
“It matters. You’re the only Alpha left.”
Abel actually gave it a moment’s thought before saying, “Yeah. I could take them.”
“We have to get to the gates,” Elise said. “You can’t kill her.” Anger blazed anew in his eyes, but before he could lose his temper, she added, “Yet. Not until they’ve transported the pack.”
“I’m not going to play nice with these dicks. I’m not going to pretend.”
“I don’t expect you to. I just expect you to be quiet until you reach our destination.” The hand on her arm was starting to hurt, but he hadn’t given her any new injuries yet. “There’s no forgiving what Leliel did. What
any
of them did. If you think you can take them down without destroying the pack, I’m not going to fight you. For now, stand the fuck down and let me go.”
His fingers unclenched. He’d left four perfect imprints of his claws on her skin.
“Your arm?” Abel asked.
“Fine,” Elise said. He didn’t need to know that the bite wasn’t going to heal on its own.