Authors: SM Reine
He landed at Mr. Black’s side and seized his arm.
James didn’t need to hear him to read his lips:
Burn in Hell
.
The angel smashed Mr. Black’s silver cuff.
The outermost ribbon ignited, flashing with flame and turning to ash. The pressure eased off James. Oxygen rushed into his lungs. All sound resumed.
Mr. Black’s influence lifted from the angels on the rooftop. A couple of them looked around as though they had just woken up. The one who had been holding Anthony sank to his knees and began crying.
The rest went insane.
The angels attacked each other. From the other side of the ribbon barrier, they were an indistinguishable mass of seething bodies. James couldn’t see any detail through the brilliant light, for which he was grateful—but there was no way to drown out the sounds. Screams tore the air. Slick crunches and thick splats punctuated every cry.
“Anthony—run!” James yelled.
He rushed for the stairs at top speed, fists pumping and feet pounding against the cement. He jumped over the rail to the level below. Mr. Black followed suit and bolted—but much slower.
His motion caught the attention of the angels that had gone mad.
They flew at him with wings that were beginning to blossom again and fell upon him before he could take three steps. They dragged him to the ground just a few feet away from James. He saw everything.
Teeth sank into Mr. Black’s shoulders. Clawed fingers dug into his belly. The suit was stripped from his body, and then the flesh from his bones in a spray of blood.
An angel tore the jaw free of his face. Hands pressed against the sides of his face and crushed his cheekbones. One eyeball bulged, then exploded. White matter splattered against the invisible barrier over the ribbon. The attackers dug elbow-deep into his body to yank viscera free.
James saw the copper-haired angel descend and remove a female from the fray. Her lips were stained with Mr. Black’s blood.
“Itra’il!” he cried.
She struggled against him, but he lifted her into the air as though her kicks and punches meant nothing. Another angel took her place over Mr. Black’s body as both disappeared into the glowing sky.
The rest of the ribbons caught fire and disappeared. A line of blood spilled across the place the barrier had been a moment before.
James wasn’t going to wait for the angels to notice.
He threw Elise over his shoulder and ran for the stairs. Nothing stopped him. Every ribbon was broken and his path was clear. Carrying her body made him even slower than Mr. Black had been, but the angels were so preoccupied that it gave him a few seconds’ head start.
They reached the top of the stairwell before the angels began alighting on the wind. Massive wings whipped behind them, only a shade darker than the light from the gate.
James didn’t watch.
There was no sign of Anthony as James rushed through the streets with Elise hanging over his back, and he didn’t dare search for him. Angels swooped overhead with wailing screams.
The windows in every shop had shattered when the gate opened, leaving shards of glass scattered on the sidewalk. His every footstep crunched. There was nowhere safe he could hide from the angels with the shops open—and he didn’t dare pass through one of the gates.
But the river wasn’t far. He could hear it roaring less than a block away.
James rushed around the corner, across a brick plaza, and down white stone steps toward the water. Angels wheeled around the buildings. One passed so low that it ruffled his hair. Feathers snowed around him, loosening from ethereal wings that had sprouted anew, but he didn’t look up to see if they were coming for him.
The Truckee had risen on its banks to swallow the walkways that surrounded it. James’s foot slipped and he sank knee-deep in water. It was so cold that it burned.
He sloshed through the shallows to shelter under the bridge as another angel shrieked past. James set Elise’s body on a narrow strip of rocks and climbed beside her, crouching under the low shelter of stone. She stayed dry, but he was wet to the hips.
James peered out at the blazing white sky. He couldn’t see the gate from their hiding place. Was it still open? Had He gone back, or was He in the city?
There was no way to tell. He turned his attention to Elise.
Her skin was colorless. James pressed his hand to her throat and found her pulse sluggish—and slowing.
Something splattered on the opposite bank.
James moved to shield Elise, but it wasn’t an angel, and it didn’t move to attack. It was a lumpy red mass—what remained of Mr. Black’s body. The angels had dropped it on them. His blood clouded the water.
He scanned the sky. The angels spiraled overhead with no indication of dropping. Everything was bright and colorless, as though He should have been close. James was so certain that He wouldn’t be able to resist Elise. It was the only way to heal her. “Come on, where are you?” he shouted to the sky. “Why won’t you heal her? She’s going to die!”
Something shifted behind him. James turned, expecting to see Him. Instead, he saw the shattered husk of Mr. Black getting to his feet.
It should have been impossible to move. The muscles had been ripped from his right leg, leaving the bones exposed from hip to ankle. There were deep teeth marks in his femur. The cavity of his skull dripped onto his shoulder. Parts of his spine were missing.
But still, he stood. And what remained of his face was trying to smile.
“Hello,” he rasped through a flapping esophagus.
Another voice echoed behind Mr. Black’s—one greater and far more terrible.
Hello
.
That single word felt like having a stiletto driven through his ears. It resonated in James’s chest. For an instant, his heart did not beat.
Mr. Black’s arms stretched out.
“You’ve brought her to me. Thank you.”
Thank you
.
James’s teeth vibrated in his skull. A sharp pop against his cheek told him that a filling had exploded. The scar on his shoulder blazed with white-hot pain, and it took all of his strength to respond. “She’s dying. You have to heal her—I know you can do it, you can do anything—”
Mr. Black splashed forward, and his bleeding fingers stroked Elise’s shoulders. Shredded skin hung from his wrist. A fingernail was missing. “Yes. I will take care of her.”
She’s mine, mortal.
This time, the voice did not just hurt James. It stirred Elise.
Her eyes opened to slits. She looked up and saw Mr. Black. Their bond was so strong that James could see through her eyes as though they were his own, and she did not see a corpse. Instead, He looked like a glowing man, taller and brighter than the sun, with endless voids where His eyes should have been. He smiled for her.
She knew Him.
And she mumbled a single word: “Thom.”
A shadow moved over them. The light was eclipsed by a mighty darkness—a black fog that oozed from the empty windows and doors of the angelic city.
“No!”
The responding echo was weaker than it should have been.
No…
A new man stepped from behind the bridge.
Thom had changed since they met at the police station. His hair extended into shadow, vast and infinite. Fire burned in his eyes. He was as beautiful as Mr. Black’s body was hideous, and when he turned to appraise the situation, James saw a sweep of translucent black wings at his shoulders.
“I’ve been summoned. What is this?” he asked, his tone far too mild for the situation.
“Get away,” He said from within Mr. Black’s body.
She’s mine
.
“Is that so? I don’t believe that’s true—yet.” Thom tapped his chin with a finger. “You were already barely in this dimension, and now you’ve taken a tangible body. What a terrible idea. You didn’t give that decision much consideration at all.”
You know who I am.
“Yes.”
You are not my match
.
“No, of course not. Not when you’re in your true form. But this…” Thom waved his hand at the body. “As I said—terrible idea.”
He rushed toward Mr. Black.
Shadow clashed with light, and James’s mind completely refused to process what he saw. It couldn’t handle the information. His vision blanked, and his ears filled with a dull buzz.
When his senses cleared a few seconds later, he saw Thom seizing Mr. Black’s shoulders and lifting Him into the air.
They blasted through the sky, receding into a pinpoint between the parking garage and its mirror. Both Thom and Mr. Black’s body vanished through the dark gate.
The air was rent by the sound of a door slamming shut. It resonated through the entire city, sending a wind sweeping along the streets that kicked up glass shards and blasted away the light.
All the pressure vanished. The distant chimes went silent.
It was over, and He was gone.
Elise was still pale and unmoving, and the wound on her stomach wasn’t bleeding anymore. He didn’t have to check for a heartbeat to know she didn’t have one. He felt it in the way his own heart shattered. “No,” he said, smoothing a hand over her forehead. “Please, Elise…”
He searched inside himself for something from her. A hint of thought, a memory, a single neuron firing…
anything
. But he had nothing. His mind was empty where Elise’s presence should have been.
The angels were gone, and the air was still. A twilit fog settled where the light had been. The riverbank felt very lonely.
Anthony must have still been somewhere in the city. He would want to say goodbye to Elise, too. But there was no time for that, and it was probably better that way. It had always been the two of them—Elise and James versus the forces of Hell and Heaven. It seemed fitting that it should end that way, too.
He pressed his forehead against hers. It was cool and clammy. “I failed,” he whispered.
“This is touching. Shall I give you a few minutes?”
Thom stood knee-deep in the river with his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his slacks. It was a bizarrely casual position for someone who had just flung a god into another dimension. His skin steamed.
Anger choked James. “That was our only chance. You let her die!”
“Such melodrama. All that activity in your lateral orbitofrontal cortex must be exhausting.”
“
What
?”
Thom pushed James aside and took Elise in his arms. He gazed at her with an expression that could only be called adoring. “So it is true,” he murmured. “She is the Godslayer. Such a thing exists.”
“She
was
the Godslayer.”
Thom snorted. “Elise isn’t dead yet. Her brain has oxygen, and a heart is an easy thing to restart. I won’t permit her to die. Would you like to go back to Earth?”
“How? The gates are all closed.”
“That’s not a problem.”
James started to agree, and then remembered that Elise hadn’t come into the city alone. “There’s another man. Anthony…”
Thom shifted Elise in his arms so he could touch the red choker at his throat. “I will bring him, too. Do not concern yourself.”
He snapped his fingers.
XIX
P
assing between dimensions
a second time was just as difficult as the first.
The instant James reappeared, he vomited across the dusty stone floor of the Night Hag’s cavern. There wasn’t much left in his stomach. Two short heaves, and he was done.
The underground chamber was too dark after the brilliance of the angelic city. He blinked green shapes out of his eyes as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Anthony was sprawled a few feet away, unconscious but breathing. Beyond him, Betty’s body was still resting—paler than the last time he saw her, but untouched.
Where was Elise?
He stood and spun, searching for any sign of her between the silent gate and the spider’s body, but all he found were pages from his Book of Shadows scattered across the floor.
A sigh whispered through the room. James looked up.
Thom drifted from the top of the cavern, black wings spread wide. The span was so great that they brushed the distant walls. Elise was curled in his arms with her head tucked under his chin. She was still unconscious. It was the only time she could look so unguarded and innocent. James felt nothing from her—no dreams or emotions—but as Thom grew closer, he saw the rise and fall of Elise’s chest.
His bare feet touched the dais. He settled to the earth, and his wings folded behind him. They vanished. The glow of his skin faded. “I see your apprehension,” Thom said to James. “Don’t worry. She only sleeps.”
James took an unsteady step toward the dais, stretching out his arms. “Give her to me.”
“You want her now? You, who was so eager to hand her to her greatest enemy just moments ago?”
“She was dying.”
“And now she is healed without a mark of blood on her body. You are welcome for the favor, and to make it better, I will do another—I will retrieve her falchions and return them. But later. Even I must rest when traveling between dimensions.” Thom raised an eyebrow. “So. You attempted to surrender your kopis to a mad god. I don’t know her as well as you do, so perhaps I am wrong, but tell me what she would choose if she were conscious: life in His garden, driven to madness, or the peaceful void of death?”
“Elise doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”
“How fortunate that you do.”
He hesitated. “When she wakes up… will she remember…?”
“Nothing. She will have no clue you tried to surrender her unless you share that fact, which I don’t recommend if you treasure your relationship with her.”
James tried not to look relieved. “Give her to me now.”
Thom stroked the hair back from Elise’s face. “There are many great mysteries in this world, James Faulkner, but few of them puzzle me after thousands of years. Yet when a deity chooses to elevate one of mankind above the rest, I can only marvel at such a decision. What makes this one special? Why should any of you be special when your lives are as short as a beat of my black heart?”
Thousands of years? He struggled to think of a response.