Authors: SM Reine
She jabbed him in the stomach, not too gently. “That’s because you’re getting soft, and I’m still going to the gym three times a week.”
Anthony shook his head. “Come on, guys. Seriously.”
“Why did you lie to me? Why not admit that you saw Michele?” Elise asked. She didn’t bother hiding that revelation from the camera. The Union was going to find out sooner or later.
“Because I didn’t kill her.” McIntyre clenched and unclenched his fists. “I don’t want to deal with this shit. My wife is probably having a baby right now.”
The door opened. The red-haired kopis was silhouetted by the fading evening sun, and he had a submachine gun in his hands. “Five minutes are up,” Boyd said, and she recognized that New England accent. He was the one who threatened to kill her when they had been arrested. “Get out.”
“I’ll be back,” she promised McIntyre.
Boyd moved into the trailer and shut the door behind him.
Elise hesitated on the steps outside, staring at the plastic-covered windows behind them. McIntyre had lied to her. It was an unsettling thought. She didn’t trust many people, but he was on the shortlist, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed if that was no longer a safe bet.
“That’s it,” Anthony said. “I’m done with this summit.”
“What?”
“He lied. He’s completely guilty. We should just let him deal with this and get home. I can’t believe I’m missing work for this.”
She glared at Anthony. “McIntyre is my friend. Maybe the only friend I have left.”
“You tried to kick the shit out of him,” he said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t.”
Zettel came around the corner of the path and interrupted their conversation. He was far too cool and composed for the oppressive heat of the desert, which meant he would have been somewhere air conditioned while they talked. Elise would have bet all her money—which was only about fifty bucks, as of late—that he had been watching their conversation.
“Did the ‘greatest kopis’ learn anything useful?” he asked.
Elise gave him a level look. “You tell me.”
Zettel’s lips thinned. A vein in his forehead bulged. “You need to get back to the motel.”
“Why? So you can watch us sleep on your cameras?”
“So you can rest before the meeting tomorrow. We’ll be at the mines bright and early,” Zettel said. “If the angels want you to mediate, fine—but you’ll do it under Union control. Come on. Move it.”
X
T
here were no
meetings that evening, which left Silver Wells occupied by two dozen bored, overheated kopides with nothing to kill but time. The one place in town that was open and air conditioned was the bar—which Elise was surprised to discover was not abandoned after all—and the kopides flocked to it.
The Pump Lounge was one room with a sticky floor and exposed concrete walls. An elevated step in the corner was meant to be a stage, judging by the dusty speaker and microphone, and the tables looked like they had been in use since the days of cowboys and horses. But the Lounge had liquor, and it was all she needed.
She found an empty spot at the bar, tuned out the raucous laughter of the men surrounding her, and had the bartender bring a shot of tequila. She knocked it back immediately.
Anthony had stayed at their motel room, as he did on most nights since Betty died, and it left Elise alone with her thoughts and the burn of alcohol.
She couldn’t stop thinking about McIntyre’s lies. It nagged at her worse than the throb of pain in her hand. If he had deceived her about seeing the recruiter, then what else would he lie about? Would he lie about being a murderer, too?
McIntyre, a killer. It was impossible.
And yet…
“Another one,” Elise told the bartender, sliding her shot glass across the bar.
“And for me,” said a man in a red silk shirt as he slid onto the stool beside her. She squinted at him out of one eye. Definitely a kopis. He had the muscle, and there was no other reason that a man with his foreign features would be in a pit like Silver Wells.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“A drink. I’ll have whatever you’ve ordered.”
She rolled the words around in her mind for a moment, considering his accent. “You’re from Java.”
He brightened. “Have you been there?”
“Once,” Elise said. An old man had been possessed by a demon, and she ended up burning a village down. Six humans died. It wasn’t one of her favorite memories.
The newcomer stuck his hand out. “My name is Ramelan.”
She ignored it and took one of the shot glasses the bartender dropped in front of them. Elise lifted it with a slight bow of her head, then drank it.
He followed suit, emptying his glass.
“Another,” she said. Ramelan echoed her. The bartender refilled the shots before moving on, but she didn’t immediately drink. She dipped her pinkie finger in the liquor. “Now that you’ve had that, what do you want?”
“I heard you’re a kopis. I’m curious.”
Great, someone who wanted to gawk at the sight of a female kopis. Just what she needed. “I’m not in the mood to talk. I just want a few minutes to myself.”
“Your father is Isaac. Right?”
Her hand froze halfway to her mouth with the tequila. She set it back on the bar, and turned on her stool to give him her full attention. Ramelan was a handsome man. His dark hair was long enough to cover his ears, and he had broad shoulders and a thin mustache. It was hard to trust someone so handsome with such an easy smile.
“How do you know him?” Elise asked. She didn’t bother trying to suppress her suspicious tone.
“He’s on the Council of Dis. He’s a touchstone of one of its statutes.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but how do you know that I’m his daughter?”
Ramelan took an envelope out of his pocket and removed a picture. “I know because he sent me to Earth with this photograph.”
It was a photo of Elise from when she was fourteen years old—just before her parents abandoned her to live with her mother’s coven. She was scrawnier then, and less scarred, and her ungloved hands held twin falchions whose blades hadn’t been engraved yet. She stared right into the camera like it was a challenge.
Elise drank the shot.
“Why would he have given you that?” she asked, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. Her eyes burned from the alcohol.
He showed her a second picture. In the photo, Ramelan clasped hands with Isaac—a broad man with the body of a rugby player and Elise’s hooked nose—and her mother stood in the background, seemingly unaware she was being photographed. The walls around them were blurred, as if the camera had difficulty capturing the glow of the red clay bricks.
It had been over ten years, but her parents had barely aged since she last saw them.
“Ariane tutored me in English and French,” Ramelan said, giving the picture a fond smile. “Isaac and I enjoy sparring.”
Her hand tightened on the shot glass. “Oh.”
“I’ve spent five years in Dis,” he went on. “That is to say, five years of Earth’s time. As you know, it was barely a year in Hell.” He returned the photo to the envelope. “Ariane and Isaac told me marvelous stories. They’ve accomplished very much, but Isaac says his greatest pride is their kopis daughter—one woman out of thousands, and she became the greatest.” He heaved a deep sigh. “But news arrived some months back that their daughter died. When we heard rumors that you be alive, they hoped I would meet you at the summit.”
She clenched her teeth. Tension radiated through her shoulders, down her spine. “And what did they tell you to do if you found me?”
He looked surprised. “They only want to know how you’re doing.”
They wanted to know how she was doing. More than a decade since they left her alone “for just a little while,” and they wanted to know how she was doing. That was nice. Really nice.
Elise turned her shot glass upside-down, contemplating the amber lights over the bar through the glass’s distortion.
“What were you doing in Dis for five years?”
“I went there to study after I became named the greatest kopis,” Ramelan said.
Dull shock rolled through her. So he was her successor—this smiling man who called her parents by their first names, like they were close friends.
“What did you do?” she asked.
His smile faded a fraction. Every kopis who became greatest had to do something great to earn the title—something big enough to earn the attention of the Council. It was inevitably something unpleasant. Being the greatest of demon hunters meant blood and pain. “It’s a beautiful night,” Ramelan said. “I’m enjoying this bar, this alcohol, and your company, and I don’t want to talk about such things.”
A haggard woman crossed the Pump Lounge and stepped between their barstools. “There you are,” she said to Ramelan. “
Finally.
You can’t just walk off like that! I’m supposed to be protecting you.” Elise watched her waving hands for a hint of magic’s glimmer, but there was no sign of it.
“Your aspis?” Elise asked Ramelan.
His smile was gone. “My handler.”
“Your bodyguard,” she corrected. She faced Elise. “Sorry. I’m Veronika. And you are…?”
Instead of responding, Elise studied the “bodyguard” silently. She had already drunk enough tequila shots that it was hard to focus, but it wasn’t hard to read Veronika’s signals. Her skin was luminous and she was clad from head to toe in latex. She wasn’t beautiful—she was a little too stringy and severe—and there was something subtly disturbing about the unnaturally long lashes that framed her black eyes.
“Nightmare,” Elise said. “You have a nightmare bodyguard.”
He shrugged. “They sent her to Earth with me. She has no authority outside of Dis.” The second part was pointed directly to Veronika.
She huffed. “Zettel wants to see you.”
“I’m talking. I’ll follow you in a minute.”
Veronika took a barstool a few seats away. As soon as the nightmare sat, Ramelan’s smile returned. “There are never two greatest kopides at a time. When one dies, the title passes onto the next in line. But you did not die, daughter of Isaac, and that leaves us with a question.” He spread his hands wide. “Of the greatest kopides, who is greater?”
She drew a line in the moisture on the bar. “You can be greater. I never wanted the title. It’s a pissing contest.”
He didn’t seem to understand the idiom, but he understood the sentiment. “You competed for the title.”
“I was in town. It sounded like fun.”
“You didn’t think you would win?”
“No, I knew I would win,” Elise said. And she knew that meant her parents would hear about it in Hell. It seemed to be the fastest way to tell them she was doing well without them, even if they didn’t care. “I just didn’t think the Council of Dis would let me be ‘greatest.’”
He studied her for a long moment, drumming his fingers on the bar. His eyes were filled with the heat of someone who had come to face their greatest passion—like a painter given a canvas. “Who is greater?” Ramelan mused. “Would you be interested to know?”
Some part of her—a large part of her—wanted to refuse on principle. But curiosity itched. Elise had been wondering the same thing. “I’ll fight you,” she offered.
Ramelan burst into laughter. “You would, wouldn’t you? And what would the outcome of that fight be?”
“I would win.”
“You’re confident, for a dead girl.” He clapped his hand on her back. “We’ll fight. We’ll definitely fight. But not right now! This isn’t the time or the place for it.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”
Ramelan finished his drink, set it down, and stood. “Your parents have shown me kindness, so you are a sister to me, sword-woman, for as long as I live and serve the Treaty of Dis. I will be happy to learn if I’m your match. Now, I’m afraid I must deal with my handler… and the Union.”
He left the bar without stopping to talk to his bodyguard. Veronika’s mouth twisted with annoyance as she followed.
Elise hadn’t planned on getting trashed that night. She wanted to investigate the Union’s claims, find out what else McIntyre was lying about, and put an end to it all that night. She needed a clear head for it. But she couldn’t shake the memory of Ramelan’s photos. It unsettled her and left an uncomfortable sickness in the pit of her stomach.
The investigation could wait until morning. She waved down the bartender.
“Another.”
XI
E
lise arrived at
the mine bright and early. It wasn’t her choice. Zettel had arrived with a van before sunrise to take her there. She waited for hours in a mine that was silent aside from the thudding of air pumps, but the ethereal delegation didn’t show up again. Neither did the demons. In fact, half of the kopides hadn’t bothered to show up, either—and those who had were getting antsy.
Her head rang with a hangover, and she had to drape herself over a chair with a hand over her eyes to keep her brain from rupturing. She sat on the Union platform as men bustled around her, arguing and swearing in low voices. It felt like they were rattling a crowbar in the empty trash can of her skull.
“They’re screwing with us,” Allyson whispered to Zettel at the back of the platform. “First they want that woman to mediate—and she’s not even sober!—and then they don’t bother to show. They never planned on coming.”
Did they have to talk so loudly? Elise massaged her hands over her temples.
Anthony sat below, with a handful of kopides. He caught her attention through the railing and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged weakly.
The Union gave up waiting after a few hours.
“Do you know anything about this?” Zettel asked as he closed the door to the mine’s elevator. He had let the other kopides exit first, and then ascended with Elise.
Her head throbbed in time with the squealing of gears. She really needed a drink. “I don’t know a goddamn thing,” Elise said.
That answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. He stood right in front of her, trying to get her to actually look at him. “You know something you’re not telling us. Don’t you? All this trouble, the murderer, the angels—you’re right in the middle of it.”
She squinted at him through one eye. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here this weekend. I don’t want to have anything to do with angels. Trust me.”