Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (36 page)

“Too bad,” she said.

She threw her head backward to try to head-butt him again. But he released her before they could connect.

James’s magic built inside. Its power cascaded through her veins. Elise could feel him drawing off of her kopis energy, the combined power of the binding, and knew that he was opening the gate inside.

Belphegor sensed it, too. He drew back, darted for the door of the temple.

Elise flung out a hand.

“Stop,” she said, and she activated the warding runes clustered on her shoulder.

Fire flushed her skin. Hunger made her stomach cramp.

Belphegor struck an invisible wall and couldn’t enter the temple.

He whirled on her, annoyance twisting his features. “They can’t get to Eden,” Belphegor said. “Not without me.”

She tackled him to the ground. He didn’t even flinch as she rained blows across his face, snapping punches into his cheekbones, his jaw, his throat.

He shoved her off of him like she was no more than a kitten.

“An amusing distraction,” he said, “but I have an appointment with the Origin.”

“It’s canceled,” Elise said.

Without even getting up, she forced the remaining runes up her body and into her hands. It felt like sinking into magma. Elise’s vision blurred as the ethereal runes coursed over her.

James had only surrounded her cage in wards and other passive magic, but it was still agony for her to hold so much ethereal power. And she knew that stuffing Belphegor full of that passive magic could only hurt him, too.

She gripped his torn shirt in both hands and shoved the runes into him.

The blaze of magic was like a fireball between them, brightening Belphegor’s features and leeching the color from his clothes. He seized her wrists.

He pushed against the runes, straining them to their limits.

Elise tried to pull away too late. He grabbed her arms and held her stationary.

Her energy began to drain rapidly as the spells battered uselessly against Belphegor. The hunger came over her as a pounding headache, a racing heart, clammy flesh. All of her muscles trembled. And still he clung to her, glaring at her, making the passive spells overload.

His power was immense. So much bigger than hers.

The runes were draining both of them, but the depth of Elise’s power was a tall glass of water in comparison to the vastness of Belphegor’s ocean.

Elise had ridden high on the knowledge that the father of all demons had given her his power. She had believed she was the strongest demon, untouchable by her enemies, only equaled by James and his damn spells—spells that she had begun figuring out how to conquer, without realizing that they were conquering her.

She had killed God. Other demons worshiped her. She was the darkness.

She was nothing compared to Belphegor.

“You’ve made a serious mistake, Godslayer,” he said, his voice so calm through the crashing hurricane of energy that was pushing Elise toward oblivion. “I was a warlock longer than the demon that changed you ever existed. If you want to pit your stolen magic directly against me, you will always fail. Always.”

The pain faded as Elise’s flesh did. She teetered on the brink of the abyss.

And then the runes ran out.

Everything went dark. She collapsed to the ground at Belphegor’s feet, a boneless mass of barely corporeal flesh.

Elise knew she was hungry, but she could barely feel it. She could barely manage to keep herself from sinking into nothingness.

He wiped his hands off on his slacks calmly.

Belphegor turned to face the temple—which was when the spell that James had been casting inside stopped dead. There was no great explosion of energy, no sense of Eden. It simply cut off. And as soon as it did, Belphegor stopped walking.

“Oh,” he said. When he faced her again, he almost looked disappointed. “Well. In that case, we’ll need to discuss what comes next as soon as possible. Accessing Eden will require a different plan of attack. I’m willing to convene on your terms at the Palace for the conversation.”

His tone was all wrong—not the aggressive taunt of an enemy that had just defeated her. He almost sounded…friendly.

Elise struggled to put herself together enough to sit up. When she failed at that, she settled for giving herself the ability to speak. “Discuss what? Where?” Her voice was thready.

Belphegor repeated himself patiently. “Eden. At the Palace. You may select the time. I will be there, alone, and you may have all the guards you need to feel safe for the conversation. You can bring the entire army with you if that’s what you desire.”

Was that meant to be a threat? “I’m not going to let you inside the wards. You can’t have the Palace back.”

“I don’t want it,” he said. “I want
you
there, ruling over Hell, where you belong.”

“Why did you leave the army outside my walls if you don’t want Dis?”

“You fail to recognize a gift,” Belphegor said. “The army is yours. You’ll need them when you lay siege to Heaven.”

Elise wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing tightly to remind herself that she was still there. Her ribs felt spongy. Her skin was slick with rot. “What the fuck did I just miss? When did you decide you’re my ally?”

The tilt of his lips was deeply unsettling. It almost looked like he was smiling. “You’ve bested me twice before. Weak as you are, Godslayer, you are the only one suitable to be with me at the end of all things—you and I and the third, all of us in Eden together.”

“I don’t want to get to Eden.”

“Yet,” he said.

He was completely insane.

Belphegor crouched beside her. “You’ll need more than my army soon. You’ll also need my guidance when you lay siege to Heaven, and you will have both.”

“I’m not at war with the angels,” Elise groaned. “I’m not on your side.”

“Yet,” Belphegor said again, and the surety with which he said it was enough to sicken her. “If Leliel ever awakens, ask her why she invited me into Shamain. Ask her about the deal she wanted to cut.”

He drew a knife. When the blade sliced through the air, she twitched. But he wasn’t aiming for her.

There was a wet
slap
as flesh hit the ground. His bone was suddenly exposed near the thumb, spraying blood over his wrist.

Belphegor had cut a piece of his thumb off.

“As you may have already realized, warlocks aren’t meant to cast ethereal magic,” he said. “You’re killing yourself every time you draw off a source of angel magic instead of what comes naturally to you—magic of an infernal source. The fact you haven’t already died is a testament to your potential strength.”

Another wet
slap
, another piece of skin on the ground inches from her nose. The edges of the skin he had cut off began to curl inward.

The smell slid toward her, seductively meaty.

“You’ll find no documents on warlock magic, nor will you find anyone else who can teach you to use it.” A final sliver of meat was severed from his wrist. Belphegor’s shoes turned. He began to walk away. “I have been relearning infernal magic, and I will happily share this knowledge with you, Godslayer. Tell me when you’re prepared to learn.”

By the time he spoke the last word, he was beyond her line of sight.

“Eat,” Belphegor said, his voice fading. “And soon we’ll talk about Eden.”

The shredded skin was already cooling. She wouldn’t eat it—not Belphegor’s flesh, especially not when it was willingly given. It was a gift with strings attached.

But when Elise tried to focus in the distance to see what had become of Belphegor, she couldn’t. She also couldn’t stand. She rolled onto her stomach and blades of grass scratched at her spongy cheek.

Something had just happened here that she didn’t understand. Something very wrong.

Belphegor didn’t want the Palace—he had never intended to keep Elise from taking it.

He didn’t want Shamain, either. He only wanted Eden.

Everything Elise had done since moving to take the Palace had been based on the idea that other demons wanted the Palace as a stepping-stone to take Shamain. That had probably been true with Abraxas and Aquiel, but not with Belphegor. She had been wrong about him. So horribly wrong.

It felt like Elise had been playing a game against shadowy enemies without knowing the rules. Instead, she hadn’t even been playing the right game.

Where did that leave her?

Where did that leave the entire damn world?

Her fingers fell on the nearest sliver of Belphegor’s skin.

She lifted her hand to her mouth and touched the skin to her lips. It numbed her mouth instantly, as if she was trying to kiss a glacier, but she slid the skin into her mouth anyway. The idea of chewing was too horrifying. She pushed it to the back of her throat, leaving a streak of numbness on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and swallowed it down.

Elise devoured all of the pieces before she could think better of it.

She pushed onto all fours. Her body tried to reject the flesh the way it did any other foreign body. The pieces of Belphegor had entered her less violently than bullets did, but they were no less hostile to her existence. Her stomach heaved. Her eyes blurred.

Elise swallowed wetly, jaw clenched. She felt the tissue rise up her throat. She swallowed again.

The energy rippled through her slowly. It wasn’t as much of a surge as James’s blood had given her, but where the ice touched her body, from chest to fingertips, strength grew. Belphegor was a demon. Feeding from him would never be as satisfying as devouring a human. The immensity of his power made up for it.

He tasted like the ages of frigid darkness that had occupied the Earth before Adam and Lilith’s children spread across its face. Elise felt it all the way down to her stomach, as though she had swallowed a fistful of ice cubes. She traced her tongue over her lips, warming the chilly flesh.

Belphegor didn’t belong in the heat of Dis. He was something older and far worse than that.

Fresh energy lanced over her flesh. It wasn’t demonic—it was ethereal, and laced with magic.

James was casting another spell.

Elise stood. Drew the gun. And she walked into the tree.

Elise entered the
temple as if in a dream. She hadn’t had time to look around when she had entered it earlier to grab Belphegor, but now she saw it. Really saw it.

This had been her home once, in a time long past. The floor under her feet had been decorated by hand. Adam had placed each and every stone in the mosaic Himself even though He could have easily wished it into existence.

She had told Him that she appreciated the effort, but that it was unnecessary for God to put so much work into one mosaic when He had an entire city to build.

“For you, I would make entire worlds,” Adam had said, gazing up at her from His hands and knees, a basket of gemstones by His knee. She still remembered the way that His voice had made her heart flip flop.

Not my heart
, Elise thought.
Eve’s heart
.

It was getting harder to remember the difference.

The delineation didn’t become any clearer as she followed her memory into the branches of the tree. It looked almost exactly the way she remembered it. The hand-sewn curtains were draped over the walls where Leliel had wanted them, claiming that the proper placement would help conduct happy energies through the home. The gears of the clock that Nashriel and Samael had forged were still well oiled and appeared functional.

She followed the ghosts of her memories into the branches, walking the paths that Eve had taken thousands of times. Elise spiraled up the stairs, circling around the brass gears, and stepped off the landing near the top. That was where she had left the door to Eden.

And that was where she found the werewolves—and James.

Elise hung back in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight of the altar assembled in front of the statue. James had made the spell to open the gate more portable than the last time Elise had seen it. He had woven the circle of power into a large rug and pre-arranged pieces of the altar so that they only needed to be snapped together like a puzzle. She was almost as impressed as she was annoyed.

The werewolves were backed against the walls. Abel on one side, Rylie and Summer on the other.

All alive. Unharmed.

Her relief was tempered by the sight of James kneeling in front of the altar. “It must be a problem with the spell,” he was saying. “The rug, maybe—it’s a new design—and if I have just a few minutes to pull some threads, then we could try—”

“Don’t move,” Elise said. She leveled the Beretta at the back of his head.

They all turned at the sound of her voice.

James reflexively grabbed his wrist, pressing a palm to the bite wound that still hadn’t healed. “Elise.”

“That’s the last one of those gates you open, James,” she said, sighting down her arm so that the muzzle was aimed at his forehead. “We’re not playing this game anymore.”

Rylie scrambled to her feet. There was dried blood on her knees and elbows, but no visible wounds. She pushed Elise’s wrists down so that the muzzle was aimed at the floor. “It didn’t open.”

Elise blinked. “What?”

“The door to Eden didn’t open,” Rylie said.

“I felt the magic. I know that he cast it.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t work. James did the spell, Abel gave his blood, and no doors opened.”

That must have been why Belphegor walked away. He had been hoping to enter Eden, but had left as soon as he realized that James’s spell had failed.

James swallowed hard. “That’s right. But I can still fix this. I can make it work the way it’s supposed to, I’m sure. The gate or the spell or… I don’t know, but something must have gotten changed after the fall. It must be reparable.”

Elise gazed at the statue of Eve. Its hands were clasped over its breasts, eyes closed, head tilted as though weeping. The statue was fine. It hadn’t been damaged.

She turned her attention to James’s spell. It was fine, too. She had spent more than enough time studying his magic recently to know it. The ritual space was complete, like a closed circuit, and there was no reason whatsoever that the door to Eden wasn’t open at that very moment.