The Darkest Gate (16 page)

“Yes. It will.”

Neuma leaned her head on Elise’s shoulder and let out a sigh. It was such a sweet gesture from someone so aggressively sexual that it didn’t occur to her to push Neuma away. Her skin tingled unpleasantly where the half-succubus’s cheek rested against it.

“But we got the cargo,” Elise said, talking over Neuma’s head to David Nicholas.

“Sure. Most of it.” He laughed at the alarm in her gaze. “Ooh, nosy little accountant is scared now, isn’t she? The angel called in friends before we got there and flew off with a half dozen crates.” He inspected his fingernails, which were painted with chipped black polish. “But we got enough to assemble the gate, I think.”

Cold fear spiked through her. “You can’t do that.”

“Take it up with the boss. It’s her game.”

“Fine. Take me down there.”

He sneered. “No.”

Between having her boyfriend almost get executed in the desert and losing part of the shipment, Elise’s patience was destroyed. She wrapped a hand around David Nicholas’s ankle and hauled him off the Dumpster.

The demons scattered when she threw him to the ground. David Nicholas immediately scrambled to his feet.

“You goddamn bitch, I’ll cut your—”

She fisted his shirt at the collar. “I wasn’t asking,” Elise said, breathing hard through her nose. It was all she could do not to throw him again.

“You’re fucking unhinged,” he spat.

“Take me. Now.”

He shoved her off. “Suit yourself.”

David Nicholas took the back paths through Craven’s. The hallways were unlit. Elise had to keep a hand on the wall and follow the stink of his cigarettes to navigate down the stairs.

When they reached Eloquent Blood, there was no music, and nobody was left at the bar. Like last time, a cleaning crew moved through with mops and disinfectant to scrub off the worst of the encrusted brimstone.

She checked the time on her phone. It was almost sunrise.

“Losing your nerve?” David Nicholas asked, opening the elevator door.

Elise got in without answering.

They went a few levels deeper than the Night Hag’s den this time. She watched the ground ascend around them as the elevator sank deeper and deeper into the earth, where noise could not touch them and the air grew motionless and cold.

When it finally came to a grinding halt and David Nicholas pushed open the cage, nothing greeted them on the other side but darkness.

He darted into the shadows without waiting for her.

“Hey!” Elise called.

His chuckle came from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Not afraid, are you?”

Elise turned on her cell phone’s flashlight mode, which made the screen white. It wasn’t powerful enough to break the tangible darkness, but it illuminated a small circle in front of her feet. Enough to see a rough stone floor.

There was only one way to go—forward.

A powerful presence grew as she moved through the hall. It wasn’t just David Nicholas as he flitted in and out of the shadows. There was something else. Something immense, and not demonic.

She came to a crossroads. She had to stop to let a line of demons pass, carrying crates between them on litters. They flinched at seeing her cell phone light. Their eyes were wide and bulging with huge black irises—perfect for seeing in dark mines. The demons were marching deeper into the earth, treading a dusty path split by footprints.

“What is this?” she asked, raising her cell phone to see the boarded-up walls. It looked like an old mine, but there wasn’t stone beyond the boards.

“Top levels of the Warrens, of course,” David Nicholas whispered. “Don’t you want to see where the worst of us lurk? Like turning over a river stone and finding leeches and cockroaches and all sorts of slime.”

“I just want to talk to the Night Hag.”

“You will. Almost there.”

The last of the demons walked on. Elise fell in step behind them.

“Almost there” was subjective. It felt like hours passed as she followed them through the twisting hall. Her breath fogged from her mouth and her skin rose in goose bumps. Then a dim light appeared at the end. A pair of tall doors stood open, leading into a dim cavern. The demons scurried off with eyes lowered.

Elise started to follow them—but she stopped when she stepped through the doors and emerged on a platform near the top of a cavern.

The room was so impossibly tall that the ceiling stretched up into shadows like an underground cathedral. Dim blue light emanated from stones in the walls, turning the shuffling line of demons into silhouettes as they stacked the crates. Several tapestries were hung in the back of the room, framing the room with images of alien forests and cemeteries.

Other demons unpacked the boxes beside a tall dais. And at the center stood a gate.

It was only halfway completed, but Elise already knew she had seen that gateway before. It wasn’t quite like the ones in her dreams, but it was cast of the same soapy-white stone with brands around the base. It was thrice her height and wide enough to accommodate a train.

She knew it because Mr. Black had built one just like it years before.

Someone moved through the demons to check their work—someone tall and beautiful and ageless. Even in the dim light, Elise recognized the man who had been chained in the Night Hag’s cavern on her last visit. But now she recognized the glimmer of magic around his necklace and the silvery stumps at his back.

The Night Hag had one of Mr. Black’s angels.

Elise moved down the ramp toward the gate. The angel caught her looking and stopped. The expression on his face was a mix of recognition and fear, just like the one the angel in the desert had looked when he saw her palm. How had she not known what he was before?

“Like it?” David Nicholas purred, reappearing from with a whiff of brimstone. “I’d be lying if I said your shock wasn’t delicious.”

“You people are making a huge mistake. You don’t understand what that does.”

“It’s a gateway to a city.”

Elise turned. The Night Hag had sneaked up behind her. She stood straight-backed and strong, arms folded and chin lifted regally. Her breasts and hips had become plump, with a tightly cinched waist, and her black hair was shot with gray. Her skin fit snugly against muscle. Instead of looking like a woman of ninety, she might have been James’s age. But it was her. There was no mistaking the way the brand on Elise’s shoulder burned when she saw her.

“I thought you were only trying to defend the Reno territory from Mr. Black,” Elise said. “You have his gate. You have one of his angel slaves, which you need to operate the gate. You realize what this looks like to me?”

The Night Hag waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes. But we must be proactive. Mr. Black won’t be the only one to come after the ruins.”

“Do you know what can come through that?” Elise asked, stabbing the air with a finger.

The gate reacted to her motion. It hummed as the symbols glowed, then faded.

“Nothing. It’s only a doorway to the real threat—the angelic city, which I suspect is buried deeper still beneath the Warrens. And that city hides darker gates that are exactly as horrifying as you think. If we don’t get there first, someone else will. Don’t you see? The angelic city to which this gate opens is what makes Reno a powerful territory—and to keep control of the city above, we must control the city below.”

“All of you will die if you go to that city,” Elise said.

“It’s a risk we’ve got to take. There are nine doors in the angelic city—
nine
. If we finish it and cross through before Mr. Black builds his, we can destroy all entrances to the city. Nobody will ever be able to seize it.”

“You think you can control it—”

The Night Hag snapped her fingers. Bright pain flared in Elise’s shoulder, and she cut off with a groan.

“Petulant worm,” she said.

David Nicholas cackled.

“No. We can’t control it. I am not suicidal, Elise Kavanagh, and I did not ascend to the position of overlord by foolishness. The only way I can keep my position is to destroy the gates at the source. This is my plan and you’ve agreed to work with me, so you’ll deal with it.”

Elise glared at the Night Hag, David Nicholas, and the gateway. Her fingers itched for her daggers. But she kept her hands at her sides. “Nothing good will come from the city.”

“I’ve made my decision. Have you? Is our truce finished?”

“Please say yes.” David Nicholas bared all those yellow teeth in a grin that literally stretched to his ears.

It took all of Elise’s strength to say, “No.”

“Good.”

Elise was obviously dismissed. The Night Hag glided toward the angel, turning her back to the kopis as though she was no threat at all. But Elise called out to her.

“I stopped the convoy. I got the parts for your gateway. When are you paying me?”

“Payment. Money.” The overlord snorted. “Petty things.”

“If it’s petty, then paying me isn’t a problem.”

“Fine. David Nicholas will take care of it. Now get out of my sight—I have work to do.”

XI

T
hom was waiting
outside the studio when Elise got back.

He sat on the Motion and Dance sign, awake and bright-eyed, and he acknowledged her with a nod. “You will be pleased to know that someone attempted to cast a remote spell on the studio and failed.”

She was too tired to care. “Great. Fine. Good job.”

Elise started to march upstairs. Thom hopped off the sign.

“Quite a greeting for the person safeguarding your aspis. You appear displeased.”

“It’s four-thirty,” she snapped. “The sun’s coming up soon and I haven’t slept. David Nicholas said he’s going to pay me ‘later’ and I have nothing in my bank account in the meantime. Sorry if I’m not chipper enough for you.”

Thom tilted his head to study her. “You saw the gate.”

“Yeah. That too.”

“Then you know the whole story. What will you do about it?”

She spread her hands wide. “What am I supposed to do? I’m branded by the overlord. My options are limited.”

“Hmm.”

“Save your pragmatic bullshit,” Elise said. “Get out of here. Take a break. I’ll keep an eye on my friends for a couple of hours.”

“If you wish.” He vanished, immediately and silently.

She stumbled upstairs, went to her old room, closed the curtains on the sunrise, and didn’t sleep.

The air mattress she had dragged into the room for her and Anthony to use must have been leaking. It was almost flat to the floor. Her boyfriend snored without stirring when she climbed in with him. She never slept on the rare nights she allowed him to stay over, so she knew he was always terrible about that. It sounded like he was sawing wood. Must have been nice to sleep so deeply.

Something scraped against the side of the building. At first, she thought it was a tree branch. But then it scraped again, and again, in a rhythm that sounded deliberate.

Elise stood and moved to the window.

She saw nothing in the street outside. The only motion came from shifting clouds a paler shade of gray than the dawning sky of morning.

Another scrape.

The dose of adrenaline put her body on high alert. Elise stretched out with her other sense—the one that would have let her track a demon blindfolded.

There was something downstairs.

Elise felt for the knife at her back on reflex, but there was, of course, nothing there. Nor were there any weapons in the bedroom. She had dropped her swords in the kitchen.

She slid into the hall silently. James’s bedroom door was open, where Betty slept propped up by pillows. She wheezed in her sleep. Stephanie had dosed her with enough Vicodin to let her sleep through an attack from a horde of angels.

Elise sneaked around James—unconscious on the couch with an arm thrown over his face—and found her spine sheath on the kitchen table. She took one of the falchions. Its engraved blade gleamed dully.

She snagged James’s keys off the coffee table before slipping out the front door.

Nerves singing, she crouch-walked down the stairs. The breeze made her sweat go cold. Grass crunched under her bare toes. She eased around the corner of the building, alert for signs of attack.

Nothing outside. Not even cars on the street.

She levered herself up to one of the windows in the main dance hall using her fingertips. The lights weren’t on, so it was hard to see. Figures moved among the mirrors.

Nothing should have been able to get through the wards. Nothing.

She cupped the keys in her hand to keep them from jingling as she unlocked the front door and sneaked into the reception area. The footsteps were louder inside. It sounded like there were a dozen people stomping through the hall.

Elise set the keys on the table and peeked through the door.

One of the back windows was broken, but the magic seals James placed over the frames should have still been in place. Yet a trio of hulking forms moved between the mirrors. Their two-segmented bodies were suspended above the ground by long legs.

Spiders. Giant, Malamute-sized spiders.

They weren’t the same breed as the demons Elise had been fighting out in the desert. These were sleek and mean-looking, with boxing-glove mouth parts and shiny black flesh. One turned in her direction, and she had a glimpse of six glimmering eyes before she pulled back into the shadows.

She pressed her back against the wall to collect her thoughts. Elise wasn’t scared of spiders, but these looked like dogfighters, fast and sleek, and three was two more than she wanted to fight at once.

A sense of calm settled over her. A challenge.

The spiders moved into the secondary hall, where Elise’s punching bag waited.

She tried to follow, but her foot caught on something dry and clinging. Thick gray webbing tore free of a mass that stretched from wall to floor. She tried to wipe it off, but it only stuck to her fingers instead.

Spider webs. They had trapped the doorway.

The spider-demons stopped moving in the other room.

She crawled to the closet by the desk, trying not to make any noise or brush against the wall. Daimarachnids had poor eyesight and hunted by vibration. She was slower than usual, a little clumsier. Her foot was numb where it had been caked in webbing.