Authors: S M Reine
He was suddenly on the bar, and she hadn’t seen him climb it. Elise leaped onto a chair, a stool, and onto his level.
Elise was a blur of motion as she moved on instinct. She had never been so fast in her life. But Thom was faster. She kicked glasses out of the way and they shattered on the floor. Another thrust. Another calm step back. Her swings were completely ineffective.
He landed on the floor again. She seized a bottle and jumped over him, knocked a table over, landed with a thud. She kicked the table toward him.
Thom moved just a tiny bit slower that time. It almost tripped him.
She rose to her knees and chucked the bottle at his head. It cracked into his shoulder, and he flinched—the barest reaction. Elise brought the glass bottle down like a club. She saw him duck out of the way. Another miss.
He spun and twisted behind her. He didn’t trip on the fallen table. She reached for him, flinging her free hand out, and her fingertips brushed silk.
She knew a moment before he disappeared again that he would reappear on the other side of the table.
Her sword was there when he stepped back.
Thom looked down at her fist pressed tight against his side. The blade jutted from his back.
Blood rushed in Elise’s ears, a roar of white noise that drowned out her breath. Satisfaction surged through her. She saw nothing but Thom’s pale, surprised face, and the genuine shock in his black eyes.
“Good,” he said, and her satisfaction vanished. Thom stepped away from her. The blade exited his body as smoothly as it had entered, and he didn’t show any signs of pain. Her fingers went slack with shock. She almost dropped her falchion. “Clean your blade if you want to keep it.”
When she didn’t immediately move, he plucked it from her unresponsive hand and wiped it off on his shirt. He lifted the sword to study it in the bar lights.
Once he was satisfied it was clean, he returned it to her. She missed twice before sheathing it.
“What are you?” she whispered again.
“I am very many things. I have been sent to assist you.”
“Sent by whom?”
He pointed to the ceiling again.
“You are not the only one who wants Him gone,” Thom said. “How do you kill something immortal? Truly immortal? When man has no weapon that can touch it, when no wound can injure it, when it possesses no soul to exorcise… what do you do?”
“You stay the fuck away. That’s what you do.”
“But there is a solution. An ugly solution, no doubt, something intolerably wrong—but you are the key. You are the—”
“Don’t say it again,” she interrupted.
Thom inclined his head in acceptance. “You have been marked as different. You must be able to kill that which cannot be killed. You are the one who will end Him.”
She shuddered, shutting her eyes to block out the sight of him. But that couldn’t block her memories. “I’ve tried before. I don’t know how.”
“Not yet,” he agreed, his voice heated. For the first time, she saw real emotion in him. It was uncomfortably similar to the desire in Anthony’s eyes when she stretched naked in his bed. “But you will. When you do…”
He leaned toward her as if for a kiss.
She didn’t wait to see what he had planned. Elise swung a hard right hook, and her fist landed on the wall. Thom was gone.
P
ART
F
IVE
Burn
JUNE 1999
M
r. Black was
not a good man, but he did have some honor—perverse as it may have been. Elise had told him she wanted to be there when he used the bowl, so he contacted her about it a few short weeks later.
The message arrived on her anonymous voicemail service, which she had just established using the money she earned for retrieving the bowl. She hadn’t even shared the number with anyone yet.
“Hello again, my dear,” said Mr. Black on the message. “I have put together a little something at my house using your kind donation to my private collection. Seeing as you expressed interest in it, I hope you’ll join me for the activation next Saturday. I’ll send a car. Don’t be a stranger.”
Elise played it again for James that night. He had sequestered himself in his room for three weeks to craft paper magic, and his Book of Shadows was bulging.
“Donation,” he repeated with a scoff.
Thanks to the generous payment, they had moved from their stuffy motel to an upscale hotel. Their suite had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and room service. Elise had never stayed anywhere so plush. She was actually bathed, well-fed, and had put on some muscle.
But she was not one to sit idle for long. Waiting for James to assemble his spells was killing her, especially when she knew Mr. Black would soon make his move.
“Will you come with me?” she asked when she finished dressing and emerged from the bathroom, fresh-skinned and smelling of peach soap. Elise latched her mother’s cross necklace at the back of her neck.
James flipped through his Book of Shadows as if checking its progress, but she thought he might have been hiding a smile. “Of course.”
Their reservation was under a pseudonym, but a car was indeed waiting for them when Saturday morning arrived. James stayed in the lobby as Alain parked and got out to open the back door.
“I will check you for weapons,” he said.
Elise took a big step back. “Don’t touch me.”
“You cannot see Mr. Black armed. It will only take a moment. Lift your elbows.”
Reluctantly, she obeyed. He gave her a short pat down with the backs of his hands, missing the slender notebook in her back pocket, and then nodded. Elise didn’t have any knives for him to find anyway. She didn’t need blades to kill.
He waved her into the car.
“It is a long drive,” he said in French as he took position behind the wheel again. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She sat stiffly in the back and didn’t put on her seatbelt.
They took a direct route out of the city and exited onto a rural road that wandered through lush green hills. Elise didn’t try to see if James was following. He had tagged her with a tracking spell and would be miles behind them.
Alain had to go through two gates to get to Mr. Black’s property, which was set in the very center of a huge field of grapevines. It felt strangely empty—there was no harvesting equipment or workers. The manor was huge and sprawling. It looked like a plantation taken directly from the South.
Mr. Black stepped onto the stairs in front to greet them. “You made it!” he exclaimed, as though it was a surprise to see her.
Elise got out of the car, and he took her hand like he was escorting a debutante to a ball. She recoiled. He didn’t seem to care. “Not comfortable with contact, are we? My sincerest apologies. I’m so thrilled you could join us. Just so thrilled.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Straight to the point! Won’t you let me give you a tour first? I don’t get many visitors, and I love an opportunity to show off. You understand.”
She nodded reluctantly. Each step she took toward the front door made pressure build in her skull, as though her brain was swelling. Her blood pulsed in her temples.
The gate was complete, and it was near.
She felt drawn toward the east wing of the house, but Mr. Black led her in the opposite direction. “This way!”
He had done well for himself indeed. Elise hadn’t met many other kopides, but those she had met lived in squalor. The life of a demon hunter wasn’t one that lent well to being a productive member of society. But Mr. Black’s choice to settle down and start his businesses had obviously borne fruit. His floors were polished wood, the architecture was spacious, and each of his rugs must have cost at least half of what he had paid her to retrieve the bowl.
She glimpsed more fields through the arched windows in a kitchen lush with marble fixtures.
“Is there a point to this?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck to try to relieve the pressure.
Mr. Black beamed. That broad smile somehow made his handsome face a shade uglier. “Just showing what’s possible when you put your mind to it, my dear. This has all been built with my hard-earned money, from foundation to rafters to those pretty pillars you see out back. Such good fortune is humbling.”
That was a word for it. He made a big show of leading her into a wine cellar, picking out a bottle, and pouring two glasses for them. He held one under her nose. It smelled woody and peppery, more spicy than sweet. “Do you like it?” he asked, pushing it into her hand. “We grew it ourselves. Come, my dear, take a look.”
He led her upstairs again to French doors at the back of the house, where a patio overlooked a field of terraced grapevines. The hill sloped steeply down, and the haze of the sun cast violet shadows on the vines. There were no more houses behind them—just rolling hills, golden brush, and a distant lake.
It was easier to breathe outside, but it had nothing to do with the fresh breeze that stirred against her legs. There was a palpable difference in tension walking over the threshold. Alain must have cast wards all over the manor to retain the power of the gate.
Elise scanned the doorway. The marks were small enough to be unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t searching for them. A thin stripe crossed the patio, curved around the bushes, and vanished at the end of the wing.
“The equipment for producing the wine is in the shed out that way.” He waved casually toward the east, drawing her attention back to him. Shading her eyes, she saw a sprawling building that could have passed for a small factory. “We’re no major operation, but we make do. There was a time I would have been able to work the fields myself, but…” He lifted his hands. The skin was rough over the knuckles from fighting. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Don’t you think it’s a shame we should only know such wealth when we’re too old to enjoy it?”
Elise gave his broad shoulders a skeptical look. He may have been old for a kopis, but even in his fifties, he was in good condition.
“Sure,” she said.
His smile grew fixed. “Of course you don’t. You’re young, and you’re the ‘greatest.’ Your legacy is secure.” A strange light filled his eyes for an instant, but the moment quickly passed. “There’s plenty more to see. The main feature is yet to come.”
Mr. Black ushered her inside. Elise dumped the wine in a potted plant when his back was turned.
He took her into his study. James would have been jealous. Every wall was covered in oak bookshelves, and there were statues in each corner that wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum. A lockbox sat next to his desk. When he caught her looking at it, he nudged it under his desk with a foot.
“Let’s be frank, Miss Kavanagh. You know why you’re here.”
“You said you were going to kill Him,” Elise said. “I could help.”
Mr. Black nodded and sat behind his desk, steepling his fingers. “Surely you must wonder why I would have such lofty aspirations. Killing a god. It’s no small task. Have you heard the legends? The power that can be gained?”
“I have no interest in power.”
“Charming. Really. Very charming. And humble—but that won’t take you far.” He leaned on his desk to give her an intent stare. “There’s some way to harness that power. It involves the artifacts—including the bowl you retrieved—and ethereal beings. But I’m not sure how. Since you’re so humble, I’m sure you don’t care about eternal youth, immense strength, control over the domains of Heaven and Earth…?” He trailed off, waiting for a reply. Elise only glared. “No? You don’t want to live forever?”
“I just want to stay away from Him. I don’t care what it takes.”
Mr. Black studied her for a long, silent moment. The smile faded. “Why you?” he murmured. “What makes a young girl so special?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I have a book that might interest you. See here, my dear.”
He led her to a glass case at the back of the room. It held an ancient tome bound in leather and wood. Mr. Black lifted the glass and handled the pages tenderly, touching only the very edges as he flipped to a bookmarked section.
“This is where I learned of what could be gained in His death. It’s a record of prophecies. Look—this one is from the days of Apollo and Pythia. History says that he spoke the future through a mortal vessel for the benefit of farmers and kings, but some scholars believe it was truly about love. Isn’t that touching?”
“No,” Elise said.
“Imagine that. A god so enamored with a mortal woman that he needed to possess her body and mind. Think of the legacy that woman would leave behind.”
She glanced at the exit to the room. He seemed pleased by her discomfort.
“There’s a precedence for it, you know. See these prophecies? Hundreds of years old. They speak of Durga, a living weapon of Shiva, and Mahishasura—a demon god. She was so beautiful and desirable that he ripped apart the world to have her. And you know what she did?”
“She killed him.”
“That’s right. She killed him.” Mr. Black turned a devilish grin on her. “Do you know much about Durga and Pythia?”
She stared at him blankly.
“The power of woman over man is an amazing thing. It’s the stuff of legends.”
“Where is the gate?” Elise asked.
He shut the book. “No curiosity. Shame. Very well; let’s move on.”
The east wing was populated by guest bedrooms, each of which was as mundane as the last. They weren’t as well-maintained as the rest of the house. There was a layer of dust on the fixtures, and a faint, musty smell of places no human had been in months. Mr. Black didn’t take long to pass through it.
But the further they moved down the hall, the heavier the pressure in Elise’s skull grew. Something was humming. She took the notebook out of her back pocket and clenched in her fist.
“I’ve converted the largest of the guest bedrooms to accommodate my… shall we say, unique art collection?” He chuckled. “Not that I need to deceive you, of course. You know what I have. Don’t you?”
Elise nodded once, lips sealed tight.
Mr. Black stopped in front of the last room. The hallway felt darker at the end, even though the windows had been opened to the hot summer air.