Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (17 page)

After a moment, Yasir said, “Okay.”

A man jogged out of the forest to the right. Abram was shocked to see that he was wearing a white leather jacket with jeans and a designer tee—all way too bright for a Union uniform. He had a hooked nose and honey-brown hair cut into short curls.

“I said just you, Commander,” Abram said to Yasir, ignoring the other guy. “The rest of your unit needs to stay here for now.”

The look that the man in the leather jacket gave Abram was of outright disgust. The sheer hostility of it was like a slap in the face. “I’m not Union,” he said coldly.

His shoulder slammed into Abram’s as he passed. The contact was hard enough to make Abram stumble, even though this other guy was smaller than him, skinnier than him, and shouldn’t have been able to make Abram sway, much less take a step.

He stopped in front of Trevin, gripped his fist, slammed a hand on his back. “Been a long time,” Trevin said, giving him that half-embrace that men too manly for real hugs exchanged. “Thought I recognized the fur.”

He
knew
this asshole?

Wait—he’d said fur. Was this the werewolf that had saved Abram from the nightmare demon?

“You’re welcome for the save,” the guy in white said.

Yasir came up beside Abram. “His name’s Levi,” he muttered by way of explanation
.

Only then did Abram realize that he knew Levi, too. He had only ever seen him once before. He was a former member of the werewolf pack. Abram vaguely remembered seeing Levi in mourning, red-eyed and miserable, the night that he and Summer had returned from the Haven. Now Levi was swaggering and obnoxious—virtually unrecognizable.

He stared after Levi as he walked away talking with Trevin. What was a former pack member doing with the Union?

Yasir jerked a thumb down the road. “Let’s talk, huh?”

Abram took Yasir
to St. Philomene’s. The commander stopped near the church’s confessional, lingering over the long table of weapons that they had pulled together.

“Nice collection,” Yasir said, running his finger along the butt of a rifle.

It
was
a nice collection, mostly salvaged from the abandoned homes around Northgate. There had been lots of hunters in town before the fissure forced the evacuation. But they weren’t exactly there to talk about their guns.

“Commander,” Abram prompted.

Yasir glanced around the cathedral, up at the rafters, scanning the windows. “Shame what’s happened to towns like this. This is one of the lucky ones, you know—aside from the fissure. A lot of places have been infested by demons and we don’t have the manpower to clear them out. Too many higher priority points of conflict.”

“What happened out there?” Abram pointed at the wall of the church, indicating the forest beyond and the demon that he had fought.

“Her name is Clotho,” Yasir said. “She’s one of Belphegor’s three Fates. They’re something we’ve classed as super-demons—entities that have been given the blood of another demon to augment their powers. We’ve been tracking her since she escaped OPA custody two weeks ago.” He tapped his earpiece, a Bluetooth headset the size of a pinkie finger. “The helicopter’s sweeping for her now.”

If she had already escaped them once, then Abram wasn’t going to expect them to find her again. She was still out there, carrying his name on her lips. “What’s she doing here?”

“Same thing we are,” Yasir said. He took an empty magazine off the table and fiddled with it. “Like I said, my unit just came out of Mexico. We’ve been securing gateways all across the country, including artifacts like the Bain Marshall statue that can form different portals depending on conditions. Belphegor’s been making a concerted effort to seize gateways that lead to Heaven.”

Abram frowned. “You want to keep him out of Heaven.”

Yasir set the magazine down. “What happens in Heaven is beyond our control—for now. But the gateways on Earth are in our jurisdiction, and whatever Belphegor does with them can only be a threat to America’s security. We believe that Clotho is now moving to secure Bain Marshall’s statue.”

Belphegor must have sent her when the kibbeth failed to take the statue.
Dammit, Rylie…

“How much do you know about what’s going on in Dis?” Abram asked.

“We know that it’s the source of most attacks on Earth and that there has been civil unrest. Intel is unclear otherwise.”

“We’re in control of the Bain Marshall statue,” he said. “On both sides.”

He took a moment to let that sink in with Yasir. The commander looked surprised, impressed, and worried all at once. “Do you think the werewolves can hold Northgate against an army of demons?” Yasir asked.

Abram didn’t even have to consider it. There was no way that they could hang onto that segment of the fissure if there was a concerted attack. The kibbeth had shown him exactly how ill prepared the Scions had been. The werewolves were strong and healed fast, sure, but they were normal people—not fighters. And they couldn’t even change without Rylie.

The idea of fighting Clotho again was sickening. Fighting Clotho
and
Belphegor’s army was unthinkable.

Yasir lowered his voice. “This isn’t the conversation I was expecting to have when I came here, to tell you the truth. I expected to be meeting friends—with all due respect. Where’s Seth?”

Abram ducked his head, stared hard at the corner of the nearest pew without seeing it. “Seth’s dead.”

“What?”

“Died in the Breaking,” Abram said. The commander looked much more bothered by this news than he expected. Grief was etched all over Yasir’s face. “How do you even know him?”

“I was friends with him,” Yasir said. He swallowed hard, the knot in his throat bobbing. “Actually, I was the best man at his wedding.” He visibly gathered himself, wiping the grief off of his features. “I’m sorry to hear what happened to him. He was a good kid.” He looked at Abram again, as if seeing him for the first time. “What are you, his cousin? You’ve got the Wilder look.”

“Nephew,” Abram said.

“Huh,” Yasir said. “Nephew. You’re not Cain’s kid, are you?” He tossed it out there casually, like it would be no big deal if Abram were the offspring of the oldest of the three brothers. But his eyes were sharp. Suspicious.

Cain had wielded a cult of witches as a weapon to try to kill Seth, Abel, and Rylie. He had been dead for months, and the world was better for it.

“Not Cain’s kid, no,” Abram said curtly. Yasir obviously wanted an explanation, but Abram wasn’t going to attempt to explain his strange family tree. They had bigger issues at hand. “Okay. Belphegor’s demons are coming here. Where does the Union fit in?”

“This unit has been assigned to help the werewolf pack protect the Bain Marshall gateway, as well as equip and train the local population.”

“Before the fissure shifted priority, the OPA was trying to register all preternaturals and exterminate werewolves. ‘Equip and train’ crap doesn’t seem consistent with your previous policies.”

“Like it or not—and a lot of us don’t—those policies were trying to prevent an incident like the Breaking. We failed. Things have changed. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing our allies. We also wouldn’t have the manpower to take Northgate from the werewolf pack even if we wanted to.” Yasir folded his arms. “When I heard the OPA secretary was planning to intervene here, I spoke on behalf of the pack and asked to keep it under Rylie’s control. If you turn me away, I’ll go, but I can’t promise that the next unit they send will be as helpful.”

And if Abram said no, then the helicopter with its impossibly bright spotlight would stop looking for Clotho. They would be alone against whatever was to come.

Abram could only guess at what his parents would say to the offer. Rylie wasn’t there and she had left Abram in charge. That meant he had to use his best judgment, not guesses.

If she didn’t like it…well, she shouldn’t have gone running off and left the pack without an Alpha.

“We can use all the help we can get,” Abram said, offering a hand to Yasir. “Thank you…sir.”

They shook.

Elise was standing
outside the Crane Hotel again, but she wasn’t sure how she had gotten there. She didn’t remember finishing with the basandere’s body and leaving him.

She turned to look behind her. There were footsteps in the snow, so she knew that she must have walked. Strange, since it was easily dark enough for her to phase. Her footsteps were surrounded by dots of darker snow. She was…dripping.

Elise checked her jacket, the pistol at the small of her back. Everything was intact, even though her breakfast had left her a mess and her head was throbbing like a motherfucker.

She was going to have to feed again, and soon—but first things first.

Elise phased up the elevator shaft to Rylie’s hotel room. It was quiet inside and the wards were intact. She rapped her knuckle against the door. “I’m coming in.”

If Rylie responded, she didn’t hear it.

Pressing her hands to the doorframe, Elise drew the runes toward her again, urging them to crawl up her fingers and slide under the wrists of her sleeves. Her stomach lurched at the touch of magic. Elise steeled herself and kept tugging, unraveling the latticework of wards that had protected the walls, the vents, the windows, the crack underneath the door. The sound of rushing blood filled her head.

She couldn’t take all the magic. It was too much.

Wrenching her hands away, she stepped back from the door. Some of the runes were still swirling over the walls. The rest were on her arms underneath her jacket.

“Shit,” she said, wiping a gloved hand over her forehead. Fuck it—she was going to have to leave the rest of them behind.

Elise entered. Rylie was sitting in bed, back against the headboard, curtains open so that she could squint at a book she tilted toward the faint light from outside.

“You’re later than I expected,” Rylie said. Then she actually looked up. She dropped the book and spilled the pillows to the floor as she stood. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“You’re covered in blood!”

Elise looked down at herself. It looked bad, but not nearly as terrible as she felt. A sour taste climbed the back of her throat. “I took care of the demons that were following us,” Elise said, shrugging it off. “They’re gone and I’m fine.”

That answer seemed to relax Rylie a fraction. “You could have let me help you.”

Not unless she wanted Elise to turn on her in crazed hunger, too.

“Thanks,” Elise said. “Maybe next time.”

She went into the bathroom and tried the tap. The water wasn’t working. She stripped off her jacket and scrubbed at the worst of the blood on the collar with a dry hand towel.

Rylie stood in the bathroom doorway to watch. “Why were those things following us?”

“They said they were with Belphegor. He must have had them follow us from Northgate.”

“Assassins?”

Assassins didn’t raid convenience stores for Twinkies and attack with brass knuckles—not against a creature like Elise. But she nodded. “Something like that. Did anything happen here?”

“No, it was quiet all day.” Rylie was hugging the book she had been reading to her chest. It looked more like a slender leather journal with loose binding that was stuffed with too many pages.

That was Elise’s book. A librarian in the Palace of Dis named Onoskelis had given it to her. “You got into my box,” Elise said. Not accusing, not yet. Just giving Rylie a chance to explain.

Her cheeks reddened. “It fell open when you threw the saddlebags on the bed. Is it okay if I read it?”

“Guess it is now. Getting anything out of it?”

“Not the book itself, no,” Rylie said. “It’s all written in the demon language, isn’t it? I can’t make heads or tails of it. But your translation notes are interesting.”

“How much have you read?” Elise pulled her bodice off to examine it. The front was drenched with basandere blood. Not going to be recoverable. She tossed it in the trash.

“Just your stuff about the map. It’s dense reading.”

No kidding. Onoskelis had given Elise an old diagram of the city—as in, millennia old—and the accompanying notes could have been used as sleeping pills. “I hope you get more out of it than I have. I’ve spent days translating it and still barely understand what I’m working on.” Scholarly analysis had always been James’s strong suit, not Elise’s.

She returned to the saddlebags and donned a fresh shirt. Just pulling it over her head hurt. The entire back of her skull felt like a massive bruise, and she wasn’t healing where she had been struck by the basandere’s chain.

Rylie hung back as Elise dressed, toying with the spine of the book. “I haven’t seen much of Hell,” she said slowly, “but I never would have expected there to be freshwater springs there.”

Elise jerked the hem of the shirt down to cover her abs. “That’s because there aren’t any.”

“The map—”

“There is no fresh water in Hell,” Elise said again. “Dis is a desert. The only fluid there is liquid magma.” That was the strangest part of the book that Onoskelis had given her. The map claimed that the city had been built on top of a source of water.

“So it’s all fake,” Rylie said.

Elise plucked the book out of her hands. “That’s what it looks like, yeah. If one part has been made up, then there’s no reason to believe that any of that supposed ancient history could be true.” She tossed it back into her box, closed the lid, and shoved everything into the saddlebags again. Rylie’s belongings were already in there. It didn’t seem that she had ever bothered to unpack.

“Why bother translating something if it’s fake?”

“Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it has no message,” Elise said. She just needed to figure out what the fuck Onoskelis was trying to tell her. She had brought the book with her in the hopes that she could work on it on the road, but that didn’t seem likely now. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Rylie pulled on her sweater and hurried to follow Elise out the door. It felt strange and wrong to leave the rest of the warding runes behind, but Elise didn’t dare attempt to gather them. “Where are we going? Did you already cast another one of those red light things?”