Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) (35 page)

Bony fingers ripped away the wall of the temple, revealing a square white face with endlessly black eyes.

Fiery magic uncoiled from James’s hands. It lit his face from underneath with crackling white-blue light. But the attack had delayed him for too long—he had no time to cast a spell, whether to counter-attack or slow their fall.

The ground rose to meet the window and the demon crouched on the wall.

They struck, and there was darkness.

Elise raced over
a world darkened by smoke and clouds in search of the central point of the tear. The damage to the sky was centralized over America. No surprises there.

She rematerialized in a field of corn underneath the worst of the tear. The stalks were yellow and shriveled. They sounded like bags of clattering bones when the growing wind beat at them.

The fiends clustered tightly around Elise’s legs, nails digging into her jeans, faces buried against her knees. The gray light of the torn sky was burning them, just as it burned her. Standing directly under the worst of it would drain whatever strength she had gotten from James before long.

She had to do something to fix it, and fast.

A dark shape was moving inside the gray. James had said that there was something wrong with Shamain, something far greater than a few closed doors, and now she realized what he had meant.

The city was falling out of the sky.

As it passed through the tear, its edges rippled like a mirage. It shifted through the dimensions slowly, but once the edge broke free of the fissure, it began to move faster. And what was worse, Elise could sense life on the crumbling section of city—not ethereal life, but mortal life.
Werewolf
life.

“Fuck me,” Elise said.

She couldn’t leap into the sky and grab them. The top of the district was surrounded by protective angelfire even as it fell. She might be able to find a way in, given the time to explore, but she didn’t have that time.

The rest of Shamain was pushing against the fissure, as though it might soon follow that district onto Earth. The piece that had already broken away was accelerating. It grew in her vision, turning from a dot that she could cover with her thumb into something almost as big as her fist.

It was going to strike the cornfield that she was standing in.

Elise didn’t have time to save the fiends. She would be lucky if she could save the werewolves.

There was only one thing she could do.

“Run,” Elise told the fiends with all the weight of her will, urging them to flee, hoping they wouldn’t be stupid enough to run deeper into the corn.

Then she faced the city and spread her arms wide as if to embrace it.

She let her body dissolve into mist—not an intangible, invisible shadow, but a form between nothingness and her corporeal form. The same kind of smothering darkness that she had used to kill all of the brutes assaulting Northgate.

McIntyre had tried to measure her natural size once and hadn’t found its limit. Much like water, Elise’s mist easily changed shapes to suit whatever vessel she was in, whether it be a hole in the ground or a bedroom or the trunk of Anthony’s car. In open air, her maximum volume was impressive. She could fill entire streets.

But the plummeting fragment of Shamain was much, much larger than a single street.

She stretched herself to her utmost limits, extending her shadow over the cornfield, toward the farmhouse, past the foothills. Elise was everywhere. She could see the beetles crawling through the stalks of dried corn. A snake in the grass. A farmer’s rotting skeleton behind his house. Expanding that far thinned her, left patches.

Elise tried to make herself denser. She made herself immense.

And then the city struck.

Abel regained consciousness
hanging upside down. Blood thundered in his ears. He groaned and tried to grab his throbbing skull, but his arms wouldn’t move.

What the hell had happened to him?

His entire body was shaking with the healing fever. The amount of sweat drenching his hair suggested that he had been badly hurt.
Very
badly.

He twisted, trying to see his body. All he could make out was a blank white plane. It was textured like rock, and it was crushing his chest.

It was also moving.

Abel looked up, focusing through the dizzying blur to see brass cogs underneath him—the clock in Eve’s temple. It was closer to the ground than he was. He had to be at least three or four stories up with nothing between him and falling but the clamp around his body.

Then the clock swung out of view as he was lifted over a railing and placed onto one of the highest walkways in Eve’s temple. The stone grip released him. Abel sagged on floor—solid, safe floor—and looked up to see a massive hand pulling away.

Belphegor had been holding him.

Except that when Belphegor had first shown up in Heaven, he had been the size of a normal man. Now he was tall enough to stand in the foyer of Eve’s temple and touch the uppermost floors.

Abel trembled as he got to his feet. His muscles were still cramping, his skin rippling. He was bloodied but whole now.

They had somehow survived falling out of Heaven.

Belphegor’s giant hand swept overhead again, momentarily shadowing where Abel stood. The demon set down Rylie and Summer simultaneously, and then he ducked down one more time. Abel caught Rylie when she stumbled.

“You okay?” he asked.

She hugged him tightly. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Summer?”

“Yes,” Summer said. “Kinda.”

Then Belphegor dropped James on top of them. The witch didn’t have werewolf super-healing. He was bloodied and bruised and barely conscious.

“There,” Belphegor said, prodding James in the back with a finger like they were toys to be rearranged. He seemed satisfied to have them all collected together.

Summer helped James stand, pulling his arm over her shoulder. “You okay?” she whispered.

“We survived?” James asked, dazed.

“Momentarily,” Belphegor said. And then he was suddenly standing in front of them on the balcony, once more human-sized, his slim black suit covered in dust that smelled like graveyards. He brushed off his shoulders. He had the backpack of spell supplies in the crook of one arm, as casually as though he were carrying groceries. “Where is the fissure to Eden, witch?”

James gingerly pulled away from Summer, stepping up to look Belphegor in the eye. “There is no fissure here.”

“You must be lying, though you don’t register any of the physical signs of it. I have information that tells me there is a way to Eden in this temple. That is the sole reason I invaded. Also, you have brought supplies that would allow you to cast a spell using the blood of Adam, which suggests that you’re attempting to access Eden, too.”

James hesitated a second too long. Belphegor backhanded him. The witch slammed into the wall and left a smear of blood where his head struck the mural.

The wall cracked.

“Ah,” Belphegor said.

He kicked James aside and studied the damaged wall. The break in the mural paralleled the left side of a beautiful woman’s face, severing a detailed painting of a tree.

Belphegor slammed his fist into the crack and shoved.

A door that Abel hadn’t noticed opened with a groan, revealing a short passage on the other side.

“Get in,” Belphegor said. It almost sounded like a request.

When James didn’t immediately stand, the demon seized him by the collar, jerked him to his feet, and tossed him bodily down the passage.

Belphegor reached for Rylie to throw her inside as well, but she sidestepped his hand. “Don’t touch me,” she said. Abel was proud of how fierce she sounded, disgust curling her upper lip. Rylie stayed out of his reach as she followed James inside.

The demon walked behind them all, herding them into the silent depths of Eve’s temple.

Abel caught Rylie’s hand. She squeezed it tightly then stretched up to whisper in his ear. “If we all attacked at the same time…”

It was a seriously tempting thought. They had three werewolves and an angel-witch-thing. Belphegor might have been a demon, but there was just one of him.

Abel glanced over his shoulder. The demon was watching them.

“Wait,” he said. Shifting shapes would take precious seconds—seconds in which Belphegor could squeeze them into jelly.

The hall slanted under their feet, sloping upward toward the end of one of the temple’s branches. The room on the other end of the passage was a large octagon. It had broken during the fall from Heaven; a chunk of roof had fallen onto the floor, baring a gray sky beyond that was beginning to snow.

A statue of a woman stood in the center of the room. She wasn’t anyone Abel recognized. Of course, all marble statues looked pretty much the same to him.

“Eve,” James breathed.

Belphegor dropped the bag of magical supplies next to him. “I see,” he mused. “This isn’t a fissure at all. This is Eve’s private passage to Eden, is it not?” Apparently the question was rhetorical. He didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “Metaraon must have locked it so that only he could access it. Which is why you are here, witch. It all makes sense.”

“Good thing it does to you,” Summer muttered.

The demon didn’t look at her.

“Cast the spell,” Belphegor commanded.

James wiped his hand over his lip, smearing the blood trickling out of his right nostril. “What spell?”

“Don’t insult me. The spell that will allow us into Eden.”

“This isn’t a door,” James said. “This is just one of Metaraon’s many locks. What you’re asking—it won’t help you with whatever you’re trying to do.”

Black fog was gathering behind Belphegor where he stood in the doorway making his pale flesh look unusually vibrant, like bones floating atop a tar pit. “Metaraon did always enjoy his games,” Belphegor said, “and now he’s dead for it. That angel was not as clever as he believed himself to be, nor was he as powerful as I am. Open this gate. I will rip open
all
of Metaraon’s locks and we’ll enter Eden together.”

Adrenaline surged in Abel. They could open Eden now—not after visiting four more gates, but
now
.

But they’d have to do it for a demon from Hell, who was very likely to kill them all as soon as the spell was finished.

Abel and James’s eyes met. James’s gaze flicked to Belphegor, back to Abel, and then to the demon again. He was trying to communicate something.

“The fog,” James mouthed silently.

Abel frowned.
What about the fog?
Belphegor was a demon. Shadow followed those guys everywhere.

He didn’t get a chance to figure out what James was trying to say. Patience gone, Belphegor seized Summer’s arm. “I don’t have to kill anyone to coerce you, witch,” he said. “I can simply skin this one.”

“Like fuck you can,” Summer said. “Eat kneecap, douchebag!”

She kneed him savagely in the crotch. Hard enough that Abel flinched. Even in human form, a werewolf was strong enough to turn testicles to Jell-O.

But Belphegor just stared at her.

Her moment of spirit defused instantly as her jaw dropped. “Crap,” she said.

“Yes,” Belphegor said, as if to himself, “I’ll skin this one.” There was a knife in his free hand now, carved from white bone with gold accents. Abel hadn’t seen him draw it.

The blade flashed through the air.

He never reached Summer.

Her arm was wrenched from his grip as Belphegor slammed into the ground flat on his face.

Summer leaped back with a shout, hands flying to her mouth. Rylie grabbed her. There wasn’t any point in trying to protect Summer now—Belphegor had hit the floor hard and couldn’t seem to get up again. The black mist now filled the doorway.

He glared up at them with shock and fury, as if he thought that one of them had somehow attacked him without his noticing. But they were all standing beyond arm’s reach. None of them had touched Belphegor.

A pair of hands had coalesced from the gathering mist and wrapped around Belphegor’s ankles.

The fog
, Abel realized.

Belphegor was jerked back six feet in one hard pull. His roar of fury shook the walls of the temple, fingertips carving deep furrows into the stone as he tried to hold himself in place. He failed.

He vanished into the darkness.

For a stunned second, everyone stared at the place that Belphegor had been standing. The fog whipped away and carried Belphegor’s shouts with it. His cries echoed as he was pulled into the main body of the temple, past the clock, and then outside.

Abel got his senses back first. He whirled on James.

“Cast that fucking spell,” he said. “
Now
.”

Belphegor finally broke
free of Elise’s grip on the lawn of Eve’s temple. She was disappointed he hadn’t lasted a little longer. She had been planning to drop him from cruising altitude to see if terminal velocity would be enough to kill him.

Elise coalesced into her corporeal form. The cobblestone under her feet had been completely pulverized. An old tree had fallen across the road nearby. It seemed to have exploded when it hit, sending emerald leaves scattering over the ground. Blossoms still fluttered through the air with the smoke.

She had caught the district and set it down as gently as possible, which wasn’t gentle at all. The streets were wrecked.

“You,” Belphegor said, stumbling free of her mist.

“Me,” she said.

Elise phased across the space between them. She rematerialized at his three o’clock.

She swung a punch at him and he moved to catch it. She accelerated, adjusted the trajectory, sent it flying past him in a feint that made him sidestep.

Her opposite elbow was waiting for him when he moved. It sank into his gut.

Belphegor doubled over. She slammed the bridge of her forehead into his nose, but she might as well have rammed her face into an iron bar for all that it did to him. Pain swarmed through her skull, shooting white-hot electricity down her spine.

He twisted her arm behind her back hard enough that, if she had still been human, her elbow would have broken. He held her tightly, but not painfully. “I have no interest in fighting you, Godslayer.”