Damnation Marked (22 page)

She gasped.

Her thoughts, feelings, and emotions crashed over him. For a dizzying moment, he could see himself as though looking up from Elise’s position, a good head and shoulders shorter—was he really that tall? The power of the fallen angel was overwhelming. Elise felt like she was on the verge of throwing up, or passing out, or maybe both. And her palms burned.

The worst part was her mind—it was a pit. She was so angry. James had never experienced that emotion at such depth, and it was almost crippling.

Yet she wasn’t thinking about Samael. She was thinking about kissing him on the beach, and how much Malcolm pissed her off, and that she blamed James for the previous night’s drunken sex. What little she remembered of it. And that only made her angrier—that she was still thinking about sex and kissing and struggling with embarrassment when Samael was on the roof with his next victim.

It would have been so much easier if you loved me.

He didn’t need to hear that.

James tried to tether off the binding. He fumbled and almost lost it—then caught firm.

Her thoughts dropped to a low murmur in the back of his mind. The seething anger faded. She didn’t show any indication that she knew that James had heard her most private thoughts.

“Elise—” he began.

A muffled gunshot rang out on the other side of the door.

She slammed through the door to the rooftop. The sky seethed with heavy gray clouds. Malcolm was crumpled on the concrete with a gun six feet from his outstretched hand.

But Samael was nowhere to be seen.

James kneeled to check Malcolm for a pulse. Cold winter air lashed over the rooftop, making his fingers cold as soon as he extended them toward the kopis’s throat. The other man wasn’t dead. Just unconscious.

Elise slipped on a patch of ice, caught her footing, and slid around a shed.

“Wait!” James called, hurrying to follow her.

He almost ran into Elise. She had stopped on the other side of the shed.

The fallen angel was at the corner of the roof, crouched on the ledge like a massive, gothic grotesque. His back muscles twisted. The stumps of his wings twitched. A low moan rose from his throat, more like a sob than a growl. He cupped the infant between his clawed hands—a tiny bundle of striped blankets that wasn’t moving. It was too dark to tell if it was alive, but the silence made James’s heart plummet.

“Samael!” she called. “Put the infant down!”

He looked over his shoulder, and hope sparked in his eyes. “Elise. You’re alive.” His wing stumps twitched again. He pulled the baby closer to his chest. “I was so sure that I killed you.”

“I’m fine. Put it
down
.”

He teetered on the edge of the roof, and James stepped forward. Elise barred him with her arm.

“I’m hungry,” the fallen angel whispered. It should have been impossible to hear him over the blasting wind, but his voice drove through James’s mind like a spike of ice. “Maybe—maybe this will be the last one. If I can’t satisfy this gnawing
need
…”

“No, Samael,” she said. He lifted the baby. “Wait!”

She stripped one of her gloves off with her teeth and held it out. The fallen angel froze, staring hungrily at her palm.

“You couldn’t help me before,” he said.

“But I can now. I promise.”

He swayed. Hugged the infant tightly. Elise moved to his side, adjusted her grip on the sword, and took a deep breath. He gazed at her with wide, trusting eyes. Her attention was locked on the baby.

She buried the blade in his back.

Joining with him, flesh to flesh with a bridge of steel, made ethereal power explode over Elise and James. The fallen angel screamed. His mind beat uselessly against them, and James could feel Samael slip against the barrier of their fresh bond, slipping and sliding away.

He unbalanced.

The angel dropped from the side of the roof.

“No!” Elise shouted, flattening her belly to the concrete barrier and flinging out a hand.

She over-balanced. Her fingers snagged Samael’s tattered sleeve, and her hips began to slip over the side, too.

James grabbed the back of her jacket.

The combined weight of the kopis and the angel was almost too much, and his feet slipped on the ice. But then his knees hit the wall, his feet found traction, and he dragged her back with a groan.

Elise’s hand remained tight on the angel. She hauled Samael back onto the roof and dropped him. He was still twitching, still shaking, still not quite dead.

And his arms were locked around the bundle of blankets.

She sheathed her sword and pulled the baby free. She lifted it awkwardly—mostly because it was squirming, crying, and
alive
. Its face was purple. Its chin trembled with the strength of its screams.

“Shh.” She bounced it gently with one hand under its neck and the other under its legs as though it were a football. “You’re okay. Stop crying.” She turned panicked eyes on James. “
Is
it okay? Is it hurt? What’s wrong?”

He took the baby and held it against his chest. A tiny pink cap had fallen to the roof. A girl, then—not an “it.”

“I think she’s just startled.” He offered his pinky to the infant, and she closed her toothless mouth around it. She fell silent and began to suck. He couldn’t help but smile. “There we go.”

Elise climbed to her feet, legs shaking. “What did you do to it? Is it dead?”

Her gums pressed into his knuckle. Her face scrunched. Fairly typical baby business. “She’s just fine.”

Satisfied, Elise turned to study Samael. He twitched on the ice. Blood bubbled over his lips. “Mercy,” he whispered.

“Mercy,” Elise agreed.

She stabbed him again—through the eye, this time.

He stopped twitching.

James felt a surge of vindication as he bounced and swayed over the body of the fallen angel, cradling the last baby Samael would ever try to kill. It didn’t bring back all the children who had died in Africa, Egypt, or France. But for the parents who would get to take their child home that day, everything was going to be just fine.

“We need to get rid of him,” Elise said.

He had a spell for that, but James’s hands were still occupied, and the little girl didn’t seem to show any inclination to release his finger. “Book of Shadows. Front jacket pocket.”

Elise tugged it out. He directed her to remove a page about halfway through and hand it to him. The infant didn’t stir when he whispered a word of power and carefully flicked the spell at Samael.

His feathers caught fire, and the flames crept over his flesh, which dried and curled like flakes of paper.

“Close the piggyback,” Elise said.

He silently terminated the bond, severing his thoughts and emotions from hers.

It was a relief—the burning of her palms immediately vanished, and so did her rage. He felt empty, and was glad for it.

She bowed her head over the smoldering remains of the fallen angel. Her expression didn’t change, but she closed her eyes and rested her chin on her hands as though in prayer.

He waited until the baby began to fuss, grunting and kicking her legs, and then he said, “We should go.”

Elise straightened. Her cheeks were dry, and Samael was nothing but cinders.

She went to Malcolm and slapped his cheeks a few times. It didn’t wake him up, but he was breathing. She pulled him over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “What’s the baby doing?” she asked, hefting Malcolm’s limp body.

“Judging by those noises? Probably trying to fill her diaper.”

Elise gave him a very, very wide berth as they headed downstairs.

T
hey turned the
infant over to the nurse. Karolina wept to see her unharmed, and then gave them a private room for Malcolm to recover in. He snored softly as Elise dropped him on the hospital bed.

“I don’t think he’s even unconscious,” James said, exasperated. He shoved the kopis’s legs onto the bed. “I think he saw Samael and fell asleep.” Elise flopped into the chair by the door and covered her face with her hands. He hesitated, wondering if he should try to comfort her, or apologize, or say anything at all. “Samael…”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She rubbed a hand over her bandaged forearm. Seeing her scratch at the new scar made James’s itch, too. “It’s too late to change your mind now, you know.”

“I wouldn’t, even if I could.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Elise. About the beach. I hope you don’t… well. You know. It’s not you.” She didn’t say anything. After an awkward moment, he repeated, “Sorry.”

She gave him a steady stare that told him nothing about what she was thinking.

That was the closest thing they would have to a discussion on the subject for quite a few years.

P
ART
S
IX

Godslayer

XI

NOVEMBER 2009

T
he ethereal city
hung suspended over Reno, defying gravity and common sense. James could see it from the hill behind his house. A helicopter buzzed through the ash-fogged sky, and he shielded his eyes against the sting of dust to watch it approach the city.

The buzzing faded quickly, but the ash kept blowing like an early snow on the hillside.

“I have a son,” James said aloud into the cold wind, just to test the sound of it.

He had never been so frustrated to be without a phone or internet in his life. The fact that he couldn’t see what the news reports said about the ethereal city didn’t bother him so much as his inability to call Hannah, or his parents, or the high priestess of the coven.

What was the child’s name? Was he a Faulkner or a Pritchard? Was he a witch, and was he powerful?

What about him made the Union think that he needed to die?

The questions he couldn’t ask overwhelmed James. He shivered and rubbed his hands together.

He went inside, which wasn’t much warmer without a functioning heater. He had set candles around the kitchen, and some of the tapers were burning to their final inches. If the power didn’t return soon, they would be without light and heat.

Elise stepped into the room, and her eyes met James’s from across the counter.

She looked as exhausted and emotionally destroyed as he felt. She set the toothbrush he had loaned her on the counter. Crossed her arms. So many unspoken things ran between them as she toyed with the ring on her thumb using her forefinger.

I have a son
. The words were still on his lips.

He swallowed it down.

As if on some silent cue, Elise shed her jacket and pulled off her t-shirt to reveal the tank top underneath. Grief had burned away more of her body fat since the last time he saw her; she was wiry again, like she had been when they used to travel together. The lines of her bicep and shoulder were emphasized by the deep shadows of candlelight.

She turned one of the dining room chairs around, rested its back against the table, and straddled the seat. She propped her elbow on the agarwood-topped table.

James’s eyebrows lifted. “What are you doing?”

She held out a hand. “Don’t you want to know who’s stronger?”

If the situation hadn’t been so bleak, it might have been laughable. Elise and James had tried to arm wrestle once after a few too many drinks, more as a joke than anything. She had flattened his arm to the table with zero effort and left before he could think of words that might soothe his wounded pride.

He considered her outstretched arm, and finally unbuttoned his sleeve, rolled it above the elbow, and sat down. “Just remember that if you injure me, my chances of survival in the demon apocalypse aren’t going to be very good.”

Elise wrapped her gloved hand around his. She had traded the winter gloves for fingerless weightlifting gloves, and the matching rings glimmered on their fingers in the candlelight. “Then you’d better beat me.”

At his nod, they began.

Her chest and shoulder muscles tensed, her bicep flexed, and his hand strained against hers.

The corners of her mouth drew down into a tight line. James took a deep breath and let it out, focusing all his energy on their joined hands.

His arm trembled. Elise’s jaw tightened.

He slammed the back of her hand to the table. She grunted, like he had hurt her.

“You let me win,” he said.

“No.” She sat back, rubbing her arm, and she sounded as surprised as he felt. “I didn’t.”

He flexed his fingers, watching the tendons in his hand ripple. Unease crept through him. “What does that mean?”

“Not much. I couldn’t beat most kopides at arm wrestling. I’m strong—very strong, for a woman—but I’m small. Mass usually wins out.”

“You’re saying that I’m as strong as an average male kopis.”

“Possibly.” Her hand dropped. “If you’re not yet, it wouldn’t be hard for you to get there.”

“Hell,” he said. “Maybe that means you’ll be out-witching me in a few weeks.”

She stood without responding and stepped into the formal dining room. Elise looked shrunken amongst the darkness.

He heard a
click
and saw a brief flare of fire.

James pushed his chair back and followed her into the dining room. From the doorway he could see through to the den, where Yatam’s still-sleeping form lay. He hadn’t moved since they had put him there.

Elise was trying to make a silver Zippo lighter produce flame, but was only getting sparks. She swore as she flicked it again.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She flung the lighter to the table. “What does it look like?”

Elise took what remained of the Book of Shadows from the belt of her jeans. She flipped to a candlelight spell and ripped it out. He noticed a white box sticking out of her pocket, and James felt a small jolt when he recognized it as a box of cigarettes.

She waved the page through the air. “How do I make this work again?”

“Elise…”

She blew on it. James’s stomach lurched, and the corner ignited.

Before she could light a cigarette with it, he crossed the room, plucked the paper from her hand, and stomped it out on Stephanie’s bamboo flooring. “That’s not what magic should be used for.”