Death's Avatar (The Descent Series) (2 page)

With a roar, Izel shoved the table. It
exploded in front of Vustaillo. He flung himself to the ground and
screamed as margarita glasses shattered around him.

Izel leaped over the table, lunging for
James’s throat with clawed hands.

She stopped short with a gasp.

Something crimson spattered on the back of
Vustaillo's hand. He looked up to see a silver blade jutting from
Izel's back. The exchange had taken a half moment—no more. The only
sound had been Izel’s shout. Vustaillo’s heart shattered when she
sagged against the kopis. Elise lowered her to the ground.

Nobody sitting outside the restaurant
reacted. They continued eating and chatting, completely oblivious,
as was normal for humans. Vustaillo had picked the most discrete
table, after all. Izel’s body cooled next to him.

Elise stepped back and sheathed her dagger
again. James put the table back in its place, picked up the plates
they had spilled, and glanced uneasily at a waiter watching from
the doorway.

“Get your friend out of here,” James said.
Disgust curled his upper lip. And then they were gone again, as
silently as they arrived.

There is no currency more valuable than
information. When it pertains to the location of the greatest kopis
and aspis, such information is priceless—and dangerous.

News of Izel’s death reached the overlord of
Cancun by nightfall, then passed to the overlord of Chetumal.
Whispers traveled on shadows, crossed continents with the ocean
breeze, and found waiting ears before dawn.

Vustaillo had been murdered by first
light.

The tenth bell chimed two weeks later.

Part
Two: Falconer

James used to spend his evenings at a cabin
in Boulder, deep in the study of ancient magic. He lost himself at
his desk for days and weeks, emerging long enough to share his
findings with the coven before submerging again.

His fiancé, Hannah, was a witch of
insignificant power compared to him. She had snow-white hair and a
personality that made icicles shiver. He liked her that way. He
liked the feeling that he could thaw her. Their fights were
passionate, their love was tumultuous, and he could have been happy
going to bed angry with her every day for the rest of his life.
Hannah was many things, but she was not boring—never boring.

But things changed. Something went wrong. A
member of his coven disappeared, and her daughter was lost. Of all
the people they could have summoned—Grant, who loved the hunt, or
Beatrice, who had no family—James was the one called to find
her.

Thereafter, his evenings were spent in
pursuit, and being pursued. James had to bring Elise Kavanagh,
daughter of the coven, home to her family.

But by the time he found her, there was no
family left. They had gone into hiding and left her behind.

It was too late for him to disentangle
himself from Elise. Her enemies became his. James’s life with
Hannah was sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the coven, leaving
him no choice but to run.

And the worst part was that Elise was
nothing like her mother, an affectionate eccentric. Instead, she
took after her father—a brutal man that James was thankful to have
never known well. Elise showed gratitude for being rescued with
slanted eyes, stony silence, and the sneer of someone who barely
tolerated his presence.

He thought he might have hated Elise a
little. Certainly, he resented her. But there were advantages to
life on the run.

He still immersed himself in magic, but it
was practical rather than theoretical. James invented spells as he
needed them, with varying results. One might be meant to s an
exorcism, and succeed; another might be intended to numb the pain
of his twisted ankle and snap the bone instead. It was a new kind
of study, wild and unpredictable. He learned things that could not
be taught in any book.

Elise usually treated him like a scab that
wouldn’t heal, but they killed together better than they did apart.
At some point—he wasn’t sure when—they started to tolerate each
other. Then they became friends.

And before he realized anything might have
changed between them, they were bound as kopis and aspis. More
permanent than marriage, more fatal than family, closer than the
oldest friends. James was sworn in Elise's service as her
protector—the shield to her sword. Forever. Whether he liked it or
not.

He wasn't going to spend the rest of his
life passionately in love with his frigid, beautiful, brilliant
fiancée. He was going to spend the rest of his life following
around a woman whose idea of friendship was choosing not to stab
him. Sometimes, she even smiled at him.

James suspected it might be something like
Stockholm Syndrome, but he started looking forward to falling
asleep to the sound of Elise sharpening her swords. He liked
sparring with her. He felt pride when she killed something new and
horrible. And when she started holding actual conversations with
him, he was thrilled to discover a compassionate, loyal, and clever
woman hidden beneath her silence and steel.

He wasn't sure when it happened, but by the
time they had been traveling together for five years, James could
no longer think of a place he would rather be.

Naturally, that was when the world
ended.

Part
Three: Pillars of Flame

June 2004

There are over a thousand kopes spread
across the world. They can be found in rural America, metropolitan
Asia, and the empty plains of Africa. Of these thousand, eight
hundred are in active service; four hundred or so have taken
witches as their aspes.

Of those four hundred, only one has the
number for Elise Kavanagh’s answering machine.

Lucas McIntyre sat on the steps outside his
trailer and watched the sky burn. He held his cell phone in one
hand and an 8mm pistol in the other, debating which one would be a
better response to the hell that had been unleashed on the
desert.

Ten chimes. Ten pillars of flame lancing
through a red sky. There was no way anybody could miss that
message.

Unlike most kopes, McIntyre kept touch with
his demon-hunting brethren around the world. Tristan in Vancouver
reported seeing it, too. So did Maasilan and Wendall. He was sure
the flames spanned the entire world.

Of all the kopes he could call, he dialed
for Elise.

“Leave a message after the tone,” said a
mechanical voice.

“It’s McIntyre. Call me.”

That was all he said. There was no point in
describing what he was calling about—she would know. She always
knew.

“Lucas!” called his girlfriend from inside
the trailer. He pretended not to hear her.

The last time the bells had chimed, it had
been nine times. McIntyre wasn’t a man of education, but he could
sense a developing pattern. He wondered what would happen when the
clock—whatever and wherever it was—struck twelve.

He shared a trailer with his girlfriend well
outside of Las Vegas. They partly selected it because it was all
they could afford, and partly because they were above the edge of
the demonic Warrens, where everything interesting happened. He had
become used to feeling the presence of demons itching at the back
of his skull.

And he could feel demons nearby now. A lot
of them. They started appearing with the first chime, and now that
the tenth had died off, it felt like there were thousands just
beyond his line of sight. They hadn’t come from the Warrens.

“Lucas!”

McIntyre kicked the dust off his boots
before going inside. He set the gun and phone on the side table.
Tish hated it when he was armed in the house. “What?” he
snapped.

Tish stood by the kitchen counter, resting
her pregnant belly against its side. Her face was ashen.
“Look.”

His gaze followed her pointed finger out to
the horizon. Dark shapes milled against the hills. Those were the
demons he had felt emerging—and they were moving toward the
trailer.

He kissed Tish’s forehead. “Get in the
bathroom. Shove something against the door. Don’t leave until I
tell you.”

She nodded, lips white around the edges.

While she barricaded herself, he took care
of the rest of the house, leaving one window through which he could
aim a gun. McIntyre wasn’t usually the defensive type. He liked to
meet fights head on. But he also wasn’t suicidal.

A minute after boarding the front door, the
demons hit his trailer in a wave, cresting and crashing against the
walls. The sky fire had faded. It was too dark to see anything
through the window except yellow teeth and glistening eyes.

His heart drummed inside his ribcage. He
pulled on protective earmuffs, shouldered a rifle, and aimed.

He blasted the demons out of the window, one
at a time. They burst into ash on his sink.

The house rattled and trembled. His
girlfriend was screaming. Aim and fire, one after another. Dead
demons everywhere.

His rifle clicked—empty. McIntyre slammed
his shoulder into a bookcase to block the window. It jittered and
jumped as fists smashed into the back.

A light on the cell phone caught his eye. He
had missed three calls. McIntyre dialed the voicemail password and
held it between his ear and shoulder as he reloaded the rifle.

There were two messages. The first was from
his friend Peter in Bulgaria—he was under attack, too. The second
was left by an anonymous phone number. He could barely hear it over
the slamming on the walls.

“
I’m
taking care of it
.”

Five words. No greeting, no goodbye. But
McIntyre recognized Elise’s voice, and he suddenly felt much
better.

He threw the phone on the couch, shoved the
bookshelf aside, and fired into the mass of demons. His girlfriend
kept screaming as brain splattered in the dirt.