Descent07 - Paradise Damned (3 page)

A daily walk became routine, during which Pamela taught her about herbs and flowers. Elise tried to pretend that it was boring, since it didn’t involve punching anything.

About a month later, Pamela invited Elise to help with a spell. She asked Elise to read from the Book of Shadows as Pamela performed the ritual. The old witch even let her watch while magic and light swirled through the air. Elise tried to pretend that was boring, too, but it was hard. Pamela was so much better at magic than Mom had ever been, and the process was fascinating.

Then Pamela started asking Elise to join her in front of the fireplace for shared reading time after dinner. They didn’t talk during this particular activity. They just sat together on the couch and read until the stupid nine o’clock bedtime.

This was the quietest of all special activities, yet Elise thought it was
fascinating
. She had never really read books before. Nothing that wasn’t about history, demonology, or fighting techniques, anyway. Elise liked fiction. It was fun.

But more than that, Mom and Dad had never gone out of their way to spend time with Elise. It was weird having an adult treat her like she was a teenager, a family member, and not a weapon.

Sitting in front of the fireplace with Pamela was the best part of the day.

“Can I read in bed?” Elise asked one night. It was nine o’clock, but she only had two chapters left—she couldn’t put the book down
now
.

This question seemed to please Pamela. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, licking her thumb and turning a page. “It’s time to sleep. But you can finish reading it at breakfast.”

While Pamela’s laws required Elise to be in bed at nine, even the most stringent rules couldn’t force her to go to sleep. She pretended to put the book back on the shelf, then tucked it under her shirt and took it to bed instead. She finished the romance novel by moonlight, holding the book open with the weight of a dagger while her hands were occupied by sharpening the falchions. She was quiet about it. Pamela never knew.

Sneaking a book to bed and reading until midnight became the last special activity Elise had at Pamela’s house, but it was definitely her favorite.

Even when she was reading in bed, Elise kept her ears perked for hints of motion in the forest outside her open window. When hunting with Dad, one of them had always been awake at any given time. They had to be prepared for anything. For the first twenty-three weeks with Pamela, there were no attacks or danger at the house to watch for, but habits were hard to break.

On the twenty-fourth week, Elise broke the habit. She fell asleep early, at nine o’clock sharp, facedown in a book.

That was why she wasn’t awake to see Pamela’s killers coming.

Elise awoke to
the sound of her bedroom door opening.

She sat up, shocked and confused, head foggy, mouth dry. The room was darker than usual. Pamela had always left a light on in the hallway in case Elise needed to navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But that light was extinguished.

Elise could barely make out the shape of a figure stepping into her bedroom, broad-shouldered and tall. Her first wild thought was that her parents had finally come back for her. But this man was much too tall to be Dad.

Men didn’t visit Pamela’s house. Especially not men with wings.

Dad’s voice rolled through her mind as she leaped out of bed, allowing her muscles to activate on instinct.

You fell asleep, you useless piece of shit.

Elise’s weapon safe was locked with the falchions inside. She grabbed a knife off of the dresser.

You let your guard down.

The angel was within arm’s reach. She swung the knife for his heart, using every ounce of speed she could muster in her sleep-sluggish state.

He caught her wrist with a crushing grip, squeezing until he dropped the knife.

Your enemies never sleep.

He brought his other arm from behind his back, and Elise realized that he was holding a sword: a blade as long as his arm with a single edge, curved and wicked. It was larger than one of Elise’s falchions, more like some kind of saber. It would be slower to swing, and useless for thrusting. She needed to get in close.

Elise drove her knee between his legs. Stomped on his instep.

He didn’t even grunt.

If you get caught sleeping, you deserve what’s coming to you
, Dad whispered.

Elise attempted to disarm the angel, to take the sword for herself. But when her fingers brushed the hilt, they flamed with pain. She cried out.

The winged man forced her to her knees and backhanded her. Her lips tasted like blood.

“Pamela!” Elise shouted.

You failed, kid
.

But in her lessons with her father, there had been second chances. She had been able to recover from the fights and try again. Dad said that she should remember that real fights never had do-overs, and that if she failed in reality, it was a permanent failure.

It was one thing to be told she would have no second chances, and another to have a booted foot driven into her face.

A flickering light filled the room. The man’s sword had ignited with flame. Though he held it several feet above her head, it scorched the finest hairs on her face. A lock of auburn hair near her eye curled with the heat. Elise twisted under the boot to see the man’s face illuminated by the sword. It was impossible to make out any details, but she could see one thing: the angel’s eyes were a very pale shade of blue.

He slammed the pommel of the saber into her skull, and her head bounced off of the floor.

Dazed, she couldn’t move as he dragged her out the door by the ankle.

The office door was open. Elise could see Pamela’s feet on the other side of the desk, as if she were asleep on the floor beyond it. Pamela was dead. Her rules didn’t apply anymore.

Elise’s head cleared enough to realize that she was still being dragged.

Never let them take you,
Dad had said once.
If the enemy takes you off of the battlefield, you’re dead
.

She was in the living room now. The front door was open. Darkness and death waited on the other side. Elise kicked and struggled, trying not to allow herself to be dragged any farther. She grabbed the couch as they passed, and her fingers slipped, tearing free. The man with the sword and the mighty wings was too strong to stop.

Dad would have been so annoyed with her.

You deserve whatever is coming,
his voice whispered in the back of her mind.

The angel dragged Elise through the front door.

But it wasn’t darkness waiting on the other side. It was gray light, so impossibly bright, and there was someone waiting for her within it.

The door closed.

P
ART
T
WO

The Bride

I

JANUARY 2010

Elise Kavanagh was
burning.

The flesh peeled from her body. Flaming fingers drove into her skull, plucked out her eyes, and pierced her brain. She arched her back and screamed until there was no breath remaining in her lungs.

It was gray. Everything was gray. She was going to die.

Why haven’t I died yet?

Hands hauled her through the light. She lashed out with booted feet, kicking and thrashing and trying to find some way to dig in before it was too late.

Her vision swam with green shapes in the wake of passing through the void, much too bright for her demon eyes to process. Even before she could see, she smelled burning leaves, heard the shifting of branches, felt the dead weight of the air.

The last thing that she remembered seeing was the reception area of Motion and Dance. The desk where she used to do the accounting had been dusty. The blue carpet and curtains had been bleached by sunlight. Outside, there had been snow on the ground, dead trees, the staring faces of empty buildings—hallmarks of a now-desolate Reno, Nevada.

She hadn’t cared about any of it. Elise had been heading upstairs to join James for breakfast, and even though her body was sore from recent fights, she was the happiest she had ever been.

Until she had stepped through the front door.

Elise’s eyes cleared, letting her watch as she was dragged underneath a stone arch into a different world.

She wasn’t in Reno anymore.

Elise was in the garden.

A pair of cherubim held her in an iron grip. Their eyes were empty holes, and silver blood tracked their cheeks. Swords hung from their belts.

The gate retreated as they carried her away. There were only a few yards of grass between the edge of the world and the garden wall. Vines gripped gray stone, punching through slivers in the brick, just like she remembered from the last time she had been trapped there.

Once she was on the other side of that wall, He would never let her out again.

James.
Elise had to get back to James.

She craned her head around and bit. Teeth sank into angel flesh. Blood filled her mouth. It tasted like sweet pain, and part of her wanted to drink it deep, draw it into her belly, drown in the bitter flavor.

Elise was rewarded by a scream. The wounded hand flinched away.

She blindly elbowed the other cherub in the gut. She must have hit something good, because his hand dropped, too.

Freedom
.

Reaching back, she felt around her shoulders for the spine sheath. It was gone, and so were the twin falchions.

She was unarmed.

Elise made a break for gate, sprinting across the field even as the gray light of Heaven seared her, peeling her flesh away with white fingers and burning her bones.

The gate approached slowly. Too slowly. Heaven rendered her sluggish.

A wind stirred her hair, and wings drummed behind her. The angels had taken flight.

Just a few more steps…

Elise stretched her fingers toward the light within the gate.

Almost there…

Pain flared at the back of her head.

Darkness.

A few minutes
or a few hours later, Elise shocked back to consciousness. The eyeless faces of the cherubim were above her. One of them had long, braided hair that swung over his shoulders. When he adjusted his grip on Elise’s wrists, she noticed that his hand trickled blood from the circular imprint of tooth marks. The other had pale features, pale hair, and a determined grimace. He held her ankles now.

She being hauled over grass again, but now the gate was nowhere in sight and the garden wall loomed. She could barely make out the skeletal fingers of branches stabbing the sky, blackened by time and bare of leaves or fruit.

They were almost inside.

Elise screamed.

The noise must have surprised the cherubim, because the grip on her legs slipped—the barest of motions, but it was enough. She ripped one leg free and snapped a kick into the cherub’s face. His nose crunched satisfyingly under her heel. He dropped her.

The angel with the braids was not so easily thwarted a second time. He kept hold of her wrists.

All the better.

She used the momentum of falling to flip him over her shoulder, and his weight broke the grip.

As soon as he was flat on his back, she straddled his chest. Elise dug her fingers into his throat and squeezed.

She had ripped a cherub’s throat out before. She would be more than happy to do it again.

But her fingernails had barely begun to sink into his flesh when the second angel recovered. One warm hand grabbed her jaw. The other took the back of her head.

He whipped her chin to the side. Something popped inside her skull.

Elise had a disconcerting moment to realize her neck had snapped before darkness swallowed her again.

It didn’t last long.

Elise’s eyes snapped
open. Her senses flooded back to life.

Gray light. Curling brown leaves. Burning flesh. And the sound of the cherubim’s footsteps on grass.

She was still alive.

Goddammit, I’m still alive!

The cherubim dragged her through the bushes on the inside of the garden wall. Brambles tore at her flesh, sharp and cruel, leaving red imprints on her pale skin. Her left hip scraped along dry soil. Pressure pinned her arms above her head. One of the cherubim had wrapped a vine around her wrists to keep her restrained.

Elise couldn’t go anywhere, so she had plenty of time to look at the garden surrounding her. It wasn’t like the garden that she had left so long ago, however vague the recollections were.

Hadn’t the flora inside the wall once been lush, blossoming, moist? Hadn’t there been flowers? Now it was a colorless place filled with fog like San Francisco summer, dense enough that she could barely see the cruel thorns scratching her, much less the shape of the Tree’s distant trunk. It was a faint specter among the gray.

Water splashed her legs as they carried Elise past the river Mnemosyne, which roared with an eon’s worth of fury. The spray over its banks was acid to her skin, but she resisted the urge to cry out.

Instead, she went completely limp.

Elise swayed between the cherubim’s hands, biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Pretending to be asleep when her entire body burned wasn’t easy. She focused on the memory of tearing out a cherub’s throat in Hell to distract herself.

Angry fire smoldered in her gut.

Soon
.

Endless minutes passed as she hung between the angels. Eventually, their grip loosened as they became convinced that she was unconscious.

Branches rustled. She dared to open her eyes to slits, watching the path they trod through her swinging hair. Paving stones began to dot the soil.

They were getting closer to the Tree.

Her heart raced as her adrenaline mounted. Elise struggled not to tremble.

They soon reached the stairs. Platforms spiraled around the trunk of the Tree to allow the garden’s inhabitants to walk into the upper branches. Because the circumference of the Tree was as great as a city, it would take long minutes to reach the place where He surely waited. But once Elise was there, the nightmare would really begin. Trapped for eternity. Sacrificed to madness.