Descent07 - Paradise Damned (7 page)

She scrambled out of the ferns and belly-crawled through the glowing graveyard. The huge stone spheres had more than just their own source of light; they were warm, too, as warm as skin, but felt as hard and smooth as the scales of lizards.

“Take the right,” said the distant voice, “and you take the left.”

The flapping of wings stirred the fog.

Elise kept crawling and decided how she would kill the first angel to find her.

She would come up behind it and crack the rock against ts skull. She would need to cover its mouth so that it wouldn’t alert the others, which still left one hand free. The wings were a delicate point—strong, but sensitive to pain. She could wrench out fistfuls of feathers. Distract it with the pain. And then she could rip its throat out with her bare hands.

Elise was so absorbed in her own violent fantasies that she didn’t realize she had crawled beside another slab until a hand dangled in her face.

She jerked back, swallowing down a gasp of surprise.

The hand was gray, but not desiccated. She followed it up to the forearm, which was covered in a brush of dark brown hair, to a muscular bicep, and a shoulder. The head had rolled to the opposite side so that she couldn’t see the face, but as she rose up on her knees, she thought that she recognized the broad chest, the hair drawing a line from navel to the juncture of his thighs.

Elise reached out and tipped the face toward her.

James’s head flopped to the side.

His throat had been slit. It was an ugly, bloody mouth underneath his chin, though it looked like it had been a long time since he bled. The cut must have been performed with something very sharp, since the skin had torn very little. It would have taken quite a blade—like the sword of an angel.

She forgot that she was holding the sling. Rocks tumbled to the ground around her.

James was dead. He was
dead
.

Had he been caught trying to save her and thrown onto a slab to rot?

Which of them had done it? Had it been the cherubim, Metaraon…or Him?

There was a wound on his shoulder, too, as if someone had stabbed him in his left pectoral, near the shoulder. Her fingers shook as she touched it.

Of all the things that she would have expected to find in the garden, James had not been among them. She thought that he had to be back on Earth, maybe waiting for her in Oymyakon.

Finding his body left her feeling empty. Stupefied.

“There you are,” said the voice, no longer distant.

Elise couldn’t react with the shock she knew that she should have felt. She was numb as she looked over her shoulder and saw Metaraon watching her with annoyance.

“He’s dead,” she said. It sounded like someone else was speaking the words.

“Yes, he’s dead. He’s been dead for longer than you think.” Metaraon strolled around Elise, one hand hooked in his pocket, as if he were taking a casual walk in a park. “You can run all you like. You might even escape—you’ve done it once before.” He spoke without looking at her. He was watching the slabs, the lake, the mist. Everything but Elise. “But escape changes nothing. I’ll keep dragging you back here until you do what you’re intended for.”

Elise pressed James’s clammy hand to her lips. She heard Metaraon stop walking behind her, but she didn’t face him. She wasn’t afraid of him killing her. She was certain that he
could
do it—if anyone were capable of ending her miserable life, it would be him. The Voice of God. The highest of angels.

But death’s oblivion suddenly sounded welcome, and she knew that he would never be that merciful.

She lifted her eyes to Metaraon.

“Is this real?” Elise asked. She had to know.

He lifted an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Yes, it was real. Of everything that she had been seeing in the garden, of all of the dreams and illusions, she knew that this one thing was genuine. It was too horrible to be anything less.

Metaraon continued pacing. “Your entire existence is due to me,” he went on. “A debt is owed. This isn’t over until you’ve paid it out.”

She set James’s hand on his chest, then stood to face Metaraon. “This is already over,” Elise said.

“Because of that?” he asked, gesturing toward James’s body. “The priest?” He smiled unkindly. “Doesn’t that hurt, when someone you love is taken from you so cruelly and needlessly? Doesn’t it make you
angry
? Would it make you want revenge if I told you that He was the one who had done it?”

She lifted her chin and stared him down.

Elise had killed angels before. She was the Godslayer, and meant to kill creatures more powerful than Metaraon. But she had no urge to kill him now—not Metaraon, and not God.

It didn’t matter. James was dead.

“It’s over,” she said, softer than before. A single hot tear rolled down her cheek, dangling from her chin.

Metaraon swept it off on his thumb. She clenched her jaw and stared at him as he lifted the tear to inspect it. The fluid stained his skin black. Elise was crying demon ichor instead of real tears.

His lips drew into a frown. “No. It’s not over until I have decided it’s over.”

He seized her by the throat, so swiftly that she couldn’t have reacted even if she had wanted to fight back. He strode toward the amber lake, dragging her at his side, and Elise’s feet scraped over rocks.

The angel slammed her to the shore. Elise strained against him, trying to remain sitting upright, but he bowed her spine back inch by inch. She could hear the sap slopping underneath her, a stinking primordial sludge that hungered to suck her under. It wet her hair and dragged her head back.

A familiar sense tickled at the back of her mind, and a voice whispered to her:
Come find us…

“Forget the priest,” Metaraon said. “Find the door. Pass through.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

He shoved.

Elise’s skull cracked into the rocks. A wave of sap swept over her face, crawling over her forehead, sweeping into her eyes. It stung against her tear ducts. Then it surged up her nostrils, and she inhaled.

The blood of the Tree rolled down her throat to fill her lungs. Her muscles jerked. She tried to cough.

Metaraon shoved his arm into her cheek, forcing her head to remain under.

Elise could almost see him glaring at her through the amber haze, even as chest hitched, her vision faded, and the wave crested over her chest. It tasted foul. Like a mixture of blood and afterbirth and liquefied organ meat. It stuck to the roof of her mouth and the insides of her ribs.

She hoped that when she sank under the flow, she would die. And she hoped that she would see James waiting on the other side.

But she was not nearly so lucky.

III

Elise woke up
in bed again. Her eyes opened on a bright gray morning. There was an altar under the window, decorated with figures of the Horned God and Mother Goddess, and the walls were covered in bookshelves. She knew that if she were to look over the side of the bed, she would see her shoes beside a pair of men’s loafers meant to look as if they belonged to James.

This was an illusion, just like everything else had been an illusion, but it was a convincing one. The air on her skin felt real. The sheets under her felt real, too. Almost as real as the sadness that rolled through her, thick as the blood of the Tree.

Dead.

Elise had lost James once before, when he had been possessed by the Hand of Death. Her only choice had been to kill him. She had raged against life and death, fought to bring him back, and won. When he had returned to life, they had shared one heartbeat, one soul, one mind. They were two halves of a whole.

Since then, Elise had suspected that James’s death would mean hers, too. A soul couldn’t survive being severed into pieces.

But he was gone, and she hadn’t died—maybe beTimecause she couldn’t die anymore. And instead, she was trapped in Heaven.

How dare he have left without her?

She heard the door open. Dishes clinked together as a man entered carrying a tray of breakfast. “Good morning,” Adam said. The words didn’t seem to come from His mouth. He spoke from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Elise couldn’t bring herself to reply. Her hands were limp in her lap.

He set the tray beside her and sat on the edge of the bed. “You look sad,” He said, pulling a lock of her hair between His fingers, rubbing the silken curls with His thumb. When she didn’t respond, Adam eventually dropped His hand. “I made you breakfast. It’s your favorite.”

Her favorite, dragged from her memories of the way that James used to cook breakfast for her—which he would never do again.

She tried to eat.

Adam watched her as if fascinated by the process. His eyes never left hers as she lifted the toast to her mouth, sank her teeth into the bread, and felt the all-too-real flavor of butter spreading over her tongue.

Elise stared at the near-perfect circle of tooth marks she left behind on the toast. When He had first brought breakfast in, she thought that it looked like there had been strawberry freezer jam on the toast, but she hadn’t tasted it when she’d taken a bite. It was gone now, as if it had never been there at all.

Subtle inconsistencies. The lie betraying itself.

“What’s bothering you, Elise?” He asked. “Isn’t it perfect?”

“Perfect,” she echoed, taking another bite.

It was toasted exactly the way that she liked it, missing freezer jam aside. She had no appetite for it.

Elise set the food aside and pushed the blankets off of her body. She was wearing a nightgown again. Naked, slave leather, a nightgown. Were any of them real? Did it matter?

Adam’s hand trailed down her shoulder, fingers slipping underneath the strap to brush bare skin, and chills pricked Elise’s skin. “Do you like it?” He asked. “I chose it for you.”

It looked nothing like the kind of clothing Elise would choose to wear. It had lace around the high neckline, a skirt of modest length. It felt like she had stepped into another woman’s wardrobe.

Did she “like”
it? What a stupid fucking question to ask.

He leaned in, and she knew that He was going to kiss her. She didn’t stop Him. Didn’t move.

His lips trailing down her shoulder felt like razor blades slicing through her skin, as if she should look down and see exposed muscle, bone, gushing flesh. Elise sucked in a gasp despite herself.

Over His shoulder, she saw Metaraon watching from the corner, arms folded, and an expectant look on his face. He was shadowed by the bookshelves, toying with one of the statuettes on the altar. Just seeing the angel in James’s bedroom made her stomach lurch with hate in a way that could only be matched by her hatred for Him.

The door
, he mouthed silently, nodding behind Elise.

She turned. James’s door was white, with four panels and a gold doorknob.

Elise closed her eyes and wished that she could be somewhere, anywhere, but that bedroom. She never wanted to think of that ordinary life again. She didn’t want to remember how good life had once been, and how little time she had gotten to appreciate it.

If Elise were to be trapped in Heaven, then she didn’t want the illusion of peace. She wanted to suffer in truth.

Adam leaned back. “What is truth?” He whispered, as if He could hear her thoughts. “What is real?”

Bitter fury surged in Elise.

She shoved the tray off of the bed with a scream, upending the plates. The mug shattered against the bedside table. Coffee splashed over the carpet. Elise ripped the lamp off of the side table and hurled it at Adam. He didn’t move to dodge. He simply wasn’t sitting on the edge of the bed anymore, having reappeared across the room.

Jumping out of bed, Elise lunged at Metaraon, hands extended.

But Adam was there first. He stepped between them and backhanded Elise, hard enough to make her vision fuzz.

She hit the ground. The carpet smelled like damp soil and grass.

Elise pushed onto her hands and knees, but before she could get up, Adam pressed His foot between her shoulder blades and flattened her to the ground again.

“Is it so hard to walk through a door?” Adam asked. He wasn’t speaking to her now. He talked over her head to Metaraon, as if she had vanished. “Do I ask too much?”

“She’s stubborn. She just needs a little coercion.”

“I don’t want to have to hurt her,” He said. “I want her to love me as much as I love her.”

Elise tried to push onto her hands and knees again, but His foot was too heavy.

“She loves you, but she’ll have to be shown that,” Metaraon said.

“Fine,” Adam said. His voice had turned deep and booming. His foot seared Elise’s flesh, increasing in intensity until it felt like a hot poker held to her spine. The moisture in her eye sizzled, evaporated. The illusion of quiet domesticity had vanished so quickly. “If I must.”

Time slipped. The
carpet disappeared from underneath Elise’s feet.

She blinked and found herself standing on the first floor of Motion and Dance, in the remodeled garage. Heavy red drapes concealed the door leading outside. Mirrors covered the other three walls, interrupted only by a single door: an ordinary white rectangle split by four panels.

The narrow windows didn’t show Reno on the other side. Branches pressed against the glass, as if hoping to punch through to her with brittle fingers. Gray light still somehow suffused the room, though the light fixtures were dim.

Elise looked down at herself. She wore black leggings, a sport’s bra, and fingerless gloves with padded knuckles. Training gear.

“Are you ready?” asked a masculine voice from behind her.

For an instant, Elise closed her eyes and imagined that it was James speaking. They had trained together a thousand times in that room. Sometimes, it was in the art of dance; sometimes, in the art of fighting. He would attack her, they would wrestle, someone would win the skirmish—usually Elise—and they would both laugh as they prepared to fight again.

They would be happy, Elise and James.

But the moment of lying to herself didn’t last long, and when she opened her eyes, it was Adam who circled around her. He was wearing a t-shirt, sweat pants, and the kind of low-soled shoes that dancers liked to use. Mimicking James.