The Darkest Gate (12 page)

She shook him. “Don’t you try to act like this isn’t a big deal!”

Anthony gently disengaged her fingers from his shirt. “I
know
it’s a big deal, but it
is
okay because they didn’t succeed. You’re alive. All right?”

“No! Not all right!”

The door opened. Anthony shifted his chair on top of the flesh pile on the floor as a man stepped into the room. Betty saw scrubs and shrieked.

“What’s going on?” asked the nurse. He had brown eyes, three chins, and greasy skin. Just like a human should. Totally normal. The empty, rubbery arm of the body was still visible, so Anthony kicked it under the bed.

“Night terrors,” he said.

“I thought I heard something fall.”

“Nope,” Anthony said, his voice an octave too high. “Just night terrors.” He plastered a grin on his face. Betty followed suit.

The nurse obviously didn’t believe them, but seemed too tired to push it. “Try to keep it down. People in the ward are sleeping.”

“I want to check out,” Betty said.

“It’s after midnight.”

“Yeah, but I’m ready to go now. I’m feeling much better!” She was certain her grin must have been manic and ridiculous. “This hospital sure is great!”

He looked dubious. “Let me go talk to the doctor.”

The nurse left. Anthony and Betty both sagged.

“I’ll call Elise,” he said.

Betty snorted. It hurt her raw nasal passage. “Yeah. Obviously.”

A
nthony half-carried
Betty up the stairs to the apartment above Motion and Dance. She was still too woozy from the leftover morphine to navigate the steps herself.

“I must be important,” she said again. “They don’t try to kill the unimportant people.”

He rolled his eyes. “You are very important.”

“Maybe I’ve scared someone. You know, I’ve been working on my magic.” She wiggled her fingers at him, like she was pretending to shoot lightning from her fingertips. “Oh yeah. Bet someone caught wind that there’s a powerful new player in town. Wicked witch of the west. Protégé to James Faulkner, the greatest aspis in the world.”

“You’re about as wicked as a ball of yarn,” Anthony said. He knocked on the door and propped Betty against the railing to wait.

“A ball of yarn who can light a candle
with her brain
.”

“I thought you inhaled too much smoke to speak.”

Betty stuck her tongue out. “Sure, you’re not afraid now, but just wait. Candles today. Whole cities tomorrow.”

Elise opened the door. She took one look at them and went rigid. “Get in,” she said, grabbing Betty’s arm to pull her inside.

“I’ll be right back,” Anthony said.

He ran downstairs and grabbed the trash bag out of his trunk. Sneaking a boneless corpse out of a hospital had been easy at two in the morning. Getting Betty out had been harder. Finding someone to disconnect her from the IV had taken an hour, and Anthony kept expecting another creepy flesh-sack to attack in the meantime.

The body in the bag had begun to smell on the ride home, and now the entire Jeep reeked of sulfur and rot. His hands slipped on the plastic when he grabbed it.

“Oh man,” he groaned. Some of the black fluids had eaten holes in the bag. His skin tingled on contact.

Elise met him at the top of the stairs. “Bathtub.”

They dumped it in the bathroom without opening the bag. She turned the on the sink so hot it steamed the mirror and sprayed soap in Anthony’s hand. The tingles were starting to become a painful itch. His skin was raw and red underneath.

“Did we wake you up?” he asked, shutting off the faucet with an elbow and drying off using embroidered hand towels cannibalized from the studio downstairs.

“No,” Elise said.

He stepped back to take a look at her. She was beautiful with her red-brown curls piled on her head and a dress that hit just above the knees. “I guess we didn’t. What were you doing this evening?”

“There’s a dead body in the tub and you’re interested in my night. I’m a bad influence.”

Anthony plucked a piece of glass out of her hair and dropped it in the sink. “You look great.”

“Uh huh.”

Betty was half-asleep on the couch in the living room. “They tried to kill me. I must be important,” she mumbled. Her injuries from the fire were covered in some kind of plastic, and the skin beneath it was completely raw.

Elise and Anthony went to a corner of the kitchen to talk without disturbing her. “Tell me what happened.”

Anthony whispered a quick and dirty rundown, and by the time he finished, Elise was pacing. Her face was drawn into a grim mask. Her lips were white around the edges. “You’ll have to stay here until I take care of this. Both of you. You can’t leave the warded perimeter of the studio. It’s not safe.”

“But my job—” Anthony protested.

“They’re watching me. They know who I’m spending time with. You can stay here or die.”

“Why? Who is ‘they’? What do ‘they’ want?”

She frowned. “That’s not important right now. I have to do an autopsy before the acid destroys my evidence. We still have plastic sheeting from renovating the garage. I’ll be right back.”

Elise ran downstairs.

“Why does she always do that?” Anthony asked the closed door.

Betty hugged a pillow to her chest as she sat up. Her face was still all puffy from the saline drip. “What, pretend you’re too dumb to understand what’s happening?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Maybe because we’re too dumb to understand what’s happening.”

“You’re lucky you almost died or I’d kill you myself,” Anthony muttered.

When Elise came back, she cut wide swaths of plastic sheeting off the roll and laid them across the kitchen floor. He would have liked to help, but Betty had woken up enough to become demanding again. She had a whole list of things she “needed,” which included a glass of water, Tylenol, and a snack. Preferably cookie dough.

“What do you want now? Your teddy bear?” Anthony asked, exasperated.

“Do you think I’m twelve or something? I’ll settle for a shot of tequila.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Woo, those IV fluids aren’t joking around. You could float me over a football stadium right now. I’ve got to pee like a pregnant woman. Help me up?” Betty stretched her hands toward Anthony. He obediently hauled her to her feet and watched to make sure she arrived safely at the bathroom.

“Two assassination attempts, and Betty’s still Betty,” Elise said, unrolling another yard of plastic and slicing it with a box cutter. She actually sounded affectionate.

“The entire world could catch fire and Betty would still be Betty.”

“Don’t tempt fate.”

He helped her tape sheeting over the dining room table, which they had positioned in the middle of the kitchen. Once Betty surrendered the bathroom, Elise donned yellow rubber gloves and took the trash bag out of the tub.

The flesh suit spilled onto the table like a hunk of jelly. Anthony covered his nose.

“Jeez. Smells like locker room.”

Elise peeled back the eyelids on the head. “Black irises,” she muttered.

“What’s that mean?”

“On its own, nothing. A lot of ugly things have black eyes.” She set the head down. The neck was hollow and couldn’t support its weight, so it tipped onto its side. The mouth hung open.

“Turn that away from me,” Betty said over the back of the couch.

Anthony did as she asked. “Go to sleep. You don’t need to watch this.”

“Are you kidding? And miss the show?”

Elise ignored them as she sorted out body parts to make it lay flat. She palpated the bulging abdomen, and fluid squirted from the neck hole. “Interesting,” she said, separating the skin and peering inside.

He grimaced. “You’re not going to—”

She reached inside. Anthony’s stomach churned, but he couldn’t seem to make himself turn away.

Elise’s hand disappeared first, and then her elbow, and then her entire arm up to the elbow. It was like her arm vanished. The body didn’t even bulge. “Interdimensional pouch,” she explained when she saw his face. “It’s an infernal power.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

She extracted something as thick as a tree branch and covered in wiry hair. Elise set it on the table and reached inside for more. She pulled out four of them before Anthony realized that he had seen something like them before. “Those look like spider legs. Like what we found in the desert.”

“Mary Poppins would love this,” Betty said.

Elise shoved the box cutter into the neck hole. Her face went slack with concentration as her back muscles worked.

A long minute later, she withdrew a strip of flesh covered in glistening black fluid—and demonic brands.

“Bring me the binder on the coffee table,” she said.

Anthony flipped it open to the page marked by a sticky note. Elise had drawn a list of brands on the page and labeled them with “desert daimarachnid” and the date they had been camping. He held it up so she could see. Each brand matched, all the way down to the extra marks that obscured them.

“Does this mean the assassin was a giant spider in a human skin suit?”

“I’m saying it’s a giant spider in a skin suit owned by the same master demon as the last one.” She set down the skin, peeled off the rubber gloves, and scrubbed her arms in the sink. Her skin was red from the venom. “But it’s impossible. Mr. Black has angels, not spiders.”

Betty sat up. “Angels?”

“Long story.” Elise rolled everything up in plastic and duct taped it together so it wouldn’t leak. The resulting mummy looked way too much like a small human body. “I’ll dump this while I’m in the desert later today. I have to make our new favorite enemy have a very bad day.”

Anthony brightened. “You’re going to attack the guy who’s been after us? This Mr. Black? Then I’m coming, too.”

“Fine. I can put your mechanic skills to use on this one. But that’s not for a couple hours, so you should both sleep while you can.”

Ignoring Betty’s protests, Elise put her in James’s bed, gave her a glass of water, and shut the door. Then she pulled extra sheets out of the linen closet and dropped them on the couch.

“Where are you sleeping?” he asked.

“I’m not.”

He pulled his shirt off. Even though he had recovered a few things from his closet at home, including his trusty shotgun, pajamas hadn’t been among them. “We could sleep on the floor together. There’s plenty of room.”

“I said I’m not sleeping.” Elise’s tone was curt, but she softened the delivery by dropping a kiss on his shoulder.

“What do you want to do if you’re not sleeping?” he asked, lowering his voice so Betty wouldn’t hear if she was still awake. He touched Elise’s hip. Her eyebrows lifted.

“Seriously?”

“I don’t think I told you how hot you look in that dress,” he said, hooking a finger under one of the straps.

“What is it with you and giant spiders?” She spread her gloved hands across his broad chest and kissed his chin. “You’ve got serious issues.”

“Coming from you, that means a lot.”

She actually kind of giggled—or at least, what was a giggle for Elise, which was more of a growl. Anthony loved that he could make her do that.

He lifted her onto the back of the couch, pushed the dress up her thighs, and pressed himself between her legs. She was wearing a concealed knife, and she smelled like summer heat and sweat. Anthony wanted to devour her.

Having sex with Elise was never like “making love.” Anthony had two girlfriends in high school that had been fun and affectionate and sometimes a little wild, but with Elise, it was more like fighting a forest fire. She didn’t know how to surrender or be vulnerable. And she was never affectionate.

When he tried to bend her back for a kiss, she climbed his body and dug her fingernails into his shoulders instead. When he tried to pull off her underwear, she locked her legs around him. He tried to grab her wrists and found himself pushed back against the kitchen table. The plastic sheeting crinkled under him.

It was an unpleasant reminder that they hadn’t gotten rid of the body, and that someone was trying to kill Elise’s friends. It should have been scary. But maybe she was right about him having issues. The adrenaline only made his blood run hotter.

He tugged the straps of her dress down her shoulders and found she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“You did that on purpose,” he groaned as he palmed one of breasts, which had a thick ridge of scar tissue down the side.

She ripped his belt out so hard that one of the loops popped.

“Hey!”

Another little growl of laughter. “Deal with it.”

He caught her lips with his and kissed her, long and hard. When he finally pulled back to take a breath, her eyes were lidded and her cheeks were flushed. She really could be so beautiful sometimes. Beautiful, and scary.

“Do you ever think about the future?” Anthony murmured into her neck, trailing his hand down her thigh. His fingers traced along the edge of the knife’s sheath.

“No.”

“But it can’t be like this forever. Giant spiders and assassins.” He kissed the soft hairs behind her ear and was rewarded with a shiver.

She still managed to sound stern when she responded, even though her voice had taken a husky edge. “You’re optimistic.”

Anthony leaned back. He searched her face and found no hint of joking in it. “You retired once. You could do it again.”

“I don’t think about the future. I’m too busy surviving today.” Elise popped his fly open and snaked a hand into his boxers. “Why are you talking?”

Normally, he would have been happy to shut his mouth and enjoy himself. But her resistance to talking irked him. “What about… you know… marriage?” He caught her wrist. “Children? We’re young, and there’s lots of time…”

Her whole body went rigid. She pulled her hand out.

He realized belatedly that he had said something wrong, but he wasn’t sure what offended her more: the idea of quitting again, or the idea of a family?

She stepped back and he didn’t fight her. “You won’t bring that subject up with me again.”

Anthony laughed shakily. “We’re dating, Elise. This isn’t some taboo subject. I know you’re not used to any of this stuff, but I can tell you it’s normal for people like us to talk about things like that.”