"The new pack. What"s it like for you?"
When he didn"t respond at all, Summer seemed to understand. She always f.u.c.king understood.
She moved toward him, keeping her distance from the bed. Her eyes were puffy and red. Her cheeks were wet. She was still crying, even now.
"We have to go," she said. "We"ll be running behind everyone else as it is."
Abel braced his hands against the window and stared out at the garden. The whole d.a.m.n world was so much darker now without Rylie in it. Had nothing to do with the smoke and the fires and the endless night that had fallen. All of that would have been fine, if she"d just been there.
"f.u.c.k off," Abel said. "I"m not on anybody"s G.o.dd.a.m.n timetable. Just f.u.c.k right off."
Summer"s arms wrapped around his chest from behind. "It"s okay to be angry."
Anger wasn"t a problem. Abel had no problems accepting the anger, and he would have been happy to let it fill his blood if it would have just turned off everything else he was feeling.
It was the part of him that wanted to turn around and hug Summer back that he didn"t like. The part that made him so furious when he realized Abram was in danger, and then feel vulnerable and p.r.i.c.kly and scared once the adrenaline wore off.
He felt like he was going to lose his kids every time he turned his back and that was a whole new kind of painful that he hadn"t faced before. Almost as bad as the pain of losing Rylie all over again.
Abel shoved Summer"s arms off of him to try to make those soft, scared feelings go away. "Don"t touch me."
"Take all the time you need," she said softly, "but don"t lose sight of what you haven"t lost. I"m going to take her to the pickup."
Summer bundled Rylie"s body into her arms and slipped away.
Abel had been p.i.s.sed to see Summer, but her retreating scent just made him even more p.i.s.sed.
His daughter had walked away from him. He didn"t want her to walk away. He wanted to keep her with him, stick her in a little box where she"d be safe, where he couldn"t lose one more thing.
How did Summer know? How did she always know?
He was about to chase after her when he smelled brimstone.
Elise had returned.
He was ready to rage at her, angry that she had invaded his room, the private place where he"d spent hours trying to sort through all those ugly emotions-but then he turned, and saw that she felt just like he did.
Elise"s rage was painted in every line of her face and body. She filled the corner of the hotel room with absolute darkness. What little bare skin that she had made corporeal again was painted with blood. "I need you to help me kill someone, Abel," Elise said, voice echoing off the walls. "And we have to go now."
Killing someone-Abel could handle that. That was simple. That was easy.
So he said, "Okay."
Eight.
The tower shivered above James, urging him to search faster. He wiped the sweat from his brow and pulled another book off the shelf.
None of the books he found in the secret stacks of the Library of Dis were labeled. Unlike the books he"d read above, they had no t.i.tles or authors. Yet, also unlike the books in the rest of the library, every single one he pulled off the shelf seemed to be about G.o.ds and geneses.
At least, the ones that he could read were about geneses. Many were in languages he didn"t understand, and many more in languages he didn"t even recognize.
Books that had survived the last genesis. The world before Adam, Eve, and Lilith.
The collection was beyond priceless, and judging by how hard the tower was shaking, he was running out of time to explore it.
Ace"s chain rattled when James returned to the table he was using as home base. The dog was straining to reach him again, straining against the end of his tether. Fortunately, the leg of the table was obsidian, like many other things in h.e.l.l; it withstood the dog"s efforts at escape, and all James needed to do was take a seat outside of Ace"s bite reach.
"Genesis, genesis..." James muttered to himself as he opened another book, tugging on the collar of his shirt. The heat from the fires below was funneled directly toward him like the constant exhalation of a ma.s.sive beast.
This book was a lengthy list, like an annotated book of laws. It was written in the ancient ethereal language. The first item on the list said, "Once begun, the genesis must be completed."
"Shocking," James remarked.
The tower groaned overhead. James looked up to see the crystal floor-a roof to him-shivering as though it were going to break.
He held his breath. The floor didn"t shatter.
After an agonizing pause, James bookmarked the list of laws, then set it on the stack he wanted to keep for later examination.
James unfurled another scroll. He couldn"t read it. He started to set it aside.
"It"s about avatars," said a boy. "I can read it."
A chair across the table was suddenly occupied. Benjamin Flynn was dusty with ash. Exhaustion rimmed his eyes. The dog was going wild, snapping and snarling, but Benjamin had cleverly chosen one of the only other seats beyond Ace"s reach.
"How in the world did you get in here?" James asked, hands tensing on the scroll.
Benjamin jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Sinkhole. I can see the fraying cables between all the universes, and I"ve been exploring them for a while, so I"ve gotten pretty good at finding my way around. Better than I used to be. It"s easier to actually go places instead of just seeing them in my mind."
"Those sinkholes have only been forming for a couple of days."
"Really? It feels like it"s been..." His eyes were chilling as he lost himself in distant thought. "Forever."
Maybe for Benjamin, it had been.
James looked down at the scroll again. He still couldn"t read it. "Avatars?"
"Right now, with Eden cracked open, the triad of G.o.ds can go wherever they want. But they usually need avatars. They"re not supposed to interfere directly with Heaven, h.e.l.l, and Earth."
"Avatars are, what, representatives?"
Benjamin glanced at Ace. The dog stopped barking. "Incarnations."
"The G.o.ds can give themselves rebirths on Earth when they want to get involved, is what you"re saying."
"Yeah," Benjamin said. "Kind of. It"s complicated. There"s a cost."
"Are you my son? I mean, are you his avatar?" James asked.
It felt like such a ridiculous question. This young man couldn"t be his son. Didn"t look anything like him.
"Yeah," Benjamin said. "I think I am."
That answered the "how" of it. But there was still another big question. "Why?"
"I don"t know. Sometimes I"m here, in the flesh, and sometimes I"m just seeing it." Benjamin tapped his temple. "I see a lot of things. I know I must have come here for a reason. I had good reason to send myself into this time and place."
"Rylie," James said. He cleared his throat. "You, ah, seem to have been involved with what happened to Rylie. Does that help you recollect anything?"
"Elise needs her. Sometimes I almost think..." His face twitched. "I"m not sure. Like I said, there"s a cost. Avatars come back different, without all of our memories. Makes it harder to interfere. You know? You probably don"t know; even I don"t know." One hand crept over his forehead, pressing tightly to his skull, as if to contain his thoughts.
"Benjamin," James said in a low, urgent voice, "you came here for a reason. Think hard. Figure it out. Rylie Gresham. Werewolf Alpha. You wouldn"t have given Elise the falchion back and demanded that I use it on her body if it weren"t for a good reason...right?"
"Probably." Benjamin was rocking in his chair, forehead pressed to his knees.
His son reborn. Not James"s child in body, but in spirit. A different man grown from the same seed.
James"s heart was hurting. "Where is Nathaniel?"
"I can see what Nathaniel sees sometimes, now that he"s loose. I saw fire. I saw a tidal wave. And now I see..." Benjamin shut his eyes, pressed his hands over his ears. "I"m at her grave. I feel so alone. I just don"t want to be alone anymore. I need you to come find me. That"s why I came-because you needed to know. Come find me where we buried her."
The tower shook again. One of the shelves tipped over, showering books onto the floor-where they immediately vanished.
A sinkhole formed inches from James.
James leaped to his feet in time to untether the dog, dragging him away as chairs vanished into the sinkhole. Ace was smart enough to know that this wasn"t a time for biting James. He lunged to the other side of the floor.
The shelves shook as the sinkhole widened, exposing the Earth far, far below, as though James were looking down on it from an airplane. There was a coast, a roiling ocean, burning cities. The wind that whipped through his hair and shirt smelled like acid rain.
"There," Benjamin said, shockingly close to James. He had gotten up quietly and left the table. "There it is." His jacket billowed around him, short curls swaying.
And then Benjamin jumped through the sinkhole.
James didn"t even have a chance to react. "Nathaniel!"
He was gone. It didn"t matter how hard he strained or how desperately he wished for it to change-his son was already gone.
James was temped to jump after him.
One last fall.
Hands crept over James"s shoulders. They pulled him away from the sinkhole. He looked down to see pale, slender fingers with black nails, and for an instant, he believed that it was Elise.
But the strength of anger that crawled over him couldn"t have come from her. It was sickeningly powerful, evoking thoughts of beating Benjamin, smashing his head against the wall, making the boy pay for how much he had scared James.
Ace was growling, slinking into the corner of the library until the chain at his neck strained, strings of saliva drooping from his jaw.
He turned to see a woman who superficially resembled Elise standing behind him. She had the pale skin, the black eyes and hair. She wore black leather that framed her cleavage in a diamond, a snug corset, and black jeans. She even carried a sword. But that was not Elise"s falchion, and the demon was not Elise.
James"s thoughts went wilder still-far past Benjamin, to how frustrating he"d found working with Brianna Dimaria, or the moment he"d realized Stephanie and several members of his coven were with the Apple.
The thoughts of retaliation that followed were so violent that they shocked him. He imagined shotguns and garrotes, magical fires, crushing bones into dust with the force of magic he no longer carried.
It was because of the demon. She looked beautiful, like a succubus, but she was something terribly, terribly wrong.
She didn"t make him l.u.s.t. She made him hate.
Her hands closed around James"s throat.
He jerked away from her and almost tripped into the sinkhole to Earth. The only thing that spared him was hooking his arm around a bookshelf, but one foot still slipped over the edge. His shoe fell off. The wind yanked it away.
"No," the demon said softly, pulling him back toward her gently. "Come here. Come to me. There"s so much anger in you."
James imagined throttling her. Throwing her to the floor, pressing all of his weight against her throat.
He had never been so furious in his life. He choked on it, unable to breathe.
The demon whispered soft nonsense words to him as he fell to his knees, weakened from slow asphyxiation. All he felt were fingers on his shoulders. And the hate. So much hate.
The library tower shivered. Another bookshelf toppled behind James with a resounding crack.
If Elise hadn"t been in Dis, she never would have been poisoned by the anathema powder. He wouldn"t have needed to heal her. He could have still had his magic, reached Eden, entered the Origin, fixed all of this.
The destruction was her fault.
Another hand seized upon the demon"s arm, wrenching her away from James.
The instant their contact broke, the hatred evaporated, leaving his muscles liquefied. He collapsed, grabbing the table at the last moment.
A pair of leather-clad legs moved to stand between James and the demon. His eyes tracked up from her bare feet to her knees, her hips, her back. This was Elise, and she looked just as powerful as the creature that attacked James. She didn"t need another demon"s thrall to evoke her rage.
"Let me have him," the other demon whispered. "I see how much you hate him. Let me take him away."
Elise visibly bristled. Energy lashed around her in spikes. "You can"t have James."
"Please, try to stop me."
Anger smoldered in Elise"s flesh. "Okay."
It was only then that James realized that Abel stood behind Elise, accompanied by the swirling wolf spirits. The Alpha pointed. "That one," Abel said.
The demon gave a battle cry, but it was immediately cut off when a wolf"s jaws snapped down on her barely corporeal arm. Smoke gushed from the wound.