Her expression didn"t shift. "It felt great."
"Sarcasm. Amusing."
"I"m an amusing person," she said flatly.
Neither of her swords was drawn. She didn"t look like she was ready to fight at all. She was soaking wet, half-dressed, her face slack with exhaustion. Elise had none of her usual fire, as though all the anger had been sucked away.
Belphegor closed the distance between them. "The failure in previous G.o.ds has been in their petty attachments. Loneliness will drive anyone insane after an eternity, but with n.o.body to miss, there can be no desolation in solitude." He stroked his knuckles down her cheek. "I have done you a favor by burning away everything that would make you struggle in G.o.dhood. Everything except for the final death, which I think you"ll want to address promptly."
He meant James.
"Fine," she said, and she drew her sword.
It wasn"t surprise that struck James. Not exactly. He didn"t have the energy for that. But he wouldn"t have expected her to jump to agreement so quickly.
Belphegor did look surprised, though. "I didn"t mean for you to kill him. I have mortally wounded him, and he won"t be capable of healing unless you enter the Origin and breathe life into him." He drummed two fingers on his chin. "Perhaps your mind was more fragile than I expected."
Was that what had happened? Had losing her friends pushed Elise beyond rationality?
No, James didn"t believe she was willing to kill him. There had to be another plan if she would so readily agree to Belphegor"s terms.
Elise"s expression betrayed nothing.
He supposed that the good news was that Belphegor intended Elise to heal him at all, though it wasn"t that good. Sparing him now would still mean eventual death of old age, and the remainder of his life would be spent as leverage to control Elise. It also meant that he would see the next genesis. James wasn"t sure if dying now would really be worse than that.
Elise didn"t seem engaged in the conversation. She swayed nearby, eyes shut, knuckles white on the sword. It looked like she was listening to the faint wind whispering through the wet, heavy forest of Eden.
"No," she said.
Belphegor stroked his fingers through her hair. She didn"t react. "What are you refusing?"
She didn"t seem to hear him. "Bad idea. That"s a bad idea. There has to be another way."
"Snapped indeed," the demon murmured.
It did look a little bit like she had snapped, but James knew Elise better. She wouldn"t break. She was far too strong.
Something else was happening. The sight of it-whatever "it" was-made him feel the smallest thrill of excitement, which was interrupted by the spike of pain accompanying too large an inhalation.
Finally, her eyes opened. They had bled to black.
Elise dived at Belphegor with the obsidian falchion. Even bleeding, James could tell that she would be too slow. She was clumsy, awkward, with none of her usual grace.
Belphegor didn"t even need to sidestep her. He simply wasn"t standing where she attacked.
He seized her by the back of the neck.
"I expected more from Metaraon"s weapon," he said.
She thrust the sword backward, between her body and her arm. The point of the falchion almost plunged into his stomach, but his spine arched, extending his body into serpentine lines that curved away from the blade.
She moved more swiftly now, striking at him again. He dodged every time. Not a single swing touched him.
"Afraid?" Elise asked.
With a sudden lunge, she nicked the sleeve of his jacket. Belphegor stepped back and touched the wound. It was slick with ichor.
He moved in a flash. With a swift gesture, Belphegor jerked the sword from her hands and tossed it aside. "Lilith"s poison can"t harm me. You have, however, expended my patience." He swept a hand toward the roots of the Tree, glowing with the crystalline waters of the Origin. "Enter now."
"No," Elise said, but she didn"t seem to be saying it to him.
Belphegor pressed a foot onto James"s head. It weighed heavily on the side of his skull, making his vision blur more as immense pressure squeezed against his eyeb.a.l.l.s.
James couldn"t help but groan, feeling his cheekbone bowing under the press of Belphegor"s heel. Elise had been about to attack again, fists lifted in an aggressive stance, but she froze at his sound of pain.
"Enter now," Belphegor said in a low, dangerous voice.
Still, she didn"t move. "The third to enter is the weakest. You went in second. You"ll have power over me."
"Yes, that"s the point." Belphegor"s foot smashed down harder. Probably only another ounce, but James felt like his brain was going to extrude through his eye sockets. He grabbed weakly at the demon"s ankle. "It"s the only way you"ll be able to save Nathaniel or his father, so you don"t have much of a choice, do you?"
When she didn"t immediately reply, Belphegor leaned.
White-hot pain lanced through James"s skull. He cried out.
"Okay!" Elise snapped. "Stop it. I"m here. I"m going. You"ll have your infernal majority."
Belphegor didn"t relent until Elise took the first step onto the root.
It felt like the entire garden held its breath as she ascended. She climbed up onto the roots, gazing down into the brightness of the Origin. It rimmed her in brilliant white light. It should have been too bright for her-it was much brighter than the sun, after all. But she only seemed to glow.
Elise turned back. The foot lifted from James"s skull an inch. His head still hurt, and he wasn"t certain that Belphegor hadn"t fractured something.
Even through the pain, Elise was beautiful to behold, and the sight of her standing above the Origin terrified him.
She didn"t want to enter the Origin. She had never wanted that kind of power-only what it took to save lives, vanquish evil, and keep the cogs of time turning. It should have been James up there, if anyone at all. He should have tried harder to get there before she could. He should have triggered genesis himself before she could be the one responsible for that.
"Don"t," James said. He wanted to say so much more, but it was all that he could bring himself to verbalize.
Elise gave him a flash of a faint smile. For an instant, as the light of the Origin rippled over her, he didn"t see her with black hair, white skin, black eyes. He saw her the way she had been as a human. Auburn-haired, muscular, freckled. Beautiful and strong, forged in battle.
There was no reluctance in her smile. Everything was going exactly to her plan.
She stepped off the edge of the roots and plunged into the Origin.
Belphegor didn"t try to stop James when he dragged himself across the gra.s.s, pushing his upper body up on his arms to peer over the root. He felt something shift inside of himself that wasn"t supposed to move. His vision darkened at the edges.
James couldn"t see Elise below. The surface of the Origin wasn"t disturbed by so much as a ripple.
He had expected something much more dramatic-something more along the lines of a big bang heralding the birth of a new universe.
Yet the Origin was calm, and so was Eden. Belphegor glanced at his wrist. James was almost amused to realize that the demon had made a watch appear at the end of his sleeve.
James tried to stand up using the root and slipped. He collapsed again, taking slow, painful breaths.
Eden began shifting. It sounded like the trees were rustling against each other even though he couldn"t actually see the branches moving. Every time he blinked, they seemed to be a few inches taller, budding with new growth, filling the canopy with lush green leaves.
A slender vine tickled James"s knuckle, creeping over the back of his hand, curling around his wrist. The growing gra.s.s seemed to stretch toward his wound as if drawn by the scent of his blood.
"Genesis," Belphegor murmured with a smile.
Nineteen.
Abram had never felt more useless in his life than he did trying to protect Elise"s family from infernal onslaught. He stood between the women and the door, violence burning in his blood. It felt right to face these demons, all red-eyed and leather-skinned and snarling. This was what he was meant to do-not hunting werewolves, as he briefly had with Seth, but hunting demons.
Yet his bullets seemed to vanish midair. For every fiend he dropped, another would climb over its body. They were infinite, pushing into the cavern one after the next.
If not for Levi and Abel, he would have already been killed by the onslaught. He"d served his purpose. Eden was open. There would be no more interventions from people like James and Elise to save him.
He wasn"t sure how much longer the werewolves would last, either.
But he couldn"t give up. Couldn"t stop shooting until he ran out of bullets, and even then he threw the guns at the fiends to knock another down before resorting to bare fists.
Abram snapped a hard right hook at a fiend and caught it in the mouth with his knuckles. The skin cracked. Blood trickled down his wrist.
Another fiend slipped past him. Ariane cried out.
He wrenched the fiend off of her, only to have another jump onto his back, staggering him. They dragged him down. Dull teeth worried against his shoulders. Abram struggled, driving his elbows into every soft spot he could find, stomping on their limbs.
Bones cracked. Saliva dripped onto his neck.
"Get-off-"
Weight lifted suddenly from him. He expected his savior to be Levi and was surprised to see Elise"s young friend dragging the fiend away. Abram didn"t even know the guy"s name.
Marion"s sharp cry drew Abram"s attention. The fiend that had gotten past him had smashed Ariane"s head into the wall. She bled from a wound in her temple, and the little girl had seen. She was in hysterics. But not injured herself, not yet.
They wouldn"t be able to survive much longer if they remained trapped in that cavern.
Abram threw the remaining fiend. It bowled into Levi, and the werewolf took care of it in moments, shredding it in his teeth. "We need a way out," Abram said, catching the arm of Elise"s friend. "Make an exit!"
The young man looked ashen. "I can"t open any more doors."
"You can"t?"
"It was never me opening them, exactly. I"m not a witch, I"m not magical. I just saw the places that fate intersected, and..." He made a knocking gesture in midair that did nothing, then shrugged.
Frustration clutched at Abram"s heart. "Then how are we going to escape?" He turned. "Marion?"
The little girl was crying. Ariane made soft soothing noises, holding her against her shoulder. It wasn"t helping.
Marion wasn"t going to be able to open a door for them, either.
"Levi!" Abram shouted.
The wolf didn"t stop fighting, but he glanced over. His eyes burned brightly in the darkness.
Abel turned at the call, too. He saw Abram"s unarmed hands and Ariane"s bleeding forehead. His mouth opened in a swear. It wasn"t hard to read lips and guess what he was saying. f.u.c.k this.
Wolf spirits erupted from him, fountaining from his flesh like the water. When a fiend rounded on Abram to attack, there was already the translucent figure of a wolf between them, forming a furred wall. The others ripped into the demons.
These wolves were slower than they"d been earlier, and even fainter. They were weakening. But it gave Abram and his companions the precious seconds they needed to escape.
Levi lunged into the doorway, shredding through a cl.u.s.ter of brutes. Then he bowled over the demons that had been about to follow them in.
The entrance to the hallway, for the moment, stood empty.
Abram skirted around the gushing spring and ran into the magma tube. The path was broader beyond the door. With the demons more spread out, they didn"t look quite so numerous. He could actually see an end to them. If they could just get past this wave...
"We need a path," he said.
Levi didn"t need to be told. He"d already begun shoving through the demons. Abram dragged Ariane along behind him, daughter and all.
Adrenaline electrified Abram"s muscles with new strength as they progressed up the hallway inch by inch, following Levi"s furred back. The wolf spirits flowed through the tunnel and vanished into the darkness. The only way to tell that they were still fighting were the screams of the demons when the wolves reached them.
"There!" Ariane cried.
There was another tunnel leading off of the main path. Abram hadn"t noticed it on the way down. There was no way to tell where it would end up, or even if it was safer than the hallway they were in now.
Given the choice between probable death and possible death, Abram would always take the latter.
He darted around a spirit wolf tearing into a gibborim and launched into the unknown.
The sounds of battle receded behind them as they rushed through the narrow tunnel. There wasn"t enough room for more than two of them to run abreast. Abram pushed Ariane and Marion in front of him so that he could watch their rear.
That left him in the back of the group with Elise"s friend. The stranger.
"Who are you?" Abram asked.
After a moment"s hesitation, he said, "My name"s Flynn."
It didn"t sound like a lie, but it didn"t quite sound like the truth, either.