Elise shut the door behind her. It made the room much too small.
"You look old," she said.
"You look..." He swallowed hard and dropped his gaze. The sight of her was as overwhelming as trying to stare directly into the sun. "Beautiful."
She stepped toward him. Reflexively, James stepped back. Pain pulsed through his body-a reminder that he"d just been tossed into a building and a car by one extremely powerful hybrid.
James sat down hard on the edge of the bed, grabbing his side.
"Are you okay?" Elise asked.
"I"m alive, fortunately."
"You killed a hybrid."
"I had surprise on my side," James said.
"And years of experience. That hasn"t gone anywhere." Her voice was strangely intense. He wanted to look at her face, but that fear was only growing stronger by the second. Nightmare thrall. His kopis-the woman he had spent a good part of the last fifteen years with-was leaking nightmare thrall at him, and he couldn"t even look at her.
"No, I suppose it hasn"t, for all the good experience does without the physical ability to act on it."
Her feet didn"t make any sound as she paced. He wasn"t entirely sure that he wasn"t hallucinating her, like he might have hallucinated Nathaniel. She was a ghost drifting from wall to wall in his too-small hotel room.
She stopped by the desk and picked up one of the runes he"d been trying to draw. Her fingers traced over the page.
"Healing," Elise said.
He risked a glanced at her. Her hips were sheathed in tight leather and she wore a borrowed t-shirt two sizes too small. There was nothing to conceal the curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the flatness of her stomach, her pinched waist and the swell of her hips. She"d always been stunning, but now she was beyond distracting.
James couldn"t remember if Elise had always looked like this in her demon form, but he didn"t think that the pull he felt was entirely due to his normal feelings. He couldn"t stop thinking s.e.xual thoughts, even though he considered himself slightly more rational than that.
She was oozing succubus s.e.xuality everywhere at the same time that she radiated nightmare energies. Truly a G.o.d among demons. And now he was nothing but a man.
"Could you turn it down somehow?" he asked. "Dampen your energies?"
Her eyebrows creased. "This is dampened."
"It"s distracting," James said.
"I should have left you alone." She turned back to the door.
"No, wait." There was a hard lump in his throat that he couldn"t quite seem to swallow. "Please."
She stopped with her hand on the handle, still clutching his non-magical rune in the other fist. "I"m not reading your mind from the inside anymore. I"m seeing everything that I see on everyone else. Hormones and chemicals and flashes of thought. You look like a mortal to me."
"I am mortal."
"And I feel stronger than I"ve ever felt before."
"Good," he said.
Elise lifted the rune between them. "What"s the word?"
He knew what she was asking for. She wanted the word of power that he would have used to activate the spell.
James cleared his throat before speaking it. He chose the infernal variant rather than the ethereal one. "Temak-ivo." There was nothing special about the word; it was just a collection of syllables on his lips.
She scooped one half of the pencil off the floor and sat on the bed beside him. Her shoulder brushed his as she traced over his rune.
"Temak-ivo," Elise repeated.
It wasn"t just a word when she said it.
Magic flared on the page. The only thing that James felt was pain-not from his physical wounds, but the sensation of a knife twisted in his disappointed heart. He watched the mark become inflamed and crawl onto Elise"s wrist and he felt nothing.
High priest of the White Ash Coven, most powerful witch alive, the man who had rediscovered ethereal magic.
He felt nothing.
Elise dropped the paper once she possessed the glowing rune. Her hand wasn"t even twitching from the force of the magic. "I wasn"t sure I"d still be able to do that. I only became capable of doing magic because of you, after all."
James couldn"t respond.
"It"s a healing spell. Can I use it on you?" she asked.
"No," he said.
She snorted. "I was only asking to be polite."
A hand gripped his wrist. James looked down to see white fingers curled over his pulse point, and gooseb.u.mps climbed up his forearm.
It was worse when she touched him. He could clearly imagine throwing her to the bed, ripping away those snug leather pants, sinking deep inside of her and losing himself. And the thought terrified him.
No rational thoughts. All from the infernal energy she couldn"t shut down.
Elise spoke again. The word never quite reached his ears, but he felt a wash of cold settle over him, followed by an instant of heat so immense that he was certain he must have been on fire.
James leaped from the bed with a shout, slapping at his arms.
There were no flames. Only magic.
It was gone in an instant, and the pain along with it. He lifted the hem of his shirt again. The bruises had vanished.
Elise spanned her fingers over his unmarked ribcage. The brush of skin made his abs clench. He tried to step back, but there was nowhere to go-his back was already against the wall.
The mental images were so vivid.
She must have been able to see what he was thinking. She jerked her hand away. "There." She sounded breathy, like she was struggling to concentrate as much as he was. "At least you"ll be able to travel now."
"Travel? Where? Where could we possibly go?"
"Somewhere safe," Elise said.
He looked at her-really looked at her. Her face was almost the one that he used to see every day on the other side of the breakfast table.
James wanted to argue that there was nowhere safe in this world or any other world. He might have only been awake for a couple of hours, but he"d been able to determine enough just by looking out the window and talking to Ariane. She couldn"t send him away. There was nowhere to go.
Yet as soon as he looked at her, he couldn"t think.
Elise"s lips were pressed into a disapproving line, which didn"t make him want to kiss her any less. "You"ll have to invent one more spell for me, James. Put together a rune that I can use to dampen my demon powers, or that will make you impervious to them. We can"t talk like this."
"I"m controlling myself," he said.
"Your control isn"t the problem. You look like lunch to me."
That sounded far too much like an invitation. "But I healed you. You said you"re stronger than ever."
"I am," Elise said. "My self-control problems aren"t because I"m hungry." She sidled toward him again, tracing a fingertip along his belt. "Just seeing how you"re reacting to me..." She shook her head. "G.o.dd.a.m.n, James."
He somehow managed to say, "Sorry."
"No. Don"t be sorry." Her thumb traced a line of electricity along the curve of his bottom lip. "I never thought you would have chosen anything over your magic."
"Not anything," James said, catching her wrist. "Just you."
A boy spoke from elsewhere in the room. "What about me?"
Elise shoved James behind her as she turned, shielding him with her body. As small as her physical form was, once her power flared, she seemed to fill every ounce of s.p.a.ce within the room.
Every ounce except the place Nathaniel stood by the window.
His arms were wrapped around his stomach, spine arched with pain. He glared at them with accusing eyes.
"Eternity," he said. "Alone. You have no idea what that"s like!"
Elise sucked in a breath. "Nathaniel." She stepped toward him, reaching out. "How did you escape Eden?" And then, an instant later, she said, "Belphegor pulled down the walls so he could get in. Now you"ve-"
Nathaniel cut her off with a scream, gripping his head as if trying to keep it from exploding.
The walls of the hotel room shivered. The paper on the desk caught fire, consuming every one of James"s miserable attempts to draw a magical rune.
And still Nathaniel screamed.
James"s eardrums throbbed. Clapping his hands over his ears did nothing to protect them.
His mind flooded with images that could only come from Nathaniel. He saw a garden filled with towering trees. A sapling taking root in the soil. A glowing pit of ether, and Nathaniel slipping into it for a swim. Red apples, rotten apples, a doorway standing alone.
Belphegor. The trio of demons called the Fates. Hybrids.
And the years. So many monotonous years jammed into a mind that hadn"t had a chance to finish growing before he entered the Origin.
Elise seized Nathaniel. James realized with a sickening jolt that his little boy was taller than her now. Almost as tall as James himself.
His presence was far vaster than hers. She filled the room; he filled the entire world.
"Nathaniel!" she shouted, her voice nowhere near as loud as his scream. "You have to stop!"
He shoved her across the room. "No!"
Nathaniel jumped through the window.
The gla.s.s shattered. So did the surrounding wall, ripping away from the hotel, showering bricks over the street beyond.
Elise didn"t even hesitate. She jumped after him.
Elise landed on the street, slamming into the b.l.o.o.d.y pavement. The buildings opposite the hotel room were on fire. They blazed as though they had been burning for hours, even though they"d been fine when Elise had arrived minutes earlier. Now she could barely see through the smoke.
The air didn"t have the scent of h.e.l.l to it, that touch of brimstone that made her homesick.
This was Nathaniel"s work, not Belphegor"s.
He stood in one of the burning buildings as it collapsed around him. Elise phased to the edge of the fire. Flames licked her boots, melting the rubber soles. She took a quick step back. "Nathaniel," she said from the wrong side of the wall of fire. "Stop this bulls.h.i.t and talk to me."
He shook his head. A ceiling beam cracked and fell, crashing to the charcoal that had once been carpet. "You abandoned me."
"You asked me to leave you in Araboth with the Tree. You wanted to move it to safety and be left alone. I did. I was showing respect for your-"
She was interrupted by another wall of the house collapsing. It slid right through Nathaniel without touching him. Bricks sprayed from the point of contact.
He lifted his head to glare at her. "You respected the decisions of a child. You should have known better."
"I wasn"t much older than you were when I was left to my own devices. I survived. I a.s.sumed you would, too."
"Not alone," Nathaniel said. "You took James from us. My mom and I were alone. Always alone."
"You"re not alone now," Elise said.
He flashed through the fire and appeared at her side. The world spun sickeningly around them. He hadn"t phased like Elise did; he had distorted the village, moving it around him rather than moving himself.
Nathaniel"s pale eyes were wild. "Then tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this." He thrust a finger at the burning village. "Tell me how to fix myself. How do I keep from hearing everything? Feeling everything?"
Elise stared helplessly at him. She"d never done well with teenagers, even when she"d been a teenager herself. p.u.b.erty was a terrible thing. And this particular teenager was experiencing p.u.b.erty with omnipotence.
She needed to say something to make it better. She had already f.u.c.ked up with Nathaniel once. She had to fix it this time. "We can figure it out," Elise said, as gently as she could manage through gritted teeth. "Together."
His eyes screwed shut, palm pressed to his forehead. "It hurts, and everything is falling apart, and I hate Belphegor, and I just want it all to stop."
On that last word, the ground rumbled. A new shadow crested over the village-a towering wall of water a hundred stories high.