Damnation Marked (13 page)

It became thudding as it grew closer, and then it multiplied.

Bodies. Lots of them.

Her hand tightened on the hilt.

A shape launched from the tunnel.

It was like being blindsided by a car. Her back slammed into the floor with the full force of its weight, and all she could see were wide, rolling eyes—slicked over with oil—and a gaping mouth with teeth that oozed shadows. It shrieked at the sudden light, as though the brightness caused it physical pain.

She realized with a shock that it was a fiend—one of Zohak’s minions. And it was possessed by the shadow.

Elise’s arm was pressed against her chest at the wrong angle for attack. She lifted her knees between them and launched the fiend into the air with a hard kick.

Before she could get to her feet, another jumped on her, and then another. They clawed at her legs. Their combined weight made her stumble.

She twisted away and danced back, jamming the falchion in the mouth of the one on her right. The blade plunged into the soft palate and erupted from the other side. Ichor splattered from the back of the fiend’s skull.

Elise jerked the blade free and whirled, cutting down the second fiend with an arcing blow.

The blade bit into its shoulder and sank into bone. Elise kicked it in the chest, forced it off her blade, and then stabbed it in the heart.

Elise searched for Thom, but it was too bright in the cavern to distinguish shapes or direction. There were more fiends—so many more. Their shapeless forms were a mass of screeching flesh draped in shadow, seething around her like a midnight ocean.

She crashed into them, letting instinct move her. She launched a kick behind her, cracking the skull of one fiend and sending it stumbling into another. Elise swooped low and drew her boot knife as she thrust the falchion into the gut of her latest attacker.

Flinging her arm out straight, she launched the slender knife into the throat of a shadow and was rewarded with a strangled, bubbling scream.

Teeth sank into her arm. They were blunt, but the force crushed against her bone. Hot pain bloomed through her arm. Blood dribbled down her elbow.

She jammed the falchion into the fiend’s eye. Her sword ripped free as the demon fell, taking a hunk of skin with it.

No time to stop.

Instinct kept her light on her feet. She cut down one fiend after another, and their oily blood slicked the floor beneath her boots.

It was only a diversion. Over their heads, the shadow in the tunnel seethed.

A column of darkness extended from the mineshaft beyond the collapse, as thick around as Elise’s torso. It seemed to emerge from the rock itself. It was no longer mere shadow. It had taken on form, like a serpent with scales that caught no light.

The infernal power radiating from it was immense, and Elise felt it burn straight through her skull. The snake was Yatai embodied.

And she was carrying a body.

Yatai swept over her head, and Elise’s heart dropped as she saw the dangling limbs, the head rolling on the shoulders. It was a man, lanky and longhaired. His wings were lifeless at his back.

The shadow clamped tight around Nukha’il’s midsection and shoved him toward the gate.

Elise kicked a fiend off of her sword and ran toward the gate, but clawed hands gripped her shirt and jeans to hold her back.

The symbols ringing the gate glowed with brilliant white light against Yatai’s shadow, which flung Nukha’il to the dais. He slid and bumped into the base of one of the columns.

At his touch, the humming intensified. Energy raced up the pillars. Elise’s palms burned.

The column of shadow descended, ready to seize Nukha’il again.

“No,” she growled, kicking free of the fiends and launching herself up the steps.

Thom got there first.

He appeared between the angel and Yatai, and he faced the darkness with no fear. Elise had never seen him angry before—she didn’t think that he could be anything but detached and, occasionally, vaguely amused. But his eyes blazed, his lips were peeled back into a growl, and he flung his arms wide with his fists clenched.

The shadow blasted into his chest and deflected. He took a single step back.

Thom roared, and white light burst from his flesh, crashing into Yatai like fire blazing over the surface of water. The smell of ozone and burning hair crackled through the air.

A shockwave blasted from the contact. It struck Elise, and her feet slipped from beneath her. The steps of the dais rose to meet her face. Pain cracked through her forehead, and stars sparked at the edges of her vision.

The power of Thom and Yatai’s clashing energies toppled the fiends and struck the walls of the cave.

The rocks groaned. Debris showered around them.

Yatai slithered back and struck again, pounding into Thom. Elise could only watch sideways, crumpled against the dais, stunned and limp.

Come now. You don’t care about the gate. Let me pass.

That silken voice was simultaneously softer and louder than the responding shudders of the cavern.

Thom didn’t respond except to take a step forward, pushing into the shadow.

Elise dragged herself over the steps, belly flat to the shuddering dais. The air grew thick as she crawled to Nukha’il, who was sprawled behind Thom’s legs. The gate responded to her proximity—it vibrated harder, and the cavern on the other side of the pillars vanished, replaced by bright gray fog.

She didn’t have to lay her palm on it to open the gate a second time. It was as though the stones remembered her touch, though it had been months since she was last there. Maybe the gate had never fully closed.

Her fingers fell on Nukha’il’s wrist. One wing was crumpled beneath him.

The angel stirred, eyes opening to slits. His blue irises had turned to gray. “Get away,” he whispered. “She’s here.”

Elise tried to drag him away from the gate. But he was immensely heavy, her bitten arm ached, the air was so thick, and Yatai spotted them.

This has been fun
, she said,
but I will wait no more.

“You’re lost to madness.” There was a quaver in Thom’s normally empty voice.

And when you favor the light, you are weak
.

The serpent reared. Elise saw it thicken over Thom’s shoulder, becoming dragon-like and vast. It crushed the light radiating from his skin. Tendrils oozed over the back of the gate.

The white light shattered.

Yatai slammed into Nukha’il, ripped his arm from her hand, and shoved him against the gate as the gray curtain parted. Together, the serpent and the angel passed the threshold—and vanished.

A boulder dislodged from the wall and crashed into the other side of the gate. Elise rolled away from the showering detritus and slipped down the steps, thudding into the cavern floor. The floor vibrated, and a mighty
crack
rent the air.

A boulder the size of a train split from the ceiling. It tumbled toward her end over end, almost in slow motion.

Elise rolled, protecting her head and knowing that it wouldn’t be good enough.

Thom blinked into existence at her side long enough to fold his arms around her shoulders. She felt reality bend and realized what he was about to do.

“No!” she shouted, but her cry never reached the cave.

They disappeared an instant before the boulder crashed into the dais.

VII

E
lise blinked. The
crumbling cavern disappeared and was replaced by white walls and wooden floors. The air turned from dusty and hot to air-conditioned cool, and the seething energy of angels disappeared, leaving her palms cold under the gloves.

Instead of being far below the city, she was suddenly in the entryway of a condo. Her mind bucked, rejecting a reality that could so easily shift.

Her cramping stomach was the only warning that she was about to vomit. Thom allowed her to fall to the floor and empty her stomach on the parquet. It burned up her throat and tasted ashen on her tongue. The puddle of bile was black, but not with blood.

Her arm throbbed, and she pushed back her sleeve to see the bite wound. She sucked in a hard breath.

What should have been nothing more than the imprint of a fiend’s dull teeth was exposed, bleeding flesh. But she was bleeding ichor—the same shadows that had dribbled from Zohak when she had stabbed him.

The same shadows that turned him to obsidian.

As soon as she saw it, the pain intensified and swept up her shoulder. She lost balance and sat back against the wall.

Elise gasped, and every time her breath wheezed out, it was with a small cry. She hated to whimper, but it was pain unlike any other. So much worse than when Death’s Hand had ripped her shoulder open, worse than having her leg shattered under falling rock, worse than getting grazed by a bullet.

Ice spiked through her heart, gripping her chest with cold fingers. Where the pain spread, so did shadow. Her skin grayed and hardened. She clenched her teeth and slammed her head back against the wall.

Thom disappeared and then reappeared in front of her a heartbeat later. White dust puffed around him, as though he brought the air with him when he phased back from the cavern. He held a sword in his hands—the falchion Elise had dropped by the gate. Shadow oozed over its blade.

“This won’t do,” he said. He peeled the darkness off of it as though it was no more than plastic, leaving her blade clear and clean.

Her instant of relief was fleeting.

“Thom—my arm—”

He set down the sword. “Is there a problem?”

Thom lifted her wrist to inspect the wound. The lightest touch shot spikes of fire into her ribcage, and her chest heaved as she fought to breathe. She couldn’t fill her lungs. Elise whined through her teeth.

“Ah, I see. You would die of this.” There was longing in his eyes, and his voice was husky. “It will turn your blood to oil and your flesh to stone. And it will hurt—oh, it will hurt.” He traced a finger around the edge of the wound, and she kicked her leg against the floor. She couldn’t wrench her limb free. His hands were gentle, but unyielding. “You should feel death marching on you now, I think.”

“James,” she panted, “take me to James, I need him—”

“Your witch cannot heal this.”

“I’m not dying from a fucking bite!”

He hummed low in his throat. “Yes, you would. If I allowed it.”

Thom lowered himself over Elise, sitting in her lap. His face loomed, beautiful even as her vision blurred and darkened. He cupped her face in both of his hands. He was so close that the tip of his nose brushed hers.

“You don’t know what a gift it is to die.” His lips tickled against her mouth. “It pains me to watch you beg for life when I would do anything—
anything
—for the blessing you deny.” His tongue darted out and wetted Elise’s bottom lip. “Let me drink your death, sword-woman. Let me have a taste…”

Thom’s mouth closed over hers, and there was nowhere she could go, trapped between his hands with her arm aflame and no oxygen in her lungs.

His kiss was so much more than the sensation of lips against lips. Demons held domain over the physical, and the caress of his tongue reached hands deep into her flesh, clenching her muscles and burning between her thighs.

She leaned forward despite herself, and he took it as an invitation. He deepened the kiss, pressing his body into hers, and it felt like melted chocolate dripping down her throat.

It was almost good enough that she forgot that her arm was turning into obsidian.

Almost.

Her struggling heart skipped a beat. She fumbled for her waist with her good arm, and every motion jolted her wound.

Her fingers closed around the hard hilt of her knife.

Thom’s hand caught her wrist before she could draw the blade. He drew back, humor sparking in his bottomless eyes. “I’ll have you know that kings have gone to war for my kiss.”

“Were they
dying
?”

“All humans perpetually spiral toward oblivion.” Thom lowered his lips to the graying skin on her arm. “But I cannot die of this venom. I could draw it from you into myself.” The whisper of his breath across the wound rocked her as though he had slammed her arm into the wall. “Would you like me to heal you?”

She couldn’t speak anymore—she could barely breathe. So she only nodded.

His eyes remained fixed on hers as he lowered his mouth to the bite… and licked it.

Thom’s saliva sizzled on the flesh, but instant relief radiated through the muscle. She sucked in a hard breath.

His tongue laved over the wound, lapping up the blackened blood around the edges. It stained the spaces between his teeth. Then he opened his mouth wide and latched his lips onto the entire injury.

The suction felt as though he drew a silver thread from her toes to her groin to her heart, which stuttered mid-beat. Elise couldn’t tear her eyes away as his mouth worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyes burned as the whites swirled with shadow.

Her skin took color again. The weight lifted from her chest.

She gave a shuddering sigh as the last of the spikes drew from her ribs, receding into the wound, and then vanishing.

It only took a few minutes before he was drinking only blood, real blood, from her arm.

But Thom wasn’t done. His lips traveled from the bite, still open and raw, to her shoulder. He licked a line along her collarbone, leaving a cool trail of moisture in its wake. His teeth briefly settled on the pulse in her throat.

Even with the haze of pain lifted, it took Elise a moment to realize what he was doing. She tried to pull her arm free of his grip.

He sighed into her throat. “I want to finish you so badly. The flesh of a kopis is sweet.”

“You’re done. Stop it.” Thom released her, but didn’t move from his position straddled across her legs. Elise was suddenly very aware that he was half-naked. His bare shoulders were smooth and warm under her hands. He had left a line of thin, pink blood up her arm when he licked her. “Get off of me.”

“Suit yourself.” The leather of his trousers creaked as he stood.