Death's Avatar (The Descent Series) (8 page)

The twelfth bell never rang.

When the eleventh bell died off, Elise was
the only one left standing

She clutched her sword in both hands as
though it was her last line to life. Its blade dripped, her
knuckles were white, and her gaze was empty. Her mind was a
thousand miles away.

The pendulum no longer kept in time with the
seconds. Its hand slowed with every swing.

Nearby, gray matter slipped out of a crack
in a demon’s skull, oozing across the tile. It trickled into one of
the iron grates and dripped onto underground fires a hundred feet
below. Brain hit flame. It gave a hiss and smelled like
barbecue.

Barbecue
. Her stomach lurched.

The sword slipped from Elise’s fingers.
Metal clattered against stone. The death goddess was sprawled at
her feet, her necklace of skulls shattered, and her face had lost
all its malice in death. She almost looked human.

The fires darkened and the heat faded.

Elise’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Her
fingers twined through the curls at her scalp as her mouth opened
in a silent cry. She had screamed too much earlier in the night and
no longer had a voice.

Her knees weakened. She collapsed.

The clock’s pendulum continued to slow.

The Book of Shadows was empty.

James pushed the bodies of demons off of
him. Emptying every page of the Book—even the terrible ones he had
sworn never to use—meant they had died in a thousand ugly ways.
Ruptured organs. Suffocation. Burning from the inside.

His foot caught the pentagram-marked binder
as he climbed free, but he didn’t pick it up. He never wanted to
cast a spell again.

The clock wasn’t ticking with that terrible
pulse anymore, and the sudden silence made his ears ring. Coughing,
he slipped to the bottom of the pillar. “Elise?” he called, voice
muffled in his ears.

He nudged a demon’s body onto its back. The
slash of its mouth gaped open, and the remaining air in its lungs
sighed out with a whiff of sulfur. Covering his nose and mouth with
his arm, he moved forward. James scrutinized each body he passed,
half expecting to see Elise beneath them.

The room depressurized, and the demons began
to rot.

Their skin dissolved to reveal bone. Their
chests spread and tore. Organs twisted like worms within their guts
as they vanished. One by one, they rotted away until the only body
left was that of the goddess in the front of the room.

A glint of steel caught his eye. His gaze
moved from the sword to the legs beside it, and he realized the
goddess wasn’t alone.

“Jesus Christ…” He scrambled onto the dais.
Elise’s skin was shredded and her chest was blackened with blood,
and his stomach flipped when he realized it was all hers.
“Elise—oh, Lord, Elise…”

Her eyes fluttered open. “James?”

“Are you all right?”

She sat up carefully with a wince. “I’m not
the one with a sword through my chest.” He laughed, though it
wasn’t all that funny. Even a hint of humor after that fight was
enough to drive him toward hysteria. “Let’s not do this again.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” He helped her
stand, and then picked up the sword she dropped. Elise turned to
leave. “Don’t you want the other one?”

She glanced at the falchion buried deep in
the goddess’s chest. Her lip curled. “No. Hell can keep it.”

The bladed clock swung once more, and it
stopped midway on the down stroke, forever frozen between
tick
and
tock
. The earth shook.

“We need to get out of here,” James
said.

Slowly, painfully, they climbed to the
surface. Night had fallen, and the rain had stopped, leaving the
air sticky and hot. They staggered almost a quarter mile before
collapsing.

Elise shuddered like a tree in a hurricane.
Her wounds looked agonizing.

“Can you heal me?” she asked. Her voice came
out in a raw whisper.

“I’m sorry. I have nothing left.”

She nodded without speaking. Her face was
very pale.

They stared up at the vast black sky
together. The clouds thinned, revealing stars and endless black
sky. They waited until the sky faded to the deep navy of false
dawn, and the sounds of night were replaced by birdsong.

When the sun broke the horizon, the light
shone in Elise’s hollow gaze.

They had won, but James couldn’t help but
feel they had lost something much worse than their lives. She
sagged against his side. “Never again,” he murmured into her hair.
“Never again.”

Part
Five: Sunrise

After a little debate and examining several
maps, they decided to move to Reno, Nevada. Neither of them had a
strong preference about where they should start a new life, but
Reno had no demonic overlord, and angelic ruins rumored to be
buried beneath the city provided its inhabitants some protection.
Most importantly, they had never been there before. Nobody would be
able to recognize them.

So they took what little they owned, paid
for a few weeks at a motel downtown, and started looking for
somewhere to live.

They had a little money stored in several
bank accounts. Some of it came from James’s life before they
traveled, but much of it had been stolen from defeated enemies, and
the rest was earned in odd jobs here and there. It wasn’t much, but
it was enough to buy a building in cash and have some left for
renovation.

The real estate agent must have thought
James and Elise were crazy. They asked to look at every cheap
commercial property available, and for three months, they looked at
more than fifty buildings within a hundred miles. None of them
passed their extensive requirements—a list which they declined to
share with their Realtor.

To the agent, it must have seemed like they
rejected each location for no reason. They would walk in the front
door, look around for a minute, and ask to leave again. Once or
twice, they didn’t even go inside before rejecting it.

Three months. They hadn’t even made an
offer.

By the time she let them into what could
have been the hundredth building for sale, she wasn’t smiling at
them as brightly, and she had given up on her sales pitch.

“This used to be a salon,” she said,
checking her watch. “There’s a garage and an apartment on the
second floor. I’ll see you outside.”

Elise and James walked into the dusty
entryway as the agent returned to her car.

It was the ugliest building they had seen
yet. It looked like interior walls had been smashed out with a
sledgehammer, the floors were ripped out, and everything was
painted a nauseating shade of pink. The paint was paler where a
sing used to hang: Glenda’s Hair. A broken ceramic flamingo was
propped against the corner.

“Well?” James asked.

Elise peeked in the back room. The windows
were small and set high, which she liked. “Good defensibility.
You?”

He paced around the perimeter of the
building. Elise trailed him a little slower, rubbing the bandage on
her chest. Everything else had healed, but that one still hurt if
she moved too much.

“I like that it’s north facing, and there’s
enough yard space to bury wards,” he said when they met around the
front again. “Let’s look at the apartment, shall we?”

They climbed the stairs on the side of the
building. The second story was just as bad as the first, but James
smiled when he saw it. He peered inside each of the cabinets, the
closets, and the crawlspace while Elise checked the windows. There
was nothing close enough to allow people—or demons—to climb into
the second floor.

It had everything he needed to magically
secure it against intrusion, and the ideal surroundings for
defense. With time and ritual, it could become be a fort nothing
could penetrate. Pink or not, it was perfect.

As simple as that, the decision was
made.

“The Realtor will be relieved,” he said as
they returned to the first floor.

“We’ll send her flowers or something to
celebrate her commission. Have you decided on a name?”

“What do you think of ‘Motion and
Dance’?”

She squinted around the room again, rolling
the name over in her mind. She could imagine the mirrored walls and
parquet flooring in place. James had been picking out furnishings
even though they hadn’t bought a location yet, so it was easy to
envision what it would look like.

It could be nice. Really nice.

“Motion and Dance. I like it.”

“We’ll have to get new… everything,” James
said, offering a hand to Elise. “Floor. Paint. Roofing.”

She wrapped her fingers around his. “That’s
fine.” Elise smiled, and it was the first time she had done it
since they left the pyramid. It hurt her cheeks. “Retirement. I
still can’t believe it.”

“Scared?” he asked.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you
kidding?”

Of course she was. But she would never say
that aloud.

“It’s going to take awhile to get adjusted
to the idea,” James admitted. “I still keep expecting to wake up
somewhere new tomorrow.”

“The weirdness will pass once we’ve signed
the paperwork… Gary.” They were using assumed names for everything
legal. Their enemies were unlikely to try to track them down by
such mundane means, but a little paranoia never hurt.

“Maybe so. I suppose I’m restless.”

“That’s over,” Elise said. The wound on her
chest throbbed. “We’re done. He won’t find us here. No more
killing, no more… anything.”

“I suppose we should be grateful,” James
said.

“Yeah. I suppose we should.”

He nudged her. She nudged him back. And
together, they left the studio and walked into the sunlight.

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SM Reine is a writer and graphic designer
obsessed with werewolves, the occult, and collecting swords. Sara
spins tales of dark fantasy to escape the drudgery of the desert,
where she lives with her husband, the Helpful Baby, and a small
army of black familiars.

An excerpt from
DEATH’S HAND
the first book
in
The Descent Series

May
2009

Steam drifted from the surface of Marisa
Ramirez’s coffee. She blew on it gently, cupping the mug between
her hands to warm her chilly fingers. Golden morning light rimmed
the closed curtains over the sink. The thermometer outside the
window read sixty-six. The swamp cooler clicked on and blew chilled
air into the kitchen. Marisa shrank deeper into her sweater.