Defying Fate (25 page)

James struggled against exhaustion to keep his eyes open. “No.”

Her chuckle was immensely satisfying. The way she snuggled under his chin was even more so.

James’s eyes fell closed.

God, I don’t deserve you
.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry
.

He knew she would hear that thought, but Elise didn’t remark on it. She trailed her hand down his side, nails tickling his skin. “You can sleep,” she said, twining her fingers with his. “I’ll keep watch.”

But if he closed his eyes and fell asleep, then it would be over. She would be gone as soon as he opened them again.

There was no fighting against biology.

Whatever had become of Elise, whatever powers James may have had, he was still only a man—and he was exhausted. Even magical sex couldn’t keep him awake forever.

He had to tell her. It couldn’t wait anymore.

“Elise,” he said.

She shushed him. “Don’t even think about talking right now.”

His eyes fell on Elise’s face and he thought,
She doesn’t want to know. It’s better this way
. Even half-asleep, he knew that he was lying to himself.

He slept.

The next morning, she was taken.

P
ART
F
OUR

The Maw

XVIII

As James moved between universes,
he felt like he floated in a motionless pool of warm water. Nathaniel’s form was a shadow far ahead of him. With no sign of the Union, it might have been serene—except that there was
something
in the void.

James could feel eyes watching him. The sense of presence was vast, immense, omnipresent.

White hands reached for him through the haze.

I see you, Priest.

Pain struck James’s palm, lancing to his shoulder. It spread through his bones, gripped the base of his skull, and made his stomach flip. The individual segments of his spine felt as though they pulled away from each other, straining against the tendons, stretching the nerves like rubber bands.

If he could have screamed, he would have.

The void vanished.

He slammed onto a stone floor. His bones snapped together all at once, and his lungs ached when he sucked in air.

Nathaniel was already there. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” James said. Transitioning between universes was always hard. He staggered to his feet, eyes watering, and pressed a fist to his gut. If he had eaten anything in the last day, he probably would have been vomiting.

Eventually, his vision began to clear. Nathaniel was the first thing he could see clearly. He looked unruffled by the transition. Moving between universes was of no consequence to a witch of his powers—no more difficult than stepping into another room.

James’s surroundings came into focus next. He stood inside of a glistening temple in front of a silent gate, much smaller than the one on Earth. The arched ceiling was hewn from white stone, glossy as marble and radiant as the moon. A lush rainforest spread beyond the steps of the temple. Dense branches formed the foundation for a carpet of plump green leaves.

Bridges led to other buildings, each of which topped stone spires. Most were empty. At one of the farthest, he could see dark figures moving between the pillars—the resident angels at work, even in the peace of night.

They were in a Heavenly temple. The ethereal energy filled James with gentle, welcoming warmth.

“We must be in Zebul,” he said, dipping his fingers into a shallow bowl of water nearby. It sparkled with its own contained light, crystalline and cold as spring water. “This place is holy.”

“Uh, yeah,” Nathaniel said, staring at the starry mosaic on the ceiling.

“Even more so than the other ethereal planes. This is a place of craftsmanship—the origin of all ethereal artifacts, and every angel-hewn Haven. There’s nothing angels honor more than artistry, beauty, and invention.”

“And lies,” Nathaniel muttered.

James dried his hand on his slacks, resisting the urge to respond.

Energy hummed in the gate behind them. Electricity shocked between pillars, spreading into a disc of gray light. Nathaniel hadn’t had time to close the gate on the other side—which meant that the Union was climbing through.

They were about to have company.

“We’d better run,” James said. “Lead the way.”

Panic filled Nathaniel’s eyes anew. He nodded.

Their feet rang out with sharp
pings
on the tiled floors like the sound of chisels being driven into stone. Nathaniel traced a hand along the wall as they ran, eyes distant. “I feel a lot of gateways,” he said.

James ran through an archway leading to an adjoining temple, but Nathaniel didn’t follow. James stepped back and grabbed his son’s sleeve, dragging him along. “Do any of the gates go to Hell?”

“No,” he said. “But I think I see where we can go.”

Shouts echoed throughout the temple behind them—the angry voice of a man barking orders.

Zettel had crossed over.

James could see open air through an archway across the room. He shoved Nathaniel through the door and didn’t release his sleeve as they jumped onto a bridge.

It was steady beneath his feet, but the base itself was made of something clear—some kind of crystal. If not for the faint reflection of starlight, it would have looked like there was nothing between the bottoms of James’s feet and the canopy far below.

A wind whirled around them. A pair of angels erupted from the trees, snowing downy white feathers as their wings pushed through the air.

They crossed over the bridge, forcing James to duck. He pulled Nathaniel down with him.

The angels didn’t stop to confront the intruders. They also weren’t the last to appear from the trees below. As the first two soared into the glimmering night sky, others began to appear, as if alerted by a silent alarm. Hundreds of pairs of wings flapped as the angels climbed into the sky.

James doubted the angels would leave Zebul unguarded. If they were evacuating, then something was about to happen—something that would not favor the intruders.

Echoing footsteps rang out from the temple behind them.

Gary Zettel burst onto the other side of the bridge, red-faced and breathless. He didn’t seem to have taken the time to recover a gun before jumping through, but the two people at his back both had rifles.

James spread his stance on the bridge, both for stability and to conceal Nathaniel.

“Turn back,” he yelled into the windy night, which was filled with the sound of churning wings.

Zettel shouted to his men.

James slapped a mark on his thigh. Pain ripped over his skin, like the muscle was tearing off of the bone. It hurt so much more than the other spells had—he wasn’t ready for it. He almost didn’t remember to point at Zettel.

Electricity arced through the air. It missed the commander and struck one of the people behind him with a smell like burning hair and barbecue.

The soldier flew off of her feet, vanishing into the darkness behind her.

Another kopis fired, hitting the crystal in front of James. Cracks spiderwebbed through the bridge with the sound of severing glaciers. James jumped onto solid ground with Nathaniel just as the bridge shattered behind him. Crystalline shards fell onto the trees like drops of water, vanishing into the leaves.

On the other side of the broken bridge, Zettel yelled at the gunman. James didn’t stop to watch for long. Bridge or not, the Union would follow them—James had no doubt of that.

He limped into the temple with Nathaniel.

The second temple was very much like the first, but instead of housing a gate, it held towering looms and huge baskets of glimmering threads. Nathaniel stood behind it. “Are you okay?” James asked, staggering to his side. His thigh still burned and twitched from the spell.

The boy’s hand was pressed to the wall of the temple, eyes blank. He was searching for gates.

James shook him. “We have to go.”

Nathaniel blinked, and his eyes cleared. “This way,” he said without missing a beat.

They crossed two more bridges and two more temples. James saw movement when he looked across the forest—Zettel was leading a unit through the temples opposite them, looking for a way across. There were six people behind him now. More had crossed through the gate.

It wouldn’t take long for them to reach James and Nathaniel. The next bridge was only two spires up.

“Almost there,” Nathaniel said. “There’s a door straight to Shamain through that arch.”

The sound of gunfire whip-cracked over the trees and echoed through the temple. Most of the bullets missed, but one of them hit the pillar beside James’s head, making the marble splinter.

A
thud
rocked the temple—a much more powerful vibration than could have come from any bullet.

The floor pitched beneath their feet, almost throwing James to his knees. Nathaniel’s hiking boots lost traction on the smooth, tilted floor. He gave a shout as he slid toward the opposite door, tumbling toward the wavering bridge.

James released his grip on the pillar and slipped to his son’s side.

“What’s happening?” Nathaniel asked, clinging to the doorframe.

“Security measures,” James said. “The angels evacuated when they realized that their holy ground had been infiltrated. I believe it’s—well, it seems to be self-destructing.”

As if to punctuate his theory, another
thud
shook the temple.

“But we need to get to that gate!” Nathaniel said, struggling to climb the tilting floor. His feet found no traction.

James and Nathaniel fell onto the bridge. It was connected to a separate pillar, so it hadn’t begun to shatter—yet.

They could only watch as the temple they had left behind collapsed. The entire left side sank into itself, stone grinding against stone, and then slipped off the top of the pillar.

It tumbled into space silently and vanished into the trees.

“I think we’ll need another route,” James said.

Nathaniel swallowed hard and nodded. Their bridge led to another temple, which hadn’t been touched yet. He pointed at it. “There’s another gate there.”

The stress of the tremors made the edge of their bridge begin to crack.

James broke into a run, and the slivers in the crystal chased his feet as they bisected the bridge. The sound of breaking glass followed. Nathaniel jumped into the next temple, and James felt the floor breaking beneath his feet. He lunged to follow his son.

He braced himself against the door, chest heaving, and looked back to see that the bridge had disappeared entirely.

“They’re coming,” Nathaniel said.

James peered through the opposite doorway. The Union rushed up the other bridge, and they were already halfway across.

The building they stood in was very much like the first. All it held was a gateway.

“Where does this one go?” James asked.

“Does it matter?”

Probably not. James pulled off the glove again to find his palm bleeding. But it wasn’t bleeding from the stitched edges where he had attached it; it bled directly from the center of the mark, irritated by the presence of the gateway. The instant he saw the injury, pain swept through him afresh.

Gritting his teeth, James pressed his hand against the gate.

The symbols illuminated. Gray light flooded the temple.

But before they could jump in, Zettel appeared in the doorway. He had left the rest of the unit behind. He aimed a handgun at them.

“Step back!” Zettel shouted.

Before James could decide what to do, Nathaniel moved.

He whipped a spell out of his notebook, threw it at Zettel, and spoke a word of power. Magic washed over them. The air over Zettel rippled.

Water gushed out of the portal that Nathaniel had created, slamming into the commander. James jumped back as the water sloshed over his feet. It was icy-cold, like snowmelt.

Zettel struggled to stand under the tide, but a rock slipped through the portal and crashed into his head. He slipped and fell again.

“Jump,” Nathaniel said, tucking the notebook into his pocket. He followed his own advice and launched through the gate. When he disappeared, the water did, too.

Zettel scrambled for the gun, bleeding from a cut in his forehead. “Stop!” he shouted.

James followed Nathaniel through the gate.

When James reappeared, there was
no ground beneath his feet—only blue sky. The gateway that Nathaniel had opened was gone, and James was falling.

The glove that he had used to protect his marked hand flew from his fingers, and he could only watch as it whipped away on the wind.

His stomach rose into his throat as he plummeted. He couldn’t breathe well enough to scream.

I’m going to die.

An instant after he had the thought, he landed on a boulder the size of a car.

James wrapped his arms around it, hanging on tightly as he fell through the air. Except they weren’t falling—the boulder was moving laterally, soaring through a cloudy mist as if propelled by rockets.

That was impossible. It defied physics, and he couldn’t feel a hint of magic from the rock beneath him.

Where
was
he?

“Nathaniel!” he yelled into the wind.

His son’s voice echoed back. “Over here!”

James looked up.

There were more rocks above his head, though some of them were large enough to be considered islands rather than boulders. They floated in the pale blue sky like an asteroid field. James was so dumbfounded by the sight that he didn’t see Nathaniel at first.

The boy waved his arms over his head. He was sitting on the edge of one of the biggest pieces of rock.

How was James supposed to get up there?

He carefully got onto his knees and was surprised to find the boulder steady enough to stand on. James extended his arms to either side to keep his balance.

Another boulder whizzed past. He jumped onto it.

“What is this place?” James called up to Nathaniel, who was swinging his feet over the side of the rocks, and looking pretty happy about it.