Descent07 - Paradise Damned (22 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The pain suddenly vanished.

She didn’t move at first, expecting that the pain would return momentarily. But it didn’t. She lay on the parquet floor beside the bed in Adam’s bedroom, looking up at a blank ceiling bordered by bookshelves.

Adam kneeled beside her, and she grasped His hands for comfort. “Adam,” she said. “What happened? Did I get hurt?”

Wonder filled His eyes, like He was seeing something that He had never expected to find again. “Eve?” He asked, touching her cheek. It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. “Is it you?”

Eve laughed. “Of course it’s me. Are
you
all right?”

He responded by crushing His lips to hers in a kiss. He tasted the way that the first breezes of spring smelled. She pressed herself to His chest and enjoyed the sensation of being consumed by the tides of His energy.

It felt like she had been without Him for so long, but she couldn’t remember why.

When she pulled away, she realized that Metaraon stood behind Him. The angel’s blue eyes, identical to Eve’s, were cold with shock—and hatred.

Hatred?

“Metaraon,” Eve said, extending an inviting hand toward him.

His lips twisted with revulsion. He didn’t move to touch her.

“There was another intruder, Father,” Metaraon said, voice tight with emotion. “It waits for you in the throne room. You said that you wanted to know.”

Adam kissed Eve again, catching her face in His hands. “Yes,” He said when He pulled away. “I’ll take care of it.” She could feel His eyes burning over her face as He drank in the sight of her. “Don’t stray, Eve. I’ll return.”

“Where would I stray?” she asked.

His delight rippled over her skin. “Soon,” Adam said. “Soon.”

He left the room, and Eve stood. Breakfast was still on the tray in front of her pillow. There was a piece of bread, a fried egg. They looked unappetizing.

“What intruder is Adam addressing?” she asked.

“There is no intruder. I lied so that He would leave.”

Eve blinked in confusion. “Why?”

Metaraon slapped her across the face.

The sensation wasn’t nearly as painful as the fact that he had struck her at all. Eve’s hand flew to her burning cheek. “Elise,” he said, “snap out of it.”

Hearing that name filled her with confusion. She looked down at herself again. Two arms, two legs, auburn hair—everything was intact. Everything except her wings.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Why did you hit me?”

Metaraon grabbed her arms. “Don’t talk like that,” he said harshly. “Don’t talk like you’re
her
. Remember who you are, Elise—you’re a killer, and you’re here for a reason.
Elise
. Not Eve.”

She stared up at him with mingling fear and shock. Metaraon would never have hit her. He adored her—in fact, he may have even been in love with her, if their kiss among the rose bushes was any indicator.

“You’re scaring me,” Eve said.

He seized her shoulders, turning her to face the bed. “Look at her. Remember who she is, and who you are.”

Another person was lying in the bed. Metaraon shoved her forward, and Eve the face of the blond-haired woman. The name came to her in a rush of crystal-clear realization.

Betty.

“Shit,” she said, pressing the hell of her palm to her temples. He was right—she wasn’t Eve, she was Elise. They were separate entities with a single mind. Her skull bulged with memories that didn’t belong.

Elise struggled to untangle her thoughts.

Elise
.

Memories of kissing Metaraon gave way to memories of kissing James, which were not nearly so horrifying. Elise wished that she had steel wool to scrub Eve’s memories from er brain. She didn’t need to see her mother’s newest lover like that.

“I almost lost myself,” Elise said. “I remembered everything. I think…I think I almost became her.”

Revulsion curled Metaraon’s lip. “You are no Eve,” he hissed. “She was a woman of grace, compassion, and magnanimity, the likes of which have been unseen since her death. You could
never
be her.” It was obvious from the way that he said it that he intended it to be the harshest of insults.

“You’re the one that shoved me into this hellhole and brought back my dead friend,” Elise said. “If I completely snap, it’s your fault.”

Metaraon waved to dismiss the vision of James’s bedroom, returning Elise and Betty to the juncture of branches in the Tree.

“I will attend to Adam,” he said.

Then he spread his wings and flew away, vanishing into the fog.

Elise’s head wouldn’t stop aching.

She paced over one of the platforms set into the Tree, massaging her forehead, although she knew that nothing could relieve the pressure. It wasn’t a physical pain.

Eve’s memories were still swirling through her mind, giving her brief glimpses of the much brighter garden that had been on Earth in days past. She saw Adam, too, young and human and filled with laughter.

Eve had loved Him so much. Enough to forgive Him for anything, even hundreds of years after He had stopped loving her back.

In fact, all of Eve’s memories were tinged with the rosy glow of love. She had loved
everything
—life, her children, the world. Metaraon was right about one thing: Elise could never have Eve’s grace and compassion.

But how the hell could Elise possibly know that?

“Elise?”

Betty had woken up. She leaned over the branch to look down at Elise pacing on the platform.

Elise climbed to her friend’s side again. “How’s your hand?” she asked.

“It doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”

Tugging at the bandages, Elise quickly unwrapped Betty’s hand. All of the swelling was gone. There was no sign of broken fingers. “You were only asleep for a few hours,” Elise said, gently bending Betty’s thumb. Betty didn’t even flinch. “How is this possible?”

“Magic?” Betty suggested.

Elise had healed all of the damage that Adam inflicted on her quickly, too. Maybe it was some kind of magic intrinsic to the garden. They had bigger worries.

“I’m going crazy,” Elise said. She blurted it right out, unable to control herself.

“I’ve known that for years.”

“No, I mean I’m actually going crazy now. I thought I had become Eve while you were sleeping.” She decided not to mention that Adam had been around—Betty didn’t need to know how vulnerable she had been. “I thought that would only happen if I went through the door.”

Betty blinked. “What door?”

“That one.” Elise nodded toward the platform below. The door was on the edge, waiting for her in the way that it always did. Betty leaned over to search for it.

“I don’t see any doors.”

“It’s right there,” Elise said. “I’m looking at it right now.”

“Okay,” Betty said slowly, “so you
are
going crazy.”

Elise was missing something—some piece of the puzzle that she couldn’t see. Why wouldn’t Betty be able to see the door? Why was she getting Eve’s memories? None of it made any sense.

“You okay?” Betty asked. “Sorry. I know that’s a stupid question. Obviously, the answer is ‘no,’ but…I guess what I’m asking is, are you worse than usual?”

Normally, Betty’s verbal diarrhea would have made Elise laugh, but she could find no mirth anymore. Not with the horrifying mental image of kissing Metaraon lingering in the back of her mind.

“Metaraon loved Eve,” Elise said. “That’s why he’s been trying to kill Adam this whole time.”

Betty’s eyes widened. “Wow. Really?”

Elise barely heard her. She was thinking aloud, and an idea had dawned on her. “Eve loved Metaraon, too. But that doesn’t make any sense. Adam never would keep someone in the garden that challenged His affections. He’s too jealous.”

The same idea seemed to have struck Betty, too. Her eyes brightened. “Adam must not have known,” she whispered. “He would kill Metaraon.”

It was a dangerous idea—dangerous, and brilliant.

Elise climbed down the Tree and set off in search of God.

X

It was easy
for Elise to figure out where Adam was lurking; the entire garden seemed to bend in His direction, as if He were a black hole toward which all matter spiraled. She and Betty had to cross a bridge over Mnemosyne to reach Him.

The setting shifted around them as they walked, sliding between the empty ethereal city, the garden at its glorious peak, and the dried-out husk it had since become. Betty clung to Elise’s arm the entire time, staring wide-eyed at the changing world.

By the time they reached Mnemosyne, it was a wide, white, torrential river that slopped over the cobblestone bridge. They crossed together. The water stung Elise’s feet when it splashed her.

“I’m going to talk to Him alone,” Elise said, gently dislodging Betty’s hand on the other side. “Watch out for yourself. If you see anyone—or anything—coming, then you need to hide.”

“You should leave me with one of your swords, just in case,” Betty said. “Or, um, a bazooka.”

“No swords or bazookas. Sorry.”

“What are you going to do?” Betty asked.

“I’m going to tell Adam the truth,” Elise said.

She managed to give Betty an encouraging smile before following the path down into the roots.

The smile disappeared the instant she turned her back. She would have given anything to get her swords back. The thought of them being eaten away in the pool of amber underneath the Tree caused her physical pain.

But just because Elise didn’t have any weapons didn’t mean that she was unarmed.

The path dipped below one of the roots, and faint light glimmered in the darkness below. Sparkling stars drifted through the air like flotsam on the surface of Mnemosyne.

She could see things in the darkness—screaming faces barely lit by the luminescent blossoms. It took Elise a few moments to realize that they weren’t a hallucination. There were oversized skulls beneath the roots, stripped bare of flesh and blood, with eternal grins. They were too big to be human. More likely dead gibborim, or even nephilim, from the time before the Treaty of Dis.

The pinpoint stars whirled around her legs as she continued to walk. Between two stones, she glimpsed the door waiting for her again—that ordinary, four-paneled, gold-handled door to James’s bedroom. Even under the Tree, it was waiting for her.

Elise didn’t look at it. She pushed on.

A woman appeared at the end of the tunnel. She rushed toward Elise, skirts gathered in her hands, her face pale. Even hurrying, she moved very slowly—the weight of her full-term belly was too much to run.

Ariane grabbed her daughter’s hands. “Elise!”

“What are you doing here? It’s not safe. You should be hiding.”

“But I need your help.” Tears clung to her eyelashes, and the whites of her eyes were red. Her palms were clammy. It wasn’t sweat on her hands—it was blood.

Elise’s alarm grew. “Are you going into labor?”

“No, it’s—Metaraon, he did something, and then he brought Nathaniel here, and I don’t know what happened—”

“Wait, stop,” she said. “Did you say Nathaniel?”

Ariane nodded. “He’s in the garden, and he’s dying.”

Ariane had been
staying in an apartment within the trunk of the Tree. Windows had been carved into the trunk to allow her to see out onto the orchard below, and gray light streamed through filmy white curtains, casting the room in a perpetual early morning glow.

Ariane stepped aside to let Elise and Betty approach the side of the bed. Metaraon was already there, and he didn’t look happy to see them. “Are you insane, Ariane?” he asked.

“I had to do
something
,” she said.

Elise shoved Metaraon aside to see who was in the bed. Even though Ariane had already told her, she didn’t want to believe that it could be him—that he could have ended up in this gray hell with her.

It was Nathaniel Pritchard. James’s son.

The white bed sheets under him were stained with his blood. Elise pushed his jacket aside to find a bullet wound. It must have entered through the back and exited the chest, because it was almost big enough to fit her fist next to his heart.

Seeing the damage made it feel like she was the one who had been fatally wounded.

“What happened?” Elise asked.

“He was shot,” Metaraon said.

“No shit.”

Elise smoothed her hand over Nathaniel’s clammy brow. With his eyes closed, he looked like a much younger child. Elise found herself remembering a little girl that she had once exorcised—a five year old named Lucinde Ramirez.

She had failed to save that child, too.

“Mom, do you have any of your potions?” Elise asked. “We need to heal him.”

Ariane picked up a pair of glass phials from her dresser, and Betty took a sniff of one. “Yes, but I don’t have anything that could repair this kind of damage,” she said, fumbling to uncork them. “Cuts and scrapes, minor bruising—”

“The boy is too far gone to be healed. I have a more elegant solution,” Metaraon said.

The angel drew a long, silver knife from behind his back. The blade was almost as long as his forearm.

Betty had been about to take one of the phials to Nathaniel, but she stopped with a gasp when she saw the dagger.

Elise stood, blocking Metaraon’s access to the bed.

“Move aside, woman,” he said. “I’m going to spare his life.”

“With a dagger?”

“He is moments from death anyway. If I kill him with this weapon here, in the Tree, then Nathaniel’s soul will be transferred to a new body in the nursery below,” Metaraon said.

“But he will come back as an ethereal creature,” Ariane protested, setting down the phials. “And he will be bound to this place—and to the God you plan on killing!”

“Would you prefer that he die entirely? He still has utility.”

“There is another option,” Ariane said.

Both of them turned to Elise at the same time.

“What?” Betty asked. “What did I miss?”

Ariane took her daughter’s hand, clinging to it with wide eyes. “Your blood is special,
ma fille
, after everything that has happened to you. Perhaps if you fill him with your blood, he will heal.”