Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5) (13 page)

Elise jerked a knife out of her boot. She flipped it so that the hilt was cradled in her palm, blade pointing up. Throwing position. “Hi, Stephanie.”

“Hello again. How’s James doing?”

“He isn’t dead.” Her tone could have turned the rain to snow. “How’s the cult life treating you?”

A thin smile from Stephanie. “Business as usual, I suppose. I was told that you don’t typically visit Northgate. Levi said that he hasn’t seen you visit even once during his tenure as informal mayor.”

A laugh slipped out of Rylie before she could stop herself. “Mayor? Levi
Riese? Are you kidding?”

He glowered at her, but didn’t rise to take the bait. He never missed out on a chance to argue with Rylie. She wondered if he was sick.

“Nobody else has been helping here lately,” Stephanie said. She spoke a little loudly, as though trying to keep attention on herself. “Who’s been feeding the Scions? Who’s been organizing recovery efforts in the outlying farms? And where have you been, Elise?”

“She doesn’t take care of Northgate. I do,” Rylie said.

“Not lately, you haven’t.”

“Levi took the cathedral. He drove Isaiah, and many of the others that led the Scions, back into Hell.”

“You didn’t exactly fight him on it, did you?” Stephanie asked. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Rylie. I know you’re…preoccupied.” Her eyes were gentle, but her mouth was a hard line. “Levi’s doing his best here. You should be cooperating with him. The two of you could make all of our lives easier.” Her gaze cut to Elise. “
Much
easier.”

Elise’s fist tightened on the dagger, leather glove creaking.

But it was Rylie who stepped forward. “Abel told me what you said to him. If this is your idea of being more cooperative, I don’t want to see what it’s like when you start making trouble.”

Elise circled Stephanie slowly. When she got close to Levi, he took a quick step back, moving with werewolf speed. Staying out of reach. “What do you know about the House of Volac, Doctor?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stephanie said.

“How about the obsidian falchion? How about three thousand missing people? Or Two Rivers, Georgia?”

“Whatever you think I know, you’re wrong,” Stephanie said. “I’m surprised, Elise. I won’t pretend we’ve ever been friends, but I think you know me better than this. Tell me—how much do you think I have to do with the affairs of Hell?”

Elise cracked her knuckles. “None,” she conceded. “None whatsoever.”

“Thank you.”

The Scions collected on the other side of the bridge had noticed their conversation. They drew nearer to watch the women talk. The weight of their gazes made the hair on the back of Rylie’s neck prickle.

“If you’re having trouble in Hell, Elise, perhaps you should return there and never come back,” Stephanie said. “We’ll figure out a way to close this fissure sooner or later. We’re drawing close to a solution now. You can be walled off in your Palace, play queen all you like, and leave Earth to its own devices. You’ve meddled enough.”

“What’s your solution?” Elise asked. “Going to pull more pieces of Shamain out of Heaven? Going to kill more people in a ritual that summons a nightmare from Hell? Which one of the Apple’s greatest hits are you going to repeat?”

Stephanie stopped spinning the umbrella. It shadowed her eyes from the flames of the fissure, allowing the dancing orange light to play over her lips. “You can’t begin to guess what we’re doing.”

“Whatever it is, I’m going to stop you.” Elise said it matter-of-factly. Rylie wished she could have that kind of mulish confidence that Elise and Levi had. It would have made it so much easier to drive the Apple out of her town.

Except that Levi wasn’t flashing his usual confidence around. He didn’t even have a hint of swagger. It was almost like he was trying to melt into the background unnoticed.

“Rylie, what do you know about Elise?” Stephanie asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do you know why she’s called the Godslayer?”

“Yes,” Rylie said. It wasn’t hard to guess. That was a pretty descriptive title. But James Faulkner had given her and Abel quite a few of the gritty details, too—more than Rylie honestly wanted to know.

“So you know that she assassinated Adam, the First Man. You’re aware that she was involved with a lengthy conspiracy to imprison our Lord.”

That was a weirdly loaded question. Like the fact that Rylie knew about that implicated her in some way, too. She didn’t like the way that the doctor was looking at her at all. She especially didn’t like the fact that Stephanie was talking loud enough for others to hear them, like she was trying to attract attention.

Rylie dragged her bottom lip between her teeth. “Why are you doing this, Stephanie?”

“Elise Kavanagh is dangerous,” she said gently. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I can take care of myself.” Rylie tried to keep her voice down, but it was too late for that to help. Stephanie wasn’t trying to be quiet. She was trying to make a show.

“I’m sure you can, where most things are concerned, but Elise is not ‘most things.’ She is a demon now. She is a traitor to the human race. She is at the crux of all of Earth’s ills.”

The werewolves and the Scions were watching. For once, there was none of the usual awe that they seemed to have for Elise and Rylie. Their expressions were distinctly judgmental.

Rylie looked at each of them in turn. It was easy to tell which ones Levi had been talking to. She could smell his soap on them, see his swagger reflected in the way they stood. He had been marking his territory and she hadn’t even noticed.

Felton stood in the back, hands clasped with Deepali. Their eyes were the most judgmental of all. Maybe Abel had been right—Rylie’s compassion hadn’t accomplished anything.

“Elise is our ally,” Rylie said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Everything about Adam, and—and, I don’t know, conspiracies—all of that is rumor. None of us know anything about that. What we do know is that Elise Kavanagh is responsible for every single human that has come out of the fissure. All of the Scions would be dead or enslaved without her. Every single one of them. She’s a friend of the pack, and we’re friends of hers.” Rylie mustered all the Alpha strength that she could and focused it in her glare toward Stephanie. “The Apple has caused the pack nothing but trouble, and they are our enemies.”

Murmurs spread through the crowd.

“It’s too bad that you feel that way.” Stephanie spoke blandly, but Rylie could see the hurt in her eyes, and the sight made her cringe inwardly.

It was too late to take the words back. Rylie squared her shoulders, stood strong. “Northgate belongs to the werewolf pack. I think Levi has overstayed his welcome. If anyone has a problem with that, they can take it up with me at the sanctuary. That goes for all of you.”

The Scions shifted on their feet. Felton turned and left, taking Deepali with him.

Not exactly the rousing show of support Rylie had been hoping for.

Levi was grinning. He didn’t need to say a single word and he still made Rylie’s stomach twist with nausea.

She picked a pack member out of the crowd—Paetrick—and focused on him, tuning out all the mutters of dissent. “Elise needs a werewolf volunteer to investigate a crime. Someone to assist her in finding missing people. I hope someone can repay her for everything she’s done for the pack by helping out.”

But nobody stepped forward.

Elise glanced at her wrist, checking her watch. “I’ll be back in a few hours for my wolf. Spread the word.” She gave a final, hard look at Stephanie. “Goodbye.”

She evaporated into smoke.

The air surrounding
the farm outside Valenciennes smelled faintly of rain, though the starry sky was clear. There was no fissure in France, no smoke spewing from Hell to clog the air, and not even a glimpse of a shattered Heaven.

In rural France, far from the nearest Union outpost, the world almost seemed…normal.

Elise felt her shoulders unknot as she approached the farmhouse and heard voices pouring from the windows. They were high pitched, shrieky, and ear shattering—the kind of noises that Elise never thought she would have been happy to hear.

The front door opened before she could knock.

“Aunt Elise!”

Two small tornadoes slammed into her legs. She was prepared for it, but it still staggered her.

The McIntyre girls, Dana and Deborah, and grown since the last time that Elise had seen them. Both of them looked to be several inches taller. The kids were blond, though not as blond as they had been before, losing that baby-fine hair that had been bleached by Las Vegas sunlight. One of them had hair that was faintly pink from old dye.

Leticia appeared in the doorway behind them. She was thinning out, too. Usually a big-hipped woman with a generous belly roll, the witch now looked shrunken in her baggy clothes. Food just wasn’t as cheap or convenient as it had been before the Breaking. Not with most of America’s farms decimated. It was hitting everyone hard, even those who had safely escaped.

“Heya,” Leticia said, giving Elise a one-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Good to see you.”

“And you.” Elise had been missing the McIntyres. Life wasn’t the same without spending long weekends at their single wide outside Las Vegas, even though she had thought more than once that she hated having the kids climbing all over her for hours on end. They were already glued to her thighs and she barely had the urge to kick them back into the house. She even felt herself smiling.

“Lucas is already working in the living room. Go on in and find him. Hey! Give Aunt Elise some breathing room!” Leticia grabbed her kids by the collars and shooed them back inside where it was warm and light.

Elise followed more slowly, closing the door behind her and glancing out the windows before drawing the curtains. The McIntyres were living in a house that had belonged to Elise’s mother’s family. She was relatively confident that the wards were strong enough to hold out everything but the most determined and powerful attackers. The problem was that the only things likely to attack Elise would be both determined and powerful.

Dana and Deb thundered up the narrow stairs to the second floor, making the house creak. “I get to do the braids this time!” That was the older girl.

“No! I do braids!” The younger one. It was getting harder to tell their voices apart.

Leticia gave Elise an apologetic grin. “Does this mean it’s beer o’clock?”

“It’s always beer o’clock when your children are involved,” Elise said.

“We have Leffe. It’s a pale ale. I’ll grab a couple for you and Lucas.”

She disappeared down into the small pantry under the kitchen, and Elise headed into the living room.

The living room had been seized by McIntyre for use as an office. He had boxes of papers everywhere, a few laptops plugged into one sagging American-to-European outlet converter, and guns scattered over the coffee table. He hadn’t been locking them up as much since Deb had hit two years old and proven that she knew all the basic rules of gun safety—treat them like they’re always loaded, don’t point at anything you don’t want to die, that kind of thing. Dana, for her part, was already a better shot than most adults. Probably better than Elise. It was safer to have the guns on hand for an unexpected attack than hide them from the girls anyway.

McIntyre came in and grabbed a pair of assault rifles off the table, barely glancing at Elise. “Hey,” he grunted.

“Hey,” she said.

He moved most of the weapons onto a folding table he’d set up under a window and tossed a stack of paper onto the remaining space. It looked like at least two or three reams of printer paper.

“More names,” McIntyre said.

She grabbed the top sheet. “Missing people?”

“Yep. Got another email. The list just keeps growing.”

She swallowed around a hard lump in her throat, putting the page back down. “Anthony?”

“Still no mention of him. Not on the lists, and not with my contacts.”

Elise wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. It would have been one thing if he was dead—a bad thing, sure, but at least it would be
something
. Something to avenge. Something to grieve.

Leticia returned, dodging Dana and Deb as the two crashed through the doorway at the same time.

“If you don’t stop shrieking, girls, I am going to rip out your vocal chords and feed them to the crocodiles,” McIntyre said.

“
Daddy
.” Dana rolled her eyes. “There are no crocodiles in
France
.”

Elise took the Leffe from Leticia gratefully. The first two bottles were already uncapped.

“Sure there are,” McIntyre said. “French crocodiles are the worst, and they’re gonna eat you. So shut your mouths.” There was no real heat in his voice. He was too distracted by searching for another power cord for the laptop that he had brought in with him.

Elise sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, glaring at another laptop’s monitor. She tuned out the activity behind her—two little girls fighting over a comb and box of rubber bands—and tossed back a swig of Leffe as she began scrolling through the names.

“I don’t understand,” Elise said, her voice quiet under the shrieks of arguing children. “How is it possible that these people have been going missing for years in such large numbers and nobody has noticed?”

McIntyre dragged a chair over to join her, plopping his girth down on the seat. Leticia had lost weight, but he’d bulked up, and not much of it muscle. His thighs draped over either side of the seat now. “People go missing all the time. A couple here, few more there. Easy not to notice.”

A small hand grabbed Elise’s hair and jerked. “Hey!” she snapped over her shoulder. “Gentle!”

“Sorry, Aunt Elise,” Dana said, sounding truly contrite. More sharply, she added, “Deb! Gentle with her hair!”

“I braid it,” Deb announced.

It felt like hyenas were attacking Elise’s skull, but if she could ignore the ache of the wound still carved into her chest, she could surely ignore a couple of kids playing with her hair.

She was going to need a lot more beer, though.