Lost in Prophecy: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Ascension Series) (Volume 5) (21 page)

Elise felt a smile creep over her when she spotted the bundle of twigs from a case that she had worked on with Father Night. She plucked it off the shelf and pocketed it.

“Don’t touch that,” Stephanie said. “That doesn’t belong to you.”

Elise ignored her, opening the door to the bedroom. The overwhelming smell of pot smoke blasted her in the face.

Clothes were scattered haphazardly across the floor. Elise picked up a pair of jeans. They looked much too large to belong to Levi. The belt was still in the loops, heavy and thick, like a utility belt. More function than fashion. She tossed them aside.

“What are you hoping to find?” Stephanie asked. “That is to say, what should I help you search for?”

Elise mulled over the question as she picked through the attached bathroom. Levi had two razors. Two different types of aftershave. Only one kind of shampoo. Two sticks of deodorant. It seemed that Levi had a male roommate living with him.

“Anathema powder,” Elise finally said. “It’s black and about as coarse as pepper. It may or may not be haloed with magic. It will be in a glass vessel. If you do find something like that and see that it’s touched with magic, don’t open it—that means it’s already been activated.”

Elise went through the drawers while Stephanie searched the closet. In their silence, she heard a soft, rhythmic sound—a strange noise that would have easily been drowned out by the sound of the rain. And once Elise heard this small heartbeat coming from within Stephanie’s womb, she realized that the doctor’s stomach was swollen. She was smaller than the woman unconscious on the lawn, still capable of hiding it with loose clothing.

“They left behind the pregnant women.” Elise said it as the realization came upon her.

Stephanie’s hand jumped to her stomach, a reflexive gesture of self-defense. “How did you…?” Her eyes narrowed. “Ah. I suppose I can imagine.”

A headache throbbed in Elise’s temples. The sheer irresponsibility of it. The idea that anyone would willingly bring new life into this horrible, shattered world.

Yet whatever Levi had done, it had spared the pregnant women.

Demons wouldn’t have cared about that.

“Have you seen Levi speaking with anyone unusual lately?” Elise asked, shaking the contents of one drawer onto the floor. There was nothing inside but socks, underwear, and a couple of knives.

“I haven’t seen him much at all,” Stephanie admitted. “I’ve been in California since Shamain fell. He hasn’t been updating me on Northgate’s progress as frequently as I’d requested, and that was part of the reason I came back. I needed to know what he’s been doing.”

“What was the rest of the reason you came back?” Elise asked.

“It’s a personal matter.”

“Anything to do with the pregnancy?”

“In a manner of speaking. As I said, it’s personal.”

There was nothing in Levi’s drawers. She abandoned them in a pile and moved to his bed.

Elise flipped his mattress over with a hard shove, exposing boxes underneath. Most of them were Bankers Boxes. She ignored those and zeroed in on a small wooden chest. It was secured with a golden lock, but it snapped easily under her fingers.

She opened it and recoiled at the contents. Levi had two more vials of anathema powder, not yet magically active.

There were also three empty vials alongside the two filled ones.

The inside of the lid was engraved with a House seal that she recognized. It was a bleeding heart encircled by spiky rays of fire. That was one of the Houses that she had been trying to force into relinquishing its slaves. Davithon wore that image etched into the breast of his House livery.

But this bleeding heart, unlike the others she had seen, was stamped with the letters “CV”—just like Volac’s bill of sale for her slaves.

“Courevore,” Elise whispered to herself. “That’s what CV means. This is from the House of Courevore.”

Her mind whirled with the implications of it.

Levi Riese had tried to poison her using something that Davithon had given him, and Davithon was currently imprisoned within Elise’s dungeon. How in all of the seven Hells had Levi managed to get in touch with an imprisoned demon?

And if Davithon was making thousands of people disappear, why would he spare the pregnant women?

Lincoln Marshall had
seen better days. He was on his feet, but walking slowly enough that James thought he might fall over at any moment. James was trying to follow him and growing impatient.

“I can get there myself,” James said.

“She said to stick with you,” Lincoln said. “I’m sticking with you.”

Excellent. So Elise had assigned a sickly guard to make sure James didn’t get into trouble in the Palace. It was terribly optimistic of her—James was fairly confident that breathing hard enough on Lincoln would have made him fall over.

Still, he remained a step behind Lincoln, following him down the tower to the Great Library. The door leading inside was two stories tall and decorated with leering faces carved into the frame that seemed to watch James as he approached.

Lincoln leaned all his weight into the door to open it, and James stepped through.

They emerged on the top floor, looking down to the bottom of the tower. The Great Library was a wondrous thing to behold. James warmed at the sight of so many books. He could feel the passion and inspiration that had been poured into the pages. The intellectual energy was heady. Addicting.

“We’ve been working over here,” Lincoln said, limping down the spiral staircase.

He barely reached one of the desks on the crystal floor before falling into its chair. Lincoln sat back with his eyes shut and hands clutching his stomach.

James’s gaze swept over the table. Over a hundred books had been stacked on the desk. Someone had been taking notes and even attempting to draw runes—pathetic attempts that didn’t glimmer with even the faintest hints of magic.

“Where did all of these books come from?” James asked. “Who selected them?”

“Elise said that one of the librarians pulled them out for her.”

But the library was empty. None of the staff were anywhere in sight.

Although James had never been to the library before—his brief time incarcerated in the dungeons hadn’t given him an opportunity to visit—he’d read about how it functioned. The librarians in the Great Library had a reputation for having their own agenda. They’d been written about in hundreds of history books, always as enigmatic figures that didn’t seem to serve any master—especially not the current administration. They probably hadn’t picked the books out at Elise’s request.

There must have been something that they wanted Elise to have.

James began flipping them over to look at the spines and covers, immediately discarding each.

“What are you looking for?” Lincoln asked.

He didn’t respond. Truth be told, James wasn’t certain. Each of the books had been written in an ancient form of
vo-ani
, the infernal tongue, but he read it well enough to know that all of them were about warlock magic. They would be interesting to study later. But there was nothing special about them, nothing different, nothing…noteworthy.

James was looking for a book that didn’t fit with the others.

He found it buried underneath a stack of tomes on fire magic. It was bound in wood rather than leather. The cover image had been delicately etched, not stamped or burned. The swirling, abstract illustration reminded him of something organic. He flicked the cover open with his thumb and studied the first page. The pictographic language was only vaguely similar to
vo-ani
, although it was looping and cursive-like rather than jagged.

That was because this book wasn’t written in the infernal language. It was written in an angelic alphabet.

He spread his fingers over the page and let his eyes fall closed, seeing the book with his heart instead of his eyes. The energy was distinctly ethereal. Incredibly ancient. But he felt a twinge of pain at touching it, too. The book remembered sadness.

How had the Palace of Dis gotten a book from the ethereal library? It had burned millennia ago. Every single book should have been lost.

Every book except this one.

“They left this for me,” James whispered. Elise never would have known what to do with it. They must have somehow known that he was coming—but how?

“What did you say?” Lincoln asked.

James tucked the book into his pocket. “If there’s any cure for anathema powder, it will be in the library somewhere. You should sit here while I search.”

“Not a chance.” Lincoln tried to stand, but getting to his feet made his face pale, and he sat back down.

“Stay,” James said.

“You don’t order me around. I’m not your lackey anymore.”

He’d been spending too much time around Elise. He was starting to sound like her.

“I’ll be nearby,” James said.

He climbed up into the stacks, searching for a catalog and finding none. The shelves weren’t even labeled. He couldn’t tell how the texts and scrolls were organized. Few had authors listed, and those that did weren’t arranged by author name anyway.

If the librarians had any method of organization, it was one that he couldn’t begin to understand.

James glanced over the railing to make sure Lincoln was still at the desk and then opened the ethereal text. He pressed his nose into the spine, inhaling deeply. The scent brought to mind rolling, grassy fields, ripe autumn apples, and blossoming flowers.

He also smelled a faint hint of smoke.

“What do you want me to know?” he murmured, cradling it in one hand as he turned the pages. He had never seen the ancient ethereal language before and couldn’t read it.

And yet, as he turned the pages, he began to pick up words here and there. Things like “eternity” and “genesis” and “apotheosis.”

Some part of James, locked away deep inside, could read the text.

By the time he flipped to the center of the book, he was reading entire paragraphs.

It wasn’t a book on ethereal magic. Instead, it was talking about the universe on a macro level—the fibers that held everything together, connecting all living creatures to one another. It was talking about shared energy. Reanimation.

Reincarnation.

“James?” Lincoln was calling.

He snapped the book shut. Tucked it back into his pocket. His heart was beating quickly. “What do you want?” James asked, leaning over the railing again.

Lincoln glared up at him with suspicion in his eyes. “You got quiet.”

Irritation crept over him. “Yes, I’m searching. Do you need me to check in with you every few seconds? Would you find that reassuring?”

“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you,” Lincoln said. “I take my job seriously.”

James grabbed a couple of books that looked like they were vaguely related to mining and minerals within Hell and carried them down to the desk. Lincoln was waiting for him, watching critically as James set the books on the corner of the desk. Lincoln picked one up.

“
Artistic Utilization of Igneous Stone in the Palace
,” he read aloud. One of his eyebrows lifted. “Are you even trying?”

“You’re welcome to find your own cure,” James said.

“You never planned to fix me, did you?” he asked. “You can’t even do it.” It didn’t sound like he meant the anathema powder.

James felt exhaustion creeping over him. He had made a lot of promises when he still believed he was going to be able to reach Eden. The promise that he would “fix” Lincoln of his demon heritage was hardly the most notable of them. He didn’t have the energy to deal with the deputy’s animosity.

When he replied, he couldn’t keep the hard edge out of his voice. “I’m your only chance at living past the next week. If I were you, I would speak with a little more respect.”

“I wouldn’t be like this if you hadn’t taken advantage of me and ruined my life in the first place,” Lincoln said.

Yes, he’d definitely been spending too much time with Elise.

How long had Lincoln and Elise been together in the Palace of Dis now anyway? She hadn’t hesitated to feed him with her own energies when he had been unconscious, and the way that she had smiled to see him wake up… They seemed to have become terribly close.

James took the seat across from Lincoln. He could feel the corner of the ethereal book digging into his hip. “If our lives hadn’t intersected, you never would have met Elise, either.”

He gave a disbelieving laugh. “It’d be worth it,” Lincoln said.

Distaste twisted James’s mouth. For all that fate, angels, and the White Ash Coven had pushed James and Elise together, he didn’t regret a moment of it. He would rather have lived a thousand miserable lives alongside her than a single life alone.

However long Lincoln had been in the Palace with Elise—hours or weeks or years—he didn’t deserve the time he had spent with her.

James grabbed one of the books. “Nothing will ever be normal for you again,” he said, unable to keep the sharp edge out of his voice. “The sooner you embrace that, the less disappointing you’ll find life. Whatever remains of it.”

The doors swung open, and a man strode into the library radiating anxiety. He stopped a few steps away from them. It was one of the human guards—the one that Elise had called Azis.

“She’s back,” Azis said.

The dungeons were
emptier than they should have been. Elise glared down at the stalls underneath Jerica’s cage and found that almost a full half of them were empty, and those that remained occupied were silent. No more threats and catcalls greeted her. Just the powerful, overbearing silence of fear.

“What happened, Gerard?” she asked.

“They’ve been dying,” he said, leaning against the wall, picking at his fingernails with a knife. “All the half-humans have been dropping. One or two a day for the last couple days. We’ve been feeding them and they don’t seem to be sick, so I don’t know what’s up.” He sounded casual about it, but there was a tremor in his voice and gnarled fingers.

Elise thought she knew what was killing her prisoners. It was the same thing making her normally fearless praetor quiver with fear. Her eyes flicked up toward the bottom of the cage swaying over the dungeon. She couldn’t see Jerica from this angle, but she suspected that the nightmare was going to look very different the next time Elise saw her. Jerica must have been very well fed. She had been drinking the half-humans to death.