The Darkest Gate (28 page)

It wasn’t the feeling of a powerful infernal presence—it was ethereal.

The silence in the elevator was unnerving. Even Betty seemed to have run out of things to say. She gave an occasional cough that rang out in the too-quiet air, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. Anthony gazed at the darkness above the cage. They could only see the walls a few feet above them before they were swallowed by shadow.

“So… demons use mining shafts. Why am I not surprised?”

Nobody responded. He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his feet.

When the elevator finally reached the bottom, Elise held up a hand to indicate that they should wait. A soft hum filled the hall. Betty shone the flashlight around the rock walls, but there was nothing to see.

“Maybe the Night Hag isn’t down here. It’s awfully empty,” Betty said.

Elise shook her head. “She’s here.”

They walked down the long, empty hallway. Nothing was guarding the entrance into the chamber where the gate had been constructed.

Elise edged around the door. The gate had been finished, the empty crates had been carried away, and the working demons were nowhere in sight. Only a single figure stood in front of the door in a long black gown. It looked like the Night Hag was taking a solitary vigil.

“That’s the overlord—the old woman by the gate,” Elise said, pointing into the cavern. “I don’t know where Thom is, but he has to be around. Watch for him. They say he’s a witch, but he’s much more powerful than that.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Like a supermodel. You’ll recognize him if you see him.”

She took another long moment to study the cavern and the gate. Instead of having the bowl fragments at the capstone, the Night Hag had redesigned it so that it was at the base instead. It wouldn’t require wings to open the gate. Elise could walk down, touch the stone, and pass through to the ethereal ruins… if she wanted to. But she didn’t plan on letting it get that far.

Elise gestured. They edged down the path with their backs against the wall.

She didn’t make it six feet before the Night Hag looked up. Betty gasped.

The overlord wasn’t alone after all.

Nukha’il knelt on the floor on the other side of the gate, hidden by its shadow. He glared at Elise with bitter fury. His face was swollen and bruised from a thorough beating, and chains at his wrists pinned him to the floor.

“This is a trap, isn’t it?” Anthony asked.

An instant later, something massive dropped from the ceiling and pinned her to the ground.

Her injured leg couldn’t take the impact. Her body struck dirt, and Anthony jumped back with a shout. A daimarachnid reared over her.

Elise drew her sword ly. One of its legs crushed her arm to the dirt.

It didn’t try to bite her. Instead, its mouth descended on her throat and snagged the chain of charms almost delicately.

The spider broke the chain and jumped off the ramp.

James grabbed for the charms and missed.

“No!” Elise shouted, scrambling on her knees to the edge, but it was already gone. It took the charms to the Night Hag like a dog fetching a bone.

“You have been very helpful!” called the overlord as she picked out the bowl fragment and threw the rest of the charms aside. “Shame that you should bite the hand that feeds. You are an incredible weapon. I would have loved to wield you.”

She extended a pale, slender hand and inserted the pebble into the crack.

Elise felt like she had just jumped off a bridge. Her pulse thrilled. Her stomach leaped into her throat. Sudden wind whipped her hair around her face, battering her body, and all she could do was dig her fingers into the ground to keep from getting ripped off the side.

The gate was complete.

“Bring them down!” ordered the Night Hag.

A dozen more daimarachnids emerged from the other side of the cavern and scuttled toward the ramp.

Elise tried to get to her feet, but her leg completely gave out. She struck the ground on one knee. Pain arced from hip to shoulder, and spots of blood dotted the bandages.

“James!”

He was beside her in an instant. “We should run—”

The spider-demons were rushed toward them. Every rustling motion echoed off the high cave walls. She grabbed his arm, dragging his face down to her level.

“Piggyback,” Elise said. “
Now
.”

“Elise—”

“Just do it!”

The blast of the shotgun roared above them. One of the daimarachnids had skipped the slope and climbed beside Anthony and Betty instead.

James swore and held Elise’s face between both of his hands. A bolt of power shot through her. “Hang on,” he said. She felt him open himself to her. Magic pulsed around them. He extended it to her, pale eyes glowing, and she opened herself to take it.

And then they both blacked out.

XVI

A
nthony thought he
coped pretty well with the whole demon thing. He didn’t have a nervous breakdown after the zombie attack, which was pretty good considering he hadn’t even believed in ghosts before that. When he went camping with Elise, he took a spider down on his own. Mostly. And he’d become pretty good with the shotgun. As far as “people who can’t turn paper into fireballs” went, he would definitely say he was a useful team member.

But nothing could have prepared him for the moment Elise and James went limp on the ground and left him alone with his wheezing cousin, a demonic overlord, and a gateway into an angelic city.

He stared at their bodies.

“Oh no,” Betty said.

They didn’t have long to be shocked. A dozen daimarachnids reached the bottom of the ramp, which gave them about twenty seconds before they were overtaken. Anthony pumped his shotgun and stood over his cousin while she examined their friends.

“She’s not responding!” Betty cried, jamming a knuckle into Elise’s breastbone. The pain from that should have been enough to wake the dead.

He stepped around her, angled the shotgun down, and fired off a shot. The spider-demon in the front lost its eyes in a cloud of blood. It collapsed and tripped the spider right behind it.

Anthony didn’t get a chance to fire again.

“Bring them down.”

The spider-demons lifted James and Elise’s bodies in their mouthparts. Their gentleness was surprising.

But the demons didn’t try to be nearly so gentle with Anthony and Betty. They drove into the back of his legs and shoved him down the path. “Hey!” he protested, twisting around to aim. They rewarded him with another, harder shove. He lost his balance and fell onto all fours.

The shotgun flew from his hands and dropped over the side of the path.

The spider-demon that had pushed Anthony seized him with its forelegs to lift him over its head. Its grip dug into his back and sides. When he was seventeen, he had body-surfed at a music festival after too much weed, and it felt a lot like that—except nobody in the mosh pit had pincers. He stared at its glistening eyeballs as it hauled him toward a woman he was pretty sure planned to kill him.

“It’s okay, Betty, we’ll be okay!” he yelled, trying to comfort his cousin. When she didn’t respond, he twisted in the spider’s legs to see what she was doing.

Betty was still at the door, kicking and punching and generally making herself impossible to grab. “Fuck you! Yeah! And fuck you, too! Ouch—hey!” Two of them finally jumped and pinned her to the ground. They dragged her down the slope. “Let go of me, you ugly bastards!”

At any other time, he would have laughed.

Each step of the spider beneath him was uneven and jolting, like riding a horse with too many legs. The demon holding Elise drew level with him. The hilt of the falchions jutted over each of her shoulders, and blood dripped from underneath the gloves. Her arms and legs dangled uselessly. So much for hoping she was only pretending to be asleep.

“Anthony? Anthony!” Betty wailed.

“Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine. We can—”

“Optimism. How sweet,” said the Night Hag as the spiders dropped all four of them in front of the dais and stepped back to form a loose circle.

Anthony eyed Elise’s swords. They were the only weapons left now, but he hadn’t even touched them before. He played baseball in elementary school, though. How much harder could it be to swing a sword?

Before he could decide if he wanted to make a move, the Night Hag descended to examine him like he was a piece of dog shit on her kitchen floor. Her nose wrinkled.

She snapped her fingers, and a beautiful man appeared at her side. He had full lips, long black hair, and no shirt. Anthony found himself gaping and had to shake free of it. The new guy had to be Thom.

“What is this?” she demanded. “What are they doing here?”

“They are friends of Elise’s.”

“Idiots. Amateurs! You would think a kopis would know better than to bring children with her!”

“Hey!” Betty complained.

The overlord ignored her. “At least she came at all. Strip her gloves and open the gate.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Thom said.

She spun on him. “Are you challenging me?”

“I have obeyed your every other order, but I will not expose her hands.” He hooked his thumbs in the waist of his slacks. “Make of it what you will.”

Several tense seconds passed.

Surprisingly, it was the Night Hag who looked away.

“Nukha’il!” she snapped. “Come here!” The chains fell away from the man on the other side of the gate. He stood slowly, as though he had been forced into a kneeling position for so long that he could barely move. He joined her on the dais. His wrists, rubbed raw by metal shackles, looked like they had delicate bird bones inside. “Grab the kopis. Remove her gloves. Open the gate. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

He glared, but he stepped down from the gate without arguing and knelt to grab Elise. Betty shielded her body.

“Don’t touch her!”

He shoved Betty with one hand. It was the smallest of gestures, but she went flying as though he had thrown his whole body into the punch. She cried out. Anthony barely caught her before she hit the ground.

Nukha’il scooped Elise from the ground, propping her awkwardly against his shoulder so he could peel off one of her gloves. Crusty blood made the material stick to her hand, but when he ripped it free, Anthony saw that the black symbol wasn’t black anymore. It glowed with the same faint, silvery light as the gate. Fresh blood dribbled from the center, as if she had been stabbed.

“Hurry,” the Night Hag said, gesturing impatiently. “Do it now.”

With an arm slung around Elise’s waist, he lifted her hand to the gate.

Anthony had to do something. Before he could reach the first step onto the dais, he caught the beautiful witch watching him. Thom gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The intent was clear:
Don’t do that
.

Nukha’il pressed the mark on Elise’s hand to the mark on the stone with his fingers spread behind hers.

The glow went out of the stone.

He stepped back, leaving a bloody handprint where Elise’s fingers had been.

Anthony was suddenly face down on the floor and had no idea how he had gotten there. He felt the pain an instant later—a splitting in his skull so much worse than having a wrench dropped on his head, worse than getting smacked in the nose with a baseball bat in Little League, worse than being tackled by spider-demons. It blinded him with white light.

He couldn’t see. Couldn’t think.

“Anthony!” Betty gasped, dropping at his side. “Oh my God, what—?”

The Night Hag was cackling, but Anthony couldn’t focus on her. He could barely see past Betty’s feet. “It works! Now, my angel, go through the gate. Make sure it’s safe.”

“No,” said a soft voice that had to belong to Nukha’il.

A cry of pain.

“I am getting sick of all this defiance!” she spat. “Go through the gate! I will kill you if you don’t. Make your decision.”

Anthony squinted at the dais. There was so much light pouring from the stone arch that he could only make out the shadowy backs of the overlord and her minions. Why wasn’t Betty screaming? It hurt so much.

Nukha’il dropped Elise. She tumbled down the steps and rolled to a stop beside Anthony.

“As you demand,” said the angel in a low growl.

With an arm lifted in front of his eyes, he passed through the pillars and disappeared.

Everyone was focused on the gate. Anthony saw his moment. He took one of the falchions out of Elise’s spine sheath, gritted his teeth against the pain, and got to his feet. Betty gaped at him as he ran onto the dais.

The overlord heard him coming and turned. He drove the falchion into her stomach.

Black blood spurted from the wound. The Night Hag cackled shrilly. “It stabbed me!” she said to Thom, turning to face him as though Anthony wasn’t even there. “That little boy
stabbed
me!”

He shrugged. “That happens.”

She shoved Anthony off the dais. The overlord was stronger than she looked, but not strong enough to throw him. He stumbled back to Betty as she jerked the falchion out of her stomach. “And to think I just finished improving this body. What a waste of time.”

She wriggled her fingers into the stab wound and began to pull. Her flesh tore away like rubber. There was something underneath, something black and crimson and not quite blood.

Her body shuddered. She heaved. The skin on her face loosened. The mouth-hole stretched until all her teeth were visible in a skull’s grin, and then they fell out one by one in sparkling shards of bone.

A huge, slippery limb pushed from the stab wound. It slid out like a tree branch birthed from her gut and felt around for the floor. When it touched down, the tip of a second limb joined it and ripped the hole wider. Her entire ribcage was bared as a third leg pushed through, and then a fourth. Each was as thick as Anthony’s body.

The Night Hag’s flesh sagged. Her arms and legs emptied into wiggling sacks.

A hulking spider rose from the remains of her human form—larger than the dais, larger than the gate itself, far larger than the semi Elise had hijacked. Anthony fell onto his back. The Night Hag loomed overhead.