Authors: SM Reine
The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1)
S
ERIES BY
SM
R
EINE
T
ABLE OF
C
ONTENTS
Book One:
Death’s Hand
Book Two:
The Darkest Gate
Book Three:
Dark Union
G
LOSSARY
kopis
: A person with improved strength and healing that polices relations between Heaven, Hell, and Earth—often violently. The word is Greek for “sword.”
aspis
: A witch that has sworn a magical oath to protect a kopis. The word is Greek for “shield.”
P
ART
O
NE
Before
RUSSIA – FEBRUARY 1998
J
ames spotted a
splatter of blood through the tree boughs. It marked the snow like an ink stain on paper.
He pushed through the pine needles, and her bare feet appeared, blue-toed and limp. He saw the curve of a calf and a knobby, bruised knee. He saw the jut of ribs under her skin and an arm thrown over her face. And the next thing he saw was the twelve other bodies.
Nausea gripped James, but he covered his mouth and maintained composure. His guide was not so lucky. The other man dove behind a bush, gagged twice, and vomited across the frozen earth.
Elise was already dead. He was so certain of it that he almost walked away at that moment. But what would Isaac think of James abandoning his daughter’s body? The indignity of leaving her naked on the ice for the birds to devour was too much, and he came so far to find her remains.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to step foot in the clearing. Elise looked peaceful, but the others were twisted in agony. Blood marked their fingernails. They had gone out fighting.
Each of the twelve other bodies could have been siblings. They had pale skin, slender forms draped in white linen, and white-blue eyes—he could tell, because they were frozen open. The snow around them looked fluffy, as though it were freshly fallen. Something about that struck him as wrong. It was cold, but it hadn’t snowed in days, leaving the earth a solid sheet of ice.
Taking a closer look, James found it wasn’t snow—the clearing was covered in feathers.
His guide had recovered and began babbling in Russian, but he spoke too fast for James to understand. He heard one recognizable word—
chort
, devil.
James hung back in the trees, fighting the urge to leave. He adjusted his balaclava, tuned out the guide’s shouts, and stepped into the clearing.
The hair lifted on his arms. His skull began to buzz.
He tried not to look at the other corpses, but it was like they reached for him, pleading for escape. Their teeth were bared. Their tongues were purple and twisted.
That one had been stabbed in the chest.
The body by his feet was disemboweled.
Those two bodies had died clutching hands.
He couldn’t look at them anymore. He focused on his feet and forced himself to take a step once, twice. Again and again. When he reached Elise, the buzzing grew so loud that he could no longer hear Maksim’s protests.
James hovered a glove over her body. All the energy vanished. The clearing went silent.
He pushed the arm off her face to examine her. Dirty, frayed bandages were wrapped around her hands, so tattered that they looked like they might blow away.
Elise had her father’s auburn hair and his strong nose, but her soft chin belonged entirely to Ariane. Her eyelashes were sealed by ice. How had she died? There wasn’t a mark he could see.
He moved to unwrap one of her hands.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Maksim!” he shouted. Her broad lips parted to exhale silver fog. “Maksim! She’s alive!” He forgot to speak in Russian, but his message didn’t need translation.
His guide shouted and ran to the van. James shed his parka. The cold seeped through his undercoat as he wrapped her in his furs.
Alive
. It was impossible. Nobody could have survived an hour naked in the killing frosts of Siberian spring.
James watched the other bodies, waiting for them to jerk to life and creep forward, but they remained lifeless. Elise was the only survivor, even though it was impossible for one small girl to have survived an attack that killed a dozen others.
Unless she had been the one to do the killing.
He carried her out of the clearing without touching the other bodies. There was nothing he could do for them. He wasn’t sure he would have anyway.
The guide opened the van, letting steam escape the back end. As soon as James climbed inside, laying Elise between their extra gas tanks and a rattling space heater, he closed the doors again.
“Hurry!” James said, reverting to his limited Russian.
“She’s a demon,” repeated Maksim as he climbed to the driver’s seat, and then he continued to speak so quickly that James couldn’t understand if he tried. He picked up a word here and there—devils and hell, curses and fear—but he was too busy to translate.
He cracked heating packs open and pressed them to Elise’s underarms, her groin, and the back of her neck.
James pulled a glove off with his teeth and touched his bare fingers to her throat. Her pulse was slow but steady. Color began to flush her cheeks.
A demon,
Maksim said. Maybe. But she was also Isaac and Ariane’s daughter, and James promised to bring her back safely. He kept all of his oaths, no matter how unpleasant.
His driver shouted and gestured. James interrupted him to say, “Town. Take us to town!”
The van bounced and groaned over the path. He had to brace his back against the fuel canisters to keep them from falling on Elise as he searched her body. He found no injuries. Aside from a few bruises, she was unharmed.
Surely a girl that young couldn’t have killed so many people without injury. There must have been someone else in the wilds—someone he hadn’t seen. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
He peeled the bandages off and flipped her hands to look at the palms.
No
.
James turned her hands over again, heart racing.
It was the first time James wished Elise had died on the tundra, but it was also far from the last.
E
lise woke up
five days after James found her in the forests near Oymyakon.
He knocked lightly and entered the room. There were no hotels in the small Russian village, so he had been staying in a house full of laborers under the guise of an ordinary traveler. Since bringing home the girl’s body, their friendliness turned to uneasy whispers, and James seldom left Elise sleeping alone in what had once been a tiny closet.
James sympathized with their wariness. Even he had to steady himself when he found her crouched in the corner of her bed, staring at him with eyes rimmed by dark circles, and he was the one who had brought her there.
“The women told me you were awake,” he said. “They say you’re refusing to eat. Please lay down. You must conserve your strength.”
She remained so still that she might have been a painting.
There were three bowls on the rickety table by her bed. It didn’t look like she had touched any of them.
“The stew is safe to eat, I assure you. Babushka is an excellent chef. I’ve eaten a dozen of her meals since I arrived, and she has yet to poison me.”
Her gaze flicked to the table and back to him.
James moved to sit on the stool next to her, but he caught a glimpse of something shining amongst the sheets. She had somehow stolen a knife from the kitchen. He froze at the sight of the blade.
Tension hung suspended between them. She didn’t move to stab him, and he didn’t show his fear.
“My name is James Faulkner,” he went on after a long moment, speaking in the voice one might use to soothe an angry hawk. “The woman you were staying with, Pamela Faulkner, is my aunt. I found you three days ago. We’re in Oymyakon now.”
“Where’s Pamela?” Her voice was throaty and hoarse.
He shut his eyes. He could see Pamela’s body as he found it in her house: slumped against the wall as though she had decided to rest for a few minutes. Her body was mostly unmarked, but blood stained her ear canals. Her beautiful black hair, streaked with gray only at the temples, was in its perpetual bun with only a single hair astray.
James had been very close to his aunt as a child. She was the high priestess of their coven, and she revolutionized ritualistic magic when she invented paper spells. Pamela had arguably been one of the most powerful witches in the world.
Very little could have caught her off-guard. Even fewer things could have killed her.
“She’s dead,” he said.
This didn’t seem to cause any emotional reaction in Elise. She got to her feet, letting the sheets tumble to the ground, and the sight of her skeletal frame made James’s stomach flip. Even swathed in a simple dress borrowed from one of the village women, he could see every curve of every bone in her body.
She took a step toward the door, knife clutched to her side, and staggered. Her hand slipped on the dresser when she tried to catch herself.
James stood to help her back to bed, but the look she gave him burned with sheer loathing, so he hung back without touching her. That glare made her look just like Isaac.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She carefully made her way toward the door, gripping the frame to lift herself to a standing position once more.
“Please, Elise, sit down and eat. I assure you, we’ll leave as soon as you can walk. If He doesn’t know where you are yet, then we’re a step ahead of Him, and we don’t want to lose this brief advantage.”
Her nose wrinkled, like the idea of going anywhere with him revolted her. He was almost offended.
She fumbled for the doorknob.
“You’re very weak and it’s hundreds of miles to the nearest city. You won’t survive alone.”
Elise’s only response was a silent glare. James was struck by the feeling that she was more of a feral animal than a teenage girl. He probably wanted to be trapped with her as little as she did, but neither of them had a choice in the matter.
She opened the door. James stepped in her path. She tried to shove him out of her way, but even though she was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like she should have been dead, he was stronger.
“Your parents asked my aunt to watch you until they came back. Since she died, the responsibility of your care falls upon me. I’ve sworn to keep you safe. I intend to keep that promise.”
She transferred her grip from the doorway to a fistful of his shirt. He felt metal press against his stomach through his parka.
The knife. He tensed.
He breathed shallowly and forced himself to speak calmly. “I’m not safe now that I’ve found you, either. We need to stay together. It’s the only way either of us will survive.”
Elise radiated silent fury. He was struck by her resemblance to Ariane, although he didn’t recall the sweet witch who had birthed her ever being so angry.