Torn by Fury Read online

  Two

  THE SOUND OF battle met Elise on the bridge into Dis. Her guards were in some kind of scuffle at the top of the tower, and the fear was palpable even at that distance.

  More traitors in the Palace?

  “Get ready to fight,” Elise said, but Azis had already pulled out his gun. The other guards had followed suit. She loosened the falchion in her scabbard.

  The men flanked her as she marched down the bridge.

  As she drew nearer, she saw that her guards were fighting people wearing the armor of her legion—demons, by the looks of their ruddy skin and cloven hooves. They were squat, muscular creatures, and they were trying to get through the door.

  Her guards, led today by Edwin, had gotten better at holding demons at bay. The smell of electricity lanced through the air as they discharged the Tasers again and again. It wasn’t enough to stop these demons.

  “Verdict?” Azis asked.

  Elise’s mouth curved into a frown. “Leave at least one of them alive.”

  “Go ahead,” he said to the others.

  The twin incubi, Endi and Albrinck, moved ahead first, streaking down the crystal bridge like lightning. Gunfire cracked through the air. Elise didn’t worry about friendly fire—they were the best shots she had on her side.

  One of the rebelling demons cried out and dropped his sword. The other wasn’t injured. He swung at Edwin’s back.

  Elise phased and reappeared between them.

  Her falchion slammed into the demon’s sword hard enough to chip the cutting edge.

  When he realized whom he had attacked, all of the color drained out of his leathery face. “Father!” He tossed his sword to the ground, dropped to his knees, and pressed his forehead to the ground. “Forgiveness. Please. I didn’t know. I never would have attacked if I’d realized. I’m a worm.”

  The second demon, the one that had been shot, struggled to roll into a similar position. He was bleeding too much from his thigh to move. Hardly a threat.

  Elise rolled her eyes and sheathed the falchion. “Yeah, fine. Whatever.” This didn’t look like much of a rebellion. “Edwin?”

  “These assholes came raging up here saying they wanted to go to Earth.” He was sweating, leaning against the wall. He tried to holster his Taser and missed. It clattered to the floor. “We didn’t let them through. Nobody got out.”

  She clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done.” They would need further training to guard the bridge. That much was obvious. But that would come later, under Gerard’s watch. She didn’t have time for it.

  “We weren’t trying to cause trouble,” the bowed demon said hurriedly without looking up. “We were trying to reach you, Father, and nobody would tell us where you went.”

  “That’s because it’s none of your business, you fucking pussy,” Endi said.

  “Who are you?” Elise asked the demon. “Give me your name.”

  The demon chanced a look up at her. His eyes were yellow with slitted pupils. “I’m Rex, Father. An unworthy peon from the House of Begoth.”

  No wonder he’d folded so quickly. The House of Begoth was populated with butchers, not fighters, but they’d still given half of their population to Elise as tribute. Evidently, that centurion hadn’t done well keeping the barely trained soldiers under his hoof.

  “Why the fuck were you looking for me, Rex?” she asked.

  “It’s Fenix,” Rex said.

  That was the centurion leading the seventeenth centuria. “What about Fenix?”

  It was the demon bleeding from a gunshot wound who said, “He’s been murdered.”

  The seventeenth centuria was preparing for transfer to Northgate. They had been positioned within the Palace’s battlements for the last three days, camping in the courtyard where the market usually stood. There was nowhere else to put them. Elise had filled the apartments with freed humans and her guard occupied the barracks. But the collection of red canvas tents left the courtyard a virtually unnavigable mess, forcing Elise to elbow her way toward the site of Fenix’s murder.

  The smell of blood hit her long before she opened the door to his tent. It hung over the camp like an invisible haze, drawing her to its source. It was fresh. Meaty. Delicious.

  Elise pushed into Fenix’s tent. Her foot slipped on a puddle. She caught her balance and flung out a hand to keep Azis from following her inside. “I want Gerard.”

  Azis nodded and left.

  She turned to study what little remained of Fenix.

  The lights in his tent had been extinguished, but it wasn’t hard to tell that he had been dismembered. One leg was on the ground a few inches from her right boot. That was the source of the blood that she had slipped in. The other leg was still shackled to one arm, as though he had been hog-tied. His head was resting on his cot’s pillow, staring vacantly up at the tent poles.

  Her eyes traveled over the fleshy lumps and bloody smears, looking for weapons. He had been doing all his planning on a plastic folding table. Weapons were arrayed across its surface, unmarked by blood. A cracked coffee mug left a brown stain on one of the pieces of parchment scattered between the sword and the rifle.

  She picked up the mug and sniffed its rim. A bitter, acidic scent flooded her nostrils.

  Her instinct was to throw the mug away from her, but she set it down very carefully and stepped back, wiping her hand off on the seat of her leather pants.

  “Poison,” she muttered.

  To be more precise, anathema powder.

  She peeled off her glove to expose fiery orange runes crawling over her fingers and wrist. They burned pleasantly, no warmer than if she had been holding her hand in front of a fireplace. The light was enough to illuminate Fenix’s body in horrifying detail. Cherry-red blood had been splashed everywhere—not just on the floor, but on the sheets of the cot, the chair, the sides of the tent.

  Most of the footprints smearing the demon’s blood weren’t hers. She stepped next to one to measure the difference. It was significantly larger and wider, a man’s foot. The tread on the boot was the same as hers. He was wearing at least part of her livery. Possibly one of the guard, rather than a soldier.

  The tent flap opened. Gerard only stepped in far enough to let it swing shut behind him. “You summoned me, ma’am?”

  “What do you know about this?” She gestured at the scene with her glowing hand, making the shadows of the body dance against the canvas.

  “All I know is, some of the guys from the seventeenth came crying to my guys about an hour ago, saying Fenix was missing or something. I sent someone down to look. I didn’t realize he was dead or I would have headed down myself.”

  He was bathed in nervousness. Unusual for Gerard. He was usually cool, confident, and more or less immune to Elise’s rage. She narrowed her eyes to study him for any hints of guilt, but found none. Only disappointment. He was mad at himself for missing this.

  “I’ve been through everyone in the Palace.” He glared at the main mass of Fenix’s body. “I’ve interviewed just about every living soul inside the battlements and kicked out anyone that looked shifty. This has got to be personal. It can’t be another traitor.”

  She pushed away the jitter of his emotions. “I take that to mean you don’t have any idea who might have done this.”

  “I’ll find out. I’m pretty sure we’ve removed all the folks who could have been with the Apple, but…maybe I missed someone. I’ve got to have missed someone.”

  This couldn’t have been some witch with the Adam-worshiping cult. None of them were strong enough—or smart enough—to take down Fenix. There was a reason Elise had planned to have him in Northgate, protecting Rylie. He had been one of her only demons that she thought was scarier than a werewolf.

  “See what you can find,” Elise said. Gerard gave a half-bow and started to back out of the tent, but then something caught her eye. “Wait.”

  She kicked one of the limbs away from the edge of the cot. There was something behind it. Something that ha
dn’t belonged to the dismembered demon.

  Elise pulled a black felt cowboy hat out from underneath the cot. It was splattered with blood.

  “Hey, doesn’t that belong to…?” Gerard asked, trailing off before he finished that thought. He shot her a sideways look. The knot in his throat bobbed when he swallowed hard. His brain was firing with trepidation, calculating whether or not saying the name he was thinking would piss Elise off.

  He didn’t have to say anything.

  “We need to find Lincoln Marshall,” Elise said.

  Azis and Gerard slammed into the Great Library first, throwing the doors wide open. The rest of Elise’s personal guard poured in behind them. Their guns were already drawn and aimed.

  Elise waited until they cleared the entrance to follow. If Lincoln had anathema powder, she wasn’t going to fuck around with him—not when inhaling a few particles had the potential to kill her.

  The guards spread out between the empty desks on the ground floor of the library. The tower seemed to be empty, with no sign of the resident librarian, nobles, or anyone else accessing the records. The only sign of life was at a desk in the center of the floor: a tall, white-haired man wearing glasses and surrounded by books.

  James got to his feet and ripped a glove off. The magic on his fist glowed a brilliant shade of blue that made her skull and flesh ache.

  He unspooled one of the runes in his fingers, letting electricity dance through the air. He was about to throw it. Attack her guards as they rushed toward him.

  “Hey,” Elise snapped. “Put that away.”

  He froze at the sound of her voice. His eyes fell on her through the crowd.

  The spell fizzled on his fingertips.

  “What’s going on?” James asked as she approached. He didn’t move, but his gaze tracked the guards spreading through the stacks, stomping up the stairs, shoving chairs aside to check under desks.

  “Where the fuck is Lincoln?” she asked.

  James reflexively looked at the chair on the opposite side of the desk, as if he hadn’t realized that Lincoln wasn’t sitting with him.

  That was answer enough for Elise. She paced away from him, counting to ten, trying to control her anger.

  It didn’t help.

  She whirled on him. It took all her strength to growl rather than yell. “You’re supposed to be watching him.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be watching me,” James said. “And I thought that you were leading a small squad into Heaven. What happened to that? Did you already get in and find a door?”

  “There was a change of plans.”

  One of the guards accidentally knocked over a shelf upstairs. The clatter echoed through the entire library. “Elise, what in the world is going on here? What did Lincoln do to warrant this?” James asked.

  “He’s not up here!” Gerard yelled from the top of one of the spiral staircases, leaning over the railing so Elise could see him. “No sign he’s been around at all!”

  “Keep looking,” Elise called back. “The library’s bigger than you think.”

  The tower echoed with shuffling, banging, slamming. Paper fluttered over one of the mezzanine levels and drifted toward her.

  James marked his page, closed the book, and took off his reading glasses. “Though I’m loath to defend him, I highly doubt Lincoln’s getting up to trouble. I only finished the spell to heal him an hour ago. In the meantime, his condition has been deteriorating. He’s weak and increasingly disoriented.”

  “Disoriented?” Elise asked.

  “The anathema powder seems to be eating away at his mind.” James sighed, trying to pinch the bridge of his nose. His hand was shaking too much with the power of ethereal magic. He gave up. “This morning, he thought he was in Northgate. I had to slip him a sedative spell to keep him from hurting himself attempting to escape. He asked me not to tell you when he became cogent again.”

  “How long has he been getting worse? He keeps telling me he’s fine.”

  James his glove back on. “He’s been lying to you.”

  Stupid, stupid men. “Do you think the disorientation is enough to make him violent?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. Lincoln’s naturally a reasonable man. Even when he’s confused, I wouldn’t expect him to lash out.” It seemed to pain him to speak favorably of the deputy. The men had never been on particularly good terms, and working on a cure together hadn’t helped the strain. “Why do you think he’s been violent? Did he hurt you?”

  “Not me.” Elise opened her mind to him, showing her memories of Fenix’s tent to James directly. She painted a vivid picture: the blood, the pieces of flesh, the mug that smelled of anathema powder. And, finally, the cowboy hat under the cot.

  James pushed the images away. “Ah. I see.” He coughed into a hand to conceal his grimace. “Well, I wouldn’t expect him to have…that is to say, why Fenix? I didn’t think Lincoln would be familiar with most of the centurions.”

  He hadn’t met them, as far as Elise knew. At least, not since he had returned to the Palace of Dis with her.

  The idea struck James an instant before it hit her, too.

  “When he was possessed, maybe,” he said.

  At the same time, she said, “Judy might have known Fenix.” Judy was the stupid name of the nightmare that had controlled Lincoln for months, served Aquiel, and helped rule the Palace. “He’s been sharing her memories well enough that he knew about Portola. So maybe—”

  “He’s regressing,” James said.

  Dammit, Elise should have known. James should have known. He’d been spending all day and night with Lincoln, testing out spells, making cautious movements toward curing him of both the anathema powder’s poisoning and his demon blood. He should have noticed if Lincoln was becoming dangerous.

  She wasn’t sure if those thoughts belonged to her or to her aspis. They rattled between them, amplified by her anger and his frustration. But the cacophony of their emotions swirled around a calm, thoughtful core. One that was trying to decide what old vendetta Lincoln was acting out, and where he would have gotten anathema powder in the first place.

  Gerard joined them by the desk, mopping the sweat off his forehead. “Pretty sure he’s not here, ma’am. We’ll search the rest of the Palace. We’ll search the whole city if we’ve got to. He can’t have gone far. Definitely not back to Earth. Edwin wouldn’t have let him through without telling us.”

  “No,” James said. “I expect he wouldn’t have tried to go to Earth anyway.”

  Elise was on the exact same train of thought. “Yeah. Okay, Gerard, search the Palace, but stay within the walls until you hear from me again. We’ll be back soon.” She caught James’s wrist and dragged him toward the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Gerard asked, following her to the door. “You need a guard? I can spare a few guys.”

  The idea of “a few guys” being more helpful than James was laughable. Between the two of them, they were more than deadly enough to handle one dying deputy, even if he did think he was a nightmare.

  And Elise didn’t plan on letting anyone else into the House of Abraxas.

  “Let me know what you find,” she said, phasing with James outside the battlements.

  Elise materialized close enough to the House of Abraxas that the warding magic shoved James a few steps back when he set down beside her.

  “Powerful,” he remarked, squinting at the gates. They were towering black iron—the only break in the solid black walls protecting the House, which had been built on the slopes of Mount Anathema. The buildings within seemed to shimmer through the warding spells protecting them.

  “The magic is mine,” Elise said. “I cast it when I was still using ethereal runes.” With no small hint of pride, she added, “I designed it myself.”

  He looked over the wards anew, rubbing his upper arms as if to smooth out goosebumps. “Impressive. It’s all very…mean.”

  “Intruders get flayed. I thought it was kind of creative.”


  “I didn’t leave any spells like that for you.”

  Elise tugged off one glove, shooting him a half-smile. “You’re not the only one who can bend the universe to his will, you know.”

  “I see that.” He sounded pleased, although he would never say it outright. He’d told her more than once that he tried not to encourage her violent tendencies. It was blatant hypocrisy. He’d always been fine with her violence when it suited his goals.

  She rearranged the warlock runes on her hand with a thought, baring space on the back of her wrist, and lifted her spread fingers toward the gate.

  James caught her elbow. “Wait. I can pull them down.”

  “Only if you want to be flayed.” She shook him loose and concentrated. “Come on,” she muttered, drawing the ethereal runes toward her.

  Elise hadn’t touched angel magic since James last tried—and failed—to heal her. It hurt more this time. The spells settled onto her bare skin, and she immediately began to blister. Pain stabbed straight to her heart. Her pulse leaped.

  “Now give them to me,” James said. “Quickly.”

  She wasn’t going to argue with him this time. She took his bared hand and pushed the magic onto him.

  For a moment, their runes tangled on the place that their fingers touched—infernal and ethereal. They clashed. A shiver raced down Elise’s spine, and she knew that James felt the same. But then he seized the ward runes, yanked them free, and the electric-blue marks slithered onto his thumb.

  He drew back, shaking out his hand. “Damn.”

  “I made them reusable so that I could reapply whenever I wanted.” Elise wiped her arm over her forehead. She was drenched in sweat. “The only problem is that I have to pull them off rather than dismantling them. It’s not convenient now that I’m allergic.”

  Elise lowered her sleeve. The leather was slick. She rubbed her thumb over it, and she was surprised to see that her sweat came off black on her pale skin.

  James hadn’t noticed. He was studying the new runes on his hand very closely. “It’s a bit clumsy, but more nuanced than I would have expected from someone who’s spent so little time casting magic.”