Page 19 of Our Vicious Descent
The moment the blistering pain faded and Elise dropped her hand to the side, her finger still wet from the venom, she craved its burn again.
A soft knock on the automobile door had her shoving the vial into her pocket and smoothing her hands over her hair once, thentwice before exiting.
Sterling gave her a stern look. “Elise, you cannot—”
“Where’s Arendale?” she inquired roughly, shoving past him. Elise walked right into Harlem reaper territory. A normal person might have had fear—all Elise had was a rifle with nine Saint bullets and enough rage to start a fire in her chest. She half expected steam to rise from the sidewalk as she walked past the line of Saints and police officers readying their equipment in front of the Clarice.
The Hotel Clarice rose against the setting sun like a looming promise of death. It stared down at her with black windows, where shadows moved with the dying rays of the evening sun. The breeze, while cold from the snowflakes it carried, reminded her of the cigar smoke that had burned her eyes just hours earlier in her father’s study. Despite the copious amounts of rancid burnt tobacco filling the air, Elise still could not escape the scent of blood hanging around that room, where a glass case holding her mother’s remains stood in the corner. Her father had mercifully covered it with a sheet, but the presence alone and knowledge of what was inside the case had been enough to make Elise’s stomach turn.
Arendale joined her on the walkway, with Tobias and Sterling watching nearby. “Police already swept the premises. The beast is gone. You will find nothing but bodies in there,” the mayor said.
Elise glanced back at her father, who only stared straight into the Clarice with pure resentment. She met Arendale’s gaze. There was no way to mention her sister without potentially endangering her. Elise knew she had to search the Clarice on her own. “I just need tosee for myself.”
Even now Elise would not allow dark thoughts about her younger sister to grace her mind. Thinking about Josephine with a craving for blood and fangs for a smile made the possibility too real.
If her father suspected any use of the venom, he said nothing about it. As usual, he had no insight into her true nature. It was the mayor who leaned in to whisper to Elise, “You might be the most valuable human in Harlem, with your connection to the reapers and a vengeful desire to do them harm.”
An acidic taste filled her mouth. Despite having walked the path of conflict between wondering whether reapers could be innocent or only the monstrous beings they had been made out to be, Elise had no more fight left in her for their cause. Not while her mother’s remains sat locked in a box in her father’s study and her younger sister’s whereabouts were unknown. All because of her own proximity to reaperhood.
“At the end of the day, I am just a girl who was put in a difficult situation. I know enough to survive.”
Mayor Arendale tilted his head to the side. “But…?”
“Surviving is no longer enough. I want blood for blood,” Elise breathed.
The mayor nodded. A small smile twisted his lips, and satisfaction bloomed in his dark eyes. “Viciousness should be met with viciousness. For your family.”
Pain gripped Elise’s throat as she fought back tears. She had barely given herself a moment to grieve alone, yet this man found itfit to prod the wound that still lay open in her heart. “I would never expect a mayor to rally for vengeance. Rather prosperity and peace, not ruin.”
“I want to propose a level playing field, where we all live separately but equal. But there is something hunting Harlem. So now, as you said, blood for blood.”
All Elise could think about was the darkness encroaching on her now. Once a lethal enemy, now it served as a welcome guest as she stepped into the Hotel Clarice. Emptiness met her at the door, just as the police officers had promised. A few explosives, prepped and ready to detonate at the police chief’s notice, covered the floor.
Snow dusted in across the floor with her boots. The rifle weighed down her arms more than she had been anticipating; weeks spent aiming on Jamie’s windowsill and roof had not prepared her for this gun’s heft. Elise passed through the vestibule and into the foyer. Her foot met blood almost instantly.
She froze, her shoulders tensing at the sudden prick of fear instigated by the hotel’s stillness. Everywhere she looked, Elise found blood. On the walls, on the dusty furniture, covering the portraits and the melted candles. The coppery scent overwhelmed her senses, and Elise gripped the rifle hard enough to crack her nails to keep herself steady against the rise of bile in her throat.
Bodies littered the floor and the stairwell. It was impossible to tell which body part belonged to whom. Organs spilled from torn torsos whose legs were nowhere to be found. Police and Saint badges soaked in blood lay scattered across the lobby, their gleaming metalsthe only brightness in the room of shadows.
Her path of rage had been cut short. It appeared there was no one left to point a gun at.
Elise started to turn around, wondering where the beast had gone overnight, when a gurgle stopped her. She whirled on the sound and aimed the rifle at the mound of what she had thought was no more than rotting flesh.
A shaky hand reached up as a voice rang out, weak and painfully human. “Leave.”
“What?” Elise called out. She approached slowly. A man lay at the bottom of the stairs with one hand pressed to his abdomen, where his organs spilled out of a large perforation. “You’re still alive,” she breathed.
He shook his head. The silver of his Saint badge glinted with each pained movement. “Hardly.”
“I can call for help—”
“No. You need to leave. Before it gets too dark. It will come back, and it will kill you too,” he wheezed.
Elise lowered her gun and leaned closer, struggling to catch his every word. “The reaper?”
Blood trickled from the man’s mouth. A hiss of pain left him, but he coughed and continued anyway. “Not just a reaper. Death itself. A devil worse than anything Harlem has ever seen before. You must leave—”
The building groaned around them. Dust fell from the ceiling and billowed in great black clouds along the floor. Elise tried to reachfor the man once more, but he shook his head as the roof seemed to tear open above. “RUN.”
