Free Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) by S.M. Reine Page A

considered it customary to kill demons that annoyed her. They were breaking all kinds of “customs” that day.
    She seized him by the hood, jerking his head down to her level. With the other hand, she drew the pistol from the small of her back and pressed it into his stomach. He twitched at the touch of cold metal. “Go in and tell them that I’m here to speak to Vassago,” Elise said. She didn’t bother putting any threat into her tone. The pistol did all the threatening for her.
    When she released him, he dry-washed his hands and tipped his head down as if muttering a prayer.
    An unseen clock tower chimed Tuesday. Time was passing quickly. It had already been a month on Earth since the fissure opened, and every moment that they waited, more people would be dying.
    Elise slipped her finger over the trigger. A disabled naga could communicate as easily as a whole one. She tried to decide where she would shoot him—the tail, or the chest?
    She didn’t get time to decide. Devadas opened the gates, and she took her finger off the trigger again.
    The gates fell shut behind him as he slithered inside, tail flicking behind him. The hands planted in the garden stretched toward him as he passed, straining at their roots to touch his scales, though he kept out of reach.
    The door opened silently, and Devadas entered.
     
    Elise waited. The clock chimed Wednesday, which meant that another day had passed on Earth and that more ruin would have crept over the world she had left behind. “What’s taking so damn long?” she muttered, peering through the gates.
    She didn’t know what kind of formalities they might be observing in there. Blood of Yatam or not, the culture of demons was foreign to her, and especially the culture of the wealthy creatures that controlled the city. There was always a chance that Vassago had killed Devadas for the intrusion—not the most heartbreaking thought, although she had just been growing attached to the idea of letting him run the House of Abraxas for her.
    While she waited, she watched the fissure and the passing of day into night and back again. It had been harder for her to tell that time was passing when she first arrived, but now it was easier to tell what the shifting light meant. The touch of sunlight made the sky slightly more orange, whereas the usual crimson of Hell seemed more violet when it was night.
    No kibbeths crossed the distance between Dis and Earth now. The large, flying demons had been used heavily on the first day to transport the remnants of Abraxas’s army to the surface like living ferries, but they had finished crossing over. The emptiness that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was anticipant.
    If Elise closed her eyes, she could imagine what was happening to everyone that remained on Earth. The fissures had gashed open North America like a giant X, severing it into bleeding quarters. It had been the worst in Las Vegas, initially. It had been the first to fall to Abraxas’s army. She knew that some people had been evacuated, but she also knew that many more had been devoured; all that remained now was wasteland.
    Abraxas had been only one piece in a vast machine, and killing him hadn’t stopped the army. She had seen the progression on the news when she visited Earth long enough to pick up Neuma and Jerica: the march of demons on Washington DC, the mandatory evacuations, the chaos as people tried to flee to countryside that was no safer than the urban centers. It was the Union’s wet dream. They hadn’t declared martial law by the time she visited last, but now, over a month after the first strike, she was sure that they would have. The country was finally theirs.
    The images that filled her mind didn’t belong to her. Elise could clearly imagine chain-link fences, black-suited Union soldiers clutching assault weapons, buses filled with civilians. Everything bristled with barbed wire. The sky was a smoky slate-gray, and the sun was a red disc in the sky no bigger than