Read The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1) for Free Online

buses and cars as they lurched from a bar to a pawn shop to get money for one more pull on the slot machine. A woman with overdone curls and skin hanging limply from her bones almost got struck by the bus as it turned onto Center Street. She didn’t notice. She wobbled on, disappearing into the maw of a casino and out of sight.
    The bus stopped at the downtown transit center, tucked between a bowling stadium and yet another hotel-casino. Elise was the first to hop off.
    The casino lights flashed in time with music piped over sidewalk speakers. A man by the front door played the saxophone. He hesitated when Elise passed. She gave him a quick once-over, taking in the translucency of his skin, his long, brittle fingers and strangely-proportioned face. Nightmare. Probably second class. Hardly a threat.
    She nodded at him as she passed. He didn’t look worried, so maybe he thought she was a demon, too. As far as the underworld here knew, there were no local kopides. What was there to worry about?
    Elise plowed through the casino, ignoring the glittering machines and their inebriated patrons. She passed the poker tables, the blackjack, the rows of machines in front of huge plasma TVs, and the diner in the back. She exited through an unmarked door to an alley.
    Wedged between the casino and its attached hotel, the dark passage appeared to have no purpose except for gathering trash. A chain link fence blocked one end of the alley, and the other side was a rotten brick wall that most people wouldn’t realize belonged to the prettier side of Craven’s. Elise never went through the front door—too many people watched it.
    Elise ducked around a Dumpster, kicking a case of empty beer cans out of the way. A set of cement stairs led down into shadow.
    Only a single word on a small, rusted sign hinted at the door’s purpose— Blood , it said, the metal so pocked and rusted it was almost unreadable.
    She pushed it open and went inside.
    Elise was never sure how long it took to get from the surface to the club—time took on a strange quality in the descent, warping and fading. Maybe she only walked for a few seconds; maybe she walked for hours. The black walls narrowed as she moved down the passage, guided by the pulsing thump of bass.
    In time, Elise came upon the end of the hall. A neon sign blazed a single electric word above the door: BLOOD.
    She crossed the threshold and left the human world behind her.
    Music thrummed around her, shaking inside her chest and against her eardrums. The back door was on the top level of Eloquent Blood. Humans sat amongst half-demons known as the Gray, doing business and swapping spit as though they weren’t different species. Many of the humans probably didn’t even know who they were associating with—a few idiots stumbled upon the bar thinking it was an underground Goth club, and nobody was in a hurry to tell them differently. Idiots were great incubus food.
    Yellow sulfur formed a fine layer on the floor. The thick stench of sweat and whiskey almost overpowered the brimstone. They tried to keep it clean in the club, but Elise was all too familiar with the stink of demons. She could have recognized it if they drenched the entire building in formaldehyde.
    She glanced at the dance floor two stories down. A DJ spun a dance beat and the bodies below pulsed in time to the rhythm. Hips rolled, arms twisted, and now and then Elise would see a flash of pale skin as another dancer stripped off her shirt. It was hot enough in Blood without dancing. Throw in a fast beat and a racing pulse, and it was nearly intolerable.
    She moved through the tight press of bodies on the spiral staircase as she would have waded through an ocean tide. Speakers on either side of the bar pumped out music so loud it drowned out even the conversations hollered inches from her ears. Elise peered up at the bartender through fog from the smoke machines to determine if it was someone she knew.
    The blond girl on the bar swayed