Seduced By Shadows

by Slade, Jessa

  They matched glares. In his widening eyes she saw him realize, just as she did, they were still holding hands.

  They took identical long steps in opposite directions. She wiped her palms down her thighs, trying to erase the chill of malice goo. And the warmth of Archer’s skin.

  Between the anger and embarrassment, his expression was fiery enough. “That’s not how we fight. You can’t just dance down along the demon’s link through the Veil into hell.”

  She answered, “I didn’t do it alone. You followed me.”

  He opened his mouth, but instead, the shrilling cry of a malice pierced the night.

  The scream shuddered down her spine. “I heard the others circling. Will they attack?”

  He shrugged distractedly. “Saves us the trouble of hunting them down.”

  “And the ferales?”

  “They hunt us.” He refocused abruptly, the glint of violet back in his dark eyes. “I don’t know what happened, but malice stain is always blood in the water to a feralis. Let’s go.”

  He spun on his heel and slipped into the night. Staying half a step ahead, he asked, “What did you think you were doing tonight?”

  “How should I know? I’m not the ancient warrior.”

  “I meant, why did you leave?”

  She raised her face to let rain trickle down the corners of her eyes, as if mere water could wash away the remnants of the malice. “I wanted to visit my father. You said I didn’t need to cut all ties yet.”

  “So you listen when it’s convenient. I listened too, to the screaming.” He glanced back, his gaze piercing.

  She looked away. “He just had a bad night.”

  “Bad because preacher man knows his beloved only daughter sold her soul to a devil.” His reven-marked hand was a fist. “Some people see through the mask of our flesh and glimpse the shadow underneath. The rare holy person, the mentally ill, some children, or an artist—the kind of people who are inclined to see things differently anyway. No one listens to them, so if they speak out, they aren’t heard.”

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t want to frighten him.”

  “Then don’t return. As the dementia advances, you’ll do more harm than good.” His voice dropped to a rumble. “Not uncommon for the demon-ridden.”

  Abruptly, he halted, his hand upheld to stop her in her tracks. Violet raced along the reven.

  “There.” His voice barely carried over the hiss of tires on wet pavement. “Under the trees.”

  Even in November, the oaks held their kraft-paper leaves. The ground underneath was an irregular checkerboard of shadow and light from surrounding streetlamps.

  Sera followed Archer’s pointing finger. “God, it’s bigger than the last one.”

  “No God here,” he said grimly. “Just us.”

  “Oh right, we’ll take care of this. So I guess it’s okay he’s been slacking for the last two thousand years. Anybody else we can call for backup?”

  Wind rattled the wet leaves with a sound like hands rubbing in anticipation. Archer flicked her a razor-wire smile. “You wanted to hunt.”

  She seriously doubted a feralis popped like a balloon, unless maybe like the Hindenburg. She swallowed. “It’s moving deeper into the trees. Does it know we’re coming?”

  “Probably. You need to learn to keep your emotions in check.”

  Just like him. He’d said possession compelled the deadening of feeling, but she wondered. “I thought we were going to lure it someplace.”

  “Remember how you said your patients didn’t get to choose the time of their dying?”

  Oh sure, the one time he decided to listen to her . . .

  Archer kept the line of parked cars between them and the feralis as he stalked. Sera stayed low, trying to stifle her burgeoning dread. Though each step took her closer to the feralis, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Archer just ahead.

  He glided through the dark, his coat flaring at his heels. The axe was out, long and wicked looking to her worried eyes. After hearing how the teshuva had come to him, she understood why he didn’t trust guns. But to get so close . . .

  When he glanced back, lights flared violet in his eyes—the demon coming out to play.

  No, not play. His expression was tight and grim. If he’d taken savage joy in destroying evil, he’d lost it along the way.

  He cut between the bumpers of two cars and melted into the tiny woods. She couldn’t leave him.

  The dark trees closed around them.

  The feralis had gone deeper. She listened for the sound of its retreat, but heard nothing over the rustle of leaves above.

  “Archer,” she hissed. The smell of wet, decayed earth clung in her nostrils, along with a fouler stench, like rotted meat. “Ferris, wait.”

  He’d pulled ahead, one more shadow among shadows. She shook her head, trying to master the fear tight on her heels.

  Something was on her heels anyway.

  The back of her neck prickled, and she whirled.

  The feralis dropped from a tree limb overhead. The thud of its clawed feet shook the earth. It straightened until the bulging dome of its head brushed the leaves. It raised stunted wings, and its howl scattered leaves in all directions.

  She spun around to run, to catch up with Archer and his suddenly too-small axe.

  The second feralis appeared before she could scream.

  CHAPTER 12

  If he truly wanted to be alone, Archer knew he would’ve been grateful for the scream.

  He whirled.The feralis filled the path, its chitin-armored back to him. It lunged at something out of his sight.

  “Sera!” He sprang, blade low.

  Not knowing where she was, he couldn’t afford to flail indiscriminately. He climbed the feralis’s back, like ice picking a mountain. The mutated insect flesh was as hard and uneven as any scree slope.

  He wrapped one arm around its neck to get the axe in place for a throat cut. It scrabbled a multijointed limb at him, and he cursed as the barbed guard hairs clamped over his shoulder in the same spot the last feralis had wounded him. So much for preternaturally fast healing.

  As he struggled to free himself, he saw Sera faced a second monster. She was trapped between the two. His heart stopped; the demon strength faltered in his muscles.

  Ferales never hunted together—or they hadn’t before hunting her.

  She evaded the winged feralis’s long arms with the same graceful twist she’d used last night at the club.

  “Don’t dance with it,” he shouted. “Run.”

  She glanced up wildly and spotted him.

  The feralis she faced turned as well and lifted moth-eaten wings. He knew he could keep both demons occupied while Sera escaped.

  Whether he’d escape too . . .

  His feralis mount bucked, but not before he caught a glimpse of her face. He groaned at the sight of her jaw set obstinately off-kilter. She wasn’t going to run.

  She kicked leaves at the winged feralis. “Hey, you ugly son of a bitch, no tag teaming.”

  The feralis crouched and spun halfway around.

  “Sera, catch!”

  Archer released the hidden knife from the haft of the axe and flung it toward her, counting on her demon reflexes. Time slowed as she tracked the weapon’s arcing flight with an outstretched hand. Her body was already in motion, turning to confront the feralis, as the leather-wrapped handle slapped into her palm.

  Time jumped to catch up, and she struck. The creature leapt back with a shriek, the retaliatory slash of its claws a many-tongued hiss in the night.

  Despite his precarious position, Archer couldn’t take his eyes off Sera. His heart raced, but not for himself. He wanted to toss her the axe, improve her odds, but he feared the slick of sweat on his palm would betray him. Just his luck, to end up beheading her.

  “Go for the throat,” he shouted. “Or the eye. Or the spine.” He should’ve skipped ahead to lesson thirteen: Vulnerabilities of Corporeal Demon Physiology. But he’d been giving
her shit about pitying the malice.

  His feralis flailed more determinedly. He had to finish it before it finished him and moved on to Sera.

  Suddenly, dying in the glory of battle to send his hollowed soul to its questionable reward seemed like it could wait.

  The feralis lumbered in a circle as if it had an itch it couldn’t quite scratch. As it swiped at him again, he grabbed the jointed limb, avoiding the spiky protrusions. Summoning all his desperate teshuva strength, he yanked the feralis off balance.

  It bellowed and twisted to reach up at him. The clawed point sliced into the back of his thigh, a piercing agony, but it lowered the shoulder pinching his weapon arm.

  He laid the edge tight against the underside of its neck.

  And loosed his own demon.

  The axe bit deep. The feralis shrieked. The shriek died in a gurgle as the feralis came down like a mountain slide under him and pinned his injured leg. His head slammed into the hard-packed earth.

  He choked on wet leaves and heaved himself up, hurling off the deadweight. His vision starred with nonexistent lights, he leapt at the feralis stalking Sera.

  It turned to face him, its slavering maw opened in a cry of rage.

  “No,” he growled back. “She’s mine.”

  They collided with battering-ram force, his arm driven halfway down its gullet. Its teeth razored up his arm, and he stared into the bulging eye.

  He cut its throat from the inside.

  It fell, taking him down in a geyser of moldering leaves. Dying spasms locked its teeth on his arm just above the elbow, and he lay in the dirt, staring into the orange eye.

  As the demon fury ebbed, as the pain crept into the emptiness, he knew he had won another battle, that his teshuva had taken another step on its path to redemption. In the feralis’s livid eye, he stared down that hellfire path. And saw it never ended.

  Half adrift from the blow, his gaze wandered beyond the feralis and fixed on a darkness among the trees: a man, cloaked in shadows not cast by the trees, and betrayed by sulfur yellow points radiating where eyeballs should have been.

  A djinn-man. Come to finish them off in their moment of weakness.

  Human adrenaline and demon vigor surged and stuttered in Archer’s veins. Of all the times for the djinn to finally take an interest in the chores of a teshuva garbageman.

  Then, just as suddenly as the figure had coalesced among the shadows, it melted back and was gone. Wet leaves glinted with the reflected yellowish lights of streetlamps.

  “Archer?”

  Sera’s whisper brought him back with a snap. Had he seen anything at all? No djinni would pass up such an effortless opportunity to destroy one of its traitorous, repentant brethren, would it? The jolt to his skull must have stunned him, seeing evil in every puddle of darkness.

  “Ferris?” She crept closer.

  “Yeah. I’m alive.” Hence the pain. “Just contemplating my glorious triumph.”

  She crouched beside him. “How’s it feel?”

  “Cold and wet. And tastes like blood.”

  She ran her hands down his arm, exploring the trap. “Don’t pull. These fangs slant backward like a shark’s.”

  “I noticed.” He hesitated. “Did you notice anything? Any other demons?”

  She glanced around in alarm. “More ferales? I was sort of occupied with these two.”

  “No. Never mind.” He gritted his teeth at the acid burn of ichor while she levered open the massive jaws. He released himself in a gush of his own blood.

  “Oh God.” Her hands hovered over his arm where the feralis’s bite had peeled skin and muscle down to the bone.

  “Don’t.” He clamped his arm close to his chest, molding flesh into place. “The demon will take care of it.”

  “It certainly did,” she said tartly.

  “My demon,” he amended as he pushed himself to his knees. She started to help him to his feet, but he shook her off.

  He cast teshuva senses outward. An annihilation-class demon came factory standard with tracking skills, but no djinn scent rode the etheric winds now.

  But someone had been interested enough to toss Sera’s apartment. Would that djinn-man have followed her? Then why hadn’t he made his move and killed them both?

  After another long moment, Archer leaned down to wipe the gory axe on wet leaves. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sera do the same with the smaller knife.

  “You poked it a couple times,” he said.

  “Just enough to burn myself on its blood.”

  “It didn’t gut me from behind, which it would have done if you hadn’t been here.”

  She lowered her head. “If not for me, it wouldn’t have been lurking. I just wanted to visit my dad.”

  “A nice quiet night? A nice quiet life?” Archer folded the axe blades and collapsed the club. He held out his good hand.

  She passed the knife to him, hilt first. “Wishful thinking? Worked on the malice.”

  “Ferales are a little harder to do away with. As for wishing your life back the way it was . . .” He spread his hand toward the downed ferales and let her draw her own conclusions.

  He saw the slump of her shoulders, started to wish something himself, and stopped it cold.

  “You played your part,” he said at last. “Let that be consolation enough.”

  At the defeat in her expression, he almost reached out to her. He knew that feeling. But what solace could he offer? “Garbagemen don’t ask where all the trash comes from. They just haul it away.”

  She eyed the splayed beast. “Looks pretty heavy.”

  “It’s not empty yet. I disabled the corporeal shell, but it holds the demonic energy. Look at the eye, still orange.” He stood over the carcass, gathering his own energy and the teshuva’s. He swayed on his pierced leg. Apparently, what energy he had to gather wouldn’t fill a shot glass.

  Despite his earlier brush-off, she stood beside him and threaded her arm around his waist. A whiff of honeysuckle teased past the sour stench clogging his head. A surge of desire sent the last of his blood careening around his body.

  “You don’t have to do it alone,” she murmured.

  “Yes, I do.” He stiffened at her touch, summoning teshuva strength against the temptation to rest on her offered shoulder. Since the malice had disappeared between them, his control had gone sketchy, as if some other carefully maintained barrier had fallen. “Your deathbed vigils might be all kum ba yah. Out here you fight alone.”

  “That’s been your choice. But I’m right here, right now.”

  When had someone last fought at his side? Keeping company with destruction left no room for another. But he needed her, at least for tonight.

  Wounded arm clenched against his belly, he forced himself to step away from her. “Draining a feralis is easier than a malice, once the corpus is out of action. Locked in the husk, it can’t get at you.”

  She wrung her hands, as if remembering the malice slime. “So, remind me what I did with the malice?”

  He wasn’t sure, hence his hope she’d do it again. When he’d grabbed her to get the job done, he’d fallen into her inward spiral. Just as when she’d been drawn through the Veil in the last stage of her possession. If he’d managed to stop himself from tearing her clothes off this time, he had only the malice in the way to thank. They’d touched, the malice suspended between them, and then it was gone. Not just drained, but gone.

  When he didn’t answer, she crouched beside the carcass. She wiped her palms nervously, then lifted the massive head. She tilted it to one side, staring into the hellfire eye. Ichor drooled from the slack jaws and curdled the grass with a charred stink.

  “When the malice got me,” she said, “I was thinking the man at the bar never had a chance. The malice goaded him; he attacked. Where was hope when he needed it? Compassion? Where was peace?”

  “Just as there are angels to balance the djinn, some say the horde-tenebrae are countered by smaller lights, called blessings.” Pain rev
erberated from shoulder to thigh when he shrugged. “I’ve never seen one. Just more figments of wishful thinking, I think.”

  “Why would you think that? Why would you want to think that?” As she half cradled the throat-slashed feralis like some perverse pietà, her eyes gleamed, not with holy benediction, but with violet challenge.

  He glared back, blood seeping from his tight-clenched fist. How could she ask why with the monstrosity still staining her hands? All her questions served only to stir up memories and trouble. He resented the memories more than the trouble.

  Light-headed with exsanguination and fury, he stalked forward, lashing up his demon. He leaned down and grabbed her, to pull her away, and do the last dirty deed himself.

  His blood spattered her cheek, the tear-shaped drop crimson on her pale skin. He froze, aghast at the violence in his touch, which leapt from him like embers from an inferno. He couldn’t even blame the brutality on his demon, interrupted mid-ascension within him.

  She faced him as boldly as she had the evils of the dark, as fierce as when she’d rolled him across the bed in his garden while knowing the night might end with his assassin’s blade, as if death and damnation held no terror for her. With all she’d been through, maybe they didn’t.

  So what chance was there that one battered, filthy, pissy male would faze her? With the edge of his thumb, he wiped the blood from her cheek.

  The droplet fused his skin to hers for a heartbeat, slick like the sweat of passion, a hint of salt—his demon senses rousing unbidden—like the balm that had welled from her body on their joining. His breathing grew ragged.

  He saw her lips part, and her wordless exhalation feathered across his palm. He wanted to follow her down to that place she conjured, where the empathy in her hazel eyes softened barren winter shadows to spring.

  He yearned to gather her close, to fit those deliberately forgotten fragments back into the tattered remnants of his soul, to let her shine into his darkness and find those pieces he’d thought long lost—light, life, desire.

  He leaned down, set his lips softly on hers, prelude to all he wanted, the first step that would change the world around him. The salty sting in the back of his throat tasted not of blood, but tears.