by Slade, Jessa
The scornful voice in her head told her she’d done entirely enough. She sunk to her haunches in the hallway. At the other end, she saw Archer on yet another phone call. If she hadn’t been off the reservation pursuing her own hopeless fantasies . . .
“Whenever the djinn-man tried to snatch you again, he might’ve gotten someone else.”
She glanced up at Niall. “You reading my mind?”
He shook his head. “Just looking at your face.”
“Nice to be transparent.”
He followed the earlier path of her gaze down the hall toward Archer. “It’s only obvious if someone knows what they’re looking at.”
She watched him with a slight frown.
He shook his head. “Archer said he’s going to tie you to a bedpost to stop you from making a terrible mistake.”
As if Archer, beds, and she hadn’t already been a terrible mistake. She dragged her mind back to the conversation at hand. “Did he explain why I think it would work?”
“He didn’t have to. I told him I’d set you free to try it.”
She pushed to her feet. “Then let’s—”
Niall put a hand on her shoulder. “If I thought it would work.”
“It will.”
“Sera, this djinn bastard is already two steps ahead of us. If he got you, he’d be light-years ahead.”
She frowned. “But light-years closer to what?”
“We still don’t know. Bookie sent me a message saying that your research has him thinking. He wanted to meet with you, but then this—”
A flurry of activity down the hall attracted their attention.
Archer was shouting into the phone. “We’re on our way,” he said, urging the talyan around him toward the door.
Niall and Sera ran to join the exodus.
Despite her night-long avoidance, she found herself in the SUV Archer commanded, crammed in the backseat between Jonah and another talya.
Archer met her gaze in the rearview mirror as he careened through the early-morning streets. “You’re coming because I didn’t have time to lock you in your room. Don’t get caught. Don’t get dead.”
She scowled and said nothing.
Wind-blown snow snaked across the pavement in hypnotic patterns before them and whipped into spume behind. She felt just as helplessly thrown into chaos.
Archer’s voice in the phone was cold as he organized the attack with fighters in the other vehicles. “I told Valjean to try the sewers. He caught a scent down there, followed it up, and Haji has the schematics on the building. He’s downloading them to your GPS units now. Raine has the area under surveillance. No one’s been in or out, but we don’t know how many humans are inside or their relationships to the djinn-man.” His tone hardened. “Valjean says the place is crawling with demon sign, so innocence is unlikely. Still, if you encounter humans, try not to kill them until we have cause. And we want the djinni contained.”
He disconnected. Sera tugged nervously at her necklace.
Beside her, Jonah shifted. “Can we hold a djinni?”
Arched didn’t look back. “We will.”
The two talyan glanced at each other over her head. Uncertainty radiated off them like a chill.
They closed on the gaunt, ugly structure in a rush of dark vehicles. The street in front was empty.
“Too much available parking,” Jonah muttered. “Never a good sign.”
Out of the cars sped a dozen talyan, silent and swift.
Sera half thought Archer would lock the doors on her, maybe leave the windows cracked open if she was lucky. But he didn’t say a word as she ran with them.
Later, she wondered if he’d guessed what they would find.
Jonah in the lead smashed through the glass front doors without slowing. The rest followed.
A wall of malice, black and frothing as a standing wave of oil-fouled water, met them.
She flinched at a painful grasp on her arm.
“Let us take care of it.” Archer took her hand and laid the haft of his smaller knife across her palm. “Don’t reveal yourself here.”
She gripped the knife. “Don’t touch me, and the thing between us won’t happen.” He stiffened as if she’d raised the weapon against him.
The other fighters weren’t waiting for them anyway. Instead, they ripped through like superheated scythes, steaming away malice in wide swathes.
The talyan pressed forward. Sera heard a whoop of satisfaction at the easy progress. Before the malice had been entirely dispersed, a tide of ferales swept forward.
But they were small and halfhearted in their attack, almost clumsy. One stumbled past the talya ahead of her, and she put Archer’s knife through it. It collapsed without even a groan and only a thin trickle of ichor.
The fighters mowed through the ferales as easily as the malice, some pressing toward the center of the building and the basement access, some hanging back to guard the territory they’d taken.
“Birnenston has weakened these demons,” Archer said. “This must’ve been a nest for years and we never knew.”
She realized he’d been sticking close, but not close enough to touch, even as he contributed his share of the decimation. Making sure she didn’t screw up, she guessed.
She frowned. “Why would the djinn-man stay here if it poisons his demon?”
“Maybe we can ask him this time.”
She glanced at him, caught by the note of reservation in his voice.
By then, they were making their way down the stairs, a few scattered malice fleeing ahead of them.
She heard one of the warriors give a single cry, then fall silent. Her blood froze.
Archer shouldered her aside. “Wait here.”
For once, she didn’t argue. The rest of the talyan cleared the stairs around her, leaving her in the dim, dank space. A lone malice skittered aimlessly in the dark corner at the bottom landing, like an autumn leaf caught up in a swirl of wind.
A sob echoed through the basement door. All else was silent. She couldn’t stop herself.
She crept down the last few stairs and stared in.
Framed in the open doorway, head bowed, Zane was tied naked to a chair.
If all the malice and all the ferales they’d battled on their way down had bled like humans, still the flood would have been a drop compared to the pool of crimson surrounding the chair.
With a choked cry, Sera broke through the ring of waiting talyan, though Liam tried to catch her. “Someone untie him. Oh God, Zane.”
He raised his head to meet her gaze—except his eyes were gone.
Archer wrenched her back. “We can’t untie him. The bindings are acting as tourniquets. Until the teshuva gets its act together and starts healing the worst of the wounds, we don’t dare loosen them.” He lowered his voice. “It’s all that’s holding him together.”
Sera swallowed hard, until she had herself under control. “Let me go.”
With each step sliding or sticking in the insane spill of blood, she went to Zane’s side and crouched beside him.
“You guys found me.” Blood trickled from his mouth. Behind the broken and missing teeth, his tongue was split, whether from blows, his own teeth, or from the heavy shears on the floor just in her line of vision, she didn’t want to know. “Not a second too soon.”
“We were gonna stop for coffee, but . . .” She tried to keep her tone light, but she heard the quaver in her voice.
A few talyan in the circle, including Liam, turned away.
“I’ve got a theory,” Zane said. “When the teshuva came to me, I was so afraid to die, I would’ve agreed to anything. I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Hmm. Where’s the theory part?”
His breath rattled wetly in his lungs. “I think the demon is finally gone.”
“The djinn-man? Yes, he’s gone.”
“I meant my demon.”
Stillness rippled out from her to the listening talyan.
“It’s not death that frees
you from the demon,” Zane said. “It’s the end of the fear of death. That’s peace. I knew you’d understand.” His voice trailed off.
Archer pulled her back. “Leave him be. Let the teshuva work.”
She bit her lip. “What if his demon is gone?”
Archer crossed his arms. “You think he wouldn’t be dead already with those wounds?”
She didn’t doubt Archer knew death intimately, but he didn’t know the knife-edge between life and death like she did. Years of hospice work had shown her both the precious fragility and the monstrous tenacity of life. “Demon or no, we can’t stay here. It reeks of evil.”
Archer nodded. “The birnenston. Probably why Zane’s teshuva hasn’t been much help.”
Unwilling to question him again about the demon’s continued presence, she let it pass. “I know you don’t think much of first aid, and we’re way past that now, but somebody should look at Zane.”
His lip curled. “Your faith healer?”
“I was thinking a little more practical.”
When the slow leakage from Zane’s body congealed, they gingerly cut his bonds. Only his rasping breaths told them he was still alive.
The transport back to the safe house might have been a funeral procession. Liam arrived a few minutes after them, the task Sera had set him complete.
Sera met Betsy outside Zane’s room. “This is awful,” she warned. “But I didn’t know whom else to call.”
The nurse clutched her small duffel, still blinking the early-morning sleep from her eyes. “I’ve done three mercy tours following two civil wars and a genocide. You can’t shock me.”
Sera gestured her in.
After one small gasp at the sight of the battered, raw meat that had been the talyan warrior, Betsy upended the duffel on the table beside the bed. Zane flinched at the clatter of glass vials.
“You’re awake?” Betsy slanted a glance at Sera, eyes wide with disbelief. “I’m a nurse. If I hurt you, tell me.”
Zane chuckled, little more than a gurgle. “I sort of doubt I’ll notice.”
“Ah, a funny guy,” Betsy said. “Those kind pinch my ass.”
The bare twist of a smile on his cut lips faded. “No pinching, I promise.”
“Just to be safe, I’m putting you out again. You won’t feel a thing.”
“Good,” he whispered.
Sera set her hand on his shoulder while Betsy emptied a syringe in his arm. He went slack, and she reassured herself that his chest still rose.
Betsy started cleaning and suturing. “I could lose my license for this.”
“We know all about risk.” Archer laid a hefty stack of bills beside Betsy’s duffel. “For your next civil war.”
Betsy glanced at Sera. “Is he for real?”
Sera shook her head, no.
“It helps to think of it all as a bad dream,” Archer agreed.
Betsy grunted. “You say this guy can’t go to the hospital, but we don’t know what internal damage he’s suffering. And you can be sure he’s suffering.”
“Yeah, we’re sure,” Archer said. “We just needed you to stabilize him.”
“He’s still capsized,” Betsy said. “We’re just keeping him from sinking any more. Barely.”
“That’s enough.”
“Probably not.” Betsy unrolled an arm’s length of gauze. “Whoever did this was a monster.”
Sera bowed her head.
“We’ll catch him.” Archer hovered just behind her. The warmth of his big body took a bit of the chill off hers.
Betsy eyed them. “You vigilantes? That why you won’t go to the police?”
Sera sighed. “Remember that self-defense course you wanted me to take? Consider it taken.”
“You’re gonna save the whole city from bad guys now?”
Sera looked at her hard. “How many gunshot wounds, rapes, and finger-shaped bruises on kids have you seen? If you could stop it, wouldn’t you?”
Betsy stared back. “No one can stop it.”
Sera let her intensity bleed away. “Slow it, then, even if you’re not sure what you’re doing matters in the end, even if nobody else thinks you’re right.”
Finally, Betsy shrugged. “Guess that’s why I came here.”
Wrapped in gauze, Zane at least looked tidy. Sera gave Betsy a hug. “Liam will take you home. Use the money to refill your black bag. We might need you again.”
Betsy’s lips twisted. “Fine. But don’t you forget, no one can fix dead.”
Sera nodded—but death just wasn’t the scariest of her fears anymore.
CHAPTER 19
Archer slumped on the chair outside Zane’s door, a weary bookend with the talya across from him, listening to the rasp and hitch of breath from within the room.
Perversely, bright sunlight gleamed through the window at the end of the hall, low in the winter sky but undaunted. Archer would’ve poked it out had he a knife long enough.
It was the least he could do for the man inside.
Why had he allowed anyone else to guard her? He’d known what stalked her and had been painfully aware of her innocence of what unholy evil could be done to her. But edgy with the longings she aroused in him, he’d let someone else take his place.
And Zane bore the consequences of his dereliction.
His own chest wrenched with every labored breath he heard. He welcomed the pain as penance, wishing he could truly take the other man’s wounds upon himself.
The scuff of footsteps down the hall made him raise his head, though the other talya never even glanced up.
The silhouette approaching was backlit by the sun, the head haloed in a golden corona, the outline carved away by gleaming light until all that was left was a slender, ethereal darkness that burned into his brain.
The figure raised its arms, and for a heart-stopping moment, Archer thought flowing wings would surely follow, arch up to shatter the too-small corridor, while a fiery sword pierced his heart. . . .
Another step closer, and the shadow fell over his face. He squinted.
Sera thumped her arms down, her expression twisted in frustration. “What are you doing out here? Go sit with him. And lose the long faces.”
Archer pulled his scattered thoughts together. Not a seraphim come to slay him as he so richly deserved, but just Sera, demon-ridden, coming to tongue-lash him.
The other talya rose uneasily. “He’s still unconscious. And he couldn’t see us anyway.”
She sighed. “Even unconscious, he’ll know you’re there, that you care. And he doesn’t need to sense your doom.”
“Is there some reason to hope?” Archer murmured.
Sera turned the blast of her hazel eyes on him. Freed from her ire, the talya slunk down the hall, out of sight. “With that attitude, you just stay out of here.” She marched into the room.
Despite her injunction, Archer followed to lean in the doorway.
She tidied the bedside table where Betsy had left antibiotics and extra bandages—as if the teshuva needed those. The league didn’t even stock aspirin.
If the teshuva had gone . . . He drained the thought as thoroughly as any malice. But the shards remained.
Sera talked softly about the sunlight outside, the wind clearing the clouds, the contrast of sun’s warmth and wind’s bite that made it hard to decide whether to stay in or go out.
“Have to put up with the one to enjoy the other, I suppose.” She pulled up a chair to the bed and brushed her fingers over Zane’s forehead. The rest of him had disappeared behind a shroud of bandages.
Archer’s fingers closed into fists so hard the muscles ached all the way up his arms.
She glanced up at him, then gestured to the chair opposite her. He shook his head. She scowled, but he noticed that the light caress of her hand never changed.
“Archer’s here too, Zane,” she said. “He feels terrible that you’re hurt. But not as terrible as I do.”
Archer drew a breath to refute her on a few key points,
but on the sheet, Zane’s hand twitched. Archer caught the movement and straightened. “Is he coming around?”
Sera took the slack fingers in her own. “You don’t have to wake up yet. When you’re ready.”
Archer shifted from one foot to the other. “He might be able to tell us more about the djinn-man.”
“You have Valjean and everyone else with an ounce of tracking sense roaming the city. You sent one team with Bookie’s mobile spectral tracking machine, even though you’re not sure it works. The only useful thing you haven’t done is stuck me out as bait . . .” She took a calming breath. “Anyway, what more can Zane tell you?”
“Not the where,” Archer acknowledged, “but the why.”
She lifted Zane’s hand as if he were evidence. “Does that matter at the moment?”
“You, the constant seeker, ask me that? Why’s the biggest question.”
“I meant the djinn-man’s plans won’t change just because Zane finishes his rest. We’ll know soon enough.”
That sounded a little too much like “The end is nigh” for Archer’s comfort. He scowled. Since when had the thought of the end become something to be feared instead of welcomed?
He stared at her in dismay and slowly backed into the hall.
She couldn’t make him afraid to die. He wouldn’t allow it. That fear would make him useless. Everything he’d lost would have been lost in vain.
The hallway was dark. The sun had succumbed to the clouds again. So much for her theory about taking the bad with the good. It was all bad, and to forget that, even for a second, only made the rediscovery more painful.
If spring came back around, it wouldn’t touch him. He’d have to blame his momentary hope on the teshuva within him that still thought it would win its way back into grace.
Idiot demon.
Wrapping the fury of betrayal around him like a fine trench coat, he stalked down the hall.
If Zane was twitching now, his teshuva would have him awake in another hour. They’d get their answers then, and the end they’d bring on would be like nothing the djinn-man could ever have imagined.
“You were almost caught.” The Worm paced, wringing his hands with such frenzy, Corvus wondered he didn’t tear them off.
Perhaps his next sculpture should be a carrion bird, some great-winged, soaring beast that descended to earth only to thrust its naked beak into the soft flesh of the welcoming dead.