Seduced By Shadows

by Slade, Jessa

  Her voice was softer yet in defeat. “So how long are we hiding out?”

  Corvus was going on two thousand years old. How much longer could he last? “Just a few days.”

  By then, she’d be suspicious. And he’d need to find a safer place for her while he hunted Corvus. He’d never mentioned the greenhouse to the others, but he hadn’t hid the place either. Bookie could uncover his financial tracks easily enough. Good thing Bookie was on his side, at least as far as the Sera-baited trap went.

  “A few days.” She walked on, leaving him a few steps behind. “Do you serve umbrella drinks out of that kitchen? I always wanted to take a tropical paradise vacation.” The meandering path brought them to the center of the garden. She lifted her head to stare at the daybed. “What will we do to fill the time?” She glanced over her shoulder at him.

  He felt the dull heat in his face and tried to keep his voice level. “I have to run out.” Run away. “You’ll be hungry later, and green tea won’t hold us forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “A few days,” he amended. “I won’t be gone long. Will you stay here and wait for me?”

  She looked at him.

  This time he let the strain come through in his voice. “Please?”

  Finally, she nodded. “I’ll stay.”

  The crow shrilled, a high, thin shriek, and threw itself against the bars of the cage.

  “Be still,” Corvus growled, and reached for it again.

  Just one stinking feather was all he needed. If he could look at the subtle shades up close, he might finally capture the spirit of the creature. This would be his last chance.

  The phone rang. The crow flapped into the peaked point of the cage. With a vicious curse, Corvus slammed the cage away, rocking it on its stand.

  He grabbed the phone. “What?”

  “I set it up.”

  The Worm. Corvus closed his eyes, calming his breath. “When? Where?”

  “Actually, she contacted me. She had some questions about her demon. I told her to meet me tomorrow night at the lab.” There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. “She hasn’t responded yet.”

  “She’ll come.” Corvus paced the edges of the room. “You’re the league’s Bookkeeper. Of course, you’ll have her answers for her.”

  Frustration leaked out in his voice, but he didn’t bother to hide it. The Bookworm would suffer any indignity gladly in pursuit of his very own demon.

  “I’ve found something else you should know.” The Bookworm’s voice shifted, a note of sly satisfaction hardening his tone.

  “Oh?” A warning rang in Corvus’s head. With a city between them, had his Worm grown a spine?

  “The wound in the Veil where Sera’s demon crossed is still raw.” The Worm paused. “Because of an unusual side effect when she is the presence of her talya lover.”

  Corvus stilled. “Her lover.”

  “Ferris Archer. The djinn may not think much of the teshuva, but this one talya alone has destroyed a legion of your lesser brethren. Through Sera’s link, the two of them have forced tenebrae back across the Veil.”

  The stillness in Corvus turned to ice. “How can that be?”

  “Demons come out. Why shouldn’t the reverse be true?”

  “Because . . .” Words failed Corvus.

  The Worm huffed out an impatient breath. “I’ve explained before. The Veil is nothing more than an energy barrier. A meta-seraphic barrier fueled by the suffering of bound souls, true, but still merely energy itself in the end. To be harnessed by those with the knowledge and the proper tools.” Even distance couldn’t conceal his sneer. “That power isn’t constrained by the convoluted mythology that binds you.”

  Corvus tightened his grip on the phone. “You said the solvo blanks would draw a djinn. But the demon was teshuva. You said the female talya would be unbalanced. Instead, this talyan pair could be a hindrance.” Could they even be a threat? Impossible. Nothing had ever stood against his demon. “You swore through your studies you had found a way to finally part the Veil.”

  “And I have,” the Worm snapped. “With the solvo blanks, I set up a potent, dark resonance. Those soul-emptied husks of undead damned should have attracted an answering darkness that would leave a breach we could exploit. Sera’s analogous penance trigger made her the demon’s target, but her lifelong refusal to yield to death and damnation twisted the resonance back on itself. The mirror of the other-realms coughed up exactly what we sought: a way through the Veil. I just didn’t realize the reflection would be so . . . bright.”

  “And what other reflections have you missed, Bookkeeper?”

  The Worm was silent a moment. “It won’t matter. Archer and Sera don’t grasp what they have between them. Most of the time, they’re fighting against it and each other. Besides, they are only two people. Just keep them apart. Once we tap the Veil and cull the energy we need, two talyan—hell, all the leagues in the world—won’t matter in the end.”

  Corvus pictured the peacock-bright hues of the bruised Veil torn asunder—not at all the businesslike venture the Worm envisioned, he knew. He closed his eyes against the rising acid sting. “True. Hell won’t matter in the end.” Birnenston leaked under his lashes, burning on his cheeks.

  “I’ve done my part. You can’t cut me out now.” The Bookworm’s voice rose eagerly. “How do I prepare for the demon?”

  Corvus realized he’d left the door on the cage open. He turned. The crow was still inside, too frightened to fly out.

  Weren’t they all?

  When he spoke, his tone was soft at last. “Stop here on your way to the meeting with Sera Littlejohn. I will make you ready for your reward.”

  Archer’s agitation grew with every minute gone. Would she wait?

  He couldn’t go back to his loft. Niall had staked out the place. Archer had almost stumbled on Valjean before he sensed the other talya. If Valjean was tracking him instead of Corvus, Niall must have decided his best bet to find the djinn-man was using Sera.

  With an urgency thrumming in his blood, the chill of coming night energized him. He shook his head. Feeling lighthearted just because he was on the lam? How sad was that? Although he supposed ditching garbageman duty was a plus to becoming an unrepentant demon.

  At the greenhouse door, Sera met him with the point of a five-foot bamboo stake.

  He reared back, hefting one of the plastic bags. “I brought Thai food. I see you have the skewers.”

  “I wasn’t sure it was you.” She eased her grip. “In the past few seconds, I managed to invent a lot of monsters fumbling around out there.”

  “My hands were full.” He edged past her. “Re-arm the door. Code’s SOLO-2-10.”

  In the garden’s heart, he laid out a little feast. Sera filled two plates, wafting the aroma of peanut sauce and limes. “Starving,” she mumbled around her first mouthful.

  “I didn’t mean to take so long.” He started to explain, then stopped himself, cursing the sense of partnership that almost made him slip. She didn’t need to know they were being hunted by both sides now. “Lots to do.”

  “I’ve been thinking, since I’ve had nothing else to do.” She gave him a flat look, then continued. “I want to try a few experiments with the pendant stone, the desolator—”

  “Numinis. ‘That which makes the gods lonely.’ ” He pushed his plate away, his stomach tightening. Great, the one time she was willing to stay home and indulge her academic side. No Bunsen burners for her, no nitro or C-4. Oh no, she wanted to play with hellfire.

  “If it can trap other-realm emanations, I bet it does make them lonely. Probably scared shitless too.” She shrugged. “Not that gods shit. Presumably. But if we can find the key to accessing the matrix, we might have a clue how Corvus intends to break through the Veil.”

  Which was worse? Letting her play with fire, or telling her that she might burn down the world? So he explained Bookie’s discovery of the reason behind the persistent opening in the Veil.
<
br />   He left off Ecco’s corollary and finished with, “So, I’d say we have a pretty good sense why Corvus wants you.”

  “I’m doing it?” The chopstick clattered out of her hands. “Me personally? I can’t even blame my demon.”

  She could blame him. “It’s just another symptom of possession you’ll need to master. You already look like a natural with a spear.”

  She rose to pace. “You say that as if I might not usher in the end of three realms.”

  He stepped in front of her and ran his hands over her arms, as if he could banish the chill dread in her eyes. “You aren’t going to make anything bad happen.” Not without him, anyway, and he wouldn’t let anything bad happen. That’s why he’d brought her here.

  She looked up at him bleakly. “Not meaning to doesn’t necessarily stop it. I can tell you that.”

  He paused, fingers wrapped around her arms. The feel of her was a distraction. No wonder the demon shied away from touch. It was hard to concentrate on salvation when sin felt so good. “I thought you wanted a few days of paradise vacation, and here you are talking shop.”

  “Right. End of the world. Same old, same old.”

  “It is. We’ll ask Corvus. He’s seen two thousand years of this.”

  She pulled back against his hands. “Two thousand years?”

  Archer sighed and released her. Why did he keep revealing things she didn’t need to know? He’d get himself in trouble one of these times. “He was a Roman gladiator before the djinni possessed him.”

  She shook her head. “God, imagine all he’s seen and done in two thousand years.”

  “Mostly spawning unimaginable evils, I’d guess.”

  “Why don’t we have that kind of power on our side?”

  He definitely wasn’t going to tell her nobody was on their side anymore. “Only the good die young.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Tell me everything you learned.”

  He didn’t. But he told her some. He avoided all mention of Ecco’s theory. How could he explain it when he didn’t understand it—didn’t believe it—himself? How could the heat between them mean anything against hellfire?

  Not to mention she’d want to know how the league planned to make use of their united effort when he’d just proved himself the worst sort of team player. After he killed Corvus, and she was safe, he’d figure out how this partnership thing worked. Sacrificing his solitary hunter cred was a small price to pay for the chance to rid the world of darkness.

  And, hell, didn’t even the lone wolf sometimes take a mate?

  He lured her back with a dark chocolate bar and pomegranate. She stopped her endless questions long enough to frown at the dessert. “Odd.”

  “I don’t have even two hundred years under my belt, but I’ve tried some things.” Thinking about what was under his belt made him shift awkwardly. He leaned back against the daybed and held a wedge of the pomegranate out to her.

  She eyed him, then took the fruit and a square of chocolate. She copied his lounging position, leaving a space between them.

  He handed over a plastic shopping bag. “I brought you some other things too.”

  She rifled through the contents. “A toothbrush. Jasmine tea.” She paused. “Underwear? Just my size. You thought of everything.”

  “Yeah.” Oh, he’d been thinking.

  He’d gone predator-still he realized when she glanced away, looking up at the little white lights and the black sky beyond, anywhere but at him. “Is it going to snow?”

  “Not in here. This is paradise.” And because he was possessed and couldn’t leave paradise well enough alone, he leaned forward through that carefully made empty space between them and kissed her.

  He breathed the heat of chilies and the pineapple sweetness, tasting bitter chocolate and tart pomegranate. Had there been a time when he couldn’t feel anything?

  Touch was still agony, though irresistible, the hot tension in his body almost more than he could bear. His fingertips ached for her. He filled his hands with the fall of her hair to cradle her head as he kissed her. The rush of blood through his veins held a single, sustained note of desire. That keening note morphed into his name on her kiss-bruised lips.

  “Ferris.” Her hand in the middle of his chest was a gentle restraint.

  He dredged up some last semblance of sanity to ease back.

  She nibbled at her lower lip. “Are you all right?”

  He thought a moment. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m so used to seeing at least a few purple sparks in your eyes.” She raised her hand to his cheek. “All I see now is you.”

  “The demon is here. I’ll never be free of it.” It had just been pushed to a way-back burner by the entirely earthly urge that possessed him now.

  “Just as well,” she murmured. “You couldn’t be here now without it.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment, resting against her palm.

  Her hazel eyes half closed. “What excuse shall we use this time? Our first time, you saved my life. The second time, we celebrated life after a death. And now?”

  “How about making my life worth living? For the night at least.”

  He saw the flare behind her lashes. Not the violet flash of demon light, but a quick shine of something else; it was gone too fast for him to name. Then her thumb brushing his mouth sidetracked him.

  He lifted her, laid her back, and pressed between her thighs to admire her sprawled across his bed. He leaned down to kiss her navel, where her shirt had ridden up. The warmth of her under his mouth was like the promise of spring, and he had only to coax the blooming blush from her skin.

  “Come here,” she murmured.

  “In a second.” A minute. An hour. A life. Since his possession, the thought of how long his lifetime lasted had horrified him. But now . . .

  Just below his lips, he knew the first tendril of her demon mark waited, inscribed on her skin. He eased back.

  “Ferris?”

  He unzipped her jeans, hooked his fingers through her belt loops, and tugged. The black reven uncoiled across her pale skin, a winding path that had led him from the restless dreams of an unbound demon to where he knelt now.

  “Yet again indebted to a demon,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  Always with the questions. He ran one hand up inside her shirt and splayed his fingers wide to press her flat. His thumb circled her nipple, and she caught her breath. “Have I mentioned that a side effect of immortality is staying power?”

  Another tug on her jeans and he was feasting again.

  Her hips rose under his questing mouth. Her breath grew ragged, each stuttering gasp twanging through his body so that his own desire strained to the breaking point as he pursued his quarry.

  She tangled her fingers in his hair. “Be with me now.”

  Demonic intervention couldn’t have gotten him out of his jeans any faster. She locked her heels behind his thighs and guided him in.

  He groaned as she closed around him, hot and tight. “Oh God.”

  “Really?” Her eyes sparkled up at him. “Is this a good time for that?”

  He growled and buried himself deep, bringing himself as close as skin would allow. She arched her back as he eased out again, a torment at leaving her. He held her on the edge, relishing the challenge. She never dropped her gaze.

  He remembered her staring at him, defiant with the feralis’s carcass in her lap in the moments before the demon vanished. He remembered how, covered in blood and ichor, he’d yearned to surrender to her clear-eyed compassion, to follow where she led, even into hell.

  Suddenly, he realized why Ecco’s comparison of fucking and their trick of piercing the Veil didn’t quite ring true. Sera in his arms made his blood rush and his senses sharpen as if the demon in him rose to some terrible threat, but nothing compared to the dangerous intimacy of her smile, of falling into her gaze. The old archive record had intimated that the mated-talyan bond had changed the world, which—call him
a selfish bastard—wasn’t anywhere near as terrifying as what it was doing to him.

  She touched his cheek. “Don’t stop now.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  If it wasn’t lust that had opened a path through the Veil to banish demons forever . . . His heart raced as if it would find a way out.

  Maybe it was love.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sera woke to a sweet perfume. When she rolled her head to the side she saw Archer, his face looking unbearably young in sleep. Just over his shoulder nodded the curved petals of a lily.

  A florist, who made almost as many trips to hospice as Sera, had once told her that lilies symbolized death and resurrection, hence their popularity at funerals. Sera eyed the smooth ivory flower. If she were the sort to believe, such a foreboding portent might make her nervous.

  As it was, the weight of Archer’s arm on her belly just made her have to pee.

  She eased out from under him. He snuffled lightly in his sleep, reached for her, and contented himself with the warmth of the pillow.

  She touched the hint of a wayward curl at his brow, the only suggestion of disobedience in his otherwise-brusque haircut. He didn’t move.

  After his efforts last night, she couldn’t blame him. He’d kept her wild with wanting, his excruciating restraint almost driving her mad before his control had finally broken.

  And when it had, his fierce desire might have frightened her—if it hadn’t matched her own so perfectly. Thrust for thrust, raking nails against taut skin, each gasp had driven them closer together until, in the darkest part of the night, on the edge of exhaustion, they’d come one last time with an intensity that eclipsed even the fireworks of their demon-streaked auras. It might have been just the twinkle lights, but she was pretty sure she saw stars.

  The marks of his passion were still imprinted on her, his scent on her skin. The violence of their joining hadn’t fazed her, but the sense of possession made her heart trip treacherously close to dangerous thoughts.

  She was being forced to give up her past; her future was murky at best. She had no business thinking beyond the glorious release from today.