by Slade, Jessa
She leaned forward to press her lips to his forehead. No thoughts of more, she warned herself, just a bit of sweet revenge that he might be as invisibly marked by their night as she was.
He murmured against the pillow and let out a sigh. She fought off the reluctance to leave him. She’d be back in a moment.
She might be in paradise, but padding naked through the garden felt too weird, not to mention chilly without him beside her. She pulled on her clothes—including fresh underwear; he’d judged her size exactly right, so perhaps demon-enhanced powers of perception were good for more than hunting evil—took a square of chocolate, and headed for the office area.
After taking care of nature’s call, she returned to the kitchenette. She heated two mugs of water in the microwave and threw in tea bags to steep. She wasn’t sure what Archer had planned for the day—although his more lurid whispers last night gave her some ideas—but she figured she’d go mad if she sat twiddling her thumbs again. Apparently, a paradise vacation wasn’t her cup of tea.
She eyed the computer at his desk. At least she could check her e-mail, see if Bookie had replied. She nudged the cups away from the keyboard. The system didn’t require a password, so she logged in to her account.
A red exclamation point flagged Bookie’s message.
She opened it and scanned the message: Tonight at the lab? Archer wouldn’t be thrilled with the location. He’d said the hotel still stunk of birnenston—not that the demon-free Bookie would care.
She wondered if Archer would give her a hard time about going. He hadn’t checked in with the league last night, hadn’t even called for an update on the search for Corvus. But if he didn’t want to take her, she knew the way. Just as well he’d removed the tracking bracelet.
She e-mailed Bookie to confirm.
Before she shut down, the reply pinged back in a chat box: Sera, are you all right? Where are you? Where is Archer?
She sat back in the chair. Suddenly, Archer’s not being in contact with the league seemed ominous.
Her pointer hovered over the little x in the upper corner.
Instead, she typed: I’m fine. Archer is fine. Why?
He kidnapped you.
“Nobody tells me anything,” she murmured. She typed: No, he didn’t.
Niall wanted to try your baited-trap idea. Archer refused. And then you were gone. Bookie outlined the meeting Archer had told her about. Except he’d told her almost nothing.
She bit her lip. Bookie explained that they’d all—all but Archer, apparently—agreed she was strong enough and clever enough to take her place as a talyan warrior. They trusted her not to get herself killed unnecessarily.
Don’t know what Archer planned, Bookie sent. Since he never fights alongside the league, maybe he didn’t think they’d be there for you. Doesn’t seem to realize he’s the one who’s never around.
And if Bookie had sounded a bit obsequious—strong and clever enough, indeed—he knew Archer painfully well.
How could a man who fought alone submit to a tactic that involved making himself helpless, trusting in someone else to save him? No one had been around to save Archer before. Could a man who’d lived into his second century change?
But Bookie was wrong to think Archer didn’t know the name of his pain. She’d seen his grief and guilt at Zane’s death, knew he blamed himself for not being in harm’s way. She also knew he’d be infinitely more determined not to let it happen again. Never mind what hung in the balance.
Say, the fate of the world.
He was so used to losing, he’d sacrifice himself every time, even if his pain wasn’t the price to be paid. She knew it only hurt him more that his suffering wasn’t enough.
The demon had promised her answers to the philosophical questions of life and death, salvation and damnation, good and evil. As it turned out, death, damnation, and evil were a little less theoretical and a lot better armed than she’d anticipated. Fighting for life, salvation, and good meant leaving her old life behind but brought her to Archer.
And Archer really wasn’t going to appreciate the irony that he was the one who’d taught her not to let a battle go by without making her mark.
She typed one last message. The dark letters burned on the white screen: Set the trap. I’ll be there.
She sat, lost in churning thoughts going nowhere. Finally, she rose. She turned away from the path into the garden and went instead down the cinder-block corridor to the front door. She punched in the code Archer had given her.
Just hours ago, he had explained the code came from the Song of Solomon, a passage his farmer father often quoted: “For, lo, the winter is passed. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come.”
The latch released under her thumb, letting in the stinging Chicago wind. She slipped out quickly.
The real problem with suddenly acquiring the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t simply the knowing part. It was deciding what to do about it.
If she wanted to fight, wanted to matter, she had to go.
She’d just kicked herself out of the garden.
A touch of cold roused Archer. He reached for Sera, but his arm closed around empty air.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the canopy. She’d be back in a moment and he’d have to decide what to tell her about his revelation in the night.
Love conquers evil. How simple that was. Not easy necessarily, but simple. God knew, it still took a sharp blade, not Air Supply ballads alone, to subdue a rampaging feralis.
All this time, he’d held himself apart, dealing death and refusing to lose again, when only partnership with the woman he’d come to trust and admire could make a difference.
Eager to share his insight, he called her name. Water murmured over rocks in the little stream, and leaves rustled gently.
But no answer.
He slid out of bed. Without pausing to gather his clothes, he circled the paths. Empty.
Kitchen and bathroom. Empty.
In the doorway, he stopped, backpedaled, looked at the two brimming cups of tea beside the computer.
When he jostled the mouse, the black monitor brightened. He reviewed the history. Within a minute, he’d read everything she’d typed.
Fury pulsed through him, pushing back the chill gathered on his skin. Damn Bookie. That wasn’t how it had gone down. The historian hadn’t liked the baited-trap idea either; he must’ve caved in.
Of course, his own version had missed some key points too. And she’d obviously decided who was to be believed. And where she wanted to be.
He crossed his arms against the chill.
She’d rejected the kidnapping charge, but now she knew he’d tried to keep her from a path she’d chosen. He, the great talyan warrior, was afraid of death—not his own, but hers.
What use was a talya afraid of death? Sera, always the guide, had shown him the answer.
The e-mail time stamps said she’d been gone almost an hour, but he imagined the frost she’d let in still lingered. He returned to the garden’s center to yank on his jeans. The scent of lily, sex, and Sera drifted around him.
She’d made him no promises—nor he to her. How could he before, knowing his immortal life was not his own, when eternity had been given to him only so long as he waged the teshuva’s war.
And how could he now, knowing she didn’t feel the same. The bond between them when they banished the demons had been an illusion as fleeting as a Chicago spring.
He’d forgotten the only way the garden could survive in this harsh place was behind thick walls and iron restraint. Letting someone in had been a mistake, one he wouldn’t make again.
Sera walked until the falling snow stopped melting on her bare arms. Let the demon keep her from freezing if it wanted. She couldn’t go to the league hotel before her appointment with Bookie. She didn’t want to answer their questions about Archer.
She wondered how much trouble he was in. The talyan were i
ndependent and wayward souls, and Liam steered them with a light hand. But even his relaxed management style couldn’t allow outright revolt.
Her willing return might take the sting out of Archer’s mutiny, especially when they needed all the fighters they could get. She had more reason to be angry with Archer than the league did. She was the one lured away under false pretenses.
A rebellious part of her mind asked, what pretense? She knew he hadn’t wanted to see her broken like Zane. Whether his motivation was guilt, simple humanity, or . . . something else, didn’t change the fact she almost welcomed his intervention.
Archer would confront Corvus without hesitation. She’d just have to keep that boldness in mind when her turn came. Of course, it’d be easier if she had his death wish too.
Her aimless steps brought her to the nursing home. She stood across the street, half hiding behind a parked truck. Two days ago—only that long?—she’d called Wendy to say Nanette would check on her father, but she’d never heard how the encounter had gone.
Lights on the porch gleamed warm and welcoming, but Sera didn’t approach. If her father had sensed the repentant demon in her and wanted her banished, she could only imagine how he’d feel about her releasing all the demons of hell. Not exactly a distinction to make a papa proud.
She pictured the honor student bumper sticker peeling off under a bloodred scrawl: MY CHILD IS IGNITING THE APOCALYPSE.
She turned and kept walking.
By the time she’d fully tested whether the demon would let her die of exposure, or only wish hypothermia would stop her shivering, she found herself outside the hospital. The emergency room offered heat and a seat. Unless she was spurting copious amounts of some bodily fluid, nobody would look twice.
As a place to contemplate her possible demise, with the gray linoleum tiles, beige plastic chairs, and the stench coming from the vending-area coffee machine, it could double for purgatory any day.
“Sera?”
For a heartbeat, her world felt surreally normal, as if this were the start of another workday in her old life—her old, old life.
“Betsy.” She stood up too fast and swayed as the blood rushed out of her head.
“Whoa.” Betsy put a hand under her elbow. “Damn, girl, you’re freezing, and you’re whiter than . . . You’re always white. Where’s your coat?”
“I lost it.” She realized she sounded vague and shook her head.
Betsy steered her toward the admitting area. “Are you in trouble?”
“Hey.” One of the waiting patients held up his hand. “I was next.”
Betsy scowled over her shoulder. “Yeah? What’s the problem?”
“I was putting up my Christmas lights, and the hammer tacker put a staple through my thumb.” He waved the digit in question.
“Right. Give me a minute to set up an OR for amputation.” Betsy pushed Sera into the nurses’ lounge. “We finally get a break from all the solvo crazies—it’s weird, they just disappeared; are they all getting high together somewhere?—and back come the normal crazies to fill the gap. Now, tell me what’s going on. How’s my patient?”
Sera dropped onto the worn couch. “Buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Southern Illinois.”
Betsy let out a long breath. “It’s that one big guy you were with, the one with the scary eyes. He looked like trouble incarnate, and now he’s got you mixed up in it.”
Sera couldn’t argue with the physical description. But she shook her head. “I mixed myself up in it. And those guys will help me make it right.” Just not the one big guy.
Betsy sat down beside her. “Honey, I know you never believed this, but the weight of the world isn’t on your shoulders.”
“It wasn’t before.” She could admit that, now that she knew what the real weight of the world felt like.
“You need to get out, save yourself.”
Sera bit her lip. “It’s complicated. I didn’t mean to bother you. I didn’t know you were on today.”
“I’m always on.”
Had she subconsciously remembered her friend’s schedule? Sera wondered what she’d hoped to find here. “You’ve seen the worst that people do to one another.
Do you think . . .” She remembered the two men lit by the neon bar sign, the shadow of the malice darkening them. “Do you think they mean to do it?”
“What’s my other choice? Every shooter, beater, and user is clinically and legally insane?”
“Maybe they are driven to it by . . . ,” Sera said, hesitating again, then finished, “by their demons.”
“We all have demons. The trick is not listening to them. That’s what I think.”
The nurse wasn’t speaking literally, Sera knew. She wondered what the other woman would say if she found out that she was right.
She had an advantage, seeing what everyone else thought was allegory, if they bothered thinking about it at all. Wouldn’t everyone fight evil if they saw what she’d seen?
She rose. “I have to go.”
“You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“I did listen. I’m going to fight my demons.”
She just wished she knew which were the most dangerous.
When she left, Betsy insisted on handing over her coat. Sera wanted to promise she’d bring it back. But she didn’t like to lie. Now seemed a good time to start keeping her soul as pure as possible. She remembered Archer’s insistence on the truth. Right up until he didn’t like the truth, of course.
On her way, she stopped by the hospital chapel, a non-denominational room with a lone stained-glass panel ripping off Monet’s water lilies. The orange throats of the lilies looked like a drained feralis’s fading sulfurous eyeball. That mental image probably didn’t haunt most visitors to the chapel, but she knew she’d find no peace, regardless.
If she was honest, she’d admit she never really sought peace in her faith. After her mother’s disappearance, she’d wanted answers, which wasn’t the same thing at all.
Looking around at the conscientious trappings of watered-down spirituality, she knew she still wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to be consoled or calmed. She didn’t want a conviction someone else handed her, however prettily or practically it might be packaged, like a bouquet. She wanted it to grow from within. Until it did, she’d go without.
Outside, the snowfall had thickened, and the low, heavy clouds hushed the city night. Whirling flakes glittered in streetlights come on early in the gathering darkness. She arrived at the league hotel a little before the hour and thought she’d wait in the doorway until Bookie came looking for her. But when she rattled the door, it opened.
She frowned at the lax security. But they’d moved everything out to avoid birnenston contamination, so maybe there was no reason to lock up, especially since Bookie knew she was coming.
In the lobby, only the low night lighting was on, leaving the ceilings all but invisible. She eyed the shadows and remembered the swarms of malice in the building where they’d found Zane. Shaking off her unease, she headed downstairs to the lab.
The lower halls were entirely unlit, leaving indirect light from a few office windows to spread in pools along her path. Only Bookie’s lab at the end of the hall stood open and bright.
She took a few steps toward it, then slowed, her senses tightening.
She knew the violet flicker was in her eyes as the hallway took on a black-light cast, reflecting energy signatures her human eyes couldn’t see. The birnenston stench had dissipated, but faint smudges on the walls remained like smoke stains. She held her breath, listening, and heard nothing.
Nothing to see, nothing to hear, but all her senses, and the demon’s too, thrummed a warning.
She didn’t call out for Bookie. Soundlessly, she backed away, wishing she’d been quieter going through the stairwell door. She turned to run.
A man stepped out from a dark doorway she’d passed, blocking her return to the stairs. He faced her, a black silhouette. He took a step forward
, and to her demon-pitched hearing, the step boomed with other-realm power, reverberating in her bones until her teeth rattled. Another thunderous step brought him within reach of one of the lighted rooms.
And still he was a black silhouette. Her enhanced vision couldn’t penetrate the unrelieved darkness that devoured him.
Now she knew why he’d taken the name Corvus—Latin for blackbird.
She bolted. Not Bookie’s office, obviously a trap. Was the historian there, wounded or dead? The next door down the hall wasn’t locked. She ducked in, then cursed when she flicked on the light and realized there was no lock on what was clearly a catch-all room and small at that.
She hauled a battered desk in front of the door. It wouldn’t stop Corvus, she knew. He wasn’t relying on his ferales anymore.
In the hall, each step boomed with etheric shock waves that sent her demon, trapped within her, fleeing in helpless circles until she reeled with vertigo. Her hypersensitive hearing faltered, so one moment her ears rang with the relentless footsteps, and in the next, only an eerie, lying silence.
No wonder teshuva didn’t fight the djinn. Her demon obviously thought they were doomed. Great. Abandoned once again.
Screw that. She pushed another desk in front of the first, then spun it ninety degrees lengthwise so that only a few inches separated it from the far wall. If he pushed open the door, the door would shove the desks into the wall.
That wouldn’t stop him either. Nothing would.
She cast around the small space, looking for something, anything, to defend herself. A box of file folders. A rolling chair. A shelf with a row of glass beakers. Maybe the acoustic tiles overhead hid a false ceiling where she could escape.
The door exploded inward, crushing the corner of the first desk. Splinters and a strip of metal blew through the room. The rebound sent the second desk spinning crazily. It knocked her to the ground.
She tried to roll and screamed at the pain in her leg.
Broken. She knew that physical sensation of sound, of bone grating on bone. The right femur was snapped in half. She wouldn’t be able to stand until her teshuva healed her.
From outside, Corvus shoved at the debris, all that was keeping him from entering.