by Jessa Slade
He jumped over the balcony railing and, before Sera could scream, had dropped the two stories into a neat crouch a few steps away.
“Don’t try that at home, kiddies,” Zane muttered. “Not unless you can call on your teshuva at will.”
“Don’t ever do that again,” Sera said, much louder. She wanted to yell over the pounding of her heart in her ears. “You scared the life out of me.”
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “The demon won’t let you go that easily.”
Then he attacked.
Silent and so swift she didn’t see him move, much less catch the afterimage. He pinned her right hand behind her back. He didn’t guide or suggest. He just held her tight.
Her skin tingled at his touch, her muscles wanted to yield before his greater strength. Like an inexorable time-lapse tide, desire lapped over her. Only fury at her own lack of self-control kept her afloat on the relentless flow of craving.
She pivoted on the ball of her foot, not fast or strong enough to break his grip. But she caught a glimpse of the violet sheen in his eyes.
Oh, now he wanted to play for keeps. And how pathetically needy was she to soften just because he’d said a few nice words about how she probably wasn’t unut terably evil?
She feinted right again, since he expected it. When he started to follow, she wrenched left. She ignored the grinding pop in her right shoulder as she aimed her left elbow for his temple.
He ducked to avoid the blow and she was free. She danced away a step, then pounced.
Let him make all the snide comments he wanted about her weak left side. Her only desire was to throttle him with both hands. But her right arm wouldn’t move.
He grabbed her left wrist. “Hold, Sera.”
“Oh sure, stop the fight when you’re losing. Again.” He’d walked away quick enough last time.
His lips twisted, amusement or annoyance, she wasn’t sure. “Your shoulder.”
As soon as he spoke, the radiating pain made her gasp. She glanced down at the unnatural wrench of her arm.
“Out of joint,” Zane said. “You got her?”
“Wait,” she said.
Archer reeled her in. Zane took her elbow in one hand and held her upper arm with the other. “Take a deep breath and let it out while I count down. Three. Two . . .”
In one steady pull, he slid her shoulder back into place.
She yelped and rocketed away. Her flight carried her halfway across the room. Her gaze locked on the mounted machine gun a long moment before she turned to glare at the men.
“Now, Sera.” Zane held up both hands.
She rubbed her shoulder. “Don’t even.”
Zane slanted a glance at Archer.“We could’ve worked on the left side tomorrow.”
“And if she met another feralis tonight? I tell you, she encounters them with unnerving frequency.”
She bristled. “I’ve walked away fine from every encounter. Except when I’m fighting you.”
She caught a glimpse of regret in the half-mast of his dark eyes before he turned back to Zane. “Make her work both sides every time. No sense setting her up for failure.”
“Standing right here.” She waved. “And not deaf.”
“Just a newbie on the fight scene,” Zane said soothingly.
She scowled. “Not so new. One malice dispatch and three feralis assists.”
Archer rolled his eyes. “And learning fast.”
“You’re not the only teacher around,” she shot back.
“But I’ll be one of them.” He made it sound like a threat.
Zane brightened. “You’re sticking close for a while? Jonah said I should ask you for some pointers.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to get back to the bat cave?” Sera muttered.
Archer didn’t even glance in her direction. “I want to go through some archives.”
Zane pursed his lips. “Those old things? Looking for something in particular?”
Archer shrugged.
Sera stifled her own spurt of curiosity. Whatever he did was his business. He’d made that clear enough. “Ready to try again, Zane? I think I’m starting to feel my demon ascend.”
Archer shook his head. “You need a chance to heal. You and I will go a round tonight.” Before she could protest, he said to Zane, “Shall we spar while I wait for Bookie?”
Zane’s face lit up. She figured as playmates went, she fell somewhere below frogs and mud pies when the big boys showed up. With a huff, she turned to go.
“Sera.” A rueful note in Archer’s voice stopped her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I should’ve known you wouldn’t accept the demonstration meekly.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Thanks.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
“Wasn’t much of an apology either.”
His scowl deepened. “I wasn’t apologizing. I told you before I’d do what it takes to keep you alive.”
He’d walked away, saying she’d be better off without him. And he’d really meant he’d be better off without her. Oh, but he did admit he regretted it. Too damn bad—for both of them.
“Then I’ll return the favor. Zane, when Archer attacks, he overcommits and goes too far. So long as he’s faster and stronger, his strategy wins. But he holds nothing back for the next step. I suppose an annihilation-class demon doesn’t think it needs a next step, what with the annihilation and all.” Archer’s half-lidded stare weighed on her. “Maybe you can help him with that.”
Zane nodded eagerly. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She contemplated sneaking up to the balcony to watch. But she doubted Zane was the fighter to adjust that Archer attitude. And she knew he’d know she was up there. She didn’t want to guess what motivation he’d ascribe to her staying.
She wasn’t sure she knew herself.
The subtle shift of air when he leaned toward her as she walked past all but drew sparks along her skin and shivered down the marking over her spine and thighs.
Maybe the demon wanted that rematch now. Unresolved tension settled deep, making her bones itch.
She paced in the lobby, staring out at the hazy daylight, unwilling to do anything stupid, such as make herself a target, just because she feared she would jump her drill instructor’s bones—and not in the approved gutter-fighting sense.
Still, hours remained before the deeper dangers of night. What was the worst that could happen? Despite the gruesome answers that kaleidoscoped through her mind, the twisting inside her drove her outside.
The chill sunk into her core and lulled the edgy demon. Or maybe it was just distance from Archer. When a sharp rumble attracted her attention, she hopped the next train to wherever.
The city flashed by—like her life lately, zipping past at half-blurred speed. She’d been possessed by a demon, slept with a man who should’ve been dead, been rejected as a bad bet by a should’ve-been-dead man possessed by a demon. . . . No, that was unfair. Rejection implied far more emotional connection than he allowed.
She’d had rejection enough to last a lifetime the day her mother left. Mom coming back had only sealed the deal. Her therapy studies had convinced her, intellectually, her mother’s abandonment had nothing to do with her. But that didn’t change the fact she’d been left alone to care for four angry brothers and a devastated father.
And then her mother had returned. In a broken whisper barely louder than the car engine, she’d told how the voices in her head had driven her away, how they were driving her now thirteen-year-old daughter in tow, toward the river. Her cry had risen, in counterpoint to the straining engine as they roared up the bridge. “Now they won’t get us,” she’d screamed, just as the car smashed the concrete railing into gray dust.
Sera steeled herself against the memory. She was just brooding because her father, through no fault of his own, and Archer, definitely to be faulted, had each come to the same conclusion about her: Not worth holding on to.
At least Mom had wanted her
around, at the end.
Her own wallowing drove her out of her seat. When the train doors opened, she followed the wave of exiting commuters.
The wave broke around a thin man in the center of the platform. Only the thatch of his muddy brown hair was visible as he hunched over, shaking a glass vial urgently over his hand, though nothing came out.
“Ah, it hurts again,” he murmured. “It hurts.”
Sera, carried past him by the crowd, turned at the chiming tinkle of breaking glass. The man stood in a pool of shards, his body slumped, as if he’d dropped something precious, but he didn’t bend down to retrieve any pieces.
She frowned, remembering the kids at the dance club, popping pills. No wonder Betsy was complaining about the drug’s potency if people jonesed this bad.
She swung around a cement column, avoiding the last commuters, but when she took a few steps back along her path, the man was gone. Only the glittering circle of glass remained.
She looked in all directions. A wind swept past, ruffling posters taped to the column. Her gaze locked on the glossy neon blue of one flyer.
Tent revival. Faith healing.
She almost laughed. See what thinking of a preacher father and demon-ridden lover predisposed the eye to notice? If only she could’ve taken the poor addict.
She started back toward the platform, then stopped. She considered the street name of the train stop and returned to the flyer. The revival was only a few blocks up.
No other place to be, she reminded herself.
Revival conjured up images of billowing white canvas and a balmy Southern afternoon. Instead, she found a church of concrete blocks that seemed grayer in the Chicago wind. She joined the straggling line of people entering the building.
An usher gestured her down an empty aisle in one of the dozen semicircles of folding chairs. “I pray you find what you are seeking tonight.”
She ignored the handbills—all invitations to join the church—and watched the small choir file haphazardly onto the stage. They opened with a hymn just out of tune enough to make her wince. A faint nimbus of light glowed around the stage lights, and she blinked. The choir wasn’t so off-key that it brought tears to her eyes. But the halo remained.
A flicker of awareness rose in her. She knew anyone looking would see her eyes glinting violet.
She edged forward on her seat. Was a demon sneaking in? Besides hers, of course. She scanned the room. The spotlights left no shadows for even a scrawny malice to hide.
The choir shifted into a processional. A man stepped toward the stage, his silver-tinted hair reflecting the lights, but Sera’s gaze arrowed to the short, red-haired woman in practical flats behind him.
Her head was bowed, but when she glanced up to take the stairs, her eyes glinted an otherworldly gold.
Sera eased back, her heart knocking counterpoint to the thud of footsteps on the stage. The choir hit a more or less high note on “Yahweh” just as realization hit her.
“An angel.” If the toughest part of angelic possession was suffering through tone-deaf singers, she wondered whether she could still trade up.
The silver-haired preacher launched into a sermon on the nearness of heaven.
“Closer than he knows,” she muttered. “Unfortunately, so’s the other side.”
The crowd stilled when he lowered the microphone and let his gaze roam the room. Slowly, he lifted the mike. “Someone is hurting, and no aspirin out of the bathroom cabinet, no solvo out of the alleys is going to cure it. Let the Spirit in. Who is hurting here?”
An older woman stood with a slight wobble, and Sera almost heard the grinding pain of hips gone bad. Two ushers flanked the woman’s progress toward the preacher, who stood with one hand outstretched. As the woman stepped up to the stage, her forehead connected with his hand. The choir burst into song. The woman fell backward into the ushers’ arms.
Sera squinted against the aura that blazed up, not around the preacher, but off to one side.
The redhead stood, hands clasped. Around her, fragile, scintillating whorls of gold sparked and glowed. The otherworldly light expanded, like a blown bubble. The aura engulfed the first row of seats, then the next, spreading toward Sera.
She stood, uncertain how angelic energy would interact with the demon. She didn’t think it would leap out of her chest like some horror-movie alien. Neither did she particularly want to test her theory.
“Are you hurting?” The preacher pointed at her. “Come forward and receive the Spirit.”
Hadn’t she learned anything by falling for the demon’s promise to answer all her questions? She’d been folded into a deeper layer of mysteries, only to find another, still-deeper stratum beyond that.
She stepped into the aisle. Apparently she hadn’t learned a damn thing. She walked through the ring of angelic light, hand over her chest. Just in case.
The redhead swayed. Did she sense a disturbance in the force? Sera wondered wryly.
The preacher smiled, capped teeth almost as big as a feralis’s, if not quite so scary. “My dear, does your heart pain you?”
An usher thrust a second microphone at her.
“What?” She dropped her hand. “No. It’s my . . .” Actually, the demon had done a lovely job. Even the dull ache in her shoulder was mostly gone. “It’s my soul, I suppose.”
The red-haired woman lifted her head. Her eyes shone gold.
Suddenly, tempting her to a game of possessed chicken—whose otherworldly passenger would flinch first?—seemed colossally stupid. Could she tell Sera carried a teshuva and not a djinni? Would it matter to her possessing angel?
“Isn’t it always the soul?” The preacher beamed. “Come closer, child.”
She realized she’d taken a half step back. Maybe her demon was trying to tell her something—or was it a lingering, childhood resentment of the God who’d taken her father’s time, yet hadn’t saved her mother?
She shook off her uncertainty and stepped forward. His hand touched her forehead. She couldn’t help herself; she closed her eyes.
And staggered back as the choir launched into another bombastic hymn, the bass cabinets under the stage thudding in her chest.
“Be healed,” the preacher cried, “of all that afflicts you.”
Since she didn’t want to add ruptured eardrums to the list, she reeled away. But not before she’d looked hard into the blank, gold eyes of the angel-ridden woman.
A few-dozen people advanced up the aisle. Sera threaded between them out the back door to cool her head, which spun with possibilities.
The clouds had consumed the last of the day’s sun. In the charcoal light, she rubbed her eyes, as if she could smear away the violet tint she knew was there.
The revival carried on into the night. Finally, the crowd trickled out, all smiles and eyes reddened with human tears. Sera slipped back inside.
The angel woman stood next to the preacher. Gold light still glimmered, now closer around her, as if the evening’s work had sapped her. But when he put an arm around her and kissed her forehead, the glow brightened.
A call from the other side of the stage drew him away, and the woman looked up to meet Sera’s gaze. They met at the front of the stage.
The woman fumbled in her pocket. “Have you come for your money back?”
Sera shook her head. “Why would I want my money back?”
“Since we couldn’t heal you. Your soul is still divided.”
“As was noted earlier in this very spot, isn’t it always?”
“Sometimes more than others,” the woman murmured. “A complicated philosophical point I don’t feel like arguing right now.”
Sera took a leap. “So I take it your husband doesn’t know you are angel-ridden.”
The woman touched the wedding band on her finger. “We call it hosting.”
“Does sound less invasive that way,” Sera agreed.
The woman smiled faintly. She sat and patted the chair beside her. “I’m Nanette, and I don�
�t want a crick in my neck. Unlike the teshuva, my angel won’t mend every bump and bruise.”
She sounded more envious than condemning, so Sera joined her. “I’m Sera, and I apparently had a crick in my soul. How long have you hosted an angel?”
“Since my miraculous recovery from leukemia at age seven.” The woman wrinkled her nose. “When my aunts talked about angels watching over me, they had no idea.” She studied Sera. “You haven’t had yours long. I see remnants of hell still popping off you like sparks from a firecracker.”
“Tell me I don’t stink of brimstone.”
Nanette smiled. “No. But you shouldn’t look anyone in the eye when the demon is active. The purple is too intense even for colored contacts, although people will try to explain it that way.”
Sera remembered the glint in Archer’s eyes when he confronted her on the bridge before the demon had come to her. She’d thought it beautiful.
“I’ve never seen your kind here before,” Nanette said.
“Maybe they’re smart enough to hide.”
“I wouldn’t have missed them. They just don’t come. Neither do the angel hosts. Most possessed think they’ve learned enough about the battle between good and evil.”
“But you’ve stayed connected with . . .” Sera thought a moment. “I was going to say the real world. Maybe I should just say oblivious.”
Nanette gave her a ghost of a smile. “I was young when I married Daniel. He was a good man, for no reason other than goodness’ sake. I needed that.”
Sera frowned. “He doesn’t know what you are, but he’s taking credit for your work.”
Nanette bristled. “I bet we help more people with our after-school program and soup kitchen than you with all your demon slaying.”
Sera held up one hand. “I’m not criticizing what you have.” A job she loved. A man who loved her. To smooth the other woman’s ire, she added, “My father was a pastor. He’s why I came tonight when I saw your flyer.”
Nanette nodded, still a little stiff. “I don’t mean to be defensive. Honestly, the angel hosts are more judgmental than you. As if the war can only be fought with flaming swords.”
“Your swords flame?” Sera smiled. “I bet that’s tidier, not to mention way cool.”