by Jessa Slade
He was still gasping where he’d collapsed beside her. The storm of their racing heartbeats calmed.
“So, are we dead now?” he murmured against her neck.
“I could die happy.”
His arm tightened around her. “What just happened?”
“Classic life-affirming behavior after a catastrophe.”
“So you’re saying you do this for all your patients?”
“Don’t piss me off when I’m afterglowing.” She glanced down at their tangled limbs. “Actually, we’re not glowing anymore.”
“The sun’s coming up.”
She hadn’t noticed the square of the window beginning to lighten. With the mundane light and no threat in sight, her demon-enhanced vision faded, unneeded.
Now that they’d slacked their desire, what else was fading?
She sighed and sat up, finger-combing her hair. “We should get ready for the funeral.”
Archer pushed himself up onto one elbow. “No funeral. I told you, a talyan cadaver won’t last long once the demon’s gone. We’re lucky to get it in the ground.”
She twisted to look at him. “Doesn’t someone say a few words, something?”
“What is there to say?” Faint Southern sweetness in his low voice, he sang back to her, “ ‘Sleep deep, my child, and fuss no more.’ ”
Her fingers tangled in the knots of her hair. “What about good-bye?”
“It’s not a journey that needs your good-byes.” He captured her hands and smoothed the snarls she’d made. “It’s over, Sera.”
Of course it was. She went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face.
When she returned to find her clothes, he was on his phone, his expression grim. Speaking of cold water . . .
She dressed and waited until he’d put his jeans on to ask. “That call didn’t look good.”
“Just getting messages. Nothing new on the search for the djinn-man. But Bookie has some results from the malice draining. He said considering what Zane reported, he wants to run a few more tests with you.”
“Tests.” She grimaced. “But maybe Zane didn’t die in vain.”
“It’s always in vain.” He pulled on his shirt and rolled back the sleeves, exposing the wild, dark lines of his reven. “Bookie said the hotel still reeks of birnenston, but he needs only a few minutes with you in his lab, so you’ll be fine.”
She frowned.“We don’t care how Corvus plans to rip the Veil. We just need to stop him. And to stop him, we need to find him. Isn’t it time to think about my trap idea?”
“With you as bait?” He shook his head. “We don’t necessarily need to find him. We just need to make sure he doesn’t find you.”
“But what about the next talya whose teshuva can do what mine does? If he finds another . . .”
“He won’t. You’re unique.”
“You can’t know that.”
He looked down at her. “I know.”
He took her hand and raised it toward his heart. She hesitated, surprised at the gesture.
Then he locked a bracelet around her wrist.
The dull metal weighed heavy. “Gee. A present.”
“No uglier than your necklace.” He shrugged at her scowl. “It’s a tracking bracelet. Niall asked me to put it on you earlier, but Zane kept you occupied. Don’t go outside or it’ll set off alarms. Every talya has orders to jump you.”
“You’re the only talya who jumps me. And I’m officially rescinding that privilege.” She thrust out her arm. “Take it off. I’m not your prisoner.”
“Don’t think of it like that.Think of it like . . .” He cocked his head. “No, go ahead and think about it like that.”
She slammed her palm down on her thigh. “What about my meeting with Bookie?”
“I decided you’re right. Tests aren’t important enough to risk your life. And baited traps definitely aren’t worth it.”
“It’s not your life,” she said between gritted teeth.
“It is now.”
She sputtered.“What sort of throwback, slave-owning arrogance—”
He took her jaw gently in his hand. “I don’t think your situation compares, do you?” When she flushed and shook her head, he released her.
She folded her manacled arm against her belly, the bracelet chilling her through her T-shirt. The lover who had warmed her from the inside out was gone, leaving only the talyan male, cold and hard. “You said you wanted me at your back. This is not much of an alliance.”
“I said if anyone, you.” His throat moved, as if he swallowed back more words. “But my first promise was to keep you alive.”
“That was before we knew the fate of the world hung in the balance.”
He stilled, except for a single spark of violet that arced across his eyes, a reminder that once his demon had counted the destruction of worlds as nothing. She held her breath until he shifted, breaking the spell. “Just until we get this under control.”
“You’re the one who believes the war will never end,” she reminded him.
“But the battles do. Ask Zane.” He opened the door and frowned at her when she didn’t move. “You’re not confined to this room. Just this house.”
“I’m going to stay here for a while.” She kept her expression utterly neutral.
His frown deepened. “Fine.” He took a half step into the hall. “The bracelet is a titanium alloy. Ferales can’t break it. The lock can’t be picked, and Niall has the only key. You asked me about the mated-talyan bond. This is the best I can do.”
She looked him hard in the eye. “Get out.”
He took another step back, and she indulged in a monstrous door slam that barely missed his nose. Never mind the talyan sleeping down the hall. They’d apparently agreed to jump her.
She didn’t hear footsteps, but the pressure eased from her chest, so she knew he’d gone.
She retreated to the bed, found it rumpled, damp, and scented of sex. With a muttered curse, she threw herself into the desk chair.
She nudged aside the curtains. The gray light of dawn wasn’t going to get any brighter, considering the weight of the clouds. The hazy light was the same color as the manacle around her wrist, though not as muted and bitter as her pendant—or Archer’s blasted heart.
Maybe she could get Bookie to come to the safe house with his tests. She could call or e-mail him, assuming Archer hadn’t cut off her communications too.
She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. For sure she should cut off communications with him. How un-surprising that he hadn’t mentioned locking her up before they made love.
Not that she’d given him much chance to talk.
The urge to connect was classically life affirming, never mind his sardonic response. The connection didn’t have to be physical, of course, so why had she chosen that? Why with someone who courted death so exclusively, he left no room for any other courtship? And why was she even thinking courtship when she’d only needed the release of another body against hers?
Considering she fancied herself a seeker, she shied away from those questions with hypocritical quickness.
She didn’t have to explain herself, not even to herself. No one would call her on it, certainly not the entity within her. It had less than nothing to say.
She pushed to her feet. Archer’d had time to get out of her way. She’d find a laptop or phone and contact Bookie.
It sure would be nice to have some answers from somebody.
Walking into the hotel lobby behind Niall and Ecco, Archer gagged as the scorched miasma of birnenston assaulted his demon senses. The teshuva scuttled deeper out of his awareness, away from the unholy poison. “I thought it was getting better.”
Niall coughed. “Bookie said so. But since unadulterated humans hardly get worse than a headache, what does he care?”
“It’ll never be clean again,” Ecco said. “Let it burn, or sell it to the angel crowd. They’re always, ‘Brimstone this and hellfire that.’ ”
; Niall grimaced. “We won’t be here long. I want to see how Lex and Perrin are coming with the cleanup. And this still feels less grim than the safe house.”
Archer couldn’t disagree—Sera was probably vibrating the walls with her fury by now.
In the lobby, a half dozen talyan waited. Niall didn’t waste time with niceties. “Tell me what we have.”
Valjean stepped forward. The talya’s face was lined with weariness, so tired his teshuva hadn’t been able to keep up with the damage. “I’ve been all over the city. Twice. I can’t pick up the djinn-man’s sign anywhere.” He paused. “No, that’s not quite true. I get whiffs of him everywhere, but when I follow, I end up trailing some clueless human.”
Archer shifted restlessly. “Djinn accomplices?” Just as the league had the assistance of human Bookkeepers, so the djinn and angels had their spheres of influence in the worldly realm. “Corvus told Zane he was mustering an army.”
Valjean shook his head. “I talked to a few, but Corvus said an army of corpses, and they weren’t dead.” He grimaced. “Although one woman said I looked like I was working too hard and offered to help me forget my troubles with a few of her pills. She smiled the whole time. Wouldn’t be much of a soldier for the tenebraeternum.”
“Corvus is powerful, but he’s still a man wrapped around that demon. He didn’t just disappear.” Niall bracketed his temples with his spread fingers, his thumb pressing against the stark lines of the demon mark around his eye. “How far out have you gone?”
Valjean slumped. “I’ll go farther.”
“Good.” Niall turned to the next talya. “Jonah?”
“Horde-tenebrae activity is up across the city. Their stench is probably interfering with Val’s tracking. Can’t tell if what’s going down is making them desperate or incredibly cocky.” The fighter laid his hand over the vicious puckered wound running down his face and neck. “I was rear guard, three brothers in front of me, and a feralis tried to grab me from behind. Thing had to know we’d take it, but it wanted to kill me first.”
Archer calculated a scant half inch to one side and Brother Jonah would have spewed his lifeblood from his carotid before his teshuva could intervene.
Shifting his gaze from the half-decapitated fighter to the tracker swaying on his feet, Archer realized they were losing this battle.
Niall’s gaze grew distant as he listened to more reports. Archer knew he was piecing all the information together in search of patterns and possibilities. Having barely escaped the Irish famine, he hungered now for the details that let him lead a ragtag band of demon slayers toward the glory to save their souls.
His expression said their prospects were about as appealing as the last potato collapsing into black rot. “Bookie, what have you found out about this Corvus?”
Bookie looked as road-worn as the rest, ruddy features blanched. “The league register has one possible match: a Corvus Valerius, possessed back in Nero’s day.”
A murmur swept the room. Such a long possession indicated a demon of incredible power. The demon would need to keep human flesh alive through centuries of cellular decay and the inevitable madness of isolation brought on by such unnatural longevity. And, of course, win every battle with every angelic host it encountered.
How dark must the djinni be to never release its stranglehold on one man? And how twisted must that man be? Archer’s own heart withered at the thought.
Bookie went on. “The register says Corvus was an arena slave who fought his way to gladiator rank. On the verge of earning his freedom, he was pitted against three cannibal savages, a lion and a bear, and an alleged Amazon—at the same time. He lost. League chronicles from then on repeat variations on the Corvus name.”
“Why the bid for apocalypse now?” Archer wondered aloud.
Bookie shrugged. “Because he can?”
“There’s never been a better time,” Jonah said. “Or should I say, a worse time. Today, one bomb maims hundreds, one disease wipes out thousands, one dictator dooms millions to poverty and terror.” In his vehemence, blood trickled from his barely knit flesh. “Evil isn’t just beating us. It’s pointing and laughing and racking up frequent-flier miles too.”
“Well, statistically,” Bookie said, “there are more people on the planet, so of course more people bleed, suffer, and die.”
Niall rubbed a hand over his face. “So now God is a numbers runner? If anybody’s running, it’s us, out of options.”
“Not really,” Bookie said. “Do what you’ve always done. Just keep playing along.”
Ecco stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“The angels and djinn fight a holy war that can never be won. The teshuva fight for a redemption they can never earn. And you all are just along for the beating.” Bookie tapped the papers against his leg. “Keep up the good work and nothing has to change.”
Archer’s gut twisted at Bookie’s interpretation, even though he’d come to the same revelation a long time ago—though not so long ago as Corvus, who’d apparently decided to end the stalemate.
In some sick way, he understood. As Sera had said, empathy meant feeling, truly feeling, another’s pain. He had less than two centuries to Corvus’s two millennia. Now that she’d brought his emotions back to life, reminded him what it was to fear, he could only dread what Corvus was capable of, having lived ten times the agony.
Bookie cleared his throat. “I’ve also finished the workup on the most recent possessed.”
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “Sera.”
Bookie shrugged indifferently. “Her technique for dispatching malice brought up some disturbing questions—”
“Skip to the point, man,” Jonah said.
Bookie glowered over the rim of his glasses. “The continued tenebrae activity is due to persistent damage in the Veil. And she is the one preventing the Veil from sealing.”
“The Veil is always in flux after a crossing,” Ecco said. “Although not so long, usually. Her teshuva—”
“Not her teshuva,” Bookie snapped. “She.” His gaze narrowed on Archer. “Sera.”
Archer felt a chill go through him. “How? She’s human. Demon-ridden, yes, but still human.” Suddenly, the distinction seemed terribly elemental to him.
Bookie frowned. “In the ESF reading, Sera’s soul force radiates outward into our realm, conjoined with the demon, just like any talya/teshuva possession. But her soul force also cascades backward along her teshuva’s remaining umbilical. Through the Veil. Into the tenebraeternum.” He gave a little shrug, with an expression like reluctant admiration. “You could almost say that instead of the demon possessing her, she is riding the demon.”
Archer stiffened. “No one would choose to be possessed.”
“That’s your occupational myopia. If you’d look around, you’d see people are capable of more than you suppose, all on their own.”
Reluctantly, Archer considered Sera’s history. Between her mother’s suicide, her career in death, her accident, her relentless delving into mysteries with no answers, maybe she hadn’t chosen to bargain her soul, but a conspiracy of circumstances had cut off any other path.
Niall asked, “What does this mean to Corvus’s plan?”
The pages in Bookie’s hand crinkled as he clenched them. “I can’t say. I just thought it was interesting. Has to make one question Sera’s intent, unconscious or not. And, actually, the true strain of her demon since it apparently crossed over in response to Corvus’s tweaking the Veil.”
Valjean straightened. “You think we’ve been harboring a djinn all along?”
Archer took a step forward. “No.”
“Djinn or teshuva, the flaw in the Veil remains,” Bookie said, “so it doesn’t really matter either way.”
Jonah sputtered. “She’s conspiring to free all the denizens of hell, and you don’t think that matters?”
Archer spun on the other man. “Sera does not want to destroy the Veil. She fights for us.”
Jonah scowled. “I won’t ris
k losing my soul just because you’ve lost your head fucking a djinn whore—”
Archer punched him. He aimed the short, vicious blow for the neck wound. Fragile, new flesh parted under his knuckles, and blood sprayed. Jonah reeled back, falling to his knees.
With a harmonized shout, the other talyan piled on Archer, pinning his arms. He braced his legs against their weight so they couldn’t take him down but stood unresisting.
He stared at Jonah through narrowed eyes as Niall helped the other man to his feet, hand clamped over the reopened wound.
Niall scowled at Archer reprovingly. “He wasn’t hurt enough?”
Archer cocked his head, assessing. “I could punch a hole in the other side, even him up, since he’s such a stickler for appearances.”
Jonah croaked something unintelligible. Niall led him to the lobby chairs and handed the bleeding talya a decorative pillow. “Hold that against your neck until it clots.”
Ecco chortled. “Now we see how our fine gent here is part of her connection to the demon realm.”
Bookie, who’d put half the room between himself and the scuffle, halted his retreat. “What do you mean?”
“You said you saw the link to the demon realm in the spectrograph. What I saw on the ESF recorder down in the lab were three strands. The thin umbilical of Sera’s demon, and piggybacked on that, Sera’s bright soul line. And then the third line, stronger and darker than the others. Archer.”
Archer remembered the braid of light pictured on the screen, the three strands in an intricate weaving dance. “The third strand would be the malice.”
Ecco shook his head. “No way would the emanations from a single malice show up as such a high-amplitude wavelength. And it’s the amps that get you. Sound like anyone we know?” He hooked his thumb meaningfully at Archer.
Everyone stared at Ecco. He shrugged. “Shit, guys. I’m not just a pretty face, and I do know my malice.”
Bookie wrinkled his lip toward a sneer. “And you think he is linked too?”
“The bond between them is damn strong, emphasis on ‘damned,’ ” Ecco said. “Just ask Jonah. When he stops foaming blood.”