by Jessa Slade
“It’s my fault you have no artifacts to safeguard you.”
She had no defenses at all… She curled the coffee mug into her chest, holding its warmth close. His fault, indeed.
“But I’ll make it right.” He gave her a fleeting grin that made her breath catch. “It’s what I do.”
Is this what Saint Nicole had faced? A man desperately trying to do the right thing, armed only with perfectly prepared coffee and that smile? No wonder the poor woman had left.
Even hell itself might not withstand him.
What chance had one lone demon?
Chapter 10
Like a warrior braving enemy armies, Fane marched through the crowd at the Christkindlmarket, leading Bella behind him. Clouds had thickened over Daley Plaza, seeming to come down almost to the top of the decorated evergreen towering over the Picasso sculpture, but the plummeting temperatures hadn’t thinned the last-minute throng at the seasonal open market.
Bella tugged at him. “My hands are cold. I need a Glühwein.”
He let her steer him toward one red-striped tent. Of course she’d see—and smell—that. The spicy scent of the mulled wine had already lured more than a few chilled shoppers who browsed with one hand around the boot-shaped commemorative mugs.
She ordered two and paid before he could pull out his wallet. “Danke,” he said.
They stepped into a space between two tents to get out of the crowds and out of the wind. Bella raised her mug. “Fröhliche Weihnachten.”
“Merry Christmas,” he guessed.
“I can say it in most languages.” She sipped her wine. “I used it as a chant to keep the tenebrae out.”
“Is it only during this season you feel their presence?”
She shook her head. “They are always around. But most of the year, they find plenty of easy fodder at the Coil. My little issues are lost in the crowd. It’s only now, when I can’t help but think about…about what happened that they focus on me.” She looked down at the mug of red wine clutched between her hands. “I must glow like a torch to the demons. Like Mirabel did.”
Fane almost reached over to pull her into his arms, but out in the open, with their big coats and the hot wine in between them, the word ‘demon’ reverberating in his ears, he felt strangely frozen.
She shook her head again, more decisively this time, as if she hadn’t needed any consolation anyway. “If you’ve brought me here to replace the Jesuses, forget it. The defenses are powered by the believers. I can’t do it myself. You need a soul to have convictions.”
He wondered if she realized her certainty she didn’t have a soul was its own sort of conviction. But then, what did he know about souls? He was just a foot soldier in the war against darkness. Fighting for the light had given him no particular insights.
“Instead of stealing other people’s beliefs, you can buy them.”
She grimaced. “Not just any knickknack repels tenebrae. It has to be the focus of someone’s hopes and dreams and…” She slanted a glance at him. “And love. That’s why the baby Jesuses worked so well. Christmas trees too—the emotions children shower on a Christmas tree put all the lights and tinsel to shame—but obviously those are harder to sneak out of people’s houses.”
He coughed on his glow wine. “You tried that?”
“Just once. I ended up with a handful of pine needles and a backside full of buckshot.”
“I can imagine.” He really could, since he’d had his hands on that ass not so many hours ago… He banished the thought. “Well, I know we can find something here with the spirit of Christmas.”
He ducked out the back end of the corridor between the tents and cut over to the farthest trailing vendors. There were fewer shoppers here at the edge, exposed to the street and the wind. One stall, enclosed in thick canvas on three sides, swayed a little in the cutting breeze and a tinkling music like wind chimes rose above the murmurings of the crowd behind them.
Fane stood to one side and waved Bella forward. She stepped into the small shelter with a small gasp.
The interior walls and the ceiling were hung with bright mercury glass ornaments. Simple balls and hearts, intricate doves and angels, fanciful birdhouses and nutcrackers, even a fine-spun dreamcatcher, and stars, stars, stars swayed from every surface.
Bella’s gaze fixed not on the ornaments but on the little man hunched at the work bench with a blow torch, a multitude of glass canes, and a flowing white beard.
“There really is a Santa Claus,” she murmured.
Fane nudged her forward. “Handmade, one of a kind, Old World artistry, made by Santa himself. These should keep the tenebrae away.”
The old man glanced up, his blue eyes bright behind his little spectacles and his cheeks red from the cold. Or maybe from the Glühwein at his elbow in a mug substantially larger than the cute commemorative boot. “If you’re looking for cheap crap, get out.”
Bella slanted a dubious look at Fane
He shrugged. “Here’s a man who obviously believes in the power of his creation.”
The old man glowered. “I’m the only one who cares about the work anymore.”
“Not the only one,” Bella said softly. She drifted forward. “What are you making now?”
He straightened with an aggrieved noise to reveal the small sleigh between his burn-scarred hands. He’d spun out the glass ridiculously fine, the sleigh’s tiny runners curled high in front, as if in expectation of a terrible snowstorm to be crossed, and hung with two tiny glass bells.
Bella reached out to nudge the little bell with her fingertip. The ring was almost inaudible, high and sweet. “The Snow Queen’s sleigh.”
The old man thrust out his chin so his beard bristled alarmingly. “Not Santa’s?”
“No. It’s empty.”
He cackled, more demented gnome than jolly old elf. “I could sell you gifts to fill it.”
“And eight reindeer.” She smiled. “Nine if you have one with a red nose.”
Fane tossed out his credit card, his attention fixed on Bella’s grin. The sight of it—white and wide—made his chest throb. It had been so long…
“I have a finished one.” The old man pointed toward the wall. “Not the same, of course.”
“No,” Bella said. “I’ll take the one in your hand, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s not quite done,” he warned.
“It never is, is it?”
He cackled again.
As the old man wrapped up the purchases in tissue, he gave Bella a long, rambling lecture on how to pack the glass after every holiday. “For your lifetime,” he bellowed suddenly. “Through your children’s lifetime and your grandchildren’s lifetime, these will last.”
“I need them to last at least through the solstice,” she told him.
“At least. Watch out. The edges can be sharp.” The old man swung his Glühwein-glazed eyes to Fane. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Years ago. I sold you a tree topper star. Gorgeous thing, gold edged cutouts so you could see the silvering inside. What happened to it?”
Fane shifted from one boot to the other. “I think my ex took it with her.”
“Ah. Very sharp edges, that.”
Fane grunted.
The old man grinned. “So I suppose you need another star.”
With two shopping bags in hand and enough money swapped to keep the old man in glow wine through the next equinox, Fane led the way back through the crowds toward the parking garage.
Bella trailed behind him, letting him break the path, until they got to the relatively clear sidewalk where she sidled up beside him. “So you and Nicole did your Christmas shopping there.”
“She said the mercury glass reminded her of her grandparents’ tree, and she wanted a ‘Baby’s First Winter’ ornament for them.” He stared up at the sky where the clouds had descended more menacingly, shaving hours off the light of day. “We never used it. I don’t know where that one went.”
They stopped at a cr
osswalk as a mob of runners passed them. The runners were all dressed in gold and white, and many sported wings: fairy wings, feathered wings, bat wings. The race bibs around their necks said ANGEL RUN. Some were clutching fake candles, some had boots of glow wine. They all giggled as they ran.
Bella clicked her tongue. “Crazy.”
Fane lifted the shopping bags and his brows, and she inclined her head in wry acknowledgment.
Toward the tail end of the pack, a runner in a white tutu sprinkled with gold glitter cavorted with a long, slender wand topped with a gold star. From the star dangled a string, and at the end of the string danced a small cluster of rounded green leaves studded with white berries.
The runner paused beside them. “You’re under the mistletoe!”
Bella blinked.
Fane leaned over and, very gently, matched his lips to hers.
It wasn’t a long kiss—probably only one change of the traffic light; maybe two—but when he lifted his head, the angel runners were gone and only a sprinkle of gold glitter remained on the sidewalk.
Bella blinked again. “The bomb.”
He drew back. “What?” While he’d been kissing her under the mistletoe and for some time thereafter, she’d been thinking about detonating demons. The heat curling thought his veins fizzled away.
The crosswalk sign blinked, and she started across, the clack of her heels a staccato counterpoint to her words. “The demons are trapped inside the orbs, right, at least until the glass is broken, and then we have a catastrophic eruption of churning tenebrae emanations. We can’t move the orbs for fear of triggering them; we can’t move the residents at the home for fear of the same. But, what if we were able to catch the tenebrae as they emerge?” She tapped the paper bag in his hand. “These ornaments made me think; the djinn-men aren’t the only ones to blow glass. Instead of dreamcatchers, we’d have demoncatchers.”
He paced alongside her. “I have no doubt the talyan are considering all the angles.”
She scoffed. “You’ve seen the crap cars they drive. They don’t have the resources for extreme demonic containment.”
He frowned. “The league isn’t interested in containment anyway. They’re like me; they do crackdown, clear-out and cleanup.”
She stared down at her boots, her shoulders hunched. “I’m thinking of another way.”
“There’s only one way to deal with—” He cut himself off, but she didn’t look up. Of course she knew what he’d been about to say.
How had he forgotten, even for a moment, what she was?
But wasn’t that exactly what he’d told her, he wanted to forget, just for a night? Yet the sun had risen—as much as a northern sun would rise, anyway—and here he was, still side by side with a demon in the stolen body of a dead girl.
She tucked her hands into opposite sleeves of her parka, the faux fur cuffs making a thick muff. “If we could just stop them where they can’t hurt anyone, if they never had a chance to get at the old people or anyone else…”
If only she hadn’t.
Her words remained as unsaid as his, but still the echo reverberated between them, pushing them a few steps apart as they walked.
“You’re talking about more than a few really big glass ornaments,” he said. “It’d need to withstand the earthly explosion of Thorne’s gifts plus the supernatural forces inside. We’d need abraxas-strength power.” His hand tightened around the rough twine handle of the shopping bags. Nothing like the smooth, flowing, living grace of his sword.
Bella glanced away. “Impossible, I guess.”
As impossible as reclaiming his blesséd weapon. He knew she hadn’t meant that; still, the implication was inescapable. And it cut deeper than demon glass or holy steel.
Finally, he said, “Only one place might give you what you want.”
Since obviously that wasn’t him.
* * *
Fane parked the Porsche across the street from the gleaming glass and steel office building he thought he’d never see again. He turned to Bella. “Here’s the plan—”
Reflected lights from the building glinted in her glasses, dimmer and distorted. “We go inside sphericanum headquarters, introduce ourselves as an ex-warden and an imp, and get our heads chopped off.”
He narrowed his eyes. “This is why I’ll make the plans, thank you.”
“The sphericanum isn’t going to help us. You are a rebel now, as far as they are concerned, and I am anathema, or worse. I don’t even know what’s worse than that.” She hunkered down in her seat, and the fluffy ruff of her coat puffed up around her nose, muffling her voice. “I’ve seen them shred tenebrae until there isn’t even dust left to float away on the wind.”
He wanted to reach for her, to soothe her fears. Instead, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “The sphericanum has tricks we could use.”
“We don’t need them that badly.”
“You don’t place bombs before Christmas because you’re going to be on vacation until after New Year’s. Thorne will act sooner, not later.” He stared up at the towering angelic command building. “Ending the djinn threat is a purpose that rises above sphere prejudice.”
“There is no above the sphere,” she reminded him. “There is only under. Preferably six feet under, as far as they’re concerned. And their prejudice is always extreme prejudice. Hence the head chopping.”
“If I can make them see reason—”
“Because zeal and reason go so well together. Like a bottle of Everclear and a blow torch.”
He scowled. “You could give the Grinch lessons in gloom.”
She’d taken out one of the glass baubles they’d bought at the Christkindlmarket when he’d first suggested their stop at the sphericanum headquarters, and now she clutched the little red and gold sphere like she wanted to crawl inside it herself. “I’m most likely going to be attacked by demons and sucked back into the tenebraeternum on the anniversary of my birth death. I really didn’t want to speed up the process by walking into heaven central.”
“It’s better if you wait here anyway.”
He slammed out of the car, but when he crossed the street she was only half a step behind him.
The front door was not guarded, although the security punch pad was an upscale model protected from the weather by a cover designed to look like a gate with a pearly finish. Somebody in the building had a sense of humor, but Fane had never met him or her.
He aimed his finger at the intercom button, then tried his code instead. The door lock clicked open.
Bella settled back on her heels. “Huh. Trusting.”
“Or trap.”
She sighed.
After the whimsy of the pearly gate, the lobby inside was uninspired Class A corporate. Fane marched them past the potted palms decorated with silver tinsel to the elevator.
As the door opened, Bella hesitated.
Fane took out his keys. “You can wait in the car.”
She took the keys, running her fingertip over the ridges. He swallowed back the unexpected surge of disappointment that she was going to leave.
“Danke,” she said, but then she walked into the elevator.
He followed and held out his hands for the keys. “I don’t want a blind girl driving my Porsche.”
“Don’t be so sexist.”
He entered his security code again and stabbed the top-floor button. “It’s not the sex part I have trouble with.”
She stared up at the ascending numbers. “So I noticed.”
He sputtered, but she hiked up the hem of her parka and tucked the keys into the front pocket of her tight jeans. Clearly he wasn’t getting those keys back unless he wanted to wrestle her down and rummage around in her pants. The thought had a certain charm, but was not recommended protocol in the elevator of an angelic stronghold. The speedy elevator arrived at their destination before he could come up with another plan.
So much for being the one with the plans.
The elevator doors ope
ned and they faced five angelic wardens, all clad in white and barefoot, like something from a Christmas postcard.
All with weapons drawn.
Chapter 11
Bella pushed her glasses higher on her nose—a thin disguise, those two brittle panes of glass—and let out a shuddering breath. Maybe her last one if the wardens’ massed surge of righteous fury was any indication.
Fane braced his hand in the closing elevator door. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so careless as to leave my code active.”
The warden in the middle angled a shepherd’s crook across his chest. To the imp, the crook blazed, molten streams of etheric energy spiraling upward like ghostly fire. “We would not have thought you would be so stupid as to use it.”
She heard herself say, “I suppose you both learned a lesson.”
Wow, she so did not need that focused golden fuming—Fane included—upon her. She stepped past Fane’s arm toward the wardens. If she was going to die, she might as well get it over with.
But the wardens retreated a step, except for the middle one. That was fine; she wasn’t here for the VIP tour. She tilted her head toward Fane. “Back to your plan.”
“Plan?” In contrast to his crook, the warden’s tone dripped ice.
“To retrieve my sword,” Fane said as he stepped into the room.
His slightly haughty emphasis on the last word made Bella wonder if the wardens’ compared the size of their…weapons. Maybe a skinny pole with a hook on the end just wasn’t considered as sexy as a long, thick sword. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Like the enmity wasn’t thick enough.
But the warden didn’t seem annoyed, or at least no more annoyed than he’d been already. If anything, a note of glee lightened his voice when he said, “Your abraxas is irretrievably ruined. Even if you take it back from the djinn-man, its influence is forever poisoned.”
Bella didn’t need to see the flare of gold in Fane’s eyes to sense his rage. “If Thorne’s power has altered the sword, I will change it back.”
The warden at one end of the line shook her head, her voice every bit as uncompromising, if less delighted. “The flaws will be permanent and impossible to absolve.”