by Jessa Slade
Oh, how she wanted. The furious heat of him beckoned her touch, and the storm of torment in his blue eyes hollowed her out. Not with an imp’s ugly hunger, but a desire purely hers to have him again, to give in to his belief they had a chance.
But the tenebrae couldn’t believe, and no light would ever be enough.
He stared down at her. “Whatever you want. I’m yours.”
She shrank away before her own longing betrayed her. And him. “No. I don’t—” Her throat tightened, as if trying to throttle her rejection. “Don’t want that from you.” Even she didn’t believe the wavering lie.
He reached for her. “You say I’m still a warrior. You could be too. Fight, Bella. Fight for us.”
In the instant before his embrace closed around her, she found the demon’s voice. “I won’t fight. And I don’t want you.”
“Don’t do this,” he warned. “Don’t push me away.”
“I am not some tragic woman you can win back with the power of your kiss. I am not a woman at all. I am tenebrae.”
“I’ve fought my demons already. I can fight one more.”
She let the double octaves rise, tearing past the ache in her throat. “I am not your demon.”
He froze, his blue eyes bright. “Too bad. If you were, maybe I could turn you over to the sphericanum and reclaim my ward. Or I could ransom you to Thorne in return for my sword. I bet he’d love to find out how he could steal dead bodies for his lesser demons.”
She held herself taut, though the taste of blood on the back of her tongue almost made her gag. “Probably not. I’m nothing, more trouble than I’m worth, really. But you of all people have seen that.”
“Yeah. You opened my eyes.” Still he lingered, his very presence burning through her resolve.
She reached down inside herself, seeking the imp’s inherent viciousness and Mirabel’s final rejection. And found nothing. Those shadows she’d hoarded so long were gone. All that remained was his demand that she fight.
Well, she could use that too.
She stood straighter. “This time it’s your turn to walk away, Cyril. Leave me.”
When he shook his head, the disheveled waves of his hair glinted with a touch of gold. “I can’t.”
“Then I’ll go.” She took one step toward the door.
“Stop.”
She did not face him.
He drew a ragged breath. “I won’t make you leave your refuge here. I’ll go. Put an artifact over the door behind me. Nothing will get in.”
Nothing ever again. His retreating footsteps echoed inside her.
Wait, her heart cried from the place where her shadows had been. I lied. Stay. She bit her lips tight until the words died in her chest. The hours were spinning down to darkness, and she would not take him with her.
But as the colors around her faded and the door closed with a terrible click, she sank to the floor. Over the window, the Porsche’s headlights gleamed once in a silver wash and were gone, but tears spattered her cheeks for a long time after, as cold and dark as ice.
Chapter 12
Fane wanted to send the Porsche screaming away from the Mortal Coil. How could she stand there—with the Christmas lights glinting in her red hair, her mouth bright from the bite of her teeth, the rumpled bed right over there—and ask him where “this” was going? And then tell him there was nothing between them?
His every muscle clenched with frustrated craving and outrage—this was where he was going, damn it—but he couldn’t even get up to the speed limit. The sleeting rain left the roads slicked and dangerous as he crept through the industrial distinct. At least there was nothing to hit; the streets were empty.
Empty as the place behind his fury threatening to rise up and swallow him like some heretofore unidentified tenebrae.
The parking lot behind the @1 warehouse, however, was an anthill. An anthill of black-vested, jack-booted, violet-eyed, demon-ridden madmen. And madwomen. They paused as he rolled the Porsche to a stop just outside the cyclone fencing. Ecco leaned in the open gate, his fingers looped through the wire as if he contemplated slamming the gate on the car.
Fane slammed out of the door and stalked toward the big talya bastard. The league males might hate him—mostly on principle; the league’s history of conflict with the sphericanum predated him by centuries—but there wasn’t a man alive, demonically possessed or not, who would harm a Porsche. “I want in.”
The talya rattled his gauntlets across the wire. “Door’s always open.” But he didn’t move out of the way.
“I’m going after Thorne.”
Ecco glanced over his shoulder and shouted, “Niall, the golden boy here finally got his curly locks on straight.”
The league leader was standing in the open loading bay, leaning over a large gutted grand piano serving as a table. He straightened with a frown and picked up his war hammer which had held down an oversized map. The paper scrolled inward, hiding its contents. Much like the league itself.
Fane bumped past Ecco and headed for the landing bay. The other talyan watched him pass, their violet irises signaling their aroused demons. This felt almost as condemning as his exit from the sphericanum.
Disdaining the stairs, he vaulted up into the landing bay. Though the big rolling door was wide open, the angle of the bay sheltered them from the worst of the wind and spattering rain.
“The sphericanum will want no part of this battle,” Liam warned. He rested his hand on the scrolled paper as an errant breeze riffled its edges.
“The sphericanum wants no part of me.”
“They’ll forgive you. I’m fairly certain it’s in their rule book.”
Fane shook his head. “It’s over.” In his head, he heard Bella’s bleak denunciation: I don’t want you. “I lost my abraxas. Which I know you haven’t forgotten because a shadow of my blood is still staining your lobby—by the way, you need to hire my cleaning service—from when my sucking chest wound spewed most of my pints courtesy of Thorne Halfmoon who used my fucking sword.”
The corner of Liam’s mouth quirked upward. “Maybe you should forgive him.”
“Not a chance.” Fane let out a breath. “The only chance I want now is to get my sword back. And then I will pledge it and myself to the league.”
Liam’s lips straightened as both eyebrows shot up. “The league doesn’t need a warden. Not even an ex-warden.”
“And it won’t get one. You need fighters. I will be that.”
The talya’s Irish brogue thickened with disbelief. “Will you now?”
Fane let the gold flicker in his own eyes. “The fight is all I have left.” He glanced over his shoulder where a couple of the talya males were standing by the Porsche with their hands on their hips. “That and a really sweet ride.”
“Then you’re definitely in.”
“Do I have to trade my wool coat for black leather?”
“Ask the Bookkeeper how easy it is to get demon ichor out of tweed.” The league leader centered the enormous hammer between his feet. “You know if you join us, the sphericanum truly won’t take you back. The bad blood between us is thicker than birnenston and twice as corrosive.”
“We all have our battles. I wouldn’t be surprised if we meet again someday on common ground.”
Liam inclined his shaggy head. “May that common ground run black with the ichor of our enemies.”
“Amen,” Fane murmured. He wondered if that was profane now he’d gone to the dark side. He found he really didn’t care. “How can I help?”
The league leader gave him a crooked smile. “Besides handing over your car keys?” He beckoned to his mate, Jilly, who clomped over with authority although her big black boots put the bright blue spikes of her hair barely on the level with Liam’s chin. “Show our new fighter the plan. I need to take care of some human resources issues. Or teshuva resources, I suppose. Otherwise there’ll be grumbling about the angel.”
Jilly gave an amused snort as Liam headed out toward the oth
er talyan, the hammer balanced easily in his hand. “Never mind the grumbling. It’s the silent shiv I’d worry about.”
Fane helped her spread the map again. “You were one who spoke up for healing me when Nanette brought me here after my last shiving with Thorne.”
She batted her hand as if he’d said thank you, which he hadn’t. “I’m practical. We need bodies, as many as we can get. Plus, I’m still new around the league.” Violet trickled into her pupils; a sign of her teshuva’s power spreading through her. “Some of the guys remember times when the sphericanum hunted the talyan to the death, like any other demons.”
“Maybe there was a time for a three-way war. But that time is not now.” He flattened his palm on the paper. “So what can I do to make up for my less enlightened brothers and sisters?” He paused as he studied the map. “Wait. This isn’t the nursing home.”
“We might not have a three-way war, but we’re still fighting on multiple fronts. The nursing home isn’t the target, or not the only one.” She curled back one page to reveal another map underneath. “We thought the nursing home was a test, Thorne messing with us, knowing we have a personal interest in the place.”
Fane traced the bull’s eyes on the map. “But it’s not a test. It’s a distraction.”
She nodded. “That’s what we’re thinking. A distraction we can’t ignore, not with Sera’s father and Nanette there. But if we focus all our attention there—which we might have done if we, meaning you, hadn’t found the bombs so early—what is Thorne up to elsewhere?”
“No good,” he murmured.
“Exactly. Which is why we started looking for other traces.” She touched one red circle on the map then three more. “Here are where we found djinni remains. And by remains, I mean mostly sulfur-scented dust and old bones. Thorne has killed several powerful djinn-men we know of, so he has to be making enemies of our enemies.”
“And yet he is still not our friend.”
“Not hardly. It seems he’s consolidating power—terror is such a great leadership skill—among the rest.”
Fane considered the arc of kills. “He’s setting up a boundary.”
“Apparently. Which puts his HQ somewhere in here.” She spread her fingers wide over the map.
“That’s a lot of ground.”
“Which is why we’re all going out tonight and tomorrow: last-minute Christmas shopping and recon.”
His gaze drifted across the map, marking landmarks. “What about the tenebrae orbs at the nursing home?”
Jilly wrinkled her nose, making the small stud glitter. “We’re splitting our forces. That attack is meant for us—whenever it goes off—and we won’t leave them undefended. Sera and Archer are there now, of course, with a few others.”
“My house has sphericanum shields built into it. Maybe your Bookkeeper can reverse engineer the protections for next time…”
Her expression softened into a wry grin as he trailed off. “Yeah, there’s always a next time, isn’t there?” Then even her smile faded. “Are you sure about this?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why is everyone questioning my intentions lately?”
She lifted one brow. “Not sure who you mean by everyone, golden boy, but maybe we don’t all have your easy access to faith.”
He stared at her. “What the hell makes you think it was easy?”
She didn’t drop her gaze. “We fight hard and, unlike us, you don’t have a teshuva’s eternal mission statement to keep you alive. Thorne could gut you again with your own sword, and we might not have enough of our abraxas shard to bring you back. Worse, it was Nanette’s touch guiding the abraxas last time. Since her husband was killed, she hasn’t been quite… Well, you could end up dead.”
He straightened his shoulders. “The sphericanum is unyielding, no doubt, but the league doesn’t appreciate how we…they have fought against evil through the ages without the benefit of superior strength and speed, enhanced senses, immortality, all the other advantages of the demonic—tenebrae and teshuva alike.” He stared at her hard. “You call me golden boy, but I am not that soft. If I die, I’ll die fighting. If not with the sphericanum, then with the league. And if not beside you, then alone. But I will fight.”
After a long moment, she shrugged. “I’ve always been a sucker for hard-luck cases.”
“Then let me borrow a sword and assign me to a team.”
She nodded and pursed her lips, glancing over to where Liam was still addressing the other talyan. “Might be hard to get somebody to ride with the golden boy.”
Fane gave her a tight smile and dangled his car keys. “I think I can find somebody.”
* * *
In the end, he didn’t have to let anyone else drive. There was a quick scramble among the talyan who didn’t want to end up in the sad league sedans, and he found himself piloting three talyan, including Nim, formerly the Naughty Nymphette and now a demon-possessed warrior with her high-heeled combat boots kicked up on the dash of his Porsche.
He slanted a glance at her. “How is Mobi?”
She beamed at him. “You remember my snake? How fabulous.”
“I still have nightmares about him crawling over the seats.”
“That’s so sweet.” She ruffled the sheaf of papers she had with her. “And it’s probably because you are such a good person that you got me as your navigator for tonight’s adventures.”
One of the talyan in back let out a strangled sound. Fane met their rolling eyeballs in the rearview mirror. He knew them by name—Gavril and Pitch—but nothing else about them. He shifted back to Nim. “Where is Jonah?”
Her smile upended into a scowl. “He’s going in a different car to a different part of the city. We’re having a thing.”
Pitch leaned between the front seats. “I’m telling you, if you would just—”
“La la la.” Nim held up the papers to block him. “An extra hundred years of existence has not improved your understanding of relationships.”
The talya thumped back in his seat. “Ecco let me borrow his magazines.” Gavril gave a disapproving sniff, and Pitch protested, “Not those magazines.”
Fane shook his head. After his own run-ins with Nim’s one-handed mate, he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience, especially sans sword. “I would have thought the symballein bond meant you’d never have ‘a thing.’ Otherwise what’s the point of finding someone whose broken soul perfectly matches yours?”
Nim thrust out her lower lip. “Oh, I still love him. I just might kill him before I tell him so again.”
Not wanting to know more, Fane guided the Porsche out behind the stream of dark sedans. Spatters of ice in the rain made threatening stars on the windshield until the wipers swept them away.
Nim rattled her papers. “First stop, the old post office building. There was another fire last night. They’re calling it a creosote build-up, but it burned a long time, so it could’ve been birnenston combustion.”
“Maybe just a feralis nest,” Gavril said. “Can’t have been much birnenston if they managed to put it out at all.”
“Let’s hope it is just a lone feralis,” Fane said. “Having Thorne holed up in a major landmark straddling the expressway could get…tricky.”
Nim grinned. “Us talyan delight in tricky.” She punched his shoulder. “That’s you now, too.”
“Don’t let her touch you, man,” Pitch said. “If Jonah smells her on you, he’ll take off your arm.”
Nim flipped him off over her shoulder. “I’ll smack you too.”
He puffed out a dismissive breath. “Save it for your symballein.”
As Fane sped toward the post office, he wondered about the symballein bond. The Chicago league had only recently rediscovered the truth behind the ancient talya legend. The alignment of flawed souls had seemed an unbelievable notion, imagined by desperate men staring at an eternity—or until they were killed—of solitude.
When the sphericanum learned of the discovery, there’d been s
ome quiet grumbling among wardens. How could the damned deserve such a bond? The sphericanum’s official response: If the demon-ridden talyan had to cobble together the pieces of two shattered souls to make one undivided, that was nothing to envy.
And yet…
For no good reason, his mind’s eye conjured up a vision of Bella sprawled on his white sheets, her hair in a red corona, reaching for him.
That was nothing holy. Quite the opposite.
And yet…
He was glad to see the Art Deco bulk of the old post office looming over the expressway. Better to fight than to think.
Nim looped her elbow over the back of the seat. “Remember, this is recon only. We are not to engage.” She directed a schoolmarm glare at Fane. “Even if the sword is there. Okay?”
He gave her a steady look. “Don’t make me lie to you.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “God, you could so be one of us.”
He cruised the darkened building and circled the long block before parking around the corner. The talyan griped about the extra walk.
“That’s what happens when you drive a nice, memorable car,” he said.
“There will be security cameras in the post office,” Nim warned. “Our teshuva interfere with the electronics enough that they won’t get a good picture of us. But you…”
Fane pulled a black ski mask and black nitrile gloves out of the center console.
She slapped his shoulder again. “Oh yeah, you could definitely be a talya.”
They vaulted the chain link fence around the perimeter—Fane forced himself not to breathe hard and vowed to add an extra thirty minutes to his daily workout—and cased the building. Vandals and rats had been through before them, as well as the fire department who had put out last night’s fire, but other than a lone malice that fled shrieking through a broken window, they found no tenebrae activity, not even a feralis snacking on the bones of unlucky rats. Or vandals.
They exited on the river side, and Fane stared across at the city. Against the black, glistening sky, the glass and steel spires of the city—lit from below—looked suddenly strange to him. Gorgeous and tough…and so vulnerable. Like someone else he knew…