by Jessa Slade
Slowly, he reached out to cup her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her temple where her glasses usually rested. “I would love you, if you take the chance.”
A panicked breath caught in her chest, aching to escape. What answer it would take with it, she didn’t know, couldn’t guess. What did he see in her that she didn’t see in herself?
“Cyril…” She reached up to echo his touch. The bristle of his unshaven chin against her palm felt too incredibly real, almost painful, as he leaned into her caress.
“They are coming.”
The discordant cry from across the room jolted them together as Fane took a step closer to her. From the lobby and the activity room, the talyan’s cell phones began to ring, scraps of a half dozen tunes jangling.
Sera’s father stood at the big picture window, staring out into the night. “The damned devils are coming!”
Chapter 14
The sound of shattering glass barely reached Fane. It sounded no worse than a tumbler dropped in some distant kitchen, deserving nothing more than a half-hearted “Opa!” and a quick sweeping out.
Then the percussive blast of etheric emanations hit the picture window.
Nothing exploded, of course. Etheric emanations interacted only haphazardly with the worldly realm. But the ornaments Bella had hung over the window swayed wildly, the reindeer seeming to leap on their strings. Just as well the sleigh was empty or it would have spilled all its gifts.
Sera raced for her father’s side, sliding on a pair of sunglasses as she went. “Dad… Pastor Littlejohn, it’s all right. Sit down now. Everything is fine.”
“The devils…” But the older man let her guide him to a chair. He glanced up. “Sera? What are you doing here?” He frowned and reached for her shades. “Is it a sunny day?”
She gentle diverted his hand. “I came to see you, Dad.”
“It’s Sunday. I have a sermon to write.”
“He better make it a good one,” Fane mumbled. He turned toward Bella.
The front door stood ajar and empty, with the reliquary above it blazing golden light.
She was gone. Fane bolted toward the door.
Ecco stepped into his path.
For all his momentum, Fane rebounded off the big talya’s bulk, although he managed to avoid puncturing himself on the gauntlets. “Get the hell out of my way,” he gasped.
Ecco blocked the door, his shoulders filling the frame. “I just let hell out. I’m not letting it back in.”
“Bella isn’t a demon. Not just a demon. No more so than you are.”
The talya half closed his eyes, dimming the violet sheen of his teshuva. “Why do you think I let her out? Let her fight, golden boy, so she knows she can.”
“Not alone,” Fane shouted.
Ecco grinned and stepped aside. “Since you asked so nicely… If you need pointers on the proper care and feeding of sexy demons, come see me.”
Fane shoved past him.
He almost went down on the icy steps. The scattering of salt added texture more than melting power. The tenebrae orb in the lighted manger was blown open like some obscene, oily, sharp-edged flower, and Bella stood over it in profile to him, a red pillar against the ice and glow of the Christmas lights. Her head was tipped back so her undone hair spilled down her stiff spine in wild curls tangled by the wind, but her face turned up toward the tenebrae was pale and still. In her hand, an extended box cutter gleamed. As if the tiny blade could have any effect against the tenebrae
The etheric emanations, which had been confined in the orbs, swirled around the nursing home in a half dozen separate waves of greasy black smoke shot through with sulfur-yellow lightning. The waves chased around the building, stretching toward one another. Their shrieks—only half heard but felt deep in his bones—escalated. When they met up, together they would be as big as a tsunami.
He thought he saw the familiar shapes of the animalistic malice and the more monstrous salambes resolving out of the smoke, but the silhouettes kept collapsing back into the chaos. It seemed the imprisonment in the orbs had permanently mashed the tenebrae subspecies together into something new and—wasn’t that always the case?—worse, combining the destructive power of the salambes with the preternatural quickness of the malice.
He dashed toward Bella as the demonic swirl sped faster. The grass crunched beneath his feet, each ice-rimed blade like a tiny silver sword.
For an instant, he thought of his abraxas, somewhere across the city in Thorne’s hands. But he might have another chance to confront the djinn-man someday and reclaim his sword; he would never have another chance with Bella.
He’d break off a thousand swords under his boots to get to her. “Wait!”
She turned and he halted in his tracks.
Even though the churning tenebrae cloud was behind her now, her eyes still reflected the pitch black and virulent yellow…
It wasn’t a reflection.
He took a slow step forward. “Bella.”
She opened her mouth and the wordless cry that emerged was pitched across multiple octaves, only one of them human. The tenebrae clouds slowed, as if their attention had been caught.
Shit. He didn’t want the tenebraeternum focused on her. Not now, not ever.
In two steps, he closed the distance between them. He framed her face in his hands. Her skin was cold, so cold.
He stared hard into her eyes, searching past the demonic overlay, past the haze of cataracts, looking for the one he knew inside. “Don’t let them in. Don’t.”
The box cutter slipped from her fingers and clinked on the icy grass. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists. Was she holding on to him, or about to push him away?
“You are not one of them,” he said roughly. “You are Bella now. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t believe that.” But even as he spoke, he despaired. Once before his love had not been enough. What made him think this time was different? Ah, but now he had an ace in the hole: the divine presence in his soul. “The angel believes in you too,” he added, urgency pounding through his veins. “You don’t think an angel would lie, do you?”
“Cyril?” Her raw whisper was almost inaudible, and her hands clenched his tendons hard against bone so he felt the shrieking roar of the tenebrae reverberating between them. “Cyril. I…”
“Yes,” he urged. “You. Not tenebrae.”
“Both,” she said raggedly. “I can’t escape…”
He wanted to deny her words, call out her lie, but what if he was wrong? Could any of them hope to escape the unbearable power of the angels and demons at work in their lives?
For a moment, he wavered. His hands slipped, slicked from the tears trickling over her cheekbones.
The tenebrae waves spun faster around the building. Half the waves had coalesced, swallowing one another.
As they would all be swallowed?
His numb hands caught in the tangles of red hair over her shoulders, and she gasped.
The small, human noise broke through his paralysis. He would not let her go.
He plunged his hands into her hair, cupping the back of her head and tilting her face up to his. “If you can’t escape,” he said roughly, “then I’m going with you.”
He brought his mouth down slanting over hers.
One hot mingled breath and two tangled tongues. The simple truth of longing. He pulled her close, leaving no room for error or lies or darkness.
She whimpered against his lips, then her hands linked at his nape, holding him fast.
He would gladly kiss her until the sun came up tomorrow, until the sun went down again forever. It wouldn’t matter because he had her flame inside him now.
Her fingers drifted down his jaw, touched the corner of his mouth, and eased him back. “Cyril,” she whispered. “I have to do this.”
He raised his head to look at her. Her lake ice eyes—a thin disguise for the vibrant woman beneath—reflected his angelic gold back at him. “Then we do it together.” He kissed her for
ehead.
She nodded against his lips, then turned within the circle of his arms to face the tenebrae waves.
Just one wave now, maggot-shaped and viscous as tar. Even bigger than a train he had feared, it poised like a suspended oil spill of evil. The sulfuric lightning had congealed, and the thick, snaking veins of yellow pulsed with a revolting, regurgitative rhythm. He did not want to see what it was about to discharge over the nursing home.
She shivered in his embrace.
“Banish it,” he murmured. “You’ve done it before. Every year when it came for you.”
“Never like this. And I had my artifacts.”
“The artifacts worked because you believed.” He leaned his cheek against her crown. “You don’t need the knucklebones to believe in yourself.”
He felt her shuddering breath as she craned her neck to look up at him. “Can I believe in you?”
He kissed her temple. “Always.”
She took a step forward out of his sheltering arms. He wanted to grab her back, but instead he followed, lending his presence and his angel’s light to her fight.
“There is nothing for you here,” she shouted. “Until you choose to become something, you have no place here.”
Fane rested his hands on her shoulders. “Did you just tell them to go away until they can be good?”
She nodded, and her hair whispered over his knuckles. “I think they’ll really take heart from what I—”
The mega-maggot reared back, faster than any tenebrae he’d ever seen, and plunged toward them.
“Watch out!” cried a voice from the porch, echoed by, “Run!”
Like he needed that sort of help. He flung himself to one side, yanking Bella with him. They rolled across the breaking grass.
The tenebrae cluster struck the manger scene where they’d been standing. Plastic shards and sparks of electricity blasted in all directions.
He used the momentum of the roll to fling her upright. “Listen to the peanut gallery. Run.”
“No.” She whirled toward the tenebrae, one hand outstretched toward the darkness, the other toward the porch where the talyan had gathered. “No one will die tonight. Not even them. Second chances, you said so. Was that a lie?”
He gritted his teeth. “I meant—”
The tenebrae maggot emerged from the wreckage, doubled back on itself, and struck again.
Fane tossed Bella to one side, but stumbled on the slick grass. He went down to one knee with a curse, hearing her scream.
His fingers found the box cutter in the grass.
There was no way his angel could take the tenebrae mass. Maybe if he’d had his abraxas…
Bella flung herself over him, which he might have appreciated more if they weren’t both about to die.
“No!” Her cry was one, lone octave, only human. “He is mine! The place within is only for me.”
Then she kissed him, and the darkness around them exploded with stars.
Chapter 15
Silence.
Was this death? Bella kept her eyes closed, not wanting to know. But the soft press of lips under hers and the mingling of breath—not to mention the cold soaking her jeans—tempted her to believe otherwise.
She listened, and—so softly at first—she heard the song.
“It came upon a midnight clear…”
Was it midnight already? On the longest night of the year. And here it ended. Hot kiss, icy ass, and the tenebrae swallowing all.
“That glorious song of old…”
Who was singing? Fane’s shoulders flexed under her hands, and she found herself in his lap, protected from the cold earth.
He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Listen.”
“…From angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold…”
“I don’t need a harp of gold,” he murmured. “Or a flaming sword. I have you.”
“You don’t sing anyway,” she said.
He shook his head. “You’ve just never heard me.” He stood, easily lifting her.
As he rose, the tenebrae recoiled, lifting like a storm cloud, and he placed her on her feet with one more lingering kiss.
On the nursing home porch, the talyan and a dozen elders stood at the rail. Nanette had the reliquary in her hand, and golden light spilled across the lawn, impossibly brilliant.
Almost as vivid as the voices.
Sera led the carolers with her clear contralto. “Silent night, holy night…”
“I’ve seen her singing along with the pop tunes at the club,” Bella said softly. “But I didn’t realize…”
Fane pulled her close. “Archer told me one of her first encounters with the league was singing a wounded talya to his death.”
“She got it from her father.”
Pastor Littlejohn stood beside his daughter, his hand on her shoulder and his deep bass carrying. “All is calm, all is bright…”
Ecco stood with his gauntlets over his chest, his mouth set tight and forbidding. Which reminded Bella why they were here.
She angled her gaze to the tenebrae worm, coiling above, held in abeyance. Had she been this afraid, this twisting mess? Had she longed for so much and believed so little?
“Let it go,” she whispered. “Can’t you let it go?”
The worm hovered.
“Sleep in heavenly peace…”
With a roaring shrieking cry, the tenebrae attacked for the third time. The thick yellow veining at the fore peeled back, revealing a gaping maw. The funnel seemed to fall in unnaturally deep, deeper than the length of the worm. Far at the other end lay a sullen nothingness more unfathomable than even the darkest night.
Bella threw herself toward Fane and he caught her under the edge of his coat. He had the box cutter in hand which he slashed across his fingers.
She cried out at the pain she could almost feel herself.
He flung his hand outward in a spray of angelic blood. The tenebrae shrank back, but not quickly enough. The spatter of red and gold burned across the worm in ragged patches, tearing holes in the ether.
“Sleep in heavenly peace…”
“Or pieces,” Fane said.
The worm tore apart without a sound. Dozens of salambe and a hundred malice fled into the night, escaping the light and sound. And love.
Bella clasped his cut hand between hers, closing it tight.
He tried to pull away. “I’m going to bleed all over you.”
“You’ve done worse.”
He stared at her, stricken, but she tugged him toward the porch. “Let’s get this looked at before you bleed out.”
He balked on the sidewalk, forcing her to turn to face him. “I never meant—”
“I don’t mind your blood on me. That will wash off. It’s your heart, beating with mine. It’s your spirit, inside me. That I can’t escape.”
“Bella…”
“And I don’t want to escape. I want to be here, with you. I want you, around me, in me. I mean that in the dirtiest way possible.” She touched his cheek with her knuckles, careful not to bloody him. “And I mean that as an angel would say it.”
Without ever glancing away, as if breaking eye contact might let her disappear, he brushed back her hair with his unbloodied hand. “Outcasts, both of us. Me from heaven, you from hell.”
Maybe it was a symptom of how far she had yet to go to be good, but she was fiercely glad he’d been cast out. So he could find her. Maybe they didn’t have the symballein bond of the soul-shattered talyan, but their wounds—and their healing—made them right for each other. “It’s like we were meant to be.”
“Together.” He didn’t smile back, his gaze so intense she thought the blue of his eyes might melt the ice. Like she was melting.
She closed her eyes and tilted up onto her toes to kiss him. A gentle touch, cool as tears, brushed her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying. She was happy.
She glanced up to see the snow sifting down. The low clouds reflected back the lights of the city in
washes of silver and gold. With only the lightest breath of wind to tease them, the snowflakes wafted in lazy spirals, each finding its own unique path from heaven to earth.
Fane laughed, sending the nearest snowflakes dancing. He kissed Bella and sang softly over her lips, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas...”
She blinked at his pure tenor, and his grin turned smug.
“I’m dreaming of Christmas with you.” He tucked her under his arm, and they walked up the sidewalk toward the talyan and the old people under a snowy winter sky.
Ecco crossed his gauntleted arms over his chest as they approached. “Had a call from the boss. They found Thorne workshop at the industrial site, but he wasn’t there. Just a bunch more bombs—most of them not even finished—and a note saying ‘Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas.’ And you just let all those tenebrae escape without sending even one back to hell. Tonight was a total bust.”
“Actually,” Bella said as they pushed by him. “This is going to be my best Christmas ever. Peace on earth and all that.”
Fane kissed her temple. “At least for tonight.”
Epilogue
Fane leaned back on the pillows of the big, red bed and sighed. He should have guessed grandma pillows rescued from yard sales would be cozy, especially with sayings like:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
May angels watch me through the night
And wake me with the morning light.
He thought, as prayers went, that one he could follow.
Bella bounced on his chest. “Seriously, I can’t believe you haven’t seen The Nightmare Before Christmas! It’s one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time.”
“It has monsters in it.”
She stared down at him. “Yeah, and?”
He sighed again, just to watch her bounce some more. “Fine. You get to pick the Christmas Eve movie, but I get to pick what we do after.”
She traced her finger down his sternum. “Sounds like a win-win.”
After the carry-out Chinese dinner and movie—which he admitted was pretty great, especially the music—she hustled him back to the bed. They’d brought up a bunch of votive candles from the bar below, and the lights danced as they sprawled across the mattress.