by Jessa Slade
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
GLOSSARY OF TERMS FROM THE @ I ARCHIVES
Teaser chapter
“Vowed in Shadows took me on a dark and sexy and intense ride with two complex, compelling characters.”
—New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh
Praise for the Novels of Jessa Slade
Forged of Shadows
“Dark, dangerous, and spiced with passion, this is a wellwritten tale that will grab your attention from the very beginning.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“The wordplay is riveting and the story line is fast and action-packed.”
—Smexy Books
“The only thing I can say about this series is WOW! Ms. Slade brings the fight against evil from the dark and into the light. This story is so exciting and action-packed that I had a hard time putting it down. I ended up reading it in one night. I can’t wait to see what comes next for this great new romantic urban fantasy series.”
—Night Owl Reviews (5 stars)
“[A] heady mix of philosophy and religion . . . serves as part of the framework for this excellent series and sets it apart from the pack. . . . Be first in line for book three, Vowed in Shadows.”
—Bitten by Books (5 tombstones)
“For readers who love J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, the Marked Souls series will hit the spot.”
—Romantic Times (4 stars)
Seduced by Shadows
“Wonderfully addictive!”
—New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter
“Slade’s debut presents a dark and dense supernatural conflict with high stakes in a world where demons and angels possess humans and use them as tools in the unending fight between heaven and hell . . . [a] rich crossover urban fantasy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A beautiful and inventive new series start, with plenty of action and wonderful characters!”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“A gripping, suspenseful story, with some hot romantic interactions thrown in for good measure.”
—San Francisco Book Review
“Seduced by Shadows blew me away. . . . Slade creates a beyond-life-or-death struggle for love and redemption in a chilling, complex, and utterly believable world.”
—Jeri Smith-Ready, award-winning author of Wicked Game
Also by Jessa Slade
Forged of Shadows
Seduced by Shadows
SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, April 2011
Copyright © Jessa Slade, 2011
All rights reserved
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eISBN : 978-1-101-51376-7
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To whom-/whatever is in charge of dreams come true: Hey, thanks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Each book is a new journey. Special acknowledgments go to my editor, Kerry Donovan, who brings clarity when I’ve lost my path, and to all the wonderful people at Signet along the long road from story to book, and also my agent, Becca Stumpf, for her unflagging enthusiasm at every step. I lift a glass half empty to the Beach Brainstorming Babes, who’ve never found a turn that can’t be made twistier with the addition of more Kahlua. Much love to my family and Scott, who’ve been with me all the way.
And first, last, and always, my fervent thanks to the readers who’ve joined this wild ride.
CHAPTER 1
“Hot as hell in here tonight.” Nim unzipped the oversized rifle case. “Just the way we like it.” She set aside the ammo box, and from the padded case, she lifted the sleek weight. “Ready to knock ’em dead?”
The boa spiraled up her arm and across her shoulders as she settled in front of the mirror. The fine mosaic of scales ran as smooth and cool as water against her sweaty nape, and Nim sighed with pleasure. “Yeah, Mobi. We need them live and squirming.”
The thump of music coming from the stage made talking in the dressing room a chore, and the dancers rarely bothered. Which suited Nim fine. So she recoiled when Amber tottered over on her platform heels, bare breasts arriving easily a full second before the rest of her, and thrust her scarlet lips toward Nim’s ear.
“He’s here again.”
Nim unlocked the ammo box and rummaged through her makeup. “Who’s here?”
“That same guy.” Amber snapped her gum impatiently. “Captain Hook.”
“Oh. Him.” Nim’s hand shook. She reached past the Viva Las Showgirls semifinals invitation ticket and grabbed a fat eye pencil to give her traitorous fingers something to do. When she stared into the mirror, her pupils were
wide with adrenaline.
She wasn’t fooling Amber either. “Yeah, him,” the girl sneered. “Everybody knows Captain Hook had a thing for cold-blooded reptiles. Didn’t end so well for him, though. Wonder if he knows what he’s getting this time.”
Nim spun in her chair to face the other dancer. The boa lifted his head, and his forked tongue stroked the stagnant air.
Amber retreated a step. “Did you get colored contacts? That’s a wicked purple.”
When Nim simply stared at her, Amber scowled again and teetered away.
Nim turned to the mirror. After a moment’s hesitation, she looked up. Her irises were the same muddy blue-green as always. Swamp-water eyes, her last ex-admirer had called them, to go with her dishwater brown dreadlocks.
How weird that Amber’s description echoed the dream she’d had a couple of nights ago. The violet eyes had belonged to a man, though. Mesmerized by his beauty, like something that should be in a museum behind glass, not exposed to a careless touch, she’d half fallen in love.
Then his irises had turned all eerie white, except for hundreds of swirling black specks, and he fucked her, his hand fisted in her dreads, until she screamed and woke herself up.
Very weird. Quitting her tranqs cold turkey had probably been against medical advice for exactly such a reason, but she didn’t want the antidepressants making her fuzzy for the final round next week. She needed to be sharp if she was going to ditch this hellhole for the lights of the Vegas Strip.
She outlined her swamp-water eyes in pitch-dark kohl. Almost right . . . She layered on purple shadow, thick and disturbing as a day-old bruise. Perfect.
When she finished her prep, she waited behind the blackout curtain, where the glaring stage lights failed to reach. Her gaze shot unerringly to the first table just beyond the stools drawn up to the counter at stage left.
Yeah, there he was again, just as he’d been all week, angled to keep the whole of the club in view, one knee drawn up with his boot heel hooked on the base of the bar stool. Like a cop. Or a thug.
He faced the stage. Staring at her? Her pulse quickened pointlessly. No way could he see her past the glare. Out in the audience, the club was too crappily lit for her to make out his features. Usually she didn’t give a rat’s ass—and, thanks to Mobi, she knew a lot about rats—who was out there, staring.
So his face was in shadow, and the garish gels washed out the color of his hair, but his body . . . that was on display for every girl in the place to assess.
Not too tall, judging by the length of thigh in his close fitting jeans. Good jeans too; no rips in the knees. Nice to see some guys still bothered to dress up before going out. No one had gotten a long look at the bulge in his pants, so maybe he rolled with a fat wallet; maybe not. Certainly he hadn’t spent any of it for one-on-one attention. The other girls had bitched about that all week while they tried—and failed—to poach him.
Of course, nobody bitched where he might hear. Nim studied the imposing breadth of his shoulders filling up a dark gray T-shirt. His biceps bunched across his chest where he’d folded his arms, blatantly displaying the reason no one bitched aloud.
Nim clicked her tongue. A cripple with any manners would wear a long-sleeve shirt, never mind the sticky heat of August in Chicago. But no, Captain Hook sat there with the honest-to-fuck metal hook instead of his right hand, shining front and center for the whole world to flinch from. Nice. She didn’t know much about prosthetics, but considering that the Russians had ways to make fake diamonds even bling experts couldn’t ID in a lineup, he might have found something less gruesome. Maybe he was hoping for a mercy dance.
Or maybe he liked gruesome.
She narrowed her eyes until her fake lashes crisscrossed like daggers in front of her. Sure, he didn’t watch the other girls, but he hadn’t tipped her out either. Even though he always came in just after she started her shift—obviously he was stalking her; maybe he’d watched her ace the qualifying rounds of the Viva competition and fallen secretly, madly in love—he always left before she could get out onto the floor after her set.
Well, that was going to end tonight. She could do gruesome like nobody’s business, no one had ever accused her of being merciful, and she knew exactly where guys like him kept their love.
His congregation would have died—again—seeing him in a place like this.
Jonah Sterling Walker kept his arms crossed tight so he wouldn’t inadvertently touch anything. He’d learned that lesson the first night at the Shimmy Shack when his elbow stuck to the tabletop. Presumably the tacky substance had been the congealed spill of some previous customer’s, but whether the spill was a beverage . . . If he could’ve kept both feet off the floor, he would’ve done that too.
Unfortunately, the repentant demon seeking redemption that had hijacked his body in return for inhuman fighting skills hadn’t gifted him with the power of levitation. It had stolen his life and replaced it with immortality, and shattered his soul in its battle against evil, but it failed to help him here.
From the gloom beyond the stage curtain, the woman’s gaze weighed on him like lead anchors. Violet tinted lead anchors—a sure sign that her demon, which had been circling her without her awareness for more than a week and had finally settled in three nights ago, was on the verge of its virgin ascension.
The only thing virginal about her.
The volume of the unrelenting din they called music dropped. The deejay exhorted them, “Put your hands together . . . Scratch that. Put ’em in your pockets—not your front pockets, you filthy jag-offs, your back pockets—and start pulling out those Lincolns for . . . our Naughty Nymphette!”
A few men hooted as told; a half dozen others sucked at their drinks as if suddenly very thirsty.
She stepped onto the stage, bare as the day she was born. Barer, since even newborns slid into the world with more body hair than that.
Jonah snapped his eyes closed. Too late. Under the harsh lights, her dusky skin glowed, sleek as the snake threaded across her outstretched arms. The shine off her shoulders, the snake’s coils, and—ah, dear God in heaven—the fullness of her breasts burned on the insides of his eyelids. Unfair that she could invade his defenses with nothing more than . . . nothing.
The costumes earlier in the week had been bad enough. Layers of vinyl and gauze, links of chain, strings of white lace from another century adding insult to injury. And he’d suffered injury aplenty, with every knock of his cock against the backside of his zipper.
At least the ridiculousness of the schoolgirl kneesocks, the maid’s apron, and a kimono, of all things, had allowed him to steel himself—in more ways than one—against the inevitable flesh display.
He might as well see his oncoming destruction. He opened his eyes.
She glided across the floor toward him, her bare feet silent on the parquet. But she timed each footfall for every other beat of the music, so even though her approach was slow, his heartbeat quickened against his will to echo the incessant bass.
Exactly how repentant was his demon?
She moved with a liquid grace that ignored gravity and time and entropy, as if she had no care for the rules of the universe. Sweat glistened across the skin of her chest, but her arms spread, unfaltering under the forty pounds of reptile. Only her rounded hips marked the cadence.
After the gyrations and jiggling of the others and the gleeful flinging of G-strings, her prolonged tension tightened every nerve in the room. Where was the teasing smile? The bustier and the stockings? Here were the tits and ass they had come for, and yet this was not their fantasy. This was too raw, too wild.
Jonah stiffened against the sharp twist inside him of the demon reacting to the first whiff of menace.
Her dreads slid across her breasts, hiding, then revealing her dark areolas, and the blunt ropes lashed the upper curve of her buttocks. Achingly slowly, she raised her arms, and the snake eased from her shoulders to spiral across her torso. The scales in shades from chocolate to sand ripp
led down her body. Its blunt diamond head poised for a moment like an earthy jewel centered above her navel, then continued lower.
Her hands tracked its descent, easing over her breasts, lingering at the flare of her hips. She tipped her head back, throat exposed, and her dreads swung loose as the snake coiled down her thighs.
It pooled at her feet like a shed skin. Unfettered, she stood exposed, her taut curves the same tawny brown as the middling tones of the scales, an illusion of snake to woman. Hell on the herpetological half shell.
Jonah’s pulse ricocheted through his body, tearing ragged holes in his calm, and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath in too long. When he finally did, it sounded like a gasp.
In the middle of the stage, the lights were aimed at her with such salacious focus that not a single shadow remained, not the faintest female mystery was left to the imagination. And yet he knew he wasn’t seeing all of her. The purple smudges around her eyes seemed to suck down the light, but her gaze fixed on him, still and predatory behind the unnatural thicket of her lashes.
The demon was rising in her, and it called to him, teased him to reach out.
His fingers twitched in anticipation, and he clenched his fists.
Fist. His missing hand burned as if he held it out toward open flame. Rather like he was doing with the remains of his soul by coming to her now.
The djinni that had taken his hand six months ago had taken with it his belief that their fight for good would prevail. To tip the balance in favor of his shaken faith, he was willing to do anything.