by Jessa Slade
“Lost . . .” His words froze her in place for a long moment. “Once again, aren’t we all?”
He rose from his crouch and stared down at her. “For someone who doesn’t believe in demons, you have a very bleak outlook.”
“I never said I didn’t believe in hell.” Her gaze slid to the inert hulk collapsed in the ichor puddle. “And maybe I should blame all those late-night horror movies, but I’m starting to believe you about the rest.”
He snorted. “Starting to?” He held out his left hand to her, the hook tucked unobtrusively behind him. “Let’s see what else I can find to finally convince you.”
“I’d really rather not. I think I’ll just stay here and nurse my broken ankle, if it’s all the same to you.”
“The bones are strong enough to hold you now. They’ll knit solid in another hour.” He gave his fingers an imperious waggle.
She leaned away from him. “I thought you didn’t want me screaming anymore?”
With an annoyed huff, he reached down, took hold of her arm, and lifted her to her feet without even a grunt of exertion, though she did her stubborn best to keep herself anchored to the ground. With a curse, she hopped upright on one foot.
“Just trust me,” he said.
“Ha. Not a chance.” But when he gave her a short tug, rather than fall on her face again—or, worse yet, stumble into the carcass—she put her foot down. And after one sharp twinge, nothing happened. “This is crazy.”
His lips quirked. “Aren’t we all?”
CHAPTER 4
Jonah knew he’d finally broken through Nim’s resistance when she agreed numbly to return to her apartment to clean up and kicked up hardly any fuss when he didn’t bother asking her address as they got into his car.
“You followed me home,” was all she said as she settled into the passenger’s seat, and she sounded more resigned than angry, so he neither confirmed nor denied.
Bewildered as she was, with her new demon scarcely settled and its capabilities still unknown, he didn’t want to risk pushing her. Not if he didn’t have to. The soothing power of a hot shower was allowable, now that she couldn’t convince herself her world was still the same.
Her teshuva had already sealed over the scrapes on her knee, and the ugly bruise on her hip was fading fast. But the streaks of blood on her tawny skin remained, and the feralis had spattered ichor on her, burning holes in her already indecent shorts.
He retrieved Mobi’s case from the backseat while Nim unlocked the security screen on the front door of the old brick building. Side by side, silent, they walked past the rows of mailboxes. He paused at the elevator, then had to hurry a few long steps to catch up with her when she opened the door to the stairs.
She smiled at him crookedly. “What? Are your legs broken?”
“You live on the seventh floor.”
“Apparently, you haven’t been watching me all that closely. I always take the stairs. Did you think taking an elevator gave me these legs?”
On cue, his gaze dropped to her legs, as if he had to make an assessment. Even streaked with blood, they were gorgeous. Slender ankles, toned calves, and reven-marked thighs that curved into well-rounded buttocks . . . not that he could see those overflowing handfuls, even with her indecent shorts. But he remembered.
Until the day some feralis took off his head, he’d never forget.
He snapped his attention to her face. “You like to do that. Make me look at your body.”
She padded up the stairs, her bare feet slapping her ire on the treads. She’d refused to put on the sandals he’d retrieved from the feralis’s maw. “That’s how I pay the rent.”
“You do it to distract.” He realized he was watching the sway of her hips, back and forth as she climbed the stairs. Distracting? Worse: mesmerizing. “You didn’t like to think that I’ve been watching you when you weren’t in charge.”
She stopped so abruptly he almost collided with her. “Watching, but not closely,” she reminded him.
“So you want me to watch closer. But only those parts you want me to see.”
“Thanks for the analysis. Will you charge me for that, along with the orgasm?”
Though he was coming to understand her tactics, the low blow brought heat to his cheeks. “It was necessary.”
“The psychoanalysis?” The wicked twinkle in her eyes dared him to disagree.
So he did. “No, the . . . orgasm.” In all his years, had he ever said that word aloud? He rubbed his thumb against the base of his ring finger, ticking the band with his nail.
Suddenly, uneasily, he wondered what else he’d be forced to do. He’d wanted only a way to fight harder, to redeem himself. He hadn’t quite anticipated that opening himself to another meant . . . to another person. To Nim.
She continued up the stairs. “The demon likes to fuck you over? But not be fucked.”
“I’m uncomfortable with your foul language.” He almost winced at how prim he sounded, how outdated.
“Oh, so it wasn’t the demon that was uncomfortable with what happened between us. It was you.”
“I was told the most prudent method to balance your rising demon was the . . . orgasm.”
“ ‘Prude’ is right,” she mumbled.
She slammed out of the stairwell and headed down the hall. He stood aside as she opened the door.
The apartment was messier than when he’d cased it previously, although the same earthy patchouli incense drifted out to tease him. He’d been surprised a stripper kept such a tidy abode. This—the magazines tangled in the folds of a blanket across the red corduroy couch, the dirty dishes piled in the sink—had been what he expected. Obviously, she’d been increasingly disturbed by the restive energies of her unbound demon.
Nice to know he hadn’t been alone.
She slipped Mobi’s case from his shoulder. “Okay, then. Thanks for everything. I’ll call you later, yeah? Bye.”
He gave her a look. Turning her back on him with an aggrieved sigh, as if that would do the trick, she went to the coffin-sized glass case against one wall and slid the snake inside. She bustled past him again to retrieve a bowl from the counter and then returned to the terrarium.
He wrinkled his nose. “Dead rat?”
“Can you think of a better use? At least this one won’t morph into a monstrosity like that one you massacred.” She whispered something nonsensical to the snake and placed the dish in a corner. She fussed with the water bowl before closing the lid, then slid a black sheet across most of the case.
“Praise be.”
She shot him an arch glance. “That’s not for your sake. Mobi doesn’t like an audience when he eats. When he’s done, he’ll need to be left alone for a day or so.”
“You dance without him?”
“Not anymore.” She pointed at the framed poster above the snake’s tank that showed the curves of a woman, breast to hip, body painted in tiger stripes. COMING SOON, it screamed in crimson type, VIVA LAS SHOWGIRLS INTRODUCES BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. “We’re rehearsing for the Showgirls semifinals. I’ll have to take a couple days off, but by the weekend, he’ll be raring to go again.”
By then, the Naughty Nymphette—like the rat—would be only a bad memory. She’d be fully immersed in the talyan world, never to return to her own. Jonah thought that could remain unsaid for now. “In the meantime, there are a few things we need to work out. The demon, when it came to you, might have felt like a dream or a hallucination. But did it leave you something tangible—a piece of jewelry, perhaps?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
He struggled to keep his voice level. “Nim, this is important. I noticed you don’t wear any jewelry when you dance.” After Liam and Archer had explained how the women’s teshuva had come to them bearing gifts of mutated metals, Jonah had made a point of checking Nim for jewelry through the week. He had looked very carefully and seen nothing.
No jewelry, anyway.
“I hocked it.”
Her breezy
admission snapped him back to painful reality. “What?” He took a quick step toward her, then stopped himself when she stiffened. He raked his hand through his hair. “You sold it? But you never went to a pawnshop.”
“While you were staking me out, you mean? I have a neighbor who unloads stuff for me.” She lifted her chin when he glared at her. “Nothing stolen. Not anymore. He gives me cold, hard cash for the cheap-ass gifts my loving customers give me. And believe me, that anklet was the cheapest-looking shit I’d ever seen.”
He paced the tight confines of the room. It was that or shake her. She couldn’t have known, but frustration sharpened his voice. “It was a weapon. A demonic weapon.”
“It was an ugly anklet.”
He coughed on a desperate laugh. “The demon should have known you well enough to at least make it shiny.”
She scowled. “All I knew, I had a weird night and I woke up with some trashy jewelry lying on my floor. Could’ve come from anywhere.” When he rolled his eyes in disbelief, she added defensively, “I have a lot of loving customers, and they tuck their gifts in a lot of places.”
He held up his hand to forestall further explanation. “Which neighbor? And where does he pawn his goods?” Or evils, in this case.
“You going to chop off his head too?”
“Not before he directs me to the anklet.” When was the last time he’d had to justify himself to another? The feeling chafed like the hook against his scar tissue. “I have never chopped off a human’s head, and I don’t plan to start. Is that answer enough?”
She crossed her arms, jaw set mulishly off-kilter.
“Nim,” he said with strained patience. “If there’s a demonic weapon loose in the city, don’t you agree it’d be wise to find it?” With each word, his voice got louder.
“I suppose I should’ve asked for more money.” And still she hesitated another moment. “It’s Pete, down the hall in 713. But he won’t answer the door for just anyone. I’ll go with you.”
“Clean up first. The blood on you will unnerve him more than I will.” Jonah scuffed the hook along his thigh as he gave her a once-over. Just looking at her made his missing hand twitch. “After we retrieve the anklet, I suppose you have to meet the rest of the league. You should wear something . . .”
She set her arms akimbo, the tight clench of her fingers dragging the already low-slung waistband another inch past her navel. “Wear something what?”
He backpedaled mentally. “Something without ichor holes.”
“Remember how you said you really liked my honesty?”
“I don’t think I said that exactly.”
She wrapped one long dread around the rest and tucked the edge under in a makeshift restraint and stood square to face him. “Honestly, I don’t want to go anywhere else with you. I don’t want to meet anyone you know. Now that I think about it—actually, I didn’t even really have to think about it—I don’t want to know you.”
The scornful words grated along his nerves. “Biblically, it’s a little late for that. We can’t reverse this.”
“Who said anything about reverse? If I really am faster and stronger, I figure I’m going to have a killer new routine worked out before the Viva Las Showgirls finals. I might even try fire dancing, since I’m immortal and all.”
He stared at her. “You’d turn your damnation into a striptease?”
“What are you doing with it that’s so much better?”
“Destroying evil.” The hook dug into his leg. “Winning back my soul.”
She shrugged. “That monster only attacked because you lured it in. And you only notice your soul is lost because you’re still looking.”
“Wrong.” He all but choked on the word. Her casual denial of what had happened to her—not disbelief, just dismissal—shocked him. “Possession wasn’t a choice, and neither is what you do next. The demon chose you to fight.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter.” The sharp edge to her smile belied her words. “It should’ve asked me first.”
“It did. Not in words. Still, you accepted it.”
She waved one hand. “Entrapment. It’ll never stand up in court.”
Frustration made his temples throb. “You’ve already been judged and found guilty. And sentenced.”
She wrinkled her lip. “By you.”
“I played no part in your possession.”
“Didn’t you?” A merciless glint brightened her fathoms-deep eyes. “I saw you in my dream, you know. The one where you said the demon came to me. It was you I thought I was letting in.” A hint of violet lurked within the glint. “Into my body.”
Startled heat flashed through him. Liam had implied that both female talyan had had premonitions of their coming possession. At the same time, their partners had been driven to restlessly roam the streets, the unbound teshuva energies resonating with the demons already possessing them. The league leader had never said outright that the women had seen their ordained mates. Had been tricked by the image of the male talya meant to stand beside them.
He had been willing to lead the demon’s unwitting quarry from darkness toward the light. But he would never have chosen to be the temptation that caused her downfall. When he told her she’d had no choice, he realized once again, the same had been true for him. “I’m sorry.”
She tilted her head. The dreads shifted across her shoulders but never obscured her far-too-perceptive eyes. “You had no hand in it—other than the hand you had in me an hour ago—yet you’re here to save me, even though you hate me. Why?”
“I don’t hate—” He bit off the protest. It wasn’t going to convince her. He continued, each word more clipped than the last, “When my sword hand was severed, the impairment left me out of step with my demon. I need a partner to rejoin the battle.”
Her gaze ticked over him, from his boots to his face. “Maybe you just need to learn another dance.”
“A tenebrae tango,” he agreed. “We will fight together.”
“You said there are others like us? Go fight with them.”
“I have. For a very long time.” Bitterness rippled through him in ragged waves, the same way the teshuva’s thwarted energy swirled and jammed in his gnarled scars without escape. “It was for one of them, I was maimed. And now I can’t . . .”The phantom muscles in his missing hand cramped, sending spasms along his reven. “Now I am even less than I was.”
She tucked in her chin with a dubious look. “Less? Really? So you were, like, Superman before?”
“I could never fly.”
“But the anklet—the demon weapon—gives you superpowers ?”
“No. Without you, the anklet means nothing. But your demon is uniquely aligned with mine, in ways we can’t understand.”
“Can’t understand?” she said, exasperated. “You mean, ‘don’t want.’ ”
“Wanting isn’t a consideration.”
She peered at him. “It’s always a consideration. You just have it sealed up tight. Which is bad, because when that one wanting hits you—and it will—it’ll be worse than if you wanted everything.”
“How very . . . voracious of you. Meanwhile, I believe together we can drive the horde into hell.”
“Oh, you just want me to be your new right hand.”
Said aloud, in her mocking tone, he realized accusing her of mercenary tendencies had been unfair. Now that his perfidy was revealed, he saw no reason to conceal the worst of what he was. “You’ll be the other half of my damaged soul.”
CHAPTER 5
Nim let the hot shower soak away the last of her aches. Jonah had said the demon wouldn’t or couldn’t purge the pain, but parboiling disguised it well enough.
If only the water could wash away everything she’d seen, everything he’d said.
Other half of his soul?
She leaned her head back under the spray until water ran up her nose and she snorted.
“It’s not as poetic as it sounds,” he had said, with a quickness usually reserved f
or monks disavowing Playboy TV. “Whether possession is a cause or effect of the vulnerability in our perpetual idiopathic etheric force—our souls—we don’t know. But the result is a flaw. Not physical, but within.” He tucked the hook under his left arm, as if he was guarding himself, and rocked to his heels. “The etheric pattern of your demon—and what’s left of your soul—resonates with what remains of mine and binds us. That’s all.”
“So we’re in a spiritual three-legged race,” she said. “Tied together in the potato sack of our souls.”
From the tightening of his jaw, she guessed he wasn’t a fan of summer camp games. Maybe he thought she had cooties. Although wouldn’t the demon’s healing take care of that?
She touched the swirling black mark on her thigh. Reven, he’d called it. She scrubbed her skin until it was bright red, just in case he was quicker with a Sharpie than he’d let on. But she didn’t truly expect to erase it.
Great. The one gift she couldn’t pawn. She’d lost or abandoned or broken so much over the years. She couldn’t believe anything—even a demon—would want to bind itself to her.
And Jonah wanted her too.
Or maybe “want” was the wrong word. He needed her.
The golden boy. Captain of the S.S. Stuck-Up. Even missing his right hand, his self-possession fit him as snug as fishnet stockings. Self-possession—ha. Not that he’d appreciate the fishnet comparison either; too transvestite-y, not to mention full of holes.
How it must grate on him to need someone like her.
She got out of the shower and padded into the bedroom. Buck naked.
But he was gone. The twinge of disappointment hurt more than her ankle. Well, she’d just wanted to shock him again. And he wanted her to wear something nice to meet his friends. Fuck him.
The other half of his soul? That was what he needed from her? It seemed so crazy. But after all that had happened, how could she keep denying? Saying no had never done her any good. But there had to be something in this for her.