Vowed in Shadows

by Jessa Slade

  And she didn’t need another reluctant half soul. Thanks, anyway.

  She rummaged through her closet for an outfit worse than the shorts and found a denim micromini and fitted white baby-doll tee. No bra. For the sake of city ordinances, she slipped on a black lace thong. From the bottom of the closet, she dragged out a pair of black high-top Vans and laced them. Tight. Like, get-the-fuck-out-of-town-in-a-hurry tight.

  She was a slut, but not a stupid slut.

  She checked that Mobi had eaten his dinner, then went to the window to stare down at the dark street. Maybe she should run now. Whatever tie bound her to Jonah might not break, but she’d see how far it could stretch.

  Or did she just want to see if he would chase her?

  A tremor went through her, and she could have kicked herself with her own speedy sneakers. Whatever had driven that wildness in the Shimmy Shack’s private room had been a one-shot deal, he’d said, a way for her and her demon to get to know each other better. Jonah had kept himself as separate as he could through the whole ordeal, even with his body raging to get in on the action. He was one of those disapproving types who wouldn’t be swayed by a bit of swaying flesh.

  What? And she wanted him to be?

  She was a stupid slut. With a sharp twist, she tied her damp dreads up with a heavy, fleeing-monsters-proof band, and stomped across her apartment.

  Jonah was in the hall when she opened the door.

  Damn, she’d hoped her imagination had overfigmented how fine he was. No such luck. And she didn’t even do golden boys.

  How old had he been when the demon froze him? She guessed not as old as his eyes and his lips, set on stern, implied. Wasn’t gold supposedly a soft metal?

  Maybe not if it was molded over stone.

  His gaze raked her once, and his expression tightened from primal king mask of gold to pure lemon sucking. “Going somewhere?”

  At least he wasn’t going to rant on the clothes. She supposed a fighter who wanted to stay alive—and keep the rest of his limbs—knew to choose his battles more carefully. “You went to Pete’s without me?”

  “Thought I’d get it out of the way.”

  “Does he still have his head?”

  “But not the anklet. He gave me the pawnshop address. Let’s go.”

  When he took her elbow, she was grateful for her noskid soles. And the sudden burst of power that let her yank from his grasp. Good demon. She just wished it could kill the shiver of sensual delight at his touch. Apparently, demons didn’t offer protection from pain or pleasure. “Don’t manhandle me.”

  His jaw worked. “You didn’t mind before.”

  “I was possessed.”

  “You still are.”

  “Not by you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. No sense letting him see the perky nipples belying her manhandling complaints. “I’m not the one to be anybody’s right hand or half a soul.”

  His expression was utterly blank. “What I’ve lost is collateral damage. Our eternal mission is to do what we can against the demon realm, the tenebraeternum.”

  She started down the hallway, leaving him to follow or not. Though she didn’t question he would. A girl couldn’t get so lucky. “I’m sure you think you mean well. Aside from almost getting me eaten by a monster, of course. But, really, from what I’ve seen, I think the world is perfectly fine falling into darkness, with or without you. So call me crazy—and considering that I’m still talking to you, I very well might be—but I don’t see any point in joining your little crusade.”

  He was a silent shadow on her heels down the stairs and onto the street. “You’d let evil win?”

  She stopped abruptly under a streetlight to face him. “You already think I’m evil, don’t you?”

  He took a few steps past her but didn’t turn. “I told you, the teshuva are repentant.”

  “I’m not talking about the demon. I mean me. I saw the way you looked at me while I was dancing. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t even a gay guy’s no-pussy-for-me-thanks attitude. You hated it. Hated me.”

  “No. Not hate.”

  She took a step toward him. “Look at me when you deny it.”

  He turned slowly. He must have washed up at her sink before he left the apartment, because the black gore was gone and the hook glimmered under the streetlight with clear warning.

  Too bad she’d never heeded warnings.

  “We don’t have time for this,” he growled.

  “We’re immortal,” she reminded him.

  “But most of the people in this city aren’t.”

  She stared at him. “Who are you fighting for, Jonah? The city? You?” She held her hands out and waggled her fingers like she was casting a spell. “The woo-woo powers of good?”

  “What do you care?” Purple lights flared across his irises.

  “I don’t.” She was pissing him off. Good. Maybe he’d answer something straight for once. “But if you can’t tell me why you and that bane demon of yours are fighting, I’m wondering why you care either.”

  “Because it was the last promise I made to my wife.”

  The words burst out of him like the ichor that had gushed from the throat-slashed feralis.

  She took an inadvertent step back, but still she felt the burn, melting toward the core of her as the black blood had sizzled through her skin.

  “You are married,” she said flatly. “I asked you about the ring.” And she hadn’t really cared about the answer. Not then, she hadn’t.

  “My wife is dead. She died more than eighty years ago.”

  Nim’s irritation guttered. “Eighty . . .”

  “I watched her grow old while I didn’t, and she died holding my hand.” He stared down at the hook. “She told me God had given me a gift, and made me promise I would use it for his glory.”

  Nim blinked. “God sent a demon to possess you? That’s fucked-up.” She shook her head. “Sorry; didn’t mean your wife.” Although, obviously, she was. What a burden to put on someone.

  Despite the warmth of the night, she clutched herself tighter. She didn’t have much experience with faithful men. But she could see how a man of faith might indulge a few moral quandaries about fingering a stripper into a mind-blowing orgasm, even for the sake of what remained of her soul. Tricky.

  No wonder he hated her.

  But she hadn’t made any promises to anyone. Just as no one had ever promised anything to her. And after hearing his story, she rather thought she’d prefer to keep it that way.

  “There’s the pawnshop,” she said instead.

  Jonah gave her a sharp glance but obviously he didn’t want to tell any more of his story either.

  The shop—in a strip mall between a bail-bond agent and a liquor store—was dark, the security grille pulled down over the windows.

  She rubbed her eyes. “I never even thought about it being so late.”

  “I did. We’ll go around back.”

  “You can’t break in,” she objected. But he ignored her and headed for the alley. She hurried to catch up. “Not another dark alley.”

  “Let your demon up and it won’t be so dark.”

  That knowledge wasn’t making her feel any better about the enterprise. “I’ve never been to jail before.”

  “You won’t go now either.” He stopped at the alleyside metal door to the shop. “Besides, no human prison could hold you.”

  “How does your boss feel about B and E?”

  “Liam understands expediency.”

  “God’s name is Liam? I thought he’d be Italian, at least.”

  He fiddled with the doorknob. “What? Liam is the leader of the Chicago talyan. He wasn’t a carpenter, but a blacksmith.” The door clicked. “He taught me all locks have a weakness.”

  He slipped inside, and she swore to herself and followed.

  The low-wattage security lighting barely picked out the shelves of digital cameras and computer-game consoles, locked racks of guns and electric guitars, and the counter display cas
es of wristwatches, diamond rings, and gold chains. Nim blinked and then blinked again. A strange, nacreous glow was smeared across the countertops, the walls and ceiling, even the floor. She hopped across one streak. “Who spilled the glow-in-the-dark paint?

  “Malice sign. Malice are lesser tenebrae—small, incorporeal demons that draw sustenance from greed, despair, indifference. This is a significant presence, although I should’ve guessed they’d swarm in a place like this.”

  He headed for the cashier’s station, where the most valuable pieces would be kept close at hand.

  “It won’t be there.” Nim edged farther down the counter toward the cheap crystal. “I’m telling you, it looked like junk.”

  “Not such junk that your neighbor wasn’t able to unload it here. What does it look like?”

  “A dull silver chain, too long to be a bracelet, too short to be a necklace. The links were rough-shaped, not consistent, as if it was handmade. And there was one metal bead strung on it, a hollow tube about an inch long, etched with a design.” She touched the top of her thigh above the reven. “Random patterns, like this.”

  Jonah leaned over the case. “I don’t see anything like that.”

  “Not here either.” She straightened. “I can’t believe they’d lock it up for the night.”

  “Seems unlikely,” he agreed, “since they leave these charming cubic zirconia out.”

  She sidled up beside him. “Sign says diamonds.”

  “My demon says fake.”

  She snorted. “And you told me it wasn’t good for anything anymore.”

  He huffed out an answering breath, then turned a slow circle, his eyes half-closed. “It’s hard for me to feel anything past the malice sign. If only . . .” He slapped his hand down on the counter in frustration, and she jumped. “There’s nothing demonic here besides us. How could they have sold the anklet so quickly if it’s as ugly as you say?”

  “Don’t leave fingerprints,” she cautioned over her pounding heart.

  “I’m not in any human record books. Not anymore.”

  He strode away from her toward the alley door where they’d entered, and she hurried to follow. Just her luck to get caught holding the bag. Not that they had a bag. She squelched a tremor of guilt. She hadn’t known what the anklet was when she sold it to Pete.

  Jonah stopped at the office door and kicked it in. The jamb splintered from the brutality of the blow.

  She jumped again. “I thought you knew all the weaknesses of locks.”

  “This one’s weakness was that it was set in plywood.” He disappeared within, and the indirect glow of a light spilled onto the floor.

  Hesitantly, she stuck her head in the doorway. He was flipping through a receipt book on the desk, the curve of the hook scanning down each page. He grunted and the hook stopped.

  “You found it?”

  “This is a receipt when Pete brought in his haul, including one silver chain.” The hook bit into the paper and he flicked the book away, his jaw tight. “But there’s no outgoing sales ticket. So where is the anklet?”

  Nim backed away and he followed a moment later, carrying a VHS tape.

  “The security tape?”

  He gave a curt nod. “In case you are in the system.” His stare weighed on her until she squirmed.

  “I made sure not to touch anything,” she said defensively.

  “And with any luck, maybe there’s something on the tape to show what they did with the anklet.”

  So he hadn’t been trying to save her from a misdemeanor burglary. “And then we’ll hunt them down?”

  “Undoubtedly, we’ll be able to buy it back with appropriate incentive.”

  “Head lopping?”

  “Cold, hard cash—your favorite kind—is tidier. They won’t know what they have, so they’ll have no reason to resist.” His eyes glittered.

  If anyone would know about cold, hard, and irresistible . . . She followed him out.

  “What have we here?”

  Corvus Valerius dangled the coarse chain between his fingers. To his human eyes—at least the one that focused—the chain looked like nothing more than a timeworn silver veneer over some base metal. But to the djinni that infused him, the trinket twinkled with unholy power.

  “I found it. Well, a swarm of darklings found it. But when I saw them all mobbing, I knew it would be something you’d like.” The young man shifted uneasily from foot to foot, as if he wasn’t quite sure of his welcome. Although with the youth’s pants hanging baggy around his knees, Corvus wondered how quickly the boy thought he’d get away.

  “Interesting.” Corvus tugged the chain over his thick swordsman’s hand. The links bit into his wrist. It would chafe his human flesh, but the djinni didn’t care. The demon’s senses expanded through him, probing at the hollow cylinder about the size of his first finger joint. When his vision blurred with the djinni’s focus, the carved patterns on the bead churned inward to another dimension. The vast depth drew his attention deeper and deeper, where he would fall endlessly. . . .

  His stomach heaved with a purely human reaction and he jerked involuntarily. The demon recoiled, and without his conscious effort, his hand slapped over the bead.

  The youth flinched. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of it—”

  “No. No, we like this very much. Thank you, Andre. You have proved yourself once again a valuable ally.” Corvus smiled at the young man.

  Judging from Andre’s second flinch, though, Corvus thought perhaps he shouldn’t make the effort again. Ever since that fall from his penthouse citadel, the muscles in his face didn’t always respond as they should. And ever since his soul had been stolen from him, he’d had little reason to practice smiles.

  But with this trinket, he’d be able to avenge both those wrongs.

  Andre smoothed the nervousness from his expression. “Without you warning me to stay away from that solvo shit, it would’ve dissolved me for sure, and I wouldn’t’ve even cared.”

  “Indeed,” Corvus murmured. “It is hard to stay focused in the face of overwhelming pain. But that is what purifies and absolves us. You have risen above your pain and not dissolved into it. Which separates you from the rest.”

  That, and the fact that when Corvus had turned the young man toward the shadows and shown him what lurked there, Andre hadn’t screamed and bolted. Indeed, his crowing, “I knew it!” had been singularly anticlimactic.

  “Andre,” Corvus said slowly. “There was a woman to whom this charming bauble belonged.”

  Andre frowned. “I found the little demons and the chain at a pawnshop. The owner and the guy behind the counter were both men.” He hitched his pants higher. “You want me to find the woman who had it first.”

  Corvus nodded. The motion set his wayward eyeball rolling and upset his stomach again. “You have been an excellent soldier, Andre. It is time for you to become a centurion, to learn what we are truly fighting for. Follow the darklings’ sign. They will follow the woman. Do not approach her. She will be dangerous, to you and to me. But find her.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jonah didn’t want to take Nim to the @1 sanctuary.

  Liam, though he had once been wholeheartedly devoted to the league, had given his heart to the second known extant female talya, Jilly. And it had been Liam’s suggestion—the coloring high in his Black Irish skin had hinted at his embarrassment—that Jonah pursue this latest female talyan in private. Jonah had been shocked that the formerly duty-bound league leader would underplay the only purpose of the mated-talyan bond: to form a stronger weapon in the battle against evil. His new priorities spoke volumes about the influence of his exceedingly rebellious woman.

  Now, as Jonah drove Nim out of the predawn city, he was grateful for the distance from his league brothers.

  How could he return with only half a weapon in hand? Nim, without her demon-wrought jewelry, was not the prize he’d sought. Nim, in her outrageously short skirt—when she’d bent over to scr
utinize the jeweler’s case at the pawnshop, the curve of her buttocks had been nearly exposed at the apex of her long legs—was perhaps too much of a prize, at least for the companionship-starved males lurking in the halls of the league’s salvage warehouse.

  He’d been married, and he’d lost his wife. Whatever had happened to the long-ago female talyan hinted at in league archives, he knew what the remaining men really needed to complete them.

  But they’d want Nim’s hell-on-heels allure even more.

  He’d pity them if he had room for the sentiment in all the pity he was feeling for himself.

  His amoral associate cracked a yawn. “Where are we going? I’m beat.”

  “I want to take a look at this video. We need to find that anklet before things get out of hand.” More out of hand.

  “Nobody has VCRs anymore,” she said. “We couldn’t even have stolen one from the pawnshop. They only had DVD players.”

  “I know a place just enough behind the times to have what we need.”

  A streak of orange showed in the eastern sky, like the heating element of a toaster oven promising another broiling day, when they pulled up at the cinder-block building on the edge of the city proper.

  Nim stood with the open car door between her and their destination. “A church? You brought me to a church while I’m dressed like this?”

  “I was a churchgoing man.” He clipped the words off; whether he was dulling them for himself or sharpening them for her, she wasn’t sure. “And you dressed like that for me.”

  “Yeah, but I’m offending you on purpose.” She clutched the doorframe. “Is this your church?”

  “No. I don’t belong now.” And never would again. Thankfully, the reminder no longer had the power to wound him through the scars of years. He slammed his door and stalked around the front of the car.

  “Right. What with being possessed by a demon. That’d probably freak ’em out.”

  “Most, undoubtedly. But Nanette knows what we are. She is the wife of the pastor here, and is host to an angelic force.”

  Nim’s sneakers thudded on the concrete behind him as she scurried to catch up. “Angels? You didn’t tell me there are angels here on Earth.”