Vowed in Shadows

by Jessa Slade

  Jonah tightened his fist. “Yes. Turn here.”

  But Liam was already turning, apparently drawn on the same garrote tightening around Jonah’s chest. The tires rumbled a warning over the abandoned rail line.

  Nando slung his arm over Jonah’s seat. “Where are we—Oh.”

  The building at the end of the tracks seemed to twitch. Ferales swarmed in uncountable numbers across its surface, their wings and tails and claws a rattling hiss in the night.

  “I never really appreciated the word ‘horde’ before,” Haji said.

  Bricks tumbled from the top cornice of the building, as if the structure writhed in pain. Demonic emanations had amassed to such pressure, ether steamed from the upper windows like a kettle about to scream. The same force leapt into Jonah’s throat.

  “That doesn’t look long for this world,” Nando commented. “So remind me: Why are we getting out of the car?”

  Jonah had fumbled the door open before Liam brought the car to a halt. The other bonded talya was only a half step behind him as he raced for the building.

  What could possibly lure this many tenebrae to one place?

  As if he even needed to ask.

  He hit the first feralis before it knew he was there and easily scaled the eight-foot, sloping spine to bury his hook in its chest. In silence, he wrenched the hook upward. Ichor spilled in a stinking gush.

  The demon’s frustrated power rebounded through him, and its frenzied craving to be unleashed aligned with his one desire: to be with Nim.

  The two nearest ferales cringed away. He ripped through them in one blow and clambered over the husks to boost himself into the open window.

  The interior was awash in tenebrae. The sour scent of rot yanked his breath away as effortlessly as he had disemboweled the ferales.

  Ecco was a dervish, gauntlets invisible under ichor and feralis chunks. He slashed with deadly grace, but only the sheer mass—the horde getting in its own way—kept him from being overwhelmed. At his back, Sera and Jilly formed the other two points of a triangle, holding back the tide with their small and deadly knives.

  Nim stood in the middle, looking lost in the fray.

  As Jonah launched himself through the window, he wondered acidly why Jilly—who loved to visit the league’s weapons depot—hadn’t seen fit to arm Nim before their girls’ night out.

  Since he’d carelessly not seen to the task himself. He’d kick himself later. If they survived.

  He cried out a warning, his throat cracking with the crisscross of human fury and demonic ecstasy. He’d sacrifice the surprise attack to let the defenders know help had arrived. Although only four more talyan against the horde . . .

  Liam and the other two talyan exploded through the windows on either side of him, and they fell on the rear of the packed ferales.

  As if oblivious to the new attack, the ferales continued to press inward. Liam swung his hammer, blasting through three ferales at a time, yet they didn’t turn to rend him or try to flee. Instead, they yearned toward Ecco and the women. Toward Nim. They had to get to her and stop the lure, or who knew what else she’d bring down on their heads.

  First, though, Jonah had to get through the concentric rings of ferales. And while the tenebrae weren’t focused on him, they’d exterminate him if he made it convenient enough.

  As he spun past the outer circle, a feralis with spiderlike forelegs reached for him. He ducked, found himself face to . . . mandibles with its second, lower head. When he lashed out, it reared back, and he followed, knocking it over. He scrambled across its belly, his boots slipping on the ulcerated gray skin, and then sprang toward the next layer of tenebrae.

  Disoriented in the melee, he couldn’t see even Ecco’s tall form. And yet some awareness drew him irresistibly onward. The bond or Nim’s lure? Or were the two the same? Certainly every man in her orbit felt the magnetism, bonded or not. And so, obviously, did every demon.

  He had to stop it. Stop her.

  The ring of tenebrae drew tighter. He leapt from one gutted feralis corpse to the next—except that one moved. It tossed him off his feet and he sprawled in a pool of ichor. The acidic black burned at his hand as he pushed himself upright.

  Inside him, the teshuva reached greedily for the feralis’s death throes, matching itself to the resonance and drawing off the emanations to refresh itself. But he didn’t have time to indulge its hungers. He tore free, just in time to dodge a winged feralis that dove in and tried to grab his head from his shoulders. He ducked behind another lumbering, roachlike monstrosity.

  The flying feralis shrieked and winged backward with a blast of fouled air. Jonah spun away as the feralis dove at him again.

  A wicked whistle of blades cut through the air. And through the feralis’s outstretched talons.

  It screamed, a piteous sound, but Ecco had zero pity. With a series of blurred punches like a speed-bag boxing workout, he diced the feralis. He reached out with his other hand and pulled Jonah into the inner circle.

  “Jonah!” Nim’s voice rang with pure elation. She threw herself against his chest.

  He grabbed her arm and forced her back a step. “You have to stop calling the tenebrae.”

  She stared at him. “Didn’t you bring the others? Is it just you?”

  His jaw worked. She hadn’t been waiting for him alone. Wisely. Since there was nothing he could do. No, he couldn’t stop the feralis onslaught, but he had to stop Nim’s lure. “There’s only Liam and two others. Not enough to face what you’ve brought here.”

  She winced, and he realized his grip had tightened. “We didn’t know this would happen,” she said.

  “So you waited until the worst possible time, until we’d gone, to take your demon for a spin.”

  “We knew you’d try to stop us.”

  “For very good reason, wouldn’t you say?” He gave her a shake. “Now you must stop it.”

  Stop flaunting his orders. Stop calling to the horde. Stop making him want. . . .

  “I don’t know how.” She flinched away from him. “You can’t just beat it out of me.”

  To his horror, he realized he was halfway there. His hand sprang open without his conscious thought to release her. He staggered back, as if there were someplace to go, to escape. Jilly and Sera were occupied with the rising body count, or they probably would’ve added him to the pile of corpses for grabbing Nim so harshly.

  He had never—never—handled Carine with such disregard. He’d rather sever his remaining hand than see Nim shrink from him. “Nim . . .”

  “I told you, I don’t know how—”

  How could she know? He hadn’t tried to teach her, not even with the same naïve but sincere fervor he’d taken with him to converting all Africa. Or at least the same exhilaration at the adventure. From the first, he’d faced her with his arms crossed, resisting temptation.

  “Like you did in the VIP lounge,” he said.

  She stiffened. “What?”

  “Dance. Dance like you did then, just for me.” He took a breath, seeking the warm scent of her skin under the miasma of rot and rust and brick dust. And he took a step closer to her, to fill her view. “As if there were just the two of us. Alone.”

  She gazed up, her eyes glazed in a violet storm. “You don’t want this. Don’t want me.”

  “But you know I do.” He gathered her close, gently, cursing his lack of poise—he couldn’t even blame the unbalance of his missing hand this time—that had made him push her away when she had reached for him with such sweet relief. If she rejected him now, rejected the focus he offered, she’d let the last of the horde close around them. And he’d have only his own ridiculous inhibitions to blame.

  “You want to stop me.” The demon was in her voice, in the lower octave and an almost inaudible shrill of condemnation.

  “I can’t stop you,” he admitted. He brought her up against his body, let her feel the hard truth in the violent need of his flesh, the pulse that lifted him to her—never mind the const
raints of his jeans or the certain death around them. “You danced for me once, and I’ve wanted you ever since.”

  The violet in her eyes flared and dimmed.

  Somewhere, Jilly called out wordlessly, and Liam answered with her name in a full-throated cry as he broke through to the inner circle. Stronger for being together.

  Jonah knew he needed to convince Nim. But how? With his body, with a look, with words? “I have nothing to give you in return,” he whispered. “My life is pledged to the league; my soul to the teshuva.”

  “I didn’t ask for either of those.”

  A heated flush rose in his face. This was the dance, he realized. The back-and-forth of what they could be to each other. For each other. “What’s left of my body isn’t worth the having.”

  “You lie,” she said. “And anyway, I’ve had that already.”

  The blush turned to flame and heated him to the core. “There’s nothing more of me.”

  “The tenebrae know there’s always more,” she said. “And they want the very last of it. Light and laughter. Hope and peace.” She hesitated. “Love.”

  The word hit him like a tenebrae fang through the belly, ripping upward to lodge in his throat. “I’ve no more of that either.”

  She shot him a glare and strained away from him with all her dancer’s strength and demon’s power. “You lie again.”

  He struggled to hold her, amping his teshuva against her fury, though his one-handed grip left him precariously unbalanced. “Nim, you ask too much.”

  In a blink, the violet storm in her eyes vanished, leaving only a deep murk. “And you never asked for anything, except a new right hand. But without the anklet, I can’t even be that to you.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  The closest feralis fell back on its haunches, pointed its muzzle upward, and let loose a howl of triumph. The rest answered in a cacophony that brought another rain of bricks tumbling down.

  Apparently, the tenebrae approved. Always a bad sign.

  Nim stood motionless. “If you can’t want me, why am I here?”

  Behind her, the ferales closed in. Nando stumbled and went to his knees. Jilly leapt forward with a battle cry . . . and Liam yanked her back, throwing himself into the fight instead. Ecco howled, trapped across the circle by a quartet of the roach ferales. Sera stood with both hands clamped around the desolator numinis around her throat. The chill of the tenebraeternum was a visible swirl of silvery fog, but the ferales marched onward.

  Jonah’s heart froze. They weren’t going to be able to fight off the horde. He couldn’t stop Nim’s lure. And he couldn’t give her what she wanted.

  In another second, if that orange-eyed feralis just beyond Nim’s shoulder had its way, his other arm would be ripped from him, along with the rest of his soul, and he’d be left with nothing. Truly nothing this time. Oblivion.

  Well, fuck that.

  In his head, he heard Nim’s laugh.

  When the orange-eyed feralis jumped, he met its attack halfway. Nim whirled as he arrowed past her, hook extended. The feralis flinched, and he caught it midchest. The hook buried past the thin metal “wrist” and lodged deep inside the feralis.

  Intimately close, he stared into its eyes. The dozen orange orbs, arrayed in a ring around its squat head, made the staring contest somewhat inequitable. It clacked its mandibles, and the clatter sounded suspiciously like a snicker. A thin spray of ichor burned on his cheek in a tenebrae kiss.

  This was the only sort of relationship remaining to him after he’d doomed himself by saying yes to the demon. Or so he’d come to believe.

  But his beliefs had failed him before.

  Nim cried out a warning. He yanked the hook free in a geyser of black rot. His teshuva reached with avid craving for the feralis’s faltering emanations. But Nim needed him.

  As he jerked around, his vision blurred between the fading tenebrae and Nim as he struggled to focus. His boots slid in the rubbish across the floor, and he windmilled his arms. And smacked a giant feralis in the nose—actually snout, razor fangs bristling—with his hook.

  The metal clanged against its teeth and the feralis snapped, faster than any creature of flesh alone, holding him fast.

  Nim screamed his name again as a second, winged feralis sprang over the hole in the inner circle to the left, where Liam had gone to Ecco’s rescue. The creature unfurled its wings, wide enough to shadow their pitifully small crew. The stink of burnt feathers blew up a with blinding backdraft of dust and glass.

  It scrabbled at Nim, and she punched back. Squealing, it dodged her blows. With one lucky snatch, it grabbed her by her hair and lifted off.

  She held on to its leg. Blood streamed through her fingers from the sharp quills. If she slipped, the feralis could break her neck with its awkward hold. Still, she batted at the wing nearest her, trying to upset its flight. It spiraled sideways, but steadied with another beat.

  In a moment, it would be out of reach.

  Jonah broke free of the feralis chewing its way up his arm. And he broke his arm too.

  The crack of the upper bone reverberated through his body like a lightning strike. The violence snapped the straps of the prosthetic, and the hook dangled in the feralis’s mouth as he launched himself after Nim.

  He latched his fingers around her ankle. Before he could hope for any leverage, his boots left the floor. The airborne feralis tilted at the added weight, dipping dangerously over the sea of ferales, before it recovered.

  The tenebrae bellowed their excitement, and Jonah had a glimpse of the talyan’s pale faces—almost three stories below now—before he looked up at Nim.

  How sad. This might be his last sight on earth, and she wasn’t wearing a skirt.

  “Pull me up,” he shouted.

  She bent her knees, hauling his deadweight higher. She grabbed his broken arm. Bone grated against bone, and the demon’s hunter-light vision sparked with pure, white human pain. He fought it down and hooked his good arm around her waist.

  The quills from the beating wings sliced through the meat of his shoulder. Which would have hurt, except for the pain in his arm. And the humiliation of not having a fucking hand to rip the fucking feralis out of the fucking sky.

  Ignoring the grind of bone, he looped his broken arm over Nim’s shoulder and lifted himself higher. The feralis had gathered the detritus of hundreds of slaughters—avian, insectile, even a hint of humanoid shape to its features swelling around a fleshy beak. Its demonic emanations—twisting and slippery—rivaled his teshuva’s.

  Which left brute ferocity to determine the winner.

  The feralis certainly overwhelmed him in the appendages division, and its underbelly was armored with thick scales. So he reached higher, and punched his fist down its throat.

  The sharp beak tore at his forearm, and then up to his elbow. It pierced skin, then muscle, and ground against bone. Ichor burned his hand. His remaining hand . . .

  For an instant, he wanted to pull free, fall to the ground. He still had two functioning feet that could carry him away.

  But the thought shredded like the wicked soulflies, never to return. He wouldn’t let go of Nim.

  The feralis choked and spat ichor in black gouts. Struggling, it ripped at him with seven of its eight feet. Only Nim’s grasp on its eighth leg kept her from falling. To his horror, she grabbed at the thrashing wing tip, and the feralis lost altitude.

  A mere two stories. A survivable fall. Probably. If they were going to bail out, they had to do so now. Knowing he had mere seconds before the feralis beak would saw through his arm, he reached down inside it.

  But a feralis didn’t have a heart. Nothing to reach for but the void he’d always feared.

  He could do to the feralis what Nim had done to him. He turned it inside out.

  His arm went numb as he heaved backward. Boiling ichor and pieces of the decomposing husk erupted from the gaping maw.

  The spidery legs spasmed and tossed Nim outward. Her gaze locked o
n his, silent, and she fell.

  Entwined with the feralis, he plummeted on his own painful arc.

  In the heartbeat before he hit, lights beamed through the open windows. Car headlights.

  With an explosion of feathers and brick dust, he slammed into the ground. The feralis broke his fall, enough that he maintained consciousness.

  The cars had to be the other talyan. Archer’s bond to Sera must have ignited any alcohol he’d managed to get in his hands. The cavalry had arrived.

  Not a moment too soon. Actually, a few moments too late.

  All around him, the tenebrae stampeded. Plenty of exits through the broken windows, but talyan—black-clad shadows, fast and furious—poured through the openings in pursuit of the escaping ferales. Who could escape only because . . .

  The lure was broken.

  The realization sent him reeling upright. “Nim!”

  Where was she? The milling claws could easily tear her apart if she lay unconscious.

  Or maybe she was already . . .

  No. He wouldn’t think that. A fleeing feralis knocked him over. He reeled up again. Realized neither arm was working right. Didn’t care.

  Where was she? He caught a glimpse of scarlet amid the black. Human blood slicked over ichor.

  His own blood stopped in his veins. He staggered, slipped again, and went to his knees beside her crumpled body.

  He heard Liam’s shout, a million miles away, and the answering roar from his warriors. At the talya war cry, the ferales fled in all directions.

  Jonah huddled over Nim as claws crushed down on him. His back strained to take the weight off her body, lest some inadvertent pressure sever an artery or pierce a vital organ before the teshuva worked its tricks.

  “You fell barely two stories,” he murmured. “Anyone who can do splits vertically on a pole while wearing heels as high as you do can survive a little bounce off concrete.”

  He barely noticed when the last of the ferales had escaped or been dismembered by the talyan. He knew only that the battering had stopped. Externally, at least.

  He leaned forward to press a kiss to Nim’s lips, but his face was too ichor scorched to feel if she breathed. “Wake up.”