Vowed in Shadows

by Jessa Slade

  His jaw worked and he clenched the bed post as if he were holding himself back from arguing. She wished he would just let go and shout at her, because then she’d know he didn’t care about what she’d found.

  Instead, he turned away to jerk on his clothes, not even bothering to tuck in his shirt. “Show me.”

  A chill spiked inward, like an iron maiden closing around her. She rolled over on the sheet to gather the folds around her. The shopping bag spilled to the floor. “Your surprise is down in the lab. I hope you like it.”

  He moved so quietly, she didn’t hear him leave. Only the quiet click of the door latch and the emptiness of the room told her he’d gone.

  Had he noticed how much he’d changed from the awkward, stiff recluse he’d considered himself? She buried her face in the pillow, where the scent of him—salt and sun and maleness—lingered. She thought she would’ve appreciated it more if he wasn’t using his quiet steps to walk out on her.

  She’d changed too, unfortunately, or she wouldn’t have cried.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jonah sucked in a long breath and almost gagged on the miasma of hot dust and ancient wood varnish. He’d gone to the stairwell, stomping headlong toward the basement, only to find himself on the top floor amidst the salvaged @1 junk.

  That’s what he’d been. Junk in the attic. Except he wasn’t even useful for spare parts.

  With Nim, though, he’d become more than that, just as he’d intended. Even without her twice-damned anklet, she was a force to be reckoned with.

  And there was always a reckoning. Apparently, this was it.

  He slumped against the window. The smudged panes obscured most of the city beyond, letting in only the white afternoon light that burned his tightly clenched lids when he closed his eyes.

  Given the first chance, she’d crept away from him, back to her life of before, even though that life lay in blood-soaked, birnenston-stained ruins. She hadn’t seen a reason to take him with her because the bond between them wasn’t strong enough. His body and soul weren’t enough. As for his heart . . .

  His harsh laugh, tinged with demon, cracked the pane.

  He was going to lose her. She would find that damned anklet and become twice the warrior he’d ever been. And the loss would hurt worse than his maiming ever had. Not because he’d lost his weapon hand—again—but because this time he’d lost his heart.

  But how could he force her to love him back? The demon’s unholy power hadn’t kept him whole before. Why should that change now?

  Reluctantly, he made his way downstairs. At the last minute, he turned aside on the main floor and stepped outside.

  At first he thought the clanging was his headache, but he followed the noise to the far docking bay, where Liam had set up his forge.

  The league leader had stripped to nothing more than a leather apron over his jeans, but sweat poured down his shoulders as he guided a hammer along the metal cuff he was molding. He nodded at Jonah and continued the rhythmic blows. Ecco worked the bellows. The big talya hadn’t deigned to remove his shirt, and he was almost as soaked as Liam.

  Jonah went to the doorway to stare blindly out at the chain link, bleached to floss under the sun’s glare. At a hiss behind him, he turned to see Liam plunge the cuff into the galvanized-steel washtub beside the anvil.

  Liam lifted the cuff, grunted to himself, and dunked his head. He came up sputtering, and joined Jonah in the doorway. “I just need to attach the cuff to the blade you gave me. When I’m done, the only weak spot will be where the weapon attaches to you.”

  “That’s the way it always is,” Jonah said.

  The league leader stood dripping for a moment, swinging the hammer idly, then hazarded a guess. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Never been there.”

  Ecco snorted. “Well, then, you gotta get back on the whore . . . horse,” he said hurriedly when the other two talyan rounded on him. “Whoa, take it easy.”

  “Ecco.” Demon harmonics shivered in Liam’s voice, and he shoved Jonah back a couple yards. “I thought putting you to slave work down here would remind you why you don’t run off with our women.”

  “I would’ve brought them back.” Ecco hunched his shoulders at the reprimand. “And can I remind you—again—that calling all tenebrae was their idea?”

  “I don’t care—Damn it, Jonah!” Liam raised the hammer to ward off the downward slice of the executioner’s blade aimed at Ecco’s head. The big talya yelped and ducked.

  Jonah gritted his teeth. Liam had removed the grip from the African blade to ready it for the cuff, so the sword lacked all balance and strength. Not unlike him. But the gleaming edge drew sparks from the hammer as it sheared through the metal.

  Jonah pulled up the strike before he hit Liam.

  The league leader narrowed his gaze, first on the blade hovering a handsbreadth from his face, then on Jonah. “I’m not done with that yet.”

  “With the sword or with Ecco?”

  “Either.”

  “It’ll be a fine sword once the teshuva’s ether sinks in,” Jonah said. He cut a glance at Ecco. “I’ll wait.”

  Ecco scowled. “You boys take this chick thing far too seriously.” He stalked away.

  “Let it go,” Liam murmured.

  Jonah shrugged. “I don’t think I ever have a choice, do I?”

  The league leader gave him a look, as if Liam suspected there was more to the comment. And Jonah didn’t want the perceptive man to delve any deeper, so he said, “Nim found a clue to Corvus’s lair.”

  Liam stiffened. “Then why are we still standing here? What is it?”

  Jonah shrugged again. “She said she left it in Sera’s lab.”

  Instead of racing away, Liam tossed the shattered hammer on the anvil. “Is Nim down there?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” There was weight in the understanding exhalation. “How badly do we want this?”

  “Badly.” Jonah studied the edge of the blade. Not a nick.

  “Then let’s go see what she brought us.”

  Jonah hesitated, the ill-weighted weapon wavering in his hand. He could send Liam alone and go to his room to confront his temptress. But the sword wasn’t ready yet.

  So he followed the league leader in silence down to the lab.

  Liam stopped at the counter and peered down at the shard. “Is it part of a bowl?”

  “Nim found it at the Shimmy Shack.”

  Liam’s gaze arrowed to him. “She went back there?”

  Jonah gave a sharp nod. “So unless the ferales have retired to pottery . . .”

  “Or glassblowing.” Liam lifted the piece, and the glass glinted.

  “The rest is turtle shell.”

  Liam grunted. “We didn’t have turtles in Ireland.”

  “We ate them from the jungle rivers.” Jonah shook his head. “There’s no way any of the people in the club took a chunk from a feralis. The tenebrae must’ve been on a rampage.”

  Liam scowled. “Andre blamed them for hurting Jilly.”

  “That is what they do,” Jonah murmured. Which was why he’d wanted to keep Nim safe, leaving her behind while the talyan hunted. How could she not understand that?

  “The glass is a strange addition.” Liam smoothed his thumb over the etched surface.

  “We know Corvus liked glass sculptures,” Jonah said. “He had captured the etheric emanations of birds in glass when Archer and Sera tracked him down the first time.”

  “He already has control—somewhat—of the ferales, so what is he capturing now?” Liam straightened. “I’ll wake Archer and Sera, see what else they remember from the glassworks. You get Nim. I want to know what else she found.”

  Jonah hesitated, and Liam rubbed his temple where the black lines of his reven curled around his eye. “Fine. You get Archer and Sera. I’ll collect Nim after I get Jilly. She’ll be furious if I leave her out.”

  As they separated to their tasks, Jonah wondered how the league leader
had forged such a close bond with a woman as bold and independent as Jilly. The two—like Archer and Sera—were fitted as close as blade to fist.

  He and Nim only raised sparks.

  His knock at Archer’s door went unanswered, so he called the other talya’s cell and got a curt message to leave his number. “We have another hint to Corvus’s location,” he said. “Liam wants you.”

  Before he’d disconnected, a call was ringing through. He answered with, “Screening your calls?”

  “Consider yourself lucky I had to piss, or I wouldn’t be up at all.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Had to get away for a day.” Archer’s voice lowered. “It’s easier to keep Sera out of trouble if we’re away.”

  Jonah wondered how far out in the Shades of Gray he’d have to take Nim. “Trouble is back.”

  Archer sighed. “And we will be too. Give us twenty minutes.”

  “Trouble isn’t usually so accommodating.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen. Hold down the fort.” Archer disconnected.

  Jonah shook his head. Was that a vote of confidence from the other talya? Considering they’d always circled each other warily, Archer’s nihilism clashing with his own objective moralism, this might very well be the end of the world.

  With heavy steps, he made his way to the lab. He slowed when he heard Nim’s voice.

  The grim and decidedly untrusting Archer trusted him, but his own talya mate did not. She had gone off alone to the tenebrae slaughterhouse rather than seek his help.

  Even at half speed, his feet carried him close enough to hear her say, “So, Detective Ramirez said—”

  “Wait,” Liam interrupted. “There was a cop?”

  “But we didn’t tell him anything,” Nim said quickly.

  “We?” Liam’s voice rose a notch.

  “Me and Cyril Fane, the angel-man.”

  Jonah closed his eyes. She hadn’t come to him, but she’d gone to the angelic possessed. And a cop too, apparently.

  He stepped into the lab. Liam and Jilly were shaking their heads in sync, though he doubted they noticed, so aghast were their expressions.

  “Nim,” Jilly said. “You shouldn’t mess with the sphericanum.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Nim protested. “He came here.”

  “What?” Liam’s voice dropped to a rumble, with demon tones riding the lows. He whirled on Jonah. “Did you know about this?”

  Nim took a step forward, bringing Liam back around. “He didn’t.”

  Jonah didn’t move, but he gave her a long look. “Do you think that sounds better for me that I didn’t know?”

  Her cheeks darkened, and she hunched her shoulders. “If you’d let me tell the story in order, it wouldn’t sound so bad, because I’d get to the part where now we have a clue how to find Corvus.”

  Liam said nothing, so Jilly gave a curt, “Fine. Start at the beginning.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Nim said. “You know, since we haven’t been doing anything, stuck here at the warehouse. So I got up. . . .”

  By the time she’d finished explaining, with only a few more muffled exclamations from Liam, how she’d summoned the lost souls, located the shell fragment, distracted the detective, and taken the angelic possessed to a lingerie store—“So I’m pretty sure we’re safe from the sphericanum hearing anything about this”—Archer and Sera had arrived.

  The two other bonded pairs stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head, one that was spouting insanity. Of course, the only reason she didn’t have a second head was that she’d left Mobi upstairs. After she’d taken the snake on her adventure.

  Jonah stiffened against the proof of how much she didn’t want him as partner. But with Liam and Jilly and Archer and Sera eyeing her with such consternation, he had no choice but to step up beside her. “Moving on,” he said. “What do we really have here?”

  Nim murmured an almost inaudible “Thank you.” He didn’t respond.

  Liam set two fingers against the reven at his temple and sighed. “I sent a message to the Beijing league. If anyone has archives deep enough to find a reference that might help, it’s them. If anyone wants to help, that is.”

  Archer flipped the shell fragment in his hand. “You’re right about it being turtle. I caught them all the time when I was a boy.”

  “A million years ago,” Sera murmured. She tucked herself under his arm to peer at the shard. “When Corvus took me to the lair he was using in his solvo-dealing days, he had the glass bird sculptures, but nothing etched like this. The birds were really quite beautiful. This . . .” Her finger hovered over the seam between shell and glass. “The way he’s melded the demonically mutated husk with the glass is just odd.”

  “We know art holds the tenebrae at bay,” Jilly said. “And we know Corvus wanted to be free of his djinni. Maybe he’s building a trap.”

  Liam wrapped his fingers around the knot-work bracelet at her wrist and pulled her close. “A trick you taught him, perhaps?”

  The sight of them, so synchronized, one to the other, stabbed through Jonah. He closed his eyes to focus on the task at hand. “Corvus might have believed tearing through the Veil would set the forces of hell directly against the gates of heaven and free him from his slavery to the djinni. But once he fell out of that high-rise where he took you”—he opened his eyes to look first at Sera, then at Archer—“because you pushed him out the window, the djinni took over what’s left of him. And the djinni wouldn’t be interested in containing the tenebrae.”

  “True,” Sera said. “Since glass isn’t a solid or a liquid, it has crossover properties that might have appealed to Corvus while he was messing with the Veil between the realms. Birnenston is a demonically altered form of hydrofluoric acid, which can etch glass. So maybe the ferales were just adding extra trash to their husks. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  After a moment of silence, everyone mumbled disagreement.

  “Yeah,” Sera said. “I don’t think that either.”

  “But it doesn’t really matter why,” Nim said. “All we care about is where.” She glanced at Jonah as if for confirmation, yet her expression was uncertain.

  What else was he supposed to care about? He crossed his arm over his chest. He felt like the fragment: half–hollow shell, half–brittle glass. “The djinn-man needs to fall. And stay fallen this time.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Archer muttered.

  Nim dropped her gaze. “How much more do we need? Andre told us Corvus mentioned a float plane. Fane dug up the turtle shell. And Ramirez said the bodies were contaminated with a gnarly acid. How many places could we be talking about?”

  Sera gave a wry shrug and tossed the shard toward her computer. Over the discordant clatter and chime as it hit the monitor, she mused, “We live in an industrial city on a lake. Let’s see . . .”

  “So look it up.” Nim pointed her chin at the computer.

  “What am I looking up? Demons and esoteric glass-work and apocalypse—oh, hell?”

  “I was thinking float planes, turtles, and hydrofluoric acid,” Nim said. “But don’t exclude demons from the search.”

  Sera shook her head and crossed to the keyboard. “Right. Because Corvus Valerius is listed on Google. Besides that one Roman general, I mean.” She muttered to herself as she typed. “More generic? ‘Chicago airport’ and ‘industrial waste’? ‘Turtles’ can stay.” She sat back abruptly. “I’d forgotten they talked about an airport at Lake Calumet.”

  “I remember,” Jilly said. “I dated an environmental activist for a while who talked about saving the marshes there.” She bumped her shoulder into Liam’s. “You would’ve hated him.”

  “The feeling would’ve been mutual.” The league leader folded his arms over his chest. “The area was used for illegal dumping for decades, and a few rotting ferales’ carcasses might’ve been added to the pile on occasion.”

  “And now they’re coming back to haunt us.” Nim ges
tured at the glass fragment. “Well? Let’s go check it out. What’ve we got to lose?”

  Everyone looked at her.

  She grimaced. “Oh, other than all that?”

  “Tonight,” Liam said. “When the others wake.”

  Under the thick, black sky, the lake was rippled glass. Tar and obsidian, Jonah thought, as he dragged in another humid breath. He let the breath out slowly as he stroked the oar silently through the water. Across the wide deck from him, Lex manned the second oar and matched his paddling. The pontoons weren’t made for rowing, but they hadn’t wanted to announce themselves with motors.

  And, more important, the square, stable craft left room for fighting, should any ferales come winging out of the dark.

  Behind him, the second boat they’d “borrowed” was equally silent as they explored the shoreline. Somewhere inland, two other teams poked through the wreckage of industry and the forest that had sprung up around it. But his cell phone, set to vibrate, was as stubbornly still as the woman at his side.

  No one had been left behind tonight. He’d understood that to ask her otherwise was pointless. Despite her play at shamelessness, he knew she felt the guilty sting of losing the anklet. But if Corvus had holed up somewhere ahead . . .

  The sweat that stained his shirt felt suddenly clammy and chilled.

  Kneeling at the prow, Nim turned her head abruptly. Her eyes gleamed violet in the night, and his heart leapt in atavistic delight at the hunter’s glow. “There,” she whispered. “In that tower.”

  He followed her gaze. The grain elevator stood abandoned, ringed in a thicket of undergrowth. No terrestrial light shone there, but to his demon’s eyes, a flicker of etheric disturbance shot across the single upper-story window and then vanished.

  His phone twitched in his pocket. Sera texted from the boat behind them to all the talyan; she’d seen the demon sign too.

  Perhaps it was nothing; a lone feralis ghosting through the empty building in pursuit of a sickly bat to add to its corporeal husk. Suddenly, he couldn’t say which he wanted more: another false alarm or Corvus’s crushed head on a pike.