Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  “They won’t hurt you. I don’t think.”

  She scowled. “I meant, I don’t like the idea we were pulled here.” She waved her arm, disrupting the slow spiral. “Kind of like these things.”

  “Stop swatting at them. It’s disrespectful. They’re not going to follow you far, or you would’ve been trailing them around like fairy dust ever since your teshuva gave you the bracelet.”

  “The gift that keeps on giving.”

  “For eternity, yeah.” Liam checked his cell phone.

  “Still too much interference to get a call out.”

  And get reinforcements in. She took a breath, not so much to rouse her demon as settle her nerves. The teshuva could only do so much, apparently. “Then we’re on our own. Good thing you got me.”

  She expected him to laugh. Instead he pocketed the phone and nodded. “Good thing.” He opened his coat and folded back the front edge to reveal the grip of the hammer. “The tenebrae were so eager to get us here. Let’s go see what they wanted us to find.”

  Together, they left the soulflies behind in a pinwheel of sparks.

  As they tracked deeper through the dark building, leaving the lightened square of the broken window behind, Liam longed to leave her safely behind. There was no safety to be had—he knew that—but the impulse didn’t change. If only he had a Jilly-sized trap where he could lock her away, someplace he’d find his way back to between battles.

  Of course, she’d kill him if she caught even an inkling of his thoughts. How convenient the flight for their lives distracted her from the telltale betrayals of capillary-refill rates, pupil dilation, and galvanic skin response that were the demon’s version of mind reading.

  She had the link to the soulflies, which led to the haint haunts connected to this latest demonic infestation, which would lead, on a twisting path, no doubt—though certain as day led to night—to Corvus. She was anything but safe.

  Like the weapons she had chosen, she was all sharp points and deadlier curves. But unlike the leather-wrapped grip of the crescent blades, if there was any safe place to hold her, he had yet to find it.

  That didn’t stop his hands from remembering the shape of her, as dangerous—and strangely calming—as the hammer he released from the anchor inside his coat.

  The third floor of the storefront where he’d broken through smelled of dust, mouse droppings, and moldy cardboard. A storage room, of some sort, but, judging from the strength of the stench, not one in recent use.

  He paused at the closed door that led out to the hall. A stretch of his demon senses picked up the boil of malice outside on the street and some more distant, muddled agony. Perhaps the ferales swept along by the train.

  “Something creepy in here,” Jilly whispered. “I don’t suppose the graffiti on the front door counts as art to keep the malice out.”

  “Depends on how good the artist was and what he infused into his art. Tags alone won’t do it.”

  “I knew I should’ve pushed harder for that art-therapy program at the halfway house, but, speaking of creeps, Envers was always telling me we didn’t have the money for it. I bet he’d change his tune after a ride-along with the league.”

  Regardless of the creep factor, they couldn’t stay here. He turned the knob and let himself out into the hall.

  The eerie black lighting of the teshuva in hunt mode flattened the perspective in the wide, empty hallway. No birnenston. No etheric smears. So why had the soulflies gathered? They moved too slowly to have been drawn to Jilly from outside in the brief time she’d been in the building. And if the bodies they’d been ripped from weren’t present . . .

  “I see you followed my little trail of bread crumbs.”

  Out of nowhere, a shape coalesced at the end of the hall, a deeper blackness among the shadows.

  Jilly’s hand fisted in the back of his coat, and a few shards of glass fell from the folds with a warning chime. Liam settled his hand on the hammer. “Corvus.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Liam angled the hammer in a two- handed grasp across his body, Jilly behind him, as the djinn- man took another step down the hall. Despite the teshuva ascending, Liam couldn’t make out the djinn-man’s features, although the curious tilt to the head was apparent.

  “Corvus?” The rough voice slurred. “Barely. Thanks to you.”

  Corvus stepped into a faint fall of street light that struggled through from an outside room. Soulflies flickered in the air, and Liam’s stomach twisted when he wondered how much haint dust was trapped in the grimy creases of the djinn- man’s clothing. Only by shuffling his demon senses to the side was Liam able to make out Corvus’s face.

  Four months ago, Liam had caught the briefest glimpse of the djinn-man. Archer had thrown him from a high-rise, which made visual identification problematic. There hadn’t exactly been a lot left to remember. A powerful wrestler’s build, a shaved head, a lot of blood. And then the building had collapsed on him in a quite dramatic spray of bricks and demon-realm wind. More concerned with the survival of his talyan, Liam hadn’t bothered noting details, since they’d thought Corvus was dead—body, soul, and demon separated forever.

  Apparently the demon part had other ideas.

  Closer now, in the staggered light, Liam studied the slack face. On that terrible night, spatterings of gray matter had melted holes in the snow, which probably indicated a certain amount of persistent brain damage. What kind of demon could bring a body back from that? And without the soul as anchor.

  One of Corvus’s faded blue eyes slid sideways, though the other stayed pinned on them. “We had no fight with you, teshuva.”

  “ ‘We, ’ ” Jilly echoed softly. “I see them both.”

  She was right. Liam’s human eyes saw the corporeal Corvus body, but his teshuva’s sight glimpsed the hovering afterimage of the possessing djinni, like an ill- fitting shadow superimposed over the man.

  Corvus’s demon still rode him, as brutalized as any haint, but the djinni hadn’t burned through its chosen body. It possessed the mangled flesh with a delicacy that whispered of eons of refined control. The only sign of its now imperfect merger was Corvus’s exposed reven. The black lines that climbed both his arms like vicious briars seeped birnenston. The sulfuric poison had eaten away at his sleeves, leaving his strangeness painfully apparent to even the most oblivious human.

  And the djinni claimed to have no fight with the league? Liam could only wish that were true.

  “You corrupted my Bookkeeper,” Liam reminded him. “And then the two of you pierced the Veil to the tenebraeternum to call over a demon that possessed a good woman . . . which made her one of mine. And still, the league and the djinn might have continued as we have since before even you were taken in Nero’s day. But then you tried to kill Sera, and her mate did not handle that well.”

  “So we noticed.” Corvus’s lips drew up in a terrible rictus. A smile, Liam realized. “But just as you have found a new configuration with that woman, so we have fresh faces.” A drop of birnenston leaked from Corvus’s wandering eyeball and fell, sizzling through the old linoleum. Corvus—or maybe the demon—lifted one hand to wipe away the smoking tear. “How do you like them?”

  “The salambes?” Liam shrugged. “We destroy malice and ferales. Honestly, what’s one more enemy?”

  “Ah, but their kind have not been free since the Fall. And they are finding their way here now. With some help from us.” Another poisonous tear crept down Corvus’s cheek.

  Liam had known that the salambes were a foe he hadn’t encountered before, despite his years in the tenebrae trenches. But hearing the Corvus-djinni confirm that the tides of the battle were shifting again wasn’t exactly encouraging news.

  That awful lopsided smile returned. “What’s more, we learned the trick from you.”

  Jilly sucked in a breath.

  Liam didn’t move. “More of Bookie’s betrayals?”

  Corvus shook his head. The lazy eye rolled, lid flapping. “Your Bookworm gave us
the desolator numinis, but you talyan fashioned the burning ones. Yet another way you are lately setting the nights on fire, yes?”

  The djinn- man gave Liam a leer and lazy-eyed wink, as if he meant to be chummy, but the slyly suggestive accusation chilled Liam to the bone.

  And still the slurred drone went on: “You gave shape to the salambes, but what is the other meaning of ‘forge,’ blacksmith?”

  Liam wondered exactly how much bitching about the league Bookie had done with his evil cohort. He could’ve done without the djinn-man knowing all their secrets. “To forge is to fake.”

  “Ah, so it is. Are you a false leader, then?”

  Jilly surged forward. “He would never help you!”

  Only Liam’s arm, snagged around her waist, kept her from charging the djinn-man. “As much as I appreciate your defending me . . . ,” he murmured. He meant to sound wry, but the warmth in his chest was more than the close press of her shoulders could explain. He’d en-vied those she stuck up for, and now he knew how it felt. Quite good. If only he had time to revel.

  Corvus tilted his head to examine her. “I never said it was just him.” Before Liam could chase down the ominous echo the words sent tolling through his head, the djinn-man continued. “You are small and sharp. And you used to run alone, just as my darklings did. Free.” He shifted a reproachful gaze to Liam. “You, at least, I thought knew better than to fall back into the trap with her.”

  Liam tightened his grip on Jilly, unwilling to be led astray by Corvus’s—or were they the djinni’s?—meandering thoughts. No doubt that miasma of insinuation and lies was as perilous as any boggy marsh. “What do you want, djinni? We followed the little path you laid. Now say why you brought us.”

  “What I suggested to your annoying talya pair before. Leave us be.”

  “Leave you—?” Liam bit off a harsh laugh. “Archer and Sera stopped you from ripping open the Veil between us and hell. You think I didn’t wholeheartedly support them?”

  Despite the slackened features, Corvus looked crafty. “What do you know of whole hearts?”

  Liam’s chest vibrated with Jilly’s growl. “I know that’s what you destroy with your nasty solvo,” she said.

  “Just the soul,” Corvus corrected.

  “Heart,” she insisted. “Mind. Life and light.”

  “Will you say ‘love’?” The doubled octaves of Corvus’s human throat and demon overlord made the word a curse and a threat.

  Jilly hesitated. “Not that. Never that.”

  She was thinking of Dory, Liam knew.

  Corvus’s lazy eye rolled back into position, fixed on her. As if, Liam thought uneasily, the man as well as the djinni knew what she was thinking too. “Will the rest of humanity feel that way, do you think, when their loved ones come to them, vicious as ferales, cruel as malice?”

  She recoiled. “What—?”

  Liam held his hand at her back. Supporting her or ready to stop another ill-considered lunge—he wasn’t sure which. “The djinni means when the salambes are running the haints. Without the help of other-realm sight, no one would know that it wasn’t their husband, wife, child, or friend. And when that person became a monster . . .”

  “Monster is such a judgmental word,” Corvus said. “And it’s not Judgment Day. Yet. But the solvo is spreading, and behind it widens the desolation.”

  Jilly straightened. “Then why even bother saying boo to us?”

  Corvus spread his hands in a theatrical gesture. Or tried to, but the awkward angle of his elbows looked more like broken wings than a magician’s flourish. His tattered sleeves flapped, and soulflies swirled in the backwash. “You are more kin to me than you know.”

  “Hardly,” she snapped.

  The djinn-man narrowed his eyes, squeezing out birnenston that burned down his cheeks, though the demon healed the angry red marks as quickly as they appeared. “Still judging. I thought you might understand how it goes. I could show you rebellion such as your young monsters in training only dream of.”

  Liam let the hammer drop lightly to his side. The low whistle sang descant to his teshuva snarl. “Whatever Dory told you, you don’t know Jilly, so stay out of her head.”

  Corvus gave him another walleyed stare. “And you know her so well?”

  Liam stiffened at the note of mockery. His duty was to know all his talyan, their strengths and foibles. So why did he suspect the djinn-man meant something more?

  “Never mind.” Corvus’s voice slurred, and his lazy eye drifted. “Perhaps you don’t yet understand, but I am learning so much from you all.”

  “He’s losing it,” Jilly hissed. “The djinni doesn’t have a solid hold.”

  Liam moved forward ahead of her, letting his demon vision flicker to keep both Corvus and the wavering shade around him in sight. “Doesn’t make them less dangerous.”

  Still, the Corvus-djinni took a step back. “I’m giving you the chance to join me.”

  “First, you said leave you alone. Now, join you.” Jilly gave a harsh laugh. Her knives flashed in her hands. “We’ll stop you.”

  “Jilly,” Liam warned.

  Before he could say more—such as, “What the fuck are you doing?”—she leapt at Corvus.

  Despite her blurred speed, the shadow of the djinni yanked the gladiator’s ravaged body back with an unnatural twist, like an invisible hand sweeping aside a puppet. Jilly dropped to a crouch in the space Corvus had been.

  Liam, a step behind, saw the soulflies displaced by a swell of demonic emanation. The drifts of tiny lights were crushed up against the walls. The sharp scent of rusting metal flowed over him.

  “Incoming.” He swung the hammer over his head, barely clearing the ceiling, and charged.

  The rush stirred the soulflies into a wake of eerie phosphorescence and outlined a dozen hulking shapes that filled the wide hallway, wall to wall. Off- kilter, upthrust teeth cut like spear points through the remnants of the pale shimmer behind Corvus. Salambes.

  Liam aimed his attack at the djinn- man. No point in swinging a hammer against pure ether. Even Jilly wasn’t that hopelessly obstinate.

  His charge took him into the center of the salambes as they swept past Corvus. Nothing to see, but he felt the congealing on his skin like slimy ice. It sank through him, a thousand times worse than the sting of a malice.

  The agony plunged into his heart and slammed him to his knees. Only the hammer braced against the floor kept him upright.

  “Liam.” Jilly bolted toward him. He held up a hand, warning her back.

  “It only hurts because of your soul,” Corvus mocked. “Can you let that go?”

  Jilly whirled and let fly with both blades.

  From the time-distorted depths of his pain, Liam admired the glitter. She at least knew how to let go. He’d have to remember to tell her that sometimes she was right.

  The crescent knives spun into Corvus with demon-amped force. He grunted and folded inward, shoulders rounded.

  “It only hurts because of your flesh,” Jilly snarled. “Let that go, why don’t you?”

  Had he been living, the twin blows would have ended him. But after a moment, the djinn-man plucked out the knives buried side by side above his heart. Blood and birnenston gushed from the wound.

  The blades clattered to the floor and Corvus straightened.

  “Jilly, run,” Liam said. Or meant to. All that emerged was a grunt as the salambes bore into him, an ever-constricting shell of ether and agony.

  He strained toward her, sweat rising on his brow. The moisture flowed into the corner of his eye, blinding him with crimson. Not sweat, but blood pouring from the reven at his temple as the salambes’ attack on the teshuva spilled over into his human body.

  She crouched over him, her neck exposed to Corvus. Damn it, that was no way to fight. He was going to take her out hunting every night, teach her—assuming they weren’t brutally slaughtered in the next few seconds.

  She held out her hand, as if she could reach through
the prison of salambes. The bracelet gleamed on her wrist, the base metal reflecting an inner light from its own demon-twisted molecules. “Take my hand. Like we did with the malice.”

  His muscles were locked as the demon in him fought back the invasion of the salambes’ emanations. The preternatural chill of the unbound demons froze the blood to his skin and iced the red tide over his eye. He couldn’t move.

  But the soulflies that lingered around the Corvus-djinni began their slow spiral to her.

  Corvus took a step back.

  “Liam,” she whispered. Amethyst and gold blazed in her eyes and she locked his gaze. “Touch me.”

  The next pulse of his heart sent another surge of blood that didn’t freeze. He felt the first weakening in the invisible bars that penned him in, pinned him through.

  The essence of the salambes was being divided, drawn to Jilly just as the soulflies were.

  “Get away,” he rasped. The fact he could talk meant she was loosening the invisible chains on him, but he wouldn’t allow it, not if she was taking them on herself.

  She held out her hand imperiously, as if the etheric grotesqueries around them weren’t coming to her already. “Just reach for me.”

  What responded in him wasn’t his teshuva, half paralyzed as it was by the salambes’ deadly embrace. It welled up from somewhere deeper, from some purely human need he didn’t have time to examine or deny.

  With a shout, he broke from his bonds, slapped his palm into hers. Around them, the hall flashed with etheric light, the salambes clearly outlined and the soulflies shining bright enough to make him squint.

  She pulled him closer with a flex of her teshuva’s strength and her solidly squared shoulders. She touched his face, fingertips at his temple, palm at his cheek. He leaned into the gentle touch, so at odds with the amethyst blaze that turned her gaze to molten rage. Through the hall, a rush of bone-dry wind cleared the stench of rusting metal, the stink of his own blood.

  The demon realm.

  “Out of the frying pan,” he murmured.

  Though he had spoken too quietly for anyone to hear, Jilly answered, “And into hell.” With the new clarity of his vision, the salambes seemed to be breaking down, shredding around them as if following the soulflies’ lead.