by Jessa Slade
No one would see what was going on here until it was too late.
Too late. Too late. Why did those words keep coming back to haunt her? Was three hundred years not enough time to get the experiment of her life right?
No, she was thinking of herself in the same way she’d accused Sidney of doing, as nothing but an interesting footnote. Small and weak—and lost and insane—she might be, but she was more than that too. She’d needed more from Sidney, and he’d been unable to give it.
So she would be that something greater. Thorne and Sidney were both in for a surprise.
She took another breath and, staying low, pushed herself out a little farther for a better view.
Thorne had herded the Halloween partyers into the side room. Pacing between them and escape, he held the sword at a low angle in front of him, as if it weighed at his arm. Or maybe the light hurt his eyes.
Alyce squinted against the gleam. What did the others see? The child had seen the sword and the “black balloons” of malice that circled around him in a constellation of evil. An artist or holy person—or asylum patient—might see the truth, but the rest would delude themselves.
As far as Alyce could tell, Thorne hadn’t used the sword against anyone. No bodies lay on the floor; no disembodied souls floated free to tempt the voracious tenebrae.
But neither did he look as if he would wait much longer.
She took a third breath—only the third of the entire time, she realized, as her head swam—and drew her legs under her to stand. What she would say …
From the other side of the atrium, a storm front of etheric energy swelled through the room, so potent the leaves of the palms shriveled at the edges. Curls of the rough bark spontaneously ignited, the woody slivers burning like incense sticks.
Hard-soled footsteps drummed on the tile, the boots of a dozen new intruders.
The djinni army had arrived.
CHAPTER 27
Wrapped around the sword, Thorne’s fingers burned and blistered and wept blood and healed in ever-thickening scars that shredded under yet more blisters. He might have screamed once or twice at the unreal pain, but eventually his nerves retired for the evening.
The djinni wasn’t helping much as it flooded the wounds with the etheric equivalent of bile, raging against the angelic presence. The demon didn’t appreciate what he was trying to do, which might have been why the eternal battle between good and evil was taking so damn long.
But it was inevitable that eventually someone would tire of the stalemate.
By the time Carlo arrived with his good little soldati in tow, Thorne’s scarred hands had stopped oozing. Maybe enough ichor had drained from him to take the edge off the djinni.
“What are you doing, Thorne?” Carlo spun on his heel, taking in the cowed crowd. When he wheeled back, the light of the sword made him squint. “Magdalena got your message and has one question for you: Are you mad?”
Thorne considered a moment. “Do you mean insane, or still angry about the scuttling of my boat?”
Carlo’s left eye twitched. “She told you she would find you.”
“After the first date, the man should make the next move. I’m old-fashioned that way.” Thorne traced the tip of the sword in an idle pattern. A toxic droplet of birnenston sizzled off the golden edge with a stench like death.
Carlo shook his head as if he didn’t realize how precariously heads were attached. “What do you want, Thorne?”
“I want my Princess.” Thorne’s voice broke across demon harmonics. Apparently not as much virulent ichor had been drained from him as the pain would seem to indicate.
“Why, when you can be with a queen?”
Thorne looked down at his mangled hands. “Queen of Spades, maybe. The black widow card. She’ll dig a hole right into hell.”
Carlo shrugged, calling attention to that tender curve where shoulder and neck met. “If that’s where the treasure is. But she wants more. She wants you.”
“I’ll bring her more,” Thorne promised.
He stepped over the hole the sword had scorched in the floor. Perhaps it was the flare of righteousness in his heart that made the weapon come alive in his hands.
He swung it in a tight arc, and Carlo’s head never had a chance.
For a heartbeat, only shocked silence vibrated through the crowd. Then a malice shrieked, triggering the flock, and their cries soared in unholy descant to the human screams.
Sid stumbled across the atrium, half-blind and all sick as the last of the verge mists evaporated from around his feet like dry ice. The blind part he blamed on the teshuva’s flickering vision. The etheric interference of Thorne’s djinni was giving it fits. The sickness …
Why had he let Alyce leave without him?
He’d always longed for a love without provisos, without specifications. He’d wanted his father to love him despite his being a second son. He’d wanted Maureen to love him even though he had a calling she couldn’t share. But when Alyce had offered him exactly that, freely, without question, he’d fled. He’d had incontrovertible proof of the existence of demons and evil, but he’d never really believed in the love he sought.
The symballein bond wasn’t a guarantee any more than an atomic bond could prevent a plutonium neutron from being knocked askew and triggering a nuclear meltdown. It was nothing more than a chance.
He’d never been good with games of chance. But the alternative was unthinkable. He would find her, he would—
When the screaming started, he realized he’d found Thorne too.
Shite. Now they had the panic on their hands they’d hoped to prevent. The city’s entire parasite load of horde-tenebrae would swarm on the pier like the least appetizing aspects of vultures, rats, and maggots combined, to feed on the emanating darkness. Worse, they’d have armed authorities backing up their terror with bullets. An unlucky round or three could bleed out a talya before the teshuva could repair the damage, especially with the interfering energy of the tenebraeternum. Even worse, there might be cameras.
But he had bigger problems—or actually, just one smaller one.
He crouched in the hazy concealment of a smoking palm tree. He’d found her.
From where he hid, her small form seemed not much more than another figure in the painted Halloween procession on the folding screen. He crept around the other side of the palm and had a clear shot to where Thorne loomed over a fallen man. Most of the crowd had drawn back in horror, hands over mouths, faces averted, but a dozen more people milled about in more active consternation.
As Sid’s teshuva tried to focus, a sulfurous yellow plume billowed above the body. It was another djinn-man Thorne had killed, which meant the other people, now gesturing furiously at Thorne, were also—
Thorne swung the sword.
And missed.
The tapered edge fell far short of the djinn-men’s bodies. But the light from the sword shot out and bathed them in a blue-white glow.
Two more columns of vicious yellow oozed upward, fleeing the light. Holding their hands out in front of them to block a blow that hadn’t come and staring at each other in confusion, the two djinn-men remained standing.
For a moment.
Then one fell to his knees. His legs crumpled. No, crumbled. The etheric winds swirled up twin dust devils from the cuffs of his pants. He let out a thin cry before his chest caved in, and then he had no throat to cry from as he puffed away.
His empty leather jacket sagged, a thin cushion to his companion, who staggered as the years of his possession caught up with him. With no demon to hold the ravages of time at bay, his muscles atrophied and his skin spotted. He clutched at his heart with one hand, the other reaching helplessly for the uprooted djinni.
The rest of the djinn-men stepped back from Thorne.
He swung again, aiming at the freed demons. A keening cry rose from the djinnless-man, echoed by the djinni that swirled above him, as the sword seemed to stretch hungrily toward them.
Sid
squinted. It wasn’t the sword that lengthened, just the light that surrounded it, sucking at the darkness. The two unbound demons roiled like plasma flares and shed flickers of ether as they struggled to escape. The shrieks of the salambes above split the tenebrae cloud with etheric lightning.
But the sword’s light was savagely brighter. The hunger reminded Sid uneasily of the verge.
But this worked in their favor. Fewer djinn-men meant—
Suddenly, the atrium trembled, windows shivering and steel beams creaking.
Fewer djinn-men meant scraps of their demon-shredded souls loose in close proximity to the ravenous tenebraeternum. Sid doubted that the predations of an angelic weapon would be a stabilizing influence on the verge.
And Alyce was right in the middle of it.
Not right in the middle. Sort of off to one side, but creeping closer as if she had a plan to be in the middle of it. He hoped she had a plan, because he had none, except to follow her and to never let her get away again.
And if that seemed brutally talya of him, he thought he had a reasonable explanation, what with loving her.
Now if only he’d have the chance to tell her.
The other djinn-men were done milling. Apparently wanton murder wasn’t cause for too much alarm in their circle. It probably helped their calm that Thorne was pointing the sword at them as if they didn’t have much choice. A handful stepped closer to him, heads bowed, and then the rest followed, a few glancing nervously at the ceiling.
Thorne lowered the sword to his side. If anything, its light was brighter. Well fed, Sid guessed. It didn’t seem to care what sort of energy it subverted.
Which was very much not working in their favor if it helped widen the verge that was already expanding into this realm.
Sid hurried across the open space between the palm tree and the folding screen, relying on the power struggle in front of him to distract the djinn-men. Alyce had already skipped ahead to a small side table holding an array of half-empty punch glasses and a fall bouquet in the center. If she hadn’t been so small herself, hiding there would have been ridiculous. As it was, the cover put her within attacking distance.
That was her plan? Sid’s heart raced toward her even though there was no place for his bigger body to hide on the way. As plans went, it sucked. Even if each of her six boning knives found demon-lethal targets, she’d have a half-dozen opponents remaining.
Not to mention Thorne and that vicious sword that could strip her teshuva from her. With three hundred years behind her—she would be gone in an instant.
The atrium shuddered again, as if it felt the force of the anguished shout that tried to crack free from his throat. He swallowed it back, and it nestled in place of his splintering heart. He didn’t have a plan, and he couldn’t wait to think of one; he would not be too late.
Alyce’s side table hiding spot was useless to him. With only open space between him and the djinn-men and their hostages, he finally understood the talyan philosophy.
To hell with it.
He tightened every muscle and hyperventilated. The teshuva coiled tighter until his bones ached with the tension. He figured he’d have a few seconds to run before the distracted djinni energy focused on him and short-circuited his demon.
Whether Alyce could come up with a plan in those few seconds … He hoped her plan would be to run in the other direction.
He charged.
He made it halfway before he realized he had only his human strength and a bit of momentum. He crossed three-quarters of the distance before one of the djinn-men shouted a warning.
He got seven-eighths of the way before Thorne, who obviously knew that old “What’s that over your shoulder?” ploy and didn’t intend to be fooled, finally turned.
Sid fired.
It was a respectable attack, he told himself, as his ears rang from the shot. Not necessarily one for the history books, but …
At least he’d remembered to pull the gun out. His perception wavered and time stuttered as the teshuva, angelic and djinni emanations, clashed. But Thorne raised the sword.
And the bullet panged off the blade in a radiant surge of energy.
In the sudden frozen strobe, Sid’s teshuva was kind enough to show him the bullet shearing in half and the relic shard absorbed by the flaming blade. The flames danced higher.
Oh, brilliant.
Thorne’s already hawk-edged features seemed whetted from darkest, sharpest obsidian, as he realized what had almost happened. His roar of rage ripped through the seething energy around the blade.
He whirled on Sid, sword at the ready.
Another bullet would only amplify the sword. Sid wondered if the sight of Red Pony’s gun would give Thorne a nostalgic pause with fond memories of the fellow radical he’d apparently blown to pieces—
The djinn-man brought the sword crashing down. Sid parried outward with the gun, desperate instinct his only chance.
The blade ripped through the revolver’s cheap steel without pause, shearing across the chamber. The last five of the hollow point rounds scattered in arcs of dull lead and shining gold.
At least Sid’s reflexive blow had deflected the sword’s blue-white holy fire upward. The salambes scattered, squalling, and left smoldering contrails across the atrium sky like undying spawn of the Hindenburg.
Thorne spun the sword over his head again, but instead of a smooth flow, the tip jerked down clumsily, aiming at the floor as if—as if seeking out the strewn bullets.
Sid’s analytical self whirled faster than the sword as he spun away to snatch a collapsed folding chair from where it had been pushed over in the panic.
The angelic weapon had given Thorne a new power, but it had also unbalanced his djinni, just as the angel relic had crippled Alyce’s weaker demon. Thorne was fighting with one hand—his djinni’s—tied behind his back.
Of course, in his literal hand Thorne was still holding a very real sword. But now the sword had its own ideas about reuniting with the remnants of its fallen comrade.
It clanged with a decidedly unheavenly and bone-jarring thud against Sid’s chair when they clashed again. Bookkeepers had to spend a lot of time sitting, but this was not how he’d thought he’d use the tool. He dared not move back, though; that would let Thorne bring the sword’s etheric disruption into play.
He remembered how Alyce moved, lithe and smooth, in an unconscious dance, without the drag of heavy thoughts.
Could he follow her lead?
He didn’t have a chance to find out.
Even as he jabbed at Thorne with the chair legs, hoping to tangle the blade, a trio of heavy weights slammed into him, one, two, and the third knocked the chair from his grasp.
The remaining djinn-men had obviously decided their fate lay with Thorne’s favor. Despite his questionable allegiance in weaponry, he’d apparently won their hearts with the murder of their brethren.
They pummeled Sid until his knees buckled. He collapsed, stirring up a puff of the decomposed djinn-man. For a moment, he was glad they’d knocked the breath out of him so he didn’t huff the dust. Another blow knocked him prone.
From his sprawl, Alyce’s hiding place was directly in his line of sight. He wanted to look into those icy eyes one last time. Could he tell her without speaking, with just a glance, that he loved her?
But, once again, she was gone.
CHAPTER 28
Alyce bit hard on her knuckle to stop from crying out when Sidney raced toward Thorne. With her hand pressed against her face, it was impossible not to notice the empty spot where she had worn the ring.
When the djinn-men tackled him and struck the chair away, she thought she might never breathe again.
She wanted to run after him as the djinn-men forced him to his feet in front of Thorne. But that was stupid, terribly stupid. There was nothing she could do against Thorne alone, much less against Thorne and his new army.
Blood streamed from Sidney’s nose. His teshuva would heal him, as long as it c
ould, which might not be much longer, if Thorne’s speculative glance and the impatient twisting of the angel sword in his hand were any indication.
The knowledge of her weakness—and worse, that Sidney would want her to stay away—ate through her like acid. She didn’t have the power; her demon couldn’t even battle malice without setting up a sneak attack. …
Ah.
She crabbed backward, keeping the small table between her and the violent tableau. She needed distance from the overwhelming djinn energy.
The side room was a smaller version of the rest of the atrium, encased on all sides in triangular glass panes to view the lake and city. It was tight against the weather, but not against malice. The small oozy-smoky tenebrae had crept in from all around, drawn to the huddled hostages.
The malice darted and swirled like evil starlings, gobbling up the crumbs of negative emotion and emitting a fouler mess of hopelessness and despair.
A few of the hostages wept quietly. If questioned, they probably wouldn’t be sure why. Better to have something to cry about, Alyce thought.
And suddenly she was glad she’d told Sidney she loved him. Maybe that had been stupid too. But what she felt had been real, not pushed by the teshuva through the symballein bond.
The love had been hers and clear.
That she might not have the chance to fight for that love tore at her. The fear bled from her, from the tiny wounds her nails opened in her palms when she clenched her fists. They sank like lesser verges in her skin, opening to her darkest dreads.
The closest malice wheeled from the hostages and arrowed toward her, pursued by a handful more, and then still more. They spread as they came, making a black and crimson hollow of ether, like a mouth, more than Alyce-sized.
“I am afraid,” she whispered to them. “And you are hungry. Come taste fear.”
She held out her bare hands.
There were so many. They swept across her like a foul second skin. As her teshuva flared, the malice sprang into sharp relief—emphasis on the sharp. The greedy little maws reaching for her pain glistened with thousands of needle teeth. Their oily essence phased in and out of solidity to reveal claws and lashing tails that stung her, soul deep.