by Jessa Slade
She, clearly, didn’t return the interest. And maybe she was wiser than he, because thanks to Archer and Sera, he’d already seen what a mated-talyan pair could do—would do—if anything came between them. It seemed the only force more threatening to the world than evil was love.
Merely thinking the word rippled the hackles up his neck.
Damn it, he didn’t have time for any of this, not the strange and perilous trick they’d pulled with the even more strangely behaving malice, not the unnerving reactivation of the soulless haints, definitely not the needful wish to touch her that made his fingers curl into fists.
This was exactly why he’d told Archer he couldn’t get involved.
“Come on. We’ve had enough trouble for one night.” He walked around to the car’s driver side, tweaked his demon, and punched out the window.
Jilly slipped in beside him when he opened the passenger door. She lifted one eyebrow. “Grand theft auto doesn’t count as more trouble for the night?”
“Less trouble than the owner calling his insurance company, or maybe filing a police report. Or worse yet, thinking some supernatural phenomenon like city crop circles scraped all the paint off his junker and posting a conspiracy theory on YouTube.” He ripped open the steering column and hot-wired the ignition, grimacing at the spark that burned across his busted knuckles.
She watched as the car sputtered to life. “You know, if it’s always such an issue, you should probably carry a screwdriver. When’s your birthday?”
He held back a sudden grin. “Your young charges teach you as much as you teach them?”
“Nah. I learned that from uncle number four.” She knotted her hands in her lap. “Anyway, kids these days just carjack. Nobody wants to put any effort into anything anymore.”
When he’d read Jilly’s file, he’d noted that her mother had raised three children by herself. Apparently none of the uncles—how many had there been?—had stuck around long enough to make a blip on the dossier. He knew well enough that the seismic forces that shaped a personality often occurred too far below the surface to be remarkable. At least, not until the whole facade came shuddering apart.
He wrapped his bloody fist around the wheel, the better to strangle memories of his own. “The league will reimburse the owner. You’d be surprised how many people take an envelope of cash with no questions asked.”
“Not surprised at all, probably. I think the director at the halfway house was into something like that. I might be a pain in the ass, but he was just too glad to get rid of me. But what do a bunch of barely-off-the-street kids have worth taking?” She slumped in her seat. “God, is the whole city rotten?”
“Don’t ask God.” Liam pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial. The phone crackled in his ear. “Archer, can’t talk long. Ran into a few malice, and their stain is playing havoc with reception. I need you to dump a car. No scrubbing. Just muddy the waters. I’ll meet you at Millennium Park.”
Jilly focused on him as he disconnected. “You guys do this a lot?”
“More often. It’s harder for us to hide these days.”
“Maybe it’s time to come out of the shadows.”
“We are the shadows.” He shook his head. “Our first and best disguise has always been that no one wants to know how close evil stalks.”
“That could be why evil gets so close: because no one knows to look for it.”
He cast her a wry look. “Considering your job, you already had a sense of how bad bad could be, and yet you still barely believe in the forces that have become part of you. How much harder for the rest of them?”
She was silent a moment, looking down at her hands where etheric stains darkened her nails around the blue polish. She twisted the bracelet on her wrist. “I do believe.”
Not in him. Not enough to reach out to him, to the connection building between them. A primitive urge to force her to acknowledge that link ramped up his pulse. But even though she’d accused him of doing anything for the league, he was not a monster. Or not the sort of monster who forced a woman to want him. He wrestled the ancient alpha-male part of his brain much as one would any reptile. He jumped on it before it could grab him in its sharp teeth, threw it in a gunnysack, tied a rope around it, and got the hell out.
In the middle of the freezing night, Millennium Park was empty. He parked the car in a temporary zone across from the Art Institute, and he and Jilly got out.
“Archer will meet us at Cloud Gate.”
She waited for him to come around to the sidewalk. “You mean the Bean.”
He glowered. “I mean the stainless steel sculpture in the middle of the park, the essence of which is more perfectly evoked by its given name than that ridiculous nickname.”
“But that’s what everyone calls it.”
As they made their way down the treelined promenade, he scoffed. “Since when do you do what everyone else does?”
This time, she glowered. “You’re just showing off how superior you think you are by calling it Cloud Gate.”
“If sticking with reality is superior, then so be it.”
“Reality bites.” She bared her teeth.
He smiled back. “That it does.”
They climbed the shallow flight of steps to the sculpture. The bowed silver towered over their heads, reflecting the darkness and the city lights with equal distortion.
Jilly reached out to touch it, just as many were drawn to do, judging by the fingerprint smudges across the surface. The bracelet—matte where the sculpture was shiny, intricately woven instead of smooth—winked with a fierce opalescent fire in its reflection.
“Lovely.” She pulled her hand away before she made contact. “Will the malice come hunting us again?”
“Not here. Something about art tends to hold them at bay.”
She tilted her head. “Odd.”
“Not if you think about how many artists talk about their work as free therapy to exorcise their demons.”
“A way out of possession.”
He shook his head. “Only the art seems immune. The artists are just as vulnerable. Maybe more so.”
“Oh well. I can’t even finger-paint.”
“I used to work with metal.” The revelation popped out of him like a spark from an overheated forge. He winced at the curiosity that brightened her face. “That was a long time ago. Anyway, Archer will be here soon—”
“You were a sculptor too? No wonder you like Cloud Gate better than ‘the Bean.’ ”
He shook his head. “Not really a sculptor. I just didn’t want you to think some artistic bent could have saved you. Plenty of artists fall prey to evil. It’s only their work that may be spared.”
“So not a sculptor,” she prodded. “An armorer? You have enough in your basement.”
“Nothing so violent. Or so useful. I was just a blacksmith back home.”
“Home, as in Ireland.” She stilled. “How long ago was it exactly?”
“I left in the winter of 1850. I’ve not been back.”
She let out a slow breath. “That’s a long time. When you said ‘immortal,’ I didn’t really appreciate what that meant.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Ah, to be so young and carefree again.”
Her lips quirked up in answer, and she waggled a finger at him.
Despite the invitation to share, he hesitated. Had anyone ever asked him about those days? If so, it had been long enough ago that he didn’t remember. That seemed ominous. “I was the smithy in my village. I repaired tools, shoed horses, made pots, nothing fancy.”
Her gaze flitted across his face so that he wondered what was showing there. “I suppose the hammer makes a certain amount of sense, then.”
“I was familiar with it.” His fist tightened.
She studied him. “I would’ve pictured a blacksmith as heftier than you. Except for the shoulders, you’re more Scarecrow than Tin Man.” Then she paused, and he saw her calculating in her head. “The potato famine. That happene
d around your time.”
As if she had summoned up one of those interminable public-television documentaries, the memories of his past threatened to bore him to tears. Or anyway, his eyes burned for some reason. “Like many others, that’s why I left.”
Her eyes narrowed, as if she knew he wasn’t telling all, just as Cloud Gate reflected only the highlights and skyline, none of the alleys or gutters. No one wanted to see that ugliness anyway.
She bit at her lip. “You didn’t—you aren’t still starving? Are you?”
“The demon freezes us like a fly in amber, but I wasn’t possessed until later.” More questions welled up in her eyes, but he didn’t want to get stuck again as if a bug in fresh tree sap. “Archer will be here soon. You need to practice getting your emotions under control.”
She scowled at him. A price he was willing to pay if it stopped her questions.
But he shook his head. “See? Right away, you’re annoyed. I’m just trying to lead you.”
“You’re telling me what to do.”
He wondered how he had ever seen her as a pixie, when she was obviously more grumbling gremlin. “You’re not a child, Jilly, who needs to be tricked into doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have to coerce you to do what’s needed to survive.”
“As if you could.”
Last straw. Her challenge, along with the old memories, and the knowledge that, for the moment at least, they were safe from outside attack, cracked his self-restraint.
He stepped into her, forcing her back against the stainless steel. “Oh, I could. In fact, I believe I already did. Once.” He drew a breath tinged with the scent of cherry gloss on her lips, and the crack in his discipline splintered.
She tilted her head back to meet his glare. “You were hopped up on Lau-lau’s long-joy juice.”
“Hmm. Is that why I was on top?” In the sculpture’s reflection, the harsh violet glow in his eyes gleamed back at him, mocking. He let the demon out another notch, revving up his senses so that his skin prickled with the auroral forces of her body near his.
Something about her—something beyond the obvious immature rebelliousness of her unruly hair and piercing—was like a million testing fingerprints trashing his well-polished control. Unlike any maddening talya he’d known, she unerringly targeted his secret flaw: that he’d never really wanted to be in command. Indulging his temper was as stupid as swinging his hammer blind. It felt wild, wrong. And so good.
Especially when she put the point of her finger in the center of his chest and took a step closer. He closed his eyes at the radiating pleasure. Why did the fate of the world matter again?
“Don’t try to dominate me,” she hissed. “It annoys me and then I can’t back down.”
Her voice lacked the double-octave lows of a rising demon. Which meant he pissed her off on a purely human level. Yay, him.
“I am not trying,” he said. And he didn’t want her to back down.
“Oh? That alpha-male bullshit doesn’t require any rational effort? Of course it doesn’t. Thinking is not the alpha-male forte.”
He opened his eyes. “Unfair. I actually think quite a lot.” About her lips softening under his. Her head tipping back to bare her throat. Her hands clutching his shoulders . . .
Her eyes narrowed. “Right. I can guess what you’re thinking.”
“Demonic possession confers no mind-reading ability,” he said officiously.
“Yeah, well, I think I have a certain power of mind over matter.” She zipped her finger down his chest and hooked the front of his jeans.
Predictably, his cock surged to undeniable attention.
She gave him a crooked grin that he answered.
“Stalemate,” he murmured.
“None of that mate crap.” Her fist closed on his fly. Not a prelude to the erotic, if exhibitionist, unveiling he might fantasize. No, she just wanted the upper hand, as usual.
His smile faded. “Who burned you, xiao-Jilly, that this energy between us scares you more than a tower of tenebrae?”
“I’m not scared.” The denial burst out of her so hotly, even she winced. “I just don’t like to be pushed around. And Mom’s boyfriends really liked to push.”
“Really.” He didn’t move, but his pulse changed as his demon uncoiled.
She must have felt it. She scowled at him and gave a sharp tug on his jeans. “Don’t go all vigilante. I took care of it myself. Anyway, it wasn’t any of them.” She looked down and seemed to realize how intimately she had taken hold of him.
Her hand sprang open, but before she could step back, he laced his fingers through hers. Not in a confining gesture, but too entwined to easily pull away. He modulated his tone the same, not demanding, but not to be denied. “Who was it?”
She shrugged as if it hardly mattered, but her grasp tightened. “After I left home, I couldn’t afford a place of my own, so I moved in with two other girls. They hung with a rough crowd, but that seemed normal. I didn’t even notice until I hooked up with one of the guys. We’d been going out for a while, and one night he got drunk and he smacked me.” She darted a look up at him.
The shamed flush on her cheeks slammed through him, and Liam locked every demon-powered muscle to stop himself from pulling her into his arms. “I can find the bastard and kill him,” he offered casually. “The league has resources I just don’t use enough.”
She didn’t laugh—smart girl, she believed him—and her grip on his hand eased. “In a sick way, he smacked sense into me. I looked around, realized I was reliving my mother’s life, blindly falling into the same trap she’d endured, and I refused.”
And she’d been refusing ever since. The insight into how hard she’d fought against a different sort of hell didn’t exactly surprise him. But he was shocked at his twinge of envy that her teshuva—discord class though it was—had found a perfect resonance with the warrior she’d become.
He shifted his hold until his thumb rested on the blood beating below the skin of her wrist. “Jilly—” He hadn’t meant for that note of yearning to color his voice.
The deliberate scuff of footsteps made them spring apart.
Archer crossed his arms. “Interrupting anything?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
Liam laughed softly when Jilly rolled her eyes at him.
Archer didn’t smile. “We have to go. Ecco found another cluster of haints. But these aren’t our old zombie friends. They have hostages.”
All amusement and desire fled Liam, the void they left jagged as a bomb blast. “Our people?” The last time he’d lost a man . . .
But Archer shook his head. “Human.” His expression softened with pity as he glanced at Jilly.
She took a step closer to Liam, as if he could deflect that sympathetic sorrow. “Andre?”
“No. Your sister is one of them.”
CHAPTER 9
Jilly wanted to pump Archer for more information, but he’d already said he didn’t know any more, that Ecco had made the cryptic call from a pay phone before racing back to the entrenched cluster. A howl echoed in her head, louder than the junker car as Archer floored the crap engine. Liam had refused to abandon the malice-molested vehicle, protecting the league’s mission even as her life swung toward disaster.
She stared her outrage at the back of his head, but he was flying through his speed dial, rallying the troops to this unknown threat.
Despite his calm voice as he relayed commands, tension glowed off him. The reven at his temple flushed violet, and the skin around it had gone almost translucent with a darkness she couldn’t bear to look into, as if shadows ate him from the inside.
Which, she supposed, they did.
All this save-the-world shit had seemed very theoretical—and not so unnerving—until she was caroming through the midnight streets at sixty- five miles per hour in a car tagged with demon graffiti.
With her sister at the other end.
Liam finished his calls and sat in deep silence a moment. Th
en he glanced back at her. “The dossier we put together on you was rushed, but it included the basics on your family. Your sister’s been an addict for a long time. The chances that she hasn’t already started on solvo aren’t good.”
She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just wait until we find her before we decide she’s dead.”
“Undead,” Archer chimed in. “Mostly.”
She resisted smacking him in the back of the head only because he had the car almost up on two wheels around the corner.
Liam ignored the other man and the stunt driving. “Dory didn’t even come around after you took that knife for her.”
A toxic mix of guilt and rage churned in Jilly’s gut. “I got her to leave her pimp.”
“Not because she chose to leave him, but because your bloody DNA sprayed everywhere helped put him in prison. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
He’d taken away everything else. The car’s tires squealed around another corner, shrill as a malice crying foul. She knew the unvoiced accusation was unreasonable. But considering how much she’d lost—not just because of the demon—she wasn’t willing to lose another chance.
From his down-turned mouth, she knew he’d read her refusal without her saying another word.
They paralleled the L for a few blocks before Archer pulled over. “This is the address Ecco gave us.” From just beyond one of the support columns for the elevated tracks, a man stepped out of the gloom. “Ah, there he is. And Jonah and Perrin are across the street.”
“I called everyone in,” Liam said.
Even if Archer hadn’t pointed them out, the men would have caught Jilly’s wary attention under any circumstances. Though varied in their police-blotter descriptions, they each exuded a dangerous stillness she associated with TV wildlife programs of big cats right before they pounced on something, all taut muscle and focused eyes.
Sheathed claws had been replaced, though, with unsheathed blades, cudgels, and other weapons of up-close and-personal destruction. The headlights gleamed off the razored gauntlets that embraced both Ecco’s forearms. The second man, Jonah, stepped up beside him, blond hair shining almost as brightly.