by Jessa Slade
He remembered what Jilly had said about trying to get away. It hadn’t worked for her either.
Liam followed the women to the warehouse.
Sera held up the jar, peering at the greenish glow in the morning light. “Jilly, if you could get your landlady to give up the recipe, maybe I could find a reference in the league records. They tend to be rather snide about lay interpretations of evil and folk remedies against it, but it couldn’t hurt to look.”
For a heartbeat, Liam wondered if he should allow Sera’s continued access to the archives. Previous male talyan had closed ranks once before; he had a duty to ensure their sacrifices weren’t in vain. But since Bookie’s betrayal over the winter, he’d had no time to recruit a new Bookkeeper. Sera’s modern medical background was the closest thing he had to scientific expertise. If anyone was going to make a breakthrough on that front, it would be her.
Whether that would be to the league’s benefit was the question.
Before he decided, Jilly shrugged. “I’m not sure she’ll ever give up her ancient Chinese secrets. How about we find out if it works first?”
One of the docking-bay doors was open. The talyan had gathered inside, most of them still streaked with blood and ichor. Rank sulfur wreathed the gathering. Which explained the open door.
Liam surveyed the weary faces and wondered if his own looked as drawn. “Place your bets on who had the crappiest night?”
The set of broad shoulders softened with muted laughter, and a few of the men pulled out chairs to sit, letting go of some of their tension.
“Pull that door closed, somebody, and kick the heater.” He pulled off his coat and slung it over an unclaimed chair. The hammer clanged. “No sense freezing off the half of our asses that wasn’t handed to us.”
From across the room, Perrin piped up. “I had more than half.” He turned to display the brutal tear down his back that had shredded his shirt and jeans, though he’d managed to cinch up his belt to maintain decency. The raking claw marks had continued down into skin, but his teshuva’s healing had made that mostly decent too. “Three ferales, attacking in a pack. Remember when they used to hunt alone, like us?” He tilted his head with a good-old-days sigh.
A smattering of applause and a wolf whistle from Ecco made Liam wince. When he’d invited them to rehash their night, he hadn’t meant for them to share quite so intimately.
But Lex stood, head up, arms straight at his sides, as if he were participating in a spelling bee. “I got mobbed by probably a gross of malice.”
“They’re gross, all right,” someone quipped.
Lex grinned and rolled up his sleeves where malice slime had left marks like frostbite. “I couldn’t drain them fast enough. If Ecco hadn’t come along, my teshuva would’ve been overwhelmed instead.”
“You know how I like my malice,” Ecco drawled.
Liam cocked one eyebrow. “Over easy?”
Sera spoke up from where she’d tucked herself under Archer’s arm despite the ichor smeared down his sleeve. “I bet Liam and Jilly win the office pool with their Corvus encounter.”
Instantly, the room sobered, and all eyes swiveled to Liam. His amusement at the camaraderie, if not the casualties, withered.
He gave a quick rundown from the time they’d gone back to the haint apartment building, not glancing at Jilly as he left out the part about their side trip into the tenebraeternum. And the kiss wasn’t exactly relevant either, so he skipped that too.
He’d barely paused for breath when the questions started.
“So all the tenebrae are under Corvus’s control?”
“How are we supposed to destroy every solvo haint in the city?”
“What else is out there waiting for us?” And a dozen more.
He let the questions peter out. “I think the fact Corvus—or, more accurately, his djinni—lured us in and wanted to deal means he doesn’t have the kind of control he wants, that he’s still not sure he can work around us.”
“Yet,” Ecco said.
“Yet,” Liam agreed. “But while he’s escalated the confrontation, it doesn’t change our mission.”
From the back of the room, Archer pointed out, “Just makes it irrelevant.” When the other talyan glanced at him, he continued. “If Corvus is still trying to tear open the Veil, how often can we hope to sweep up the aftermath?”
Liam kept himself from bristling. After almost two centuries, the futility of their eternal task had maddened Archer. Though Sera had tempered his solitary, suicidal ferocity, his disgust with what he’d derisively called their supernatural-garbage-men status remained. Sera’s involvement in the league’s Bookkeeper duties had brought Archer back into the fold—a mixed blessing.
“We bested Corvus once.” Liam gave Archer a long, level stare. “But the cost was high.”
He’d heard Archer’s report of that night four months ago in Corvus’s lair—although now he was discovering that Archer hadn’t shared everything either—but he’d decided at the time not to relay too much detail to the other talyan. It was enough for them to know that after millennia of separate paths, the league and one djinni were on a collision course. Now that inevitable collision seemed closer than ever.
To a man—and woman, apparently—the talyan were a fierce and volatile crowd. Their immortality made them rash, and their damaged souls meant they didn’t necessarily care. He’d taken it upon himself to make sure those demon-riddled souls had every chance possible to recover some measure of salvation. Which wouldn’t be theirs if they strayed from their mission.
In a low, relentless voice, he made his point. “We survived the battle, but we lost a Bookkeeper and a good fighter when we never have enough. We had to abandon our home, and when Corvus’s high- rise blew, we skirted too close to revealing our presence to the whole city. You think it’s tough now draining tenebrae bloated on everyday spite and decay? Imagine if you have to work around the terror and mayhem of a populace that learns evil walks incarnate and they can neither see it, believe it, nor fight it off.”
He waited while that sank in, then continued. “Corvus has us at a disadvantage, since he is willing to work in plain sight, while we must keep to the shadows. We can’t help him make things worse by bringing the horde-tenebrae into the light.”
From their set expressions, he could see they were not happy with his assessment, but neither did they disagree.
Until Jilly took a step forward. “But are we saving the city, or just our souls?”
His hands flexed, driven by the reflexive surge of his demon to her challenge. He tamped it down, the heels of his palms hard against his thighs lest he reach for her.
Her gaze burned over him like hot coals, lingered on his fists, as if she thought he would silence her with fingers around her throat. Not that she’d let that stop her.
How could he explain that he didn’t want to silence her, but save her—never mind the city—from herself?
Her stare burned deeper. “I always wanted the kids at the halfway house to know until they addressed their problems honestly, they’d always feel like outsiders, outcast even from themselves.”
“Is this a ‘face your demons’ speech?” Ecco asked.
She glanced at the other talya but didn’t smile. “What if everyone did? Not just us, but everyone in the city?”
Sera stepped up beside Jilly. “I’ve wondered the same. If there are people like Jilly’s landlady, regular humans, who are fighting the demons, maybe we should find them and join forces. There’s no reason we have to be alone in this.”
With his demon hovering halfway to attack, Liam felt the talyan weighing the words as clearly as if they’d picked up stones, hefted the burdens in their hands. They didn’t appreciate how their calling was fragile as glass, that every night they walked one wrong step away from hell.
They also didn’t know that he and Jilly had been dancing right there on the edge. If they found out, they’d never listen to him, and he dreaded the day he watched them r
idden down by the darkness of the world, weighed down by the darkness in their souls.
“There’s one reason.” At the demon lows in his voice, violet flickered in the eyes around him as the others responded to the implied threat.
Only Jilly’s gaze was clear. “What?”
He touched his temple, drawing attention to the most obvious sign of the demon rampant. The reven smoldered beneath his fingers, his human flesh incompatible with the other-realm marking, even though they were inextricably intertwined.
And that was the reason. “We are alone because we are marked as damned, and we must atone. That is our only mission, our only fight.”
The harsh conviction rolled through them as if those stones had backfired.
“You’re the one who pointed it out to me,” he reminded Jilly softly. “I am soul brother to Corvus. And so are we all.”
Despite the roaring propane heater in the ceiling, the warehouse had gone chill. One wrong touch and they would all shatter. The ravager in him coiled and uncoiled. It knew jagged edges made better weapons.
Even more softly, knowing they would hear, he said, “But we will fight. I promise you.” His heart bled to hear the ring of truth.
After a moment, Jonah nodded. “The way to repentance is between you and your God.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Or your demon, as the case may be. It is no longer our place to convert others.”
Ecco snorted. “Converting was always your deal, missionary man, not mine. I don’t care what Corvus has in mind—bashed in like it is—as long as I get plenty of slaughter time. It’ll all come out in the wash.” He snorted again. “Well, not all of it. Unless you use bleach. Whatever. I’m beat. Wake me up if tomorrow doesn’t get here.”
His exit broke the pained tableau. Archer touched Sera’s shoulder, drawing her away, but not before she murmured something to Jilly, who didn’t respond.
A palace coup? Liam couldn’t dredge up the interest to care as he talked to a few more talyan on their way out. They’d all had bad nights, their clashes with tenebrae fiercer than ever. Underneath their murmured reaffirmations that they’d made it through in one piece—or at least pieces that could be put back together—was the unspoken echo to the question Archer had raised: Did it matter?
Their doubt drained him as he subtly reinforced their focus. Their intensity he never questioned, and their strength. But those sterling attributes could become glittering knives turned against the world if ever they lost track of their mission, like he’d indulged the spiraling dark obsession with Jilly.
Though undercurrents of unease still swirled in violet eyes, exhaustion took them to their rooms. The end times offered that advantage, at least: keeping the union of supernatural killers too busy with overtime to review their retirement policy.
When he was alone in the docking bay, he turned off the heater and the lights. He stood in the empty, cavernous space for a moment, but not even the flicker of a lone soulfly disturbed the darkness.
He went inside.
The halls were every bit as empty, but a subdued clatter drew him to the kitchen.
Jilly. Of course. He leaned in the doorway.
She’d only turned on the counter light, leaving her adrift in the otherwise murky room. A pile of neatly split eggshells glistened whitely at her elbow. She didn’t look around at him as she cracked another egg. “I’m not trying to win friends and influence people, but the crew will need something for breakfast.”
“Maybe you can mix in some of Lau-lau’s repellent.”
She finally glanced over at him, uncertainty in the hunch of her shoulders. “I didn’t think you’d even talk to me.”
“Why? Just because you’re trying to destroy the league from within?”
“I’m not—” She grabbed a bowl and began whisking furiously.
“You’re about to tell me a discord demon can’t make omelets without breaking some eggs.”
“I’m not making omelets again. I’m making quiche. It’ll keep until tomorrow when everyone gets up.”
“Jilly,” he said softly as he walked toward her
She put the bowl down with a decisive thump, as if she didn’t want to be tempted to throw it at him. “I am not the teshuva, not just discord.”
“It chose you for a reason.”
“But I’m not trying to challenge you,” she said. When he snorted, she pursed her lips with a wry tilt of her head but didn’t back down as he closed the distance between them. “Not challenge you for responsibility to the league, anyway. I have no illusions what kind of leader I’d be. Still, I really believe I can make a difference.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He lifted one hand when she started to protest. “Your life has been about going a different way. That’s why you got involved with the halfway house, to keep the kids out of the sort of trouble you grew up in. But you can’t save the talyan by ending this fight. Only in the fighting can we be saved.”
She stared at him.
“You think I’m blind, but I’m not.” Involuntarily, he touched his temple with the pointed knuckles of his hard-clenched fist. “I see very clearly. I see that we are caught for eternity in this battle. That is the contract we inadvertently signed in our possession. But seeing clearly doesn’t mean there’s a way out of the trap.”
She gently bumped aside his fist to lay her palm against his cheekbone, her fingertips just grazing his reven. The combination of her soft touch and even-softer eyes nearly ruined him. Just when he thought she only wanted his head on a pike, she offered him instead a chance to lay his head in her lap. The temptation trumped any the demon had ever conjured.
He half closed his eyes. Then his gaze snagged on her bracelet. Other-realm ethers still glimmered in the woven bands, a mute reminder of lurking threats trapped but not vanquished.
He took a step back, and she paled as if he’d slapped her. But there were only so many pieces of him that could be caught in so many traps before there wouldn’t be anything left.
And he had to wonder if that would be so bad.
“I’ll go so you can finish,” he said stiffly.
“Liam,” she said.
But he didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 18
Jilly slept until noon. Thanks to the teshuva, she needed less sleep. But she didn��t want to face Liam again.
And hiding in her bedroom was oh- so mature. When she couldn’t stand her own cowardice anymore, she sneaked across the hall to her sister’s room.
Dory answered her knock, looking more rumpled and tired than Jilly’d felt after a night of being chased by demons. “Hey.”
She supposed Dory had been fleeing her own. “Hey. Can I come in?”
In the short time she’d been in residence, Dory had trashed the place. Her assortment of clothes from the league’s castoffs covered more space than seemed possible. The desk was strewn with paper and markers.
“You’re coloring.” The words popped out of Jilly in her surprise; then she winced. It sounded like an accusation.
Dory shrugged. “Sera’s friend, the church lady Nanette, said sometimes it helps her get what’s inside out.”
Jilly gestured at the table. “Can I . . . ?”
Dory shrugged again.
She hadn’t hoped for puppies and flowers, but Jilly’s heart skittered at the dozen pages crammed with Corvus’s blunt features.
“I can’t get him out of my system.” Dory’s voice was dull. “After she gave me the pens, she wanted to hold hands and pray, and I told her to get lost.” She waved her hand when Jilly frowned. “In a nice way. But it isn’t going to work with me. I tried that twelve-step shit.”
Jilly had suggested AA to enough kids to be familiar with the resistance. “You have to keep working the steps, Dory. It’s not a quick fix.”
Dory sat on the bed, her lank blond hair swinging forward to hide her face. “I heard you saw Blackbird last night.”
The talyan must have been talking. Jilly hoped they hadn’t said
anything totally inappropriate. Hard enough to explain her situation to her sister without getting into demonic possession.
Dory stared at her. “Your boyfriend said you tried to kill Blackbird once.”
“The league did, but that was before I got together with Liam.” Jilly realized she couldn’t explain the league either. She reached for a shirt to fold instead. “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”
Dory gave her a practiced adolescent eye roll. “Did you hurt him?”
“I’d like to,” Jilly murmured. She wasn’t sure if Dory meant Liam or Corvus. “Blackbird attacked us.”
Emotions, darker and older than the calculated insubordination, sleeted over Dory’s face, too quick to catalog. “Still, you all lived to fight another day.”
Once again, Jilly couldn’t tell if her sister was glad for her or for Corvus. “Something like that. Dory, with Sera’s connections, we can get you a bed in a good program.” She hesitated and set the neatened shirt aside. “It’s inpatient and out of state, but—”
Dory was already shaking her head. “I don’t want to be locked up.”
“It’s not a prison.”
“You’ve never been,” Dory burst out. “Why you think those kids never listen to you? They know you never been there.”
The honest fear in her sister’s voice beat in Jilly’s chest. She steeled herself. “I had my year in juvie. It’s not a badge of honor.”
Dory shook her head violently. “Not the place- place. The mind. You’ve never been stuck in there. You always knew you’d find the way out. And I always knew that’s why you couldn’t get me out too.”
Jilly pressed her arm against her stomach, to hold in the sorrow and affection that tried to well up and choke her. “Dory, I’m sorry for . . .” Where to start? “Everything. I’m not myself lately, and I just don’t know . . .” Where to start? “Anything.”
Dory blinked at her. “That’s more than you could’ve admitted before.”
Jilly winced. “Am I such a bitch?”
“A ‘babe in total control of herself.’ That’s what it stands for, you know. ‘Bitch.’ That’s what Mom’s boyfriends did to you. You escaped, but not untouched, no more than me.”