by Jessa Slade
“Ecco,” he gasped. “The bowl.”
Who cared about the fucking fishbowl? With her hand clamped around the arterial spray of his brutal amputation, they staggered to Ecco and tugged him into the shelter behind the ruined hothouse just as the salambe-driven fan burst from its foundations.
The fan blades tangled in the confusion of bent framing. Jilly covered her head, but the squeal of metal and the musical explosion of glass rang in her ears. To her shocked gaze, the hothouse looked like a version of her bracelet writ large and distorted, with the weave of metal and the gleam of ether trapped within.
“Where’s the bowl?” Ecco rasped. Blood—his or Jonah’s, Jilly didn’t know—streamed down his face.
“You don’t have it?” Jonah’s voice was a moan as Jilly knotted her socks in a tourniquet around his forearm.
Halfway across the roof, Jilly saw Liam, in pursuit of the sturdy glass bowl, tumbling and half invisible in a swirl of salambes.
And behind him were the last of the ferales.
The putrid stench of birnenston had flatlined all her senses except horror, and she could barely keep track of which way was up. But she knew the edge of the roof was all around.
And only a shallow lip ringed the edge.
If the salambes pushed the bowl over, it would smash open on the sidewalk below. Blessed it might be, but it was still only glass. Who knew demons would be so keen on protecting one another?
God knew, the teshuva couldn’t pull it off.
Doubling back like a snake of smoke, the salambes left the bowl, which continued to roll toward the edge. Liam didn’t stop and he was swallowed in the cloud of ether. Jilly recoiled at the memory of that unrelenting agony. He’d been through it once, and he’d just done it again. Only this time, the ferales would close in and finish the job.
She bolted to her bare feet.
Out of nowhere, Archer, Sera right behind him, jumped into the ferales’ fray. A half step behind them, Perrin leapt at the bowl with a warrior cry.
The salambes echoed the scream. Their shrieks lifted a scintillating cloud of pulverized glass and birnenston. Half a rooftop away, Jilly gagged on the nose-searing scent and tasted blood in her throat. The salambes whirled off Liam, who staggered but did not fall.
Perrin had claimed some immunity from the birnenston, and he used it now. The jump carried him over the rolling fishbowl.
“No,” Jilly whispered.
The bowl tumbled closer to the drop. The salambe cloud darted beneath Perrin and lifted the glass sphere a foot or more into the air. It would clear the knee- high roof lip easily.
But Perrin stabbed the yard-long shards of his spears down into the asphalt—one, two, three—in a circle around his prize. The tripod of stakes pinned a rough tepee over the glass, holding it in place.
For a single breath, the salambes fell silent.
Then with a thunderous roar, they swept Perrin off the roof.
Liam straightened as if one of the stakes had gone through him. Jilly thought she might have cried out, an anguished shout she knew he would never release. Or maybe the ringing in her ears was only the salambes’ shriek as they rose to thread between the ferales circling on the wing. In a churning mass, the tenebrae vanished into the darkness, abandoning their trapped kin.
The other-realm wind stilled. Liam was already racing across the roof, back to the access door.
Jilly took a step after him and fell to her knees after one bloody footprint. But her heart hurt too bad for her to feel her blistered soles.
Sera crouched beside their little decimated trio. “Oh no,” she murmured. “Jonah.”
He recoiled at her touch. “Save it for Perrin, death singer.”
Lips tight, she glanced at Ecco, but he shook his head, eyes bleak. “Nothing for me either, solace bringer. I dropped the ball, or the bowl, and Perrin paid.”
Archer stood with the fishbowl in arms. The sputtering reven on his hand flared in counterpoint to the roil of greasy demon smoke inside. “Enough. We need to get you all out of here so the teshuva can heal you up, do their job.”
“We did the job, all right.” Jilly’s ears still rang and her words sounded hollow, as if her head were stuffed in the fishbowl along with the salambe. “It’s all about the job.”
Sera levered her upright. “Stop it.” Her voice was gentler but as firm as Archer’s. “You know that’s not true.”
But it was. Jilly stared down, stomach churning not at the sight of her flayed feet but at the memory of marching up to Liam and demanding to be part of the team. If she hadn’t volunteered her demon-trapping self, would the night have gone so terribly wrong? Except for the inescapable pull of the knot-work bracelet, the salambes would have fled. The talyan would have been frustrated . . . but alive and intact.
She’d wanted to prove herself, forgetting that a rebel without a chance shouldn’t drag others down into the abyss with her.
Without Liam to ride herd with his curt hand signals, they clustered silently together, Archer and Ecco supporting Jonah, Sera next to Jilly. One feralis could’ve thrashed them all, but their muffled footsteps roused nothing. The rough treads ground against Jilly’s bare heels and she staggered.
Before Sera could catch her, she straightened with a guilty look back at Jonah. If he could walk at all, it was the least she could do. Holding her voice at a mere whisper, she asked, “Shouldn’t we have tried to find his . . . his arm?”
Sera shook her head. “Did you see the wreckage the fan left?”
“But isn’t that the teshuva’s promise, to keep us alive and well? Whole isn’t part of the bargain?”
“It took part of our souls, Jilly. Do you think it really cares about whole?”
Her legs still wobbled, but her feet and the birnenston blisters on her hands stopped bleeding by the time they reached the ground floor. The front door hung open, askew on its hinges where Liam had busted through without even the pretense of subtlety.
For a moment, Jilly wished she could just walk out through the open door and keep going. But she resisted when Sera started to lead them down the street to the van. “Don’t.”
Archer rumbled low in his throat but paced behind them.
They turned the other direction, to the side of the building where Perrin had fallen.
Liam stood on the empty sidewalk. He had removed his long coat, and was laying it over the still form crumpled in the flower bed.
But not before Jilly saw that Perrin must have hit the beams of the L or the lamppost before he landed. Blood speckled the early snowdrops. She looked down. The skin on her hands was slowly smoothing over. Perrin’s wounds never would. “What’s the point?”
“We get immortality, not indestructibility,” Sera reminded her.
Considering what they were up against, Jilly wondered if immortality was enough.
Jonah lifted his head, staring at the covered body. “His demon is gone.”
“Sneaking bastards, all of them,” Ecco muttered. “I’d like to stuff them, each and every one, in a fishbowl and lock it with enough angels’ blood and brimstone to last past the end of the world.”
“We should have let it go,” Jilly burst out. She hadn’t known the angelic seal was primed with the blood of an angel’s host. She definitely didn’t want to know how much was needed, though it couldn’t be even half as much as had poured from Jonah’s arm. “We could always have tried again.”
“Exactly,” Archer said. “And Perrin might’ve died—finally—then instead.”
“Jilly.” Sera’s voice was gentle. “This is what we do.”
“But I’m the one who wanted to do it. He shouldn’t have had to make the sacrifice for me.”
Liam finally straightened and turned to face them. His reven guttered, the ravager still struggling out from under the birnenston poisoning. “It wasn’t for you.”
For the cause. Of course. She closed her hands into fists. The slowly healing flesh stung as if she’d grabbed sharpened steel.
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Despite her silence—or maybe because of it—Liam continued. “Sometimes you don’t get to make the call who sacrifices.”
She lifted her chin. “If not me, when it was my idea, then who? The teshuva?”
“Me.” With a nod, he sent Ecco and Jonah to the van. He bent and lifted Perrin’s body over his shoulder. Jilly shuddered, remembering that simple, blunt strength when he’d lifted her.
Ecco was behind the wheel. Jonah slumped in the passenger seat beside him, unconscious, his breath hitching, the demon unable to save him from the agony even in oblivion. Archer and Sera had climbed into the far back, Archer with his arm around his mate. Jilly settled into the middle seat, arms around herself to push back the cold. Her palms and soles throbbed with returning life, which seemed vulgar with Perrin’s body behind them.
Her morbid thoughts were derailed when Liam sat beside her. He gestured for Ecco to drive, then leaned back and put his arm around her shoulders. She realized she was shivering.
“I never thought to stock the fleet with spare blankets.” His tone was thoughtful, as if they were discussing placing an order with Martha Stewart.
But despite her own wounded chill and the fact he at least still had his long-sleeved button-down shirt, pure ice radiated off him. Carefully, she wrapped her arm around his chest.
This was nothing like his cupid-carved bed. That moment of respite seemed a thousand years away. Her breath hitched in dismay when she realized, for some, like Blackbird, that wasn’t even an exaggeration.
Liam’s grip tightened, almost to the point of pain, then abruptly relaxed. “Let me see your hands.”
“I’m fine.”
He stared down at her, blue eyes unblinking.
She untucked her hand from his waist. The skin was still marked with rings of white scars like water droplets in a pond, but even those were fading. “See?”
“So where’s all the blood from?” Without waiting for an answer, he set her to one side and nudged up the bottom of her T-shirt.
“Hey.” She pushed at his hands.
“Stay still.”
She hissed when his fingers probed her side. “It’s probably Jonah’s.”
“No, not fine.” He lifted her T-shirt. Under her breast, the black lines of her reven were quiescent with the demon dormant. “Relax. No one can see here.”
“I’m not—Never mind.” She wasn’t tense because she was prudish. It just wasn’t right that her demon had faltered when she most needed it. Perrin had died, Jonah had had to make a terrible choice, and here she was, wishing . . . wishing things that didn’t have anything to do with death or not dying. She wanted. . . .
She just wanted. Again.
He let out a breath. “It missed all the important parts.”
“Don’t we always,” she murmured.
He glanced up. This time there was a flicker of violet in his gaze.
She didn’t look away. “Perrin died because of us.”
“Perrin died because of the salambes.”
She shook her head. “If you and I had worked together, we could have bottled the salambe before the others descended.”
From the way his jaw worked, she knew he agreed. But he said, “If we did what we do, we could have opened a rift in the Veil that let through worse demons than the salambes.” When she flinched, he nodded. “Sera told me about the reference she found. Corvus said he learned something from us. We can’t afford to teach him any more bad habits.”
“Then I’m useless to you.” When he drew a breath, she took his hand. “I’m not strong enough to take them on my own, which is how you want to hunt.”
“You’re stronger than you know.”
She tried to smile. “Oh, I have a very high opinion of myself. But I know when I’m not going to make it.”
“Bullshit. When have you given up?”
She stared at him. “Ask my mother. Ask Dee and Iz and the other kids who are probably wondering what happened to me.”
“Neither of those were your fault.”
“Ask Jonah.”
He tried to ease his hand free from hers. “You don’t get to take that on either.”
She kept a grip. “Because that’s yours too?”
“Yes, damn it. You’ve been overstepping your bounds, talya. I lost a fighter tonight. It has happened before and it will happen again.” He leaned over her, gaze flat and still. “And you will stay out of it.”
“Stay out of which part? The being guilty? Or the dying?”
Or did he just not want to mourn with her? His arm over her shoulder could’ve been simply sharing what precious body heat remained between them.
After all, he couldn’t want a weapon that backfired on him. She’d sown discord in the fragile team he’d built, which was nothing a bowl of soup could fix. And what little they knew about female talyan made it seem like there was no hope for any fix.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
He didn’t answer.
By the time they made it back to the warehouse, all the talyan knew what had happened. One at a time, they returned to drift through the dock where Liam had laid Perrin’s body on a stack of pallets. Jonah stood at the dead talya’s head, his arm tucked under the front of his crimson-soaked coat. His teshuva might have stopped his bleeding, but from the white lines of strain around his mouth that the demon hadn’t smoothed over, it was clear only sheer human obstinacy kept him upright.
The same bone-deep weariness left her swaying on her bare feet, but Jilly couldn’t bring herself to leave the dock. She stood at a slight distance. Though she didn’t look around, she knew Liam lingered behind her.
“We have to be done here.” Archer stalked by them. “He’s been possessed a long time. The body’ll be dust and bones before dawn.”
Sera snagged him by the arm and dragged him to a halt. “Let them be. They need to see. They need this time.”
“Ghoul,” he hissed at her. But his body curved toward hers.
“Healing,” she countered. She touched his shoulder. “Go inside. Eat some of what Jilly made. They’ll follow you, and then we can take care of Perrin. Lex volunteered to make the drive out to the burial ground down south. Even if the league has never fully explained what happens to the talya soul after death, we know what’s left of his body will find a beautiful place to rest.”
Archer watched her a moment, eyes half lidded. Though he didn’t move, Jilly’s skin prickled as she felt the demon rising in him, as if just the thought of walking away from his mate was a threat. After a tense moment, he nodded, and his exit did pull a few other talyan into his wake.
Sera joined Jilly. They watched Jonah, who bent his head over the body, as if in prayer.
“They don’t lose a brother often,” Sera murmured. “In some ways, that makes it harder for them.”
Jilly slanted a glance at her. “Who wants to practice at losing just so you won’t cry when the time comes?”
“Who said anything about not crying?” Sera shrugged. “Violence only sharpens the edge of the pain.”
Liam’s voice rumbled behind them. “Violence, properly wielded, also takes care of what’s causing your pain.” He inclined his head at Ecco, who nodded and finally dragged Jonah away.
Jilly winced at their matched halting steps. “With all that’s coming at the league, I’m surprised there isn’t a funeral a day.”
“The teshuva are almost always strong enough to repair the damage from malice and ferales,” Liam said. “It’s the others that have been the problem.”
“The salambes.” Jilly gripped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “And the djinn.”
But Sera gave him a narrower glance. “And you still wonder about the demons that choose a woman, don’t you?”
He met her accusing glare without any sign of regret, his arms loose at his sides. “I never believed you were evil. Either of you.”
Jilly wondered if she’d ever be warm again. “Just dangerous.”
He di
dn’t answer, and Sera prodded, “In the last four months, you’ve lost two talyan. When was the last before that?”
“Check league archives.”
“I don’t need to.” Sera’s voice was low. “I know you remember every one.”
He gave her a level look. “Does it matter? I gained a talya for each one I lost.”
His nonanswer was answer enough. And Jilly didn’t want to be a replacement part. “We should go.”
He nodded. “Get something to eat. The teshuva might not care, but your body still does.”
Now he cared about her body. “I mean, Sera and I should leave the league.”
They stared at her, with flickering violet in their eyes and demonic lows in their voices when they both said, “No.”
“Something dangerous happens when we . . . when we touch.” She looked at Liam. “You said it yourself. What happens between us might not be evil, but it isn’t good.”
His jaw tightened. “So we won’t touch.” A scant heartbeat later, he added, “Except when we can use it, control it.”
“You two speak for yourselves,” Sera snapped. “If Archer heard this, he’d break something.”
“We’re already breaking the league,” Jilly said. “One man at a time.”
“That’s what happens when you won’t bend to changes.” Sera cast a hard look at Liam. “Even brain-damaged, soulless Corvus figured that out.”
“Maybe that made it easier,” Jilly said. “All he had left was his heart.”
“And his demon,” Liam growled. “We paid a high price, but we have a salambe to dissect, clues to unravel, and the end of the world to avert. No one is leaving.”
His vehemence silenced them until Archer strode up, stark lines drawing his face into a hard mask. “Your sister’s gone.”
As if the cold was just too much, Jilly’s heart went still in her chest. So much for nobody leaving. “Maybe she needed something for the kitchen. Frosting for the brownies. Maybe—”
“And she took the last of the solvo.”