by Jessa Slade
“You can’t tell them anything until the demon ascends. They won’t believe you before then. Maybe not even then.”
Zane peered at him. “We can’t just let her go. I know we aren’t sure which strain of demon wants her, but no one should go through it alone.” He started forward, as if to flag down the cab.
Archer snagged Zane’s arm, whipping him around. “If she’s wise, she won’t go through it at all.”
Zane faltered. “You warned her? Is that an option?”
Archer shrugged irritably. “You can’t warn any more than you can guide.”
“You’d better hope Niall doesn’t hear about this. Ecco and Raine were watching from the other side of the bridge.”
Archer scowled, even more exasperated. “You think, if it comes to that, they want a woman joining the league? As if we didn’t face madness enough.”
“She’d be no worse than some,” Zane muttered. Then his gaze slid away as if he’d said too much—and to the wrong person.
Archer kept a leash on his flaring temper, but since someone had stuck the tuning fork in his dreams that had him vibrating to this emergent demon, his discipline felt unreliable.
Her accusation he was a psycho killer should have struck too close to the truth. But the zest with which she delivered the line and the glint in her hazel eyes as she aimed the spray can had roused sensations he thought long dead. Dead, buried, and rotted past all unholy resurrection.
Except in the dreams that left him unwilling to sleep. Strangely attuned to the unbound demon, he’d been prepared for violence. As always. But not for this. Not for her.
He wrestled down the rage. “There’s a malice in the alley back there. It followed the pyrotechnics this far. Scare it off before it gets bored and does something annoying.”
Zane glanced back, distracted. “Shouldn’t we drain it?”
“We won’t have time for every petty malice roaming the streets tonight.” Archer strode off.
“Where are you going?” Zane called.
“After more dangerous game.”
CHAPTER 2
Sera hauled herself up two flights of stairs, clenching her teeth on the echoes of well-meaning advice.
“ ‘Maybe you should get a ground-floor apartment,’ ” she muttered. “ ‘Maybe you should fuse those last vertebrae. ’ Maybe you should just shut up.”
Juggling her keys and bag at the front door, she dropped the cane. Too stiff to bend over, she left it and limped down the hall to the bathroom.
She cranked the water to hot and faced the mirror.
Six months ago, she’d draped the light fixture with a filmy scarf, telling herself she was contemplating taking up stained-glass design in her convalescence. As a mental health counselor with a certification in thanatology, guiding people through their last days, she’d seen plenty of injuries and illnesses no surgery could heal. She’d held the stump of a diabetic amputee who swore he could still feel his hands. She’d brushed the last lock of hair away from the startlingly bright eyes of a burn victim. Her own wounds had nothing on those.
She stripped naked, then yanked the scarf off the lights. Time for some hard truths by seventy-five watts.
Betsy was right. She looked like hell. Marion was right. She looked like death warmed over. Scrawny, wan, scarred from waist to knee. If the potential rapist on the bridge had seen this, he’d have been the one to run away in terror.
She let the scarf drop. They’d stuck her father in a nursing home, something she’d promised would never happen, telling her to concentrate on getting stronger. She couldn’t work, couldn’t drive, could barely walk. And now she’d let herself be frightened just because a man had spoken to her.
She couldn’t live like this. Wouldn’t.
She thought of the pills in her bag. Maybe she’d been relying on them too much. Well, no more. And that damn cane could stay in the hallway too.
The mirror fogged as steam billowed over the shower curtain. She swiped one hand across the glass. A face stared back at her, made somehow unfamiliar by the beaded droplets of water.
She frowned at the disjointed image. She knew who she was, where she was going. She’d been thrown only a little off track. Okay, catapulted. But tomorrow, Marion was getting another visit. So was the home where her brothers had put Dad. And then she’d have lunch with Betsy and eat everything on her plate.
The fog returned, but she was done. She stepped into the shower and bowed her head under the hot water. She’d stop shivering in just a second.
Sera walked into her bedroom, still naked. Damp heat followed her out of the shower in a slowly uncoiling mist. Only the slant of streetlights through the blinds lit the room, casting deep purple shadows. And he was there, a lean, dark outline with his black trench coat buttoned tight. Spicy musk teased her senses.
She blinked. “I’m dreaming. That’s why I’m wandering around my apartment naked. I never wander around naked.”
“Not wandering. You were coming. For me.” He stood unmoving, but the trailing edge of his long coat shifted in a draft she didn’t feel. “I will make it a sweet dream.”
She touched her forehead, in lieu of pinching herself and drawing his attention to her naked parts. Dripping strands of her hair tangled around her wrist. “I don’t need a wet dream tonight. Go away.”
He moved closer. “You called. You’ve called forever.”
“I don’t even know you . . . ,” she said, trailing off when he raised a hand to brush back her hair. He had the square, blunt hands of a working man, but his thumb feathered across her temple, almost too lightly to feel. The touch sent ripples of shivery sensation through her body like a pebble in still water.
She’d been close to screaming when he faced her on the bridge. She couldn’t muster the will now. It was just a dream, she reminded herself.
“So lonely,” he murmured. “So lost.”
“I’m sorry for you, really. But I can’t help you.”
“You’re the only one who can. But I meant you, my love.” He stroked the back of his knuckles along her cheek. “You’ve been alone so long, so long afraid, close to giving in, calling all the while.”
“I’m not . . . I am not your love.” She pulled away.
“I’ve breathed your soul. Whom else can I love?”
“You haven’t breathed on anything of mine.” Her skin prickled at the thought—a pleasure she hadn’t indulged in in a long time.
From behind, his hands slid over her shoulders, down her arms, then skipped to her bare hips.
That made her shy away as nothing else had. “Don’t touch me.” Not there. The unspoken words echoed in her head.
He framed the scars with his hands. The long shadows of his fingers hid the red and white puckers of stitched flesh. “I will make you whole again, as if you’d never been broken, nothing left behind.”
Speaking of dreams, everyone said she was dreaming when she’d promised herself the same after her accident. “What, you’re a physical therapist?”
“Quite the opposite.”
While she pondered what that might be—as if the riddles in dreams even mattered—he eased her back against him. The leather of his coat was cool on her backside and shoulders. Her thoughts scattered.
“I will take away your loneliness, your fear,” he whispered into her hair.
“I’m not afraid.” And, stupidly enough, that was true.
“You will be.”
His warm breath over her ear made her sigh. It had been a very long time. There’d been the accident, before that taking care of her father and his work at the church, before that raising her brothers. Why shouldn’t she share the burden and the solace, if only in a dream?
“I have the answer to all your questions.” His lips, brushing the curve of her ear, sent a shiver down her spine, through bones shattered and cobbled together again.
She tipped her head, whether drawing away from his lips or exposing her neck to draw his kiss, she wasn’t sure. “My ques
tions? Like why in the hell am I still talking to a dream?”
“Hell doesn’t have answers.” He spun her slowly in his arms. When had he undone the long row of buttons on his coat? The leather parted around his chest. “Hell doesn’t have this. Oh, to feel . . .”
She braced her hands between them, holding him off with palms flat on his smooth skin.
“Sera,” he whispered. “You called. I came for you. I will give you what you want.”
“Man, I even went to school for this.” She frowned. “After the crappy day I’ve had, of course I’d dream up a big scary dude who morphs into my devoted love slave.”
“Slave, yes. Only for you. I will be here for you always. I will give you what you need—”
“Right, right. Tell me more.” She slipped her hand up to his neck. He’d said she was close to giving in. Well, what was wrong with that occasionally?
He matched her embrace, cradling the back of her head in one hand. “Bind me.”
Between the heat of their bodies, a cold, hard knot pressed into her breastbone. She winced and peered at a pendant hanging around her neck on a black cord. The stone shone a moment, then dimmed, like a cheap opal.
“Wow, jewelry. On the first date.” She tugged on the stone and the cord unraveled. She dropped the necklace to the floor. “Thanks, but I don’t need to hear sweet little lies, even the ones generated by my own subconscious. But until the pills wear off . . .”
She pulled him down to her kiss.
He resisted. “Will you take me? Will you let me in?”
In answer, she opened her mouth. His lips on hers were as cool as the pendant stone; his fingers in her hair held her in place. Not that she was going anywhere. It was her damn dream, after all.
She gripped the open edges of his coat. The silvery violet mist seemed to pull closer in her tangling fingers, wrapping them in a drifting, luminous shroud. She wanted to melt into him, to swap her own frailty and uncertainties for the powerful male energy that had enthralled her on the bridge.
“Let me in,” he murmured.
“Yes.” Her eyes drifted shut. His mouth slanted across hers, tongue plunging deep. A shivering thrill coursed through her, rippling inward from skin to bone so her knees buckled. Only his compelling grip kept her upright against his bare chest. The faint chill of his skin made her shiver again.
A scent like cold, wet rock nagged her. Had she left the shower running? No. No pesky reality allowed. But she opened her eyes—and froze.
He was still there, arms tight around her, mouth hovering over hers.
But his eyes, locked on hers, were wrong, not the dark of the man on the bridge, nor any other human color.
White on white eyes. Ice. Ash. Ancient bone. As she stared at him, speechless, a point of blackest oblivion surfaced in the white, then another, and another, until an insectile horde of dark specks crawled across the pale sclera.
Okay, this was worth a scream.
She tried—and choked.
She woke, crouched at the bottom of the shower, spewing water from her mouth and nose. Glacial water nailed over her shoulders.
She fumbled for the spigots, hands numb. The drain had backed up into a shin-deep pool. The ceramic was frigid; the water smelled like cold lead. How long had she been under?
She crawled over the lip of the tub, shivering too hard to stand. Snatching for her towel, she curled into a ball, wracked by tremors.
“Dreams suck,” she gasped.
Her hips and spine screamed in pain. Her bag, with the prescription bottle, was on the table by the front door. She could drag herself that far.
Hand on the doorknob, she hesitated.
What if he was still out there? As suddenly as the thought surfaced, she banished it. Of course he wasn’t out there. He’d never been out there.
Had he even been on the bridge? Had she? Or had that been part of the dream—nightmare—too? Maybe she hadn’t gotten fired from her job tonight, after all.
“Now I’m just making things up.” At least the fleeting wish that Marion was a mere figment of her imagination short-circuited the frantic circling of her thoughts.
She levered herself to her feet. Her knees wobbled, and her skin was blanched cold and white as the ceramic tub. Pulling on her fleece robe, she barely felt the soft nap.
“What’s worse than death warmed over? Death not warmed over.”
She opened the door and gazed across the hall at the doorway to her bedroom. Streetlights through the blinds lit the room, the same as in her dream, but no tall man was silhouetted in a silvery purple mist.
Too bad, since this time she would have screamed. And then maced him. And then retrieved the cane from the landing and beaten him with it. How dare her dreams tease her with hands that hid her scars and coaxed pleasure from her bones?
She needed to get her body temp back up. Moving like one of her geriatric patients on arthritic last legs, she crept toward the kitchen and a nice cup of tea—caffeinated. She didn’t want to fall asleep where her dreams could watch her, whether the eyes were dark, shot with violet, or dead white and crawling with bugs.
“Maybe I’ll have an espresso,” she muttered. “Heck, make it a double.”
Only the soft hiss of the gas burner under the kettle broke the silence. She stared down the hallway. No one was there. If she’d heard anything else, it was only the plink of water falling into the clogged tub.
She slid a cleaver from the butcher block. She needed something sharp to unclog the drain.
She’d left the light on in the bathroom—the empty bathroom. It shone into the empty bedroom—empty, just as she’d known.
She knelt stiffly beside the tub and rolled up her sleeve. A black band looped around the drain. Had the gasket on the plug popped off? She fished her hand into the cold water, grasping the loop.
She lifted the cord and the ovoid stone pendant broke the surface with an opalescent flash, one sly vanishing wink that took with it the last of her breath.
The demon had gone to ground. The flaw where it had crossed the barrier of ensnared souls was hidden again—a last lingering link between the realms. Still, Valerius Corvus imagined the terrible bruise left by the crossing.
Perhaps the wound in the Veil evoked a peacock, tinted in violet, sapphire, and emerald. His fingers hovered over canes of glass hued just so. Then he glanced over his shoulder.
From the vermeil filigree cage, the crow watched him, jet eyes catching a flicker from the fireplace. His brow furrowed. All the other birds had slept at night—but not the crow. It kept odd hours, and the rare glint of oil-slick color in its black plumage was just as unpredictable.
He should have killed the crow and set the trap again. He thought wistfully of a pigeon with powdery gray feathers, the rainbow sheen of the breast, the neck of purest white, the brilliant orange eye. Cheese curls were cheap bait, and he still had a little time.
He removed his ring, set it carefully aside, then ran his fingers over the pliers and pinchers, blades and shears, a blowtorch. Such ugly instruments of pain, for such delicate, beautiful work.
He jostled the jewel-colored canes, searching for the black, and the rods of glass chimed against one another in warning. He forced himself to calm, but the twisting inside him made his hands shake.
He’d fancied himself up to the task, patience honed like glass drawn to spun-sugar fineness. After all, as the saying went, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nor had it fallen in a night. But Corvus had found, these days and nights, the world moved much more swiftly. His patience had suffered.
Just as well he knew all about suffering too.
A bead of liquid welled from his eye and fell. It hissed on the glass, where it left a smoky stain.
Turning away, Corvus poured himself a drink and went to the window. Below, the autumn color in the line of trees along the river had long since dulled, leaving only tattered skeletons of trunks and branches, waiting for a decent burial by snow.
He sipped the cognac. Mello
w heat dampened his awareness of the petty darklings riled in the demon’s wake. Any havoc the darklings conceived was nothing compared to what lay just beyond the unlit horizon, beyond narrow human perception.
A swirl of his glass set the reflected flames from the fireplace dancing in the alcohol, flickering like a phoenix on the wing. In his own depths, the demon stirred, not deceived by his enforced calm. It surged along channels in his blood and bones, seeking outlet.
Not yet. He resisted, twisting the power back upon itself, upon himself, in ways a newly emergent demon and its chosen prey could never comprehend.
A tremor of excitement passed through him, and he hissed out a single breath.
The scouring inferno, when he loosed it, would burn with abandon. In its freedom he would find his own at last. He lacked only the fuse.
How convenient that tonight’s luminous trail would lead him straight to the spark that would help him ignite a conflagration that would scorch even hell itself.
Archer walked from the bridge back toward his loft to reconnoiter the neighborhood. Circling the industrial-sized blocks in Chicago’s meatpacking district, with its longtime butcher shops and more-recent art galleries, took a while. With a side trip down one alley, he drained a malice that had mistakenly tried to claim the vacant territory he’d created around his place.
He left the malice’s thin psychic cry to stain the bricks, a warning to the city’s other resident evils. The sign might serve only to bring a feralis sniffing around for leftovers, but Archer felt cranky enough to relish a pitched battle. At least that would get his blood flowing.
He found himself little caring if it all flowed away.
Except for the unlucky malice, the block was clean—until he got through the doorway leading up the narrow stairs to his loft.
He paused, head cocked to catch the faint rustle from the landing above. “Just when I thought I’d wiped out all the pests in the neighborhood.”
Niall leaned over the railing. “I wasn’t going to wait out in the cold.”
Archer marched up. “So, about respecting my privacy unless sweeping my place after my death . . .”
