by Jessa Slade
“This is more important,” Niall said. “You let the talya get away.”
Archer stared impassively at the other man. “Not talya yet. But I saw that somebody taped a sign to her back saying, ‘Possess me.’ That should do the trick.”
Niall glowered. “Ecco was recording everything. Even had some of Bookie’s new spectral-analysis equipment going. How often do we get to study an emergent demon? And you let its target walk away.”
“Study?” Archer lifted one eyebrow. “Can you preserve a malice in formaldehyde? Will dissecting a feralis bring any of the unfortunates it consumed back to life? If only I’d known a pocket protector keeps stains off the soul.”
“We need an edge, any edge in this fight.” Niall paced the tight confines of the landing. Despite his agitation, he left a careful space between them. “I know you sense it, even out here on the edges. Maybe from the outside you can see all sides.” He spun toward Archer, his expression stark under the black lines marring his temple. “Evil is winning.”
Archer shifted. “No worse than usual.”
“Much worse,” Niall said, plunging on. “The djinn have always mocked the limitations of our mandate, but lately even the lesser emanations are flipping us shit. I swear, the other night a malice gave me the finger before I drained it. Last week, Jonah took out a feralis feeding on a pigeon down by the lake. And the sun was up. An old lady on a park bench told him to leave the ‘poor doggie’ alone. Hell, it probably would’ve eaten her next.”
“You want confirmation e-mails of my daily demolition?” Archer asked tightly. “Not that the number of malice drained or ferales dismembered makes a damn bit of difference. There’s always another load of trash.”
Niall dragged a hand through his hair. “I know your counts. And, really, would it kill you to share some of those techniques? You must realize we’re falling behind.”
“Yes, it could kill me to share, or more likely kill your precious men, and hell yeah, we’re falling behind. You think having her is going to change that?” Archer refused to imagine the willowy Sera pitted against Jonah’s feralis.
Bad enough when the ferales just consumed cockroaches. The demonic emanations warped and mutated the ordinary chitin into battle-ready carapaces that turned aside blades and bullets with ease. He hated it when the lesser demons took wing.
“You think a woman couldn’t fight beside us? It’s unprecedented, I know, but Bookie’s already putting together a dossier on Sera Littlejohn, and she’s neither a shrinking violet nor a hothouse rose.” Niall peered at him. “Or is this some sort of misplaced Southern gentlemanly honor I wouldn’t know anything about? Damn it, Ferris, we’re at war.”
“They say honor is always the first casualty. I’m not an idiot, Liam.” He drew out the name to show he hadn’t missed—or appreciated—the other man’s familiarity. “And I’m not naïve. Neither are you, usually. You know she doesn’t have a chance.”
“But you gave her one anyway.”
Archer clenched his right hand against the phantom ache. “In the end, how many resist temptation? Not enough to make the counting worthwhile, especially considering the pathetic wrecks that remain. You said it yourself, the demons are winning.”
“The wrong ones,” Niall muttered.
“Right or wrong? You think that matters?
Niall narrowed his eyes. “You chose. Same as the rest of us.”
“Same as her. With luck”—Archer laughed, a hollow sound in his own ears—you’ll have a new demon-ridden talyan fighter for your hopeless battles. If I know anything about temptation, Sera Littlejohn is already possessed.”
CHAPTER 3
She drifted in a world of gray, where only a thin charcoal line marked the horizon. A cry, shrill and mournful, pierced her confusion. She blinked when the sleek monochrome shape coalesced into streaks of white, black, and powder gray—a seagull.
Sera blinked again, and the gray became heavy clouds over sullen water. The gull surfed the wind off the lake, frozen a moment before it tilted its wings and soared away over a domed building as gray as the water and sky.
She blinked a third time—third time’s always the charm.
Last she remembered, she’d been hunched over a pot of black coffee, trying to decide whether to bother with a mug. Now she was freezing her ass off again, this time halfway down the spit of land that held the wa terfront planetarium, one sleepwalking step away from drowning.
She took a shuddering breath and a careful step back from the water. How had she gotten here? God, what day was it? Had she taken too many happy pills when she’d sworn she wouldn’t take any? Her world was being taken away one piece at a time. Her strength, her job, her poor father. Now her mind.
She backed away from the edge of the jetty and crouched in the shelter of the concave retaining wall. She passed a shaking hand over her hair. Her fingers tangled in knots. The thought that had haunted her longer than she cared to remember slipped unbidden from her tongue: “Am I trying to kill myself?”
“Too late for that.”
She bolted to her feet at the low voice with its soft Southern lilt, as ill fitted to this bleak panorama as to the hard, cold features of the man who spoke.
“You,” she said. “So much for third time’s the charm.”
“Third time?” He shook his head as if sorry for asking. “How are you feeling?”
She opened her mouth to issue a curt snubbing, then stopped. “A little odd, which you already guessed.”
“I suspected.”
“Your fault,” she shot back. “After last night . . .” Had it been last night?
“I waited for you on the bridge to warn you.” His eyes flickered between her and the jetty’s edge where corrugated steel and tumbled boulders held back the gray chop of the lake.
As if he too suspected she wasn’t very stable.
She took a sideways step closer to the water. “I meant later, in my bedroom.” At the memory of his hands on her, a reluctant warmth flushed through her.
He stiffened. “I wasn’t in your bedroom.”
“Like I’m going to believe anything a stalker says.” She stumbled another step toward the edge.
“Sera.” Her name was a warning. “Come back from there.”
“Get away from me.” She let her voice rise in panic.
He held up one appeasing hand. A black tattoo marked his knuckles. “I won’t hurt you.”
She stepped back again, heel to the jagged steel. For good effect, she windmilled her arm.
“Sera.” He leapt, reaching for her.
Sucker. She pivoted, planted a helpful palm between his shoulder blades, and launched him toward the waves.
Anyway, that was her intent. He shouted out a curse. Through his back, she felt his muscles seize, every fiber locking. He teetered impossibly over the rocks.
She fled.
She ran with the lake on one side and the head-high retaining wall on the other. People always walked around the planetarium to snap pictures across the water of the cityscape. If she could get to them before he got to her . . .
The wind whipped tears from her eyes. As if she had a chance with her limp.
Then she realized she was running flat out, no hitch in her step. No pain. Fear was an awesome motivator.
Just not enough to save her.
She felt a jerk at her coat. She clawed the zipper halfway down, slithering free as she ran. But the zipper jammed. The coat slipped down to her thighs, hobbling her. He had an iron grip now, and the coat slid down to her knees.
With a shriek, she tripped and rolled, taking the brunt of the fall on her shoulder so she landed facing him. Kicking violently, she drove him back.
He leaned out of harm’s way, twisting the coat around her knees to bind her legs. All her efforts barely ruffled the black shirt underneath his unbuttoned trench coat.
“Sera,” he roared, “cease at once.”
She landed a weak-ass punch somewhere in the vicinity of his left ni
pple. He jerked the coat around her knees, and she fell back, panting.
He scowled. “Are you done?”
She bared her teeth. “Come a little closer and ask me again.”
He wrapped another loop of the coat around his big hand, hiding the tattoo she’d glimpsed there. “I did not come to your bedroom last night.”
She kicked with both legs, though the tight binding hampered the blow. “Oh, my mistake. Must’ve been some other tall, dark, and handsome Southerner in exile with a bigger wardrobe budget and better taste than mine.”
“Better taste? I couldn’t say.” His half-lidded gaze lingered on her lips.
The heat in her rose a notch—equal parts exertion, embarrassment, and improvident arousal. “You didn’t say much in my bedroom either, since your tongue was in my mouth.”
That brought his eyes up to hers. His grasp on her coat slackened.
They stared at each other.
“The eyes were wrong,” she murmured. She couldn’t suppress a shiver as she met his gaze, dark with a hint of earthy color, like a blackened bronze. “I knew it then. And fell for it anyway.”
The buttoned vee of his shirt revealed a sprinkling of dark hairs. The man in her room had been smooth skinned, with unmarked hands, as if he hadn’t gotten the details quite right.
“The demon takes the form of temptation.” He shifted back onto his heels, dropping the coat. “That’s the nature of demons.”
She rallied her attention to scowl. “Demon? You mean the drugs? But I hadn’t taken any.” Her conscience pricked her. “Lately.”
“You’re an addict?” Ignoring her sputtered protest, he nodded once and rose to his feet, lithe despite his size. “That does make possession easier.”
“I have a prescription.” She staggered up. “I can’t be charged with possession of illegal drugs.”
“I don’t care what you possess, but what seeks to possess you.”
“Never mind the drug charges.” She kicked away the traitorous coat. “Who was in my room?”
“As I said, the demon.”
She sagged against the wall. The concrete leached the last of her warmth. Nothing made sense—not his words, not her sudden physical well-being, not the strange rock that had appeared out of nowhere in her shower. “Demon?”
His sigh deepened with frustration. “A circular conversation going nowhere. This is why I don’t handle newly possessed talyan.”
She pictured those white eyes pierced with infinity, the odd stone glowing in her palm. “Was he your twin?”
“I have no brothers. And it wasn’t a he. An it. A demon escaped from hell.” He angled his gaze down at her. “You thought I was with you?”
She ignored that. “Part two. Who are you?”
“Ferris Archer. I followed the emanations from the demon realm, which led me to you.”
“Do you really expect me to believe any of this? That I’ve been possessed by a—a demon?”
“Belief is beside the point. It is true.”
It was like being told she would soon be killed by a falling piano. Of course she didn’t believe him. And yet she couldn’t help looking up. “Demons don’t exist.”
“Not corporeally, not in this world. Which is why it has clothed itself in your flesh.”
The lake wind swirled, and an inadvertent shudder ripped through her. She wrapped her arms around her waist, as if she might feel different. “And what if I’m not interested in sharing my flesh?”
A muscle in his jaw tensed. “You can cast it out, before it ascends, before it sets roots in your soul and its mark on your skin. But the price is high.”
“Isn’t it always?” She forced herself to open her clenched fingers. “Tell me Betsy sent you from AA and this is all a really bad metaphor.”
“I wish I could.”
“Just do,” she urged him.
His lips twisted as if to hide a twinge of pain—or maybe a smile. “My sins are many, but lying is not among them.”
He twitched back the edge of his trench coat and from the folds of supple leather released a blackened club the size of her forearm. With a snap of his wrist and the menacing shhick of sliding metal, the club telescoped to double in length. He flicked it outward, and from the thickened, studded end, a blade cascaded out in a series of glittering steel segments, like a cardsharp’s precisely fanned hand almost twice as wide as her spread fingers.
From primitive club to switchblade battle-axe quicker than her stuttering heart could find its beat.
“Oh God.” She cringed back against the wall.
“I never got around to naming it.” He gripped the weapon just below the wickedly recurved blade and tugged up the sleeves of his coat and shirt.
The razor edge carved the cold light, sharper than the look he threw her as he laid the gleaming blade against the inside of his right arm between the inky lines of his tattoo.
“No.” A sickening beat of horror skipped through her, in the same way as when she’d seen the SUV hurtling toward her, about to change her life forever.
The tattoo, neither Celtic nor tribal but even more primitive, swirled over his knuckles and spiked halfway up his arm. Against the black, the skin of his wrist looked tender, veins and tendons standing out in marbled relief.
He stilled, and despite the dread-filled thump of her heart, she found her gaze drawn to his.
“Unforgivably melodramatic,” he said, “but effectively convincing.”
He sliced the blade down his inner arm. Blood foun tained up behind the silvery edge into a gruesome rooster tail.
With a wordless cry, she jumped forward. A sweep of her elbow knocked the axe from his grasp.
The momentum of her leap sent them both tumbling to the pavement. He swore as his back hit the ground with a jolt.
She straddled him, both hands clamped on the terrible injury, stemming the inexorable outflow of life. Her heart raced, matching each gushing pump of blood from his wrist.
“Sera.”
“Are you crazy?” Was she? He’d had an axe, for God’s sake. She tried not to wonder if the weapon was far enough from his reach, if he would use it again, this time on her. “I can’t let go of you.”
“If so, you would be the first.”
The glimmer of old pain in his gaze ensnared her. But each heartbeat she spent wondering, another pulse of his blood eked between her fingers. “Shut up unless you’re going to make sense. We have to tourniquet your arm. Damn it, why don’t I have a scarf?”
“Sera, let go.”
Her stomach twisted. “I feared I was trying to kill myself, but I guess you beat me to it.”
“’Tis harder than you’d think.” His voice was soft, and he shifted under her, his thighs hard between her knees. “Sera, please.”
His tone made her pause. She was practically molesting him, something she hadn’t quite gotten around to with his doppelganger. He was too big for her to restrain, too sensibly calm and level eyed for her to tell herself he was totally nuts. Adrenaline ebbed, leaving her dazed.
“I already know you’re not a healer,” he said. “You’re a guide. You of all people should understand release from pain can be dearer than life.”
She shook her head, slowly at first, then with more vigor. “Who told you that? That’s not why . . .”
“Let go.”
“Damn you.” She did.
Only a tracing of scar remained. The white line gleamed like pearl beneath the transecting smears of blood left by her fingers. She gasped and stumbled back.
“Easy.” He reached out to steady her.
She evaded him, as if by avoiding his hand she could ignore what she’d just seen. “It’s a trick.”
“All demon-kind delight in trickery.” He swept his hand over the scar, smearing her fingerprints into his skin, then folded the axe away and rose to his feet. “But I have not tricked you. Your possession will be hard enough without fear and doubt undermining you. Trust me on that.”
He tucked
the club back into the folds of his coat and held his hand down to her.
“Trust you?” She clenched her fist, sticky with his blood. If she refused to listen to him, then she couldn’t believe her own senses either, which would mean she was broken in ways beyond the damage of a speeding SUV. That possibility was more frightening than anything he’d said. This time, the collision course was between what she’d known before and . . . “Possession?”
“The demon came to you. You let it in.”
“I didn’t know it was a demon.” Just saying the word made her feel as if she were playing on the flip side of sanity. “I can’t believe I’m listening to you.” But she took his hand.
He drew her to her feet. He stared down at their matched bloody hands a moment, then released her. “Remember what I said about believing? You’re already going through the first symptoms of possession as the demon metastasizes. Your anger and blackouts, the sensation that you’ve been cut off from everything you’ve ever known.” The gray lake and sky cast a silvery pall over his eyes.
His distant, pensive expression made him seem too . . . too much like her. She curled her fingers tight against the urge to touch him again, to recall his focus from the empty horizon.
He continued. “You’ll tell yourself you’re losing your mind, that you’re embroiled in a government conspiracy, whatever makes you feel better.” The silver haze hardened to bronze again as he looked back at her. “But when the demon ascends, you can reject my words and die. Or listen to me and just maybe survive.”
“Survive possession.”
“And what comes after. Now the demon travels this world in your flesh, and when its influence rises, you draw unnatural power through the residual link to its realm.”
“That’s how I knocked the axe out of your hand.”
“I was momentarily distracted.” He glowered at her beneath lowered brows. “It won’t happen again.”
She couldn’t stop a quick grin at his disgruntlement. Then she thought about what he was saying, and her grin faded. “There’s psychological degradation as well?”
Up went one brow. “Like homicidal schizophrenia?”
She winced to hear the accusation she’d thrown at him on the bridge tossed back like an armed grenade. “Like voices in your head, telling you to do things.”
