by Jessa Slade
Just right. Corvus balanced the torch in a vise and reached for two thick glass rods. So many small acts before the final effect.
In the same way, he’d insinuated his final plan into the dreams of the pharmaceutical researcher and the executive. He’d barely called on the confusing miasma of his djinn-infused aura to charm them. With just a few suggestive words, he’d opened a path to the center of their souls and bent them to his need. One man lusted for immeasurable wealth; the other longed to be a hero. Together, they spread a spiritual plague through the city. The world would come to curse those early unwitting carriers of doom, but at least a few innocents would be spared the coming annihilation.
Well, not actually innocent, and not spared, precisely. But their deaths would be kinder than what lay ahead.
He softened both canes in the flame and spiraled the transparent black into the matte. Dark and darker, like his endless servitude. How appropriate the crow had come to him as his last work in the darkest days of all.
The Worm cleared his throat. “Actually, the strain of the demon changes nothing.”
Corvus tipped his head. “True, nothing ever really changes.”
“A complication only.” Eagerness rose in the Worm’s voice. “The league has its newest talya well guarded, but the weakness in the Veil remains. Our work doesn’t require informed, or even willing, participation.”
“You should know,” Corvus murmured. More loudly, he said, “True again.”
“My formula for the chemical desolator numinis performs exactly as we wanted. Soon we’ll have the critical mass we need to punch through the Veil.” The Worm straightened. “So our agreement still holds.”
Corvus put down the glass. He took up the ring he’d laid aside and slipped it over his finger. “Why do you covet it? You cannot cozen the demon’s power for yourself.”
The Worm’s gaze fixed on the ring. “Of course I can.” His hands jerked at his sides, as if he reached for something just beyond his grasp. “The power, channeled through human flesh, is just that: power. Neither good nor evil, nor repentant.”
Corvus stroked his thumb over the smooth stone.“Are there more twistings to you than I knew, my Worm?”
If the Worm even heard the name Corvus had given him, he didn’t object. “Once we have the siphon through the Veil in place, we can focus the etheric energy however we wish.”
Seeing the glint in the Worm’s eye, Corvus tilted his head. “Such grand plans.”
“Damn right,” the Worm snapped.
Just as well he’d never been tempted to share his ultimate intent, Corvus thought. Seduced by the prospect of power the Worm might be, but still too small to appreciate the terrible might that, once unleashed, would free them all.
Damned indeed.
“We still need the talya and her teshuva to mark the flaw in the web of souls. And soon,” Corvus warned. “My desolator army is nearly complete.”
“And our next opportunity could be decades away.” Impatience overrode the last of the Worm’s trepidation, and his writhing fingers stilled into clenched fists. “I’m already working on it. She’ll have no place else to go and no time to balance the demon’s energies. Once we have her, I can trace the link through her teshuva to the demon realm and place the tap in that weakened point in Veil. I’ll get—we’ll have everything we need.”
“I have faith.” Corvus smiled.
The Worm smiled back.
When he had gone, Corvus returned to his glass. With each translucent layer, the disquiet in his soul sunk deeper out of his awareness, leaving him floating free of the murk. The Worm could never understand. Corvus doubted even the white-hot tip of the torch was bright enough to enlighten the man.
Meanwhile, he basked in a glow of satisfaction. He’d always known this day would come.
The playwrights of this era shied away from deus ex machina conclusions. The Greeks had loved the practice of actors, masked as the gods, descending from wires overhead to make their long-winded proclamations and neatly wrap up their complicated morality tales. Today’s playwrights found such a finish too unlikely, maybe even disturbing.
They didn’t believe that overwhelming, unearthly forces would come down and end their play.
Little did they know.
He found himself curious about this new demon-ridden warrior. He’d never bothered with the skulking talyan and their paltry teshuva, too fainthearted to reach for their desperately sought-after release. They should thank him for hastening their conclusion. But this one was powerful, the Worm said, and a female. Perhaps he needed to see this oddity.
He took his high spirits down from his tower into the streets. His passage rippled out in waves of frenzied darklings that would feast well before morning’s light.
No sense letting the talyan get lazy now. Their teshuva hadn’t much longer to repent.
Archer paused on the sidewalk in front of the refurbished old hotel, when Sera halted, staring up. “Betsy said it was almost a full moon.”
In the early-morning sky, the wan moon hung between the angular spears of the hotel’s Gothic crenellations, a fragile bubble over a field of needles. “Who is Betsy?”
“A nurse where I work. Worked. She told me the crazies would be out.”
“Not knowing she’d be talking about you.” The inadvertent cruelty of his words made him wince. “Never mind.”
“Demons.” Sera shook her head. “She’d probably find comfort in finally hearing an explanation for all the suckiness in the world.”
“Working with humanity wasn’t explanation enough?”
She dragged her gaze down from the sky. “What the hell is your problem?”
Hell. He didn’t answer.
She scowled, the pale moonlight in her eyes eclipsed with violet demon glow. “I thought you brought me here so I could learn how we fight to save the world.”
“We’re fighting to save our souls,” he reminded her. “The world is collateral damage.”
“Collateral salvation, you mean.”
“Guess that depends whether anybody survives.”
She shook her head, blond hair sifting over her shoulders. “Are all the other demon-ridden like you?”
“God forbid.”
Archer didn’t turn around at the voice behind them. “Will you set her a better example, Ecco?”
Zane stepped up on the other side of them. “We’re just getting off the hunt—worst ever, I gotta say—but Liam said to wait for you.” He turned to Sera. “Your honor guard, ma’am. I’m Zane.”
She murmured some appropriate response. Ecco did not introduce himself.
Archer put himself between Sera and the two men. “Emphasis on the guard?”
Zane ducked his head. “Niall said you weren’t exactly sure. . . .”
Ecco growled. “Thought we might have to take her out. Since you couldn’t.”
“You might try.” Sera smiled sweetly, but Archer, his demon ascending at the hinted violence, felt the sudden race of her pulse. From the curl of her fingers, he knew the fierce rush of the demon rose in her too. “Unless you’re no better at the wet work than the undercover detail. Maybe you should stick to doll making.”
Zane choked.
Archer smirked, his demon subsiding. “Shall we go up?”
Zane jumped forward to swipe his entry card at the door. The heavy glass etched with the @1 insignia swung open with a dull clang, and they filed in.
Archer almost bumped shoulders with Ecco as the other man tried to fall into place behind Sera. Their stares clashed. After a heartbeat, Ecco gestured him ahead, lips twisted with insincerity.
Archer narrowed his gaze, then stepped past, following Sera through the retro Metropolis lobby.
The elevator rose thirty-five floors in strained silence.
Archer glanced over at Sera. She’d been looking at him, but her gaze slipped away before he could do something—take her hand, coldcock Ecco, something—to reassure her.
Zane cleared his
throat. “I remember the first time I met the league, with a mischief-class demon newly embedded in my soul.” He pitched his voice as if he spoke only to Sera, although of course they all heard. “I was piss-myself scared, sorry to say.”
Sera gave him a fleeting smile. “Seems reasonable.”
“But you shouldn’t be scared. Not of us. And the teshuva are pretty chill too. Kinda like living in an efficiency apartment with a roommate who works days while you work nights. You share the same space and sort of help each other out, but you never even see the other guy.”
“He must be the one who keeps leaving the toilet seat up,” Ecco said. “Asshole.”
“Anyway,” Zane said, “that just leaves bad demons to worry about. And you’ve already racked up an assist in a feralis takedown.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You keep score?”
He flushed. “Well, not officially. The reckoning’s all in the soul, I suppose.”
“And the hash marks in your flesh,” Ecco growled.
Sera glanced at him. “Don’t you heal? I thought that’s the demon’s half of the deal.”
Ecco smiled, full of teeth. “Doesn’t stop it from hurting like hell.”
When her gaze slid to him again, Archer kept his eyes fixed on the elevator doors, which thankfully opened. Ecco and Zane stepped out, but Sera balked on the threshold. Archer tried to see the room as a newcomer.
Decades ago, the league had converted the old hotel to apartments for its talyan. When Niall had taken over as leader, he’d opened the penthouse suite with its massive sunken living room as a gathering space, trying to foster community among the almost pathologically re clusive fighters. The hotel wasn’t the tallest or finest in the city, but the wall of windows framed an impressive swath of skyline and morning light.
Despite the elegance of sleek modern furnishings in black and chrome highlighted with crimson, Archer didn’t think any particular awe of the decorating held Sera in place, clashing violet lights in her eyes.
Maybe her reluctance had something to do with the couple dozen large, powerful men—variously scarred and reven marked, and at the moment liberally sprayed with ichor—rising from their scattered seats, all with violet-tinged gazes fixed on her.
When Zane had said they’d waited after rounds, he’d meant they’d all waited.
Archer put his hand at the small of Sera’s back. He paused while she angled herself a single degree toward him, toward the comfort—or at least the familiarity—of his touch. He noted how every man’s eyes flicked to that point of contact.
Only then did he guide her forward to the man standing in the middle of the room.
“Sera Littlejohn,” he said. “This is Liam Niall.” He cast his gaze wider. “And the Chicago league of the teshuva, those who would repent.”
The talyan fighters stood motionless, but tension lapped the room in almost visible waves.
“ ‘Pleased to meet you’ seems a little . . . ,” she responded, hesitating, then finished, “beside the point.”
Niall’s lips quirked up. “Hello is fine. Truth is, we’re as surprised to meet you as you are to find us.A woman, with a powerful enigma-class demon.These are puzzling times indeed.” He shook his head. “But we are very pleased to meet you. It isn’t every day—or every decade—that we welcome a new convert to the league.”
“I think that’s probably a good thing.” Sera’s sideways glance took in the room of silent men.
“Not if we’re going to stay ahead of the bad guys,” Niall said.
Ecco hovered nearby, if a man with biceps the size of tree trunks could hover. “We are the bad guys. We’re just not the really bad guys.”
Niall shot him a quelling glance. “Don’t scare her.”
“Too late,” Sera murmured.
At the same moment, Zane said bracingly, “She’s not as nervous as I was. I about puked the first time I smelled a malice.”
“Thank you, Zane,” Niall said with a wry twist to his lips.
Sera shifted uneasily. “I guess I have already seen some of the nastiness.”
“Not the worst, you haven’t,” Ecco said.
She slanted a glance at Archer. He folded his arms and leaned against the column that separated the elevator entryway from the steps down into the living room. He’d done his part, shepherding her through the possession, bringing her into the fold. The camaraderie Niall and Zane dangled with their tag-team routine, even Ecco’s ominous hazing, wasn’t something he could offer her.
It had been a mistake to claim her so blatantly in front of the others. Just because the destroyer in him sent portents through his dreams that something—some demon, someone—was coming his way, didn’t mean she belonged to him.
A man who lived forever—until he was brutally slaughtered by unholy minions of darkness—didn’t find dating an easy proposition. Girlfriends wondered who’d left the ichor stain on the shirt collar. Wives grew suspicious when their husbands didn’t grow old.
Worse, the demon’s dread of compounding its burden of sin turned every touch into an inner battle that, over the years, became not worth waging.
But a female talya . . . Every man in the room eyed Sera as if she were the fantasy haunting his lonely dreams. If Bookie was right about the last female talya disappearing into antiquity, maybe something in their demonic DNA was waking up. The hungry stares roused a protective instinct Archer thought eradicated in his lone-wolf existence.
At least he could tell himself his unsubtle claiming would give her a bit of breathing space in this room of rogues and killers. Of course, what his mind told itself had nothing to do with the primal impulses raging through his blood.
In the face of his silence, Sera glanced uncertainly back at Niall. “I don’t know what Archer told you about the feralis attacking, but I’m no fighter.”
“If you survived possession, you are.” Niall gestured her deeper into the room.
The other men quietly arranged themselves to points equidistant on the other low couches and single chairs, as if too shy to approach, too fascinated to leave. Archer stayed beside his column.
Sera’s gaze slid from one side to the other, keeping them all in view. She took a seat on the edge of the couch across from Niall. “Metaphorically, perhaps. But I think you all live a little more literally.”
Ecco paced behind Niall. “You were a death-dealer before too. We read it in your file.”
“A thanatologist.” The snap in her eyes held enough hazel fire that any violet was redundant. “We offer comfort and guidance at the end of life.”
Archer tried to reconcile that fierce glare with the imagined hush of a deathbed vigil. As if wondering the same, Ecco scratched his head. “So guide the poor suffering demons into oblivion at the point of a gun, or a knife, or poisoned blow darts.”
Zane stepped in front of Ecco and settled himself a few cushions away from Sera. “Don’t sweat the details yet. You don’t even know what your demon can do.”
She glanced at him. “So, how long did it take you to resign yourself to killing ferales?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? I still want to be the next Jimi Hendrix.”
She gave him an answering smile. “But duty and a demon called?”
His merry expression faded. “Duty called, all right, but instead of going to Vietnam, I headed for the border. Got caught in a poacher’s snare just this side and lay there for a week with my leg half cut off at the knee. Demon came to me looking like my draft officer. For some reason, I thought I only had to serve a year.”
She grew still. “Vietnam? How old are you?”
The bleakness spread, until the callow smoothness of his face looked no longer young but worn to nothing. “When was I called up? Seventy-two? This other war has made me forget.”
In the silence, the sound of Zane rubbing at his jeans over the long-ago wounded leg rasped irritatingly. Out of all the gathered men, not a one breathed. Archer, fighting down his own memories, wondered if he should take a
poll for pitching Zane over the balcony.
“Zane was the last to join us, before you,” Niall said quietly. “Perhaps that other life still stings a bit, but it fades.”
Sera frowned. “I don’t want to give up my life.”
“In some ways, you already had. Which is one reason the demon chose you. Just as Zane left everything to flee to Canada, so your accident separated you from what passed before.”
“But I have family, friends.” Sera’s voice rose a half step, a plaintive note.
“You won’t for long,” Ecco muttered.
Archer figured he could expand the pitching over the balcony poll to include Ecco.
A stark expression tightened Sera’s face, as if the rug had been pulled out from under her, along with the floor and the earth itself, leaving her to stare into a yawning abyss—or not so much into, as up from, since she was at the bottom now.
He couldn’t tell her she wasn’t lost, that he’d save her. She’d know it for a lie. But he found himself straightening from his post beside the column and stepping down into the room. “As Zane said, she doesn’t know what her demon can do. Maybe she’ll be like Bookie, working on the sidelines.” He looked around for the absent historian. “Until she has balanced her demon, she’s of no use to the league, with no reason to cut all her ties at once.”
Niall frowned. “Since the teshuva’s crossing, the Veil has been in flux and tenebrae activity through the roof. We need every man—every woman—we can get.”
“Do we?” The curt question from the back of the room turned a few heads.
Archer noted who seemed unsurprised by the question.
Niall asked, “You think there aren’t enough demons to go around, Jonah?”
The tawny-haired fighter’s quick wits matched his brawn, but he stood inflexible now. Jonah never blabbed like Zane, but Archer had pieced together the story of how he’d picked up his demon like a particularly nasty and incurable case of malaria while serving as a missionary in Africa.
Jonah’s expression pinched tight. “Bad enough we’re seeing demons in daylight. Must we also face them in”—he glanced at Sera—“in our fair flowers of womanhood?”
