by Jessa Slade
The dark trees closed around them.
The feralis had gone deeper. She listened for the sound of its retreat, but heard nothing over the rustle of leaves above.
“Archer,” she hissed. The smell of wet, decayed earth clung in her nostrils, along with a fouler stench, like rotted meat. “Ferris, wait.”
He’d pulled ahead, one more shadow among shadows. She shook her head, trying to master the fear tight on her heels.
Something was on her heels anyway.
The back of her neck prickled, and she whirled.
The feralis dropped from a tree limb overhead. The thud of its clawed feet shook the earth. It straightened until the bulging dome of its head brushed the leaves. It raised stunted wings, and its howl scattered leaves in all directions.
She spun around to run, to catch up with Archer and his suddenly too-small axe.
The second feralis appeared before she could scream.
CHAPTER 12
If he truly wanted to be alone, Archer knew he would’ve been grateful for the scream.
He whirled.The feralis filled the path, its chitin-armored back to him. It lunged at something out of his sight.
“Sera!” He sprang, blade low.
Not knowing where she was, he couldn’t afford to flail indiscriminately. He climbed the feralis’s back, like ice picking a mountain. The mutated insect flesh was as hard and uneven as any scree slope.
He wrapped one arm around its neck to get the axe in place for a throat cut. It scrabbled a multijointed limb at him, and he cursed as the barbed guard hairs clamped over his shoulder in the same spot the last feralis had wounded him. So much for preternaturally fast healing.
As he struggled to free himself, he saw Sera faced a second monster. She was trapped between the two. His heart stopped; the demon strength faltered in his muscles.
Ferales never hunted together—or they hadn’t before hunting her.
She evaded the winged feralis’s long arms with the same graceful twist she’d used last night at the club.
“Don’t dance with it,” he shouted. “Run.”
She glanced up wildly and spotted him.
The feralis she faced turned as well and lifted moth-eaten wings. He knew he could keep both demons occupied while Sera escaped.
Whether he’d escape too . . .
His feralis mount bucked, but not before he caught a glimpse of her face. He groaned at the sight of her jaw set obstinately off-kilter. She wasn’t going to run.
She kicked leaves at the winged feralis. “Hey, you ugly son of a bitch, no tag teaming.”
The feralis crouched and spun halfway around.
“Sera, catch!”
Archer released the hidden knife from the haft of the axe and flung it toward her, counting on her demon reflexes. Time slowed as she tracked the weapon’s arcing flight with an outstretched hand. Her body was already in motion, turning to confront the feralis, as the leather-wrapped handle slapped into her palm.
Time jumped to catch up, and she struck. The creature leapt back with a shriek, the retaliatory slash of its claws a many-tongued hiss in the night.
Despite his precarious position, Archer couldn’t take his eyes off Sera. His heart raced, but not for himself. He wanted to toss her the axe, improve her odds, but he feared the slick of sweat on his palm would betray him. Just his luck, to end up beheading her.
“Go for the throat,” he shouted. “Or the eye. Or the spine.” He should’ve skipped ahead to lesson thirteen: Vulnerabilities of Corporeal Demon Physiology. But he’d been giving her shit about pitying the malice.
His feralis flailed more determinedly. He had to finish it before it finished him and moved on to Sera.
Suddenly, dying in the glory of battle to send his hollowed soul to its questionable reward seemed like it could wait.
The feralis lumbered in a circle as if it had an itch it couldn’t quite scratch. As it swiped at him again, he grabbed the jointed limb, avoiding the spiky protrusions. Summoning all his desperate teshuva strength, he yanked the feralis off balance.
It bellowed and twisted to reach up at him. The clawed point sliced into the back of his thigh, a piercing agony, but it lowered the shoulder pinching his weapon arm.
He laid the edge tight against the underside of its neck.
And loosed his own demon.
The axe bit deep. The feralis shrieked. The shriek died in a gurgle as the feralis came down like a mountain slide under him and pinned his injured leg. His head slammed into the hard-packed earth.
He choked on wet leaves and heaved himself up, hurling off the deadweight. His vision starred with nonexistent lights, he leapt at the feralis stalking Sera.
It turned to face him, its slavering maw opened in a cry of rage.
“No,” he growled back. “She’s mine.”
They collided with battering-ram force, his arm driven halfway down its gullet. Its teeth razored up his arm, and he stared into the bulging eye.
He cut its throat from the inside.
It fell, taking him down in a geyser of moldering leaves. Dying spasms locked its teeth on his arm just above the elbow, and he lay in the dirt, staring into the orange eye.
As the demon fury ebbed, as the pain crept into the emptiness, he knew he had won another battle, that his teshuva had taken another step on its path to redemption. In the feralis’s livid eye, he stared down that hellfire path. And saw it never ended.
Half adrift from the blow, his gaze wandered beyond the feralis and fixed on a darkness among the trees: a man, cloaked in shadows not cast by the trees, and betrayed by sulfur yellow points radiating where eyeballs should have been.
A djinn-man. Come to finish them off in their moment of weakness.
Human adrenaline and demon vigor surged and stuttered in Archer’s veins. Of all the times for the djinn to finally take an interest in the chores of a teshuva garbageman.
Then, just as suddenly as the figure had coalesced among the shadows, it melted back and was gone. Wet leaves glinted with the reflected yellowish lights of streetlamps.
“Archer?”
Sera’s whisper brought him back with a snap. Had he seen anything at all? No djinni would pass up such an effortless opportunity to destroy one of its traitorous, repentant brethren, would it? The jolt to his skull must have stunned him, seeing evil in every puddle of darkness.
“Ferris?” She crept closer.
“Yeah. I’m alive.” Hence the pain. “Just contemplating my glorious triumph.”
She crouched beside him. “How’s it feel?”
“Cold and wet. And tastes like blood.”
She ran her hands down his arm, exploring the trap. “Don’t pull. These fangs slant backward like a shark’s.”
“I noticed.” He hesitated. “Did you notice anything? Any other demons?”
She glanced around in alarm. “More ferales? I was sort of occupied with these two.”
“No. Never mind.” He gritted his teeth at the acid burn of ichor while she levered open the massive jaws. He released himself in a gush of his own blood.
“Oh God.” Her hands hovered over his arm where the feralis’s bite had peeled skin and muscle down to the bone.
“Don’t.” He clamped his arm close to his chest, molding flesh into place. “The demon will take care of it.”
“It certainly did,” she said tartly.
“My demon,” he amended as he pushed himself to his knees. She started to help him to his feet, but he shook her off.
He cast teshuva senses outward. An annihilation-class demon came factory standard with tracking skills, but no djinn scent rode the etheric winds now.
But someone had been interested enough to toss Sera’s apartment. Would that djinn-man have followed her? Then why hadn’t he made his move and killed them both?
After another long moment, Archer leaned down to wipe the gory axe on wet leaves. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sera do the same with the smaller knife.
“Yo
u poked it a couple times,” he said.
“Just enough to burn myself on its blood.”
“It didn’t gut me from behind, which it would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
She lowered her head. “If not for me, it wouldn’t have been lurking. I just wanted to visit my dad.”
“A nice quiet night? A nice quiet life?” Archer folded the axe blades and collapsed the club. He held out his good hand.
She passed the knife to him, hilt first. “Wishful thinking? Worked on the malice.”
“Ferales are a little harder to do away with. As for wishing your life back the way it was . . .” He spread his hand toward the downed ferales and let her draw her own conclusions.
He saw the slump of her shoulders, started to wish something himself, and stopped it cold.
“You played your part,” he said at last. “Let that be consolation enough.”
At the defeat in her expression, he almost reached out to her. He knew that feeling. But what solace could he offer? “Garbagemen don’t ask where all the trash comes from. They just haul it away.”
She eyed the splayed beast. “Looks pretty heavy.”
“It’s not empty yet. I disabled the corporeal shell, but it holds the demonic energy. Look at the eye, still orange.” He stood over the carcass, gathering his own energy and the teshuva’s. He swayed on his pierced leg. Apparently, what energy he had to gather wouldn’t fill a shot glass.
Despite his earlier brush-off, she stood beside him and threaded her arm around his waist. A whiff of honeysuckle teased past the sour stench clogging his head. A surge of desire sent the last of his blood careening around his body.
“You don’t have to do it alone,” she murmured.
“Yes, I do.” He stiffened at her touch, summoning teshuva strength against the temptation to rest on her offered shoulder. Since the malice had disappeared between them, his control had gone sketchy, as if some other carefully maintained barrier had fallen. “Your deathbed vigils might be all kum ba yah. Out here you fight alone.”
“That’s been your choice. But I’m right here, right now.”
When had someone last fought at his side? Keeping company with destruction left no room for another. But he needed her, at least for tonight.
Wounded arm clenched against his belly, he forced himself to step away from her. “Draining a feralis is easier than a malice, once the corpus is out of action. Locked in the husk, it can’t get at you.”
She wrung her hands, as if remembering the malice slime. “So, remind me what I did with the malice?”
He wasn’t sure, hence his hope she’d do it again. When he’d grabbed her to get the job done, he’d fallen into her inward spiral. Just as when she’d been drawn through the Veil in the last stage of her possession. If he’d managed to stop himself from tearing her clothes off this time, he had only the malice in the way to thank. They’d touched, the malice suspended between them, and then it was gone. Not just drained, but gone.
When he didn’t answer, she crouched beside the carcass. She wiped her palms nervously, then lifted the massive head. She tilted it to one side, staring into the hellfire eye. Ichor drooled from the slack jaws and curdled the grass with a charred stink.
“When the malice got me,” she said, “I was thinking the man at the bar never had a chance. The malice goaded him; he attacked. Where was hope when he needed it? Compassion? Where was peace?”
“Just as there are angels to balance the djinn, some say the horde-tenebrae are countered by smaller lights, called blessings.” Pain reverberated from shoulder to thigh when he shrugged. “I’ve never seen one. Just more figments of wishful thinking, I think.”
“Why would you think that? Why would you want to think that?” As she half cradled the throat-slashed feralis like some perverse pietà, her eyes gleamed, not with holy benediction, but with violet challenge.
He glared back, blood seeping from his tight-clenched fist. How could she ask why with the monstrosity still staining her hands? All her questions served only to stir up memories and trouble. He resented the memories more than the trouble.
Light-headed with exsanguination and fury, he stalked forward, lashing up his demon. He leaned down and grabbed her, to pull her away, and do the last dirty deed himself.
His blood spattered her cheek, the tear-shaped drop crimson on her pale skin. He froze, aghast at the violence in his touch, which leapt from him like embers from an inferno. He couldn’t even blame the brutality on his demon, interrupted mid-ascension within him.
She faced him as boldly as she had the evils of the dark, as fierce as when she’d rolled him across the bed in his garden while knowing the night might end with his assassin’s blade, as if death and damnation held no terror for her. With all she’d been through, maybe they didn’t.
So what chance was there that one battered, filthy, pissy male would faze her? With the edge of his thumb, he wiped the blood from her cheek.
The droplet fused his skin to hers for a heartbeat, slick like the sweat of passion, a hint of salt—his demon senses rousing unbidden—like the balm that had welled from her body on their joining. His breathing grew ragged.
He saw her lips part, and her wordless exhalation feathered across his palm. He wanted to follow her down to that place she conjured, where the empathy in her hazel eyes softened barren winter shadows to spring.
He yearned to gather her close, to fit those deliberately forgotten fragments back into the tattered remnants of his soul, to let her shine into his darkness and find those pieces he’d thought long lost—light, life, desire.
He leaned down, set his lips softly on hers, prelude to all he wanted, the first step that would change the world around him. The salty sting in the back of his throat tasted not of blood, but tears.
He recoiled. The yearning in him tore free, with an unvoiced cry. She fell back onto her haunches. The feralis husk rolled off her lap.
“Fucking teshuva,” he whispered, staggering back from her. “No touching.” Had the destroyer in him forgotten the risks of temptation? Had he forgotten the agony of wanting what he couldn’t hold on to? As if damnation weren’t bad enough without the mockery of what he’d lost thrown back in his face. “You are an innocent fool.”
“And you are bumming me out.” She gave the husk a halfhearted kick that waggled the lolling tongue. “Why’d you freak? I thought you were going to let me exorcise it this time.”
“I didn’t do anything to the feralis.” It could go to hell for all he cared. She’d certainly taken him halfway there. “And I did not freak.”
“But it’s gone.”
She was right. The feralis’s eye had grayed, empty and cold as his heart. He would have thanked God, but he doubted the Almighty wanted credit for either the feralis or his heart.
He glanced at the other carcass, opening his teshuva senses for the inevitable scraps of ether. Nothing. All the demonic energy was gone.And she’d never even touched it. She’d just touched him. His blood still thrummed urgently through him, as if he’d escaped a fate in her eyes every bit as damning.
“But I didn’t do anything either,” she said, as if she’d heard his thoughts. “I don’t think.”
He certainly hadn’t been thinking, lost in his pointless craving. Still, the demons were gone. What more could he want?
He told himself not to answer that question.
But her touch, his yearning, and the demons’ fate seemed fatally intertwined. His mind reeled at the implication. Whatever they’d done, they’d done together—just as she accused. Now the malice and ferales were gone.
The headlights of a passing car swept over them, catching on the feralis’s fogged eyes. Sera jumped away from the husk with a muffled curse.
He dredged up a smile, trying to keep the twist of his lips more toward the wry side than the bitter. “So the world goes on without us. We keep the battle in the shadows for their sake.”
And maybe for his own sake too. He steeled himself
against the glimpse of light in her eyes that tempted him to reach out of his darkness. Why did he have the feeling that temptation could be the end of him as surely as she had somehow banished the feralis?
Sera prowled a wary circle around the downed demons. “I read that demons are solitary hunters.”
“We are. They are.” An unease he couldn’t pin down played along his spine. “These two must’ve honed in on you and found each other.”
“It’s nice to be wanted. By someone.” Her low tone required no reply.
She didn’t touch him again, but his skin ached for her, his bones yearned. His blood heated, a thousand times more scorching than his wounds.
If once some strange bond had joined possessed lovers, some wise talya had probably torn it out by the roots. Hell, he felt torn in two. He’d lived with pain a very long time, he reminded himself. But somehow, this time, it hurt worse.
He took her back to his loft. Sera kept silent as he slammed the door behind her and coded the lock.
She’d nearly gotten them killed. She thought she knew how to handle the stark reality of death. The pockmark freckles of demon spatter were healing even as she watched, but her hands still shook. So much for handling anything.
She cut a glance at Archer. In the cab, he’d called Jonah about the attack, using not particularly subtle code words such as “accident in the park” and “hazmat disposal.” He’d also called Liam and tersely recapped the night’s events. Without looking at her, he’d added, “She’s fine, untouched. Unless I kill her.”
Now he stood in the middle of the unlit room as if he’d forgotten she existed.
She hesitated to remind him. “Maybe I should stay at the league hotel. Liam said he had a room for me.”
“This place has energy sinks too. You won’t lure any more demons here.”
That hadn’t been why she suggested it. She wondered whether he emoted enough to leave a drip mark in those energy sinks. “All right. Your arm . . .”
“I got it. Help yourself to some clean clothes.” Without a backward glance, he left her standing there.
She waited until steam fogged the glass-block bathroom before exploring. The incongruous plantation shutters concealing the low-framed bed from the rest of the room also hid an armoire and dresser.
