Seduced by Shadows ms-1

by Jessa Slade

Archer ran a hand through his hair. “They’re all towers.”

  In the middle of the next block, from behind a parked truck, a pedestrian stepped out into the street. Archer slammed on the brakes, and the SUV slewed sideways.

  The homeless man, his coat hung awkwardly from one shoulder, never looked around, his gaze fixed upward.

  Archer tightened his grip on the wheel as another oblivious walker—a girl in stiletto heels still not high enough to keep her out of the snow—followed the man into the street, her face turned toward the sky as if drawn by a hook in her lip.

  Archer glanced at Bookie, then back at the pedestrians. Zane had said Corvus commanded an army of corpses. “Nanette. Those people. Tell me what you see.”

  “What? Nothing.” Her voice rose with excitement. “Nothing. Just like Bookie.”

  The odd couple cut between the parked cars, following a line only they sensed, and disappeared into a park. Archer pulled over, his hand on the door handle, ready to give chase.

  “Over there,” Nanette said. “Three more of them.” The enthusiasm in her tone wavered. “Whatever they are.”

  They followed slowly until Bookie clawed at his door, whining, “It’s here.”

  “My God,” Nanette whispered.

  Archer glanced in the rearview mirror. Nanette had her cheek pressed to the glass, as rapt as their unwitting guides.

  He peered out at the dark high-rise. “What?”

  “Don’t you see them? Stop the car.”

  He hauled the wheel over, bouncing onto the curb. “What is it? Bookie’s soul?”

  “No. It’s like . . . but not a soul.” She tumbled out before he could turn off the car. He got out, hand on his axe.

  She stood, eyes bright, mouth agape like a child catching snowflakes on her tongue.

  He followed her gaze.

  High up, white and drifting, the birds, brighter than the clouds, flew through the storm.

  They soared on other-realm winds that didn’t disturb the endless fall of snow. The trailing edges of their ethereal wings flickered with light as if from a distant dawn. They looped around the building’s crown in graceful patterns that almost reminded him of something, if he could only trace their flight with a pen.

  “Bookie said tower,” Nanette murmured. “I looked up, and they were there.”

  After a moment, Archer found his voice. “I see them too.” He followed the intricate dance, the patterns sketching ever-more complicated fractals into infinity, like Sera’s reven. His breath caught. “This is the place.”

  He hit Niall on speed dial, handed Nanette the phone, and ran for the door.

  “You don’t have to die, Sera.”

  Nothing existed outside the evil movies in her head, but the voice snaked through.

  “Everybody has to die,” she murmured.

  “Not now you don’t. Just call on me.”

  The demon. Her teshuva.

  Or maybe the other demon. Corvus.

  Either way, the voice was right. Her demon could save her.

  She just had to damn the world.

  Shouldn’t everyone fight the demons with her? Her wounds of abandonment would never heal, even if the teshuva came raging back. She sighed, a breath that felt like her last. She would not call on the demon. She wouldn’t make the world face its demons.

  Not peace, but resignation.

  Until the iron door exploded and her name came howling through.

  In flash-frozen images worse than anything the malice visions had conjured, Archer crashed in, engulfed by a dozen ferales.

  His flaring, violet gaze caught hers. As always, his glance blazed over her skin, slammed through her bones. Then he was fighting his way toward her.

  The ferales raged out of control, in a melee of clashing claws and jaws, rending one another as often as Archer. A handful of the malice on her squealed and scrambled away.

  Corvus dodged for the stairs, out of the fray.

  The fanned blade of Archer’s axe spun through the air, its shining edge shedding ichor. In his off hand, the smaller knife flashed and pierced, but always another mutation of evil barred his way.

  She dragged herself up, then stumbled a step toward him. Malice weighed on her, draining her spirit like bloated ticks. No way could she reach him; far too many monsters were between them.

  Her broken leg twisted, and she sunk to the floor. A malice dropped back on its smoky coil of a tail and wailed.

  Archer’s answering shout of defiance echoed across the stones. He rose up, scattering ferales. He stood, stark and alone, black coat in tatters around bare skin and crimson rivulets of blood.

  “Sera!”

  He reached out, as if he could hold her across the cavern, against the death and damnation that threatened.

  The ferales swept in. Archer brought up his blades, winking fierce and fragile against the darkness. One hideous fiend towered over him, its slavering maw open to crooked rows of serrated teeth. The feralis roared and fell upon him.

  Sera screamed, the cry ripped from her body and soul. She held out her hand, straining toward him. She needed to go to him. He needed her. She toppled forward, her body weak, her will failing.

  But her soul, the other half of her soul . . .

  “Ferris!”

  The demon, roused at her cry, burst across her senses. The dark cavern flared to eerie black-light incandescence, demon sign smeared across the walls. The wild power drew down to her core and swirled in the mark over her hips and thighs. Between the violet-shot lines of the reven, her bare skin faded to other-realm translucence.

  The etheric supernova rose, exploding through her in a shock wave that shook the shadows and reached between the realms.

  Desperate, dying, she fell toward the Veil.

  CHAPTER 25

  Corvus climbed the stairs three at a time, cursing with each crash of his foot against the treads.

  Igniting the apocalypse was proving more troublesome than he’d anticipated.

  He supposed he should be grateful to the male talya intruder, since his appearance had triggered the resurgence of Sera Littlejohn’s teshuva. But so much for enjoying the end of the world in peace and quiet.

  He swept his hand over the glass-working tools on his desk. Where was the stone? He’d removed his ring as he always did before his rougher work. He didn’t see the cold silver glint among the dark steel and iron.

  With another curse for the woman who’d distracted him, he shoved all the tools off the desk, almost knocking over the gilt cage.

  The crow cackled. The batting of its wings sounded like airy laughter.

  Corvus turned.

  The crow stilled. It took one slow, sidling step.

  Corvus lunged, then swung open the cage door. The thieving crow shrieked and pecked at his fingers.

  He wrapped his fingers around its neck and dragged it out. He didn’t notice when the black talons stopped tearing at his hand.

  He sighed and reached for the sullen gleam half hidden in the discarded sunflower hulls.

  Archer thought she was dead. Her eyes were closed, shutting him out. Ice congealed around his heart. The ferales piled over him, slashing through flesh to bone.

  In that numb moment where even piercing fangs couldn’t reach, he realized death would bring him silence and stillness, but peace wasn’t what he wanted.

  He wanted Sera.

  And he’d fight through hell itself to find her.

  Crying her name, he burst out from under the ferales in a spray of blood and fury. He reached for her as if all the space between them were no obstacle to his need.

  She lay crumpled on the floor, her skin shocking white against the purple panties he’d given her.

  He knew the moment she reached through the Veil. As her physical weakness loosened her hold on the world, she followed her demon’s link to its realm and turned her vulnerability into preternatural power.

  The walls of the basement seemed to bell outward, rippling into other realms. The ring
of soulless let out a collective moan that raised his hackles. They held out their empty arms, as if they wanted to follow her down—down through the Veil, that tangled web of disembodied souls. . . .

  Suddenly, he understood what Corvus had wrought. The soulless army—like a fire’s backdraft—would implode against the Veil, weakened where Sera’s demon had so recently crossed, sucking down the souls that imprisoned all the demons of hell.

  All the remaining demons, that is. Archer summoned his own and tore through the ring around Sera.

  But they were too many, their hungry need too great. He took only three steps toward her before the ground between them cracked.

  From the corpses’ gaping mouths, a groan shivered the air, rising toward a gasping yowl. The patchwork brick and cement of the cavern floor broke apart. Thin tendrils of fog snaked out.

  Archer caught himself on the edge of the crack. The hem of his coat fluttered forward, drawn as if by a breath.

  The ferales pounded toward him, his blood already in their teeth.

  Still too far away, Sera lay swamped in malice. Surrounded by rings of evil, she couldn’t even see him. The soulless army would swallow the Veil and crack open the demon realm upon the world, and he couldn’t do a damn thing.

  By himself.

  “Sera,” he roared, “I won’t lose you.”

  Through the shifting morass of malice, a glint of blond shone.

  “I can’t do this alone.”

  The last was merely a whisper as time warped between the realms, but he caught a hint of hazel as Sera lifted her head. He wanted to scream at the dark bruise high on her cheek and the raw welts left by hungry malice mouths.

  With a hiss of retribution, the crack in the floor raced thin and jagged halfway across the room toward her, and sucked down a malice.

  The demon squealed and was gone.

  The other malice sprang in all directions with a dissonant chorus of shrieks. An other-realm vortex, like the winds that held the spirit birds aloft, spun up. Malice were swept into the air, like red-eyed bats in a cyclone, screaming as they were drawn toward the maw. Archer staggered with its force, though the torches burned steadily on.

  A feralis, turning to flee, reeled into one vein of the gray fog. It bawled as its substance unraveled and poured into the void.

  With each step he took toward Sera, the frenzy of the vortex increased. More gray tendrils reached out from the rift. The ferales hunched under the invisible inhalation of energy. A handful of the soulless slumped as if their bones had turned to jelly.

  One of the torches leapt toward the ceiling, then extinguished itself. The rift glowed with a nacreous, mesmerizing energy.

  When he’d danced this dance with her before for the lone malice and the two ferales, they’d broken free of each other easily. Now, the link between them had taken on a dangerous power of its own, just as he’d always known it would.

  Without turning away from her, he deflected the attack of another feralis. A strand of the rift engulfed it. The continuing arc of the axe sunk into another feralis leaping out of the shadows.

  The demon split apart in a noisome collapse of rat bones and roach shells. Archer jumped back and released his hold as the blade was sucked through the vortex in a glittering trail of particles.

  The rift wasn’t consuming just demonic energy.

  Avoiding the tendrils, at last he dropped to his knees next to Sera. The malice were gone, the bruise already fading from her cheek.

  “Rise and shine,” he murmured when she blinked as if waking from a dream—or nightmare. “I guess you’re already shining.”

  Brilliant amethyst winked at him as she took in the whirling gray fog. “This looks bad. The Veil . . .”

  “You gave us a chance. I took it.”

  “A chance? I should have died rather than risk—”

  “No.” He gripped her shoulders hard. “Risk.”

  What wouldn’t he risk for her? His life? Of course. His soul? In a heartbeat. Ah, yes, his heart . . . He lifted her to her feet. “But the Veil is breached, just as Corvus planned.”

  Her gaze shifted to the ring of Corvus’s soulless army, their mouths slack in unvoiced screams. “Do we kill them? Will that stop it?” Her tone was bleak.

  “Too late. Corvus said they were dead. He knew death wouldn’t save them. We need to stop him from calling any other demons through.”

  “Call them? How?”

  “Those spirit birds circling.” He knelt in front of her, hands gentle on her thigh, making sure her teshuva was setting bone and muscle straight.

  Through gritted teeth, she asked, “You could see the sculptures from the street?”

  “We saw the spirits. We thought they were Bookie’s soul at first.”

  Her expression darkened. “Corvus stripped the essences of the birds like he did Bookie, bound them to the glass. Why?”

  “Birds have always been associated with the soul. The soulless that Corvus created homed in on them. Unbound demons crossing the Veil, seeking vulnerable spirits, will be lured too. Can you walk?”

  “Hurts. But I can move.” She raised her hand to his cheek. “How can you?”

  “Head wounds bleed.” So did all the other ones, but the teshuva was getting to them. He just had to ignore the pain. Even harder, he had to ignore the desire to rest against her touch. She’d rejected that—rejected him—to continue the fight. Well, fight he could give her. He lifted her to her feet. “Let’s go before Blackbird flies the coop.”

  They took the steps at a staggering run. Frantic cawing echoed down the hall as they reached the top floor. Abruptly, the cawing stopped.

  Sera put her hand on Archer’s arm. “He’s in there. That bird hates him.”

  “Now you know why.”

  They stepped into the room.

  Corvus stood at the window, a black rag dangling from his hand. Beyond him, the city spread out in a winter spectacle, with the strange inversion of light and dark where the snowy night sky reflecting city lights was brighter than the buildings. Pinwheels of etheric energy burst up from the streets—horde-tenebrae, and worse, closing on their location.

  Corvus did not turn. “So lovely.”

  Archer realized the djinn-man wasn’t watching the advance of his world-ending army, but the spirit birds just outside the glass. He took in the dozens of sculptures on the window ledge and identified the motionless black tangle of feathers in Corvus’s hand, in the same glance.

  “Where is Bookie’s soul?” He had to ask, though he doubted severed souls could be reunited with flesh. And with the rift widening, they didn’t have time to find all the souls of the people below, to satiate their hunger before they destroyed the Veil.

  “A Worm’s spirit will never fly, so I let it go.” Finally, Corvus turned. His eyes glistened with leaching birnenston. “I see he betrayed me too, given the chance.”

  “After you stripped his soul, he probably figured your deal was off.” Archer stepped to one side, distancing himself from Sera, making room for the attack.

  Corvus lifted his head. “Ah well, his work survives him. When the Veil parts, there will be demons enough for everyone.”

  “Not if I stop them,” Sera said through gritted teeth.

  In mocking reply, the vortex found them. It whirled through the room, leaving papers untouched but rattling the glass birds on the windowsill like chimes.

  “You started it,” Corvus reminded her. “But like your Bookworm, your task is done. You are free to go.” He raised his hand. The ring on his finger winked slyly.

  “Sera,” Archer warned. “The ring.”

  Mostly dull with a hint of iridescent shine, like sunlight on gray doves’ wings. The tint of a soul.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her touch the pendant around her neck. That was what Bookie had been muttering.

  “Desolator numinis,” he repeated. “The soul cleaver.” No wonder the djinn-man had been so bold. With her soul sundered, she’d be as passive as Bookie,
subject to Corvus’s whim.

  Corvus froze when Sera pulled out the matching pendant from under her shirt. “The Bookworm kept more secrets than I guessed. I doubt even he realized what his work called through from the other side. Do you know what you are?”

  Her eyes gleamed violet as she framed the stone between her palms. “I might not have all the answers. But the demon told me this stone could enslave it. And Zane told us you stole his demon. So I have a damn good idea what I can try.”

  Corvus circled. His clawed hand flexed, startling a glimmer from his ring. “You? You would face off against me alone?”

  “Yeah me. I’m the reflection of what you and Bookie invoked.” Her voice rose along with the vortex wind. “You made the emptiness that drew my demon. You wanted the hole in the Veil. You got exactly what you asked for. And I am not alone.”

  The floor heaved. Something had shifted in the basement.

  Corvus glared at Sera. “What is this sucking wound you’ve made? Can’t you feel the void calling the darkness back? We too are demon-ridden. Let them loose.”

  “I won’t.” The vortex whirled through the room with an otherworldly shriek, like a spirit bird gone mad. It lashed her hair into a golden corona.

  “If demon-kind walk the world, unfleshed, then we will be free of them, slaves no longer.” Corvus turned his poison stare on Archer. “You are old, though not as old as I. Tell her to set us free.”

  For a suspended heartbeat, Archer felt the gladiator’s centuries of pain. Let demons and angels war on. Man needn’t be the battlefield anymore.

  “Nothing would change.” Sera faced Corvus. “The true battle between good and evil is fought as it always has been, as it always will be, within the human heart.” She stood straight, still. “I will seal the Veil.”

  “You are no healer,” Corvus said. “You have always ushered in the end. Live your fate.”

  She shook her head. Archer dreaded the dire beauty of her in her steadfastness, and the anguish of what she denied them for the sake of an oblivious world.

  “Then you will suffer eternally.” Corvus raised his fist. “Only a distillation of our souls will seal the Veil. We will be trapped for eternity between the realms.”