by Jessa Slade
“Is this the time for a schooling?”
“None better, since you’re about to get your first test.”
And then the shadow was upon them.
The malice hit first, in an inky boil deeper than the tunnel’s blackness. A quick handful of the incorporeal little demons squirmed past Archer and Ecco. Their solitary red eyes glared immaculate hatred. Liam stopped them with the blunt-force projection of his teshuva’s power, formidable as the hammer braced across his chest.
The malice shredded with multiharmonic screams and the stench of rotting eggs. Nim coughed.
Jonah tucked the hook under his left arm. “If malice get on you, they sting like ice. Don’t try to run away; you can’t. Let the teshuva rise—like when you let it choose your footsteps. It will match itself to their energy and consume them. The next wave will be salambes. Like the malice, but worse. They burn if they touch. Don’t try to run away from them either.”
“Why’d I bother wearing sneakers?”
“The ferales, slower, will come last. You can run from them, but you’ve seen our preferred method.”
“Seeing isn’t the same as doing.”
“You’re about to do.”
“Trial by fire?”
“And ice. And worse.”
“I wish you’d stop saying ‘worse.’ ”
So he stopped talking.
A second surge of malice welled like a black tide past Archer and Ecco. A few avoided the sweep of Liam’s hammer and ricocheted off the walls. Straight toward Nim.
Jonah stepped forward.
Since he’d lost his hand six months ago, the teshuva lurked off balance in him. It had healed the wound below his elbow, though it hadn’t touched the pain, but now the sinuous, twisting flow of its energy backed up in the scars of his arm with no way out. He thought he’d reconciled to all the ways the demon had betrayed him. This time, it had left him not just less of a man, but less of a monster.
With the malice aiming at Nim, though, he’d force that damned demon to rise.
The teshuva stuttered along his nerves like a reluctant diesel engine, agonizingly slow as the malice corkscrewed toward them, streamers of oily ether staining the air behind them.
He drew himself upright, taller than he would be on his own, with the demon expanding him into dimensions that were not his. But he felt the lack, the emptiness where his hand had been, where the dance of the demon through his body faltered at the dead end. The stump itched, then ached, then blistered as the teshuva’s energy bottlenecked in the scars.
The malice hesitated, skittered sideways, but darted in again. He lifted the hook like a lightning rod.
Then Nim was beside him. No, not just beside him; practically inside him, she was so close. She tucked herself up under his raised arm, her breasts pressed against his ribs.
When the malice arrowed in, they were both engulfed.
He’d expected the chill, even warned Nim, but the contrast with her warm body made his muscles scream. Or maybe that was her again. The thought made him grin, and he hoped no one saw the no doubt insane expression. He pulled her tight against him.
She wrapped one arm around him, holding him with a violence that flashed back to the hot confines of the Shimmy Shack VIP lounge. His flesh tightened, not with the demon, but with desire.
“Where’d they go?” Nim murmured.
The malice had vanished, as utterly gone as that longlost moment when the Naughty Nymphette had writhed against him.
But he didn’t have time to be grateful. Liam shouted as the rusting stink of salambes clogged the corridor.
A hellfire glow silhouetted Ecco and Archer. Crowding the passage beyond the men, the immense, hazy shapes of salambes advanced, their jutting scimitar teeth carving hieroglyphics in the ether. Chaotic emanations boiled ahead of them and stung Jonah’s skin like a million army ants biting for bone.
Liam called for them to retreat. The ferales would be waiting behind that burning wall of salambes.
Jonah eased Nim back a few steps. “Can you give them a little more incentive?”
Her elbow nudged into his ribs. “Should I swear this time, or just scream again?”
“You seem to have a knack for this. Your call.”
Her chest expanded against him as she took a breath. “Andre! You thieving spawn of a toothless whore. Come and get me!”
Jonah stilled. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
“What? I have all my teeth.”
“I meant the ‘come and get me’ part.”
“Oh. Well, he doesn’t stand a chance against you.”
Probably she meant Ecco and Archer, even Liam, standing stoic guard. And still her trust sent a rush of primitive pleasure through him, soothing the teshuva’s knotted energies. But he couldn’t stop to consider the implication, since the sensation was quickly swamped by fear. Because she could so easily be wrong about their chances.
Through the glare of oncoming salambes, a half dozen ferales jockeyed for position. A clawed foot, a vastly oversized pincer, a ratty wing. It was impossible to tell where one monstrosity left off and the next began.
The air in the tunnel crackled with conflicting energies as the demons—malevolent versus repentant—struggled for dominance. Concrete dust puffed from the walls. One-on-one, a teshuva easily mastered a bad demon, but with the fluctuating waves of malice, salambes, and ferales . . . The first row of tenebrae cleared the etheric fog, and behind them was a second rank.
And “rank” was exactly the right word. The stench in the corridor backed up in his throat like sewage. A third row jostled the second, and Jonah revised the talyan chances downward.
They edged toward the open junction, not to lure the horde to their doom but merely to breathe.
Jonah turned at a chill wafting across his shoulders. Jilly and Sera had come from behind. Sera rushed past him in a swirl of air too cold and dry to be merely the fresher air of the open corridor beyond. The teshuva inside him expanded and tensed, like a cat staring at ghosts in an open room. The female talya was cracking her way into the tenebraeternum, where she could banish the lesser demons. It was a skill only the women had, focused by the artifacts left during their possession. And it was heresy, if one read the league archives in the right paranoid mind-set.
Considering the way the army of tenebrae hesitated despite their superior numbers, the league, perhaps, had reason to be paranoid.
“Go.” Jilly paused next to him. Her eyes were solid amethyst, and the edges of her reven, visible above her décolletage, raced with answering violence. Her breath curled in an icy plume. “You can’t do anything here.” He stiffened, and she added, “Not when Nim doesn’t have the anklet. There are too many of them, and we can’t play nice, not if we want Andre.”
It was Nim’s turn to stiffen. Her fingers latched onto his shirt, tugging the material loose from its neat tuck. “We have to stay. It’s my fault I lost the anklet.”
“And I lost the boy who may have turned to this path. Who’s guiltier?” Jilly stared past them. “I need to be with Liam. You have your map and light. Get out of here.” She didn’t promise to call later.
Jonah took Nim’s hand in his. “We’re gone.”
Nim tugged at him. “But—”
Jilly strode past them. Without looking back, Liam reached out to her. His tall, almost too-thin form and her short, full-bodied stance blended together. One weapon.
Jonah dragged his gaze away, almost as difficult as dragging Nim with her stumbling feet.
“We can’t leave them.” Her flashlight swung toward the fight, adding a strobe to the clash of talyan against ferales. “They’re in trouble.”
“They’ll have less trouble without us.” The truth churned in his stomach, a sickening counterpoint to the riled teshuva.
In a dozen strides, they emerged in the open junction. Three lines of tracks led into the darkness beyond the reach of Nim’s light.
“Which way?” She fumbled for the satchel over h
er shoulder, where Sera had stuffed the map.
Jonah conjured up the diagrams in his mind. “The left leads toward the second team.”
“We can send them back here.” Suddenly, Nim was pulling him forward. “Reinforcements.”
He didn’t bother telling her the fight would be over—one way or another—long before they reached the next exit.
They sped down the corridor. With her mind focused on the task ahead—summoning help for the others—she moved with her natural grace plus the demon’s speed. It was he, half-unbalanced, who fell a step behind. The teshuva’s energy ripped through him, a warning.
“Slow down,” he said.
“Take my hand.” She reached for him, as Liam had reached for Jilly.
Anger flared. “I said, ‘slow down.’ There’s something blocking the path.”
She half turned. He grabbed her when she tripped and kept her from blundering right into the metal grate ahead of them, powder coated the same flat gray as the surrounding concrete and almost invisible in Nim’s jouncing light.
A padlock the size of his hand dangled at eye level from the door set into the blockade. He set Nim to one side and threaded his fingers through the thin wire. “Watch your eyes.”
He heaved back. The metal tore from its hinges with a rusted squeal.
She slipped through and waited for him. “Good catch. I would’ve grated myself like cheese.”
“I don’t like that the lock-off wasn’t marked on the map.”
“The tenebrae must’ve come down a different path.”
He propped the gate against the wall. “There’s no demon sign at all.”
“Hard to make you happy.”
“Hard to imagine that some tenebrae sometime hasn’t used these tunnels to get around the city. The gate wouldn’t stop the malice and salambes, but the ferales would’ve broken through.”
“Why would they? Not much down here to keep them happy. Or me, for that matter. Let’s go.” Her whole body canted toward the promise of the exit.
He followed, drawn along because they couldn’t go back.
They passed another junction, and he steered them toward where the second team would probably have come down by now. Hearing no word would be an irresistible invitation to join the fray.
Nim’s flashlight dimmed. “What?”
No, it hadn’t dimmed. The black-painted wall blocking their path had just swallowed the light.
“Watertight seal,” Jonah said. “No wonder there’s no demon sign. Even a malice couldn’t squeeze through.”
Nim stomped her foot. “What’s the point of having a map if it’s wrong?”
“Life’s funny that way.”
“Death, not so much,” she shot back. “Can’t you—?”
“Rip it open?” He touched the solid barrier. The teshuva didn’t twitch. “I don’t think so.”
He reared back and slammed his shoulder into the wall. Flakes of concrete drifted down. He rammed the wall again. Chunks of concrete the size of his clenched fist tumbled from the curve overhead, and Nim let out a startled cry.
When he drew back again, she grabbed his arm. “Don’t. The tunnel is too old to take the abuse.”
He let her draw him away. His body rang painfully with the force of the blows, the teshuva slow to respond to the damage it hadn’t authorized.
Everyone was disapproving these days.
“Back to the last junction,” he said. “According to the map . . .” He waited while she scoffed. “According to the map, there’s another exit. Farther and not as circumspect, but it’s our best option now.”
The junction had only one other choice, so they passed through it at a run. Their speed didn’t stop him from noting the demon sign smeared on the walls. This had been the path the horde had taken to get to the club. Though he felt dizzy with the effort, he pushed the demon hard through his body to pick up the pace.
They crossed into another Y-shaped junction.
“Which way?” Nim gasped.
He hesitated. Follow the demon sign out—but into who knew what nest? Or take another turn? He led her down the smaller route, still marked with etheric traces of tenebrae, but faintly.
Unlike the other corridors, this one plunged downward. More ominously, the freight tracks ended. He tried to summon the map into his mind. This branch of the tunnel had been diagrammed, but were they passing under a street? Maybe the softer layer of soil the city had dug through to make the tunnels had shifted.
Or maybe the map had failed completely.
The corridor behind them trembled, and the scent of grave dirt breathed from cracks in the walls.
“Go,” Nim gasped.
Movement was opportunity, hope, life. Which was why the teshuva in him held itself so still.
Down they went.
Here the walls had not been finished with the concrete veneer, and clods of earth pattered down. The horde wasn’t visible yet, but etheric emanations flowed ahead like sulfuric wind before a hellish storm.
Nim hurried beside him. “The bad demons. They broke through your friends, didn’t they?”
“It seems likely.”
She mumbled something under her breath, maybe a curse.
The corridor took another dip downward, and this time the ceiling lowered. The walls in the swinging beam of Nim’s flashlight showed the gouge marks of earthmoving machines. Though the hooks had been set in the ceiling to hold the electrical line, the tunnel itself had never been finished.
The light bounced off the corroded metal hooks and glimmered off something shinier on the floor. A mirror . . . No, water.
After escaping the cold of the tenebraeternum, he hadn’t noticed the damp chill in the air.
Nim rocked to a halt at the edge of the standing pool. She played the beam out as far as it could go. The black surface of the water reflected the light away, and the depths of the tunnel swallowed it. “You said I shouldn’t be unnecessarily scared,” she mused. “How would you rate this moment?”
He considered. His leader and friends were trapped in a desperate fight somewhere behind them. And maybe ahead of them too. The forces of darkness had the advantage. He was lost—well, unfound, at least—under the city with a half-dressed woman who was about to be very wet. “I’d say there’s no point screaming, since that just brings the tenebrae down faster.”
“That good, huh?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t get too deep.”
She snorted and waded in. She hissed as the water topped her sneakers. His boots kept out the cold bite for just another heartbeat. Under his heels, the floor was slick with a coat of mud.
By the time they reached as far as the light had, the water was up to their knees, and still the tunnel angled downward while the water rose. Nim cast the light ahead. The light bounced up in a rippling cat’s eye where the ceiling of the tunnel sloped to touch the water. If the path continued, it did so only underwater.
“Crap,” she said.
Under the circumstances, he thought she restrained herself admirably.
As they stood contemplating, the ripples around them stilled. Until a tremor shivered the surface like breaking glass.
“Nim,” he said softly. “Turn off your light.”
A wonder she didn’t ask why, but just did as he asked. In the pitch-blackness, his demon strained to help him see. He wasn’t asking much, and it found a few stray photons of light. A red glow, almost cheery, if he hadn’t known what was coming.
“Salambes,” Nim whispered. “Oh, fuck.” She didn’t bother turning on the light again. “So you said these demons can’t morph through waterproof walls, right? Can they swim?”
“They can’t dive.” It didn’t necessarily follow that he and Nim could.
As if she were reading his mind, or maybe just his expression, Nim said, “Out of the frying pan and into the cold, dark, possibly bottomless well. Do we have a choice?”
Once, he would have. He could have taken the tenebrae, maybe even had
a chance. Or if not a chance, he could have won back at least a measure of grace.
He imagined slamming his missing hand into the wall. The nerves in the stump screamed up his arm, and the teshuva rose to the threat . . . only to be dashed back by the scarred flesh.
He couldn’t risk Nim on these odds, not with his limitations.
Without waiting for his answer, she waded deeper, up to her thighs. Her reven sparked restlessly. She raised her hands to keep them dry, pointlessly, as the water reached her navel. The hem of her T-shirt floated up.
Jonah followed her, and the cold water wicked up his jeans, dousing any momentary—and equally pointless—flare of ardor.
When the chill reached his chest, he paused. The glow behind them was flame bright, but the salambes weren’t yet in view. “I don’t know how much of the tunnel is submerged,” he warned.
“And here I thought you knew everything.” She took a deep breath. “No chance teshuva breathe underwater, I suppose.”
“I don’t know that either. Never had reason to find out.”
“Well, I donated my body to a demon. Might as well give it to science too.”
“Don’t.” He wasn’t sure where the word came from; it just jumped from his tongue. “Don’t give yourself away.”
She eyed him, violet clashing with the red gleam of the approaching horde. “Does it matter now?”
He supposed not. “The teshuva will at least help you hold your breath,” he said instead. “It will keep you going longer than you could by yourself, as long as you don’t choke on the need to breathe.”
“I have almost no gag reflex,” she said. “Ready?”
Facing each other, they each took a long, deep breath. The swell of her chest brought her breasts above the waterline. He sighed at the thrust of her nipples through her wet shirt, sucked in one last breath, and dove.
Nim didn’t look back, but she knew the moment the red light of the salambes faded away. Ahead of them, only black. She doubted the flashlight was waterproof. Not like the tunnel was turning anyway. If anything, it was still going down. Which wasn’t good, because that meant more water before it went up.
Her heart pounded like the biggest drum in the orchestra—loud and slow. Good demon, taking it easy. Now, if the tunnel would just turn upward . . .
