by Jessa Slade
“Nice torture chamber.”
“I told you that art has a dampening effect on the tenebrae,” he said. “And we don’t torture.” When she gave a disbelieving little cough, he added, “We haven’t tortured.”
“Kept it to yourself, have you? How martyrish.”
He clenched his jaw.
She stopped in the middle of the empty hallway and turned to face him. Then she stripped out of her T-shirt.
“Nim,” he gasped. He stepped closer to her, not that there was anyone around to see, not that there was any part of her to grab to stop her. Against the backdrop of the odd pieces of art, she was an oddity in a class of her own, all smooth, tight muscle and soft, curving flesh. And the silly sunglasses sparkling in her hair. The bruises from their escapades were already fading on her dusky skin, but his hand itched to soothe away the sting he knew remained.
“Torture doesn’t always mean pain,” she said conversationally. “At least, not in the way you’re thinking of it.” With her gaze fixed on his, she gave the shirt a lazy twirl around her finger.
He hurt all right, and he wasn’t in the mood to parse the exact sensations. “You’re going to fuck Andre into a confession?”
She gave him a coquettish gasp. “Harsh words from the missionary man. Shouldn’t I do it—do him—though, for the good of the mission?”
“He’s a minion of evil.”
“And you were just telling me how they have their needs too. Not that I didn’t already know that, probably better than you.” She jerked her chin toward him. “Give me your shirt.”
He recoiled, a fierce heat and panicked cold colliding in him.
“Hurry up,” she said. “Before somebody catches us in this compromising position.”
“How is my being half-naked too going to improve the situation?”
“Oh, please. Your precious league practically pimped you out when it sent you my way. Don’t get righteous on me now. Again.”
He clenched his teeth. “You bought a shirt that was too small for me because you planned to take it for yourself.”
“I knew you’d faint if I tried to swap at the park.” She crooked her finger. “Give it up already.”
He’d taken off more shirts for this woman. . . .
As he lifted the shirt over his head, he felt her step up to him. She didn’t touch, but she didn’t have to. His body knew, anticipated, shivered with longing. The clench of his stomach muscles was like a sucker punch.
He gripped the shirt to keep from reaching for her, grateful that his other hand was occupied with having been severed. Because if he’d been whole, nothing would have stopped him from taking her in his arms. And when he did that, what little remained of the man he’d been would burn to dust.
She gazed up at him with shadows and hazards and mysteries oceans deep in her blue-green eyes. A man could lose himself there and not remember to mind....
He straightened abruptly and yanked on her shirt—which had been his shirt but now was irrevocably hers, stained down the back with her blood where the hook in the tunnel had gaffed her and teasing him with the temple-incense scent of her skin.
She had already pulled on the BUCK YOU! T-shirt and was smoothing down the iron-on decal of Buckingham Fountain while he was still wrestling his hook through the armhole.
He glowered at her while he viciously jammed the bottom hem into his jeans.
She flaunted her Nymphette smile. “Quick wardrobe changes are a vocational skill.”
He didn’t answer, just led her to the end of the hall where a door stood a few inches ajar. He paused to let her change her mind, but she stiff-armed the door and sailed past him.
Despite his protestations earlier, he was mildly surprised there was no blood.
The young man—Andre—was seated in a chair centered in the middle of the room. He was not restrained, except by the prowling menace of Archer, whose teshuva flared in his eyes even under the bright fluorescents.
Ecco stood in the corner, arms crossed. The rot of decomposing husks clotted his gauntlets. Over the slow drip of ichor, his stare never left Andre.
“Where’s Liam?” Jonah pitched his voice low, loath to overset the precarious tempers in the room.
Ecco answered. “Jilly jumped in between him and a feralis rush.”
Jonah winced. He could guess how the league leader had felt about that. That the man had answered the phone spoke of his commitment. That he wasn’t present at the interrogation told Jonah how badly Jilly must have been hurt.
Andre gripped the edge of his chair. “I told her to fucking back off. I told her the fucking monsters don’t listen once I set them loose. They’re crazy, out of control.” He caught his breath. “She never fucking listened when I told her to back off.”
Archer never stopped his restless pacing. “That’s because for some fool reason, she wanted to save your fucking ass.” He snarled the last two words with demon harmonics, and Andre flinched.
Jonah knew that feeling, of the teshuva burning close to the surface, threatening to overwhelm what was left of his humanity. Then only constant movement—like Archer’s pacing or the concentration of battle—distracted the demon enough to keep his persona intact.
With the loss of his arm, sometimes it seemed he couldn’t move or fight enough to hold himself and the demon together. That loss brought to him courtesy of this boy’s master.
Still, he had survived, which had nearly not been the case for Nim.
As if sensing the spike of anger, Andre met Jonah’s stare. His face paled at whatever he saw there.
As if she didn’t care about the escalating threat of carnage, Nim nudged past him to approach Andre. “You’re the gutter punk who stole my anklet? I thought a minion of evil would be taller.”
He angled his head back insolently. “You’re the stripper Blackbird sent me for? I thought you’d be . . .”
Jonah took a silent step that put him right behind Nim, directly in Andre’s line of sight.
Nim waited a moment. “Naked-er?”
Archer stopped pacing, and Ecco made a noise that might have been a laugh. Or maybe a growl of the sort that preceded a fatality. Andre swallowed hard.
Without glancing back, Nim said, “Archer, Ecco, stop scaring the poor boy. He won’t be able to tell me where my anklet is.”
Jonah pitched his voice for her ears only. “I’m not scaring him?”
“You’re the kind of scary no one notices until it’s too late. So we’re cool.”
The young man scowled. “Why would I tell you anything?”
Nim gave a little huff. “Of course you’ll tell.”
Andre’s gaze shuttled among the male talyan, as if he couldn’t quite decide who was the biggest threat. Jonah wished he could clear up the question. But he’d let Nim play her game . . . at least until Liam came down to rip the man apart for damaging his mate.
But Nim said, very softly, “Not them, silly. Look at me.”
Andre’s stare snapped to her, and his eyes widened. Black pupils expanded to swallow the irises in a gulp.
Jonah felt a chill at the small of his back that he couldn’t blame on the damp waistband of his jeans. He didn’t think the punk was wrong about exactly where the threat lay.
Nim’s voice lowered, and Andre leaned forward in his chair. “You’ll tell me because that’s what men do.” She circled him. “They tell me things they shouldn’t. Do things they shouldn’t. I guess you’d call it . . . a gift.”
A curse. Jonah heard the word echo, distorted, in the demon harmonics of her voice.
Andre obviously heard it too, and shuddered, but his expression was rapt. Jonah had seen that entranced, hungry look before, when the Naughty Nymphette stepped onto the stage.
The chill crept farther up his spine, even though the thin cotton of his shirt was mostly dry. That wasn’t an air-conditioned subbasement breeze.
That was the tenebraeternum.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Archer stiffen. The m
ated talya knew what was happening. Ecco canted forward, as much under Nim’s sway as the young punk.
She came to a halt in front of the boy and leaned down, her palms flattened on the fronts of her thighs. At her fingertips, the black traceries of her reven blazed, matching her half-lidded eyes with violet intensity. “But don’t you worry about doing something you shouldn’t. Because Corvus sent you to find me. Didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you find me?”
“Yes.”
“Then won’t you take me to my pretty demon jewelry?”
Andre’s answer drifted off on a dreamy sigh, his breath visible in the plunging cold. “Yes.”
“No,” Jonah snapped.
“Oh yes,” Nim said. “Tell me.”
Archer pulled Jonah aside. “She’s opening a path into the demon realm.”
Jonah shrugged out from under the talya’s hand. “Hard not to notice.”
“Without the teshuva’s artifact, she shouldn’t be able to do that.”
The rare note of alarm in Archer’s voice almost made Jonah smile, except he was equally dismayed. “Which makes me think we don’t quite understand the purpose of the demons’ offerings. What if the relics don’t grant the power, or even channel it? What if the jewelry is a control?”
“Like a limiter that only allows a certain amplitude of power through?” For a heartbeat, Archer looked intrigued. Then he recalled himself, brows crashing down in a scowl. “Well, we’re missing hers. So you have to control her.”
Jonah choked back a laugh that would have sounded desperate. “How?”
“The way you control any woman.”
“Sera would have your head if she heard you.”
“Both of them. And while she was busy, she wouldn’t be tearing open the barrier between our realm and hell.”
Jonah couldn’t keep his gaze off Nim. Her soft croon spiraled up on a breath, visible in the deepening chill. She gleamed with the demon’s raw power, like a jewel herself.
Archer punched his shoulder, sharp and hard. “She doesn’t need another lust slave. Snap out of it and back her up.”
Jonah shook his head. “I don’t—”
“You’d better. There are no tenebrae here to shove back into the demon realm. Do you want her using her soul to patch the hole she rips through the Veil?” When Jonah shook his head again, trying to throw off his spellbound fascination, Archer continued relentlessly. “Do you want her to use mine? Ecco’s?” He paused. “Yours?”
“Enough,” Jonah growled. He wasn’t sure if he spoke to Archer or Nim. Not that it mattered.
He reached out to grab her. Her skin was like dry ice, so cold it burned, fusing him to her. When he tried to pull her back, away from Andre, he felt resistance. But not in her. She bent toward him, pliant and yielding.
The resistance was in Andre. In the soul stretching from him like a fish being teased from the river. As if Jonah were the fisherman, casting Nim upon the water like a lure.
He almost let her go, at the cruel mockery of the life’s work he’d once aspired to, a fisher of souls leading men from sin.
Instead, he was using sin incarnate to lure evil itself.
Because he shouldn’t have been able to see Andre’s soul. The teshuva had once—like their angelic and djinni kin—been privy to the warp and weft of the human soul, but they’d sacrificed the ability when they chose a third path, sanctioned by neither heaven nor hell.
They were able to see the wayward soulflies cut adrift from their haint husks, but a soul contained within its body should have been indiscernible.
Of course, Andre’s soul wasn’t entirely within his body anymore. And judging from the murky tatters drifting from him, she was only getting the nasty bits.
“Nim,” he murmured. “Put it back. That’s not a toy.”
“He treated it like one,” she replied. “No, worse. He valued most of his toys more than this.”
“Don’t judge,” he warned. He didn’t want to guess what his own soul would look like, with the teshuva threaded through the shards.
“I’m not judging. I like toys too. In fact, I might just keep this one.”
“It’s not yours.”
“Andre doesn’t mind. Do you, Andre?” She gave a little tug; Jonah could feel it through her body.
Andre’s soul stretched a bit more. “I don’t mind.”
Jonah’s throat tightened. “That’s something Corvus would do.”
“You’re trying to make me feel bad about myself, comparing me to a bad man.” Nim’s voice was dark, brooding. Andre whimpered. “But I never pretended this darkness wasn’t here. And now you want to control it, control me.”
“You’re not controlling yourself. Is this how you would dance? Destroying your audience?”
He felt another tremor go through her. “He took what was mine.”
“That’s the thrall talking,” he said. “Would you, Nim, take a man’s soul?”
“I’ve taken their money—all their money—and their time, their sobriety, their faithfulness, their innocence. . . .” But she shivered again, as if the cold burning him had finally penetrated her focus.
“Then tell me: If that boy stubbed out a match flame on his skin, wondering if there was someone inside him who cared, who would be left to flinch if you do this?” When she didn’t answer, he murmured, “You never let anyone take this part of you, not even at your worst. Give it back to him, Nim.”
The moment drew out, spun brittle and sharp like the old pane of glass that had severed his hand.
Then she turned and threw herself into his arms, unmindful of the point of his hook. He gathered her gingerly and buried his fingers under the fall of her dreads.
Andre tipped forward out of his chair and thudded to the floor. Ecco and Archer drew in ragged breaths, and Jonah realized there’d been more than one soul drawn toward her.
When he’d identified her as temptation, he hadn’t known quite how deeply the charm set its hooks.
He stroked his hand down the line of her back until the shivers eased.
Ecco knelt beside Andre and flipped the young man over. The punk’s eyes were open and fixed, but he took a shuddering gasp. As Ecco levered him up into the chair, he groaned a few words.
Jonah stared over Nim’s bowed head at the gauntleted talya. “What did he say?”
“That Blackbird always talks about flying free.” Ecco gave him a sharp grin. “And that if Nim is coming for him, he better fly faster.”
Jonah took her to his room. All the talyan kept rooms at the warehouse, even if they had private retreats hidden elsewhere in the city. And while there were unoccupied rooms in the building, with plenty of salvaged furniture to scavenge, still, he took her to his room.
From the sidelong glances that slipped away as he lifted her into his arms—her face buried in his chest, her hands locked behind his head—he doubted anyone would dare challenge him for the right.
He’d had opportunity before—after a long, ichorsoaked night of tenebrae slaughter—to be grateful for Liam’s foresight in retrofitting the warehouse with private baths for each room. But for the first time in a long time, his thankfulness bordered on a prayer as he awkwardly unlatched the door to his suite.
He let her feet slide to the floor but kept her tucked against his side as he cranked on the hot water in the shower.
“Please turn the light on,” she said. “The dark and the water . . .”
Too much like the tunnels. He clicked on the light. Shortly after his maiming, being none to eager to see himself, he’d broken all but one bulb in the old-fashioned vanity light bar. At least the muted light was better than the blackness under the city. Or the shadows that must be coursing through her mind.
He knelt at her feet. The laces of her sneakers were stiff and grimy and resisted his fingers. He sliced through them with the tip of the hook. He tapped her ankle to let him pull off her shoe, and she lifted her foot with a passivity that was
starting to alarm him. “You didn’t do it,” he reminded her.
“I would have,” she said. “I wanted to. I was pulling his soul—his soul!—out of him. Like teasing a dollar bill out of a guy’s pocket.” She gripped his shoulder when he lifted her other foot. The skin above her sock was crusted with silt.
“A hundred-dollar bill, at least.” He tried to keep his tone light.
“No, he gave it up as easily as a single dollar. I don’t mind being a bad girl, Jonah, but I never wanted to be evil.”
He looked up at her and was shocked to see tears glistening in her eyes.
Something shifted in his chest. He remembered that moment himself, in a jungle less forgiving than this one of asphalt and concrete. He and the Naughty Nymphette were more alike than she knew.
He wrapped his fingers around her ankle and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Nim, Andre was a drug dealer before he fell in with Corvus. He’s one of the few humans to see a djinn-man—truly see, just like he saw the demon sign at the pawnshop—and it didn’t stop him from offering his services. He was leading a horde of demons to kidnap you after he let them butcher a dozen people. After all that, do you think he held his soul in any particular regard?”
One tear escaped and tracked over her cheekbone. “Maybe he was like me, and didn’t believe in it.”
“But you believe now.” He stood. Unable to stop himself, he reached up and thumbed away the tear. “More important, you’re trying to do the right thing now that you know.”
She sniffled. “The right thing? Like I just did?”
“I suppose there’s a learning curve,” he admitted. And apparently the league—male dominated for millennia—knew less than ever.
Her lip quivered, as if undecided between another sniffle and a smile. She echoed his touch, her fingers curving around his jaw. “Would you be so generous if it had been your soul I was stealing?”
