Vowed in Shadows

by Jessa Slade

Nim went down through the quiet halls to the dock and pushed up the rolling door. The heat poured in, thick and moist as one of Jilly’s soufflés. Nim patted her curls again, feeling them taking on a demonic life of their own from the humidity. Sera and Jilly, with their fine, straight hair, hadn’t understood how the dreads weren’t a fashion statement, but a life-saving measure.

  She plugged in the boom box. It’d be a long time before her hair grew that long. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so rash with the scissors. But she’d banished the memory of the feralis’s punishing grip with each hack. She couldn’t escape the teshuva as easily, of course. Only the soul-cleaving solvo could sever its link, and the soul wouldn’t ever grow back.

  She dialed through the radio band to the local hiphop station that promised an uninterrupted marathon, and started to dance.

  In the heat, Mobi was lithe and lively, gliding over her arms as if her limbs were obstacles to his hunt. She went into a deep backbend to let him slide up her torso, and then straightened slowly as he climbed to circle her neck. Her hair was definitely a rat’s nest now, sweat stiffened and kinked.

  Who was she kidding? She hadn’t cut her hair to protect her from feralis attacks. She’d done it to sever her old life from the one she wanted now.

  She wanted the missionary man. The pure and unholy warrior.

  She wanted Jonah, and she didn’t see any way on earth—or in the demon realm either, for that matter—that she could ever truly have him.

  Sure, he desired her. The Naughty Nymphette didn’t give him a choice there. He’d even said “love,” but she’d heard that one before. She couldn’t hold a man like him. When the desire burned down, he’d see only the darkness in her. No one could love that.

  In case she tried to forget again—in case she thought there was something else she could change to capture Jonah’s heart—she danced through the songs until her thighs trembled from exertion and Mobi was a limp ribbon in her hands.

  When the next set of commercials kicked in, she sank to her knees and pulled the plug.

  She knelt, panting in the hot silence, wondering why exactly she’d fallen in love.

  She loved Jonah. What a world-ending fuckup to end all fuckups.

  Once upon a time, she’d set matches against her skin just to feel anything at all. The holes in her flesh had let out the pain, sorrow, and hatred, like little tears in the Veil around the tenebraeternum. No wonder the demons were drawn to her.

  He was a good man who thought he could make her a good woman, but the light Jonah held up only made her shadows deeper.

  Sweat stung in her eyes.

  A sharp round of applause—three mocking claps—jerked her head up.

  “How intriguing,” Cyril Fane drawled.

  The angelic possessed stood just outside the fence, watching her.

  She waited until her breath evened and she could answer with similar nonchalance. “Are you like a vampire, where you can’t come in unless invited?”

  He shot his cuffs, and the sun gleamed off the pristine starch of his shirt. “It is high daylight, and I’m wearing white.”

  “I already knew you weren’t cool like a vampire.” She tucked Mobi around her shoulders, grateful for the scaled armor.

  They studied each other through the chain link.

  “So, now I’ve seen the Naughty Nymphette display her charms. But you kept your clothes on. I feel short-changed.”

  “You didn’t pay. And it would’ve been more than change.”

  He smiled crookedly. “As delightful as it is to spar with you, heshuka, don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  “Didn’t your mama ever teach you that insults work better when you speak English?”

  “How do you know it was an insult? Perhaps heshuka is a term of endearment.”

  She laughed.

  He shrugged. “It was the sphericanum—the blessed realm—that christened you ‘talyan,’ from the Aramaic for ‘sacrificial lamb.’ ”

  “See? That’s how I knew it was an insult. It came from your mouth.”

  He crossed his arms in an Old Testament sort of way. “So, you’re not going to ask?”

  “Most of what I ask for, I don’t get. And most of what I get, I didn’t ask for.” For a heartbeat, she wondered if that mind-set might just be why she was fucking up with Jonah.

  But Fane interrupted. “I won’t come in because my presence will overwhelm the energy sinks you talyan put in place to swallow your pain and anger and hatred.”

  “I can only imagine,” she mused.

  He glowered at her, all pretense of amusement fled. “Really, you can’t.”

  She sighed. “Fine, Angel Boy. What do you want?”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “After I called you Angel Boy?”

  “No worse than me calling you the ‘unknown darkness.’ ”

  At least she knew what heshuka meant. Swell. Her knowledge of Aramaic had just doubled. “I might not know much, but I’m fairly sure going anywhere with you is a terrible idea.”

  “Undoubtedly, but it can’t be helped.”

  “Sure it can. By me not going.”

  His glower deepened. “Elaine, I discover I am finding it less delightful to spar with you.”

  “Ha, made you lie. Is that going to look bad on your record?” That he had bothered to learn her real name didn’t seem like a good sign. Bad enough the devil knew it.

  “I know where your anklet is.”

  A jolt went through her. “So do we. It’s with Blackbird.”

  “And I know how to find Corvus Valerius.”

  She hesitated and cursed under her breath when Fane smiled, clearly knowing he’d caught her. “I’ll go get Jonah.” And Liam and Archer and Ecco and, oh, a dozen other snarly, sleepy talyan. They’d want her to tell them. They wouldn’t care about the risk, about the fact that it was all her fault. They lived for opportunities like this.

  For moments like this, they died.

  Liam and Archer and Ecco and the others had their own sins with their demons to match, but this should be her fight. A little voice twisted in her head—too weak and wistful to be a demon’s voice; just her voice—and said if she found Corvus and the anklet, that would be good. She would be good.

  “No league,” Fane said. “Only you.”

  Damn it. This was so obviously the sort of temptation she was supposed to resist. Running off with an angel must look really bad on a talya’s record, even if righting her own wrongs was exactly what the preacher man had ordered. So she said, with as much resolve as she could muster, “No.”

  This time, he laughed.

  In her defense, she thought, as the Lotus peeled out of the warehouse district . . . Okay, there was no defense for sneaking out of the league compound without authorization or even leaving a note. Except that she was possessed by a demon, which, by definition, meant she could be unfailingly relied upon to do all sorts of bad things, even when—especially when—she was trying to do good.

  “I’m so fucked,” she muttered.

  “There are certain advantages to the symballein bond,” Fane agreed.

  “The angelic possessed aren’t the same? You’re not celibate, are you? With a car like this? What a shame.”

  A smile flickered over his lips, but faded. “As a highersphere warden, I am most assuredly not going to share sphericanum secrets with an outcast heshuka.”

  Nim leaned back against the silky leather. “Yeah. You’re celibate.”

  “Can you keep your serpent off the upholstery?”

  She frowned at his sharp tone. “I offered to put Mobi back.”

  “I couldn’t trust you not to wake your mate.”

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  Fane gave her a look. “Even if you kept your word”—the vanishing space between his furrowed brows calculated the chances of that as slim to none—“your presence, and your withdrawal, could have given you away.”

  She had to admit he was right. She had
already noticed that Jonah in a bed had a gravitational pull she found hard to resist.

  “You could just set the serpent loose,” Fane suggested.

  She gave him a look as disbelieving as the one he’d given her. “God, I hope you’re not in charge of any paradises.”

  His expression turned thunderous again. “Do you even comprehend,” he burst out, “how your attachment to the serpent represents your stubborn clinging to the darkness that made you vulnerable to demonic possession?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I had Mobi long before the demon.”

  “But you permitted the resonance in your soul that matched the teshuva.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time.”

  “Didn’t you?” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Um, no.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Emotionally, you must have. Spiritually . . .”

  “Like I said before, no. Any particular reason you’re looking for validation? Can’t you just be holier than me and be happy?”

  She was being snide, but at least he shut up.

  He’d already told her they were going to the Shimmy Shack, although he wouldn’t say why and offered only an annoyingly mysterious “That is why you must come with me. To see.”

  At the sight of the bright yellow crime-scene tape across the garish red paint, her pulse plummeted and then rocketed with her breath. She got out of the Lotus and wrapped Mobi so tight around her neck he squirmed in protest.

  Heat waves shimmered over the asphalt of the empty parking lot, and the crime-scene tape seemed to ripple despite the still, heavy air. Did she just imagine the drifting scent of putrefaction?

  Fane yanked aside the tape.

  Nim hesitated. The loose yellow plastic licked her ankle like a tongue. “We have to go inside?”

  “That’s where the people were killed. That’s where the souls will be waiting.”

  He didn’t look back, and she hurried to catch up. “You said you’d tell me where Corvus was.”

  “I will. Right after you find out from the lingering souls.” He paused at the front door. After a moment, it yielded to his touch.

  For a second, she was impressed at his B&E skills, which seemed inappropriate for an angel. Then she realized he had a key. An angel with a key to a strip club. Even more inappropriate.

  She followed him into the stuffy darkness. The newly shortened hairs at the back of her neck would have stood up straight if not for Mobi’s comforting presence. Her demon sight flickered into hunting mode as her teshuva caught her mood.

  “There are no demons here,” Fane said. “Besides yours.”

  She resisted the urge to sniff, but she was definitely catching a whiff of rot. “How can you be sure?”

  He scowled. “Because I am host to an upper-sphere angel that—”

  “Okay, no need to preach. You should’ve let me bring Jonah. You’d like him.” Who was she kidding? She was the one who wanted Jonah beside her. But Fane was right; the etheric etchings left by the invading tenebrae had faded until even her teshuva caught the sickening glimmers only from the corners of her eyes. “So what am I supposed to do here?”

  “Many who die violently and unexpectedly and brimming with treacherous passions”—he gave her a meaningful look—“are prone to linger at the site of their demise. Bring me their souls.”

  She squinted at him. “Isn’t that what you do?”

  His scowl blanked to a mask somehow more unnerving. “If so, would you be here?”

  She shifted in her flip-flops, wishing—once again—that she’d worn more substantial footgear. But Jonah had said they looked perfect for some lazy summer afternoon on the boat, and the image had appealed to her, and so here she was, breaking into a demonic murder scene in flip-flops, which were going to sound ridiculous if she had to make a quick getaway.

  When he faced her, Fane’s eyes were deeper than the shadows of the empty club. “Call the souls.”

  Nim shook her head. “Bad things happen when I turn up the juice. Besides, the teshuva can’t see souls unless they’ve been shredded out of the body by solvo.”

  “Not just solvo. Anything demon fouled.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Charming. Demon fouled, was she? “I know Nanette can see the soulflies, just like me. Why can’t you just—?”

  “Elaine,” he snapped. “Are you always this tiresome?”

  “If you’d brought Jonah, you’d know the answer,” she snarled back. “And my name is Nim.”

  “Do you want to find Corvus?”

  “Duh.”

  He gritted out each word. “Then bring me the damned souls.”

  Wow. Now she was getting actual angels, not just missionary men, to swear. Unless he meant literally damned, and then she supposed it was a technical term and not an expletive. But at least now she was starting to understand. “You don’t want to sully your pretty white hands on those nasty, demon-fouled, damned souls, do you?”

  “It is no business of the league how the heavenly order presides over the war with the tenebraeternum.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t say anything about heaven. . . . Oh, you mean you’re not supposed to be here either. And your bosses—how many higher spheres are there anyway?—will notice if you get gunk under your nails. So you brought me to do the dirty work.”

  He glowered at her.

  She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of dirty work.”

  “We have to stop Corvus.”

  “What d’you mean ‘we,’ white man?” She walked into the middle of the room. No one had picked up since the attack, and the tables were still upturned, the chairs broken and strewn across the floor. But the bodies had disappeared. Which, in some ways, was even more eerie, since if she didn’t know better, she might have thought the mess was the result of a particularly uproarious bachelor party. But the wrong kind of stains remained, dark and spreading, the source of the lingering stink that had Mobi licking the air. Which made her feel a little nauseated.

  She avoided the tainted patches, just as she had walked around the ether signs at the pawnshop all those centuries, years, okay, days ago. She took a breath, then wished she hadn’t. “You have to be ready to knock me out if the lure spreads too far.”

  “Happily,” he said.

  “You could at least look like you’re joking,” she said.

  But mostly he looked like he had seen a ghost. And she hadn’t even started calling yet. The sphericanum must really frown on fraternizing between angels and demons if the mighty Fane was so anxious about what they were doing.

  Which, along with actually finding Blackbird, sort of unnerved her now. Based on the name, she’d been picturing something small and fluffy—evil, of course, but fluffily so. But, then, she’d always been one to underestimate wickedness.

  Her soul had been invaded and her anklet stolen—well, after she’d sold it—and her life was no longer her own. But if there was one thing she’d always been good at, it was making the best of her own failings. And where better than here, the murky, hell-hot, claustrophobic Shimmy Shack of Lost Souls, with an angel watching over her to revel in her failure . . . and still not let it touch her.

  “Here I go.” She stepped up onto the unlit stage to gather the energy that would bring down the house.

  CHAPTER 21

  Throwing Andre off the pier with his spine crushed had been hasty. Corvus lugged the clinking duffel across the rough ground, salty crystals of sweat grating at the corner of his eye when he blinked. Where clumps of grass had poked up, it was hard to see the trash. But breaking bottles had their own special sound underfoot. He winced as he found another and added it to his duffel.

  He trudged across the field.

  Soul gone. Mind gone. His downtown aerie with its city view gone. His minions gone.

  He paused in front of the tower. Nothing else moved in the hot stillness except an eerie, singing hum, like a wet fingertip on crystal. The etheric resonance of amassed tenebrae raised the birnenston-sco
rched hair on his demon-scarred arms.

  Not all gone . . .

  Who’d turned the stage lights on? Nim saw the strobe through her closed eyelids.

  “Elaine?” The worried voice sounded far away. Much farther than the lights. “Nim, stop now.”

  She couldn’t stop. She had to bring them all. They all wanted her. . . . They all had to want her. . . .

  “No,” she whispered. The desire was hers to indulge, no one else’s. “Don’t touch,” she hissed. And she opened her eyes.

  Cyril Fane stood below her, his hand on the stage as if he were about to boost himself up. Probably to punch her lights out, to stop the call.

  But there were already plenty of lights, and she had stopped herself.

  They hovered in vaguely human shape, unlike the drifting clouds of soulflies. The brutal terror of the ferales had destroyed their bodies, leaving their blood to soak the floorboards, but their souls were mercifully—maybe “mercifully” wasn’t the right word—whole and unbroken.

  Not that they seemed reconciled to the distinction.

  The souls shifted almost too fast for her demon eye to follow, blinking between the various stains on the floor, then reappearing to hover near the stage, then circling again, with faint etheric contrails connecting the dots. Even when they paused for a moment, they pulsed with an agitation beyond the need for words. Which, now that she thought about it, seemed problematic.

  She glared at Fane. “They can’t talk.”

  He looked away. “In stories, they always find a way to tell their secrets.”

  “Stories?” Her multioctave shriek puffed the souls away like oversized dandelion blooms. “What, like ghost stories?”

  He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t read much populist fiction. And the upper spheres of the sphericanum haven’t bothered with the aftermath before.”

  “Then why didn’t we bring Nanette?”

  “She’s the one who convinced me we need to get involved.”

  “But you thought you could handle it. Handle me.” In her everyday human derision, the demon overtones melted away, and she shook her head. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch?”