by Jessa Slade
Was that why she’d run off? To see if he’d follow? He almost snapped. But he hesitated at the odd note in her voice. If he didn’t know better, he’d call it wistfulness. “I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The bond between us doesn’t care when or where or why. I will come for you.”
She didn’t turn her gaze from the road, but she rubbed her palm reflexively down her thigh. The motion captured his attention until he forced himself to look away.
“Damn it.” She smacked her hand on the steering wheel again. “I forgot my shopping bags in Nanette’s van. I don’t suppose it’s a good idea to go back now.”
“Why did you go to the church at all?”
“I went shopping.”
He shifted in his seat, barely feeling the depleted wallet under his backside. “Can you buy forgiveness?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand. People like you and Nanette never do.”
“People like—”
“Good people,” Nim burst out. “You don’t understand doing it wrong.” She sighed. “I was scared.”
“Of coming home with my empty wallet?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You don’t really care about that.”
“Jilly will. Her old life with a nonprofit gave her an appreciation for making every penny count.”
“Yeah, I noticed she doesn’t have much use for deadweight.” She trailed off.
He frowned. “Did Jilly or Sera say something to scare you off?”
Still she hesitated. “Oh, it’s just . . . everything. I didn’t want to wait around for tonight. I’m scared something else bad is going to happen because of me. I’m scared I can’t even be good at being evil. Repentantly evil. I figured I wouldn’t have to think about any of that at the church. And if I had cuter shoes.”
“Nim, I’m here, so you don’t have to be scared.”
“I was scared of that too, facing you after . . .” She regarded him from beneath half-lowered lashes.
They’d stopped at a red light, so he didn’t have an excuse to look away. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, flustered. She was a liar when it suited her, a knee-jerk flirt, a thief of convenience, and still she spoke with a painful insight that humbled him.
“Do you hate me for corrupting you?” she pressed. “Am I your bane now?”
Was it too late to return to the angelic possessed and fight him to the death? Another interrealm war would be less fraught than this conversation.
“I could never hate you, Nim.”
“Oh, trust me. It’s easier than you’d think.”
He reached across the space between them and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. In the endlessly lingering summer light, her dusky skin was warm and soft under his touch. She had tempted him, seduced him. But corrupted? “I am not one of those men.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, you’re not.”
The light turned green and he released her.
They drove to the warehouse in silence, and she parked inside the barbed-wire lot. The docking bay door was thrown wide-open, and a handful of the talyan had gathered in the twilight.
Liam paced the edge of the concrete dock alone, his mate nowhere in evidence. Jonah felt a twinge of sympathy. Having just suffered through the frantic agony of being unable to locate his other half, he wondered if knowing where she was but that she was injured and there was nothing he could do would be better . . . or worse.
As they got out of the car, he was suddenly, fiercely glad Sera had suggested the women would stay behind tonight in solidarity with the bed-bound Jilly.
Ecco leaned against the wall, rolling a cigarette. In a moment, the scent of cloves drifted across the yard.
Nim nodded at the big talya. “Can I get a drag? Now that I’m immortal and all.”
Ecco held on to the blunt. “Immortality won’t help me much if your boyfriend rips my lungs out through my nose.”
Nim slanted a glance at Jonah, then sighed. “Never mind, then.”
Like a pack of hunting dogs, the talyan continued to gather, talking in small groups or lounging near the dock. At some unknown signal Jonah had never identified except by the prickling of his demon, they quieted and came together, senses on alert, the first glimmers of violet in their eyes.
Liam halted off to the side, and as one the talyan faced him. “I have had enough of Corvus Valerius.”
A wave of muted laughter rippled through the warriors, but the tension didn’t ease. If anything, Jonah’s nerves felt strung tighter as the demonic emanations thickened.
“Andre coughed up a hint of a location for us,” Liam said.
“With hardly any blood,” Archer added.
Liam didn’t smile. “He waxed a bit poetical, but we think Corvus is holed up near an airport. We set Andre loose to confirm, hoping he’d go running back, but we lost him when he backtracked through a tenebrae dumping ground outside Englewood. Maybe we’ll pick him up again. At least his bones.” He shrugged. “Since the djinn are as territorial as the leagues, we doubt Corvus would stray as far as the suburbs. Leaving us two choices: O’Hare and Midway, with the old Meigs Field as a long-shot third choice.”
His sharp blue gaze roamed the talyan. “For almost a year now, we’ve taken hits from the djinn-man, if we can still call him that when the man is almost gone and the djinni runs rogue. According to some interpretations of our mission, confronting him while he still wears the tatters of his human skin is outside our sanction. Maybe we should let the angels and the djinn war over our heads while we and the teshuva are fit only for the shadows. So I’ll leave it up to you where to hunt tonight.” He paused. “But I do have a half dozen cars that will circle all three locations and end up at the Coil for beer on the league’s tab before last call.”
From the back of the dock, Nando sent up a little cheer. “I’m ready for a new headache.”
This time, Liam gave them a cold smile. “Unless, of course, we find Blackbird, and then I’m calling you all in for the ravaging.”
That got a big cheer.
As the talyan divvied up toward the cars, Nim sidled next to Jonah. “Which of the three should we try?”
He jumped down from the loading dock—to get away quicker, not because he wanted to leer at the bounce of her breasts as she followed. “I’m going to Meigs Field. It’s not even an airport anymore, and I think Andre was trying to be clever, giving us what we asked for while still protecting his patron. But you aren’t going.”
She opened her mouth, and he thought she was about to object. He cut her off. “Archer insisted that Sera stay here to keep Jilly from sneaking out. So I volunteered you to stay too.”
She bit her lip and slowly shook her head. “Wow, you males really got us figured out.”
Something about her tone made him squint, but she looked guileless. Which made him narrow his eyes even more. The bond between them pulled him closer until he stood within the aura of her body, her heat signature, breath, and the incense perfume of her skin all matched to the restless demon in him. The thrum through his bones eased when he was next to her. He wanted to stay there, lost in that solace.
But that was her thrall demon, luring him in again.
He took a step back. “I’ll skip the drinking at the Coil.”
“But not the ravaging, if you’re so lucky.”
“That is why we’re going.”
“I’m why you’re going.” She kicked at a patch of gravel. “It’s my anklet you’re after.”
“It’s Corvus’s head we’re after. Everything else is an excuse.” He longed to reach out to her, to smooth his thumb over her woeful, outthrust lower lip. “We want so much more than we’ve had, Nim.”
She gazed at him, as if she knew he wasn’t talking just about the league. “Come back soon. But not too soon.”
She hopped up onto the dock and stood there as they all climbed into their chosen vehicles. She raised one hand to wave. In the last light, with her dreads hanging close around her, she looked like a primitive q
ueen sending her warriors to battle.
Jonah’s heart crashed in his chest, as if it wanted to leap past his seat belt and race back to her. He sighed.
Archer slid into the driver’s seat. “Yeah, that’s love.”
Jonah suppressed a curse. “Is it too late for me to pick another car?”
“Yes. We’re going to share everything we’ve learned about the mated-talyan bond on the way to Meigs.”
From the backseat, Nando groaned. “Girl talk.”
“Shut up,” Archer said. “You could be next.”
The talya perked up, but Jonah shook his head. “Let me tell you about an angel I met instead.”
Nim watched the cars file out past the barbed wire. The crunch of tires on gravel sounded like breaking bones.
She wondered if losing a hand would be as hard as letting Jonah go. If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out. Oh, great. How come she knew only the squicky parts of the Good Book? But the Bible was right; if she couldn’t be what Jonah needed to fight his battle, he’d have to cut her off. That was what everyone in her life had figured out long ago.
The scent of cloves teased her, and Ecco stepped out from behind the Dumpster. “I’ll go bottle up some malice and meet you back here. Lock up behind me.”
She followed him to the chain-link gate. “Do you think they’ll find Corvus?”
“No, or I would have gone with them. Blackbird is smarter than us.”
She eyed him. “Ever heard of this concept called allegiance?”
The big talya shrugged. “Doesn’t get you anywhere. Brutal, but true. Still, now we have the three of you.”
Her and Sera and Jilly. And whatever they could become together. “What are we again?”
“I think you’re our chance. That’s why I didn’t go with them, and why I’ll risk some serious ass kicking if your boys find out I’m not with any of them.”
“What happens if we get in worse trouble than they do?”
Ecco’s teeth flashed brighter than his gauntlet blades. “Yeah, that thought had occurred to me.”
When he sauntered out the gate, she yanked it shut with more force than was necessary.
He brought his gauntlets down his thigh with a hiss of steel on leather. “What’s with the attitude? You like trouble. You got through your old life wrapped in trouble. That’s why you didn’t need clothes.”
“Remember how I gave up my old life?”
“Nobody changes that much.” He flicked the stub of his cigarette through the chain link at her feet and walked away.
She waited until he’d disappeared beyond the corner of the warehouse, too far for even a demon to hear, before she answered, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She went to the dock, pulled down the big door, and latched it against the night.
Sera and Jilly weren’t waiting for her in the kitchen or in the lobby. She took a breath, closed her eyes, and let her senses flow.
She sensed the deadened zones, where Jonah had talked about energy sinks. And the leftover art no one had claimed from salvage held a sort of brightness from which the teshuva shied away. But a faint track led her to the stairwell and up to the roof.
The two women were sitting on matching bar stools, their feet propped on the low lip of the wall ringing the rooftop. A third stool was pulled up beside them.
Nim dropped onto it with a huff. “Couldn’t leave a note?”
“Wondered if your teshuva would sniff us out,” Jilly said. “Even without the anklet.”
“We already knew the artifacts didn’t give us our powers,” Sera said.
Jilly shrugged. “Tonight we’ll find out what they are for.”
Nim glanced at her. Dressed in cutoffs and a short sleeved cotton oxford, Jilly didn’t look like a woman who’d been nearly gutted earlier in the day. Except for the band of gauze that peeked through at the shirt’s unbuttoned neck. “You up for this?”
Jilly gave her a look. “I’m up.”
“I already told her we could wait,” Sera said. “The female talyan have been MIA for more than two thousand years. Another night wouldn’t kill us. Probably. Although weirder things have happened.”
Jilly huffed. “With reassurances like that, is it any wonder I got up?”
They sat looking out over the city, peaceful if not exactly companionable as the light faded.
Jilly finally stirred. “What do you think happened to all of us, all the women warriors?”
Sera sighed. “You know the league archives have almost nothing to say.”
“Then I’m guessing we all ran away,” Nim said. The other two drew identical breaths as preparation to argue, their eyes reflecting their outrage along with the last of the sky glow, but she held up her hand to stop them. “Think about it. A man wins a woman, and he brags out loud to whoever’ll listen. He hits her? He’s got a long story about how she walked into a door. Hell, he’ll kill her and scream about how she had it coming. But if she runs away? Vast, echoing silence.”
Sera puffed out her cheeks on a sigh stopped midstream. “That’s cynical.”
“And believable,” Jilly said. “Saw it often enough with the street kids I worked with. Andre told me some of the things his dad used to say to him. . . .” She shook her head.
Nim lifted her eyebrows. “You feel sorry for him?”
“What can I say?” Jilly tugged at the gauze bandage. “I’m a bleeding heart.”
“Har har.” Sera stood and stretched, blond hair rippling down her back. “Come on. Let’s meet Ecco halfway. I don’t want to be fighting the league barriers in the warehouse when we try our little trick.”
Nim stood, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “How will we find him? How will he catch the malice?”
Sera turned away from them, toward the city. Her racerback tank top displayed the traceries of her reven.. “Ecco has a way with the malice. He flays open his soul, and then they come to feast. Can’t you feel it? He’s out there now, like he’s ringing a bell and singing ‘Come and get it.’ ”
Nim shuddered. “How can he stand to be eaten alive?”
Sera shrugged. “He’s come to the same sort of serenity as the dying people I counseled.” The violet lights flared higher. “Except he gets to fight back. Unlike our missing sisters, apparently.”
“But we’re here now,” Jilly said. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER 16
They traced Ecco’s path to the next industrial park. He’d chosen an empty warehouse, the four stories of brick still standing but every windowpane shattered and the bottom eight feet of the exterior wreathed in layers of garbled graffiti.
Train tracks passed it, but the rails had been partially filled in with asphalt, the line abandoned.
“At least we won’t have to explain to Liam how the building got destroyed,” Jilly said.
“That does make it easier.” Sera kicked open the door.
The interior had been gutted; only broken glass and the support beams that disappeared into the darkness four floors up remained. The darkness was thick with etheric smoke as tangled as the graffiti, and in a strange way, almost as legible.
And the word it pulsed was “doom.”
Ecco whirled at the heart of it, gauntlets dulled but his teshuva alight to Nim’s demon-amped vision. A dozen forty-ounce liquor bottles surrounded him. Nim realized when he’d said he was bottling malice, he meant actually bottling them. Obviously, he’d had no trouble finding containers in the vacant building.
Not that the malice seemed inclined to participate. A cloud of inky darkness darted around him, staining the air behind it with streamers of demon sign, as the malice tried to avoid the bottles and get to Ecco.
He chanted obscenities, and his eyes blazed. Nim wasn’t sure she wanted to get too close either. “What’s our move?”
“You’re the lure,” Sera said. “Call them.”
“Me?” Nim stammered the word into multiple syllables.
Jilly wrapped her fingers around he
r wrist, where her woven metallic bracelet flickered with violet. “Bring them close enough and I’ll trap them all.”
“And I’ll send them to the other side,” Sera said.
“Although this is a bigger horde than we’ve tried before.” Did Jilly’s voice waver a bit? Her uncertainty was almost lost in the malevolent drone of the malice as they circled.
Nim took a breath. Too late to back down now.
But she wanted Jonah by her side, so badly her knees shook. Or maybe that was fear. Or maybe the reven wrapped around her thighs kicking in. She didn’t know which. And that was why she wanted him. He’d know. With his steady assurance, his unwavering strength, his devotion. Oh, not devotion to her—she knew that—but to the bond between them, which was almost the same. She wanted it to be the same.
The longing shocked her.
As did the realization that her yearning had distracted the malice.
Their focus weighed on her like a major depression, like the yawning void that before had inspired her to strike entire books of matches. As if those tiny flames could ever light the darkness. The bright flare of pain as she’d extinguished the fire in her skin had been something like light, an illusion of illumination.
But not as bright as the reven that flared now to her knees, straightening her stance.
The tornado of malice made a vacuum that sucked at her breath, as if they could stop her heart with their convergence.
“That’s it,” Jilly whispered. “Lure them in.”
The horde wanted her as much as she wanted Jonah. No, they wanted her more. Because all the crazy, luminous, weightless yearning that made her pulse race when she thought of him was not enough to satisfy them.
Because she could not be enough to satisfy Jonah.
“Don’t lose them, Nim.” Sera’s voice came as if from a deep well, distorted and thin. “Nim?”
How could she have spent a lifetime honing herself into a tool of desire, and yet all her hot caresses left him cold, untouched? Not his body, of course; that always rose to her teasing fingers like the teshuva roused to demon sign. But his heart . . . That was locked away where she couldn’t ever reach. He didn’t want her, not like the malice wanted her.
