Vowed in Shadows ms-3

by Jessa Slade

  “With the sword or with Ecco?”

  “Either.”

  “It’ll be a fine sword once the teshuva’s ether sinks in,” Jonah said. He cut a glance at Ecco. “I’ll wait.”

  Ecco scowled. “You boys take this chick thing far too seriously.” He stalked away.

  “Let it go,” Liam murmured.

  Jonah shrugged. “I don’t think I ever have a choice, do I?”

  The league leader gave him a look, as if Liam suspected there was more to the comment. And Jonah didn’t want the perceptive man to delve any deeper, so he said, “Nim found a clue to Corvus’s lair.”

  Liam stiffened. “Then why are we still standing here? What is it?”

  Jonah shrugged again. “She said she left it in Sera’s lab.”

  Instead of racing away, Liam tossed the shattered hammer on the anvil. “Is Nim down there?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” There was weight in the understanding exhalation. “How badly do we want this?”

  “Badly.” Jonah studied the edge of the blade. Not a nick.

  “Then let’s go see what she brought us.”

  Jonah hesitated, the ill-weighted weapon wavering in his hand. He could send Liam alone and go to his room to confront his temptress. But the sword wasn’t ready yet.

  So he followed the league leader in silence down to the lab.

  Liam stopped at the counter and peered down at the shard. “Is it part of a bowl?”

  “Nim found it at the Shimmy Shack.”

  Liam’s gaze arrowed to him. “She went back there?”

  Jonah gave a sharp nod. “So unless the ferales have retired to pottery . . .”

  “Or glassblowing.” Liam lifted the piece, and the glass glinted.

  “The rest is turtle shell.”

  Liam grunted. “We didn’t have turtles in Ireland.”

  “We ate them from the jungle rivers.” Jonah shook his head. “There’s no way any of the people in the club took a chunk from a feralis. The tenebrae must’ve been on a rampage.”

  Liam scowled. “Andre blamed them for hurting Jilly.”

  “That is what they do,” Jonah murmured. Which was why he’d wanted to keep Nim safe, leaving her behind while the talyan hunted. How could she not understand that?

  “The glass is a strange addition.” Liam smoothed his thumb over the etched surface.

  “We know Corvus liked glass sculptures,” Jonah said. “He had captured the etheric emanations of birds in glass when Archer and Sera tracked him down the first time.”

  “He already has control—somewhat—of the ferales, so what is he capturing now?” Liam straightened. “I’ll wake Archer and Sera, see what else they remember from the glassworks. You get Nim. I want to know what else she found.”

  Jonah hesitated, and Liam rubbed his temple where the black lines of his reven curled around his eye. “Fine. You get Archer and Sera. I’ll collect Nim after I get Jilly. She’ll be furious if I leave her out.”

  As they separated to their tasks, Jonah wondered how the league leader had forged such a close bond with a woman as bold and independent as Jilly. The two—like Archer and Sera—were fitted as close as blade to fist.

  He and Nim only raised sparks.

  His knock at Archer’s door went unanswered, so he called the other talya’s cell and got a curt message to leave his number. “We have another hint to Corvus’s location,” he said. “Liam wants you.”

  Before he’d disconnected, a call was ringing through. He answered with, “Screening your calls?”

  “Consider yourself lucky I had to piss, or I wouldn’t be up at all.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Had to get away for a day.” Archer’s voice lowered. “It’s easier to keep Sera out of trouble if we’re away.”

  Jonah wondered how far out in the Shades of Gray he’d have to take Nim. “Trouble is back.”

  Archer sighed. “And we will be too. Give us twenty minutes.”

  “Trouble isn’t usually so accommodating.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen. Hold down the fort.” Archer disconnected.

  Jonah shook his head. Was that a vote of confidence from the other talya? Considering they’d always circled each other warily, Archer’s nihilism clashing with his own objective moralism, this might very well be the end of the world.

  With heavy steps, he made his way to the lab. He slowed when he heard Nim’s voice.

  The grim and decidedly untrusting Archer trusted him, but his own talya mate did not. She had gone off alone to the tenebrae slaughterhouse rather than seek his help.

  Even at half speed, his feet carried him close enough to hear her say, “So, Detective Ramirez said—”

  “Wait,” Liam interrupted. “There was a cop?”

  “But we didn’t tell him anything,” Nim said quickly.

  “We?” Liam’s voice rose a notch.

  “Me and Cyril Fane, the angel-man.”

  Jonah closed his eyes. She hadn’t come to him, but she’d gone to the angelic possessed. And a cop too, apparently.

  He stepped into the lab. Liam and Jilly were shaking their heads in sync, though he doubted they noticed, so aghast were their expressions.

  “Nim,” Jilly said. “You shouldn’t mess with the sphericanum.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Nim protested. “He came here.”

  “What?” Liam’s voice dropped to a rumble, with demon tones riding the lows. He whirled on Jonah. “Did you know about this?”

  Nim took a step forward, bringing Liam back around. “He didn’t.”

  Jonah didn’t move, but he gave her a long look. “Do you think that sounds better for me that I didn’t know?”

  Her cheeks darkened, and she hunched her shoulders. “If you’d let me tell the story in order, it wouldn’t sound so bad, because I’d get to the part where now we have a clue how to find Corvus.”

  Liam said nothing, so Jilly gave a curt, “Fine. Start at the beginning.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Nim said. “You know, since we haven’t been doing anything, stuck here at the warehouse. So I got up. . . .”

  By the time she’d finished explaining, with only a few more muffled exclamations from Liam, how she’d summoned the lost souls, located the shell fragment, distracted the detective, and taken the angelic possessed to a lingerie store—“So I’m pretty sure we’re safe from the sphericanum hearing anything about this”—Archer and Sera had arrived.

  The two other bonded pairs stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head, one that was spouting insanity. Of course, the only reason she didn’t have a second head was that she’d left Mobi upstairs. After she’d taken the snake on her adventure.

  Jonah stiffened against the proof of how much she didn’t want him as partner. But with Liam and Jilly and Archer and Sera eyeing her with such consternation, he had no choice but to step up beside her. “Moving on,” he said. “What do we really have here?”

  Nim murmured an almost inaudible “Thank you.” He didn’t respond.

  Liam set two fingers against the reven at his temple and sighed. “I sent a message to the Beijing league. If anyone has archives deep enough to find a reference that might help, it’s them. If anyone wants to help, that is.”

  Archer flipped the shell fragment in his hand. “You’re right about it being turtle. I caught them all the time when I was a boy.”

  “A million years ago,” Sera murmured. She tucked herself under his arm to peer at the shard. “When Corvus took me to the lair he was using in his solvo-dealing days, he had the glass bird sculptures, but nothing etched like this. The birds were really quite beautiful. This . . .” Her finger hovered over the seam between shell and glass. “The way he’s melded the demonically mutated husk with the glass is just odd.”

  “We know art holds the tenebrae at bay,” Jilly said. “And we know Corvus wanted to be free of his djinni. Maybe he’s building a trap.”

  Liam wrapped his fingers around
the knot-work bracelet at her wrist and pulled her close. “A trick you taught him, perhaps?”

  The sight of them, so synchronized, one to the other, stabbed through Jonah. He closed his eyes to focus on the task at hand. “Corvus might have believed tearing through the Veil would set the forces of hell directly against the gates of heaven and free him from his slavery to the djinni. But once he fell out of that high-rise where he took you”—he opened his eyes to look first at Sera, then at Archer—“because you pushed him out the window, the djinni took over what’s left of him. And the djinni wouldn’t be interested in containing the tenebrae.”

  “True,” Sera said. “Since glass isn’t a solid or a liquid, it has crossover properties that might have appealed to Corvus while he was messing with the Veil between the realms. Birnenston is a demonically altered form of hydrofluoric acid, which can etch glass. So maybe the ferales were just adding extra trash to their husks. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

  After a moment of silence, everyone mumbled disagreement.

  “Yeah,” Sera said. “I don’t think that either.”

  “But it doesn’t really matter why,” Nim said. “All we care about is where.” She glanced at Jonah as if for confirmation, yet her expression was uncertain.

  What else was he supposed to care about? He crossed his arm over his chest. He felt like the fragment: half–hollow shell, half–brittle glass. “The djinn-man needs to fall. And stay fallen this time.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Archer muttered.

  Nim dropped her gaze. “How much more do we need? Andre told us Corvus mentioned a float plane. Fane dug up the turtle shell. And Ramirez said the bodies were contaminated with a gnarly acid. How many places could we be talking about?”

  Sera gave a wry shrug and tossed the shard toward her computer. Over the discordant clatter and chime as it hit the monitor, she mused, “We live in an industrial city on a lake. Let’s see . . .”

  “So look it up.” Nim pointed her chin at the computer.

  “What am I looking up? Demons and esoteric glass-work and apocalypse—oh, hell?”

  “I was thinking float planes, turtles, and hydrofluoric acid,” Nim said. “But don’t exclude demons from the search.”

  Sera shook her head and crossed to the keyboard. “Right. Because Corvus Valerius is listed on Google. Besides that one Roman general, I mean.” She muttered to herself as she typed. “More generic? ‘Chicago airport’ and ‘industrial waste’? ‘Turtles’ can stay.” She sat back abruptly. “I’d forgotten they talked about an airport at Lake Calumet.”

  “I remember,” Jilly said. “I dated an environmental activist for a while who talked about saving the marshes there.” She bumped her shoulder into Liam’s. “You would’ve hated him.”

  “The feeling would’ve been mutual.” The league leader folded his arms over his chest. “The area was used for illegal dumping for decades, and a few rotting ferales’ carcasses might’ve been added to the pile on occasion.”

  “And now they’re coming back to haunt us.” Nim gestured at the glass fragment. “Well? Let’s go check it out. What’ve we got to lose?”

  Everyone looked at her.

  She grimaced. “Oh, other than all that?”

  “Tonight,” Liam said. “When the others wake.”

  * * *

  Under the thick, black sky, the lake was rippled glass. Tar and obsidian, Jonah thought, as he dragged in another humid breath. He let the breath out slowly as he stroked the oar silently through the water. Across the wide deck from him, Lex manned the second oar and matched his paddling. The pontoons weren’t made for rowing, but they hadn’t wanted to announce themselves with motors.

  And, more important, the square, stable craft left room for fighting, should any ferales come winging out of the dark.

  Behind him, the second boat they’d “borrowed” was equally silent as they explored the shoreline. Somewhere inland, two other teams poked through the wreckage of industry and the forest that had sprung up around it. But his cell phone, set to vibrate, was as stubbornly still as the woman at his side.

  No one had been left behind tonight. He’d understood that to ask her otherwise was pointless. Despite her play at shamelessness, he knew she felt the guilty sting of losing the anklet. But if Corvus had holed up somewhere ahead . . .

  The sweat that stained his shirt felt suddenly clammy and chilled.

  Kneeling at the prow, Nim turned her head abruptly. Her eyes gleamed violet in the night, and his heart leapt in atavistic delight at the hunter’s glow. “There,” she whispered. “In that tower.”

  He followed her gaze. The grain elevator stood abandoned, ringed in a thicket of undergrowth. No terrestrial light shone there, but to his demon’s eyes, a flicker of etheric disturbance shot across the single upper-story window and then vanished.

  His phone twitched in his pocket. Sera texted from the boat behind them to all the talyan; she’d seen the demon sign too.

  Perhaps it was nothing; a lone feralis ghosting through the empty building in pursuit of a sickly bat to add to its corporeal husk. Suddenly, he couldn’t say which he wanted more: another false alarm or Corvus’s crushed head on a pike.

  His phone vibrated again. A call this time, conferenced to the rest of the teams. He tilted the phone so the other talyan could hear.

  “We’re just outside the fence around the elevator,” Liam said. “The ground is littered with bones. And turtle shells. Jonah, you’ll have to beach the boats. The dock looks completely rotted out.” The league leader’s voice deepened with satisfaction. “And if you’ll direct your attention to the top floor, you’ll notice the rusted-out skeleton of what appears to be a float plane.”

  Just as Andre had told them.

  “Not getting much demon sign.” Archer, from the second ground team, sounded disappointed. “If it is Corvus, he’s gotten lazy and lonely.”

  “Then he’ll love to see us,” Jonah murmured.

  Nim’s violet gaze fixed on him, then shied away.

  Liam’s voice crackled. “If there’s no etheric interference to distract him, the djinni will know we’re coming. Let’s move.”

  The flare of teshuva energy was certainly a giveaway, Jonah thought, but he couldn’t contain the surge as he drove the boat through the water. The second boat, with Ecco and Nando at the oars, was right behind him.

  The two pontoons hit the brushy shoreline in a burst of mud and murky stink. Jonah jabbed the oar into the muck and heaved the boat another length onto solid ground. The end of the oar clacked against his new cuff as he vaulted over the prow.

  Despite his speed, Nim was already ahead of him, half-lost among the rushes. He couldn’t call out to her without giving away their location.

  As he raced after her, he fumbled over his shoulder for the executioner’s sword strapped against his spine. He hadn’t had time to practice the move, to smooth out the reach and grab, much less the twist and latch that locked the blade to his cuff. The metal cuff that Liam had made laced ingeniously up his forearm to his shoulder, like some bizarre cyborg warrior.

  He hadn’t even swung the sword yet.

  Off to his right and a little ahead, Ecco stumbled and swore. Jonah swept past him. Maybe he’d keep the big talya on his right, and if his first practice swing accidentally took off anybody’s head . . .

  The teshuva rose in him, tightening his muscles, sharpening every hazy, starlit glimmer of grass. He vaulted over a fifty-gallon drum rusting in the weeds and landed with a crunch of old bone. Nim was only a step ahead of him.

  From the water, the grain elevator had looked surrounded by overgrowth. But an unnatural clearing spread from the base of the tower to a chain-link fence on the outskirts. The fencing rattled as, somewhere along its length, the first talyan went over.

  Nim hit the fence at a dead run. Clad in black from head to foot, she was a shadow against the dark sky. He jumped beside her, hooked the top curve of the sword over the upper rim of the fen
ce, and yanked himself over. To his relief, the blade didn’t detach from the cuff, nor the cuff from his arm. And, even more of a relief, now he was ahead of her.

  She’d already made it clear she had no qualms about confronting Corvus on her own. He’d make sure she didn’t get that chance again.

  From the inland side, a dozen talyan converged on the tower, Liam in the lead. He charged across the clearing like a human—human plus demon—battering ram. The hammer shone in a gleaming arc over his head. And he brought it crashing down against the door.

  Jonah could’ve sworn they’d decided on something not quite full frontal, but maybe he’d missed an IM.

  With one entrance and the risk of bottlenecking, they had only the element of surprise to get enough of them in the door. So he was right on Liam’s heels, with the rest of the talyan breathing down his neck.

  Which didn’t give any of them a chance to appreciate Corvus’s redecorating before the salambes descended in attack, and their flame-bright ether lit the interior like walking into a lava lamp of doom. Nim would appreciate the comparison.

  Assuming they survived.

  CHAPTER 23

  Nim swore as Jonah passed her at the fence. He’d taken the newly adapted sword from Liam earlier in the night and hadn’t even acknowledged her when she suggested he give it a whirl before they went out.

  He could lose his head with a crappy attitude like that.

  What a terrible time to realize she wanted to keep him just the way he was. She was done with dancing alone.

  The stream of oversized male talyan flowed into the grain elevator, forcing her to pause as the doorway swallowed him. Her pulse ratcheted to painful intensity. Simply losing sight of him was bad enough.

  She stared up. The elevator loomed above her. At the very top, black against the haze of distant city lights, the wings and floats of the half-dismantled plane perched like a weathervane.

  Archer rocked to a stop beside her. “Are you armed this time?”

  She lifted the African throwing knife she’d picked out. With its uniquely asymmetrical four-pronged design, and every prong sharpened to a wicked edge, she didn’t even need to aim.