by Jessa Slade
Archer nodded. “Stay out here with my defensive team.”
“Jonah’s inside. He needs me.” She knew she didn’t have to say more.
After a heartbeat, Archer nodded toward the tower. “Go, then. And don’t get dead.”
She didn’t bother rolling her eyes. She just returned the nod and ran for the doorway where the last talyan had disappeared inside. She crossed the threshold, and for a second, her world upended.
Ecco had explained how he neutralized and contained malice in etherically altered glass capped with foil blessed by an angelic possessed. No wonder they hadn’t sensed an overwhelming presence of tenebrae; Corvus had made the entire wooden tower into a blessed—or in this case, damned—bottle.
The ravaged interior still showed the bracing structures of the five-story vertical bins where grain had been stored, but the walls had been mostly torn away. What was left was honeycombed but asymmetrical, like a misshapen beehive.
And everything had been sheeted in etched glass.
Nim almost staggered under her teshuva’s disorientation against the reflected and distorted emanations of the tenebrae trapped behind glass. This was how Jonah must feel every day with his demon’s flow disrupted.
The thought of him straightened her. Where had he gone?
The combined force of the teshuva energy had created a protective no-fly zone over the gathered talyan, but a cloud of salambes hovered just above. Their virulent glow lit the glass as if someone had set the world on fire. And Jonah’s blond hair gleamed like gold.
Nim couldn’t help but hunch her shoulders as she raced toward him. Good thing she’d worn her sneakers; even the roughly planked flooring underfoot was coated with glass.
She called his name, but the sound was lost in the chime of shattering glass as a feralis—no, not one, but a handful, then dozens—began to break free of the walls.
And the floor. The slick glass heaved under her feet, and she fell to her knees. A half-shelled feralis—she recognized the patterns from the fragment from the club, but the rest was bony protuberances like fish bones—reared up over her. Whatever lock of energies had kept the tenebrae confined had been broken by the teshuva’s arrival.
As the other ferales rose, leaving monster-sized graves behind in the glass, she found herself reluctant to actually throw away her throwing knife. Keeping her pointy treasures close seemed suddenly wiser.
From her prone position, she kicked at the feralis. It went down in a tumble, squat legs waving in the air. Ha—certain advantages in fighting a mutated-turtle enemy. Once they were flipped over—
The feralis heaved itself to its spiny side and whirled to slice at her with snapping turtle jaws.
The disadvantages of fighting a mutated half turtle. She lashed out with the knife to force it away. It reared back, exposing the leathery folds of its neck embedded with glass pebbles. . . .
She struck with all the teshuva’s force. The knife bit deep, past the first and second prongs, buried to the third. She yanked back and rolled away from the fountain of black ichor. Splinters of glass ground into her palms.
The feralis wasn’t going anywhere and she didn’t have time to neutralize its emanations. She’d lost Jonah in the melee as the talyan engaged the ferales. The uproar of clashing energies had allowed the salambes to descend, like saber-toothed vultures, and the ruined glass walls glinted crazily.
“Corvus Valerius!”
She heard the shout, though she couldn’t see the shouter. But she felt the surge of demonic energy as the talyan focused.
There was Jonah! He was already running for the stairs, in a pack with five other talyan. Of course, Corvus wouldn’t be hanging here with the rabble. If anywhere, he’d be in the cupola at the top of the tower.
She blew past the remaining talyan. Ecco shouted at her, but she didn’t hesitate. She tagged behind Haji and hit the stairs with Jonah’s group before she thought how this probably wasn’t what Archer had meant by “Don’t get dead.”
Of course, he’d let her go, so he must’ve known that, dead or deadly, she had to be with Jonah.
The stairs had been built against the exterior wall. With the interior gutted, the steps clung precariously over the open center. A few treads were missing, and she almost plummeted through one gap as Haji, just ahead of her, cleared the opening with typical talya grace.
Locked in the glass prison, the demons had gone mad. The salambes dove at them as they climbed. In their spiraling frenzy, the salambes shredded trailing sparks that rained down on the talyan below like party streamers on fire. Their hunger beat against Nim’s awareness and licked in to taste her fear.
She gripped the ichor-stained knife and plunged upward.
Under her hand, braced against the outer wall, the tower quivered. Had the inner coating of glass been the only thing holding up the old wood? A hysterical laugh threatened, and she realized she wasn’t much better. A sharp and deadly gleam hiding rot. Jonah should be thankful she hadn’t returned his love. At least not aloud.
A stair crumbled under her foot and only a desperate push launched her to the next step. The talyan ahead of her raced on.
If she’d fallen, none would have noticed. Unless, of course, she landed on someone five stories down. Her stomach heaved. Been there; done that. Not fun.
A smash from above brought her attention upward. Jonah had reached the upper landing, just big enough for one man. The door ran with rippled glass. Corvus obviously hadn’t wanted the tenebrae to come knocking.
Unfortunately for him, the teshuva weren’t so polite.
With another blow from the sword, Jonah cracked through the glass. Then he rammed his shoulder against the door. So much for his lock finessing.
The wood crumbled before him and he disappeared inside.
“Not again,” she muttered.
The other talyan were right behind him, and Nim sped upward as the stairs behind her flaked away with the shivering tower.
There was no going back now.
She caromed through the doorway.
Into a seething black wall of malice.
She should’ve wondered where they all were. No gathering of tenebrae was complete without festive red malice eyeballs. Or maybe she meant “festering.”
In a way, malice were scarier than ferales. She could lop off the head of a feralis and disable its corporeal husk. Malice were cockroach quick, but there was nothing to swing at, just a creeping chill that turned her blood to ice and her teshuva to frozen Jell-O.
Despite the seeping pain, she struggled forward. The cupola wasn’t that big. The talyan couldn’t have gone too far, although the blinding malice swarm gave her the eerie sensation that she could step through a hole in the floor and plummet, sliced and diced by the spears of glass lining the walls all the way down.
She didn’t think that would end as well as the last time she’d fallen, when she’d ended up in Jonah’s arms.
As if her thoughts had conjured them, heavy arms wrapped around her from behind.
Arms, as in two. Thickly lined with virulent yellow reven. Nobody she knew well enough for such a friendly hug.
With a shout, she dropped into a crouch. The abrupt move broke the grasp. She swept one leg out behind her and whirled at the same time, the throwing knife biting through the air.
Air was all she hit as the man who’d grabbed her leapt straight up.
He hovered unnaturally aloft for longer than was possible, and her teshuva-aided vision registered a poison-yellow fog, vaguely human-shaped, around him. The djinni. It had jerked him out of the way of her blow and held him suspended an extra moment, like a toy dangling out of her reach.
Corvus landed lightly on his feet, but his wayward eyeball jolted unpleasantly in his skull, loose as a baby blue marble. The sulfur gleam in the other eye, though, sent the last erg of her teshuva bravery scuttling for deep cover.
She felt utterly alone.
He waved one hand with obvious irritation, and the malice smog l
ifted slightly. Around his thick wrist, links of rough chain cut into his skin. A large bead pressed against his pulse point, and the design incised into the dull silver glinted at her.
Her anklet. The key to her teshuva’s most potent trick.
“The Naughty Nymphette.” His voice rumbled, to match that shaved bullet head and thick features. “Finally.”
She braced her fingers against the floor, balancing her weight, and tightened her grip on the knife. All four honed prongs glinted at the corner of her gaze.
And didn’t give her any sense of conviction at all. Where were Haji and the other talyan? Where was Jonah?
“If I keep you talking, will you not kill me?” she wondered.
“Why would I kill you, sister mine?”
“I’m an only child. Anyway, I’m fairly certain my mother wouldn’t claim you. Sorry.” Maybe she shouldn’t piss him off. “My dad, though . . .”
Corvus shook his head. The human eye locked on her for a moment before it lost direction again. “Soul siblings.” He smiled and held out his hands. His reven had cracked and oozed down both arms. The human skin around the tracings blistered and smoked. “I am your brother-in-arms.”
“I have all the arms I need,” she muttered.
But Jonah might be lying injured only steps away and she wouldn’t know. And couldn’t do anything. Unless she got that anklet.
“Well,” she stalled. She shifted her weight to her thighs. Was she fast enough to spring past him? And could she bring herself to lop off his arm to snag the anklet? She thought yes on the lopping. As for the speed . . . She coughed to disguise a hysterical laugh. “Most of my routines are solo, but if you’re interested in the life, I know some male revues.”
His jaundice-tinged eye contracted. “No more of your men, Nymphette. I find myself quite tired of them.” His voice shifted, lighter than before. “You and I, though, together we could free ourselves of those who have sought to master us all our lives.”
Who was talking to her? The djinni escaped from hell? Or the gladiator who’d been tossed from the Colosseum with two broken arms and a demon hunting him? Or had the two joined forces for this rogue rampage against the respectable battle between good and evil?
She kind of understood where he was coming from.
He—whichever he was—must have seen some weakening in her eyes, because he took a step closer.
But, really, just because she knew he was right didn’t mean she was going to listen.
Quick as Mobi lashing after a rat, she sprang toward him. The longest prong of the knife scored his chest, but the yellow fog was quicker. The djinni yanked Corvus away, and she flailed past him.
On the plus side, she stumbled into the malice cloud and lost sight of him. On the minus side, she stumbled into the malice cloud and lost sight of him.
The wretched, sucking pain and despair of the engulfing malice was like the worst flu and the worst hangover and the worst night of senseless channel surfing ever. With the teshuva too overwhelmed by the tenebrae energy to fight back, she went to her knees. But she’d spent many a night crawling through bad hangovers, so she wasn’t going to give in to a bunch of etheric pests. Below her clenched hands, even the floor—the only malice-free thing she could see—was starting to gray as her vision dimmed. The edges of the knife glimmered and faded.
Was she really going to die for nothing, killed by nothing? Appropriate, when she’d always been nothing.
Wait, she didn’t think that. Her rapist had whispered that she had nothing to cry about. Her mother had told her she mustn’t speak. Her father had looked away as if she’d disappeared.
But she wasn’t nothing. Not anymore.
“Don’t touch,” she snarled.
She drew herself into a crouch and lashed out with the knife. There was nothing to strike, but the teshuva surged in her muscles, revived now that she was away from the djinni’s overwhelming energy. The malice recoiled in a wave, not from the knife, she knew, but from her demon.
She stood, wavered a little, and locked her knees.
“Ah, Nymphette.” Corvus’s rumbling voice seemed to come from all around, and the malice swirled in agitated funnel clouds. “You wound me. Not literally, of course. You tried to take my arm off.”
“I want my anklet back.” No point trying to hide from him. He could clear the malice with one burst of djinni power. And clear her teshuva again too.
“And it would look lovely against your tawny hide.”
“What? You’re going to skin me for a rug?” Could she sneak around through the malice fog, come up behind him, and commence with the aforementioned lopping?
“Don’t tease,” he chided. “I’ve no use for those I can walk over. Not anymore. The battle has progressed too far for pawns to carry the banner any farther.”
“Good news for the pawns.” She crept to her right, toward the voice, knife at the ready.
“It would be, were any still standing. Unlike you.”
“I’m not a pawn.”
“Not anymore.” Between one blink and the next, Corvus emerged from the malice cloud bank, and she bit back a gasp. The knife wavered in her hand. He seemed unfazed by the point aimed at him, skimmed in his stillhuman blood. “Aren’t you tired of dancing for your masters, Nymphette?”
With the teshuva’s strength sputtering, the weight of the knife pulled at her arm. “They were never my masters.”
Now Corvus was sneering. Jonah had doubted her too. And the teshuva, cowering somewhere behind her navel or something, obviously didn’t think she could pull this off.
Like she’d once taunted wallets out of the back pockets of the jaded, cheap bastards at the Shimmy Shack, she focused every nerve and muscle toward a single point. Or four points, in this case. She hauled back and let fly with the knife. The four prongs whirled into one glimmering circle of death.
And sank into Corvus’s chest through his raggedyman clothes, crisscrossing the shallow slash she’d landed earlier.
Both of Corvus’s eyes focused on her with malevolent intent.
Empty-handed, she felt way more naked than she’d ever felt with all her clothes off. In retrospect, disarming herself might not have been the smartest move. But since when did she ever look back?
She spun on her heel and fled toward the malice darkness. No quipping now; Corvus’s heels on the wooden floor behind her pounded out a rhythm of doom. The fury of the djinni was like an inferno at her spine. She wasn’t going to make it.
Through the tenebrae blackness, pockmarked with the stark crimson of malice eyes, a glint of gold shone.
Nim cried out as a blade pierced the shadows; then Jonah emerged a heartbeat behind.
Jonah had heard her voice, and the malice-evoked memories that had paralyzed him—memories where the jungle darkness had never lifted, where he’d never walked out—lifted at the sound.
And he saw her with Corvus Valerius hard on her heels, the djinni’s venomous form reaching ahead to snag her.
The teshuva in him hesitated in the face of such unrelenting evil. But he’d stopped relying on the teshuva. So he stepped forward into the fight without a second thought for his doubtful demon.
Nim shouted his name, her eyes bright with fear and, he thought, delight. Well, he’d be glad to see the long reach of the executioner’s sword too, if he were empty-handed.
He swung, knowing he wouldn’t connect, knowing too that Corvus’s djinni would instinctively remove his body from danger, and give Nim a heartbeat to escape.
“Go,” he told her.
Of course, she made no such attempt. Instead, she slowed and, incredibly, turned back.
He swung again. He’d already discovered that the sword, cleverly fitted though it was, was no substitute for his arm. The wrist cuff didn’t bend, and his entire body was forced to follow through with the blow. A strange dance of power and momentum and vulnerability. A death dance. But who would die?
Nim, the bold and ungrateful wench, darted back in. Even as
the djinni was jerking Corvus away from Jonah’s third swing, Nim leapt in from the side. She grabbed at the gladiator, and Jonah’s heart curdled as he pulled back from another attack. What was she—?
Then the chain looped around the djinn-man’s wrist caught a flash of light.
She’d found the anklet.
Corvus lashed out with one birnenston-laced arm. The anklet gleamed. He backhanded Nim and slammed her across the room. She hit the wall in an arc of blood and crumpled.
Corvus’s roar tore through the malice cloud and the tower shuddered, sending Jonah to his knees. One of the rotted beams buckled beside his hand, and he rolled away from the sudden fissure that went five stories down.
The malice scattered toward the high corners of the cupola. As they lifted, he caught a glimpse of the other talyan whose teshuva had been overcome by the sheer chaotic energy of the massed tenebrae. Nando pushed upright and gave Lex a hand up, the malice malaise rapidly clearing from their eyes.
Jonah thought that if he could keep the djinni occupied long enough for the other talyan to recover, to take back the anklet, while he went for Nim . . . He lunged at Corvus.
Corvus ducked. As he spun away, he wrenched up two floorboards, one for each hand. Nails squealed free from the decayed wood. He wielded the two makeshift maces over his head, and the nails glinted like snaggle fangs.
“You talyan should have killed me when you had the chance,” he said. “Or, I should say, chances.”
“We tried. A good-faith attempt.” Jonah circled the hole in the floor, now three boards wide. The glass beneath the open space shimmered in the corner of his eye. Worse, a chill breath circled into the cupola. Somewhere below, the other women were piercing the Veil. And the demon realm was responding with its cold sigh. “Since you ask nicely, we’re willing to take another shot.”
Corvus tsked and shook his head. His blue eye drifted. “Too late. The djinni has made other plans.”
“How is hiding in the top of your pretty tower a plan?”
Corvus spat. Birnenston sizzled on the planks between his feet. “It works for heaven.”
Jonah cursed himself for engaging in repartee with a djinni-possessed man who’d left half his gray matter splattered across a sidewalk the first time they’d met. He vaulted across the hole in the floor, the downward whistle of the blade his only response.
