Vowed in Shadows ms-3

by Jessa Slade

  Corvus met the blade with his board. The sword sheared through the wood.

  Too easily. Jonah stumbled behind the swing, all his weight canted forward.

  With a nasty chuckle, Corvus cracked the shortened board upward. He caught Jonah hard under the chin.

  Jonah’s head snapped back. For an instant, he lost track of up and down as his feet went over his head.

  But he’d already seen Lex and Nando right behind Corvus.

  He might have felt more gleeful, except he knew the hole was behind him somewhere.

  He scrabbled at the rotted wood that crumbled under his fingers until he finally caught himself. He shoved to his feet, staggered one step as his ringing brain caught up with the new direction.

  Lex had Corvus in a half nelson, the anklet-bound arm flailing, while Nando moved in for the kill.

  Not that any talya had ever killed a djinn-man before.

  Corvus bellowed, but the sound held more fury than fear. The demon marks on his arms wept birnenston, and Lex’s face was cramped with the effort of keeping his grip. Jonah knew the other man’s teshuva must be faltering from the etheric toxin.

  The djinni thinned to a yellow mist that choked the air with the stench of rotting eggs.

  Was it trying to escape? Without a soul in Corvus’s husk to anchor it, Jonah knew that nothing prevented the demon from leaving. No wonder it had no fear.

  The mist unfurled in a graceful, almost lazy spiral. Like when he and Nim had danced on the Shades of Gray and he’d spun her out to the length of their extended arms.

  And then he’d whirled her back into his grasp, and the shock of her hitting his chest had nearly stopped his heart.

  The djinni’s outward expansion slowed, stopped. Reversed.

  “Nando, Lex, get down,” he cried. “Get down!”

  The emanations snapped back into Corvus’s body, and the sudden compression of demonic energy in a confined space released a detonation of toxic ether. Weakened with age and neglect and the seeping battle stains, the cupola began to buckle.

  The wall closest behind the djinn-man exploded in the damp stink of old wood. Malice circled, seeking escape, frenetic streamers of ether staining the air as the night poured in.

  At its epicenter, the reven on Corvus’s arms burst with poison like a backed-up sewer. The beams around his feet groaned and sagged. His hulking body staggered but did not fall.

  The talyan were not so lucky. Lex and Nando tumbled backward like a pair of dice. Lex went over the edge where the wall had been, with only Nando’s shout to mark his fall. The talya reached for his disappeared comrade. And then the malice sprang loose.

  The second shock wave hit Nando and knocked him into the darkness after Lex, a split second before the force slammed into Jonah.

  Again he clutched for some hold as he spun across the floor. But this time his fingers found only open air.

  The hungry tongue of the tenebraeternum wind swirled up through the riddled floor and sucked him down.

  CHAPTER 24

  Nim came to with a hundred malice streaming by, their frenetic screams slicing by her like a thousand paper cuts. The wall beside her was half-gone, and the city on the horizon fuzzed and crackled with bad reception. She blinked hard, and the teshuva snapped everything into focus.

  She bolted to her feet and tried to catch her balance. But the tower swayed under her. Not her demon slacking off; the whole thing was going to crumble. “Jonah!”

  She was alone.

  “Nim!”

  Not alone.

  Wedged sideways in a gaping hole in the floor, the executioner’s sword glinted. Jonah had managed to hook his elbow over the floorboard. Only the oversized length of the sword had kept him from a long plummet down the glass-lined gullet of the abandoned bins.

  She ran to him, stepping lightly on the patchwork beams.

  He hung suspended. His legs swung above the four-story drop. Below him, the mad swirl of the battle reflected a million times in the facets of shimmering, shattered glass.

  She flung herself down beside the hole to hook her elbow under his armpit. “Can you get a grip with your other hand?”

  “It’s rotting from the inside.” He looked up at her. “Get out.”

  “Do you know me at all?”

  Despite his precarious position, he grinned fiercely. “I wanted to make sure you’d stay.”

  She snorted. “Just reach up on the other side so you don’t crack the boards under me.”

  The wood pulped under his fingers, and the tower seemed to list farther with every handful that tore free. Glass chimed as it fell, and she shuddered at a scream from below. Talyan or tenebrae? She couldn’t be sure, but something desperate and hurting.

  With her counterweight, he swung one leg up through the hole. Even as the planks disintegrated, he heaved himself toward her. She pulled back, narrowly avoided yanking them both down another fissure opening in the floor, and dragged him away from the gaping center. The flooring around the outer edge seemed sturdier; at least it held their weight for the moment.

  “Where are—?” She bit off the rest of the question in horror when Jonah shook his head.

  “We have to get out of here.” He rose, pulling her to her feet. “If the building comes down with us inside, we’ll be minced.”

  “The stairs peeled off the walls behind me,” she said. “We’re not getting out that way.”

  “So where’d Corvus go?”

  They both looked up.

  Side by side, they raced to the gaping wall of the cupola. Attached to the outside, a ladder went up.

  “Not down,” Nim noted sadly.

  “Climb,” Jonah said. He started up.

  He’d made it only halfway when dark wings launched over their heads.

  It was Corvus, suspended below the wings of the float plane. The skeletonized cockpit was a steel death trap around him, but the wings held just enough glide to descend.

  The tower listed again. It was going down. And so were they, one way or another.

  Below them, indecipherable figures streamed from the doorway.

  “Nim, follow me.” Jonah leapt for the fleeing Corvus, the executioner’s sword outstretched.

  She hesitated for less than a heartbeat, and launched herself after him, thigh muscles screaming, though her throat was locked.

  She caught his waist, heard the demonic screech of metal on metal as the blade scraped on the broken tail of the plane.

  The blade skittered, then bit deep. Jonah reached for her shoulders to pull her up his body.

  “Grab the fucking plane,” she shrieked.

  “Don’t curse,” he reminded her. He heaved himself higher on the tail section, dragging her with him.

  The plane listed sideways, its glide severely hampered by extra weight.

  Behind them, the wood of the tower groaned and snapped. The chime of glass rose above it in crescendoing destruction.

  The building gained speed as it collapsed, aiming right at them. They weren’t going to get clear of its shadow.

  Corvus roared, and his djinni pulsed with a nuclear–mushroom cloud fury. But suspended in the darkness, there was nothing to rage against.

  The cupola they’d moments ago escaped raced at them, smashing into the tail section. The planks crashed around Nim, knocking her free. Jonah cried her name, reached back for her. The sword wrenched loose.

  And they were falling.

  But not far enough even to scream. Nim hit the brush in a bruising tangle, rolled, slammed into Jonah. He grabbed her close and threw himself over her as the cupola boomed and splintered all around.

  They lay in a daze, limbs entwined. Not just their limbs, but tree limbs. Carefully, Nim straightened. Nothing broken. Other than the tree. And the tower. And Corvus?

  She stiffened, gaze darting. Even with the teshuva on high alert, she couldn’t distinguish the rusted metal outline of the plane. How much farther had it gone?

  “Nim?” Jonah’s hands were all o
ver her.

  She batted him away. “I’m fine. You?”

  “There’s blood on your face.” He cupped her jaw. “It shines to the demon.”

  She winced as his thumb brushed the cut on her cheek where Corvus had backhanded her. The tenebrae-flustered teshuva had been slow to seal the wound. But she couldn’t push Jonah away again. She leaned into his touch. “That was crazy.”

  “We’re down,” he pointed out. “And alive.”

  “And everyone else?”

  He didn’t answer, but rose and held his hand out to her.

  If the wreckage of the industrial site had been Superfund-worthy before, it was positively apocalyptic now. Wood and glass crunched under their steps as they circled the crash site.

  In the debris, they found Nando.

  His gaze was fixed upward toward the black sky, no demon violet, no human spark. Nim stumbled to her knees in grief. Glass stung her palms in a hot flush of pain.

  She flinched from Jonah’s hand on her shoulder. “If you say he’s in a better place, I’ll punch you.”

  “At least he’s not here.”

  She glared up at him and clenched her fists, driving glass shards deep. At least that explained the tears that clouded her vision.

  “Jonah, Nim.” With his black clothes, Liam was a shadow in the night, except for the twinkling flecks of glass in his dark hair and the rampant reven at his temple. His pupils, blown wide with the teshuva, glowed. “We couldn’t come after you. The stairs . . .”

  “I know,” Jonah said. “Nando . . .”

  “I know,” Jilly echoed as she walked up beside the league leader.

  In silence, they assembled.

  “Lex is missing,” Sera said. “Also Marc, Argus, and Haji.”

  “I found Lex,” Ecco said. He didn’t have to say more.

  “Start digging,” Archer said. Sera nodded. “Crush injuries or lacerations will be bad enough, but the amount of birnenston that was sealed in the glass chambers will be fatal if we can’t find them soon. And the tenebrae could be drawn to the pain.”

  Someone asked, “Corvus?”

  Jonah’s voice was monotone, the demon harmonics threaded into one livid tone. “Gone.”

  They started digging.

  With improvised shovels torn from fifty-gallon drums, they managed to keep their fingers attached. Still, blood ran in slick rivulets from Nim’s hands and wrists, and her grip on the scoop kept slipping and she kept swearing. Jonah, bent to his own search a few yards away, said nothing and never looked up.

  She dug and bled, and the teshuva healed her, slower and slower as the birnenston poison sapped its coherence, and so she bled some more.

  They found Marc and Argus, dead. Haji they pulled from the ruins just as dawn’s gleam brightened the lake.

  The talya was sliced head to foot, his blood a congealed pool brimming the glass depression in the remains of the elevator floor. “I tripped,” he mumbled with woozy incoherence. He touched the back of his head where he’d obviously knocked himself unconscious— and nearly scalped himself—when he fell into the sharpedged pit. “I never trip.”

  Sera bumped his hand away. “Don’t touch.”

  The words, the echo of her old life, sent claws down Nim’s spine. Her selfish cluelessness had led directly to this moment. She’d sold the anklet, never thinking, never caring.

  Not knowing, she tried to remind herself. But in the devastation, the guilt clung dank and thick as river mud.

  Four dead, and she’d barely known their names, when the league needed every man and woman it had.

  Well, not every woman.

  She staggered away from the destruction. Others had taken breaks away from the birnenston to give their teshuva a chance to refresh, so no one paid attention. Thankfully, the tenebrae that had escaped their glass enclosure hadn’t returned, though the anguish must have been tempting. Despite their much-vaunted control over their emotions, the talyan almost shimmered with the waves of their fury and grief.

  Maybe the pain was so bad even the malice wanted no part of it.

  Maybe the malice were smarter than her.

  Not far beyond the scattered glass and wood, she found the crumpled remnants of the float-plane wings. She swayed, dripping blood from her fingertips. The divot she and Jonah had kicked up where they hit the ground looked like a shallow grave.

  No Corvus, of course. But, really, even if she returned now with her anklet in hand, or around her ankle, actually, could she redeem the talyan sacrifice?

  Was this how Jonah had felt when he lost his hand?

  To live and fight was to salvage their souls. Anything else—even death itself—was unacceptable. At least she understood him now.

  Now that it was too late.

  A yellow glimmer caught her gaze, and the first ray of sunlight filtered through the trees just as Corvus stepped into view.

  “Come to me, alone, tonight,” he said. “I have no fight with your friends.”

  Jonah had told her and told her not to scream or swear. So for once, she took his advice and just stared at Corvus with numb fatigue. “Can’t you just kill me here?”

  His smile was as gentle as sinking into deep water when the last breath was gone. “No.”

  “Nim!”

  She turned her sun-blinded eyes—damn it, were those tears again?—toward Jonah’s call.

  He bounded out of the woods, someone’s borrowed spear half raised in his good hand. Since it was only half raised, he must not have seen Corvus. But his blue eyes were narrowed in suspicion, so she wasn’t entirely off the hook.

  She smiled grimly to herself. Off the hook? Oh, she so wasn’t off the hook.

  Jonah was beyond wrecked, she knew, that he took her smile at face value and let the sword drop to his side. “Don’t sneak off.”

  “I didn’t get far.” She thought she shouldn’t bother denying the “sneak” part. “Just wanted to marvel at our miraculous survival.”

  He prodded the ruined wings with the butt of the spear. “Too bad Corvus survived too.”

  “Yeah. And took the anklet with him.”

  “We’ll get it back.” He wasn’t so weary that he didn’t recognize the incredulous look she shot him. He shrugged one shoulder. “We must.”

  No matter what. If she wanted to marvel, here was another opportunity. Not a miracle, but horror. After what had just happened, he was ready to go again. If Corvus walked out from between the trees, Jonah would fight.

  She spun on her heel and strode toward the other talyan. The prickle of tiny hairs rising on the back of her neck spread down both arms. Corvus was watching them go. He wanted her alone.

  Well, hadn’t she always been that? Until Jonah.

  She kept her pace brisk until they cleared the knot of trees, then slowed to match her steps to his. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  “Thanks for saving mine.”

  “Remember you said that,” she murmured.

  The talyan were draining the last of the ferales they’d incapacitated during the fight. As the orange caution lights went out in the snapping-turtle eyes, the husks clattered apart.

  “Ashes to dust to mud.” Sera flung down the last husk. It shattered in a spray of shell and bone and glass shards. “And gone.”

  Archer touched the small of her back, and she whirled with demon speed. Nim took a worried breath, but the other woman threw herself into her mate’s arms.

  Across the clearing, Ecco ripped apart the chain-link fence. Four white-bound forms lay in the grass, and Nim averted her gaze as the talyan lifted their dead brethren with gentle strength. Haji looked almost as white as they helped him into the truck, their encouraging whispers too soft for her demon to hear.

  “Don’t,” Jonah said softly.

  “Don’t what?” Don’t curse. Don’t scream. Don’t touch. Don’t die.

  “You’re thinking that it should’ve been you.”

  She tried to make her face as smooth as glass, but there wasn’t much
inspiration in the rubble. Inside, she felt as torn. “You can’t read my mind.”

  “Not even necessary, since everyone here feels the same.”

  “It wasn’t their fuckup, losing the anklet.”

  “You’re part of the league now. Fuckup for one, fuckup for all.” His weary smile invited her to tease him.

  She couldn’t. They had made her one of them—one for all—and look what had happened to them.

  Demon possessed they might be, and doomed to fight from the shadows, but they had twisted their darkness into something that looked a helluva lot like light. And love.

  If only she could have seen that earlier. If only she could have seen it in herself.

  When she didn’t answer, Jonah’s smile turned brittle, but he reached for her and drew her into his arms. “After I lost my hand, I thought I had nothing more to offer. I thought I’d never be anything but an ugly reminder. But I was wrong.” He pulled away a little to look down at her. “I won’t say you’re my reason for living. I won’t burden you with that again. But you make living . . . good.” He kissed her temple, and his gentleness—more shattering than anything else that night—made her close her eyes. “We’ll get through this.”

  “I know you will.” She’d make damn sure of that.

  CHAPTER 25

  In the end, she didn’t even have to be particularly sneaky.

  Jonah, Jilly, and a handful of others had volunteered to take the fallen talyan to the league’s burial ground down south.

  “It’s quiet down there, empty,” he told Nim from the shower. “No people means no tenebrae. Just grass and sky.”

  She sat on the tile floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. She’d lost the impetus to unlace her mudsoaked sneakers. This was the last straw for them, she decided morosely. Even though the canvas was black, the filth was so ingrained, the shoes couldn’t be saved. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just for the day. It’s a long drive, but we’ll come right back. One promise we make is to bury the dead before the decades of immortality catch up with the corpse. And then we carry on the fight.”