by Jessa Slade
She dodged to one side of the alley. She’d seen a glint beside the neatly stacked boxes—right there. Yes! Someone had forgotten a box cutter.
She scrabbled at the cardboard, fingers closing around the narrow metal, sliding the tiny razor tooth out in the same motion. She spun back to the fight.
Despite her speedy weapon procurement, Thor already stood, legs braced, over one carcass. With another swing of his hammer he dispatched the second creature. He knocked its mandibled head right off its shoulders as if it were a meaty croquet ball. Jilly’s stomach heaved at the wet thud of the head thwacking into the brick wall.
The last monster—obviously smarter than Jilly herself—ran.
The man whirled, every line of his body poised to pursue. Jilly’s breath caught hard, this time in pure pleasure at the taut, precise flow of his moves. He seemed so familiar, like something she’d dreamed. Maybe as she’d fallen asleep in the middle of one of those gawd-awful CGIed action movies.
The monster-head stump oozed black scum, and she swallowed hard at the blunt reminder; this hammer-wielding superhero was no faker.
Since when had she forgotten she wasn’t impressed by superheroes anymore? They were all fakers, by their nature. She scoffed to herself. As if he’d heard her, the man wheeled back around. The heavy oiled-canvas hem of the duster swirled above the pull straps of his boots. Her bravado withered at the stark expression that drew down the otherwise sensuous lines of his full mouth.
“Just what the hell were you going to do with that little thing?”
The lilt of his Irish accent captivated her for a moment, so she didn’t pay attention to the words. Then she was insulted. She wasn’t that short.
Finally she noted his focus on the box cutter in her hand. “Defend your honor?”
The grim set of his mouth softened, just barely. “Defend me?” He let the hammer swing down into a slow, mesmerizing ticktock. “Did I look like I needed defending?”
The hint of amused arrogance in his voice made her lift her chin in defiance. “Maybe a little. It’s a very small knife anyway.” She clutched it tight as he strode toward her.
Her gaze locked on the bold tattoo that rayed across his left temple to brush the corner of his blue eye. God, that must’ve hurt—needles nicking that rugged cheekbone for hours.
She snapped upright. “Now I remember. You were at that homeless outreach we did in the park last weekend.” She stiffened even more as realization crept over her. “You know my name. You’ve been following me.”
The final tock of the hammer pointed at the headless corpse. “Good thing, huh?”
She didn’t want to think about it. “I have to make sure Iz and Dee are okay.”
“They made it to the roof. I’ll have someone escort them down.”
Jilly narrowed her eyes. “Someone, who?”
“One of my people.”
“Your people, who? Never mind. Dee was supposed to call 911.”
“The call couldn’t get through the interference. That’s typical with these attacks lately. Besides, what are you going to tell the authorities?”
Yeah, she knew how the authorities dealt with monstrosities, even the purely human kind. “I want to see the kids.”
“My people will take them back to the halfway house. They’ll be fine without you.” His voice dropped, the brogue’s cadences waxing again. “They’ll have to be from now on.”
Jilly gripped the box cutter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, don’t you, that it’s too late?”
“Too late for what?”
“I didn’t understand the restlessness, or I didn’t want to listen. It’s too late to give you a chance.”
Her voice rose with annoyance. And the first touch of unadulterated fear. “Too late for what?”
“To say no to the demon.”
CHAPTER 2
Liam Niall had regrets. Many regrets. Any 180-year-old man could expect to fuck up now and then. An immortal man could expect to survive the fuckups with the burden of guilt weighing ever heavier.
As the word “demon” reverberated between them, he contemplated the incredulous woman before him. His delay finding Jilly Chan, his failure to warn her that she’d been chosen by an unbound demon that would possess her soul and doom her to an eternity fighting the endless battle between good and evil . . . Yeah, this particular fuckup was going to haunt him for a very long time.
But as the leader of the Chicago league of talyan—soul-damaged warriors possessed by repentant demons called teshuva seeking salvation—he’d long ago stopped listening to the little voice inside that warned of danger and destruction and doom. Damn it, he was possessed by a demon hell-bent on obliterating every lesser demonic emanation from the other-realm that had the bad luck to cross his path. The little voice inside him was always freaking out.
And so he had squelched the restlessness that had kept him wandering the streets long after the rest of the league retreated for the day to sleep off their wounds. But as the nights passed, the little voice had gone from a whisper to a scream, until he was frantic with the need to silence it. Roaming the neighborhoods, he’d felt like he was missing something, and the sensation had been unnerving.
As the league’s leader, missing something was tantamount to betrayal. He’d looked for a ferales’ lair or malice flock, or another potentially disastrous tear in the Veil like the one that had nearly spelled their end just a few months ago. Even a disturbance in the other-realm ethers could mean yet more peril for his possessed fighters.
And then he’d found it.
Found her.
Trailing her unbound demon like a silk scarf, the pixie with the triple-X-rated curves had instantly caught his eye, as both a demon slayer and a male. Her black hair, spiked with propane- flame blue, matched the titanium loop piercing the nostril of her flat- bridged nose. Both affectations faded beside the golden honey and cinnamon of her eyes.
That exotic regard had passed over him without interest, focused as she was on handing out socks and sandwiches to the homeless who’d gathered in the park that day. But even that glancing heat had turned his watery bones to steam.
It shamed him now—without changing his belief that he’d do exactly the same again—that he’d run back to the familiar cold comforts of the league.
But one of his best fighters, Ferris Archer, had looked him over and said, “You found her.”
For the first time in a long time, Liam rejected necessity and played blissfully ignorant. “Found who?”
“You can’t just blow off the mated-talyan bond. I should know.” Archer lifted one eyebrow in a self-deprecating gesture. Winning that recent battle to save the city had proved easier than winning Sera, the first female talya in living history, though in the end, she’d only asked Archer to give up his death wish, his bloody arrogance, and his heart.
“We don’t know anything about joined talyan,” Liam objected. “Thanks to Bookie absconding with the only extant reference.” He peered at Archer. “Unless Sera has found something you haven’t told the rest of us bachelors.”
Archer schooled his expression, but a glint of sinful pleasure—and a touch of that arrogance—brightened his eyes. “She’s been working her way through the archives, trying to find any references to female talyan, the mated bond, soulless armies, and all the other crazy shit we’ve been facing lately. But there’s a lot to go through, especially with no trained Bookkeeper.”
“Then if you don’t know anything—”
“I know that even with demon-amped strength, you can’t run from this.”
“Since when do you believe in destiny?”
“Who said anything about destiny? I mean you can’t run from this fight.”
Bowing to the inevitable, Liam had sent the league’s best tracker to find the new female possessed. Haji had learned that Jilly Chan spent more time on the street than at her desk for her job with Reach Out, a halfway house for homeless teens, but she’d b
een absent from her usual haunts, no doubt subliminally unsettled by the other-realm forces focused on her. The tracker had chased the intermittent energies of the unbound demon with no luck. They’d missed picking her up before she got to her apartment one night, and then a surge in demonic activity had distracted them.
Finally, following the relentless echo in his chest, like an indefinable hunger determined to assuage itself, Liam had found the source of his unease facing down not one but three ferales, with their demonic emanations clothed in menacing corporeal husks.
The recent pack behavior of the previously solitary ferales was worrisome enough; to think that they’d had Jilly cornered, her demon’s powers latent and inaccessible until the final ascension, made his blood curdle.
Now, staring at the pint-sized woman with the hot-toddy eyes, he wondered which lucky bastard would help escort her through the terrifying new life that awaited. For the merest heartbeat, he wished . . . But no, overseeing the league itself and the repentant teshuva’s eternal mission to atone was his calling.
He glanced down at her shit-kicker boots. He didn’t necessarily envy the man chosen to guide her next steps.
She narrowed those heated eyes at him. “Demon?”
He stifled a sigh. If the league kept adding new fighters at the current rate, he’d have to come up with a welcome kit, a handbook, and probably name tags. Since when had fighting evil included management issues?
“This sounds insane, of course,” he started.
“Yeah, why stop the reality thrill ride now?”
“These . . .” He toed the butchered feralis. “These are lesser demons, drawn to the demon that has possessed you.”
She straightened, though the extra inches barely lifted the blue spikes of her hair up to his chin. “Is my head coming off next?”
Ignoring the ichor staining the hammer, he slipped the weapon back into the sheath in his coat. The move didn’t seem to particularly reassure her. He couldn’t blame her. “The teshuva demon in you is repentant, seeking to atone for its sins. Like the one in me.”
She stared at him. “You’re possessed. By a demon.”
“You’re finding it hard to believe, I know. But soon your demon will make its virgin ascension. Its influence will spread completely through you. Then you’ll understand what I’m saying. For now, I just need you to believe that you could’ve been killed tonight by these monsters. And more of these will be drawn to you until you’ve fully integrated the teshuva. So you’ll take the guard I give you.”
Her glare struck him like a match head.
He shrugged. “Think you can stop me?”
She looked down at the tiny blade in her hand and echoed his shrug.
“I’m not crazy,” he said. “And you’re not crazy, seeing these entities or listening to me. I know you’ve gone through some rough times lately, that you’ve been feeling isolated and alone, as if you’ve drifted away from your life.”
“I suppose you stalkers prefer isolated victims.” She flicked the blade in the box cutter another notch longer. “I should warn you, lonely or not, I won’t go easy.”
“No doubt.” He refrained from explaining that a demon-ridden warrior who went easy wouldn’t be much use in the never-ending battle against evil. “I’m just telling you what we know of possession. The other-realm entities that possess humans always mark people already trapped between hammer and anvil, with fire all around.”
“That doesn’t seem particularly fair.”
“Resisting temptation is easy when you’re feeling strong.”
The restless flick of the box cutter in her hands stilled, and a shadow darkened her eyes. “What do you know about temptation?”
A curl of awareness made him stiffen against his teshuva’s sudden predatory interest. “I can tell, based on the trailing ethers around you, that the demon came to you—what?—last night? Or maybe the night before.” Guilt pricked him. “I had people looking, but they couldn’t find you.”
“Until too late,” she murmured, echoing him. “Nothing like these things . . . these demons came for me before tonight.” She pinned him with a needle-sharp gaze. “Before you.” Then her eyes widened.
“What?” He stared into the black rounds of her shock-expanded pupils, seeking that first hint of violet.
“Before you,” she said again to herself. “I thought it was a dream.” Her gaze tripped over him, and his skin prickled as if she’d physically swept her hand across his body. She lingered on the mark at his temple, avoiding his eyes. “Never mind. Th is is crazy. I have to go.”
He didn’t want to let her go. Because, he convinced himself, the league needed all the fighters that came its way. Not to mention the world didn’t need any rogue talyan, confused by their demons, wandering the streets without purpose. At least the battle between good and evil offered job security.
“Take the escort I’m giving you,” he urged. “For the kids’ sake, if not for your own.”
That brought her gaze back to him. “Don’t try to manipulate me.” Despite the exotic cast of her features, her tone was raw icy Chicago street. “Especially not with the kids.”
“Noted.”
After a moment, she blew out a breath. “Fine, somebody can walk me to the halfway house. And don’t bother telling me not to go.”
He stepped back, out into the street, giving her room to come out of the alley. She kept the box cutter in hand.
She skirted the carcasses warily, her lip curled in disgust. “I don’t want one of those inside me.”
“You’ve been possessed by a teshuva, a repentant demon,” he reminded her. “These are ferales. Lesser emanations from the tenebraeternum—the demon realm—that merge and mutate human-realm matter into corporeal husks like these.”
She eyed him with only somewhat less disgust. “Maybe I don’t want a . . . a teshuva in me either.”
If only his advance team had had more time to build up a dossier on Jilly Chan. Maybe some of her secrets would give him an insight to her personality, a clue, a weakness that would bring her around more easily. Though he had a sneaking suspicion that her weaknesses were even better guarded than the rest of her.
“It chose you for a reason,” he said. “Something made you vulnerable. You let it in, and if you reject it now, it will tear open that vulnerability on its way out. You’d never be whole again, in body, mind, or spirit.”
She flattened one hand against her ribs, under her breast, as if she had a stitch in her side. “If there’s something inside me, then I’m not whole anyway, am I?”
“Better than the alternatives.”
“Which are?”
“Death and damnation now.”
“Instead of?”
“Death and damnation later.”
She huffed back something that sounded like laughter. “As a killer, you’re pretty impressive. As a welcoming committee, you suck.”
“Thank you,” he said drily. He glanced across the street, signaled with two fingers to the alley, then with another finger pointed out the path the third feralis had taken. He gave the roundup sign to have the talyan finish sweeping the area, and he fell into step beside Jilly.
She watched him. “What was that?”
“Giving the crew their orders.”
“The crew. Of other demon-possessed killers.”
He ignored the incredulity laced with mockery in her voice.
“So you’re their boss?”
He lifted one shoulder in a reluctant shrug. It felt as if the weight of the world pressed down on him there, but that was just the heft of the hammer.
She kept the width of the empty sidewalk between them. “How many demons are there?”
“Not as many repentant teshuva as quite unrepentant tenebrae. You’ll meet the rest of our league eventually.”
He watched her study the night, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared so that the ring piercing winked. She couldn’t know it, but the demon was already changing the way she looked into the
shadows. Although something about her told him she’d always faced the darkness with defiance.
Who would make a good partner for her, with her prickly punk attitude? Haji was too quiet. Jonah was too straitlaced. Maybe Ecco, with his crude humor. No, she’d eviscerate even that powerful fighter and ask no quarter.
The final stages of possession could get ugly as the human and demonic elements struggled to find a new balance. Archer and Sera had been reluctant to explain the details of how they’d gotten through that last dangerous night. He’d have to bully past their shared silence so he could make the right choice for Jilly.
God knew, possession was hard enough already.
To distract himself from the memories that threatened, he asked, “What were you doing poking around this part of town so late?”
“It’s part of my job, keeping an eye on the kids.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to keep an eye on them at the halfway house instead of roaming crap neighborhoods after midnight?”
Her lips twisted in wry agreement. “Iz got it into his head to investigate the disappearance of a friend of his.”
“What do the police—” Liam stopped himself. “I suppose the authorities don’t have a lot of time to spend on a missing street kid.”
Her lifted eyebrow implied he’d get no cookie for that brilliant deduction. “Luckily, Dee ratted him out and brought me here. And if you hadn’t come . . .” Her smile upended and vanished.
He didn’t try to reassure her. Better that she was frightened.
After a moment, she composed herself. “The kids have been talking strange lately, and Iz blamed Andre’s disappearance on things I couldn’t believe. I tried to tell him Andre had been getting into some nasty stuff. Not strange, just nasty, like dealing solvo.”
Dismay stiffened Liam’s spine. “Solvo and strange are more closely linked than you know. If Andre was using, you should write him off.”
One hard shake of her head rattled her blue spikes. “I don’t write anyone off.”
“You don’t get a choice with solvo addicts.”
“There’s a way back from everything—”
