by Jessa Slade
He should be trying to pull her back from this dangerous path. This wasn’t how the league had outlined its eternal mission. Even Corvus and his djinni—the soulless, brain-damaged, malevolent fiend who wanted to tear down the Veil between hell and earth to pit demons directly against the gates of heaven—had sounded disapproving.
And Liam didn’t much care at the moment. With Jilly tucked against his chest, the pain—well, it hadn’t disappeared, but he didn’t care about that either. In fact, the whole damn world could end right now. . . .
No, not quite yet.
He lowered his head, set his lips softly over Jilly’s. The warmth of her breath moved through him and melted the salambe ice. “Now it can end,” he murmured.
“But you just started.” Her hand slipped down from his face to land above his heart, her gaze focused on him as if demons weren’t shredding all around them. “Are you okay?”
Never mind the demons. She was in his arms. “I’m fine.” He glanced beyond her. The space around them shifted between dark hallway and ominous gray void. Only her cinnamon-honey eyes half streaked with violet and the blue spikes of her hair maintained their color. Well, and the carnelian of her lips where his mouth had roughened her. If they were lost between the realms . . . “Can you get us back out?”
“Out—?” She followed his gaze. “Uh-oh.”
He withheld a smile. “Indeed. The salambes followed the soulflies after you. It would sure be nice to leave them stuck here.”
She looked down at the bracelet, pressed between them where her hand lay curled against his chest. The slowly unraveling demon entities swirled closer around them, circling the drain. “The knot work. It’s not just a pattern for us to follow. It’s a trap in itself.”
“Hopefully not for us.” Despite his attempt at reassurance, he didn’t let go of her. “Its powers are definitely more convoluted than I suspected. Why I didn’t guess that with you as its owner . . .” When she wrinkled her nose at him, he gave her an affectionate squeeze. “We’re not too deep. I still see the hallway.” Barely.
“What do we do?”
“Like last time. In your apartment.” He kept his voice even, but his pulse raced, roaring in his ears with an urgency to rival a runaway train.
Her eyes widened, and he could only wonder what his heartbeat, under her hand, felt like. “You want to have sex in the middle of a demon attack?” She shook her head. “I guess it was a demon attack last time too. The teshuva, I mean. Not you.”
But it had been almost an assault, desperate and demon fueled. He remembered her body straining under his, breath frantic. Though bending steel railroad tracks would have been easier, he sidelined the memory. “Just like that time, we want to stay on the human side of the Veil.”
“You said the league has always reinforced its humanity through wine, women, and war.”
“ ‘Wine, women, and song.’ The phrase is ‘song,’ not ‘war.’ And I’m sure I phrased it less archaically.”
“You didn’t. Do you have a bottle of fine Irish whiskey on you somewhere?” She skimmed her hands inside his coat. His chest tightened in response, and he bit back a groan. “No? I suppose we could fight each other.”
“We already do.” He forced his taut muscles to move slowly, to gently touch her cheek, but his hand trembled. He’d been so harried last time, he’d forgotten to savor the moment. “I can’t remember how it goes.”
“We snipe. We kiss. We snipe some more.” She sounded breathless.
“I would have done anything to bring you through possession.”
“And you’ll do anything now to bring us out.” The gray void leached the emotion from her voice, and hurt darkened her eyes.
She was twisting his words. “Damn it. Stop sniping.”
“But that only leaves—”
He silenced her with his mouth.
Archaic, indeed. He sank his fingers into her spiked hair, drew her upright. Somewhere, the hammer fell with a faint, unheeded thud. He tasted sweat, sweet cherries, blood. Archaic? Downright primitive. His heart, which had been just this side of a demon’s frozen dinner a minute ago, raged in his chest until he thought they could follow its beat back to the human world.
Her hands inside his coat traced over his ribs and locked behind him. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, would have scored him had he been naked. If only. She was small enough to tuck under his chin and when she leaned into him, her breasts yielded with soft seduction, but God, she matched his grip with a clasp every bit as furious.
Alone in a foreign land, ersatz father to his pack of lost boys, he had given up any dream of passion even before the demon had come to him. That the dangers of hell itself gave him a second chance was the definition of absurd.
And he couldn’t get enough of her. As he slanted his mouth over hers—hot, wet, hard—the hunger in him had nothing to do with his ravager demon, nothing to do with her discord demon running roughshod over his discipline. No, it was her, her alone. Her fearless temper, her flashing eyes, her quick tongue. Ah, her tongue, darting, teasing him . . . He wanted her beyond all sense, never mind his worries about Archer’s willingness to sacrifice the world for this feeling, never mind Corvus’s oblique warnings and the djinni’s leer.
This was more dangerous than demons.
His head swirled as she matched him, breath for gasping breath. Or was that the churned remnants of the salambes, torn apart by this woman? What was she that she could rip through the demons’ defenses—through his own—with a wave of her hand?
And what the hell was he thinking, whipping up the frenzy?
Not thinking. For once, the ceaseless uncertainties in his brain, the doubts in his soul, all were swept away by the raw desire singing through his veins.
He savored the weight of her, canted against him. The kiss shifted, deepened, and he fit her curves to his body like working molten metal against an anvil. Ah, except he was the one getting harder. And she didn’t rest quietly in his hands. She twined around him, molded him to her wishes until he couldn’t be sure where his craving ended and hers began. Didn’t care, because they were one and the same.
Her rebellion challenged his restraint, set him free. And it felt good, as good as her body rocking against his. She did not allow him to box away his feelings; she needled him until he exploded. Her grasp shifted, raking down his back to clutch fistfuls of denim and his ass, and she yanked his hips tight to her belly. His arousal surged at the friction, and he panted against her mouth.
He was going to explode if he didn’t have her. All of her. Now. No common sense, no self-preservation, no enduring quest—nothing—would stop him.
Her hand in the middle of his chest set him back on his haunches. He caught himself before he tipped over.
Cold, dank air rushed between them. The abrupt separation seared his senses worse than the teshuva’s alien intrusion. He ached all over, as if the bolt of longing that went through him had left him torn apart in ways even hell’s torturers shuddered to contemplate. To add insult, he had the uncomfortable sensation that his hand, braced behind him, had landed in mouse turds.
“All done,” she murmured.
The hallway was dark and empty except for them. Welcome back to the world.
CHAPTER 16
Jilly bit her lip. Not that such a tiny sting could obliterate the sensation of Liam’s mouth crushing hers.
Her whole body tingled, as if his mouth had been all over her. No wonder the demon realm had tossed them back; even hell recognized the unacceptable temptation between them.
He was her boss. And an arrogant jerk most of the time. Plus, he hadn’t really wanted to kiss her.
Not true, her body screamed. Even the most unrepentant demon with its cozening lies couldn’t have faked that erection. He’d wanted it, and by God, she wanted him to admit it. He couldn’t just keep using this intense chemistry between them as the flash powder in his demon skirmishes. Too many more scorching kisses like that and she’d blow up
too.
Yeah, hell so didn’t want any part of this battle.
“They’re gone.” Liam rose to his feet, graceful as always, as if they hadn’t just wrestled free of the demon realm. Tongue wrestling apparently counted.
But he was right about the gone part. Nothing remained in the hallway except the two crescent knives on the floor, smeared in blood and birnenston. Corvus, the salambes, even the sparkle of slivered souls, gone. “Was Corvus sucked into the trap?”
Liam shook his head. “If the djinni had been, the body would still be here.”
He held a hand out to her and pulled her to her feet. He kept her hand in his and gently twisted her wrist so the bracelet winked at them. The crevices of the knot work gleamed with a strange iridescence. “Like ichor stuck in its teeth,” he murmured thoughtfully. “The mouth of the trap. And the throat led back to the tenebraeternum to swallow them all. My ever-hungry ravager is suitably impressed.”
“And I’m a little . . . unsettled,” Jilly said. Admitting as much rankled, but she’d seen he didn’t bear the weight of command lightly. “Why did this come to me? I’m the last person on earth who ever wanted to trap anyone.”
“Who better to be in charge of it?”
“Um, you? You’re clan chieftain of the league anyway.”
“It’s too narrow a torque to fit around my neck. For whatever reason—the teshuva’s reason—the power came to you, Jilly.”
What did she fear? The power the bracelet gave her over evil? Or the implied power that Liam, as chief evil fighter, had over her? She was totally willing to hand him the knot-work trap, and she trusted him with the fate of the world, yet still her heart raced when he touched her.
His blue eyes turned unfathomable, and he released her to collect his hammer. “The commitments never waver. And neither can we.”
When he straightened, he seemed taller than ever. She stiffened her spine to match him. Tentatively, she reached out with her demon senses, not much different from trying to sniff out the first whiff of something burning on the stove. “No tenebrae left in the building. The malice outside are gone too.”
“Escaped or sucked down.” He pulled out his cell phone. Over the hiss of a bad connection, he spoke quickly.
She bent to retrieve her knives and wipe them on her jeans. When she straightened to stick them in her pocket, the hallway blurred around her, and for a moment she thought the demon realm was rising around them again.
“Easy.” Liam grabbed her, and she realized she’d tipped far to one side. “Too much for you?”
She wanted to scoff, make a smart-ass comment about how he might be six- foot-and-did-it-matter-after-that, but he was definitely nothing she couldn’t handle. But he wasn’t talking about himself, and then she’d just reveal that she had thoughts about his too-much self.
Before she could figure out what her next smart-ass comment should be, he swung her into his arms.
She’d always thought petite sucked. People thought less of her because there was less of her. But cradled against his chest, she wondered if she’d been blind to the bennies.
“You’re worse than me,” he murmured. “I called Archer to bring a car.”
Finally, she found her voice. “I can walk.” Not much of a smart-ass comment. Sounded kind of weak, actually. Especially muffled against the expanse of his chest.
“All the way back to the warehouse?” He tightened his grip.
“I was just dizzy for a second.” Where she curled her fist in the shadow of his coat lapel, the bracelet glimmered. “It’s kind of pretty, huh?”
“Pretty dangerous.” He started down the hallway without releasing her.
She tucked in her feet to keep from scuffing on the walls down the stairs. “That wasn’t business as usual, was it?”
His jaw flexed. “Sera has a connection to the tenebraeternum that seems unique in league annals. Archer did a piss-poor job of describing it, but it sounded nothing like that. I wouldn’t have guessed there’d be worse.”
Great, she was uniquely dangerous. She was always telling her kids that playing the lone-gunman rebel off on a wild tear was a bad idea. She even thought she’d walked the talk. At the moment, though, she wasn’t walking at all, and despite the strong arms wrapped around her, she felt very much alone again. “Could we catch Corvus the same way? Could we sweep all demons out of the city?”
He shook his head. “I still don’t know how this fits.”
And by “this” he meant her. There was no “we.” She was just another cog in his cosmic battle machine. How’d she keep managing to forget that? He certainly never did. The whole time his kiss had wiped her mind, he’d been plotting strategies and doing crosswords.
How desperate was she? She didn’t want to answer that.
At the bottom of the stairs, she struggled out of his grasp. He had to put her down or risk dumping her.
Couldn’t dump her when they’d never been steady, her helpful brain reminded her. Sure, now it was back online with smart-ass comments directed at herself.
The main floor of the building was a vacant convenience store with only dust behemoths on the empty shelves. Liam easily broke the locks on the roll-down security gate and wrenched up the steel curtain. The screech and stink of rusty metal made her stiffen, demon senses scanning for salambes.
Liam slanted a glance at her. “We’re okay now.”
“Now,” she muttered.
The rush of colder air swept the room, and the dust behemoths tumbled in frantic circles like they couldn’t wait to get out either. Liam stepped out onto the street, his face lifted to the night, his hand near the grip of his hammer despite his reassurances.
Demon sign streaked the sidewalk and the stanchions for the L as if black- light paint. But that was it. Even the psychic screams left behind when the teshuva overwhelmed their prey were missing.
Liam’s gaze was shuttered. “You got rid of them all.”
Which, last she heard, was a good thing, so why the wary look? Unless he thought he was next. After her shamelessly soliciting his kiss, she couldn’t blame him for sensing a trap. Ironic, considering that was her hang-up.
She kept a chunk of space between them as she lifted her hand near a smear of ether on a light post. It matched the unearthly phosphorescence deep in the weave of the knot-work bracelet. “What sign does a fleeing djinni leave?”
“It’s still riding Corvus’s body, so big footprints, half-smoked cigarette butts, getaway cars. The usual bad-guy spoor.”
She surveyed the cracked concrete with its scattering of trash. Down the urban canyon of buildings, the rumble of another train sounded. “Not going to help us tonight, is it?”
He shook his head. “Not now that it’s obvious we won’t listen to his pitch about joining the dark side.”
“You wanted to keep him talking?”
“Little harder to keep up his end of the conversation after you put two knives in his chest.”
“What did you really think you’d learn? That he’s a bad guy?”
“And you’re a badass.” Liam shrugged. “The djinni-possessed and the talyan have always walked separate paths, the djinn to greater dissolution, the teshuva to repentance. Why did he seek us out? What does he think is changing?” His expression darkened. “He said he has learned something from us. I shudder to think that we’ve given him any insight or advantage.”
“He’s probably just trying to make us doubt ourselves. Isn’t that the devil’s MO?”
Liam studied her, blue eyes as shadowed as when he spoke of Corvus. “Doubt has never stopped you, though, has it? I find myself drawn to that.”
She bit the inside of her lip as she tried to unravel the compliment—was it a compliment? Damn it, now he was making her doubt. “I thought we did good. We practically burned a hole through hell.”
“Is that what we’ve shown the djinni?” He closed his coat, tucking away his hammer—and any other evidence that he’d ever been drawn to her. “Corvus had mar
ginal control over the ferales when we tangled with him last fall. Now he has this new species of tenebrae, and he’s able to manipulate the salambes. This is not a comforting progression.”
She touched the bracelet. “But you have—the league has—more weapons now too.”
He hesitated. “Right.”
She bristled. “What? I’m not a worthy addition to your crew?”
“I don’t know what you are. Or Sera either, for that matter. All I know is that she and Archer do scary things together, things that, as far as I’ve seen, have driven us closer to the edge, not eased us back. You don’t unleash a nuclear weapon when you still think you can save the world. And as for you—”
“Us,” she insisted. “You were right there with me, remember? In the demon realm.” She lifted her chin. Let him deny it. “Kissing me.”
But of course he didn’t deny it. He was too good for that. Instead, he just took a half step back. Right. Just denying her. Though she hadn’t moved, she felt as if the pocketed blades had gone through her jacket into her belly.
“There’ve been no female talyan for two thousand years or more.” His voice was low, almost lost in the approaching rumble of the train. “Maybe there was a reason the mated-talyan bond went extinct.”
Not just denying her, but her whole gender. Or subspecies or essence or whatever.
“Or maybe the males were just fucking blind,” she snapped, “and doomed the world to rampant evil rather than admit . . .” Admit what? That they had something together? Had what? “Rather than admit they needed each other. Why have a real team when you can always rustle up a tribunal to ask if women even have souls?” Her voice rose over the clatter of the train on the tracks above them. “Let’s just burn the witch, make her cover her hair, deny her the vote, or pay her less for equal work. Screw you and your sexist demon. Maybe I don’t need you either.”
A wind, cold as winter iron, dry as charcoal ashes, hissed around them. Centered on her. She held up her hand. Whether the bracelet was the source or lodestone of the wind, she couldn’t tell, but the knot work gleamed with preternatural intensity in the light of the train passing above.
