Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  He drove away from her apartment with Sera in the front passenger seat cradling her stinking jar of goo. A glance in the rearview mirror showed him Jilly staring out her window, her expression utterly closed. As if she were the wronged party.

  Didn’t she understand that she—all right, they—had crossed a line when they played in the demon zone? Bad enough to be infested with a teshuva. He’d resigned himself to that long ago. But he wasn’t going to compound his sin by risking the barrier that protected the world.

  He’d seen the change in Archer when Sera came, the shift in focus. More than once, he’d wondered if he would have to intervene and separate them. Even nonchalantly voicing the thought to Sera had garnered exactly the reaction he feared.

  Insisting on twin beds probably wouldn’t be enough, not when they had risked the world for each other already.

  If that devil- may-care recklessness was the result of the mated-talyan bond, no wonder the early league leaders had run screaming in the other direction. With the fate of the league and what remained of the talyan’s souls on his head, he could never allow himself the same indulgence as Archer. He had to accept the price he’d paid and remain faithful to the commitments he’d made, that all the other talyan made, night after night.

  Regardless of the desires that came to him in his dreams.

  Still he couldn’t help trying to force her gaze in the mirror. He almost missed the exit onto Lower Wacker and had to swerve to avoid the concrete pylon that marked the entrance to the bottom deck.

  “About those moving violations,” Sera muttered. He gave her the mildest glance and she subsided.

  Abruptly, from the backseat, Jilly said, “We should go back to the bar.”

  “It was that kind of night,” Sera agreed.

  Jilly didn’t crack a smile. “Not to drink. If solvo dealers are still selling out of the Coil, I bet I can pick up a trail of soulflies there. Maybe they’ll lead us to Corvus again.”

  “Soulflies?” Sera sat straighter.

  “Never mind and no,” Liam ground out. “This round with Corvus was a wash. Let’s quit while we’re not too far behind.”

  “Quit?” Sera boggled at him. “Since when—?”

  “Since Corvus can call down on command more tenebrae than we’ve ever dealt with at once. Since Jilly and I—” He gritted his teeth. “Since I said so.”

  After a moment, Sera nodded. “Oh. Right. Since then.”

  Liam realized Jilly was finally looking at him. Despite the intermittent flashes of the overhead fluorescent streetlights, her golden eyes were hidden.

  “So you’re not going to unleash me to do what I can?” Her voice was low, but with no echo of the demon. Like she wasn’t even upset. But he noticed she didn’t include him in who’d contributed what to the night’s clusterfuck.

  He tried for a small smile, but it made his jaw ache. “I’m just not the unleashing kind of guy. When we have another chance—a chance that won’t make things worse than they are now—we’ll take it. But not before then.”

  She didn’t move and his demon was dormant, so he couldn’t possibly have sensed the minute shift of air. Nevertheless, he felt her withdrawal.

  Well, she’d heard Sera. With all their girl talk, she must know as well as he did that was what had to be. They didn’t have to beat it out like dull iron just to make the necessary severing edge.

  Dawn was coming. Between the support pillars on the open side of the tunnel, the river reflected the silvering sky. Even with his enhanced sight, the demon sign by which the teshuva hunted would be harder to see as daylight banished the creatures that prowled the night through all the ages.

  Although lately those creatures had been coming out of the shadows. A circumstance that was only slightly more terrifying than female talyan.

  Once again, he was flailing, out of his depth. But this time, the weapon at his disposal was more devastating than the war.

  Disposal. The word appalled him. Jilly wasn’t disposable. And yet she had to be, just like all the talyan were. For all intents, despite their immortality, they were already dead to the world. They were fated to die for the teshuva’s cause.

  In the cold spring light, the grungy warehouse windows reflected nothing back, gray as the demon realm. He pulled the car around back, glad to see most of the league’s vehicles accounted for. He wanted to hear the night’s reports, bring them up to speed—if a confused standstill could be called speed—and then climb into a shower hot enough to burn away even a salambe’s chill.

  He parked, and his passengers got out. He sat a moment, until Sera leaned in. “You coming?”

  “Yeah.” He forced his hands off the steering wheel. The poor hatchback couldn’t carry him far enough to escape this. Why he’d even think it . . . ?

  He remembered what Jilly had said about trying to get away. It hadn’t worked for her either.

  Liam followed the women to the warehouse.

  Sera held up the jar, peering at the greenish glow in the morning light. “Jilly, if you could get your landlady to give up the recipe, maybe I could find a reference in the league records. They tend to be rather snide about lay interpretations of evil and folk remedies against it, but it couldn’t hurt to look.”

  For a heartbeat, Liam wondered if he should allow Sera’s continued access to the archives. Previous male talyan had closed ranks once before; he had a duty to ensure their sacrifices weren’t in vain. But since Bookie’s betrayal over the winter, he’d had no time to recruit a new Bookkeeper. Sera’s modern medical background was the closest thing he had to scientific expertise. If anyone was going to make a breakthrough on that front, it would be her.

  Whether that would be to the league’s benefit was the question.

  Before he decided, Jilly shrugged. “I’m not sure she’ll ever give up her ancient Chinese secrets. How about we find out if it works first?”

  One of the docking-bay doors was open. The talyan had gathered inside, most of them still streaked with blood and ichor. Rank sulfur wreathed the gathering. Which explained the open door.

  Liam surveyed the weary faces and wondered if his own looked as drawn. “Place your bets on who had the crappiest night?”

  The set of broad shoulders softened with muted laughter, and a few of the men pulled out chairs to sit, letting go of some of their tension.

  “Pull that door closed, somebody, and kick the heater.” He pulled off his coat and slung it over an unclaimed chair. The hammer clanged. “No sense freezing off the half of our asses that wasn’t handed to us.”

  From across the room, Perrin piped up. “I had more than half.” He turned to display the brutal tear down his back that had shredded his shirt and jeans, though he’d managed to cinch up his belt to maintain decency. The raking claw marks had continued down into skin, but his teshuva’s healing had made that mostly decent too. “Three ferales, attacking in a pack. Remember when they used to hunt alone, like us?” He tilted his head with a good-old-days sigh.

  A smattering of applause and a wolf whistle from Ecco made Liam wince. When he’d invited them to rehash their night, he hadn’t meant for them to share quite so intimately.

  But Lex stood, head up, arms straight at his sides, as if he were participating in a spelling bee. “I got mobbed by probably a gross of malice.”

  “They’re gross, all right,” someone quipped.

  Lex grinned and rolled up his sleeves where malice slime had left marks like frostbite. “I couldn’t drain them fast enough. If Ecco hadn’t come along, my teshuva would’ve been overwhelmed instead.”

  “You know how I like my malice,” Ecco drawled.

  Liam cocked one eyebrow. “Over easy?”

  Sera spoke up from where she’d tucked herself under Archer’s arm despite the ichor smeared down his sleeve. “I bet Liam and Jilly win the office pool with their Corvus encounter.”

  Instantly, the room sobered, and all eyes swiveled to Liam. His amusement at the camaraderie, if not the casualties, wit
hered.

  He gave a quick rundown from the time they’d gone back to the haint apartment building, not glancing at Jilly as he left out the part about their side trip into the tenebraeternum. And the kiss wasn’t exactly relevant either, so he skipped that too.

  He’d barely paused for breath when the questions started.

  “So all the tenebrae are under Corvus’s control?”

  “How are we supposed to destroy every solvo haint in the city?”

  “What else is out there waiting for us?” And a dozen more.

  He let the questions peter out. “I think the fact Corvus—or, more accurately, his djinni—lured us in and wanted to deal means he doesn’t have the kind of control he wants, that he’s still not sure he can work around us.”

  “Yet,” Ecco said.

  “Yet,” Liam agreed. “But while he’s escalated the confrontation, it doesn’t change our mission.”

  From the back of the room, Archer pointed out, “Just makes it irrelevant.” When the other talyan glanced at him, he continued. “If Corvus is still trying to tear open the Veil, how often can we hope to sweep up the aftermath?”

  Liam kept himself from bristling. After almost two centuries, the futility of their eternal task had maddened Archer. Though Sera had tempered his solitary, suicidal ferocity, his disgust with what he’d derisively called their supernatural-garbage-men status remained. Sera’s involvement in the league’s Bookkeeper duties had brought Archer back into the fold—a mixed blessing.

  “We bested Corvus once.” Liam gave Archer a long, level stare. “But the cost was high.”

  He’d heard Archer’s report of that night four months ago in Corvus’s lair—although now he was discovering that Archer hadn’t shared everything either—but he’d decided at the time not to relay too much detail to the other talyan. It was enough for them to know that after millennia of separate paths, the league and one djinni were on a collision course. Now that inevitable collision seemed closer than ever.

  To a man—and woman, apparently—the talyan were a fierce and volatile crowd. Their immortality made them rash, and their damaged souls meant they didn’t necessarily care. He’d taken it upon himself to make sure those demon-riddled souls had every chance possible to recover some measure of salvation. Which wouldn’t be theirs if they strayed from their mission.

  In a low, relentless voice, he made his point. “We survived the battle, but we lost a Bookkeeper and a good fighter when we never have enough. We had to abandon our home, and when Corvus’s high- rise blew, we skirted too close to revealing our presence to the whole city. You think it’s tough now draining tenebrae bloated on everyday spite and decay? Imagine if you have to work around the terror and mayhem of a populace that learns evil walks incarnate and they can neither see it, believe it, nor fight it off.”

  He waited while that sank in, then continued. “Corvus has us at a disadvantage, since he is willing to work in plain sight, while we must keep to the shadows. We can’t help him make things worse by bringing the horde-tenebrae into the light.”

  From their set expressions, he could see they were not happy with his assessment, but neither did they disagree.

  Until Jilly took a step forward. “But are we saving the city, or just our souls?”

  His hands flexed, driven by the reflexive surge of his demon to her challenge. He tamped it down, the heels of his palms hard against his thighs lest he reach for her.

  Her gaze burned over him like hot coals, lingered on his fists, as if she thought he would silence her with fingers around her throat. Not that she’d let that stop her.

  How could he explain that he didn’t want to silence her, but save her—never mind the city—from herself?

  Her stare burned deeper. “I always wanted the kids at the halfway house to know until they addressed their problems honestly, they’d always feel like outsiders, outcast even from themselves.”

  “Is this a ‘face your demons’ speech?” Ecco asked.

  She glanced at the other talya but didn’t smile. “What if everyone did? Not just us, but everyone in the city?”

  Sera stepped up beside Jilly. “I’ve wondered the same. If there are people like Jilly’s landlady, regular humans, who are fighting the demons, maybe we should find them and join forces. There’s no reason we have to be alone in this.”

  With his demon hovering halfway to attack, Liam felt the talyan weighing the words as clearly as if they’d picked up stones, hefted the burdens in their hands. They didn’t appreciate how their calling was fragile as glass, that every night they walked one wrong step away from hell.

  They also didn’t know that he and Jilly had been dancing right there on the edge. If they found out, they’d never listen to him, and he dreaded the day he watched them ridden down by the darkness of the world, weighed down by the darkness in their souls.

  “There’s one reason.” At the demon lows in his voice, violet flickered in the eyes around him as the others responded to the implied threat.

  Only Jilly’s gaze was clear. “What?”

  He touched his temple, drawing attention to the most obvious sign of the demon rampant. The reven smoldered beneath his fingers, his human flesh incompatible with the other-realm marking, even though they were inextricably intertwined.

  And that was the reason. “We are alone because we are marked as damned, and we must atone. That is our only mission, our only fight.”

  The harsh conviction rolled through them as if those stones had backfired.

  “You’re the one who pointed it out to me,” he reminded Jilly softly. “I am soul brother to Corvus. And so are we all.”

  Despite the roaring propane heater in the ceiling, the warehouse had gone chill. One wrong touch and they would all shatter. The ravager in him coiled and uncoiled. It knew jagged edges made better weapons.

  Even more softly, knowing they would hear, he said, “But we will fight. I promise you.” His heart bled to hear the ring of truth.

  After a moment, Jonah nodded. “The way to repentance is between you and your God.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Or your demon, as the case may be. It is no longer our place to convert others.”

  Ecco snorted. “Converting was always your deal, missionary man, not mine. I don’t care what Corvus has in mind—bashed in like it is—as long as I get plenty of slaughter time. It’ll all come out in the wash.” He snorted again. “Well, not all of it. Unless you use bleach. Whatever. I’m beat. Wake me up if tomorrow doesn’t get here.”

  His exit broke the pained tableau. Archer touched Sera’s shoulder, drawing her away, but not before she murmured something to Jilly, who didn’t respond.

  A palace coup? Liam couldn’t dredge up the interest to care as he talked to a few more talyan on their way out. They’d all had bad nights, their clashes with tenebrae fiercer than ever. Underneath their murmured reaffirmations that they’d made it through in one piece—or at least pieces that could be put back together—was the unspoken echo to the question Archer had raised: Did it matter?

  Their doubt drained him as he subtly reinforced their focus. Their intensity he never questioned, and their strength. But those sterling attributes could become glittering knives turned against the world if ever they lost track of their mission, like he’d indulged the spiraling dark obsession with Jilly.

  Though undercurrents of unease still swirled in violet eyes, exhaustion took them to their rooms. The end times offered that advantage, at least: keeping the union of supernatural killers too busy with overtime to review their retirement policy.

  When he was alone in the docking bay, he turned off the heater and the lights. He stood in the empty, cavernous space for a moment, but not even the flicker of a lone soulfly disturbed the darkness.

  He went inside.

  The halls were every bit as empty, but a subdued clatter drew him to the kitchen.

  Jilly. Of course. He leaned in the doorway.

  She’d only turned on the counter light, leaving her a
drift in the otherwise murky room. A pile of neatly split eggshells glistened whitely at her elbow. She didn’t look around at him as she cracked another egg. “I’m not trying to win friends and influence people, but the crew will need something for breakfast.”

  “Maybe you can mix in some of Lau-lau’s repellent.”

  She finally glanced over at him, uncertainty in the hunch of her shoulders. “I didn’t think you’d even talk to me.”

  “Why? Just because you’re trying to destroy the league from within?”

  “I’m not—” She grabbed a bowl and began whisking furiously.

  “You’re about to tell me a discord demon can’t make omelets without breaking some eggs.”

  “I’m not making omelets again. I’m making quiche. It’ll keep until tomorrow when everyone gets up.”

  “Jilly,” he said softly as he walked toward her

  She put the bowl down with a decisive thump, as if she didn’t want to be tempted to throw it at him. “I am not the teshuva, not just discord.”

  “It chose you for a reason.”

  “But I’m not trying to challenge you,” she said. When he snorted, she pursed her lips with a wry tilt of her head but didn’t back down as he closed the distance between them. “Not challenge you for responsibility to the league, anyway. I have no illusions what kind of leader I’d be. Still, I really believe I can make a difference.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” He lifted one hand when she started to protest. “Your life has been about going a different way. That’s why you got involved with the halfway house, to keep the kids out of the sort of trouble you grew up in. But you can’t save the talyan by ending this fight. Only in the fighting can we be saved.”

  She stared at him.

  “You think I’m blind, but I’m not.” Involuntarily, he touched his temple with the pointed knuckles of his hard-clenched fist. “I see very clearly. I see that we are caught for eternity in this battle. That is the contract we inadvertently signed in our possession. But seeing clearly doesn’t mean there’s a way out of the trap.”