by Jessa Slade
The first two weren’t entirely true—a smirching of Bookkeeper integrity—and the last … The last pierced him like a sharpened pencil lead.
All other extant female talyan were bound in symballein pairs, but Alyce had survived this long alone. She was special; he already knew that; so maybe she didn’t need a talya mate matched to her soul. Almost every male talyan ran solo, and other than being brutal, raging, pitiless bastards, they seemed fine with their solitude.
Caught on the point of the thought, he was forced to observe how unworthy and wrong it was. Alyce had been alone long enough. Just because he wanted …
Hell, he’d watched without a word as Maureen walked away, taking with her his last link to a world where monsters were mere abstractions. But she’d deserved a man devoted to her, who hadn’t already promised himself elsewhere, and her life had been at stake, if not her eternal soul. Hadn’t that lesson taught him anything about keeping his wants out of his work, out of his life?
He focused with more effort than should have been needed, suddenly glad Jonah had volunteered to give Alyce a tour of the sanctuary. She would have read the riot of emotions on his face and known him for a crueler bastard than any talya.
He settled on simple fact: “This shouldn’t be a problem. The leagues have always had to integrate raw recruits.”
“Not erratic rogues,” Liam countered. “Not females coming out of nowhere. And never so many so often.” He leaned back to stare up at Jilly looming over him. “Sorry, Chan, but you almost broke me.”
She pressed a smacking kiss to his forehead. “I love you too.”
He straightened to look at Sid. “Integration is grueling, which you Bookkeepers don’t appreciate, because you’re around for only one or two virgin possessions a decade.”
“Because we die of old age. How lazy.” Sid refused to think of his father back in London. He didn’t need to consult the catalog of what serving as Bookkeeper for a talyan league took from someone.
“Holding the demon in balance is hard,” the league leader said, “but holding the league together against these upheavals is worse.”
Jilly brushed her hand down the side of his face where his reven flared. “We’re here. I’m here.”
Liam captured her fingers. “Which is why I am still here.” He averted his gaze from Sid. “You know about rogues.”
Sid nodded slowly at the nonquestion. “I’ve read about long-possessed talyan who lost equilibrium with their teshuva. And newly possessed who never found it.”
“Have you seen it happen?”
Sid noticed Sera and Jilly were watching the talya men with his same reluctant fascination. “I’ve read about it,” he repeated.
“Not the same.” Archer slouched against the wall, but the stark lines of his face gave lie to his relaxed stance. “They turn against everything, with no distinction between human or tenebrae, possessed or pure-souled, good or evil. Just … carnage.”
“That is not Alyce,” Sid said.
Liam lifted one eyebrow. “She ripped apart two ferales, spitted a djinn-man, and almost kicked your head off.”
Sid resisted the urge to touch his forehead. He’d forgotten about the bruise when she pushed him away from the attack in the alley. “My head is hard enough to take it.”
“And she Dumpstered Ecco,” Liam continued.
“Archer thought that was funny.” Sid wished he didn’t sound quite so much like a schoolboy sharing excuses.
Liam glanced at Archer reproachfully.
Archer shrugged. “It was funny.”
“How much more must this league take?” Liam pushed back in his chair, hands spread wide across his desk as if he had to hold it in place. “Last year, we lost good fighters—good men, emphasis on good—against Corvus Valerius. Our three female talyan bring their own powerful energy, but as someone standing on a nuclear bomb might tell you, power is a frightening thing.”
Jilly patted his cheek. “Gee, thanks.”
Liam kissed her knuckles. “I have to wonder—is Alyce the stray neutron that starts the fatal chain reaction?”
The silence dug deep in a way only four demon-possessed warriors contemplating fatalities could dig.
Sid’s hackles ruffled between unease and anger. The agitation propelled him to his feet. “If she’s going to explode, I’d better get a front row seat so I can take good notes.”
He stalked out of the room, wondering what whispers he’d hear following him if he had demon-amplified hearing.
Damn, but since when were the Chicago talyan sticklers for propriety? London had been thinking they were all practically rogue themselves. Couldn’t they see her for the unique opportunity she was?
The warehouse echoed his footsteps back at him. The talyan had the quiet tread of most predators, but the halls were unnaturally still even for them. Where had everyone gone? Run off to hide from the freakish newcomer? Poor Alyce.
He poked his head into a few empty rooms, until a muted hooting drew him up the back stairs. The warehouse—once an architectural salvage business, a mundane front and money-laundering operation for the league until it became one of their last resources thanks to the embezzling Bookie—still kept an upper floor of antiques and junk. He hurried his steps. Maybe being surrounded by the old pieces, assisted by a few pertinent queries, would loosen Alyce’s memory.
He took the last stairs two at a time and popped through the open door.
Just as an airborne red-and-cream-striped Louis XVI chair rocketed toward his head.
He ducked, and the chair exploded against the wall behind him in a stinging shower of splinters and horsehair stuffing. “Bloody hell!”
“Sidney?”
He straightened as Alyce materialized from between the shadowy towers of old furniture. “My God, Alyce, what’s happened? Where’s Jonah? Where’s Nim?”
She hefted a counterpart to the destroyed chair in one hand, as if the carved oak weighed nothing. “Nim is hiding. Jonah went downstairs to find a hand.”
“A what?”
Another missile blasted toward them. Was that a vase? Oh God, was it a Ming?
“Sidney, get down.” Alyce swung the chair, and the vase—please let it be a reproduction—vaporized on impact in a cloud of white and blue dust.
While Liam and the others had distracted him, the rest of the talyan were trying to kill her!
At the far end of the darkened aisle, an ominous hulking form passed, clearly planning to sneak up behind them.
Sid bolted across the open foyer toward Alyce and grabbed her arm. “Come on—we have to get out of here.”
“We just started.”
“And I’m trying to stop them from ending it.”
She frowned at him, her feet planted against his tug. “But I am winning.”
“Only because you’re still standing.”
“I don’t have to knock them down. I get points if I hit them and they can’t hit me.”
“Hit you? Why—?”
The whistle of another incoming vase silenced him.
Well, it was not so much the vase as the impact of Alyce’s arm around his middle as she jerked him out of the way. The vase shattered out on the stairs.
He clamped one hand to his specs as she dragged him toward a sheltering maze of armoires. “I don’t think this is a good game for you,” she said.
“A game?” His yelp of outrage turned into a real shout as he tripped over the remains of a midcentury end table missing one of its legs. Probably used in a giggle-inducing round of stake-a-Bookkeeper. “Who’s out there?”
“All of them.” Alyce peered around the corner of one of the ceiling-high industrial shelves that held a tangle of chandeliers. Miles of chains and wires and hundreds of lampshades littered the shelves. “Except Jonah. He said he’s not a lefty.”
“Who’s on your team?”
She grabbed a 1970s-era fixture and began unscrewing the globe. The frosted glass reflected the twinkling reven around her neck. “Now? You
are.”
His pulse beat heavy in his ears, drowning out anyone who might be sneaking up on them. Had she misread their murderous intent? Or was it really a game? If so, it was a fucking murderous game.
Although maybe not to an immortal hunter.
He had grown up knowing the world teemed with monsters his schoolmates forgot about once they left their picture books behind. And yet he’d never felt so alone.
Alyce watched him a moment, then held out the glass ball. “Aim for where they will be, not where they are. They are faster than the devils on the street.”
The glass slipped against his damp palm. “How do I know where they will be?”
“They’ll be coming for me.”
“Alyce,” he hissed.
But she had already slipped from behind the cover of the shelves.
There wasn’t much floor space where she stepped out, just a haphazard jumble of tables, some of them stacked on top of each other, some of them turned top to top so the legs stuck up in a veritable woodland of potential impalements. Alyce slipped between them, her powder blue dress a ghostly blur in the darkness.
A darker form detached itself from the shadows beyond the chairs, on the other side of an upended Provençal-style butcher block kitchen table. Unless she could bend her vision around right angles, no way would Alyce see the talya from her position before he sneaked close enough to tag her.
Maybe that would end this insane game.
Or was it more than a game? A twisted talya courtship ritual, perhaps? A primitive proving of strength, speed, and fearlessness.
What a fascinating thought.
And even as his brain was polishing its spectacles and harrumphing thoughtfully, his arm drew back, muscles tensed until the feralis wound screamed. Knowing he was going to be housemates with American males, he’d watched a recording of baseball highlights on the transatlantic flight.
Those steroid-bulked athletes had nothing on his sudden fury.
Mated talya bond, indeed. Alyce was not a prize for the taking.
He hurled the lamp globe across the darkness.
Miraculously, the globe avoided every table leg and struck the skulking talya. The sound of breaking glass was loud in the stillness, and Alyce dropped to a crouch.
“You’re out, Pitch,” came a cry from above.
Barely visible in the red emergency exit lighting, Nim perched on the highest shelf, one hand braced on the heavy ceiling beam. She cut her stiff-held fingers across her throat.
On the ground, the male talya, Pitch, grumbled. “She didn’t tag me out. Westerbrook did.”
“How embarrassing,” Nim said cheerfully. “Good thing he wasn’t a salambe. Better luck next time, lover boy.”
Alyce hurried back to him and held out another globe. “Good throw. Only seven left.”
Sid clenched his teeth. How many had pitted themselves against her? The monsters.
But he refused to reach for the weapon. He wasn’t part of this game. Neither, though, could he in good conscience let it continue. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”
Nim clambered halfway down the shelves, then jumped. She landed in a lithe crouch. “That was kind of the point.”
“To hurt Alyce?”
“Stupid Bookkeeper. Of course not. To see who was willing to hurt for her.”
“That’s …” He groped for his suddenly missing words.
“Fucked up?” Nim supplied. “Hmm. It is, kind of.” She ducked back into the shadows.
“Wait,” Sid called to her. Pitch’s glare prickled between his shoulder blades. He ignored the talya until he stalked off. “Alyce, we shouldn’t—”
She brushed his arm. “This isn’t like when we fought the djinn-man, you and I.” Her earnest gaze met his, as hesitant as her fingers against his flesh. “This is for fun. No one gets hurt.” A crash and a muffled shout from somewhere deeper among the salvaged remains made him realize the game had continued, with the male talyan eliminating one another. Alyce grinned at him. “At least not hurt for long.”
Her sudden transformation from serious to prom-giddy made his breath catch. God, he’d forgotten she was still a young woman. Actually, she was not just a young woman, but in many of the ways that mattered, she’d been both cheated of and trapped by what she’d been at the moment of her possession. And yet she’d fought and killed some of the most formidable incarnations of evil walking their world. If the talyan needed to take the edge off the harsh realities of their existence with a fractionally less safe version of school yard dodgeball hide-and-seek, who was he to stop them?
Presupposing he could stop them.
He took Alyce’s hand. “I’ll try not to slow you down.”
“I limp,” she reminded him.
Whoever had triumphed in that other exchange would be stalking them now, with the advantage of superior strength and quickness, sharper eyesight and hearing, and a demon’s killer instincts.
They ducked into a row of shoulder-high racks strewn with odds and ends. Sid grabbed a fist-sized granite frog that would make a worthy missile and a … shite, the lawn gnome was plastic. But Alyce hadn’t slowed, so he hastened after her.
There. At the end of the row was a bank of smudged windows, charcoal gray from the October sky beyond. A talya-sized figure in black flitted past. Alyce breathed out softly and cocked her arm, her glitter-painted Christmas wreath–cum–ninja shuriken throwing star at the ready.
Sid whispered her name—or didn’t whisper, really, but more thought it and laid his tongue over the syllables, but she glanced toward him nonetheless. He tilted his head at the gnome in his hand and mimed lobbing it grenade-style into the next aisle, with a sweep of his other hand indicating the probable path of the investigating talya. She nodded and ghosted across the open aisle, staying in her row instead of crossing to the next row over with a shot at the talya.
She faded just a few steps into the shadows, lingering near the open aisle. Sid tossed the gnome over the top of the shelves, and the hollow plastic thunked noisily on the wooden floor.
Sure enough, the talya charged down his own row, parallel to Alyce. Without a glance at Sid, he crossed the aisle, fixated like a pouncing cat.
Maybe the talyan needed a movie night or two. Honestly, didn’t everybody know that trick?
Alyce bounded out of her hiding spot and nailed the talya in the backside. The wreath burst apart in a shower of fake bay leaves and silver glitter.
“Baird, out,” Nim called from another high perch. “Since when do you not watch your back, sparkle boy?”
“I was distracted, damn it.” The talya brushed at the seat of his jeans and grimaced at the glitter on his palm. “Well, could’ve been noodle art.”
Sid straightened, popping above the shelves where Baird could see him. “Yeah, that nickname would be worse.”
The talya shot him the middle finger and a big grin full of white teeth. “Al dente, asshole.”
From the corner of his eye, back the way they had come, Sid glimpsed a dark shape. Nim and Baird were trading another gleeful insult. Alyce stood halfway into the open aisle, her baby blue housedress much the worse for wear but still a pale gleaming target. She watched the byplay with her head cocked and that delighted little smile curving her lips.
Before he could call her name—whispered, shouted, or anything else—the bombardment was inbound.
As kitchen sinks went, it wasn’t big—more prep-sink-sized. It was still going to hurt like a son of a bitch.
As heroic dives went, his was kind of prep-sized too. But he just needed to get between Alyce and whichever talya was sneaking up on her in the hopes of winning—or pinning—her heart.
He was still in midair when the sink smashed into his shoulder—the feralis-bitten one, of course.
Alyce spun toward him in a pale blue blur. Before his knee crashed into the floorboards, her arms were already reaching out to him, slowing his descent.
She saved his skull, but the point of his shoulder rebound
ed off the floor. The gray numbness was obliterated in a blinding white wave of pain like newsprint in a gasoline flame.
He cursed, not quite as loud as Alyce with her double-octave growl of outrage.
“What the hell, Pitch,” Nim snapped as she jumped down to the floor. “You’re out of the Alyce game.”
“I wasn’t aiming at her.”
Sid righted himself, his good hand braced on the floor. Always nice to know he’d thrown himself into the line of fire for nothing.
Baird shook his head. “Westerbrook isn’t a valid target.”
“Not anymore,” Pitch said. “C’mon—I didn’t use the claw-foot tub.”
Pushing Alyce’s hand away, Sid drew himself to his feet. He refused to steady himself on the nearest shelf, and for a wonder his spectacles had stayed on. “That’s it. This game is over.”
Jonah hurried down the aisle toward them. A multipronged hook was attached to his stump in place of his right hand. “Why’s everybody standing around? She didn’t get everybody out already, did she?” He looked at Nim. “Do I owe you that fifty bucks?”
Nim shook her head. “Westerbrook called a halt. I think we shocked him with our childish behavior.”
Jonah turned a glower on Sid. “We’re not allowed a little fun?” Nim wrapped her fingers around his forearm, just above the cuff where the hook connected, becoming part of him. In the shadows of forgotten furniture, a half-dozen massive shapes converged, talya blackness broken only by heat-lightning flares of violet. They were the remaining hopeful suitors.
Alyce gripped a Christmas icicle ornament like a knife in her hand.
Sid returned Jonah’s glower. “I guess my dictionary shows a different definition of fun. Bowling, for example.”
“Well, you’re playing in our world now,” someone said.
Sid didn’t bother identifying the speaker, though he thought it was Lev, the lanky redheaded talya—or maybe Amiri, the tall Maori. Didn’t matter. They obviously all felt the same way.
