Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  He had big hands, strong hands. She sighed. Big hands for big books—she wasn’t big.

  As if he’d heard the thought, he stopped to display the penned illustrations. The page looked as if someone had taken an entire goose and dipped it upside down in ink and dashed it across the paper.

  “These are depictions of the reven of some of the strongest talyan ever to fight.” He traced one complex swirl. “The depth and intricacy of the mark echoes the power of the teshuva.”

  She lifted her chin. “Mine is nothing like that.”

  He flipped a few more pages, then more and more until the lines petered out. These reven were as much like the first as a cup of tap water resembled Lake Michigan wind-whipped to viciousness on a stormy day. “More like this,” he agreed.

  “Does possession by a weak demon mean I am less damned?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice because, at least to this question, she already knew the answer.

  Sidney gave her a chiding look. “Your teshuva may not have the same destructive capabilities as some of its brethren, but the strength of its repentance is no less.”

  “Will that save me?”

  “Save what? Your soul or your life?” He hurried on, as if he didn’t want to hear which she meant. “As Nanette noticed, the emanations of a weaker teshuva get disrupted—tangled—in competing energy. When it can’t hold its coherence against another signal, it will be altered and lost.”

  “You think that is what happened to me? I’ve been lost because my devil isn’t strong enough to save me?”

  Sidney backed away—giving himself room to think, she decided—and leaned against the counter across from the exam table. “I think your teshuva is trying very hard to save you. To save you from things you don’t want to remember.”

  She froze. He stiffened too.

  Maybe he hadn’t been giving himself room to think, but room to escape.

  “I do want to remember.” She made sure each word came out distinct from the others, lest there be misunderstanding.

  “I don’t think the teshuva believes you.”

  “And do you not believe me?”

  He marshaled his words with the same care the illustrators of the book had used when laying out their reven drawings, in tidy blocks, no matter how messy the depiction within. “I know part of you wants to remember. But which part is you, which part is the demon, which part is the other parts of you?”

  “I am not so complicated,” she protested.

  “We all are. Even me. Part of me wants …” He shook his head. “But that doesn’t matter.”

  What did he want? The urge to know prickled through her. This must be how he felt about his many books—to open them up and to know them.

  She stared at the capable width of his hands as he thumbed farther through the book. Toward the end, intricate and simple reven shared the pages, compared and contrasted.

  His finger landed on one. “Ah, you don’t have to worry about what your demon wants. But everything else will worry. You have a dread demon.”

  She tilted her head and squinted at the design, but it seemed too fanciful to match hers.

  “Don’t believe me?” He repeated her words with a little smile and took another step closer to her, one forefinger on the book, the other at her neckline. Since she was sitting up on the table, her face was even with his and he had to reach up to touch her. “It starts boldest here.” His finger was warm at the crook of her neck and shoulder. “Maybe not so dark on you as in the book, but close enough. A sudden burst of energy, like a startled heartbeat.” He traced her reven forward. “And here it stutters, like a frantic pulse.”

  Oh, what was her pulse doing? As if he controlled it with his words, her blood throbbed.

  His voice lowered—and the throbbing in her body spread lower too—as his finger dipped into the hollow of her throat. “And here it pools and flares. …”

  “Like what?” she whispered.

  “Like …”

  But words seemed to fail him, so she canted forward and pressed her lips to his.

  His touch had not soothed her hurts; instead he had kindled a fever.

  And it was good; deliriously good.

  The torn gown she’d been holding slipped from her fingers as she reached for him, to bring him closer. He made a noise. Was that supposed to be a protest? She measured the width of his unhurt shoulder with eager pets of her hand, and then he was between her knees, the rough denim of his pants rubbing her bare inner thighs.

  She rubbed back, and that was better than good.

  “Alyce,” he gasped against her mouth.

  She threaded her fingers through his hair, because that sounded very much like the start of a protest.

  And with his mouth open on that gasp, the wet heat of his tongue and lips was hers.

  He groaned, and, like the pictures in his book of each devil matched to its sin, his hand moved to echo hers. With his fingers at the back of her head, he tilted her, just so, and she said, “Oh,” to show him she understood and because she could not stop herself.

  His tongue played over her lips and the front line of her teeth before dipping deeper. It roused the fever in her until she thought she would die with wanting what he was holding back.

  She wrapped her heels behind his thighs and drew him closer. No holding back. She would not forget this.

  He stumbled into her, one hand braced behind her to steady himself, the other steadied against her—against her naked breast.

  He recoiled, hand flinching back as if he’d been burned. And perhaps he had been, given that she felt so hot. “Alyce.”

  She cursed the weak demon that apparently couldn’t tempt him. “Are you afraid of my dread demon?”

  “Afraid for you, more like.” He grabbed at the crumpled folds of fabric in her lap and tugged the dress upward to cover her.

  She refused to hold it in place. He’d been the one to cut it in back, after all. “That makes no sense.”

  “It would if you knew what you were doing to me.”

  “You can’t hurt me. Nothing leaves a mark. Other than the demon,” she added reluctantly. “And that’s almost nothing; you said it yourself.”

  “There are different kinds of hurt. And I didn’t say it was nothing.” Still holding her dress in place with one hand, he twisted himself loose from her knees and slipped around behind her. He grabbed a tool from the cart and pinched it over the split edges of fabric. With four angry clips, he closed the tear.

  “Those staples will hold until we find you something else to wear. Something without blood. Something with underthings.”

  She narrowed her eyes at his vehemence. “You thought I was in trouble upstairs, and you came to save me even though you could have been hurt.”

  “You aren’t in trouble. You are trouble.” He turned away from her, raking his fingers through his hair in distress.

  When she had done it, she’d left the thick russet locks in disarray. But his hands smoothed away the evidence of her touch.

  Very little in the world showed evidence of her passage. That thought had never bothered her before—or even occurred to her before. She had drifted through the streets in shadows, as unknown and unknowing as the tenebrae.

  Now she wanted someone—needed him—to acknowledge her existence.

  So she slipped off the table, slipped out of her dress—the staples would not hold against her—and slipped up behind him in one stealthy flow.

  He must have sensed he was being stalked, because he whirled around to face her. But it was too late, and he could catch her only as she moved right into him.

  One arm went around his waist to keep him from escaping. One hand went behind his head to bring his kiss down to her. One hand … Oh, that was his hand anchoring beneath her bottom to drag her up against his chest.

  “Damn it, Alyce.” For once, the curse didn’t hurt. His growl sent shivers through her as no tenebrae scream ever had.

  With Sidney’s arms tight arou
nd her, for once damnation and the devil seemed very far away.

  Whatever slow instruction he might have given her before in the mating of tongues, he apparently expected her to have mastered by now. He bent her back, his mouth fierce and hot.

  He didn’t fear her. He wasn’t running away.

  She strained to bring herself closer to him, for even the scant space for their gasping breath was a separation she wouldn’t allow. Not even room for thought, much less words.

  His big hands framed the width of her ribs, his thumbs pushing up her breasts as he kissed the edge of her jaw, the column of her throat, the point of her collarbone.

  The fever raced ahead of his mouth, centering deep in her core, as if lighting the way for his exploration.

  She pushed down on his shoulders to urge him lower in case he couldn’t follow the signs.

  One moment they were chasing desire … and the next, cold distance separated them.

  Sidney let out a surprised shout as he flew through the air. His arms windmilled, and his flailing legs knocked over the table with a ringing crash. He slammed into the wall. His shirt had slipped awry, and his wounded shoulder left a smear of blood.

  Alyce whirled to face the attack.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sid’s skull rang, and the flush of conflicting biochemicals in his bloodstream—lust, shock, pain—left him breathless.

  Had he frightened her? Or her demon?

  He patted around him until he found his spectacles. With one hinge bent, they sat seriously askew when he propped them on the end of his nose. He barely had time to focus before a black bulk filled his field of vision. Strong fingers wrapped around his throat and helped him to his feet, then lifted him another meter higher than that.

  Gagging, he wrapped his hands around the thick wrist and found himself staring into Liam’s ferocious purple glare.

  “Bookkeeper, your studies go too far.”

  Despite the murderous intent in the league leader’s eyes, Sid directed his attention beyond the talya male. “Alyce, no.”

  Liam glanced over his shoulder, then returned his gaze to Sid with one lifted eyebrow. “I take it the tonsil exam was mutual.”

  “Let him go.” Alyce poised herself on the balls of her bare feet. It was the rest of her bare self that sent an agonized rush through Sid—that, and the sheen of the ridiculously tiny scalpel in her fist.

  The little blade had served well enough to open her torn dress, and she looked fully ready to fillet Liam the same way.

  Liam lowered Sid until his toes brushed the floor but did not release him. “Alyce, are you unhurt? Nim said the game upstairs got … heated. I’m not sure she realized how heated.”

  Sid made another gagging noise.

  Liam set him down flat-footed and stepped aside. “My mistake.”

  Alyce did not lower the scalpel. “Go away.”

  Sid bent to brace himself with one hand on his knee and rubbed the back of his head where he’d connected with the wall. “Alyce, please put the knife down. It was a mistake.”

  Her eyes had flickered violet as she faced Liam. Now she glanced at him, and the icy stillness of the pale blue told him his words had struck her. “A mistake?”

  “I didn’t mean …” He hadn’t meant the kiss, but now that he thought about it …

  His hesitation made her recoil. Her narrow bared shoulders folded inward to hide the reven around her neck.

  God, she was so small. The lithe tension of her muscles as she’d strained against him moments ago had made him forget that. She had made him forget pretty much everything, obviously. But under the unforgiving fluorescent lights, without even the dubious protection of her torn housedress and with Liam’s dark bulk for contrast, she looked unbearably breakable. No wonder the demon was so zealous in its protection of her.

  Dread was worse than fear. Dread encompassed all that hadn’t happened but might.

  For the first time, Sid felt true affinity for a demon. The teshuva was trying harder than he was to keep Alyce in one piece. And he was ashamed he was not living up to the moral expectations of an entity that had once stormed the gates of heaven.

  He held back a groan as he straightened. He was getting roundly pummeled by all sorts of demons. And he deserved it.

  He extended his flattened palm. “Give me the knife, please.”

  For the space of a blink, he stared into her frozen eyes and saw the demon looking back almost as if it were contemplating stabbing him—for what sin, he wasn’t sure.

  Alyce handed him the scalpel.

  She handed it to him nicely—not as the demon would have, through the center of his palm, if not his heart—and still the breath whooshed out of him.

  Despite what he had done to her—well, he hadn’t done that much, but despite what he’d wanted to do—still she trusted him. The obligation weighed heavily on his shoulders, which were almost twice as wide as hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. To her. To Liam. To the raging erection trapped behind his fly. “It won’t happen again.”

  Liam grunted. “If one of the other talyan had found you manhandling her like that, there’d be hell to pay. And hell does not come cheap around here.”

  Sid wished the other man hadn’t said come.

  Alyce made a low noise deep in her throat. The growl wasn’t anywhere near as sexy as the moan, but his pulse still ratcheted up in a crazily eager response that ranked danger at the top of some heretofore unimagined list of things that apparently turned him on.

  Or maybe it was just because she made the noise.

  Damn.

  She glowered at Liam. “I have lived without you for … for a long time. I do not need another master.”

  “The league has archaic traditions,” Sid reassured her, “but nothing that barbaric.”

  Except for the symballein bond, of course, uniting male and female talyan through unpredictable and uncontrollable forces they hadn’t yet identified. If the link wasn’t voluntarily chosen, was that so different from slavery?

  But he wasn’t here to judge—merely to study. If only he could keep his hands off his primary source.

  He bent down in front of Alyce and grabbed the torn housedress, now with a few more holes where the surgical staples had ripped out. His head swam as he stood again, and it was everything he could do not to brace himself—against her.

  He took a steadying breath. Even that was fraught with the scent of her—no perfume or lotion or bath wash, but just the simple fragrance of her skin. He wrapped the threadbare dress around her without his fingers roaming a millimeter from their careful course.

  She looked up at him—Alyce did, not the demon—and he knew the quelling aspect of Liam’s presence had only the faintest power.

  Liam crossed his arms in a disapproving stance, gripping his biceps as if he were still imagining Sid’s neck. “The storage room down the hall has extra clothing. Get some. Then feed the girl. I’ve seen more meat on a malice.” He spun on his heel and went to the lab door. He looked back. “Move it.”

  The league leader obviously had more faith than Sid did in a bit of a reality check to break the spell between them. But moving away from her was the first step.

  Covering her up was a good second step. Liam left them at the storeroom with a long, significant look at Sid. “I want you up in the kitchen in five minutes.”

  Alyce didn’t watch him leave. She stood passively in the doorway while Sid rummaged across the shelves.

  “What size are you?” He waited a moment. “Never mind. Small. Oh good, one of the other women must have insisted on more sizes or we’d never find anything to fit you. Here you go. A couple of each. Not much selection for color, but no holes.”

  He turned to her, the folds of black fabric wrinkling in his arms as he clutched the clothing to his chest—as if that was what he wanted to hold.

  She stared up at him through her lashes. In another woman, the effect might have been flirtatious. On her, the look was more arctic wolf be
hind a low, dark thicket.

  He swallowed. “What I did was inappropriate. I know you aren’t ready for … for anything like that.”

  “I have been alone longer than I have been possessed.”

  The flat chill of her tone belied the churning depths of emotion underneath, in the same way as the frozen scrim of a winter-bound river hid the dangerous undertow. And still, everything in him wanted to step out onto the ice, to reach out a rescuing hand.

  But he was a scholar, not a hero—not even a damned hero.

  “You aren’t alone anymore,” he said. “You have the entire league.”

  She turned away, the white line of her spine like an accusation glaring through the tatters of her dress.

  He took her upstairs and found her an empty room down a long hall with other talyan on both sides. The demon-possessed usually kept solitary, secret retreats elsewhere, he knew, like Alyce’s bolt-holes, although undoubtedly nicer. But every league maintained a place for them to come together. Private and taciturn they might be, and still they needed one another. Alyce would come to appreciate the companionship they offered.

  More than companionship—the thought tightened every muscle in him until the ache in his bashed head and bitten shoulder made him think he was falling into pieces.

  He’d already witnessed the first stages of a talya courtship. He’d personally felt the temptation of demonic power. From now on, he’d have to keep his mechanical pencil and clipboard as sword and shield against his unacceptable attraction.

  Alyce was not his. She belonged to the league, to the unwitting city, and to the fight. He had his own fight ahead of him if he was going to finally win London’s approval. He just had to keep his eye on the prize.

  But it was a nearly unwinnable battle with his wayward gaze to lead her to the bathroom, turn on the shower, place the clean clothes on the sink, and back away without looking for another glimpse of her pale skin.

  “I’ll wait for you in the kitchen,” he said.

  And he fled, because flight had always been the underappreciated younger brother of fight.