Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  They burst out the back door into the empty alley. The windowless walls of the buildings rose up four stories on both sides, a canyon of chipped brick and rusting steel. From the vents and grates in the upper floor of the club and from over the roofline poured the greasy smoke of the devils.

  “Time to rumble,” Jilly muttered.

  As if in answer, the music inside the hall kicked on again, the deep notes throbbing through the walls.

  Sidney tugged at Alyce’s hand. “What’s happening?”

  She pointed. “You can’t see them.”

  He frowned. “Just … shadows?”

  “Horde.” Nim’s voice was almost a croon. “Come to Mama.”

  They came in a stinking rush of broken rotting eggs, as if night’s darkness sped down the wall, obliterating every detail.

  Alyce had never fought with others before, and she tried to watch with her new understanding, the new words Sidney had given her, though her muscles cramped with the urge to flee. If this many of the devils had come for her alone …

  But the talyan stepped forward in a wall of male flesh, the two talya women nearly lost between the broad shoulders. A furious sweep of etheric energy belled out ahead of them. The devils that hit the teshuva power boiled into foul steam.

  “Bloody hell. I should have had another drink.” Sidney rubbed his eyes and squinted, as if trying to separate what his eyes saw—or didn’t see, or half saw—and his mind knew. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, is it? Why are there so many?”

  “Nim and her demon call them to slaughter,” Jonah said. “Makes hunting far more efficient lately.”

  But Nim shook her head. “I can’t take the credit. These were already gathering, even before I called. Alyce saw them first.”

  Half of Liam’s attention stayed on the talyan slowly shredding the tenebrae. “What did they want? You?”

  “Not me,” Alyce said. “They wanted the wanting.”

  Liam pointed at Sidney. “You. Care to decode?”

  Alyce pulled her hand free of Sidney’s when his gaze settled on her with as much curiosity as he’d had when he’d studied the horde above them.

  He didn’t seem to notice her withdrawal as he considered their little grouping. “The league is usually so careful about damping its energy. All the desires and fears and furies. The emotions that power all of us are amplified by the teshuva, which give the talyan more strengths—and more vulnerabilities.”

  She didn’t need more vulnerabilities. It was bad enough to be alone, afraid, confused. But she did know one thing, and she’d wanted to show them.

  She stepped outside the protective circle of talyan.

  Sidney’s surprised call didn’t stop her; nor did the other talyan. The bright flare of their eyes followed her.

  The ferocity of their teshuva had thinned the devils, but the dozens that remained were whipped to a rage. Singly, they might feed on despair or frustration and be content to spread their malaise like a creeping sickness.

  En masse, they wanted to devour her.

  So she let them.

  Sidney shouted again, more vehemently this time. From the surge through the talya energy, she knew they had rallied to hold him back.

  Really, they should get a little farther back.

  The devils surrounded her, their nasty mouths latched on the flesh exposed by her pretty new dress. They fed her their horrors. No, not theirs. She hadn’t recognized that until now, when Sidney had made her face her flickering memory. These were her own half-known horrors, sucked from her and regurgitated, more vile than before.

  Their whispers leached through her veins. Master. Madness. Hang the witch.

  The reven around her neck tightened as the teshuva finally roused. She had thought maybe she had to hurt for it to hunt. But now she understood; it was too weak to waste itself on the chase. She was staked out as victim while it waited to take its unwitting prey from behind.

  Now that her eyes were opened, the experience was rather more gruesome. But she stood, swaying, hands in fists.

  The malice exulted in her fading strength as they consumed the last of her sickened outrage and the pain of their violation and delighted in the more delicate flavors of deepest despair. A larger salambe loomed closer, not so patiently waiting its turn.

  She tasted the first stirrings of dread—her own dread, tainted as grave dirt. In another heartbeat, death would come.

  Not for her. Her demon longed for the horde in its embrace.

  “Alyce!”

  Sidney’s shout, rough and frantic, rang from the bricks and forced her eyes open.

  Liam grappled with Sidney, who struggled against the talya’s hold. Sidney swung his fist with more vehemence than aim.

  And knocked the bigger man to the pavement in a tangle of his canvas duster.

  A shock rippled all the way around the talya circle. Even Jilly stood a stunned moment before rushing to her mate.

  As if the demon-possessed warrior had been nothing more than an inconveniently closed door he had to get through, Sidney bolted beyond the shielding energy of the roused teshuva.

  “No,” Alyce whispered. Scarcely past her lips, her plea withered in the miasma of the chortling malice, wound tight round her throat.

  Sidney’s gaze fastened on her.

  At the same moment she realized she’d gone too far. In her silly hurt at Sidney’s rejection and the conceit of flaunting her demon, she’d brought too many malice to her to feast. Fortified by her torment, they would flay Sidney for dessert.

  Because of her.

  Malice sheathed her bare arms in a crawling shawl of shadows, but with every last thread of her token power, she lifted her still-bare hand, fingers spread in a white star to ward him off.

  But Sidney ignored her warning and laced his fingers through hers.

  She couldn’t feel his touch. The negative energy of the malice was extinguishing her, moment by moment, as it overwhelmed her demon.

  “Don’t do this alone.” His voice through the distortions of the malice surrounding her sounded so far away.

  But he was going back to London, she wanted to remind him. She would be alone again.

  Sidney’s steely gaze reflected the violet of a dozen rampant teshuva. But though his lucky shot had flattened Liam, he couldn’t loosen her from the miring weight of malice. The irresistible compulsion that had drawn her to find him in the alley just one night ago wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough.

  So he drew himself to her.

  No! She wanted to scream her denial to save him from the demons swarming around them. But she was weak, so weak in the presence of such potent temptation, and when he bowed his head to kiss her, she lifted her mouth to his.

  That she felt—a fleeting touch of heat and swirling light and life.

  Then the teshuva burned through her in a sudden rush, scouring away all thought and any emotion, save one impulse that was hers and hers alone: This.

  The salambes fled, and the malice might have screamed—half-formed mouths dripping with her anguish—if they’d pulled away faster. But the etheric power exploded them like swollen ticks.

  The talyan swore and ducked, their violet-glowing eyes wise to the spatter. Only Liam’s hand between Sidney’s shoulder blades as the talya finally reached them spared his human flesh a bad ichor burn.

  The brick walls glowed sickly with devil sign, and a querulous thin cry drifted up as the scattered shreds of ether drifted down.

  Alyce rocked back onto her heavy boot heels, their sturdy weight holding her upright.

  “Steady,” Sidney cautioned. But his voice shook. “Are you okay?”

  She considered. “Nim said I would need practical shoes.”

  Then even the boots weren’t enough support, and she crumpled into his arms.

  Sid cradled Alyce in his lap as the car bumped over the railroad tracks around the warehouse. “What the fuck?” he mumbled. “What the fuck?”

  “Stop saying that,”
Jilly growled from the front seat.

  “Why? It’s true.”

  “Just because she uses a slightly different technique—”

  “Her teshuva could have been overwhelmed—she could have been killed!—while we watched.”

  Liam rubbed his jaw gingerly where Sid had punched him, though the teshuva had already erased the bruise. “Isn’t that what Bookkeepers do? Watch?”

  Sid shot him a furious glare. “You had a shitty Bookkeeper before. Get over it.”

  “Bookie would have seen us all killed, and happily, to capture a demon’s power for himself. That’s shitty all right.”

  “That wasn’t me.” Bloody hell, he couldn’t even begin to explain how that wasn’t him, how he’d never wanted to step outside the Bookkeeper boundaries. In fact, he’d done everything in his life to stay properly within bounds. How his father would shake his head at the irony.

  Alyce stirred in his arms. Her soft moan ruffled the shirt against his chest and vaporized any pretense that he was at all detached.

  “Alyce?” He brushed aside the dark locks of hair that had loosened from her braid.

  Jilly peered over the seat. “Is she awake?”

  Sid looked down into Alyce’s wide eyes and tucked her closer to his chest. For once, he didn’t want to talk, and Alyce seemed willing to rest in his arms. He’d wait to yell at her. “Just get us home.”

  When they pulled into the warehouse lot, he hefted her into his arms and carried her inside, past the line of silent talyan.

  Gavril took a half step out of the line. “Is she—?”

  Sid passed him without a word.

  Liam paused to say something to the men, but Jilly followed him to the room he’d given Alyce earlier, Nim behind her with shopping bags slung from her elbows.

  Jilly pushed open the door and flicked on the light, then whisked around Sid to turn down the covers. “Put her down; then you can go and we’ll—”

  “Forget it.”

  He laid his too-small burden on the bed and faced the other women.

  Hands propped on her curvy hips, Jilly stared back, her expression the opposite of flirty. “You have no idea what you are doing.”

  “I have lots of ideas. I’m a Bookkeeper.”

  She scoffed. “But you don’t have the idea. The one you need most. The one where you realize you’re totally wrong.”

  He gritted his teeth. “If I’m wrong, then I’ll come up with a new idea. It’s the scientific method.”

  Nim echoed Jilly’s snort and tossed the shopping bags next to the bed. “With arrogance like that, I can’t believe you’re not talya.”

  “And I can’t believe you two are still here.”

  They stared at him another moment.

  “You’re going to hurt her,” Jilly said.

  “And you almost killed her.”

  Guilt flickered over the other woman’s face, and Nim ducked her head. “I can’t believe that’s how she’s fought the tenebrae all this time. To give herself over to them …” She shuddered. “I’d do anything to stop them from touching me.”

  Jilly touched her shoulder. “Now that we know what she’s been through, we can show her another way.”

  “Not tonight you can’t.” Sid walked toward them, using the momentum of his body and their remorse to force them out.

  Nim made one last about-face at the door, forehead crinkling with concern. “It’s not right, your staying with her.”

  He braced his hand in the doorway, in case she thought she was coming back in. “This, from an ex-stripper? Jonah’s missionary days coming back to haunt you?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Jilly tugged at Nim’s arm, still managing to shoot Sid a bossy look. “You’ll call for us, right away, if—”

  He shut the door in their faces.

  Oh, he knew they could kick the door back in his teeth—even Nim in her high heels—but he was counting on their shock at Alyce’s performance to hold them at bay. It would never occur to a talya to become the quarry.

  They couldn’t understand. Hell, he couldn’t either, but understanding was his task, in the same way theirs was to risk themselves. Alyce just had a more dreadful way than most.

  “That demon of yours cuts both ways, doesn’t it?” He turned back to the bed.

  She lay curled on her side, hands fisted under her chin. “I heal fast.”

  “Good thing.” He sat at the foot of the bed. There was plenty of room with her knees bent to her chest, even with the big black boots taking up an inordinate amount of space. “Is this sort of collapse normal for you after a fight?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it against so many before.”

  He closed his eyes, glad for the sake of his suddenly wobbling knees that he was sitting down. “You terrify me.”

  “I thought it was only dread.”

  “Only.” When he opened his eyes again, he realized that even with perfectly functional legs, he wouldn’t just walk away from her. “Let’s get these lovely new boots off you.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “They are very … steel-toed.”

  “Nim says either the heel or the toe should be a weapon, and I couldn’t stand up in the shoes she liked best.”

  The image of slender Alyce in white stilettos rocketed from his brain stem to his occipital lobe, burning a permanent pathway in his brain as it flashed like lightning in front of his eyes. It made him think sitting on her bed wasn’t his best idea ever.

  “Right. Shoes off. Sheets up. Sleep.” He could work the steps and still make his escape.

  When he tugged at her laces, she sat up. “I can do it.”

  He caught her hands and turned them palm up. The crescent punctures of her nails had healed into the faintest of moons, but the bloody streaks remained. “You get your boots off. I’ll get a washcloth.”

  In the bathroom, he found her blue granny dress neatly folded, bloody smears right side up. She’d kept the rag, as if she might need it later. How could he reassure her that this was her new home when he had already revealed how quickly he intended to leave?

  He stared at himself in the mirror as he ran the water to warm it.

  What did he want? How could he even ask that when he’d chosen to give up everything for London?

  He gripped the edge of the sink.

  The double thuds of her boots hitting the floor made him straighten, and he wrung out the washcloth.

  God, he was in a peculiar mood tonight. He’d barely seen a thing with his limited human vision, but that moment in the alley had opened his eyes.

  He returned to Alyce’s bedside. She sat with her knees still pulled up to her chest, feet tucked under her hem. She held out her hands, palms down, so he perched beside her and tucked her hands between the damp folds of the cloth.

  “It was interesting,” he said. “What you did out there, by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t by myself.” She regarded him steadily. “You came. And you shouldn’t have.”

  Her words were true enough, which didn’t lessen their sting. “Yes, well, you did all the hard stuff, such as turning the malice into etheric dust motes.”

  She stared down at their joined hands. “Not much, is it, compared to what Sera and Jilly and Nim can do?”

  “They’re different from you, as they are different from one another. That’s part of their strength.” He’d meant the words as consolation, but now that he said them, he wondered at their deeper meaning. Together, the first three talya women formed an unusually effective hunting team. Was that demonic evolution? Or was there a more organized hand at work?

  “You think even more than you talk,” Alyce said.

  He realized he’d been silent a long moment and chuckled. “A hazard of the job. Not so hazardous as yours, of course.” He swiped the cloth across her hands.

  She showed him the immaculate flesh. “Okay?”

  He nodded and tossed the cloth on the bedside table. He started to rise, but she took his han
d.

  He hovered awkwardly, one foot on the floor, one knee still bent on the mattress.

  Her eyes glimmered. Not violet, not tears. He couldn’t quite identify …

  “Stay,” she whispered.

  Ah. Right. “Alyce, I know you heard when I mentioned London—”

  “I’m not asking forever. Stay now. Stay the night.”

  “Alyce …”

  “There’s not much night left. I know dawn is coming.”

  That should be a good thing. The return of light meant the tenebrae slunk away; it meant they’d survived another fight. And yet her voice trembled with wistfulness.

  He supposed days and nights hadn’t meant much to her, lost with her demon.

  It wasn’t pity that moved him, but awe at her fragile strength, that she could fall before the tenebrae and yet stand again. He knew he’d never have such endless resilience.

  In his own inconsequential human way, he’d tried to be strong, when his mother had walked away from the cold and silent house where Bookkeeper secrets had gathered in a smothering dust. But as his girlfriend had discovered, the words with which he’d tried to fill the silence were hollow. And she too had left. Then the metaphorical distance between them that she always complained about had become an existent and enduring entity.

  Maybe becoming the London league Bookkeeper wasn’t the be-all, end-all aspiration he’d proclaimed. Maybe it was just an end. But it was a place he knew and understood, and there he wouldn’t hurt anything—anyone—who didn’t deserve it.

  He pulled free from Alyce’s grasp, and her shoulders drooped.

  He curled his fingers behind her neck, half expecting her reven to shock him as her gaze flashed up to his.

  “You’ve bewitched me,” he murmured. “It’s the only explanation.”

  Her eyes widened. “Witch?”

  “I should know better than this.” He drew his other knee up onto the bed, and she dipped toward his greater weight. “I do know better.”

  “We can only know so much,” she said. “Even you.”

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “No. Maybe. Stop talking.” She lifted her face, an invitation. “Stop thinking.”

  And he took the invitation—and took her. He kissed her until her lips reddened, and an answering flush rose in her pale cheeks. He buried his fingers in her hair, combing out the last of the valiantly clinging braid. She moaned against his lips, and the civilized part of him said, Wait, while the rest of him—a burgeoning part, in more than one sense—urged him onward.