Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls

by Jessa Slade

  But there was no safety out there, and besides, that wasn’t what they were about.

  He realized then that he’d never—not even when that long-ago bottle had broken in his waistband and the smell of blood and liquor had choked him—felt anything to compare to the dread that gripped him now.

  Thorne was nowhere to be seen either. Damn, at least a flaming sword could have lit a few of the shadows.

  When they got to the bottom, Amiri clutched his own short sword vertically in front of him, though there was scarcely room on its hilt for his nervous double-handed grip. “This isn’t right. Where are we?”

  “The Veil, the no-man’s-land—the no-demon’s-land—stuck between the realms,” Nim said. “And now there’s a gateway through the Veil. Why do you think we called it the verge?”

  “Because it sounded cool.” Amiri’s voice cracked.

  Jonah shot him a glance. “I know this isn’t what you’re used to. The male talyan have hunted strictly on our side of the Veil, picking off the horde dregs. Now you’re seeing what’s beyond. Ladies’ night starts here.”

  Amiri shook his head, a little wildly. “The dregs have been plenty bad enough to keep us busy. And sometimes dead.”

  “Oh, you can die here too.” Nim stood as close to Jonah as their drawn weapons would allow. The curves of their knives nearly matched—his large enough to qualify as a sword, hers smaller and balanced for throwing. “The rules are different here on the edge of hell, but that one stays the same.”

  Nim raised her hands, and Jonah hunched his shoulders as her knife waved near his ear. As she stretched herself to full height, the cuffs of her skinny-leg jeans lifted to reveal an anklet curved over the strap of her high heel shoe. The talisman glinted with violet highlights.

  Alyce made a soft sound, and Sid angled himself between her and … and whatever might happen next. She twisted the asylum rivet around her finger as if the restless movement might rev her demon.

  Maybe it would; what the hell did he know?

  Nim’s brows furrowed. “Who’s out there?” she whispered. “You’re hungry? Then come get us. You know you can’t resist me.”

  Sid swallowed against the menace that deepened her voice. The shadows seemed to have no such concerns. The swirling gray mist tightened into double vortices, spiraling in toward Nim’s outstretched hands.

  Jonah stood behind her. His good arm wrapped low over her belly and anchored her to his chest. His sword arm—literally a sword in place of his missing hand—waited, cocked to eviscerate anything that came too close.

  Not that even a wisp of mist could have worked its way between their bodies. Their perfect accord tugged at Sid, and he put his hand over his chest as the emptiness in him answered the damning lure.

  He and Alyce had been given the chance to bond. But he’d been afraid. In his heart, he’d fancied himself some bold pursuer of knowledge. Instead, he’d run from the mystery.

  And now it was that emptiness in his torso he felt watching the etheric dance of the symballein pair: his missing heart; the unfolding mystery that was Alyce.

  The mist and shadows drew toward Nim like a magician slowly pulling away a diaphanous curtain.

  In the amorphous realm of the Veil, the verge was a sculptured modern art shape that seemed to have expanded in all visible directions and taken on a disturbing new life. Among the layers of gray, Technicolor glimpses of the outside world surfaced in the glass orbs studding the bony feralis husk.

  One aperture showed the Ferris wheel spinning with unnatural speed. The riders’ faces distorted from laughter to slack-jawed screams. Behind the park, the midway lights glimmering on the Crystal Gardens flamed into etheric bonfires. Fiery silhouettes of salambes climbed the building’s steel cross braces, seeking escape. The virulence of their emanations melted the windows in widening holes while molten glass dripped down onto the broken bodies of the crowd within. Already, the ferales were shredding the dead, claiming the corpses for their own hideous creations.

  Amiri swore and spun for the ladder.

  “It’s not happening,” Alyce said. “These passages are how hell sends evil to torture us, but not all the ways are open, not all the nightmares will come to pass. That one is dread, not truth.”

  Sid grabbed her arms and spun her to face him. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  The pale violet of her eyes was another window reflecting the tenebraeternum’s portals of projected horror. “My demon remembers.”

  Once he’d touched her, it was impossible to let go. The tough resistance of the leather sleeves only emphasized the slender fragility of her under his grip. His breath faltered. “Alyce, when you said you loved me once …”

  “Don’t.” She shrugged him off. “That wasn’t real either. Just the last of my delusions evaporating.”

  He wanted to howl, some wordless cry of denial. Because what could he say now that would reach her through the demons, the threat of death, his own dumb oblivion? With every dictionary at his disposal, where were the right words?

  “Look!” Amiri shouted. “It’s the rest of the league.”

  Another altered orb dripped coagulating ether as if salivating. Between the droplets, it showed Liam, with Cyril Fane and a half-dozen others behind him, racing through the oblivious crowd. Their expressions were as uniform as their black clothes, worried and grim. Against his white shirt, Fane’s expression was darker yet.

  Jonah kissed Nim’s temple. “Dare we hope that one is real?”

  “It’s not just a hope since we did call them,” she said practically. “Let’s make sure that vision becomes reality.”

  All around them, the orbs revealed nightmare visions—worse, they were the passageways through the flawed Veil where hell’s darkness had the chance to leach into the world. Sid pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Thorne has an angel’s sword. If these portals are tuned to places and possibilities that might draw the tenebrae, the sphericanum’s blessing on the sword could mask him.”

  “That’s a problem.” Nim swatted her knife through the mists in frustration. “I don’t think these televisions get decent reception of the Goodness and Light Channel.”

  “Then he needs to feel some dread too.” Sid glanced at Alyce. “Can you do it?”

  “Summon the fear?” Her eyes clouded, and she nodded slowly. “I’ve done it before. Not with Thorne, of course.”

  Her icy gaze fixed on him. He was the only one she’d ever frightened off.

  When he put his hands on her shoulders, her stiffness shocked him. He’d wanted to focus the aimless little Alyce who’d found him in the alley, but he’d never meant to sharpen her to this brittle point that went through his heart. Beneath his thumbs and forefingers, where the neckline of the leather bustier left her collarbone exposed, her skin was so cold.

  “You did terrify me,” he said softly. “But not anymore.”

  Her cold stare gave him no quarter. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten.” Despite her frozen facade, she swayed with a barely perceptible shiver.

  He should be focused on finding and stopping Thorne and ending the potential catastrophes unveiled in the portals. But every part of him wanted to stay in the here and now, with her. He dropped his hands and stepped back before even his demon could determine whether she’d swayed away … or to him.

  “Thorne doesn’t need to be terrified. Look at the talyan. They’re just barely on the far side of freaked out. If you can inspire the same in Thorne, maybe we can get a lock on him through the verge.”

  “He’s so much stronger than we are,” Alyce said.

  “Evil always is,” Jonah said. “Annoyingly.”

  Alyce lowered her head, twisting the ring. Violet sparks burned between her fingers, and her hands flared open in surprise. “Little things,” she murmured. “He won’t notice the little things.”

  She lifted her head. When she straightened, the chevron knives along her spine flared like tiny, delicate wings. “I can find him. And the verge will take m
e there.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Sid had thought he had run away from his heart. But he found it now. It was lodged in his throat. He choked on it, and Alyce was already extending her hands before he forced his voice around the objection.

  “Wait,” he said. “Not you.”

  “I’m the least,” she said. “Nothing I do will distract him. Until it’s too late.”

  Too late. The words mocked him. “I’ll go with you.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t. You’re too big, too strong, too bright. It’s not …”

  “Not my place,” he said softly.

  She glanced away. “Not with me.”

  The rejection pierced him. And the regret. He must be lighting up the tenebraeternum switchboard like a disaster. Of course, he couldn’t follow her. He’d never been able to give her what she needed.

  She held her hands out, as Nim had, but instead of flowing toward her, the shadowy mists stilled.

  “They like Nim,” Alyce murmured. “They fear me.” Following her shooing gesture, the ether curled backward, retreating like a wave in reverse slow motion. She pursued.

  “Wait,” he said.

  But she didn’t. The rivet flared on her finger, more violently than he’d yet seen, and she snatched at the fleeing etheric wave. The energy flared and caught Alyce in the backwash. She arched with a pained cry, eyes wide and ice blind in shock.

  Her hands flung outward, as if reaching for something, anything, even the unforgiving steel table of the asylum.

  Sid ran forward, reaching for her in return.

  But the energy collapsed around her with a flash, like bared teeth, and she was gone.

  “Alyce!”

  He tripped over the place where she’d been. Beneath his nose, the ground wavered between the damp earth of the diner crypt in the human realm and an undulating gray surface. As he scrambled to his feet, his fingers closed reflexively around the only solid thing.

  A ring. Alyce’s ring.

  He groaned. What balance she and the teshuva had regained was concentrated in the rivet, and it had been knocked loose.

  Jonah and Nim were beside him, lifting him.

  As soon as he steadied, Jonah gave him a shake. “Why didn’t you go with her?” His voice was rough, accusing.

  “She wouldn’t let me.”

  Jonah snarled. “Never let that stop you.”

  Nim touched her mate’s arm above the sword cuff. “It takes time.”

  “It’s too late to take time.” Jonah shook his head.

  Sid refused to hear him. “How can I follow?”

  “The power is hers, but you are connected.”

  An ugly laugh welled in Sid’s throat. “We’re not. I wouldn’t let it happen.”

  “But you won’t let that stop you ever again, will you?” Nim pushed him, less gently than Jonah. “Find her. Find Thorne. We’ll find you.”

  He stumbled away from them but glanced back. “How can I—?”

  Nim swore at him. “Go!”

  He ran.

  He ran as his mother must have run after him that night, frightened, desperate to get to him. She’d died because no one had been there for her, and in his pounding heart, he knew he would rather die than not be there again.

  At least he knew why he was running, and where. To Alyce. What he’d say when he got there …

  “I love you,” he whispered as the gray closed around him. He could not claim it either liked him or feared him; it was just hungry, though surely not as hungry as he. “Alyce, I love you.”

  She slipped sideways through the etheric winds that tore around her. Among the shadows, she surrounded herself with the twisting gray, just one of the nothing.

  She remembered this. It was not so different from the electricity that had burned through her brain and silenced everything—at least for a time, before the dread demon slowly coiled in her again.

  The void seemed to realize it had ingested a little irritant. The gray heaved around her, like a hanged man kicked against the noose. And the next thing she knew, the etheric winds spat her out, thus proving she was not as powerful as a rope, in case anyone was taking notes.

  She rolled and came to a hard stop against a … pumpkin?

  Her head rang from the blow and confusion. Slowly, she levered herself upright, without the teshuva’s assistance.

  The pumpkin was huge, its pale orange bulk curving higher than her waist. She couldn’t even begin to guess how much it must weigh, although a sign beside it said GUESS MY WEIGHT!

  She looked around. She was in the Crystal Gardens atrium. The airy interior was decorated for the upcoming holiday with orange tea lights, little paper ghosts dangling from the trees … and a roiling storm of tenebrae circling the panes of glass six stories overhead.

  But they hadn’t descended—not yet.

  So much for her assurances to Sidney. Here she was, alone again.

  A small blue imp bolted around the pumpkin and nearly bowled Alyce down. They both gasped.

  “Hello,” said the imp.

  “Hello,” Alyce said. It was a child—a blue child with bulbous black and white eyes on top of its head and its face peering out from the gaping maw lined in black felt, but a child, not a tenebrae.

  “You look like a princess,” the child said. “Mostly. But an evil princess.”

  Alyce considered. “And you look mostly like a monster. But a nice monster.”

  “I’m Cookie Monster,” the child crowed. “Cookies are nice.”

  Alyce blinked. “Why would anyone think cookies are monstrous?”

  “Sugar,” the child said promptly. “Mommy says sugar makes me a monster.”

  Alyce glanced around. “Where is your mother?” Where was everyone? The atrium was empty, though it was clear from the burning candles and gurgling punch fountain that the party had been in full swing.

  The child waved one blue arm in a vague arc. “She’s over on the other side, watching the juggler. She told me I should play hide-and-seek instead.”

  “What kind of juggler?” Alyce peered suspiciously around the pumpkin.

  “He’s not very good. He has only one thing to juggle. A sword. He had some black balloons too, but that’s not really juggling, is it?”

  Alyce’s heart pounded. No wonder her demon was still quiet. Thorne was near. “I think you should keep playing hide-and-seek.”

  “With you?”

  “Yes. You hide. I’ll seek.”

  “Okay. But close your eyes.”

  Alyce did, because the horror pulsing through her made her feel faint. All those people … If Thorne stripped their souls to feed the tenebraeternum, the verge would expand again, swallowing the whole pier and everyone on it: herself, the child, the crowd at the diner, the talyan, Sidney. …

  None of them would be strong enough to stand against the verge.

  When she opened her eyes, the child was gone.

  With luck—and talyan—Cookie Monster would never know how close the real monsters had been.

  Alyce crept around the pumpkin and scuttled to the nearest concrete planter. Palm trees—almost as otherworldly in Chicago as the demon realm—spread the serrated blades of their leaves against the gleaming steel and dark sky beyond. The threatening storm cloud of salambes drifted lower. Alyce was suddenly glad her dread teshuva was in hiding; she didn’t need the tenebrae raising the alarm.

  Not until some screaming might be useful, anyway.

  She braced her hand on the concrete, ready to launch herself to the next barrier … and realized her ring was gone.

  She froze.

  A cold sleet of fear prickled across her skin, completely divorced from the teshuva. Divorced. She swallowed back a panicked giggle. Without the ring, she was as good as divorced from the demon. That little bit of self-control she’d focused through the talisman was lost—again.

  Whispers of dark thoughts threaded through the room in the tenebrae wake, like the pale strings of fake spiderwebs spread ar
ound the Halloween decorations. The insidious murmurs wrapped her tighter than the white jackets of the asylum.

  The rivet was lost. The demon was lost. Sidney was lost.

  She was lost. And it hurt so much worse than before because now she remembered every precious moment.

  The gray haze of the tenebraeternum was so close. So easy to sink into it, to become one with the shadows. They wanted her. Maybe she’d always been meant for the darkness.

  A flash of golden light pierced her vision. The teshuva was dormant inside her, but she flinched from the remembered pain in her leg.

  An angel’s sword.

  The angelic light wasn’t like anything else—not like the twinkle lights, not like the candles. It was like sunlight glowing through water, maybe, yet more pure. The light was its own thing, even surrounded by the drifting tendrils of the tenebraeternum.

  The shard buried in her knee had been only the tiniest piece, and it had changed her life. What could an entire sword of the stuff do?

  She really didn’t want to know.

  That, more than anything, made her think it was no wonder the demon had taken her.

  She didn’t want to do this; she couldn’t do this. She’d seen an angelic sword in action before, and the vision had been the crack in her soul that made her a flawed vessel for the teshuva. She’d spent three centuries fighting back the tenebrae, not for any righteous purpose or even a selfish one, but because she’d been too confused to do otherwise.

  She wasn’t addled Alyce anymore.

  Except she crept one more planter forward, just to see. Where did insanity and curiosity meet?

  Somewhere just a little closer to the action, apparently.

  From the last planter, her view was blocked by a folding screen. The painted panels showed a monochrome parade of spooks and goblins and witches under a bloodred moon. Alyce thought it might give her nightmares. Although, considering the view it probably blocked …

  Taking a deep breath, she peeked around the end panel.

  The smaller side room of the atrium bumped out toward a patio. In warmer weather, the tables and chairs might have been a nice retreat. On a cold October night, the crowds had stayed toward the lights of the park and promenade.