by Jessa Slade
“Security knows the situation,” Envers said. “Don’t make me call them.”
“I don’t make anybody do anything. That’s your trip, not mine.”
“The children need someone willing to use her authority, somebody who doesn’t get in even more trouble than they do, not another rebel without a chance. We’re done here, Jilly.” He made a note on the paper in front of him, dismissing her like she was just another item to be checked off his list.
As if pretending something didn’t exist made it go away. God, she’d always hated that sort of bullshit. She took another deliberate step forward. His head snapped up at the thunk of her boots.
“Maybe I don’t keep all the stats like you do.” She remembered Liam’s promise and echoed it with her voice pitched low. “But since I have all this free time, I’ll find out what happened to Andre, and I’ll be sure to let you know if he would’ve had a chance.”
The weight of his stare followed her out.
She stalked down the street, fists thrust into her pockets. Just as well she hadn’t tried to go in last night with Liam watching if Envers had told the night crew to toss her out on her ass. What a coward to assign the task to someone else.
“A real man does his own dirty work,” she muttered.
“Yet the women still get to clean up after.”
Jilly whirled to face a slender blond woman in a scarlet trench coat. Her squared stance, light on the balls of her feet, screamed confidence louder than the coat.
She held up her hands, palms out. “Hi, Jilly. I’m Sera. Not too long ago, I was like you. Feeling cut off from everyone, just lost my job, didn’t think I’d ever recover from that wound.” Her hazel eyes darkened. “Or the ones that had come before. And now I’m possessed by a demon. Like you. Liam sent me to reassure you that you’re not crazy.”
Jilly tried to absorb the awkward introduction, then decided to just skip it. “I knew I was being tailed.”
The woman—Sera—tilted her head. “Following the boss’s orders.”
“Your boss. Since you’re possessed by a demon, that would be the devil?”
“Ah, no. That would be Liam.”
“Who is apparently not one of those real men who does his own dirty work.”
Sera sucked a breath of air between her teeth. “He seemed to think another woman would be better able to answer your questions. As if there’s a gentle way to tell you your soul is forfeit to the never-ending battle against evil.”
Jilly pulled off her sunglasses to squint at the woman. “Battle against evil? I thought having a demon would make me evil.”
Sera planted her hands on her hips. “Didn’t Liam at least explain the repentant part?”
Jilly snorted. “The goo dripping off his hammer must’ve distracted me.”
“Okay, then, do you feel evil?”
Jilly pictured Envers standing up to the monsters in the alley last night. “A little.”
Sera grinned, a bright flash that edged her from confident to confidante. “Oh well, that’s why you’re repenting. C’mon. We need doughnuts. It’s my treat.”
Jilly dug in her heels. “It’s my ass. And I don’t need more of it.”
Sera shook her head. “Since Liam didn’t get to any of the good stuff, I’ll enlighten you. A demon-revved metabolism means you can eat all the doughnuts you like. And, anyway, your ass belongs to the league now.”
“I hate being railroaded,” Jilly said.
Despite the chill, they sat outside the doughnut shop, clutching their coffee cups. A dozen pigeons strutted around the table.
“Shanghaied would be more accurate,” Sera said.
Jilly had put her sunglasses back on, but she hoped the other woman could feel her glare. “Was that a cultural slur?”
“ ‘Railroad’ implies a nice straight track going from point A to point B in a timely manner. Joining the fight of repentant demons against the darkness—the tenebraeternum—is more like being shanghaied. You’re blindsided one night and wake up on a ship where no one knows your language, bound for God knows where.” Sera waved one hand. “The analogy works pretty well.” She looked at Jilly. “Except now you’re here.”
Jilly swallowed her bite of doughnut so she wouldn’t choke on the powdered sugar, then let out a long-suffering sigh. “Explain. You know you want to.”
“Shanghaied sailors were all male. They were stronger, of course, more resistant to the horrors of shipboard slavery. Plus, there was that whole ‘women on board are a curse’ wankery. I was the first female talya in the league’s memory. And since the talyan are immortal, living memory is a long time. My appearance marked a change in the teshuva battle plan. Your possession marks an acceleration in that change.”
“I don’t have time to save the world.” Jilly knew how absurd that sounded even as the words popped out.
“You’re immortal now, remember?” Sera’s hazel gaze softened. “What else is there?”
Jilly tried to forget Envers’s mockery. But he was right. “I was busting my butt just to keep a few dozen kids from falling prey to everyday evils like getting caught rolling a joint in the school bathroom. Yet, half the time, they’d disappear from the system and I’d never find out what happened to them.”
“And now you’re not even doing that.” Though Sera’s voice was gentle, the blow of her words knocked Jilly’s breath back down her throat in a hard knot. “Our world falls away, bit by bit. I haven’t figured out if the presence of the unbound demon stalking us makes that happen, or if that’s what makes us vulnerable to possession.”
Vulnerable. How she hated that word. Jilly washed it down with a pull off the bitter chicory coffee.
Sera threw a few pieces of doughnut toward the pigeons. But a blur of black wings descended from the wind-torn awning and they scattered. The crow gobbled up the treat and cocked its head to eye them.
“You shouldn’t feed wild animals,” Jilly said. “Gives them ideas.”
“So very true.” Sera tossed the crow another piece with a smile. “But it’s good to make friends where you find them.”
If the crow was a friend, Jilly thought, this league of theirs needed better networking skills. “If you people . . . you demons . . . What are you?”
“We are called talyan,” Sera said patiently. “Human, but possessed by teshuva demons which lend us their immortality and their unworldly powers to fight. And survive the fighting.”
“Immortality,” Jilly mused. “Here I was, always telling the kids not to think they were immortal.”
“You told them that because thinking otherwise would get them into bad trouble. Which, turns out, was even more true than you knew. The immortality, the speed and strength of inhuman fighting skills, the recovery from heinous injury, all that is just a consolation prize the demon offers while we fight eternally for redemption.”
“Right.” Jilly drew out the word to emphasize her skepticism. “If you win this never-ending battle against evil, does that mean no more monsters?”
Sera tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s the hope.”
“Hope.” That sounded a little too much like vulnerable to Jilly.
Sera must have heard the note of reservation. “It’ll get you through the next few days.”
“I thought the battle was never-ending-ish.”
“But in the next few days, your demon will make its virgin ascension. It’s a particularly hazardous time for the newly possessed. Until you balance the demonic emanations within you, you could be pulled to the other side.”
“To hell.”
Sera’s open face settled into a stillness that would’ve done Mona Lisa proud. “It has a strange attraction, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”
Jilly stared at her.
“Long story. But speaking of places to live, I’d really like to bring you to the league HQ, introduce you to some of the guys, let you pick out a . . . room.” An incongruous touch of red brightened Sera’s pale cheeks.
Jill
y frowned. “What do I need a room for?”
Sera cleared her throat. “Since you’re one of us now—”
“Whoa. Just because I’m intrigued by the idea of ending the threat to my kids doesn’t mean I’m enlisting with any demon army or whatever.”
“You may not survive without the league.” Sera spun her coffee cup in her hands, gaze fixed on the dark slosh. “Not without a talya lover as escort.” She raised her head, and under the hazy sky, her eyes sparked with a faint violet light. “Not without Liam.”
The name and that uncanny glow made Jilly feel sheathed in strangeness. She pushed to her feet, slowly. The gust of blood through her muscles worried her that if she moved too fast, she might inadvertently upend the table, dumping doughnuts, steaming coffee, and a heaping pile of invective over the other woman.
She tried to tamp down the wild rush, unnerved by the reckless thrill triggered by that one word. “He is not my lover.”
“Not yet, but that’s how you’ll balance the ascension.”
“Not ever, if that’s why he came after me.” The unexpected—unwanted—wave of longing knotted within her. But the pain was preferable to surrender. “I’ve had enough of pimps.”
Sera tsked. “Unfair. But I’ve read your dossier, and that pimp stopped after merely sticking a knife between your ribs. What’s coming is far worse, far more intimate, and will leave you with your soul—not just your lung—in tatters.”
Jilly fisted her hands, as if Sera had feinted at her, though the other woman made no effort to rise. “You don’t know anything about me.” Despite the tension in her body from frustrated desire, her fuming breath moved easily through her for the first time in more than a year, and she wondered, did she even know herself anymore?
Sera fanned her fingertips along the edge of the table, the only betrayal of her own tension. “The league has entirely too many tough guys, Jilly. If you have to lower those impressive defenses of yours long enough to let one of our fighters save you, then by God—should I say, by the demon possessing you—that’s what you are going to do.”
If Liam thought he’d sent Sera to be sympathetic, Jilly decided she’d have to disabuse him of that notion. “Whatever info you’ve been collecting on me, at the very least you should know I don’t back down from vague threats.”
“Sometimes vague is all we get. But I do know that one of those talyan saved me from something awful. And I’m not just talking about demons.”
“What could be worse?” Jilly muttered. But she already knew some of the answers, though she couldn’t picture tall, blond, self-confident Sera ever making the sorts of bad decisions where demonic possession looked like a self-improvement project. The uncertainty kept Jilly on her feet, but she didn’t walk away.
Sera must have sensed her victory, but she didn’t gloat. She stood in a rush of red, startling the crow into the sky. “It’s not all bad. Repenting, I mean. You get a place to stay. A mission to last the rest of your potentially very long life. And there are other perks.” She ducked her head and gave Jilly a sidelong glance.
“Nothing else about lovers,” Jilly warned. Bad enough that her breath caught with the vague claustrophobia of sharing her skin with a demon. Sharing it with a daunting male like Liam Niall . . .
“No, no.” Sera’s gaze wavered. “I was just thinking, maybe I get a sister in a houseful of men.”
The genuine wistfulness snagged at Jilly’s resistance, though pain flared as quickly behind it. “I make a terrible sister.” She ignored the flicker of disappointment over Sera’s face; if the other woman had read her file, she’d understand. “I only want to find out what happened to Andre. So show me this league of evil-undoers.”
They fell into step and headed uptown. The crow wheeled once against the white clouds and was gone.
The lantern tipped. Flames raced across the straw. A glint of steel, and his temple exploded with a flash of light across his eye. Then darkness. Endless darkness.
And pounding.
Liam jackknifed up and shoved away the entangling bedcovers. The darkness and pounding endured, but at least he was awake. He touched his temple and winced at the flicker of demon violet that illuminated his shaking fingers.
“What?” He winced again when the word came out as a roar.
The pounding at the door stopped. “Sera called. She found Jilly and is bringing her in.”
Liam rolled out of bed and pushed aside the blackout curtains over the windows. The stark sunlight narrowed his eyes but brought no warmth to his naked flesh. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You’ve got ten.” Archer’s voice was brisk. “Use it. I can smell your nightmare through the door. You’ll scare her off before she’s even gone through the teshuva’s ascension.”
“Insolent bastard,” Liam muttered.
“I can hear through doors too.”
Liam waved his upright middle finger vigorously, though Archer was stomping away. Liam dropped back to the bed. He’d avoided going back to Jilly’s apartment last night, knowing Archer was keeping watch. So he had no excuse not to have managed a good night’s sleep.
No excuse except those dreams that always ended in flames and darkness.
He pounded his head once into the pillow and stared up at the ornate headboard above him. Entire grave-yards boasted fewer chubby, cavorting cherubs than this oak behemoth. He couldn’t imagine what the wood-worker had been thinking. It would be impossible to have sex in this bed.
Yeah, that could be the other excuse for no good night’s sleep.
In five minutes, he’d run a cold shower, downed a cup of burned coffee, and ensconced himself behind his desk.
After the league’s last refuge had been poisoned in the tenebrae attack, they’d retreated to one of their holdings fronted by an architectural-salvage warehouse. The warehouse lacked the style of their previous retro hotel, but it had a kitchen, a few apartments, a dormitory, and an armory. If there was one thing the league did well, it was break things and pick up the pieces. The three-legged walnut desk he’d propped up on a knock-off Grecian urn at least had a certain presence. Anyway, it was big.
He gripped the thick edge and waited for Sera’s knock. She entered and stopped just inside the door, while Jilly marched up to the other side of his desk and tossed her puffy silver coat on the guest chair.
She planted her hands on her hips, which puffed up other parts of her. Under her snug short-sleeved T-shirt, the roundness of her breasts seemed counterintuitively soft. He found himself distracted by the butterfly tattoo that rode the upper curve revealed by the V neckline, the navy cotton setting off her anger-flushed tawny skin.
“What the fuck?” she snapped.
Good thing it was a big desk. He slanted a glance at Sera, who grinned and sidled out.
He returned his attention to Jilly and wondered if the oak headboard would have blocked more of the fury that vibrated off her. No. No thinking of Jilly in his bed. “Which part is fucked?”
She glared at him, and for a moment he was mesmerized by the golden snap in her eyes, the tint of flames in straw.
“If you wanted to recruit me, sell me yourself.” She faltered, as if that hadn’t come out as she intended. “You knew I’d come, given the chance to find out what’s happening to the kids on the street. You didn’t have to send Sera.”
“She had the best chance of convincing you.”
“And do you always use people for what they can do for you?”
He steeled himself against the sting of her words. He was spread too thin to regret delegating when necessary. Not when he knew that strain would bring him one step closer to a break the league might not survive.
Not when her burning eyes were the straw to break the beast of burden.
“I save myself for the fun parts,” he said coolly. “I’m sure Sera explained what we’re up against.”
“She explained a lot.” Jilly set her chin off-kilter, as if she was holding back words. “What are we doing to chase th
ese monsters—what did you call them?—these tenebraeternum off the streets?”
“ ‘ We’?” Liam leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. He waited for the flare of triumph at bringing another tyro aboard. God knew, he needed this ardent young fighter in front of him. Instead, her fierce zeal made him feel older than the dirt that crept into every nook of the league’s salvaged stronghold.
And his need would never be assuaged.
“The tenebraeternum is the place where the demons come from,” he said. As if reciting the chronicles of league history would relieve the ache that arrowed through him. “The lesser demons en masse we call the horde-tenebrae.”
She wrinkled her nose at the impromptu lesson. “Sera already made it clear I might not even survive my demon’s ascension. If I only have another hour or another day, then I want to find out what happened to Andre and make sure the things and the place never bother any of the kids again.”
She paced in front of his desk, all impetuous curves and spiky nerves. He tightened his jaw against the clomp of her impatient boots. She wasn’t much more disciplined than the kids—streetwise teen hooligans, more like—she claimed as her own. But he’d bent wilder spirits to this unending task. “I can’t promise that.”
“I don’t believe in promises anyway. Give me something real I can sink my teeth into.” She swung to face him, her hand cocked on the hip of her low- riding jeans. “Give me something bigger than that stupid box cutter and I’m your warrior woman. For tonight anyway.”
He felt the tightening in his muscles, the prickle of his skin, as the demon in him stirred at the unruly battle cry in her words. He wrestled down its ready and willing mayhem, so in tune with the young woman before him. The demon possessing him might take hungry leaps toward repentance, but every swing of his war hammer thrust him away from the desperate detachment keeping what was left of his soul—what was him—intact.
Once, he’d worked with his hands to create; now he was half ravager. And the molten gold of Jilly’s eyes only lured him closer to his doom, like a stupid moth to singeing flame.
