Forged of Shadows ms-2

by Jessa Slade

  Apparently the demon part had other ideas.

  Closer now, in the staggered light, Liam studied the slack face. On that terrible night, spatterings of gray matter had melted holes in the snow, which probably indicated a certain amount of persistent brain damage. What kind of demon could bring a body back from that? And without the soul as anchor.

  One of Corvus’s faded blue eyes slid sideways, though the other stayed pinned on them. “We had no fight with you, teshuva.”

  “ ‘We, ’ ” Jilly echoed softly. “I see them both.”

  She was right. Liam’s human eyes saw the corporeal Corvus body, but his teshuva’s sight glimpsed the hovering afterimage of the possessing djinni, like an ill- fitting shadow superimposed over the man.

  Corvus’s demon still rode him, as brutalized as any haint, but the djinni hadn’t burned through its chosen body. It possessed the mangled flesh with a delicacy that whispered of eons of refined control. The only sign of its now imperfect merger was Corvus’s exposed reven. The black lines that climbed both his arms like vicious briars seeped birnenston. The sulfuric poison had eaten away at his sleeves, leaving his strangeness painfully apparent to even the most oblivious human.

  And the djinni claimed to have no fight with the league? Liam could only wish that were true.

  “You corrupted my Bookkeeper,” Liam reminded him. “And then the two of you pierced the Veil to the tenebraeternum to call over a demon that possessed a good woman . . . which made her one of mine. And still, the league and the djinn might have continued as we have since before even you were taken in Nero’s day. But then you tried to kill Sera, and her mate did not handle that well.”

  “So we noticed.” Corvus’s lips drew up in a terrible rictus. A smile, Liam realized. “But just as you have found a new configuration with that woman, so we have fresh faces.” A drop of birnenston leaked from Corvus’s wandering eyeball and fell, sizzling through the old linoleum. Corvus—or maybe the demon—lifted one hand to wipe away the smoking tear. “How do you like them?”

  “The salambes?” Liam shrugged. “We destroy malice and ferales. Honestly, what’s one more enemy?”

  “Ah, but their kind have not been free since the Fall. And they are finding their way here now. With some help from us.” Another poisonous tear crept down Corvus’s cheek.

  Liam had known that the salambes were a foe he hadn’t encountered before, despite his years in the tenebrae trenches. But hearing the Corvus-djinni confirm that the tides of the battle were shifting again wasn’t exactly encouraging news.

  That awful lopsided smile returned. “What’s more, we learned the trick from you.”

  Jilly sucked in a breath.

  Liam didn’t move. “More of Bookie’s betrayals?”

  Corvus shook his head. The lazy eye rolled, lid flapping. “Your Bookworm gave us the desolator numinis, but you talyan fashioned the burning ones. Yet another way you are lately setting the nights on fire, yes?”

  The djinn- man gave Liam a leer and lazy-eyed wink, as if he meant to be chummy, but the slyly suggestive accusation chilled Liam to the bone.

  And still the slurred drone went on: “You gave shape to the salambes, but what is the other meaning of ‘forge,’ blacksmith?”

  Liam wondered exactly how much bitching about the league Bookie had done with his evil cohort. He could’ve done without the djinn-man knowing all their secrets. “To forge is to fake.”

  “Ah, so it is. Are you a false leader, then?”

  Jilly surged forward. “He would never help you!”

  Only Liam’s arm, snagged around her waist, kept her from charging the djinn-man. “As much as I appreciate your defending me . . . ,” he murmured. He meant to sound wry, but the warmth in his chest was more than the close press of her shoulders could explain. He’d en-vied those she stuck up for, and now he knew how it felt. Quite good. If only he had time to revel.

  Corvus tilted his head to examine her. “I never said it was just him.” Before Liam could chase down the ominous echo the words sent tolling through his head, the djinn-man continued. “You are small and sharp. And you used to run alone, just as my darklings did. Free.” He shifted a reproachful gaze to Liam. “You, at least, I thought knew better than to fall back into the trap with her.”

  Liam tightened his grip on Jilly, unwilling to be led astray by Corvus’s—or were they the djinni’s?—meandering thoughts. No doubt that miasma of insinuation and lies was as perilous as any boggy marsh. “What do you want, djinni? We followed the little path you laid. Now say why you brought us.”

  “What I suggested to your annoying talya pair before. Leave us be.”

  “Leave you—?” Liam bit off a harsh laugh. “Archer and Sera stopped you from ripping open the Veil between us and hell. You think I didn’t wholeheartedly support them?”

  Despite the slackened features, Corvus looked crafty. “What do you know of whole hearts?”

  Liam’s chest vibrated with Jilly’s growl. “I know that’s what you destroy with your nasty solvo,” she said.

  “Just the soul,” Corvus corrected.

  “Heart,” she insisted. “Mind. Life and light.”

  “Will you say ‘love’?” The doubled octaves of Corvus’s human throat and demon overlord made the word a curse and a threat.

  Jilly hesitated. “Not that. Never that.”

  She was thinking of Dory, Liam knew.

  Corvus’s lazy eye rolled back into position, fixed on her. As if, Liam thought uneasily, the man as well as the djinni knew what she was thinking too. “Will the rest of humanity feel that way, do you think, when their loved ones come to them, vicious as ferales, cruel as malice?”

  She recoiled. “What—?”

  Liam held his hand at her back. Supporting her or ready to stop another ill-considered lunge—he wasn’t sure which. “The djinni means when the salambes are running the haints. Without the help of other-realm sight, no one would know that it wasn’t their husband, wife, child, or friend. And when that person became a monster . . .”

  “Monster is such a judgmental word,” Corvus said. “And it’s not Judgment Day. Yet. But the solvo is spreading, and behind it widens the desolation.”

  Jilly straightened. “Then why even bother saying boo to us?”

  Corvus spread his hands in a theatrical gesture. Or tried to, but the awkward angle of his elbows looked more like broken wings than a magician’s flourish. His tattered sleeves flapped, and soulflies swirled in the backwash. “You are more kin to me than you know.”

  “Hardly,” she snapped.

  The djinn-man narrowed his eyes, squeezing out birnenston that burned down his cheeks, though the demon healed the angry red marks as quickly as they appeared. “Still judging. I thought you might understand how it goes. I could show you rebellion such as your young monsters in training only dream of.”

  Liam let the hammer drop lightly to his side. The low whistle sang descant to his teshuva snarl. “Whatever Dory told you, you don’t know Jilly, so stay out of her head.”

  Corvus gave him another walleyed stare. “And you know her so well?”

  Liam stiffened at the note of mockery. His duty was to know all his talyan, their strengths and foibles. So why did he suspect the djinn-man meant something more?

  “Never mind.” Corvus’s voice slurred, and his lazy eye drifted. “Perhaps you don’t yet understand, but I am learning so much from you all.”

  “He’s losing it,” Jilly hissed. “The djinni doesn’t have a solid hold.”

  Liam moved forward ahead of her, letting his demon vision flicker to keep both Corvus and the wavering shade around him in sight. “Doesn’t make them less dangerous.”

  Still, the Corvus-djinni took a step back. “I’m giving you the chance to join me.”

  “First, you said leave you alone. Now, join you.” Jilly gave a harsh laugh. Her knives flashed in her hands. “We’ll stop you.”

  “Jilly,” Liam warned.

  Before he could
say more—such as, “What the fuck are you doing?”—she leapt at Corvus.

  Despite her blurred speed, the shadow of the djinni yanked the gladiator’s ravaged body back with an unnatural twist, like an invisible hand sweeping aside a puppet. Jilly dropped to a crouch in the space Corvus had been.

  Liam, a step behind, saw the soulflies displaced by a swell of demonic emanation. The drifts of tiny lights were crushed up against the walls. The sharp scent of rusting metal flowed over him.

  “Incoming.” He swung the hammer over his head, barely clearing the ceiling, and charged.

  The rush stirred the soulflies into a wake of eerie phosphorescence and outlined a dozen hulking shapes that filled the wide hallway, wall to wall. Off- kilter, upthrust teeth cut like spear points through the remnants of the pale shimmer behind Corvus. Salambes.

  Liam aimed his attack at the djinn- man. No point in swinging a hammer against pure ether. Even Jilly wasn’t that hopelessly obstinate.

  His charge took him into the center of the salambes as they swept past Corvus. Nothing to see, but he felt the congealing on his skin like slimy ice. It sank through him, a thousand times worse than the sting of a malice.

  The agony plunged into his heart and slammed him to his knees. Only the hammer braced against the floor kept him upright.

  “Liam.” Jilly bolted toward him. He held up a hand, warning her back.

  “It only hurts because of your soul,” Corvus mocked. “Can you let that go?”

  Jilly whirled and let fly with both blades.

  From the time-distorted depths of his pain, Liam admired the glitter. She at least knew how to let go. He’d have to remember to tell her that sometimes she was right.

  The crescent knives spun into Corvus with demon-amped force. He grunted and folded inward, shoulders rounded.

  “It only hurts because of your flesh,” Jilly snarled. “Let that go, why don’t you?”

  Had he been living, the twin blows would have ended him. But after a moment, the djinn-man plucked out the knives buried side by side above his heart. Blood and birnenston gushed from the wound.

  The blades clattered to the floor and Corvus straightened.

  “Jilly, run,” Liam said. Or meant to. All that emerged was a grunt as the salambes bore into him, an ever-constricting shell of ether and agony.

  He strained toward her, sweat rising on his brow. The moisture flowed into the corner of his eye, blinding him with crimson. Not sweat, but blood pouring from the reven at his temple as the salambes’ attack on the teshuva spilled over into his human body.

  She crouched over him, her neck exposed to Corvus. Damn it, that was no way to fight. He was going to take her out hunting every night, teach her—assuming they weren’t brutally slaughtered in the next few seconds.

  She held out her hand, as if she could reach through the prison of salambes. The bracelet gleamed on her wrist, the base metal reflecting an inner light from its own demon-twisted molecules. “Take my hand. Like we did with the malice.”

  His muscles were locked as the demon in him fought back the invasion of the salambes’ emanations. The preternatural chill of the unbound demons froze the blood to his skin and iced the red tide over his eye. He couldn’t move.

  But the soulflies that lingered around the Corvus-djinni began their slow spiral to her.

  Corvus took a step back.

  “Liam,” she whispered. Amethyst and gold blazed in her eyes and she locked his gaze. “Touch me.”

  The next pulse of his heart sent another surge of blood that didn’t freeze. He felt the first weakening in the invisible bars that penned him in, pinned him through.

  The essence of the salambes was being divided, drawn to Jilly just as the soulflies were.

  “Get away,” he rasped. The fact he could talk meant she was loosening the invisible chains on him, but he wouldn’t allow it, not if she was taking them on herself.

  She held out her hand imperiously, as if the etheric grotesqueries around them weren’t coming to her already. “Just reach for me.”

  What responded in him wasn’t his teshuva, half paralyzed as it was by the salambes’ deadly embrace. It welled up from somewhere deeper, from some purely human need he didn’t have time to examine or deny.

  With a shout, he broke from his bonds, slapped his palm into hers. Around them, the hall flashed with etheric light, the salambes clearly outlined and the soulflies shining bright enough to make him squint.

  She pulled him closer with a flex of her teshuva’s strength and her solidly squared shoulders. She touched his face, fingertips at his temple, palm at his cheek. He leaned into the gentle touch, so at odds with the amethyst blaze that turned her gaze to molten rage. Through the hall, a rush of bone-dry wind cleared the stench of rusting metal, the stink of his own blood.

  The demon realm.

  “Out of the frying pan,” he murmured.

  Though he had spoken too quietly for anyone to hear, Jilly answered, “And into hell.” With the new clarity of his vision, the salambes seemed to be breaking down, shredding around them as if following the soulflies’ lead.

  He should be trying to pull her back from this dangerous path. This wasn’t how the league had outlined its eternal mission. Even Corvus and his djinni—the soulless, brain-damaged, malevolent fiend who wanted to tear down the Veil between hell and earth to pit demons directly against the gates of heaven—had sounded disapproving.

  And Liam didn’t much care at the moment. With Jilly tucked against his chest, the pain—well, it hadn’t disappeared, but he didn’t care about that either. In fact, the whole damn world could end right now. . . .

  No, not quite yet.

  He lowered his head, set his lips softly over Jilly’s. The warmth of her breath moved through him and melted the salambe ice. “Now it can end,” he murmured.

  “But you just started.” Her hand slipped down from his face to land above his heart, her gaze focused on him as if demons weren’t shredding all around them. “Are you okay?”

  Never mind the demons. She was in his arms. “I’m fine.” He glanced beyond her. The space around them shifted between dark hallway and ominous gray void. Only her cinnamon-honey eyes half streaked with violet and the blue spikes of her hair maintained their color. Well, and the carnelian of her lips where his mouth had roughened her. If they were lost between the realms . . . “Can you get us back out?”

  “Out—?” She followed his gaze. “Uh-oh.”

  He withheld a smile. “Indeed. The salambes followed the soulflies after you. It would sure be nice to leave them stuck here.”

  She looked down at the bracelet, pressed between them where her hand lay curled against his chest. The slowly unraveling demon entities swirled closer around them, circling the drain. “The knot work. It’s not just a pattern for us to follow. It’s a trap in itself.”

  “Hopefully not for us.” Despite his attempt at reassurance, he didn’t let go of her. “Its powers are definitely more convoluted than I suspected. Why I didn’t guess that with you as its owner . . .” When she wrinkled her nose at him, he gave her an affectionate squeeze. “We’re not too deep. I still see the hallway.” Barely.

  “What do we do?”

  “Like last time. In your apartment.” He kept his voice even, but his pulse raced, roaring in his ears with an urgency to rival a runaway train.

  Her eyes widened, and he could only wonder what his heartbeat, under her hand, felt like. “You want to have sex in the middle of a demon attack?” She shook her head. “I guess it was a demon attack last time too. The teshuva, I mean. Not you.”

  But it had been almost an assault, desperate and demon fueled. He remembered her body straining under his, breath frantic. Though bending steel railroad tracks would have been easier, he sidelined the memory. “Just like that time, we want to stay on the human side of the Veil.”

  “You said the league has always reinforced its humanity through wine, women, and war.”

  “ ‘Wine, women,
and song.’ The phrase is ‘song,’ not ‘war.’ And I’m sure I phrased it less archaically.”

  “You didn’t. Do you have a bottle of fine Irish whiskey on you somewhere?” She skimmed her hands inside his coat. His chest tightened in response, and he bit back a groan. “No? I suppose we could fight each other.”

  “We already do.” He forced his taut muscles to move slowly, to gently touch her cheek, but his hand trembled. He’d been so harried last time, he’d forgotten to savor the moment. “I can’t remember how it goes.”

  “We snipe. We kiss. We snipe some more.” She sounded breathless.

  “I would have done anything to bring you through possession.”

  “And you’ll do anything now to bring us out.” The gray void leached the emotion from her voice, and hurt darkened her eyes.

  She was twisting his words. “Damn it. Stop sniping.”

  “But that only leaves—”

  He silenced her with his mouth.

  Archaic, indeed. He sank his fingers into her spiked hair, drew her upright. Somewhere, the hammer fell with a faint, unheeded thud. He tasted sweat, sweet cherries, blood. Archaic? Downright primitive. His heart, which had been just this side of a demon’s frozen dinner a minute ago, raged in his chest until he thought they could follow its beat back to the human world.

  Her hands inside his coat traced over his ribs and locked behind him. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, would have scored him had he been naked. If only. She was small enough to tuck under his chin and when she leaned into him, her breasts yielded with soft seduction, but God, she matched his grip with a clasp every bit as furious.

  Alone in a foreign land, ersatz father to his pack of lost boys, he had given up any dream of passion even before the demon had come to him. That the dangers of hell itself gave him a second chance was the definition of absurd.