Forged of Shadows ms-2

by Jessa Slade

  Jilly froze. “Did it get out?”

  They glanced at her. Ecco lifted his hands, speckled with faint scarring like hers after she’d wrestled the salambe. “Had to take it apart, but we got a good shred.”

  In the harsh light, Sera’s face was pale and drawn under her lopsided blond ponytail. Jilly wondered if she’d slept at all. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I dissected worms in high school biology. After that, it was mostly theory and philosophy.” She clenched her hands, as battle bruised as Ecco’s.

  “So what’s your philosophical theory now?” Jilly edged closer to the table.

  Sera reached around to rub her shoulder, knocking the ponytail farther askew. “We’ve already seen how the salambes seem to occupy a morphology somewhere between the incorporeal malice, which feed off of but never invade living flesh, and the ferales, which convert dead-animal matter into working husks for themselves.” She clicked off the desk lamp beside her and pushed a button on the side of the glass box.

  Jilly blinked in the sudden dark, poised to rally her teshuva. But the electrodes on the box began to glow. A pulse crossed the glass. And the salambe within roiled into view.

  “Dim the lights, send a few positive ions through—the same kind of energy that drives the Santa Ana winds that make people crazy and the opposite of the negative ions at the beach that seem to calm people down—and voilà,” Sera said. “Cool light show and absolutely no practical application.”

  Jilly walked around to the other side. At closer range, she could see the solder gleamed with gold flecks. Some angelic force infused the box where Sera and Ecco had basically recreated the hothouse under more secure conditions.

  The salambe’s coiling energy mesmerized her. She shook off the trance as the electrode pulse faded and the salambe dimmed again. Ecco turned the lamp back on. The salambe was all but invisible in the bright light.

  “So the salambes occupy the same place in a haint as the soul used to,” Jilly mused.

  Sera shrugged. “Nothing in league archives offers any clue. There are references to a vaster array of tenebrae than what we’ve seen, but previous Bookkeepers seemed to think everyone must already know what they were talking about.” She hissed out a breath. “Overconfident snobs. They thought they’d always be walking the same path, not necessarily winning the war against evil, but not challenged either. Now, when we most need that information, I don’t even know where to start looking.” She glared at Jilly through red-rimmed eyes. “Do you have any idea what sort of paper trail gets left in a handful of millennia? More like a paper mountain.”

  “Still,” Jilly insisted. “The salambes obviously can’t use a human with the soul on board. When I was fully engulfed, I could feel it chewing at me.” She kept her voice even, as if that horror were no worse than a few mosquito bites. “Maybe given enough time and a few more friends, it could have forced my soul out and taken over. But the solvo makes room for the salambe by removing the soul, so it’s reasonable to assume that the salambe is operating some of the same mechanisms as the soul.”

  Ecco stared at her. “You make it sound like puppetry.”

  She gave him a bitter glance. “Isn’t that what we are now? Puppets for the teshuva?”

  He shook his head. “I fight because I want to. The teshuva just makes the fun last longer.”

  She studied him. Did he honestly believe that? But he was far more experienced than she, and she couldn’t call her demon into fine enough focus to call him out as a liar. Plus, that’d probably just be a really bad idea.

  She huffed. “Forget it. Never mind what we are. It’s what the salambes can do that matters. If they offer a guide into the ruined pathways of the abandoned soul, we could put an end to solvo addiction.” What had seemed so worth getting fired over when she imagined Andre, lost on the street, had become a miniature feralis clawing at her heart when she imagined her sister, not lost, but found. By Corvus.

  Sera tilted her head. “The league would at least be back to the same place it was before Corvus set his sights on destroying us.”

  A small foam-lined casket stood open on the table behind Sera, the shards of a broken glass vial upended in the place of dishonor.

  Jilly studied the debris. “Dory stole the solvo out of there?”

  Sera nodded. “Smash and grab.”

  Just beyond the reach of the lamp, the fragments still glimmered with a pearlescent sheen. Even the dust of the raw solvo she and Liam had retrieved from the sewer possessed a luminescent beauty completely at odds with the bare-bones lab, its seething box of trapped evil, and three worn fighters.

  She pointed at the glass sliver. “Put that in with the salambe.”

  Sera hummed under her breath. “Interesting.”

  Ecco stared at Jilly under wrinkled brows. “They used to let you work around children?” He directed the incredulous look at Sera. “And poor dying people? You’re like mad-scientist girls.”

  Sera steepled her fingers in a serious pose, but she winked at Jilly. Who would’ve guessed she’d find an ally in the crew’s good girl?

  Jilly turned a fierce, challenging smile on Ecco. “C’mon, now. Who’s going to get hurt, after all?”

  “Um, us?” But he leaned forward curiously as Sera plucked a shard from its resting place.

  The faintest scent of rain teased them. They all inhaled.

  “Okay, that’s just wrong,” Ecco said. “Sulfur, rotting dead things, even rusty metal, I was okay with that. But a quiet night’s walk in the forest primeval? Very wrong.”

  Jilly stared at the glimmering glass. “I wonder what it tastes like.” She winced when Ecco punched her shoulder.

  “Stop it.” His voice was harsh. “That sort of drifting is what gets a talya killed.”

  She blinked at him. “I wasn’t—”

  “You start wondering what it’s like to check out, and that’s the end of you,” he said. “Oh, you might not die right away, what with being immortal and all, but your existence becomes pointless, and even if you never take the solvo, your soul will be lost.”

  The word bounced cruelly around the hollow space, and even the beguiling scent of the solvo couldn’t dampen it. Jilly lifted her chin, studying the big talya. “Projecting much?”

  Ecco flushed, the white thread of his new scar more obvious against his red face.

  Sera cleared her throat. “Let’s just agree we’re not going to be checking out any time soon. I think Jilly’s experiment sounds”—she lifted her eyebrows—“fun. You should appreciate that, Ecco.”

  He scowled. Then shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Do it.”

  Sera tweezered the solvo-dusted splinter of glass and held it up at eye level. “Not enough to get anybody high,” she said doubtfully.

  “But maybe enough to steal a soul.” Jilly shifted to the balls of her feet and noticed Ecco looked similarly prepared.

  Working through a small, gold-lined portal in the glass container, Sera tapped the shard into the salambe’s cage.

  Nothing.

  “Not as fun as I thought,” Ecco said.

  “Hit the ion pulse,” Jilly said. “People take solvo when they are hurting. If the positive ions re-create that experience—”

  Sera pushed the button.

  The electrodes gleamed. The salambe flared to life for a heartbeat.

  Then the angel-blessed glass ignited.

  CHAPTER 25

  “What? The explosion on the roof wasn’t enough for you? Losing Perrin and Jonah’s arm wasn’t enough?”

  Liam paced in front of the three miscreant amateur metaphysics professors, pausing at the turn just long enough to glare at them. His temple throbbed with fury, and the demon burned in every muscle, begging him to unleash on something, someone.

  Jilly.

  He froze in front of her, deafened by the angry pound of his heart in his chest. She’d said she wouldn’t go anywhere, and yet she’d managed to find the worst sort of trouble in the only stronghold he had left. She defied him even whi
le obeying his orders.

  Ecco cleared his throat as he picked at a shard of glass embedded in his cheek. “Admittedly, it wasn’t as much fun as we’d anticipated—”

  Sera and Jilly winced as Liam wheeled on the other male. “Fun?” His voice throbbed with demonic lows.

  For once, Ecco didn’t respond by summoning his own demon. He just settled deeper in his chair. “Did I mention it was Jilly’s idea?”

  Liam clenched his fists until his whole body was just one aching desire to detonate.

  Although they hadn’t seen fit to invite him to that fun.

  “The results support my theory.” Eagerness rose in Jilly’s tone as if she didn’t notice—didn’t care about—his edging into violence. “If solvo shreds souls and salambes, then maybe souls and salambes are more alike than we know.”

  “So what?”

  She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “So you should be glad we discovered that solvo destroys salambes.”

  “Are we going to become pushers ourselves? Manufacture more of the stuff?” He stalked closer to her. “Will we become what we most hate?”

  She tilted her face up. “You mean more like.”

  He didn’t recoil, but her point struck home. Why did he want to hold to the old ways? Where had it ever gotten them? Except further behind, as he lost his already-too-few men to Corvus’s new threats. Why did he keep thinking he had any place left at the head of this fight?

  He should drift away gracefully as Roald had before him, make room for the young and hungrier.

  Damn it, no. No matter how much easier it might seem to step aside, he knew better than most what sort of trouble the young and hungry got into.

  He glared at Sera. “You at least I trusted to know better. As our interim Bookkeeper, you should have come to me before trying anything extreme.”

  She stared at him, but not in challenge. More with pity. “You can’t do it all, Liam. That’s how a team works.”

  “And I am still leader.” But they must know how close he was to losing it. Especially Sera, who had been kidnapped by her frantic mate when she’d volunteered to sacrifice herself—with Liam’s sanction—to save the world. If he ran off, would he do so to escape the league, or to avoid chancing Jilly as he’d risked another talya’s mate?

  Once again, he pushed away the impossible question. He glanced sharply at the broken vial of solvo. The larger portion of the sample was gone, thanks to Dory, and still the stuff was a hazard. “Seal those pieces,” he snapped. “It’s a bad influence, obviously. Ecco, clean up this mess. Sera, Archer wants to talk to you.” He speared her with a glance when she grumbled. “Jilly, come with me.”

  He wasn’t amused when Ecco wiped his brow with exaggerated relief.

  Liam stalked out, leaving Jilly to follow. He’d trust the same self-preservation instincts that had made her duck away from the worst of the exploding glass would make sure she followed immediately and silently.

  He should have known better.

  In the stairwell, the drag of her steps behind him made him grit his teeth. “I can finish chewing you out in front of the others, or you can pick up your feet and take your licks in private.”

  She gave a short, low laugh. “Why start now?” When he whirled to glare at her, she just glared back. “Lay a hand on me, and you will regret it for the rest of your suddenly very short life.”

  A protest sprang to the tip of his tongue that he would never lay a hand on her, but that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He was so tired of the dance. It was worse than fighting, this circling around what was between them.

  If he just indulged it . . .

  No, that was sin itself talking. And he didn’t even have the excuse of the raw, exposed solvo nearby.

  He tightened his fists against the urge to reach for her. “I want just one peaceful night of destroying tenebrae. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No one’s stopping you,” she snapped. “Oh, wait. Except Corvus.”

  He glowered at her. “And you.”

  The stairwell was as uncomfortable a place for seduction as he could imagine—other than the middle of a tenebrae attack—and still his body yearned toward her. And here he’d always thought he had the inevitable talya death wish firmly under control.

  He had nothing under control when he was with Jilly.

  He took a long breath and let it out even more slowly. “I don’t want to fight with you again.”

  “And yet we do it so well, remember?”

  He couldn’t help but smile at the wry note that crept into her voice. “Yeah.”

  “You told me not to go out, and I didn’t.” When he opened his mouth to point out that she’d found plenty of trouble anyway, she pinned him with a glare. “I get at least a few points for that.”

  “You get minus points for destroying company property.” He held up one hand. “But I’ll count you back at zero if you aren’t around any more explosions for the rest of the night.”

  She huffed as if his request was a huge imposition. “If we had enough raw solvo, we could launch it into a room of salambes—maybe even use it against malice and ferales—from a distance, and no one would get hurt.”

  He gave her a reproving glance. “Except for anyone caught in the resulting cataclysmic blast. You said Sera used just the smallest bit of leftover solvo, and look what it did.”

  Jilly chewed at her lip and looked away. “But we wouldn’t have to risk anyone in the hand-to-hand again. If it works, the talyan could overcome the tenebrae without having to get close enough to match their demons against each other.”

  Knowing he shouldn’t, he reached out to touch her cheek, to bring her gaze up to his. “Losing Perrin was bad,” he said softly. “But we can’t fix it, can’t bring him back, by avoiding our mission.”

  He expected her to pull away, assuming she didn’t just snap off his head—and maybe his hand. Instead, she rested a moment against his touch. The blue streaks of her hair hung down without their customary gel, straight and soft against the backs of his fingers.

  “I just can’t seem to make anything better,” she murmured. “My family. The kids at the halfway house. I manage to make things worse even when I’m fighting evil incarnate and it seems like there’s no way things could get worse.”

  “We all have our special skills,” he said. She rewarded him with a fleeting smile, compelling him to remind her, “I wanted more for the boys under my watch too, so I know how you feel.”

  He wished he could make it better. For her. Never mind the world’s battle against evil. If he could ease her hurt, even for a moment, maybe that would be the first step to making up for all his failures over the many long years.

  After all, he did know how she felt. He just wanted to feel more of her.

  He leaned down, very slowly, giving her time to protest. She only stared up, her eyes half closed and her lips parted.

  Softly, he closed his mouth over hers. Spicy and sweet. The sigh of her breath warmed the damp joining of their lips and spread with a curling rush through the rest of him. He stroked his tongue against hers, felt her melt as the heat rose between them.

  He pulled her up against his chest, the clean cotton of the black T-shirt he’d laid out for her—the whole time imagining her bare, wet, hot skin in the shower—rumpling under his clenched fingers. He’d like to see that skin, taste it, mark it with his presence, a warning more clear than even a flashing reven to any who would hurt her again.

  A clang from somewhere down in the basement made him lift his head.

  But she didn’t draw away. “I thought we weren’t going to do this again.”

  He brushed a twined strand of blue and black hair behind her ear. “If it’s this or fight . . .”

  Her hand rested in the middle of his chest, rising and falling with his slightly harried breath. “We can’t do anything by halves, can we? But that’s all we are anymore. Half of a soul, half demon.”

  His grip on her tightened involuntarily. Because he
didn’t feel divided at the moment.

  Oh no, definitely all of him wanted all of her.

  She might think of herself as somehow lessened, but he knew better.

  “You said it was my fault we lost Perrin, and I agreed. But I didn’t say why.” The confession ripped out of him. “If I’d been with you, we could have staved off the salambes’ attack, at least long enough to confine the one and make our escape.”

  Under his hand, he felt the imperceptible stiffening of her spine. “What do you mean?”

  He pulled her closer again. “This. This power that binds us. I’ve denied it, thinking it would do more harm than good. But as you pointed out, how can we sink any deeper?”

  She’d gone utterly still in his grasp, and he realized he could’ve offered a more impassioned appeal to her senses before pointing out the cold practicality of their joining. He tilted his head, gaze fixed on her mouth, ready to make up for the error.

  But she pulled back, exerting no little amount of her teshuva’s strength. “So you think one kiss seals the deal?”

  “No,” he murmured. “I figure two or three should do it.”

  This time she was not amused, he saw. Under the black weave of her T-shirt, her muscles rippled as she amped the demon higher. “So we’re going to hook up to save the league.”

  He had to let her go or risk an undignified wrestling match on the cold metal stairs. “I thought you understood. You noticed it yourself, before I did; we’re two halves of a whole, mirror images.”

  “Matter and antimatter,” she countered.

  “And if we handle the explosion right, we’ll only take the evil in the world with us.”

  She took a long step back from him, until her heels hovered near the edge of the stairs, as if she’d rather tumble back down than be near him. “You’re the one who said no more explosions.”

  “I was hasty.” He grimaced. “You bring that out in me. Just another way we’re different.”

  “Just another way we’ll kill each other before we could drain a single malice.”

  Frustration rose up in him. “You want to fight. You’ve been pushing to take this to the next level.”