by Jessa Slade
“Never.”
They stopped at the end of the alley, where Iz and Dee had climbed the fire escape to the roof.
“As traps go, this is a simple one,” Liam said. “One way in. No way out.”
“Iz and Dee got out,” she reminded him.
“You didn’t.”
No. She’d escaped the ferales with his help, but the demon already had her. Sera might say no one escaped fate, but of course a thanatologist would think that.
Jilly glanced around the alley. “I don’t see anything. And I still don’t smell that solvo rain.” She felt her cheeks heat. Had she been attracted here only by her memory of meeting him?
Liam released her hand, and she wondered if he’d read her thoughts somehow. He wouldn’t appreciate being misled from his task. “We’ve gone up before. And we’ve gone down. This time, let’s go through.”
The hammer was in his hands in a heartbeat, and then he was swinging. Splinters of brick flew, and she skipped back to escape the spray.
Sera and Archer had completed a slower sweep and caught up with them. “Oh, the subtle method,” Sera said, observing Liam.
“Nice technique,” Archer commented.
Jilly paced just out of reach of the shrapnel. “I don’t even know what he’s—Oh.”
Liam broke through the wall.
CHAPTER 27
It felt so good to be attacking something solid, something that would fly apart beneath him. And he didn’t have to feel guilty about it. Just smash.
The wall came down too quickly for his satisfaction.
The bricks crumbled before him, and then he was through. The sudden glare of white light cast halos in his sensitized vision, and he brandished the hammer against the surge of tenebrae he half expected. After all, he’d said the alley made a good trap.
But the attack didn’t come. He squinted until the teshuva backed down a notch.
Inside, the walls glowed pearlescent and the wash of sweet rain made all of them inhale.
“Now we know why Corvus switched to sewers for production,” Archer said. “Much easier to erase the evidence.”
Liam took a step into the room. Though the place was absolutely empty, the walls were glazed with solvo dust, like the inside of the vial Dory had broken. No sign of birnenston or recent demonic activity of any kind remained. “Did the solvo destroy everything demonic?”
“It shreds souls, not demons,” Sera said.
“We saw what it did to the salambes.” Liam glanced around. “For God’s sake, don’t touch anything and lick your fingers. Our souls are precariously balanced enough.”
Sera crowded behind him. “If we can scrape these walls, we’ve got enough for a hell of an explosion.”
He snorted. “Have you been talking to Jilly?”
“Yes.” Sera glanced up at him with a guilty expression and sidled away. “Not about you or anything. Much.”
There was a mystery he didn’t want to unravel. “Jilly,” he called. When she approached, he reached out for her. “I’m not picking up anything demonic at all. You?”
She hesitated, her gaze fixed on his hand. The small rejection speared him with unnecessary force. He did not betray his reaction; the muscles in his face were too stiff for any expression. But she shifted beside him, facing the room. The back of her hand bumped his; then her fingers slipped into his grasp.
“Sensing anything? Besides us?” Her breath hummed out in a faint sigh. After a moment, she shook her head. “At least we know what happened to Andre.”
He didn’t disagree. There was no way a human had been in such close proximity to solvo for any length of time without succumbing to its whispered promise of peace. Even with his demon riding high, he felt the distant urge to just sink to his knees, to let the effort flow out of him.
Along with his soul, of course. And the teshuva wouldn’t allow that. He could imagine the giant red “fail” on a fallen angel’s scorecard to lose its human mount to the dark side.
Right next to the big black check mark of doom for ravaging the Veil and crossing into the demon realm, of course.
Gently, he disengaged his hand. “I’m sorry we couldn’t help him.” He gave her shoulder a light squeeze, one talya to another. But her warmth lingered in his flesh. Unfair, that hellfire promised such pleasure.
He prowled the abandoned room. “All right. We’ll leave a few talyan here to harvest.” He shot a glance at Jilly. “But we won’t be blowing anything up tonight.”
The four of them backed out of the subtly glowing space. After the soft fragrance of the solvo, the alley seemed even more ugly and pungent. He paused to give directions to Ecco to pass along to the others, sending half the crew onward to recon the halfway house, then joined his wayward trio on the street.
“We’re not getting anywhere.” Archer’s frustration bounced off the brick wall. “Corvus has gone to ground. Either his head wasn’t as bashed in as we thought, or his djinni isn’t interested in risking his immortality again.”
“Yet another question,” Sera murmured. “Why should the djinni care what body it inhabits? Without the anchor of the soul, it can jump anywhere.”
“Maybe it’s not as much fun and games as you think.” Jilly stared past them, focused on nothing. “Being alone.”
Sera leaned sideways a few inches so her shoulder pressed against Archer’s. Liam wondered if that touch relieved the kind of tightness that seized his chest at Jilly’s words. Finally, he nodded. “Corvus and his djinni have been together a very long time.”
“Yeah, true love,” Archer growled. He winced when Sera elbowed him. “Meanwhile, where are we going to find him?”
Jilly straightened, and Liam glanced at her. “What is it?”
“True love,” she repeated. “Dory wanted Corvus that much. So where would a drug-addicted prostitute and her evil lover go?”
Archer shook his head. “We already checked her old apartment.”
Jilly hung her head. “Not where she lived. Where she turned tricks. Where I got stabbed.”
Liam ached to reach out to her. But he couldn’t take away her pain with a touch. He’d only made it worse. But as far as walks down memory lane went, this one was a real bitch.
* * *
Anyone who hunted evil for a living ended up in bad neighborhoods. Not that evil was limited to bad neighborhoods, of course, but bashing the shit out of evil tended to be less frowned upon in places where people were scared to look out their windows.
And somehow, it had always seemed more righteous to Liam that the league be most heavily dispatched among the places where people cared the least.
So police tape, cars on blocks, security grilles, and the smell of old blood were nothing new to him. And yet the street Jilly led them to offered horrors deeper yet.
Malice sign was everywhere, etheric hieroglyphics etched into the brick and cement. Faint smears of ichor glowed under his teshuva’s vision, marking where ferales had drooled over their prey. Maybe the bestial demons had snagged just cockroaches and pigeons, but Liam feared the worst.
Or maybe around here, a quick, violent death was less unspeakable horror and more business as usual.
Jilly stopped on a corner beneath a busted lamp and stared down the street. “That’s it, down there. This is as far as I got after Rico stabbed me.”
His teshuva shifted, tasting the passage of innumerable malice that had followed the riot of negative emotions that swirled on the street. However much of her blood had been spilled here, though, it had been trodden away by many careless boots.
“You made it a good long way.” Liam wondered whom he was trying to soothe, her with her pained memory or himself with his present fury. As if breaking into the Cook County prison to remove her attacker’s lung was justice. Still, his fist clenched at the thought.
She cast him an indecipherable glance. “Yeah, I made it all the way into the demon’s arms.”
They’d been his arms. Or the teshuva had taken his appearance anyw
ay. He knew her one glimpse of him before the demon came to her hadn’t been the seed of her possession, just a symptom. But he wondered if she could ever forgive that essential betrayal.
Actually, how could she, when he continued to lead her deeper into danger and damnation? He wouldn’t forgive himself, even if this time she was leading.
She shook off her hesitation. “This way.”
He glanced back at the couple dozen talyan ranging behind, awaiting his command. Would they find a battle with Corvus and his minions? Or just a strung-out frightened girl? “Let’s go.”
The flophouse actually wasn’t the worst on the street. It sat back from the sidewalk a short ways beyond a wrought iron fence. Someone had stuck red plastic daisies along the walk. The gate was open.
The scent of the rusting metal caught in the back of his throat, though he didn’t sense the presence of salambes. Traces of ichor were well aged, though malice sign smeared the place thick enough he could almost taste the despair himself.
Archer prowled past him. “If Corvus’s djinni is dormant, we’re not going to pick it up. He’ll be just another wretched human.”
Liam drew breath to correct Archer’s harsh interpretation, but let it go. Since it seemed fairly accurate. “Once we’re in, the djinni won’t be dormant long.”
Archer inclined his head in agreement. “Flush the Blackbird?”
Ecco approached on the last words. “Did someone say flush? This place is the toilet to do it.”
Liam rubbed his forehead and sighed. He knew now was not the time for a lesson in compassion. Not that men possessed by demons had much room for compassion. “It’s not a big building. Teams of two. Door-to-door. No need to call out. We’ll know if you find him.”
Liam held Jilly back with a hand at her elbow as the rest broke along their preferred lines and filed into the building. She tensed against him, not hard enough to yank free, just enough to let him know she begrudged the restraint.
“You’re afraid,” he said. At her hard glance, he tsked. “For Dory, I know. But don’t add your negative emotions to the maelstrom. Even if you don’t bring a malice storm down on us, you’ll still cloud your view.”
She took in a breath, and though she didn’t meet his gaze again, for just a moment, she leaned into his touch. Then she set her shoulders back and gave a stiff nod. “Right. Can we go now?”
“Do you know which room was hers?”
“The girls didn’t have their own rooms, just took whatever was available.”
He blew the demon’s senses wide as they proceeded between the daisies. From the mingled strains of lust and disgust soiling the general pall of apathy and consumption, he guessed the building was still a bordello in daily use. The miasma was so thick, he couldn’t tell if Dory or Corvus had come through. No drifting scent of rain washed the air.
Maybe if he was touching Jilly . . . but that was just an excuse. They’d find out soon enough.
The talyan spread through the building, their soft footfalls lost beneath the creak of bedsprings, muttered curses, and the draft that moved through the shabby halls.
“Come on.” He headed down an empty hall.
Jilly followed. “Maybe this is pointless.”
“Maybe.” He figured she knew that, on some level, she didn’t want to find out what happened to Dory. Because it wouldn’t be good.
He flattened his hand against the first door and spurred the teshuva higher. The walls and ceiling pulsed with old energy signatures, malice and human, but nothing else. He knocked anyway. No answer.
Jilly stood a few steps away, her head cocked and gaze fixed on the stairway at the end of the hall. “Let’s go up.”
“But . . .” He stopped himself. “All right.”
They had just started toward the stairs when the scream rang out.
Jilly bolted ahead of him. Despite his burst of speed, she was already up to the landing before he caught her arm.
“Let me go.” Her voice vibrated with the demon. “That was Dory.”
“I know.” He didn’t let her go, but he hauled her along as he strode for the source of the shriek.
Lex hovered in the hall, staring into an open doorway. He took a step forward just as a body came flying backward through the door. Talya, Liam guessed, by the black clothes, but moving too fast to identify. He shoved Jilly behind him and leapt to the fight.
He had only a brief impression of nicotine- stained walls, and then the etheric blaze of Corvus’s djinni blinded him. He continued forward in a rush. But he left the hammer sheathed. He couldn’t risk hitting Dory, even though she was screaming loud enough to track if she’d stop racing from corner to corner like a panicked rat.
He closed with Corvus in a blunt collision that rattled his bones. For all the damage done to him in the building collapse earlier in the winter, Corvus was still a powerful man, his body honed from many lifetimes of battle.
Liam knew he couldn’t sap the teshuva or he’d have no chance against the djinni, but he couldn’t clear the demonic dazzle from his vision.
Damn, but Corvus was strong. The djinn- man’s hands closed around his skull, and Liam wrenched backward to prevent Corvus from twisting his head off.
“Liam!” Jilly’s cry was a clarion call in the darkness. With a sudden shock, his vision snapped into hunter’s light. Eerie tracers of etheric energy patterned the room. If only he could turn those tracers into bonds to trap the ascendant djinni.
Instead, he jolted forward again to head-butt Corvus. The reven at his temple flared, bright enough that even he could see the violet gleam blazing from the interrealm rift that marked him as possessed.
Corvus staggered back. He reached for Dory as he fell.
“No, you don’t,” Liam growled.
But Dory held out her arms, wrapping herself around the windmilling djinn-man. They went down in a tangle. That looked like a setup. Liam released the hammer.
Jilly dragged at his elbow. “Don’t hit her.”
Like he’d done the salambe- ridden woman in the haint-haunted apartment. He’d known that moment would come back to get him.
In a heartbeat, the djinni rose in a smoky yellow column. It dragged Corvus up behind it more quickly than any human could have moved. Dory was knocked aside in a loose-limbed sprawl.
With Jilly crowding close, Liam couldn’t swing without risk. Corvus gave him a single meaningful look, his lazy eye rolling as if in sympathy. Then the half- loose djinni yanked him backward out the window.
“Damn it,” Liam growled. “Not again.”
The glass shattered. Corvus disappeared, with that faint teasing grin still on his lips.
Liam raced to the window. He could hope for a terrible splatter, but they were only on the second story. An easy fall for a powerful djinn-man.
Sure enough, Corvus landed on an abandoned car. His impact knocked the cement blocks out from under it and the dent in the roof was impressive, but he swung himself down and landed on his feet.
He glanced up once, meeting Liam’s gaze, and then he ran.
Liam pulled himself into the window frame, ignoring the shattered glass.
“Oh no.” Jilly’s cry drew him back. “No.”
He paused for a moment, torn. Literally and figuratively, judging by the amount of blood pouring from his hands.
He went to Jilly.
She was cradling Dory. “Not again,” she moaned, echoing his words.
No, not again. This time it was worse.
The faint whiff of rain clung to Dory, and her smile was vague.
Unlike angels and djinn, the teshuva had lost the ability to see souls when they were exiled from both heaven and hell. But Liam didn’t need that dubious talent. He knew what he wouldn’t see.
Dory had lost her soul.
CHAPTER 28
Jilly guessed she must be crying because she saw the spatter of wet on her hands as she clutched Dory, but she didn’t feel anything. “Too late,” she whispered.
Dory b
linked up at her. “Jilly.” Her voice was thick, and her words came slowly. “Hey. Is it late? That must be why I’m so tired.”
“Yeah.” Jilly knew the other talyan had gathered. A few had gone in pursuit of Corvus. She’d heard Liam issue the order. But he’d stayed.
So had Sera, and with her, Archer, who hovered near the window as if he’d rather be out on the street. “You’d think Corvus would’ve developed a healthy fear of heights after I threw him out the last window.”
Sera shushed him.
Jilly could have told her his flippancy didn’t bother her. Nothing hurt her. “Dory, where’s the rest of the solvo?”
“I took it all. He said then we could be together.”
“He’s gone,” Jilly pointed out.
“No. We’re together.”
Jilly supposed her sister was right, in a way. Soulless together. She glanced at Liam. “We have to get her somewhere safe, somewhere the salambes can’t find her.”
He hustled them out of the apartment and down the hall, his fingers firm around her arm. She didn’t protest. His grip steadied her. No, more than that, held her together.
She’d had to attend court dates with her kids, and once, identify a body of a young man who’d passed through the halfway house. She’d done it with tears—half sorrow, half frustration—burning in her eyes.
Escorting her sister’s upright cadaver, she summoned the strict control Liam had pushed so hard. She placed her boots with precision, side by side with his, her eyes dry as the tenebraeternum’s bone-dust wind.
One tenant peered out as they passed, her salt-and-pepper hair in rollers. “That’s right. You empty that trash out of here.”
Sera wrinkled her nose. “She’s no worse than the rest.”
The old woman returned the grimace with a snarl. “Oh, she’s the emptiest kind of all.” She slammed her door.
Jilly tried to summon up some curiosity about whether the woman was another like Lau lau, mysteriously cognizant of the war around them. But it was hard to care when she couldn’t feel.
