by Jessa Slade
Ecco punched Jonah’s shoulder, not lightly. “If you think Corvus is bad, imagine facing Jilly when you say you’re taking her sister away. She’ll tear off your other arm.”
Liam winced, though he couldn’t decide which was worse, Ecco’s insensitivity or the clear picture in his mind of Jilly’s reaction to Jonah’s expedience. “Armageddon,” he murmured.
“Damn straight,” Ecco said. “And while you’re thinking Armageddon, you should also ask yourself why Corvus and the djinni both desire poor deluded Dory of the dreadful decision making. Can’t be true love alone.”
“His better half.” Jonah gave an ugly laugh. “You’re offering marital counseling to a soulless, brain-damaged husk and the bottomless evil jerking him around and the drug-addict prostitute they tag teamed? We’re the only thing standing between a rogue djinn-man and the rest of the world. If we fall here—”
Liam kept his voice soft, with none of Corvus’s theatrics. “No. We make a stand.”
Ecco nodded, but Jonah looked unconvinced. “Is that the leader of the Chicago league speaking? Or a mate who fears betraying his bond?”
Liam straightened to look Jonah hard in the eye. “I say it.”
Jonah inclined his head.
But the question gnawed at Liam. His qualifications had always been suspect. Now there was just an obvious reason to doubt him.
Again Corvus bellowed, “Where is she?”
Liam pitched his own demon to carry his voice. “She is not yours.”
“You have yours already, talya. Don’t thieve.”
Liam smiled bitterly. “As you have stolen Dory’s soul? Stolen all those souls?”
“Released,” Corvus cried. “Freed as I have been.”
Ecco huffed thoughtfully. “Ever notice how ‘evil’ is ‘love’ spelled backward with one different letter? It’s like we’re just one fucked-up spell checker away from eternal doom.”
Corvus lifted his arms, and the djinni rose above him. The poisonous yellow edges of it bled into the rain so it seemed to fill half the street, rising as high as the second story of the warehouse.
“Oh shit,” Ecco said. “That’s no good.”
Jilly sat beside Dory’s bed. Her sister twisted restlessly until the sheets wound around her like a burial shroud. On her sweat-beaded brow, the solvo glistened. Jilly wanted to tear it out, never mind the violence.
Out in the hall, the thud of boots distracted her. Harsh male voices called to one another in low tones, as if they didn’t want to disturb her.
Too late. She was officially disturbed.
She rose from the bedside and looked down at her sister. Too late indeed. She wanted to weep, but her eyes were dry, as if the night had carved her down to bare, ether-etched bone. She touched Dory’s cheek gently and went to the door.
The talyan were returning, pounding up the stairs from the basement, laden with weapons.
Archer had two in each fist. She stopped him. “Hand it over.”
He paused as the other talyan rushed past, and gave her a superior sniff.
She waggled her fingers in a give- it-here motion. He tossed her the mace.
She hefted the short-handled weapon, admired the glint of light off the dozens of steel points. “It goes with my hair.”
Archer grinned. “Yeah. Come on, then.”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I’m going to find Liam.”
He nodded. “What you gotta do. He’s up top.” Then he was gone with the others, heading for the front walk, where the talyan would meet the enemy head-on.
Leaving her to realize that had always been her problem, doing what others said she had to do. She and authority had never gotten along, and fucked-up fate was just another force telling her how fast to dance.
But somewhere along the way, she’d started believing in fate.
Maybe about the time she learned demons were real. So what other mystical, magical powers of the universe had she been refusing to let sway her?
She needed to find Liam. She’d meet her own demons head-on too.
* * *
Liam stiffened as the first of his talyan burst from the warehouse to confront Corvus’s army. “Let’s get down there.”
“Wait a minute,” Jonah cautioned. “Once you’re in the thick of it, you won’t have this overview. See what they’re going to do, how they’re going to fight. Then go down.”
“They’ll fight like demons, I bet,” Ecco said. “I’m on it.” He turned to go, then rocked back on his heels, jolting Liam. “Oh, baby.”
Liam glanced over his shoulder and froze.
When avenging angels of the cupid size fell, they could only hope they looked half as badass as his reluctant tyro.
From spiked hair to spiked mace to the wide stance of her booted feet, Jilly exuded warrior maiden. Not maiden, his body reminded him with sudden inappropriateness. Those small but steady hands had been wrapped around him not so long ago.
He cleared his throat. “I thought you were with your sister.”
“I can’t help her.” Jilly raised her chin. “But I can help you.”
Liam stiffened. “Whatever you’re proposing—” And he could guess, considering her purposeful grip on the mace.
“Okay, then, we’re going.” Ecco hauled Jonah behind him. “Maybe we’ll leave a few malice, just for fun.”
Liam ignored them. He couldn’t look away from the gold and amethyst sparkle of her eyes, the diamonds of misted rain in her hair. How could he stand beside her when he was a starving ex-blacksmith who’d only worked in iron and steel, base and dull? And even that had been a long time ago. These dark nights, he was master only of blood and ichor.
She shifted the mace to one hand and let it swing down to her side. “The league needs us.”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. There wasn’t time for that either. “I don’t know what I have to give.” Not anymore.
“Me,” she said simply.
His bones turned to rain. He held himself straight by will alone. “I wouldn’t give him Dory. Corvus won’t get you either.”
“I’m more than he can handle.” She bit her lip, and the carnelian flush made him wish he’d been the cause. “Together, we might be more than he can survive.”
So this would bring her to him—violence and the promise of revenge. He supposed he should be glad it was so simple and clear. The ravager in him roused willingly to face the tenebrae, but a deeper impulse remained to take her hand and run, somewhere the league didn’t matter because evil didn’t exist. He couldn’t guess where that might be, since he’d never known such a place, even as a boy. So he imagined his big, ugly bed, minus the voyeur cherubim. Wrapped in her fierce embrace, body and soul, he’d take her hand and ask her, would she have him now? With life and death, heaven and hell, damnation and salvation out of the way, would she still have him?
Here in the world, though, evil still existed, and gave no quarter for such irrelevant questions. Plus, she was shivering in the cold rain, the diamond droplets melting into the blue streaks of her hair.
How could she not hate him for making her a pawn in this war? She’d spent all her life refusing to be confined by fate, yet her possession had been inescapable, and he was the figurehead for that damnation. He wouldn’t have blamed her for rebelling. Instead, she’d thrown herself into his fray with all her might. He admired her fortitude, needed her help, and had no defense against her touch, even when she reached out to him with the end of the world in her eyes. He’d never break free of her. And he’d never want to.
Besides, he couldn’t stand to see her cold. He pulled her under his arm and wrapped the edge of his duster around her. Her skin was chiller than the metal of her weapon.
“Nice mace,” he murmured.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “No, really, compared to what we’re going to do, it’s nothing.” She tilted her face up, her gaze fixed on his. “Kiss me.”
“Xiao-Jilly.” He couldn’t stop himself.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just . . . kiss me.”
He thought the world would shift to gray around them, tumble them into the demon realm. But he felt only the soft parting of her lips, the warm exhalation of her breath, the yearning in his flesh.
She drew back, her gaze sliding away. “Take me down.”
Oh, he wanted to. Right there in the puddles gathering on the asphalt. But that’s not what she meant. Down to the battle. Only in close quarters could they unleash their joined power. The danger was incalculable. But when she slipped free of his embrace, when they chose the league and its eternal mission instead of running for that imaginary place without evil, he knew the price had already been paid.
CHAPTER 30
Despite her puffy coat, Jilly was cold inside. Fear, she told herself, as she and Liam raced through the warehouse to the front door. Fear of the tenebrae army, fear of Corvus’s power, fear of death.
And foremost, fear of the tall, lean man at her side and what his hands on her could do.
And she wasn’t worrying about falling into the demon realm either.
They burst through the front doors, out onto the sidewalk, where the talyan were fully engaged, moving like a hundred men. But the ranks of haints and salambes were like a thousand.
As each haint fell, the salambe phased to a new husk before the talya fighting it could get close to drain the demonic emanations. The salambes kept the talyan going in a merry dance. Without the merry part.
With the first stumble, the first sign of exhaustion, the salambe/haint pairings would move in and finish the talyan. That stumble hadn’t come yet. But it would.
Liam cursed and reached to pull her behind him.
She resisted and moved instead to stand in front of him, facing him. “Together. Remember?”
“No. You stay here. We need to regroup, remember our formations.”
“We don’t have time for that. Let them do what you’ve trained them to do.”
“I’m supposed to lead them.”
His gaze was fixed over her head, on the battle. He wanted to be in the midst of it, she knew, keeping his men safe. She was holding him back. No, she had to believe that while he might not want her as his bonded mate, he would always do anything for the league.
“I can’t do this alone.” She flattened her palm in the middle of his chest. The bracelet winked, flaring with each shout or otherworldly shriek in the clashes behind her, as if drawing that energy. She hoped it would. Liam had told her she must take control of it, and she would, but she needed him, his strength and certainty.
The sound of battle was right behind her, but she didn’t turn. Of all her secret doubts, she never doubted Liam would have her back.
He dragged his gaze down to her. “Jilly?” His voice sounded far away. Then he clamped his hand over hers.
At the touch of his skin, as always, the thrill flared in her. She stiffened, waiting for the remembered sense of danger, of losing herself. But unlike last time, now she felt only a fierce joy, a resonant echo through her being, as if part of her had been calling out, and finally heard a reply.
With Liam beside her, she felt she could bend hell itself into a puzzle no demon would ever escape. She had one heartbeat to contemplate that maybe she still had something to learn from him about reining in her bravado, and then the tenebraeternum closed around them.
As if the rain had become a shell, enveloping them apart from all the rest, the featureless gray spread in all directions. It had never felt so vast, and she realized her connection with Liam had never been so complete.
Too bad it had taken this extreme to bind them. Ah well, what did she know about steady relationships anyway?
She didn’t want to step away from him, not with the infinite nothingness all around. Only her bracelet—the demon’s knot-work trap—glinted. Somehow, she knew a misstep would be the end of her, led by marshlights into the mist, never to return. Even Liam the Irishman with his hammer couldn’t bash through this gloom.
Ominous blooms of smoked orange managed to make the otherwise featureless gray even more threatening. “The salambes,” Liam said. “The tenebraeternum exists parallel to our world with only the Veil keeping us separate, which is why when we shift between the realms, we’re still ‘here.’ The salambes are using that overlap to phase through the tenebraeternum as they jump from haint to haint.”
“No wonder they’re so fast.”
Frustration sharpened his voice. “And the talyan can’t touch them while they’re out of the human realm.”
She curled her hand to tangle her fingers with his. “Then it’s a good thing we’re here.”
He looked down at her and his lips twitched in the beginning of a smile. “Yeah, good thing we’re in hell.” Gently, he untangled himself and ran his fingers down her wrist to the bracelet. “Let’s see who else you can trap back on this side.”
She hoped somebody, since she’d epic failed with him. But she’d always known what he wanted her for. As for her wanting more . . . well, as his weapon, she’d still have his hands all over her. So she took a breath and sank into the gray, mesmerized by the faint glowing weave of the bracelet.
When she and Sera had been watching over Dory, the other talya had explained, haltingly, how she and her mate had found themselves in the demon realm. A near-death experience in Sera’s childhood and her work as a thanatologist had given her a unique slanting view of the other-realms even before Corvus’s attempts to destroy the Veil had summoned her teshuva. Battling Corvus, Archer had almost lost what remained of his soul, and only Sera, wielding the soul-cleaver pendant, had been able to patch the Veil.
Jilly looked up at Liam, wishing . . . No, she’d never felt herself to be the kind of person who patched things up. “I can get them lost.”
That’s where all this had led her. To the realization that she’d run so hard from entanglements, she’d barred anyone from holding her. No wonder the kids had related to her; she’d never had a clue. And no wonder Envers at the halfway house had cut her loose. He might have been in the pay of the devil himself, but even the kids knew, at some point, it was time to grow up and face her fears.
Thanks to her teshuva, now she’d never grow up. But maybe a rebel without a chance could still face all the world’s fears.
The first flecks of wayward soul scraps wavered through the patches of gray and intermittent orange, their light as white and pure as solvo. The lights danced around her, drawn into patterns as intricate as the whorls of the bracelet. The demon talisman froze her arm, stealing energy from the part of her spirit-self existing in this realm just as it drew ether from the tenebrae.
If she could just attract enough of the salambes, the talyan out in the world would have a chance.
The first orange glow began to take shape. Hulking, crescent-horned, scimitar-clawed shape. Then another, following the glittering trail of soulflies into the pattern that was the trap ending in the tenebraeternum, where they belonged.
“Jilly.” Liam’s grip on her tightened. He covered the bracelet, his hand hot on her skin, as if he could burn away the chill. And stop what they’d set in motion. “I’m thinking this is a bad idea.”
“It’s the only way.”
“No. There are many paths. That’s what you always told the kids.”
“Many paths, yes. And they’re all leading here. To the end.”
He dragged her deeper into the gloom, the soulflies strung out behind them. “You have to listen to me for once.”
“I did. And you said this was all for the league. For the mission. For the world.”
Anguish twisted his features. “Don’t listen to that part. There’s more than that. There’s you, and me—”
The first of the salambes overtook the swarm of soul bits, swatting them aside in a contrail swirl. Liam gave a shout and leapt for it even as it attacked. She expected him to blow through it, as Ecco had during their first encounter with the incorporeal tenebrae. But Liam and the salambe colli
ded with a force that knocked the soulflies into another swirling confusion. Jilly gasped; she knew his emanation in the demon realm wasn’t his physical self—still, destruction was possible. Maybe even more perilous, since whatever happened to the demon-mottled soul of a talya after death, its chances couldn’t be improved this close to the deeper nether-world of hell.
More salambes were phasing into the gray, their shapes clearer now than in the real world, as if the compatible energy gave them extra power. How unfair.
She gritted her teeth. Hell, like life, might not be fair, but she had a demon of her own, after all. She lifted her arm, the bracelet lofted high. The soulflies spiraled in, slowly at first, then making her dizzy with their quickening whirl.
The league wasn’t going to win. There were too many against them, her force and Liam’s split from the other talyan—split from each other—just when Corvus had found a way to bring the forces of evil together in a real army.
The soulflies were like a path, leading her farther down into the gray. She had to follow, to trap them in that spiral where they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Where they themselves couldn’t be hurt.
Because that’s what she’d always believed. She’d gotten trapped in her own pain and sadness. It was just easier, safer, to stay locked inside. Wasn’t Liam always telling her to be safe?
Since when had she ever done what he said?
At the thought of him, her heart contracted, and she realized, dimly, that it hadn’t done that for a while. That beating thing. Was she dying down here in the gray? She would’ve thought it would hurt more.
She didn’t want to hurt, and it hurt to love Liam when she wasn’t sure he could love her back. Not that she’d taken the chance to ask.
Love. The word lanced through her awareness, brighter than soulflies, straight and true.
Perhaps a path out, if she was brave enough to take it.
Somewhere in the gathering darkness, the thought welled up inside her, the reminder that he didn’t want her. He had a love already, the league, the mission.
Sink, the darkness whispered to her. Fall through the cracks. Get lost in the shadows.
