Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (21 page)

Despite the stern clack, only Alyce turned. Against the white dress and her white skin, her icy eyes burned with a pale blue fire.

Her expression didn’t soften, still as cold and remote as the moon since she’d heard him choose London over her, and he realized he’d wanted her to be happy to see him. He wanted her smile to invite him through the ring of prowling talyan to her side.

Several millennia of Bookkeeper doctrine stood in direct opposition to his wants, though he couldn’t quote the exact passages right at this moment, but what did they know? He was just one man, and she, despite her demonic burden, was still a woman, the woman he couldn’t get out of his otherwise ruthlessly disciplined mind. Despite all the unspecified fears, really, how could this shimmering awareness between them destabilize the world?

Even as his head spun from the alcohol in his empty belly, his determined footsteps carried him through the first ring of talya males. Tonight, he was through taking notes.

A tremor swept down Alyce’s spine, riding an anonymous surge of keen expectation.

She had never been around so many overwrought people. When the lights above the dance floor swept the crowd, the garish illumination captured fleeting moments of expressions. A blue frozen laugh. A red openmouthed shout. A yellow head thrown back in abandon. The unfettered passions sent another wave of shivers through her bones, as if trying to vibrate her into ill-considered action.

The talyan wanted her. Nim had promised they would not attack, though the marks of their demons glittered brighter than the club lights. Jilly had also promised to put her heavy boot through their backsides if they touched Alyce without her permission.

Alyce wondered what the fierce little woman would do to Sidney.

Then, as if conjured by her thought, he emerged from the stairwell.

To her devil-riddled eyes, he stood out against the shadows like one of the candles in the cracked glass. His light gleamed through his flaws until her eyes watered from looking at him.

There was more light to him than shadow, which was more than she could say for herself. No wonder he wouldn’t stay.

She let the tears blind her, so she didn’t have to see him watching her from a distance that was impossible even for a powerful demon to cross and utterly hopeless for her. She would do anything to stave off the dreadful moment when he would walk up to her and say good-bye.

Through the haze of weakling tears she glimpsed the starry night of red watching eyes.

Ah,
that
was who was so excited about her misery.

Without raising her head or drawing attention, she murmured to Nim, who stood closest, “Do you see them? We’re surrounded.”

“Can’t miss ’em. Tall, dark-souled, and disgustingly handsome. You’d think in a few thousand years between them of walking this earth, they could come up with one pickup line.”

“I meant the devils.”

“Yeah, all that teshuva tweaking makes the
reven
light up like a pinball game.” Nim scowled. “Sorry I made you the shiny silver ball.”

“The dress is very pretty.” Alyce brushed her palms down her thighs. Around her, the net of etheric energy pinged on her skin as it tightened another notch. “I’m talking about the tenebrae.”

“What? Where?” Nim whirled, her hand at the small of her back. She kept a blade there, Alyce had noticed. The grim-faced man at the door to the club hadn’t noticed, despite his air of officiousness, because he’d been too busy looking at Nim’s long, bare legs.

But the concealed knife would do no good against these devils.

“Up,” Alyce said. “No, don’t look. You’ll bring them upon us.”

“We can take them.”

“You are stronger,” Alyce agreed, “but the panic downstairs would be … messy.”

Nim nodded. “The horde-tenebrae always like the juicy tang of panic.” She leaned toward Jonah and spoke into his ear.

He stiffened but didn’t look up. “Let’s take it outside.”

As if someone had thrown a match on the line of black powder connecting them, the demon marks on all the talyan flared violet at once.

Tucked like black mold into the nooks and crannies in the ceiling girders, the malice shrieked and were echoed in a deeper register by the larger salambes. The cry reverberated in the big gray boxes that boomed music below. The song cut out and projected the horde’s voice in a vicious roar. People on the dance floor dropped to their knees, hands clamped over their ears.

Alyce winced. “We have to get out. Maybe the devils will follow us.”

“They will if I tell them to,” Nim said. She threaded her fingers through Jonah’s.

To Alyce’s astonishment, the talya tucked her into the crook of his arm and kissed her. It was a scandalizing kiss, her breasts tight against his chest, his hook gleaming low against the yielding curve of her spine. The backlash went through the teshuva and tenebrae alike in a shuddering wave.

Alyce was already heading for the stairs, shoving between the frozen talyan.

Sidney stepped in front of her. “What—?”

She grabbed his hand and yanked him along.

Her passage broke apart the stillness, and they fell into line behind her and Sidney. Liam was right at their heels. “Thank all the saints you were paying attention.”

“There are no saints here.” She hunched her shoulders against the gathering storm cloud of devils overhead.

“Through the back, to the alley,” Jonah said. “Nim will lure the malice with us.”

In a wave of blackness all their own, the talyan swept through the stunned crowd. Someone was tugging at wires around the big music boxes, muttering, “Damn speakers.”

Yes, Alyce thought, all the talking had almost damned them. She didn’t want to hear any more from Liam and the others about all she would be with them—or worse, hear the words they didn’t say; the look, lonely and hungry, that was only in their eyes.

She’d show them what she did with lonely and hungry.

They burst out the back door into the empty alley. The windowless walls of the buildings rose up four stories on both sides, a canyon of chipped brick and rusting steel. From the vents and grates in the upper floor of the club and from over the roofline poured the greasy smoke of the devils.

“Time to rumble,” Jilly muttered.

As if in answer, the music inside the hall kicked on again, the deep notes throbbing through the walls.

Sidney tugged at Alyce’s hand. “What’s happening?”

She pointed. “You can’t see them.”

He frowned. “Just … shadows?”

“Horde.” Nim’s voice was almost a croon. “Come to Mama.”

They came in a stinking rush of broken rotting eggs, as if night’s darkness sped down the wall, obliterating every detail.

Alyce had never fought with others before, and she tried to watch with her new understanding, the new words Sidney had given her, though her muscles cramped with the urge to flee. If this many of the devils had come for her alone …

But the talyan stepped forward in a wall of male flesh,
the two talya women nearly lost between the broad shoulders. A furious sweep of etheric energy belled out ahead of them. The devils that hit the teshuva power boiled into foul steam.

“Bloody hell. I should have had another drink.” Sidney rubbed his eyes and squinted, as if trying to separate what his eyes saw—or didn’t see, or half saw—and his mind knew. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, is it? Why are there so many?”

“Nim and her demon call them to slaughter,” Jonah said. “Makes hunting far more efficient lately.”

But Nim shook her head. “I can’t take the credit. These were already gathering, even before I called. Alyce saw them first.”

Half of Liam’s attention stayed on the talyan slowly shredding the tenebrae. “What did they want? You?”

“Not me,” Alyce said. “They wanted the wanting.”

Liam pointed at Sidney. “You. Care to decode?”

Alyce pulled her hand free of Sidney’s when his gaze settled on her with as much curiosity as he’d had when he’d studied the horde above them.

He didn’t seem to notice her withdrawal as he considered their little grouping. “The league is usually so careful about damping its energy. All the desires and fears and furies. The emotions that power all of us are amplified by the teshuva, which give the talyan more strengths—and more vulnerabilities.”

She didn’t need more vulnerabilities. It was bad enough to be alone, afraid, confused. But she did know one thing, and she’d wanted to show them.

She stepped outside the protective circle of talyan.

Sidney’s surprised call didn’t stop her; nor did the other talyan. The bright flare of their eyes followed her.

The ferocity of their teshuva had thinned the devils, but the dozens that remained were whipped to a rage. Singly,
they might feed on despair or frustration and be content to spread their malaise like a creeping sickness.

En masse, they wanted to devour her.

So she let them.

Sidney shouted again, more vehemently this time. From the surge through the talya energy, she knew they had rallied to hold him back.

Really, they should get a little farther back.

The devils surrounded her, their nasty mouths latched on the flesh exposed by her pretty new dress. They fed her their horrors. No, not theirs. She hadn’t recognized that until now, when Sidney had made her face her flickering memory. These were her own half-known horrors, sucked from her and regurgitated, more vile than before.

Their whispers leached through her veins.
Master. Madness. Hang the witch.

The
reven
around her neck tightened as the teshuva finally roused. She had thought maybe she had to hurt for it to hunt. But now she understood; it was too weak to waste itself on the chase. She was staked out as victim while it waited to take its unwitting prey from behind.

Now that her eyes were opened, the experience was rather more gruesome. But she stood, swaying, hands in fists.

The malice exulted in her fading strength as they consumed the last of her sickened outrage and the pain of their violation and delighted in the more delicate flavors of deepest despair. A larger salambe loomed closer, not so patiently waiting its turn.

She tasted the first stirrings of dread—her own dread, tainted as grave dirt. In another heartbeat, death would come.

Not for her. Her demon longed for the horde in its embrace.

“Alyce!”

Sidney’s shout, rough and frantic, rang from the bricks and forced her eyes open.

Liam grappled with Sidney, who struggled against the talya’s hold. Sidney swung his fist with more vehemence than aim.

And knocked the bigger man to the pavement in a tangle of his canvas duster.

A shock rippled all the way around the talya circle. Even Jilly stood a stunned moment before rushing to her mate.

As if the demon-possessed warrior had been nothing more than an inconveniently closed door he had to get through, Sidney bolted beyond the shielding energy of the roused teshuva.

“No,” Alyce whispered. Scarcely past her lips, her plea withered in the miasma of the chortling malice, wound tight round her throat.

Sidney’s gaze fastened on her.

At the same moment she realized she’d gone too far. In her silly hurt at Sidney’s rejection and the conceit of flaunting her demon, she’d brought too many malice to her to feast. Fortified by her torment, they would flay Sidney for dessert.

Because of her.

Malice sheathed her bare arms in a crawling shawl of shadows, but with every last thread of her token power, she lifted her still-bare hand, fingers spread in a white star to ward him off.

But Sidney ignored her warning and laced his fingers through hers.

She couldn’t feel his touch. The negative energy of the malice was extinguishing her, moment by moment, as it overwhelmed her demon.

“Don’t do this alone.” His voice through the distortions of the malice surrounding her sounded so far away.

But he was going back to London, she wanted to remind him. She would be alone again.

Sidney’s steely gaze reflected the violet of a dozen rampant teshuva. But though his lucky shot had flattened Liam, he couldn’t loosen her from the miring weight of malice. The irresistible compulsion that had drawn her to find him in the alley just one night ago wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough.

So he drew himself to her.

No! She wanted to scream her denial to save him from the demons swarming around them. But she was weak, so weak in the presence of such potent temptation, and when he bowed his head to kiss her, she lifted her mouth to his.

That she felt—a fleeting touch of heat and swirling light and life.

Then the teshuva burned through her in a sudden rush, scouring away all thought and any emotion, save one impulse that was hers and hers alone:
This.

The salambes fled, and the malice might have screamed—half-formed mouths dripping with her anguish—if they’d pulled away faster. But the etheric power exploded them like swollen ticks.

The talyan swore and ducked, their violet-glowing eyes wise to the spatter. Only Liam’s hand between Sidney’s shoulder blades as the talya finally reached them spared his human flesh a bad ichor burn.

The brick walls glowed sickly with devil sign, and a querulous thin cry drifted up as the scattered shreds of ether drifted down.

Alyce rocked back onto her heavy boot heels, their sturdy weight holding her upright.

“Steady,” Sidney cautioned. But his voice shook. “Are you okay?”

She considered. “Nim said I would need practical shoes.”

Then even the boots weren’t enough support, and she crumpled into his arms.