Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (40 page)

Nim shuddered. “What could he want from the tenebraeternum? There’s only one thing there: a helluva lot more demons.”

“That’s what he wants,” Alyce said. “More tenebrae.”

Jonah paced a few steps. “Corvus was the worst the league ever encountered, and even he didn’t try to amass a demon army from the other side.”

Alyce said softly, “He’s not the worst anymore.”

As the others argued, Alyce shivered at the chill threads of the devils all around her: the muted background of the city’s tenebrae; the sharper strands of the teshuva nearest her; and somewhere not too far, the harsh power of djinni.

But even awash in the competing demonic energies, she still felt the bite of the October wind. It was not a good feeling, and yet …

Despite Sidney’s rejection, she hadn’t faded back into the demon’s hazy spell. Her teshuva had settled, finally, into its place in her soul, the rivet ring a reminder that she was strong enough to control her dread. She was still Alyce; she still remembered.

Damn him for ruining her.

Not for taking her to bed. She’d wanted that. Not even for giving her back the horrifying memories of her penance trigger and possession. No, she was ruined merely because she felt she was. Because she
felt
at all. Ruined, razed, left in rubble, her feelings lay like broken foundations around her,
only shattered glass and sharp stone and fragments of what could have been.

Thorne must have felt the same, to see his boat burned and sunk, the enemy breaching his gate. No wonder he wanted to pull the cold and darkness around him.

She understood. But all she had was her meager power, that simplest of emotions—fear. She wasn’t like Nim, Jilly, and Sera. Whatever power they drew from the
symballein
bond, she didn’t have the strength to take for herself. She was alone again. At least she still had the comfort—cold and alien, but comfort nonetheless—of her demon.

It coiled within her, its agitation tightening her throat and choking back her tears.

“Thorne can’t believe he’ll just widen the verge,” Nim said.

“He has Fane’s sword,” Jonah said. “No doubt he believes he can do quite a bit.”

“He could set loose many souls,” Alyce finished. “How many people are on the pier right now?”

They fell silent, and as if in answer, the voice of the crowd rolled over them.

Sidney shifted. “Alyce, you told me once you’d never seen Thorne hurt anyone.”

She stared at him. “I told you once I loved you. My judgment is not to be trusted.”

“So,” Nim said into the awkward silence, “down we go.”

“We could call in a bomb threat,” Amiri said. “Put those traffic cops to good use clearing the pier. And we wouldn’t even be lying.”

“That might work.” Sidney rubbed his chin with his Bookkeeper abstracted expression. Then abruptly he focused. “But you don’t agree, do you, Alyce? I recognize that look.”

She had a look? And how did he know what she was thinking almost before she did? “If you try to warn everyone,
you’ll panic them. I’ve seen frightened mobs. We’d bring the city’s tenebrae down on our heads, never mind what’s waiting on the other side of the verge.”

Nim swore under her breath. “Then we just go in. With the lure power of my teshuva, I should be able to hold—”

Jonah wrapped his arm around her waist. The gleaming hook rested at her hip. “We should be able to hold.”

“
We
should be able to hold any crossover demons in the basement until reinforcements arrive.” Nim crossed her fingers.

Nobody called her on the wishful thinking.

The five of them eased past the line into the diner, amidst much grumbling. “Hey, no cutting,” one man said.

“Maybe you want to take our place?” Amiri growled under his breath.

Inside, Jonah cornered Therese. “Can you get everyone out of here?”

She glanced dubiously around the full seats. “They won’t be happy.”

“We don’t need the negative emotions,” Alyce warned. “We should just go.”

“Stop in the kitchen on your way,” Therese urged. “I have knives. Good knives.”

“Nothing to rival a sword, though,” Sidney murmured.

As they descended the ladders, Alyce cast a wary eye over the space. Even with her teshuva at high alert, there seemed no end to the space. The walls were lost in shifting shadows with no apparent source, as if large, unseen forces moved between them and the light.

The verge was widening, with all of hell on the other side. And hell was hungry.

The transmuted glass and bone husk that marked the verge was invisible in the mist. Sid wasn’t sure whether it was worse to see the disturbing mouth of hell, or to know it had gaped wide enough that now he was looking past its tonsils.

His demon-altered vision skipped and pixilated, like a smudged DVD, as it tried to reconcile his human knowledge with what he was experiencing, collating the physical and metaphysical planes. But even as the Bookkeeper in him marveled, he knew he had nothing to compare.

Except maybe the nothingness that haunted Alyce’s eyes.

She was right behind him on the ladder, her big black boots nearly on his fingers as she hastened downward. He wanted to shove her back up the ladder, out to safety.

But there was no safety out there, and besides, that wasn’t what they were about.

He realized then that he’d never—not even when that long-ago bottle had broken in his waistband and the smell
of blood and liquor had choked him—felt anything to compare to the dread that gripped him now.

Thorne was nowhere to be seen either. Damn, at least a flaming sword could have lit a few of the shadows.

When they got to the bottom, Amiri clutched his own short sword vertically in front of him, though there was scarcely room on its hilt for his nervous double-handed grip. “This isn’t right. Where are we?”

“The Veil, the no-man’s-land—the no-demon’s-land—stuck between the realms,” Nim said. “And now there’s a gateway through the Veil. Why do you think we called it the verge?”

“Because it sounded cool.” Amiri’s voice cracked.

Jonah shot him a glance. “I know this isn’t what you’re used to. The male talyan have hunted strictly on our side of the Veil, picking off the horde dregs. Now you’re seeing what’s beyond. Ladies’ night starts here.”

Amiri shook his head, a little wildly. “The dregs have been plenty bad enough to keep us busy. And sometimes dead.”

“Oh, you can die here too.” Nim stood as close to Jonah as their drawn weapons would allow. The curves of their knives nearly matched—his large enough to qualify as a sword, hers smaller and balanced for throwing. “The rules are different here on the edge of hell, but that one stays the same.”

Nim raised her hands, and Jonah hunched his shoulders as her knife waved near his ear. As she stretched herself to full height, the cuffs of her skinny-leg jeans lifted to reveal an anklet curved over the strap of her high heel shoe. The talisman glinted with violet highlights.

Alyce made a soft sound, and Sid angled himself between her and … and whatever might happen next. She twisted the asylum rivet around her finger as if the restless movement might rev her demon.

Maybe it would; what the hell did he know?

Nim’s brows furrowed. “Who’s out there?” she whispered. “You’re hungry? Then come get us. You know you can’t resist me.”

Sid swallowed against the menace that deepened her voice. The shadows seemed to have no such concerns. The swirling gray mist tightened into double vortices, spiraling in toward Nim’s outstretched hands.

Jonah stood behind her. His good arm wrapped low over her belly and anchored her to his chest. His sword arm—literally a sword in place of his missing hand—waited, cocked to eviscerate anything that came too close.

Not that even a wisp of mist could have worked its way between their bodies. Their perfect accord tugged at Sid, and he put his hand over his chest as the emptiness in him answered the damning lure.

He and Alyce had been given the chance to bond. But he’d been afraid. In his heart, he’d fancied himself some bold pursuer of knowledge. Instead, he’d run from the mystery.

And now it was that emptiness in his torso he felt watching the etheric dance of the
symballein
pair: his missing heart; the unfolding mystery that was Alyce.

The mist and shadows drew toward Nim like a magician slowly pulling away a diaphanous curtain.

In the amorphous realm of the Veil, the verge was a sculptured modern art shape that seemed to have expanded in all visible directions and taken on a disturbing new life. Among the layers of gray, Technicolor glimpses of the outside world surfaced in the glass orbs studding the bony feralis husk.

One aperture showed the Ferris wheel spinning with unnatural speed. The riders’ faces distorted from laughter to slack-jawed screams. Behind the park, the midway lights glimmering on the Crystal Gardens flamed into etheric bonfires. Fiery silhouettes of salambes climbed the building’s steel cross braces, seeking escape. The virulence of
their emanations melted the windows in widening holes while molten glass dripped down onto the broken bodies of the crowd within. Already, the ferales were shredding the dead, claiming the corpses for their own hideous creations.

Amiri swore and spun for the ladder.

“It’s not happening,” Alyce said. “These passages are how hell sends evil to torture us, but not all the ways are open, not all the nightmares will come to pass. That one is dread, not truth.”

Sid grabbed her arms and spun her to face him. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

The pale violet of her eyes was another window reflecting the tenebraeternum’s portals of projected horror. “My demon remembers.”

Once he’d touched her, it was impossible to let go. The tough resistance of the leather sleeves only emphasized the slender fragility of her under his grip. His breath faltered. “Alyce, when you said you loved me once …”

“Don’t.” She shrugged him off. “That wasn’t real either. Just the last of my delusions evaporating.”

He wanted to howl, some wordless cry of denial. Because what could he say now that would reach her through the demons, the threat of death, his own dumb oblivion? With every dictionary at his disposal, where were the right words?

“Look!” Amiri shouted. “It’s the rest of the league.”

Another altered orb dripped coagulating ether as if salivating. Between the droplets, it showed Liam, with Cyril Fane and a half-dozen others behind him, racing through the oblivious crowd. Their expressions were as uniform as their black clothes, worried and grim. Against his white shirt, Fane’s expression was darker yet.

Jonah kissed Nim’s temple. “Dare we hope that one is real?”

“It’s not just a hope since we
did
call them,” she said practically. “Let’s make sure that vision becomes reality.”

All around them, the orbs revealed nightmare visions—
worse, they were the passageways through the flawed Veil where hell’s darkness had the chance to leach into the world. Sid pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Thorne has an angel’s sword. If these portals are tuned to places and possibilities that might draw the tenebrae, the sphericanum’s blessing on the sword could mask him.”

“That’s a problem.” Nim swatted her knife through the mists in frustration. “I don’t think these televisions get decent reception of the Goodness and Light Channel.”

“Then he needs to feel some dread too.” Sid glanced at Alyce. “Can you do it?”

“Summon the fear?” Her eyes clouded, and she nodded slowly. “I’ve done it before. Not with Thorne, of course.”

Her icy gaze fixed on him. He was the only one she’d ever frightened off.

When he put his hands on her shoulders, her stiffness shocked him. He’d wanted to focus the aimless little Alyce who’d found him in the alley, but he’d never meant to sharpen her to this brittle point that went through his heart. Beneath his thumbs and forefingers, where the neckline of the leather bustier left her collarbone exposed, her skin was so cold.

“You did terrify me,” he said softly. “But not anymore.”

Her cold stare gave him no quarter. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten.” Despite her frozen facade, she swayed with a barely perceptible shiver.

He should be focused on finding and stopping Thorne and ending the potential catastrophes unveiled in the portals. But every part of him wanted to stay in the here and now, with her. He dropped his hands and stepped back before even his demon could determine whether she’d swayed away … or to him.

“Thorne doesn’t need to be terrified. Look at the talyan. They’re just barely on the far side of freaked out. If you can inspire the same in Thorne, maybe we can get a lock on him through the verge.”

“He’s so much stronger than we are,” Alyce said.

“Evil always is,” Jonah said. “Annoyingly.”

Alyce lowered her head, twisting the ring. Violet sparks burned between her fingers, and her hands flared open in surprise. “Little things,” she murmured. “He won’t notice the little things.”

She lifted her head. When she straightened, the chevron knives along her spine flared like tiny, delicate wings. “I can find him. And the verge will take me there.”

Sid had thought he had run away from his heart. But he found it now. It was lodged in his throat. He choked on it, and Alyce was already extending her hands before he forced his voice around the objection.

“Wait,” he said. “Not you.”

“I’m the least,” she said. “Nothing I do will distract him. Until it’s too late.”

Too late.
The words mocked him. “I’ll go with you.”

She shook her head. “You can’t. You’re too big, too strong, too bright. It’s not …”

“Not my place,” he said softly.

She glanced away. “Not with me.”

The rejection pierced him. And the regret. He must be lighting up the tenebraeternum switchboard like a disaster. Of course, he couldn’t follow her. He’d never been able to give her what she needed.

She held her hands out, as Nim had, but instead of flowing toward her, the shadowy mists stilled.