Shadow Bound (25 page)

Jacob huffed and pulled the knife out of Adam’s side with a searing twist. “He’s tied to the chair. He can’t do anything.”

With the knife gone, the chance was lost. Panic shuddered Adam, but a glance at Talia’s white face, and he brought himself sharply under control. The only thing he had left under his power was himself. Giving in to fear would not help anything. He had to hold it together for her. Stay with her to the end.

“Are you arguing with me?” The snaking black demon flexed its menace on the host’s body.

Jacob ducked his head in sudden obedience. “Of course not.”

The host gestured, sharp and perfunctory. Jacob handed the blade to the other wraith, who released Talia and left the room. The door shut with a devastating click.

Talia dropped to the floor at Adam’s knees, her hands fluttering at his side where the blade had pierced him. Blood now seeped through his shirt, but not enough for a mortal injury; Jacob had chosen the spot too well.

Jacob grabbed a fistful of Talia’s hair to haul her upright again. She whimpered as her shoulders followed the oblique angle of her body.

Adam strained against his bonds, growling.

“Let her be,” the host said. “This will go more quickly if they have a moment together.”

Talia fell back onto Adam’s lap. Adam ached to pull her into his arms, to cover her body with his so she could be safe. No torture was more painful than Talia, weeping on his lap.

Finally she brought her shining upturned eyes to his.

Adam’s gaze fixed on hers with a million questions. Why was she here? Why wasn’t she hiding in shadow? She could do things in shadow. Escape. Save herself.

Of course she understood him. Of all the people on this earth, Talia was the only one who could really understand him.

“I couldn’t let you do it alone,” she said, her voice rasping with effort. “You should have waited for me.”

I couldn’t risk losing you.

“You should have trusted me.” Talia worked her fingers on the tape on his face.

I had to protect you.
The harsh reality was that he couldn’t protect her. He’d tried everything, and still had fallen short.

“You can’t just run off to save the world whenever you want. I need you,” she said. The tape burned as she stripped it off.

“I love you,” Adam said. He needed those to be the first words out of his mouth. Something right amid so much wrong. “I had to do
something.
”

“You still can,” the host interrupted.

Adam brought his gaze up to the demon and his host. The host lifted a hand to Talia’s hair and wound a blonde curl around his finger.

The demon. Touching Talia.

“You’ve been a thorn in my side—” The host paused expectantly.

Adam got the joke, but he wasn’t about to laugh for a demon.

“—for some time now. I would take great satisfaction, and make significant progress in my plans, were you to join my army of wraiths.”

Dread pooled within Adam. He could see where this was going.

The host’s gaze darted back and forth between him and Talia, expressive and emoting. It seemed the man, independent of the demon, had taken an interest in the proposal that the demon used his human lips to form.

“If you accept my offer of immortality, I will give the banshee the gift of time. I will allow her off my ship. Give her a day to run and hide before I hunt for her again.”

Adam didn’t want to hear the “or.”

“Or, I will rape her now, before your eyes, and get my child on her.”

Talia clamped her hands over Adam’s ears, but too late. He’d already heard.

“No no no no no,” she croaked. “Don’t listen to him. Don’t even think about it.”

Tears streaked black makeup down the face he loved. Even with all that goth gunk, she was beautiful. So much magic in such a small package.

Adam had seen what had been done to Custo. Saw how his friend had been wrenched to death. He knew he couldn’t watch Talia be defiled before his eyes and not do something about it. The mere thought of her desecration sent excruciating pain searing through his veins.

With a painful snap, something broke inside Adam. Something vital, essential to life. Something that connected him to Talia, Segue, and his lost family. Something that set him apart from everything he loved. The demon had just effortlessly named the price of his soul.

“No no no no no.” Talia sobbed against his shoulder, seeking comfort he couldn’t, wouldn’t, give.

Adam strained his head away from her. He couldn’t bear her frantic touch, the sound of hurt in her voice. If anyone could weaken his resolve, she could, and it would take every ounce of will he possessed to do this last thing.

The host’s head cocked in an affectation of thinking. “Actually, my plan would be best served by fucking her now. Jacob could hold her down, if necessary. As much as you and your Segue have been a constant irritation—”

“—I’ll do it,” Adam interrupted, though he knew the demon was now playing with him for sport. “I’ll become a wraith.”

“No.” Talia’s voice was a sob-clogged whisper. Shadows shuddered with her surge of horror and dread. She took Adam’s head in her hands to make him face her again. To look into his eyes and compel a different answer out of him. She was already on her knees. Now she used her position to beg.
Please, anything but a wraith.
She could not imagine a worse fate for him than to become the thing he’d dedicated his life to destroy. She refused to be the means of his undoing.

Adam kept his chin firmly to the side, the muscles in his jaw flexing with effort, his gaze refusing to meet hers.

“Don’t do this, Adam,” she rasped. “Take it back. You can still make a different choice. They’ll find me anyway. The demon has hellhounds that can see in shadow. I can’t evade them. You’d be doing this for nothing.”

The door opened behind her. Talia could hear the dogs whine. For a moment, she thought the beasts would be brought in to demonstrate her point, but instead the host said, “I’ll need my cup,” to someone outside the small room.

“Adam, why won’t you listen to me? Please, listen to me!” For all her efforts, her voice was a harsh whisper; she could barely hear herself.

The door opened again—Talia whipped her head around to see what awful thing was next—and the cup was handed in. An old-fashioned goblet of sorts.

The host held it while the demon snake belched black tar to the brim. Talia could smell its sulfurous reek paces away. Something about the stuff echoed the tar coating her throat.

“You’ll need to drink this,” the host said to Adam, lifting the cup as if to toast.

Oh please God no
.

But he obviously didn’t care. For whatever stupid, cosmic reason, neither God nor Shadowman was going to help her. Talia glanced at Adam’s inscrutable expression. She was in this nightmare alone.

Well, they couldn’t have him.

Talia stood in front of Adam’s chair and faced the demon, her feet braced for maximum stability.
Over her dead body.
She hoped the demon would take her challenge literally.

The only way the demon was going to get through her with his revolting brew was if he killed her. Which would be just groovy, because then Shadowman would come and cut his disgusting, slimy black hide to pieces.

“I’ve made my choice, Talia,” Adam said behind her. “Now get out of the way.”

Adam’s tone made the small room drop thirty degrees, and bitter goose bumps raced across Talia’s skin. She braced against the cold. She could be stubborn, too.

The host smirked awkwardly at her, though the man’s eyes were wide with acute horror and sadness. Talia found it ironic that the human half of that demon-host marriage should empathize with her situation, especially since his choice was the first to give the demon power.

Well, if that coward wanted forgiveness, he’d have to look elsewhere.

The host’s gaze seemed to read her answer, because it dulled again, the man retreating back into the shadows of his mind. Still choosing the easy way.

She wouldn’t.

“I’m not moving,” Talia said. The room darkened, shadows stirring with her inner turmoil as if a gale circled the room.

Jacob stepped toward her, but the host raised his hand to stop him.

“Release Adam,” the host said to Jacob. “Let him deal with her. He has to take the cup himself anyway. The banshee will settle when he becomes a wraith.”

Not likely.

Jacob moved around Adam’s chair. Talia heard the tape at Adam’s hands rip.

Adam stood, his arms dropping to his sides, fingers flexing to restore circulation. His expression was closed and grim.

“You’ll see her safely back to New York?” Adam asked over her head.

“I will,” the host answered. “Safe and sound. As a creature of Twilight, I cannot break my word.”

This was not happening. This could not be happening.

“Don’t do this.” Talia clutched at Adam’s sweat-dampened shirt. He smelled stale and stressed, but still so good. So
Adam. She planted her hands on his chest to hold him physically back.

He gripped her shoulders—would this be the last time he’d hold her?—and finally met her gaze.

“Talia,” he said, voice gravelly, “you are an expert at running and hiding. I’ve left you everything I have to help you. I need you to take this chance; I’m going to give it to you regardless. I need you to run. I need you to heal. Then you track this bastard down and scream.”

“Please, if you love me, don’t do this,” she begged. She hated the determination in his voice. Adam was impossible to stay from a decided course of action. Tears blurred her vision in frustration.

“Look at me, Talia,” Adam commanded. “Look at me!”

She startled painfully. His shout felt like he’d struck her.

“Then I need you to track
me
down,” he said. “I need you to scream for me. Will you do that, Talia? Will you scream for me?”

A sob of anguish broke out of her. “No.” But what she was refusing she couldn’t name. “No” to his choice. “No” to running. “No” to this whole goddamned nightmare. Couldn’t he see that the only answer to give was “No”?

Adam’s grip on her shoulders tightened just enough to move her out of his way.

She dived into his side and threw her arms around his waist to drag him down with her weight. He stumbled slightly, then regained his balance.

She pulled on shadow to blank Adam’s vision. She coaxed the veils into a frenzy to bar him from reaching the demon. She summoned her will to push him back with her mind.

If the demon wanted to sic his dogs on her, so be it. She could fight wraiths. She could fight the demon and his hellhounds. And she’d damn well fight Adam if she had to.

The demon could not have him.

Adam struggled against her, his will against hers. He pried his arms away, his grip biting into her flesh.

“See how easy it is,” the host observed lightly, presumably to Jacob. “She’s been here perhaps ten minutes and he’s broken. Watch how they fight each other.”

Jacob snickered in agreement.

Blind fury rose in Talia, the likes of which she’d never felt in her life. The room darkened deeper than pitch. Her hair lifted and whipped around her as the veils layered shadow upon shadow.

She drew a deep breath of outrage and grief, and screamed.

It was a broken, pitiful noise that set a fire in her lungs.

The host laughed outright.

She tried again, pushing all the life and love she had into one sound, an extended gasp of pain and sorrow.

Still, nothing. Goddamn nothing.

“Stop this, Talia,” Adam lashed. “You’re only doing more damage to yourself.”

The room churned with her storm of shadows, but still he managed to move forward, carry ing her with him a full step toward the demon and his hateful cup.

Sobbing, she leaned into Adam’s body with her shoulder, her arms reaching beyond him for something to hold on to. Reaching for something to give her leverage against his greater strength. Reaching for
anything
that would delay his insanity.

Cold steel met her palm. A frigid rod or shaft of this ship’s pipes. Her fingers wrapped around it.

Power flooded up her arm and through her body in primeval recognition.

Not a shaft of pipe, then. The shaft of her father’s scythe, handed father to daughter across their native shadow. Her fae inheritance, the legacy of Death.

A dark glee of demon bloodlust suffused Talia’s half-breed
senses. She pushed Adam firmly back, once and for all, and turned to face the demon, the crescent moon of the scythe’s blade circling over her head as a vane signals a change in the weather.

The wind was finally blowing her way.

A
DAM
stumbled back at Talia’s astonishingly hard shove. The room disappeared. Without her touch, he swam in a sea of mute darkness, his sense of direction upended.

Damn stubborn woman. Couldn’t she understand that this was the only way?

And damn if her newfound strength didn’t make him love her even more. As if that were possible. If she could stand between him and the demon, daring the Death Collector to do his worst, then she could survive on her own. She could run, heal, and then find her way to a scream that would end this nightmare. Perhaps they’d all wake to a bright morning where anything was possible.

First, he had to get her off this ship. It didn’t matter in the least what her safety cost.

“Talia!”

The darkness broke suddenly. Talia reeled back into Adam’s arms, a vicious dog scraping at her corset to get to her throat.

Adam hit the beast in the head with his fist. It yowled and broke away, as the other two snarling hellhounds rounded Talia’s side.

A glint of elongated steel struck down like a flash of lighting, and the first dog dissolved into a dense cloud of black
smoke. The other dogs jumped to retreat in a braced crouch, ears pinned and teeth bared.

“Call off your dogs!” Adam glanced at the door.

The demon and his host were gone, the door to the cell swinging ajar. The goblet full of demon vomit rolled on the floor on its side, smearing the goo in a half circle at the threshold. Adam darted a glance to Jacob, whose face had lost all of its previous mirth. He, like the dogs, was braced to fight or flee, his eyes trained on Talia, his body twitching to anticipate her next move.

Talia.

Adam’s gaze traveled up the staff of the lowered weapon to Talia’s grip. He swallowed hard and looked her in the face.

Her already pale skin was shining alabaster, her eyes churning with deep shadow and rimmed with smudged makeup that accentuated her fae bone structure. Off her shoulders her white hair lifted, crackling with energy as a cloak of translucent veils fell, rippling layer upon layer, to hazy nothing at its edges. Her corset was deeply scored, but no red soaked through. Her bosom heaved as she lifted the scythe again.

Banshee. Beauty. And, well, badass. He always knew she had it in her.

Talia lifted the staff and brought the scythe down again in a glittering arc. The hellhounds danced out of reach, growling deep in their throats and barking dire threats.

Where she’d gotten the weapon, Adam could only guess. It was way past time that the Other side helped them out. But he wasn’t complaining, not if the scythe belonged to who he thought it belonged. No—with a fae weapon in the hands of a fae fighter, Adam wasn’t complaining at all. He could work with this. Elated relief, or blood loss, made him near giddy.

Except Talia’s position was too open, unguarded. Adam grabbed the chair by its back and heaved it up as Jacob darted forward to seize the advantage. A chair leg went through Jacob’s eye socket and cracked his skull. Jacob fell back against the far wall in a slump.

The movement was a sharp stab in Adam’s gut where Jacob had used him as a pincushion. Adam pressed a hand to the wound. Blood seeped through his closed fingers.

Damn it. Wraiths moved too fast, and the ship had to be chock-full of them.

He’d been soft at Segue about self-defense. No longer. He was going to have to teach Talia to watch her sight lines. If they got out of here alive, his woman was in for some serious instruction. Basic self-defense would not be enough. She’d need combat training. And he’d have to find a specialist who worked with blades, a swordsman of sorts, most likely. His banshee would need the best.

“Spread your grip on the shaft,” Adam commanded, keeping his gaze fixed on Jacob and the hellhounds. “You’ll have better control. And don’t lock your knees. Stay on the balls of your feet.”

The hellhounds leaned into a round of ferocious barking, the echo bouncing in a clamor off the room’s metal walls.

Jacob stirred across the room. Damn it. Wraiths healed too fast, too.

The scythe flashed as Talia suddenly lunged. The hellhounds’ shouts were cut into sharp squeaks as they lifted into dark, sulfurous smoke.

The blade arced up again and Talia paced forward, as if she could read Adam’s mind.

Go. Go. Go.
His heart thumped hard, pounding in time with his internal chant.

The blade swept down in a deep threshing movement.

Talia took Jacob where he lay in a heap on the room’s floor,
his head rolling to a light tap against the wall. His body gasped and settled as if he’d already been long dead. The smell confirmed it.

And just like that Adam’s promise was fulfilled. An old tightness in his chest, one that had robbed him of air for six years too long, released. The rush that followed made his eyes water with slightly euphoric realization: He’d seen to his brother, what was left of him anyway. And now he was free. Adam didn’t know how he could ever thank Talia enough, but he would try. Over and over again, as necessary.

Talia turned. “Are you okay?”

The wrinkle between her brows told him she was worried. She bit her bottom lip to deep red. If they got off this ship alive, he’d start thanking her by kissing that lip first. The one that took all the punishment for her nerves.

“Never better.” Bleeding from his belly in a ship full of wraiths, captained by the demon Death Collector, and it was the absolute truth.

Her teeth scraped her lip again as she smiled back at him.

Yeah, that bottom lip had to be first, and then maybe the delightful dip of her cleavage. Those goths were definitely onto something with their corsets.

“Let’s go finish this, then,” Talia said, her humor fading from her face. She gripped her staff with one hand and held out her other to him.

As Adam took hold, he felt her pull on the shadows between the mortal world and the Other beyond the veils, the passage called death. Dark magic infused her until every cell gleamed potent in the shifting gloom. Never had she straddled that boundary more completely than she did now.

He stepped to the door and carefully checked the narrow gray corridor. It was broken by connecting doors, but otherwise empty.

“Watch your step,” he said, gesturing to the demon vomit.
Now he wanted to stay as far away from the stuff as he could. He’d have to thank her for that, too. Deeply and repeatedly.

They moved down the hallway. The rhythmic pounding of feet from elsewhere filtered to their position, but they met no resistance. A steep stair—almost a ladder—led to the deck above. Talia ascended first, leaving him in pitch blackness. He climbed up after. A cool hand on his face brought the ship back into focus.

Adam held her in the shadowed cabin, arms around her cinched waist, considering their next move.

“If the demon is smart, he’ll have positioned the wraiths to the sides of the door, to pick us off as soon as we try to exit. The ship probably has a communication center. I’d radio for help, but I’ve no one left to call. I’m afraid it’s just you and me.” It was hard to believe—all the resources he’d labored to amass were either destroyed or scattered.

Adam felt Talia’s body shake as she chuckled.

“I’m not afraid anymore,” she whispered. “I say we go through the door. My father’s scythe has a long reach. Longer than I thought possible. It’ll be enough.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.” Talia’s touch trailed out of the embrace to find his hand once again. She squeezed, ready.

Talia braced as Adam shifted to unlatch the door and kick it open; then she blew a storm of darkness onto the deck. Beyond, the deafening
chop- chop
of a helicopter signaled the Death Collector’s escape route, but the gusting air was nothing to the gale of her shadow.

Adam loosed her hand, so she could grip her scythe firmly. She wasn’t about to leave him in the dark, so she pushed the veils away until the world lay in turbulent gray.

A wraith darted inside the cabin door and was cut in half
for his stupidity. The blade cleaved with only the slightest resis tance, enough to gain her the satisfaction of the kill without slowing her. A second wraith scurried back as she and Adam emerged onto the deck. Dozens more crowded the open-air surface.

All of them backed away from her. It was a heady sensation—the hunted finally becoming the hunter. And while the scythe was too large for her frame, the humming energy that charged her senses felt just right.

Beyond the press of wraiths, the demon and his host were just climbing the stairs of the helipad. In only moments, they would be safely inside and take to the sky. The scythe’s reach was long, but not that long.

Talia’s fae senses screamed the time was now. She drove into the crowd of wraiths, swinging. Adam swore coarsely behind her, but she pressed forward.

She brought down the blade and caught a wraith at the knees. The strike was enough to collapse the rest of him, mouth gaping as he was sundered from life.

“Your left!” Adam’s tone was deep and angry.

Talia whirled. Two wraiths charged her, both baring inhuman teeth. She panicked. Adam blurred in her side vision, kicking one in the belly. She swung at the other, and he fell; then she pivoted to swipe at the first. She cut his monstrous gape right off his face.

Adam’s arm came roughly around her waist as he pulled her suddenly back. The blade sliced through the air, caught a third wraith at his shoulder, and sent him spinning into death.

Chest heaving, Talia darted a glance right and left, looking for the next to attack. But the wraiths were backing away.

“They’re jumping ship,” Adam said into her ear.

Talia’s gaze flew to the edge where, indeed, a wraith leaped over the side. It made sense: The wraiths might drown, but
they couldn’t die. Talia wouldn’t be able to reach them beneath the waves without drowning herself, and she was after hooking a much bigger fish.

“To me!” the host called. He hadn’t moved from the top step of the helipad.

The demon’s call went unacknowledged as his army deserted him. That made sense, too: Anyone who chose the monstrous existence of a wraith was fundamentally selfish to begin with. They wouldn’t stay to fight for the demon if it cost them their lives, the very thing they had traded their humanity to sustain.

Talia stalked across the clearing deck to the stairs. The helicopter was ready; why wasn’t the demon and his host aboard, safe?

She looked closely for signs of subterfuge.

The host was corpse pale, expression lined with stress.

“Kill us quick, before it takes me completely,” the man said, gasping in a human voice. His white-knuckled grip on the railing trembled as the demon snake poured itself into his ear. The host’s jaundiced face contracted into a rictus of pain, his eyes wide-open, sightless, and horrified. Thick tar coated the inside of his mouth and bled from his nose.

Talia understood. The host, lesson learned, was making one last choice. Withstand the demon’s rape of his body, wait for the scythe, and be freed.

“Half-breed…” the demon said, voice pitched to a feral growl, in command of the host’s mouth again.

Sharp, sweet power rose within her as Talia raised the scythe.

“…whore’s get…” The host, overcome, lost his battle and released the railing to scramble, crawling, toward the waiting helicopter.

The power ached beautifully in her muscles and tingled
to her fingertips. Fantasies of death played in her mind. Her blood roared to stain the ship’s deck with a smear of demon.

She stalked the demon-host abomination, Adam at her back. There was no way the demon could escape. No place to hide and no time.

Talia gathered the force of her scream, and channeled it into a great, slashing swing.

The blade sang through the air and cut the abomination in half. Talia trembled on the edge of rapture with the thrill of the kill.

The man whimpered into death as the demon split, its sinuous form condensing into a dark tongue of shadow before losing all cohesion, just like his hellhounds.

Dead.

For a moment, Talia couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to anyway near the dispersing black gases.

Then the cloud of demon reek convulsed.

Talia jumped back and bumped into Adam. His strong arm circled her waist protectively.

Out of the stagnant black cloud, a dusky hand whipped out, midair. The hand jerked just as suddenly back into oblivion. Before Talia could take another breath, the arm again clawed through the center of darkest shadow, as if fighting against an unseen force.

Talia’s heart seized. Another demon? Her hands tightened on the shaft of the scythe. She could do this. Her muscles coiled to strike, waiting for the moment the being emerged.

“Be ready,” Adam murmured. She felt his body tense at her back.

She pulled on shadow, the source of her power. Pulled hard until the scythe glowed overhead amid layers of darkness. Pulled until…the being himself emerged out of his wild prison and into the world.

Talia shook with shock and recognition.

The being fell to the deck in a cascade of seething shadowcloak and gleaming long black hair. When he straightened, his tilted eyes coming to rest on her, there could be no doubt whatsoever. Death was her father.

They regarded each other for a long moment, the intent of his gaze rippling the surrounding veils.

Talia raised her chin, heart hammering, and returned his scrutiny.

Her father had a face like a dark angel, ageless with cruel compassion. His body appeared strong and healthy, though shadows of death circled—the very same shadows that twined about her. His stillness had grace, yet she knew his strike was brutally fast, the results a mess of pain and hurt.

No wonder people stayed away from her.

“You have your mother’s face,” he said at last. His voice was dark velvet, brushing over her like a caress.

Talia’s heart leaped with emotion. She had no words.

But Adam did. “Is it over?”

Shadowman’s gaze slid to Adam, leaving her bereft. “Chaos is back where it belongs.”

Her father inclined his head again to her. The tide of shadows lapped strongly at her body, as if to draw her into its sea. Through its dense waves she could feel the solid press of Adam’s body, and deeper to the core of his emotion.