The Darkest Night (16 page)

Archer shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how empty you think you are, but you can’t hold that many tenebrae.”

Bella shivered. How did he know her emptiness? Could those bronze eyes wracked with violet streaks see so deep? She didn’t think so. No one saw her.

Sera laid her hand on Archer’s arm and didn’t let go. “We don’t send anyone alone against the darkness. Not anymore.”

“That’s all a demon is,” Bella said bitterly. “Darkness.”

Sera plastered her other hand wide across Archer’s chest, as if he was her Exhibit A. “You forget who you are talking to.”

“The teshuva repented,” Bella reminded her. As if the talya needed reminding she’d been possessed by a repentant demon seeking its salvation.

Nanette clasped her hands in front of her. “And haven’t
you
repented? Why else did you come to help us except you wanted to make amends?”

The question floated in front of Bella, a star in the storm, beyond her grasp. “As if saying makes it so.”

Nanette shook her head. “Not saying. Believing. And behaving.”

Ecco snorted. “Well, behaving is in the eye of the beholder…”

Fane barged past all of them and took Bella’s elbow. “If you’ll all excuse us a moment.” He didn’t wait for any response but dragged her out of the lobby toward the fish tank.

Bella tried to set her heels, but some of the old people were watching and she didn’t want to cause a ruckus. Instead she hissed at him, “Let me go.”

“You keep saying that, and I’ll keep ignoring you.”

Finally shielded behind the fish, she yanked her arm out of his grasp. She rubbed her elbow resentfully. “I don’t know how you can call yourself a good guy.”

“I don’t.” He boxed her in with the glass behind her. Against the pale glow of the water, his eyes were bright gold. “I’m just a man, Bella, who ended up with an angel. And you are a demon who got a second chance. What are you going to do with it?”

She averted her face. “What about everyone who didn’t get a chance? Mirabel. Your son, Max… You and your wife.”

She thought he would flinch, almost wanted him to, so she could slip away from him. But he didn’t move.

He did close his eyes. “No, he didn’t get a chance. We didn’t get a chance, to know him, to watch him live. No chance. But we loved him so much anyway. I’ll love him always.” When he opened his eyes again, the gold was gone, just the bright blue she shouldn’t be able to see, that pierced her heart. “Imagine what can happen when you do take a chance.”

She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words as if he spoke something even more arcane than the ancient language of the sphericanum and the twisted tongue of the demons.

Slowly, he reached out to cup her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her temple where her glasses usually rested. “I would love you, if you take the chance.”

A panicked breath caught in her chest, aching to escape. What answer it would take with it, she didn’t know, couldn’t guess. What did he see in her that she didn’t see in herself?

“Cyril…” She reached up to echo his touch. The bristle of his unshaven chin against her palm felt too incredibly real, almost painful, as he leaned into her caress.

“They are coming.”

The discordant cry from across the room jolted them together as Fane took a step closer to her. From the lobby and the activity room, the talyan’s cell phones began to ring, scraps of a half dozen tunes jangling.

Sera’s father stood at the big picture window, staring out into the night. “The damned devils are coming!”

Chapter 14

The sound of shattering glass barely reached Fane. It sounded no worse than a tumbler dropped in some distant kitchen, deserving nothing more than a half-hearted “Opa!” and a quick sweeping out.

Then the percussive blast of etheric emanations hit the picture window.

Nothing exploded, of course. Etheric emanations interacted only haphazardly with the worldly realm. But the ornaments Bella had hung over the window swayed wildly, the reindeer seeming to leap on their strings. Just as well the sleigh was empty or it would have spilled all its gifts.

Sera raced for her father’s side, sliding on a pair of sunglasses as she went. “Dad… Pastor Littlejohn, it’s all right. Sit down now. Everything is fine.”

“The devils…” But the older man let her guide him to a chair. He glanced up. “Sera? What are you doing here?” He frowned and reached for her shades. “Is it a sunny day?”

She gentle diverted his hand. “I came to see you, Dad.”

“It’s Sunday. I have a sermon to write.”

“He better make it a good one,” Fane mumbled. He turned toward Bella.

The front door stood ajar and empty, with the reliquary above it blazing golden light.

She was gone. Fane bolted toward the door.

Ecco stepped into his path.

For all his momentum, Fane rebounded off the big talya’s bulk, although he managed to avoid puncturing himself on the gauntlets. “Get the hell out of my way,” he gasped.

Ecco blocked the door, his shoulders filling the frame. “I just let hell out. I’m not letting it back in.”

“Bella isn’t a demon. Not just a demon. No more so than you are.”

The talya half closed his eyes, dimming the violet sheen of his teshuva. “Why do you think I let her out? Let her fight, golden boy, so she knows she can.”

“Not alone,” Fane shouted.

Ecco grinned and stepped aside. “Since you asked so nicely… If you need pointers on the proper care and feeding of sexy demons, come see me.”

Fane shoved past him.

He almost went down on the icy steps. The scattering of salt added texture more than melting power. The tenebrae orb in the lighted manger was blown open like some obscene, oily, sharp-edged flower, and Bella stood over it in profile to him, a red pillar against the ice and glow of the Christmas lights. Her head was tipped back so her undone hair spilled down her stiff spine in wild curls tangled by the wind, but her face turned up toward the tenebrae was pale and still. In her hand, an extended box cutter gleamed. As if the tiny blade could have any effect against the tenebrae

The etheric emanations, which had been confined in the orbs, swirled around the nursing home in a half dozen separate waves of greasy black smoke shot through with sulfur-yellow lightning. The waves chased around the building, stretching toward one another. Their shrieks—only half heard but felt deep in his bones—escalated. When they met up, together they would be as big as a tsunami.

He thought he saw the familiar shapes of the animalistic malice and the more monstrous salambes resolving out of the smoke, but the silhouettes kept collapsing back into the chaos. It seemed the imprisonment in the orbs had permanently mashed the tenebrae subspecies together into something new and—wasn’t that always the case?—worse, combining the destructive power of the salambes with the preternatural quickness of the malice.

He dashed toward Bella as the demonic swirl sped faster. The grass crunched beneath his feet, each ice-rimed blade like a tiny silver sword.

For an instant, he thought of his abraxas, somewhere across the city in Thorne’s hands. But he might have another chance to confront the djinn-man someday and reclaim his sword; he would never have another chance with Bella.

He’d break off a thousand swords under his boots to get to her. “Wait!”

She turned and he halted in his tracks.

Even though the churning tenebrae cloud was behind her now, her eyes still reflected the pitch black and virulent yellow…

It wasn’t a reflection.

He took a slow step forward. “Bella.”

She opened her mouth and the wordless cry that emerged was pitched across multiple octaves, only one of them human. The tenebrae clouds slowed, as if their attention had been caught.

Shit. He didn’t want the tenebraeternum focused on her. Not now, not ever.

In two steps, he closed the distance between them. He framed her face in his hands. Her skin was cold, so cold.

He stared hard into her eyes, searching past the demonic overlay, past the haze of cataracts, looking for the one he knew inside. “Don’t let them in. Don’t.”

The box cutter slipped from her fingers and clinked on the icy grass. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists. Was she holding on to him, or about to push him away?

“You are not one of them,” he said roughly. “You are Bella now. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t believe that.” But even as he spoke, he despaired. Once before his love had not been enough. What made him think this time was different? Ah, but now he had an ace in the hole: the divine presence in his soul. “The angel believes in you too,” he added, urgency pounding through his veins. “You don’t think an angel would lie, do you?”

“Cyril?” Her raw whisper was almost inaudible, and her hands clenched his tendons hard against bone so he
felt
the shrieking roar of the tenebrae reverberating between them. “Cyril. I…”

“Yes,” he urged. “You. Not tenebrae.”

“Both,” she said raggedly. “I can’t escape…”

He wanted to deny her words, call out her lie, but what if he was wrong? Could any of them hope to escape the unbearable power of the angels and demons at work in their lives?

For a moment, he wavered. His hands slipped, slicked from the tears trickling over her cheekbones.

The tenebrae waves spun faster around the building. Half the waves had coalesced, swallowing one another.

As they would all be swallowed?

His numb hands caught in the tangles of red hair over her shoulders, and she gasped.

The small, human noise broke through his paralysis. He would not let her go.

He plunged his hands into her hair, cupping the back of her head and tilting her face up to his. “If you can’t escape,” he said roughly, “then I’m going with you.”

He brought his mouth down slanting over hers.

One hot mingled breath and two tangled tongues. The simple truth of longing. He pulled her close, leaving no room for error or lies or darkness.

She whimpered against his lips, then her hands linked at his nape, holding him fast.

He would gladly kiss her until the sun came up tomorrow, until the sun went down again forever. It wouldn’t matter because he had her flame inside him now.

Her fingers drifted down his jaw, touched the corner of his mouth, and eased him back. “Cyril,” she whispered. “I have to do this.”

He raised his head to look at her. Her lake ice eyes—a thin disguise for the vibrant woman beneath—reflected his angelic gold back at him. “Then we do it together.” He kissed her forehead.

She nodded against his lips, then turned within the circle of his arms to face the tenebrae waves.

Just one wave now, maggot-shaped and viscous as tar. Even bigger than a train he had feared, it poised like a suspended oil spill of evil. The sulfuric lightning had congealed, and the thick, snaking veins of yellow pulsed with a revolting, regurgitative rhythm. He did not want to see what it was about to discharge over the nursing home.

She shivered in his embrace.

“Banish it,” he murmured. “You’ve done it before. Every year when it came for you.”

“Never like this. And I had my artifacts.”

“The artifacts worked because you believed.” He leaned his cheek against her crown. “You don’t need the knucklebones to believe in yourself.”

He felt her shuddering breath as she craned her neck to look up at him. “Can I believe in you?”

He kissed her temple. “Always.”

She took a step forward out of his sheltering arms. He wanted to grab her back, but instead he followed, lending his presence and his angel’s light to her fight.

“There is nothing for you here,” she shouted. “Until you choose to become something, you have no place here.”

Fane rested his hands on her shoulders. “Did you just tell them to go away until they can be good?”

She nodded, and her hair whispered over his knuckles. “I think they’ll really take heart from what I—”

The mega-maggot reared back, faster than any tenebrae he’d ever seen, and plunged toward them.

“Watch out!” cried a voice from the porch, echoed by, “Run!”

Like he needed that sort of help. He flung himself to one side, yanking Bella with him. They rolled across the breaking grass.

The tenebrae cluster struck the manger scene where they’d been standing. Plastic shards and sparks of electricity blasted in all directions.

He used the momentum of the roll to fling her upright. “Listen to the peanut gallery. Run.”

“No.” She whirled toward the tenebrae, one hand outstretched toward the darkness, the other toward the porch where the talyan had gathered. “No one will die tonight. Not even them. Second chances, you said so. Was that a lie?”

He gritted his teeth. “I meant—”

The tenebrae maggot emerged from the wreckage, doubled back on itself, and struck again.

Fane tossed Bella to one side, but stumbled on the slick grass. He went down to one knee with a curse, hearing her scream.

His fingers found the box cutter in the grass.

There was no way his angel could take the tenebrae mass. Maybe if he’d had his abraxas…

Bella flung herself over him, which he might have appreciated more if they weren’t both about to die.

“No!” Her cry was one, lone octave, only human. “He is mine! The place within is only for me.”

Then she kissed him, and the darkness around them exploded with stars.

Chapter 15

Silence.

Was this death? Bella kept her eyes closed, not wanting to know. But the soft press of lips under hers and the mingling of breath—not to mention the cold soaking her jeans—tempted her to believe otherwise.

She listened, and—so softly at first—she heard the song.

“It came upon a midnight clear…”

Was it midnight already? On the longest night of the year. And here it ended. Hot kiss, icy ass, and the tenebrae swallowing all.

“That glorious song of old…”

Who was singing? Fane’s shoulders flexed under her hands, and she found herself in his lap, protected from the cold earth.

He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Listen.”