Vowed in Shadows (14 page)

Sera's voice was soft, but it carried. “And where are the pieces they left on the way out?”

“Not even any blood trail from after the feast.” Ecco scratched one razor tip of his gauntlet across the wall. Nim gritted her teeth at the blackboard screech. “And if cleanliness is next to godliness, there's a reason ferales are damned.”

From down the corridor behind them, an answering screech echoed, thin and high. And hungry.

As one, the talyan turned to face the way they'd come.

“Who woulda thought they'd wait around below the club,” Ecco said conversationally.

“Ferales hunted Sera last winter,” Archer said. “Apparently, these want more than the anklet.”

“They waited for me?” Nim wished her voice hadn't squeaked. No wonder her demon had wanted to keep moving.

“Now we don't have to chase them,” Jonah said.

“Because they're about to be chasing us,” Nim shot back. She wished her voice
had
squeaked this time, because the panic sounded worse.

“Easier to clean up down here,” Archer said. “When we're done draining them, we can just leave them to rot.”

Nim swallowed hard when everyone else murmured agreement. Liam's rumble cut through. “According to the map, there's an open junction just a bit farther along. Let's fall back and let them bottleneck. Don't incapacitate them too quickly; we'll need to draw them into the junction and get around behind them before Andre, if it is him, realizes he's in trouble and bolts while the ferales keep us occupied.”

They retreated. Nim would've urged a little more speed, but the talyan moved with their habitual maddening grace while she was tripping on the tracks again. God, if she didn't get it together, she was going to leave a foot in the rails too.

“Don't be frightened,” Jonah said. “At least, don't be unnecessarily frightened.” She cast him a disbelieving glance, and he lifted one shoulder in apology. “Okay, then. Stay close and keep the screaming and swearing to a minimum. Ecco hates it when anyone screams and swears more than he does.”

“Hey,” Ecco said from close behind them.

Liam rocked to a halt. “Here. No cell reception, shockingly, so we can't call in the second team. Jilly, Sera, scout ahead and make sure the junction is where the map says it is. I don't want to get trapped against a locked Com Ed gate.”

Jilly stiffened, and for a second, Nim thought she'd protest. But Sera touched her arm, and with a sharp nod, Jilly led the way into the darkness beyond.

The silent communication tugged sharply at Nim's chest. Despite years working with other dancers, she'd never had that sort of easy closeness. They'd been too busy screwing one another out of customers.

How nice it would be to have a friend or two at her back, friends with knives aimed outward.

She turned to face down the tunnel. The tension in the four brawny men around her pinged off her skin. “When are they coming?”

“They know we're here,” Jonah said.

“No, they know
you're
here,” she said. “The testosterone is like ozone in here. But it's me they want.”

“They'll be cautious because of us.” Liam cocked his head at a whistle from one of the women he'd sent ahead. “Too bad. As you might have deduced from the pieces falling off the ferales, it's more convenient when they're overexcited.”

“Then maybe we can hurry them along.” She took a deep breath and let out a shriek fit to melt concrete from the walls.

For a frozen heartbeat, she
saw
the belling wave of her cry reverberate through the corridor. As the echo faded, the walls trembled with some invisible force.

Jonah sighed.

“Yup, that did get 'em excited.” Ecco took a step forward, straddling half the track. Archer joined him, and the wall of warrior felt almost impenetrable.

Almost.

Jonah tightened his fist. The middle position—neither in the front with the fighters, nor in the rear guard—rankled, even if Nim was unarmed. As was he.

“Sorry about the scream,” she whispered.

“Great idea.” When she stiffened, he clarified, “It was. Your thrall demon knew it instinctively. Fear is an aphrodisiac to the tenebrae.”

“I know all about aphrodisiacs,” she said. “Even without the demon.”

He could swear to that. For a second, he wondered why the tenebrae had responded to her so zealously. Almost as ardently as he himself, which wasn't exactly a flattering comparison. And why did he have the sneaking suspicion the demons knew the reason?

Since the musing had no immediate survival value, he cast it aside. “Don't let the fear overwhelm you when the horde overwhelms us. They'll use that energy against you when you need to use the teshuva's energy against them.”

“Is this the time for a schooling?”

“None better, since you're about to get your first test.”

And then the shadow was upon them.

The malice hit first, in an inky boil deeper than the tunnel's blackness. A quick handful of the incorporeal little demons squirmed past Archer and Ecco. Their solitary red eyes glared immaculate hatred. Liam stopped them with the blunt-force projection of his teshuva's power, formidable as the hammer braced across his chest.

The malice shredded with multiharmonic screams and the stench of rotting eggs. Nim coughed.

Jonah tucked the hook under his left arm. “If malice get on you, they sting like ice. Don't try to run away; you can't. Let the teshuva rise—like when you let it choose your footsteps. It will match itself to their energy and consume them. The next wave will be salambes. Like the malice, but worse. They burn if they touch. Don't try to run away from them either.”

“Why'd I bother wearing sneakers?”

“The ferales, slower, will come last. You can run from them, but you've seen our preferred method.”

“Seeing isn't the same as doing.”

“You're about to do.”

“Trial by fire?”

“And ice. And worse.”

“I wish you'd stop saying ‘worse.' ”

So he stopped talking.

A second surge of malice welled like a black tide past Archer and Ecco. A few avoided the sweep of Liam's hammer and ricocheted off the walls. Straight toward Nim.

Jonah stepped forward.

Since he'd lost his hand six months ago, the teshuva lurked off balance in him. It had healed the wound below his elbow, though it hadn't touched the pain, but now the sinuous, twisting flow of its energy backed up in the scars of his arm with no way out. He thought he'd reconciled to all the ways the demon had betrayed him. This time, it had left him not just less of a man, but less of a monster.

With the malice aiming at Nim, though, he'd force that damned demon to rise.

The teshuva stuttered along his nerves like a reluctant diesel engine, agonizingly slow as the malice corkscrewed toward them, streamers of oily ether staining the air behind them.

He drew himself upright, taller than he would be on his own, with the demon expanding him into dimensions that were not his. But he felt the lack, the emptiness where his hand had been, where the dance of the demon through his body faltered at the dead end. The stump itched, then ached, then blistered as the teshuva's energy bottlenecked in the scars.

The malice hesitated, skittered sideways, but darted in again. He lifted the hook like a lightning rod.

Then Nim was beside him. No, not just beside him; practically
inside
him, she was so close. She tucked herself up under his raised arm, her breasts pressed against his ribs.

When the malice arrowed in, they were both engulfed.

He'd expected the chill, even warned Nim, but the contrast with her warm body made his muscles scream. Or maybe that was her again. The thought made him grin, and he hoped no one saw the no doubt insane expression. He pulled her tight against him.

She wrapped one arm around him, holding him with a violence that flashed back to the hot confines of the Shimmy Shack VIP lounge. His flesh tightened, not with the demon, but with desire.

“Where'd they go?” Nim murmured.

The malice had vanished, as utterly gone as that longlost moment when the Naughty Nymphette had writhed against him.

But he didn't have time to be grateful. Liam shouted as the rusting stink of salambes clogged the corridor.

A hellfire glow silhouetted Ecco and Archer. Crowding the passage beyond the men, the immense, hazy shapes of salambes advanced, their jutting scimitar teeth carving hieroglyphics in the ether. Chaotic emanations boiled ahead of them and stung Jonah's skin like a million army ants biting for bone.

Liam called for them to retreat. The ferales would be waiting behind that burning wall of salambes.

Jonah eased Nim back a few steps. “Can you give them a little more incentive?”

Her elbow nudged into his ribs. “Should I swear this time, or just scream again?”

“You seem to have a knack for this. Your call.”

Her chest expanded against him as she took a breath. “Andre! You thieving spawn of a toothless whore. Come and get me!”

Jonah stilled. “Not quite what I had in mind.”

“What? I have all my teeth.”

“I meant the ‘come and get me' part.”

“Oh. Well, he doesn't stand a chance against you.”

Probably she meant Ecco and Archer, even Liam, standing stoic guard. And still her trust sent a rush of primitive pleasure through him, soothing the teshuva's knotted energies. But he couldn't stop to consider the implication, since the sensation was quickly swamped by fear. Because she could so easily be wrong about their chances.

Through the glare of oncoming salambes, a half dozen ferales jockeyed for position. A clawed foot, a vastly oversized pincer, a ratty wing. It was impossible to tell where one monstrosity left off and the next began.

The air in the tunnel crackled with conflicting energies as the demons—malevolent versus repentant—struggled for dominance. Concrete dust puffed from the walls. One-on-one, a teshuva easily mastered a bad demon, but with the fluctuating waves of malice, salambes, and ferales . . . The first row of tenebrae cleared the etheric fog, and behind them was a second rank.

And “rank” was exactly the right word. The stench in the corridor backed up in his throat like sewage. A third row jostled the second, and Jonah revised the talyan chances downward.

They edged toward the open junction, not to lure the horde to their doom but merely to breathe.

Jonah turned at a chill wafting across his shoulders. Jilly and Sera had come from behind. Sera rushed past him in a swirl of air too cold and dry to be merely the fresher air of the open corridor beyond. The teshuva inside him expanded and tensed, like a cat staring at ghosts in an open room. The female talya was cracking her way into the tenebraeternum, where she could banish the lesser demons. It was a skill only the women had, focused by the artifacts left during their possession. And it was heresy, if one read the league archives in the right paranoid mind-set.

Considering the way the army of tenebrae hesitated despite their superior numbers, the league, perhaps, had reason to be paranoid.

“Go.” Jilly paused next to him. Her eyes were solid amethyst, and the edges of her
reven
, visible above her décolletage, raced with answering violence. Her breath curled in an icy plume. “You can't do anything here.” He stiffened, and she added, “Not when Nim doesn't have the anklet. There are too many of them, and we can't play nice, not if we want Andre.”

It was Nim's turn to stiffen. Her fingers latched onto his shirt, tugging the material loose from its neat tuck. “We have to stay. It's my fault I lost the anklet.”

“And I lost the boy who may have turned to this path. Who's guiltier?” Jilly stared past them. “I need to be with Liam. You have your map and light. Get out of here.” She didn't promise to call later.

Jonah took Nim's hand in his. “We're gone.”

Nim tugged at him. “But—”

Jilly strode past them. Without looking back, Liam reached out to her. His tall, almost too-thin form and her short, full-bodied stance blended together. One weapon.

Jonah dragged his gaze away, almost as difficult as dragging Nim with her stumbling feet.

“We can't leave them.” Her flashlight swung toward the fight, adding a strobe to the clash of talyan against ferales. “They're in trouble.”

“They'll have less trouble without us.” The truth churned in his stomach, a sickening counterpoint to the riled teshuva.

In a dozen strides, they emerged in the open junction. Three lines of tracks led into the darkness beyond the reach of Nim's light.

“Which way?” She fumbled for the satchel over her shoulder, where Sera had stuffed the map.

Jonah conjured up the diagrams in his mind. “The left leads toward the second team.”

“We can send them back here.” Suddenly, Nim was pulling him forward. “Reinforcements.”

He didn't bother telling her the fight would be over—one way or another—long before they reached the next exit.

They sped down the corridor. With her mind focused on the task ahead—summoning help for the others—she moved with her natural grace plus the demon's speed. It was he, half-unbalanced, who fell a step behind. The teshuva's energy ripped through him, a warning.

“Slow down,” he said.

“Take my hand.” She reached for him, as Liam had reached for Jilly.

Anger flared. “I said, ‘slow down.' There's something blocking the path.”