Vowed in Shadows (18 page)

“Take her home,” Liam said. For a heartbeat, Jonah's cheeks heated; then Liam continued. “Not her apartment. Take her to the warehouse. The police will no doubt be interviewing everyone on the books at the strip club, and I'd rather work out a script with her first.”

“She'd do fine on her own,” Jonah said. He'd seen her in action.

“The demons prefer us on our own,” Liam agreed. “But she doesn't have to be alone, because she has us now.”

Jonah tried to believe that was better. He had to believe the battle was worth the cost. After all, he was almost a league poster child for fighting on, never mind the odds.

Deliberately, he scraped the hook down the wall again, leaving a furrow in the brick. “Do we have anything to show besides the scars?”

He knew Liam wouldn't bother debating the philosophy with him and, sure enough, the league leader went straight to the literal interpretation. “We have Andre. He was quite surprised to see Jilly.”

Since the young punk had known her only as a street counselor, Jonah could imagine the shock of seeing the woman wielding her double knives and the demon-realm trap that was her teshuva's legacy.

“Did he have the anklet?”

Nim edged closer, head cocked as she listened in.

“No. He sold it.”

“There's a market for demon artifacts?”

“Among the djinn.”

Despite the shimmering August heat, Jonah's bones chilled. “Corvus.”

“And Andre was supposed to bring him Nim next.”

 

As their cab pulled up near the warehouse, Jonah finished his explanation to Nim. “And now, after two attempts to rip through the Veil that divides us from the tenebraeternum, Corvus finally has a weapon in hand. The etheric energy of his lost soul is all that stabilizes the rift in the Veil. If he reclaims his soul, using the anklet to call that energy to him, he'll loose hell on earth. Only we can stop him.”

He handed money over the seat to the driver, who said, “Aw, man. You can't stop there. How does it end?”

Nim opened the door. “You'll have to read the book. Or see the movie.” As the cabbie pulled away, she shook her head. “It is an incredible story. That this Blackbird guy has been possessed by an evil demon since he was a gladiator in Rome, and he wants to end demonic possession by pitting hell directly against heaven, without the intervening human pawns. . . .”

“And now he's recruiting humans to his side. Bad enough when we were fighting just demons. But at least the tenebrae can be drained and even banished. We've been struggling to keep up with the soulless haints. If we have a tide of people willing to align with unrepentant evil—”

“Not a tide,” Nim interrupted. “One man. Just a boy, really.”

“That's how it starts,” Jonah said. At the front door, he ran his @1 pass card in front of the scanner.

“Enter the sanctum,” Nim intoned. She hummed a few vaguely
Twilight Zone
notes. “There should be theme music for the movie.”

“This is serious.”

“As a heart attack. But I already had one of those when I drowned. I figure you'll bring me back again.”

She stopped just inside the doorway. “I love what you've done with the place.”

The warehouse had held architectural salvage materials before Liam made it the league's main headquarters. After their last battle with Corvus left the warehouse in pieces, they'd used the salvaged stone, tile, and glass to rebuild. The results were . . . eclectic.

Nim ran her fingers over one of the pink Italian marble columns that supported a web of steel beams bracing the outer wall. “Does the fire marshal approve of siege towers?”

“He would if he'd ever seen a salambe.”

She turned to him. “Where are the dungeons?” When he lifted one eyebrow, she pursed her lips. “Oh, please. You know you have one. I want to meet the punk who stole my anklet.”

“You sold it,” he reminded her.

“Not to Andre. He stole it from that nice pawnbroker.” Her voice lowered toward the demon harmonics. “And he was coming to steal the matching piece: me.”

Jonah shook his head. “What are you going to do?”

“Obviously, Andre isn't afraid of evil, not if he's hooked up with Corvus. So let's see what he thinks of repenting.”

When had he developed a reckless streak? Had his good sense been severed with his arm? He'd blame Nim's bad influence, but that seemed too easy. Because the streak felt a little too good. “This way.”

He led her down the stairs. “Into the basement, of course,” she muttered.

Another turn of the staircase took them to the subbasement. But the halls were lined with the best examples of what they'd saved from the salvage operations: gorgeous landscape paintings in museum-quality, gilded frames; a mosaic fresco that might have been stolen from a museum; a midcentury stained-glass panel that shimmered even in the ugly gleam of the fluorescent bulbs overhead.

“Nice torture chamber.”

“I told you that art has a dampening effect on the tenebrae,” he said. “And we don't torture.” When she gave a disbelieving little cough, he added, “We haven't tortured.”

“Kept it to yourself, have you? How martyrish.”

He clenched his jaw.

She stopped in the middle of the empty hallway and turned to face him. Then she stripped out of her T-shirt.

“Nim,” he gasped. He stepped closer to her, not that there was anyone around to see, not that there was any part of her to grab to stop her. Against the backdrop of the odd pieces of art, she was an oddity in a class of her own, all smooth, tight muscle and soft, curving flesh. And the silly sunglasses sparkling in her hair. The bruises from their escapades were already fading on her dusky skin, but his hand itched to soothe away the sting he knew remained.

“Torture doesn't always mean pain,” she said conversationally. “At least, not in the way you're thinking of it.” With her gaze fixed on his, she gave the shirt a lazy twirl around her finger.

He hurt all right, and he wasn't in the mood to parse the exact sensations. “You're going to fuck Andre into a confession?”

She gave him a coquettish gasp. “Harsh words from the missionary man. Shouldn't I do it—do him—though, for the good of the mission?”

“He's a minion of evil.”

“And you were just telling me how they have their needs too. Not that I didn't already know that, probably better than you.” She jerked her chin toward him. “Give me your shirt.”

He recoiled, a fierce heat and panicked cold colliding in him.

“Hurry up,” she said. “Before somebody catches us in this compromising position.”

“How is my being half-naked too going to improve the situation?”

“Oh, please. Your precious league practically pimped you out when it sent you my way. Don't get righteous on me now. Again.”

He clenched his teeth. “You bought a shirt that was too small for me because you planned to take it for yourself.”

“I knew you'd faint if I tried to swap at the park.” She crooked her finger. “Give it up already.”

He'd taken off more shirts for this woman. . . .

As he lifted the shirt over his head, he felt her step up to him. She didn't touch, but she didn't have to. His body knew, anticipated, shivered with longing. The clench of his stomach muscles was like a sucker punch.

He gripped the shirt to keep from reaching for her, grateful that his other hand was occupied with having been severed. Because if he'd been whole, nothing would have stopped him from taking her in his arms. And when he did that, what little remained of the man he'd been would burn to dust.

She gazed up at him with shadows and hazards and mysteries oceans deep in her blue-green eyes. A man could lose himself there and not remember to mind....

He straightened abruptly and yanked on her shirt—which had been his shirt but now was irrevocably hers, stained down the back with her blood where the hook in the tunnel had gaffed her and teasing him with the temple-incense scent of her skin.

She had already pulled on the BUCK YOU! T-shirt and was smoothing down the iron-on decal of Buckingham Fountain while he was still wrestling his hook through the armhole.

He glowered at her while he viciously jammed the bottom hem into his jeans.

She flaunted her Nymphette smile. “Quick wardrobe changes are a vocational skill.”

He didn't answer, just led her to the end of the hall where a door stood a few inches ajar. He paused to let her change her mind, but she stiff-armed the door and sailed past him.

Despite his protestations earlier, he was mildly surprised there was no blood.

The young man—Andre—was seated in a chair centered in the middle of the room. He was not restrained, except by the prowling menace of Archer, whose teshuva flared in his eyes even under the bright fluorescents.

Ecco stood in the corner, arms crossed. The rot of decomposing husks clotted his gauntlets. Over the slow drip of ichor, his stare never left Andre.

“Where's Liam?” Jonah pitched his voice low, loath to overset the precarious tempers in the room.

Ecco answered. “Jilly jumped in between him and a feralis rush.”

Jonah winced. He could guess how the league leader had felt about that. That the man had answered the phone spoke of his commitment. That he wasn't present at the interrogation told Jonah how badly Jilly must have been hurt.

Andre gripped the edge of his chair. “I told her to fucking back off. I told her the fucking monsters don't listen once I set them loose. They're crazy, out of control.” He caught his breath. “She never fucking listened when I told her to back off.”

Archer never stopped his restless pacing. “That's because for some fool reason, she wanted to save your fucking ass.” He snarled the last two words with demon harmonics, and Andre flinched.

Jonah knew that feeling, of the teshuva burning close to the surface, threatening to overwhelm what was left of his humanity. Then only constant movement—like Archer's pacing or the concentration of battle—distracted the demon enough to keep his persona intact.

With the loss of his arm, sometimes it seemed he couldn't move or fight enough to hold himself and the demon together. That loss brought to him courtesy of this boy's master.

Still, he had survived, which had nearly not been the case for Nim.

As if sensing the spike of anger, Andre met Jonah's stare. His face paled at whatever he saw there.

As if she didn't care about the escalating threat of carnage, Nim nudged past him to approach Andre. “You're the gutter punk who stole my anklet? I thought a minion of evil would be taller.”

He angled his head back insolently. “You're the stripper Blackbird sent me for? I thought you'd be . . .”

Jonah took a silent step that put him right behind Nim, directly in Andre's line of sight.

Nim waited a moment. “Naked-er?”

Archer stopped pacing, and Ecco made a noise that might have been a laugh. Or maybe a growl of the sort that preceded a fatality. Andre swallowed hard.

Without glancing back, Nim said, “Archer, Ecco, stop scaring the poor boy. He won't be able to tell me where my anklet is.”

Jonah pitched his voice for her ears only. “I'm not scaring him?”

“You're the kind of scary no one notices until it's too late. So we're cool.”

The young man scowled. “Why would I tell you anything?”

Nim gave a little huff. “Of course you'll tell.”

Andre's gaze shuttled among the male talyan, as if he couldn't quite decide who was the biggest threat. Jonah wished he could clear up the question. But he'd let Nim play her game . . . at least until Liam came down to rip the man apart for damaging his mate.

But Nim said, very softly, “Not them, silly. Look at me.”

Andre's stare snapped to her, and his eyes widened. Black pupils expanded to swallow the irises in a gulp.

Jonah felt a chill at the small of his back that he couldn't blame on the damp waistband of his jeans. He didn't think the punk was wrong about exactly where the threat lay.

Nim's voice lowered, and Andre leaned forward in his chair. “You'll tell me because that's what men do.” She circled him. “They tell me things they shouldn't. Do things they shouldn't. I guess you'd call it . . . a gift.”

A curse.
Jonah heard the word echo, distorted, in the demon harmonics of her voice.

Andre obviously heard it too, and shuddered, but his expression was rapt. Jonah had seen that entranced, hungry look before, when the Naughty Nymphette stepped onto the stage.

The chill crept farther up his spine, even though the thin cotton of his shirt was mostly dry. That wasn't an air-conditioned subbasement breeze.

That was the tenebraeternum.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Archer stiffen. The mated talya knew what was happening. Ecco canted forward, as much under Nim's sway as the young punk.

She came to a halt in front of the boy and leaned down, her palms flattened on the fronts of her thighs. At her fingertips, the black traceries of her
reven
blazed, matching her half-lidded eyes with violet intensity. “But don't you worry about doing something you shouldn't. Because Corvus sent you to find me. Didn't he?”

“Yes.”

“And didn't you find me?”

“Yes.”

“Then won't you take me to my pretty demon jewelry?”

Andre's answer drifted off on a dreamy sigh, his breath visible in the plunging cold. “Yes.”