Vowed in Shadows (34 page)

“Oh no, you don't,” she said. “You need breakfast and then sleep.”

He ducked his head down to nuzzle her neck. “Let the demon take care of it.”

“Not when I'm here to bedevil you,” she said. But she sagged into the caress of his hand down her spine.

A half hour later, he snuck to the kitchen and back, returning with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Everything else was eaten,” he said. “Jilly's comfort food always gets to them. Especially when it's frosted comfort studded with mini chocolate chips.”

Nim scooted up a pillow for him to lean back on while she nestled against his side. “Sounds like you all needed the caloric encouragement.”

“Malice and ferales and even salambes aren't enough anymore. The talyan won't be satisfied until they have Corvus.”

She'd been running her fingers down the quiet patterns of the
reven
that curved around his ribs, but she stopped to look up at him. “Because I let Corvus get the anklet?”

He shook his head. “This isn't about you. Or you're just an excuse.”

“I'm used to that.”

He finished the sandwich and rolled her onto her back. “You're my excuse for not getting enough sleep, for getting worn down to the bone.” His mouth pressed softly to hers in a slow kiss, though other parts—seemingly not at all worn-down—were more insistent. “You're my excuse for wondering why I even care about Corvus when you're here waiting for me.”

She licked the hint of jelly from his lips. “That's so sweet.”

“By the way, I like your hair.”

She patted her head and the trimmed curls poked at her fingers. The last weight of the dreads had unraveled, leaving behind a springy mess with pretensions of world domination. “Sera and Jilly evened it up tonight. Said they were sick of looking at it.”

He nudged aside her hand and tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. The corners of his half-closed eyes crinkled when it tumbled back again. “Soft,” he murmured. “And wild.”

She kissed him again, and he was asleep before she lifted her head. Easy for him to be exhausted. He hadn't been sitting around, worrying and twiddling his fingers all night.

With a sigh, she echoed his caress, brushing a blond lock from his forehead. His deep breath never faltered, but he turned to nuzzle her palm. The brush of his lips against her wrist fired her pulse.

God, she couldn't stop touching him, even while knowing he needed to rest, needed to stay focused if he was going to survive the horde. She pulled away and clamped her hand between her knees so she wouldn't reach out to him again. All these years of ruthlessly using her body to get her way and she was betrayed, not by her bones or muscles or nerves, but by a quivering lump of flesh at her center.

And not just her clit either.

Her stupid heart.

What was she doing here? She wasn't just seducing a missionary man. She was luring a damned holy warrior away from his shot at redemption. She had ruined his chances and put him in danger by losing the anklet, and he wouldn't even let her help him get it back. She'd never even wanted to be part of a team—for which everyone was probably eternally grateful, since when she wasn't being useless, she was a downright menace.

Her fingers curled, digging into the flesh of her thighs.

Once upon a time, she would've taken this beautiful moment to burn a hole in her skin. But the demon would laugh at such a wimpy wound.

And this time, she didn't need the outside pain.

She slipped out of the bed and fetched Mobi. She'd forgotten to bring her CDs from her apartment, which was a drag, since the only stereo she'd found in the warehouse didn't have a place to dock her iPod. Another example of the league's slow evolution, Sera had mourned, despite the ever-pressing need for change.

Nim went down through the quiet halls to the dock and pushed up the rolling door. The heat poured in, thick and moist as one of Jilly's soufflés. Nim patted her curls again, feeling them taking on a demonic life of their own from the humidity. Sera and Jilly, with their fine, straight hair, hadn't understood how the dreads weren't a fashion statement, but a life-saving measure.

She plugged in the boom box. It'd be a long time before her hair grew that long. Maybe she shouldn't have been so rash with the scissors. But she'd banished the memory of the feralis's punishing grip with each hack. She couldn't escape the teshuva as easily, of course. Only the soul-cleaving solvo could sever its link, and the soul wouldn't ever grow back.

She dialed through the radio band to the local hiphop station that promised an uninterrupted marathon, and started to dance.

In the heat, Mobi was lithe and lively, gliding over her arms as if her limbs were obstacles to his hunt. She went into a deep backbend to let him slide up her torso, and then straightened slowly as he climbed to circle her neck. Her hair was definitely a rat's nest now, sweat stiffened and kinked.

Who was she kidding? She hadn't cut her hair to protect her from feralis attacks. She'd done it to sever her old life from the one she wanted now.

She wanted the missionary man. The pure and unholy warrior.

She wanted Jonah, and she didn't see any way on earth—or in the demon realm either, for that matter—that she could ever truly have him.

Sure, he desired her. The Naughty Nymphette didn't give him a choice there. He'd even said “love,” but she'd heard that one before. She couldn't hold a man like him. When the desire burned down, he'd see only the darkness in her. No one could love that.

In case she tried to forget again—in case she thought there was something else she could change to capture Jonah's heart—she danced through the songs until her thighs trembled from exertion and Mobi was a limp ribbon in her hands.

When the next set of commercials kicked in, she sank to her knees and pulled the plug.

She knelt, panting in the hot silence, wondering why exactly she'd fallen in love.

She loved Jonah. What a world-ending fuckup to end all fuckups.

Once upon a time, she'd set matches against her skin just to feel anything at all. The holes in her flesh had let out the pain, sorrow, and hatred, like little tears in the Veil around the tenebraeternum. No wonder the demons were drawn to her.

He was a good man who thought he could make her a good woman, but the light Jonah held up only made her shadows deeper.

Sweat stung in her eyes.

A sharp round of applause—three mocking claps—jerked her head up.

“How intriguing,” Cyril Fane drawled.

The angelic possessed stood just outside the fence, watching her.

She waited until her breath evened and she could answer with similar nonchalance. “Are you like a vampire, where you can't come in unless invited?”

He shot his cuffs, and the sun gleamed off the pristine starch of his shirt. “It is high daylight, and I'm wearing white.”

“I already knew you weren't cool like a vampire.” She tucked Mobi around her shoulders, grateful for the scaled armor.

They studied each other through the chain link.

“So, now I've seen the Naughty Nymphette display her charms. But you kept your clothes on. I feel short-changed.”

“You didn't pay. And it would've been more than change.”

He smiled crookedly. “As delightful as it is to spar with you,
heshuka
, don't you want to know why I'm here?”

“Didn't your mama ever teach you that insults work better when you speak English?”

“How do you know it was an insult? Perhaps
heshuka
is a term of endearment.”

She laughed.

He shrugged. “It was the sphericanum—the blessed realm—that christened you ‘talyan,' from the Aramaic for ‘sacrificial lamb.' ”

“See? That's how I knew it was an insult. It came from your mouth.”

He crossed his arms in an Old Testament sort of way. “So, you're not going to ask?”

“Most of what I ask for, I don't get. And most of what I get, I didn't ask for.” For a heartbeat, she wondered if that mind-set might just be why she was fucking up with Jonah.

But Fane interrupted. “I won't come in because my presence will overwhelm the energy sinks you talyan put in place to swallow your pain and anger and hatred.”

“I can only imagine,” she mused.

He glowered at her, all pretense of amusement fled. “Really, you can't.”

She sighed. “Fine, Angel Boy. What do you want?”

“I want you to come with me.”

“After I called you Angel Boy?”

“No worse than me calling you the ‘unknown darkness.' ”

At least she knew what
heshuka
meant. Swell. Her knowledge of Aramaic had just doubled. “I might not know much, but I'm fairly sure going anywhere with you is a terrible idea.”

“Undoubtedly, but it can't be helped.”

“Sure it can. By me not going.”

His glower deepened. “Elaine, I discover I am finding it less delightful to spar with you.”

“Ha, made you lie. Is that going to look bad on your record?” That he had bothered to learn her real name didn't seem like a good sign. Bad enough the devil knew it.

“I know where your anklet is.”

A jolt went through her. “So do we. It's with Blackbird.”

“And I know how to find Corvus Valerius.”

She hesitated and cursed under her breath when Fane smiled, clearly knowing he'd caught her. “I'll go get Jonah.” And Liam and Archer and Ecco and, oh, a dozen other snarly, sleepy talyan. They'd want her to tell them. They wouldn't care about the risk, about the fact that it was all her fault. They lived for opportunities like this.

For moments like this, they died.

Liam and Archer and Ecco and the others had their own sins with their demons to match, but this should be her fight. A little voice twisted in her head—too weak and wistful to be a demon's voice; just her voice—and said if she found Corvus and the anklet, that would be good.
She
would be good.

“No league,” Fane said. “Only you.”

Damn it. This was so obviously the sort of temptation she was supposed to resist. Running off with an angel must look really bad on a talya's record, even if righting her own wrongs was exactly what the preacher man had ordered. So she said, with as much resolve as she could muster, “No.”

This time, he laughed.

 

In her defense, she thought, as the Lotus peeled out of the warehouse district . . . Okay, there was no defense for sneaking out of the league compound without authorization or even leaving a note. Except that she was possessed by a demon, which, by definition, meant she could be unfailingly relied upon to do all sorts of bad things, even when—especially when—she was trying to do good.

“I'm so fucked,” she muttered.

“There are certain advantages to the
symballein
bond,” Fane agreed.

“The angelic possessed aren't the same? You're not celibate, are you? With a car like this? What a shame.”

A smile flickered over his lips, but faded. “As a highersphere warden, I am most assuredly not going to share sphericanum secrets with an outcast
heshuka
.”

Nim leaned back against the silky leather. “Yeah. You're celibate.”

“Can you keep your serpent off the upholstery?”

She frowned at his sharp tone. “I offered to put Mobi back.”

“I couldn't trust you not to wake your mate.”

“I said I wouldn't.”

Fane gave her a look. “Even if you kept your word”—the vanishing space between his furrowed brows calculated the chances of that as slim to none—“your presence, and your withdrawal, could have given you away.”

She had to admit he was right. She had already noticed that Jonah in a bed had a gravitational pull she found hard to resist.

“You could just set the serpent loose,” Fane suggested.

She gave him a look as disbelieving as the one he'd given her. “God, I hope you're not in charge of any paradises.”

His expression turned thunderous again. “Do you even comprehend,” he burst out, “how your attachment to the serpent represents your stubborn clinging to the darkness that made you vulnerable to demonic possession?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I had Mobi long before the demon.”

“But you permitted the resonance in your soul that matched the teshuva.”

“I didn't know that at the time.”

“Didn't you?” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

“Um,
no.
” She rolled her eyes.

“Emotionally, you must have. Spiritually . . .”

“Like I said before, no. Any particular reason you're looking for validation? Can't you just be holier than me and be happy?”

She was being snide, but at least he shut up.

He'd already told her they were going to the Shimmy Shack, although he wouldn't say why and offered only an annoyingly mysterious “That is why you must come with me. To see.”

At the sight of the bright yellow crime-scene tape across the garish red paint, her pulse plummeted and then rocketed with her breath. She got out of the Lotus and wrapped Mobi so tight around her neck he squirmed in protest.

Heat waves shimmered over the asphalt of the empty parking lot, and the crime-scene tape seemed to ripple despite the still, heavy air. Did she just imagine the drifting scent of putrefaction?

Fane yanked aside the tape.

Nim hesitated. The loose yellow plastic licked her ankle like a tongue. “We have to go inside?”