Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (38 page)

Sera stuck her clean hands in her pockets. “Holler if you need anything.”

“Oh, he might holler.” Nanette flicked her fingers. The golden light spattered like raindrops. “But please don’t mind him.”

Fane tried to push himself up on his elbows. She nudged him back.

Sidney ushered Alyce and Sera through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

Sera leaned against the wall, her arms hanging limp at
her sides. “Should we be worried about leaving our precious league secrets in there with a couple of angels?”

Sidney shrugged. “Nanette seems sweet, and Fane is otherwise occupied. And I think the sphericanum has bigger concerns now.”

“It’s our fault,” Alyce said.

Sera frowned. “What, that Fane can’t fight?”

“That he had to fight Thorne.”

Sidney echoed Sera’s frown but more fiercely. “What makes you think it was Thorne?”

She folded her hands in front of her and waited.

He started to rake his fingers through his hair but stopped at the sight of the blood. “You would know.”

Sera drummed the wall behind her, then pushed herself straight. “Okay, typical crappy talya luck says you’re probably right, it’s Thorne. But that doesn’t make it our fault he attacked Fane.”

“Specifically, my fault,” Sidney said. “I gave him the idea an angelic sword would make a fine demonic weapon.”

“I believe I was the inspiration,” Alyce countered. “You just refined the concept.”

“Damn it, enough.” Sera pointed an admonishing finger at each of them in turn. “There’s plenty of repenting to go around—just ask the teshuva.”

Alyce shook her head. “Maybe we’ll ask Thorne.”

“Run,” Jonah whispered.

Sid glanced at the other man. “What?”

“They’re after you.”

Since the warehouse loading bay was full of talyan gathering for the night’s hunt, it seemed unlikely the tenebrae or the sphericanum had invaded. Anyway, his teshuva was dormant. “Who’s after me?”

“The girls. Alyce.”

The teshuva didn’t twitch, but other parts of Sid did. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m telling you. I recognize that look. It doesn’t bode well.”

In the room of large, black-clad males planning their routes through the city, it was hard for a moment to pick out the smaller women, especially since they seemed to be sneaking around the bigger bodies.

Sid shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe they’re after you.”

“Nim already has me.”

Was that a note of censure in the other man’s voice? “Alyce knows she can come to me for anything.”

Jonah lifted one eyebrow. “But she went to Nim instead. And she was upstairs sparring with Gavril earlier, before Fane and Nanette showed up.”

Now Sid’s teshuva did rouse, a slow coiling of possessiveness. It was so unlike him. He was not that sort of man. Of course, that was the point. It wasn’t the man but the demon. He tried to tamp it down. “I think she’s smart to take advantage of all the strengths and skills the league members can offer.”

“Uh-huh.” Jonah’s doubt lengthened each syllable.

Sid gritted his teeth if only to keep the teshuva from letting out a roar.

She was decked out, from the dark braid of her hair to her big boots, in talya black, blending with the males, so he didn’t see the problem until she stepped under one of the loading bay lights and the harsh fluorescent gleamed off the hard shine of leather.

Black leather.

There were legitimate reasons to use leather for work clothes. For example, quality leather gardening gloves, heavy boots, and cowboy chaps wore smoother, lasted longer, and protected better than lighter-weight materials.

There was no excuse for a strap-up leather bustier.

Jonah groaned. “Nim …”

The talya female minced over to him. The wild corona of her sandy hair was neatly bound in a ponytail, and her oversized black T-shirt was actually tucked in. “Yes, sir? Reporting for duty, sir.”

“Troublemaker.”

“What? I just—”

Whatever she
just
faded from Sid’s hearing as Jonah hauled her away. Not that he was listening. He stalked toward Alyce.

As combat apparel, he supposed it made a certain sense. The bodice laced close around her body and left no loose folds of fabric to catch on feralis claws. The long sleeves, with the pointed cuffs covering the backs of her hands, fit her like a second skin, a skin that would hold up to ichor spatter better than her own, at least long enough to dispatch the tenebrae doing the spattering. And, of course, it was black.

On the taller, curvier Nim, the bustier would have bordered on indecent. On Alyce, the laces closed tight, eyelet to eyelet, without a suggestion of skin. This made him wonder what, if anything, she was wearing underneath.

A simple inhalation—he’d been doing it all his life—caught raggedly in his throat.

As if in echo, her breasts rose and fell on a breath. The bustier wasn’t so meek and modest as to hide that. Her
reven
made a plain choker around her neck.

“I see you’re ready to rumble.” His voice sounded wrong, too deep, with a note of menace.

She turned her back to him and reached around her side. For a heartbeat, he thought she was going to flip him off. How quickly even a rogue absorbed talya arrogance.

But then she tugged at one of the filigreed and studded embellishments at her shoulder blade … and half withdrew a knife. The thin, silvery blade flexed against its hidden sheath, supple like a boning knife. Six of the embellishments, three on each side, descended along her sides, tucked into decorative chevron striping down the back of the bustier. The exposed, delicate hilts were perfectly sized for her small hand.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Clever, isn’t it?”

“I never would have noticed the knives,” he said with complete honesty.

“Nim said it’s good for sneak attacks.”

“I bet it is.” He certainly felt sideswiped. From the unsubtle, longing glances from the other talyan, he wasn’t the only one.

She bit at her lower lip, watching him. “Do you think Thorne will come after us tonight?”

“Who?” Sid shook himself. “Thorne. I think he’s after something, and whatever he riles up probably falls within the league mission statement.”

“And if it doesn’t,” Archer said as he came up, “we’ll write ourselves a new mission statement.”

“Signed in ichor,” Sera added. The pendant around her neck twinkled violet like her eyes.

Sid stared at her. She was the closest thing to a Bookkeeper the Chicago league had had for close to a year. Her background was so similar to his—the education, the intellect, the curiosity. If she had been a firstborn male child of a Bookkeeper, the masters would have passed around cigars. But she was unapologetically, fully talya in that moment.

And when she curled her hand around Archer’s elbow and slanted that violet-shot gaze up to him, she wasn’t just talya but
symballein
.

Unrepentantly so.

Before Sid could consider the implications, Liam hopped up onto a chair to raise himself above the heads of the tall, muscular, well-armed crowd. “Listen up, talyan. Pitch lurked around the
River Princess
all day as she burned and never saw a sign of Thorne. We know he spent part of his evening gutting Fane. As for what he’s been doing the rest of the time … Well, I can only think he’s been brooding, and we all know what that does to us.”

A ripple of amusement softened the crowd not at all.

“So stay sharp. Sharp as your favorite blades. Because whoever out there is willing to attack a djinn-man in his home, and whatever a djinn-man thinks is bad enough that he needs to arm himself with an angel’s sword, is more than willing to obliterate us. Unless we get it first.”

There was no cheer, but Sid’s demon tightened into a ball of restless craving.

In pairs and triads, the talyan filed past Jilly and her map. In quiet times—a relative term, of late—they patrolled their favorite haunts independently, clearing the city of horde-tenebrae, one dark corner at a time. But with a djinn-man on the prowl, Liam had assigned teams across the city. They would be far enough apart to cover some ground, but close enough to come to each other’s aid, should the need arise.

Assuming they had time to call out to one another.

Waiting for final orders, Sid edged into an unoccupied corner and flipped open his cell phone. His fingers hovered over the keypad a moment, then punched out a quick number and waited through a few rings that gave him too much time to think.

“At-One London.” Despite the predawn hour on the other end, the answer was crisp and authoritative.

“Morning, Wes.”

This pause was longer than the first; long enough that he almost hung up.

Finally, a groan sighed down the line. “Not yet it ain’t.” Wes’s voice crackled with the sleepiness he’d held back before. “What the hell, Sid?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

“Dad told me everything.”

“I’m sure he summed it up nicely. But I have another note to add. We’re going after a djinn-man who’s shaping up to be orders of magnitude worse than Corvus Valerius. I e-mailed what we know so far, in case—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Saying we might be slaughtered doesn’t make it more likely to happen.”

“Not saying it means I don’t have to think about it.”

“You’re going to be Bookkeeper of London, bro.” Sid let out one notch on the rein of his demon to growl, “You’d better fucking think. Since you can’t leave. Again.”

That was the worst sort of scientist: letting the dread of
what could b
e become the horror of
what was
, creating the outcomes he’d anticipated.

Even as he thought it, Sid winced at his hypocrisy. Hadn’t he done exactly that with Alyce? After his mother, after Maureen, he’d feared he’d never be able to open his life to another.

And he’d made his fears come true.

It was too late to beat himself up, but no doubt there were entities aplenty standing in line to take care of the task.

“You’re right,” Wes said quietly. “I don’t know what you’re facing—hell, I still don’t know all of what I’m facing—but I won’t make you come back just to kick my ass.” He hesitated. “Although I hope … I do hope you’ll come back sometime.”

“Maybe.” Sid turned to face the loading bay, the talyan spread out before him like one of those monochrome black-on-black-on-black canvases he found so hard to appreciate as art. “My place is here. But I’m glad you’re with Dad.” The admission slipped from him as easily as the teshuva healed a hangnail. Because in the end—and this very well could be the end—it was true.

“He’s in his office,” Wes said. “Do you want to talk to him?”

It was Sid’s turn to hesitate, the teshuva in him providing no protection from this. And maybe Wes understood, because the line clicked over without another word.

“Sidney?”

“I’m sorry, Dad.” The apology cracked out of him.

“For what, exactly?” The hum of curiosity was as personal and familiar to Sid as his own handwriting. “Being possessed?”

“For that. For letting you down. For letting Mum—”

“No.” Dispassionate though his father claimed to be, the sharp refusal halted all discussion. “The demons were none of your doing, not the tenebrae that killed your mother, not this teshuva now. And you never, never let me down.”

Sid bowed his head into the cup of his hand, the phone cradled against his ear.

His father’s voice softened. “From the moment your mother told me she was pregnant again, I knew you’d go your own way. You were quick and fearless and always knew your own mind. I would have been proud to call you London’s Bookkeeper after me. But more than that, I am proud you are my son.”

Sid closed his eyes tight. What he wouldn’t give to have his father and Wes at his side, to talk over this attack, to talk about anything at all. … “Do you think you could keep the other masters from declaring me rogue if I came home for a visit?”

“Somehow I don’t think they could stop you with a few words. So,” his father continued, “about this girl. She’s the one?”

Liam had pushed up the loading bay door, and the night air swirled through. Sid lifted his head to breathe in the fusion of wet concrete, chilled steel, and something else, some primeval incense of coming battle. “My demon says so.”

“And you?”

Hadn’t he seen Alyce as two entities in the beginning? Girl and demon in discordance had been vulnerable, the girl confused and the demon lashing out. But they’d come to a balance. Now he was the one stumbling.

Was it too late?

The talyan were filing out of the warehouse to the waiting fleet of cars, solemn in their black like a line of mourners headed to somebody’s funeral. “I have to go, Dad, but … I’ll call you later.” Though he’d told Wes otherwise, he wished saying the words could make it so.

“I told you before to be careful—”

“Definitely too late for that,” Sid muttered, but he pitched his voice only to the teshuva’s range, so he heard his father’s continuation.

“And you didn’t listen. Perhaps you knew better than I all along. So be happy instead, Sidney.”

The words, part command, part plea, jolted him, and he mumbled out his good-bye just as the dark-haired, bustier-clad source of his too-lateness—and his happiness—slipped past him.

Gavril crossed the loading bay on an intercept course that would have put him in line right behind Alyce. Sid snapped the cell close and quickened his step to edge out the other man.

Gavril raised one eyebrow but fell back a slot.

Sid’s spine crackled with tension—not that he thought Gavril would attack from behind.

From the front maybe.

Why had Alyce gone to the other male? Of course, it was easy to answer, even for his Bookkeeper brain. Alyce didn’t want his jealousy and selfishness. She wanted love.

After his father’s questioning, frustration made his muscles clench, like the demon given no place to unleash. Great. The emotions he did have were nothing he could give her, and their dark churn confused whatever insight he might have found.