Seduced by Shadows (33 page)

The scorn in his voice raised her hackles even as something else in her withered. “A few of those, at least, are worth saving. Which is more than I can say about giving up your life and soul for a slaver’s ill-fated cotton farm.”

He went utterly still.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Why was she fighting him? What was the point? “That was a hateful thing to say.”

“You’ve been doing more research than I realized.” He took a step back. “Hateful but true. My father owned slaves. I would have if I’d managed to keep the farm, if the South had won the war. And you’re right; it was stupid to sacrifice my soul when the battle I was fighting was already lost. Which is why I won’t let you make yourself bait.”

Wouldn’t let? She bristled, remorse morphing to anger. She echoed his words back at him. “Not your call. You’ve kept yourself an outsider in the league. If Niall, like Ecco, thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll do it.”

He shook his head. “Always pushing. The universe probably crushed your spine just to make you sit down and shut up for a minute. No wonder the demon was able to tempt you so easily with the promise you could just keep pushing.”

Her throat tightened. She clenched her fists as if she could shift the tension away from the threatening tears. “You’re asking me to just give up?”

He shook his head. “Nobody has to ask. Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

She stood in the hall and watched him walk away.

Towers these days didn’t have dungeons, which puzzled Corvus, since this world hadn’t lost the taste for dungeons. But the towers did have basements, and sub-basements, which served just as well. Enough levels down and, even within the thick concrete and rebar walls, the smells were the same—cold, damp, and inescapable decay.

He brought his second set of tools down there: the torch with the slightly askew propane stream; the pliers and tongs that didn’t quite meet straight anymore; the dulled shears that didn’t cut so much as crush.

He’d also brought the slivers of ruined glass.

The splinters glittered in the harsh light—but not so bright as the corroded eyes skittering in what shadows they could find.

He sighed as he contemplated the darklings’ trophy. Despite his less-than-gentle tutelage—and it wasn’t as if they didn’t eat the brains he gave them—they’d still managed to snatch the wrong talya. He should have risked getting closer. But the last time had been too close.

He slapped the talya’s cheek lightly. The man jerked, head lolling. With another sigh, Corvus threw the remains of his glass of cognac in the man’s face.

He sputtered, yanking against the birnenston-soaked bonds. Corvus waited while the talya’s gaze shuttled around the barren room, taking in the shifting kaleidoscope of lesser demons, the table of tools, and finally returned to Corvus himself.

Corvus nodded at the sudden, fearful constriction of the talya’s pupils. “I am djinn.”

“I am so not surprised.”

Corvus smiled sourly at the impudence. “No need for your name, rank, and serial number. Your league brothers call you Zane. Your petty-mischief demon came from one of the shallowest circles of hell. And your number is up.”

Zane shook his head, spraying cognac. “Your insults have broken me already.”

“Oh, I don’t need words for that.” Corvus stretched his empty, bare hands. “Even your puny teshuva will heal your wounds again and again. The screaming will go on for a very long time.”

“So what do you want to know? I’ll sing like a bird.”

“Nothing really. I know everything I need.” Corvus surveyed the table of tools. “Except how to extract a demon.” He turned back with a pair of pliers in his hand. “I shall set you free.”

“By killing me.”

Corvus inclined his head. “An unfortunate corollary.”

For a moment, Zane’s expression calmed. “To let it go . . .”

Corvus pressed the back of his hand against his forehead, shielding his eyes from the harsh lights as he felt the tightening of the demon’s rising. “You have fought long enough. Not so long as I, but as a courtesy, I will not add your corpse to my army.”

Zane pulled back as far as the bonds would let him. “Yeah, thanks for not much.”

“Perhaps your soul, once free, will thank me.”

“ ‘Charity begins at home.’ ”

In Zane’s widening eyes, Corvus saw the reflection of his own yellow gaze, the acid tears that burned furrows down his cheeks. “I would, you know. If I could.”

“Please don’t let me stop you.”

“Oh, you won’t.” He brought the pliers up against Zane’s cheek. “Hell itself can’t stop me now.”

Sera wished Niall’s safe house were bigger, if only to give her more room to pace. Bigger would have put more space between her and Archer too.

He was always deep in conversation with another talya or on his phone. He never even glanced up. She knew this because she was staring angry holes in him. She could help if he’d stop being such a stubborn, patriarchal throwback.

The scornful voice in her head told her she’d done entirely enough. She sunk to her haunches in the hallway. At the other end, she saw Archer on yet another phone call. If she hadn’t been off the reservation pursuing her own hopeless fantasies . . .

“Whenever the djinn-man tried to snatch you again, he might’ve gotten someone else.”

She glanced up at Niall. “You reading my mind?”

He shook his head. “Just looking at your face.”

“Nice to be transparent.”

He followed the earlier path of her gaze down the hall toward Archer. “It’s only obvious if someone knows what they’re looking at.”

She watched him with a slight frown.

He shook his head. “Archer said he’s going to tie you to a bedpost to stop you from making a terrible mistake.”

As if Archer, beds, and she hadn’t already been a terrible mistake. She dragged her mind back to the conversation at hand. “Did he explain why I think it would work?”

“He didn’t have to. I told him I’d set you free to try it.”

She pushed to her feet. “Then let’s—”

Niall put a hand on her shoulder. “If I thought it would work.”

“It will.”

“Sera, this djinn bastard is already two steps ahead of us. If he got you, he’d be light-years ahead.”

She frowned. “But light-years closer to what?”

“We still don’t know. Bookie sent me a message saying that your research has him thinking. He wanted to meet with you, but then this—”

A flurry of activity down the hall attracted their attention.

Archer was shouting into the phone. “We’re on our way,” he said, urging the talyan around him toward the door.

Niall and Sera ran to join the exodus.

Despite her night-long avoidance, she found herself in the SUV Archer commanded, crammed in the backseat between Jonah and another talya.

Archer met her gaze in the rearview mirror as he careened through the early-morning streets. “You’re coming because I didn’t have time to lock you in your room. Don’t get caught. Don’t get dead.”

She scowled and said nothing.

Wind-blown snow snaked across the pavement in hypnotic patterns before them and whipped into spume behind. She felt just as helplessly thrown into chaos.

Archer’s voice in the phone was cold as he organized the attack with fighters in the other vehicles. “I told Valjean to try the sewers. He caught a scent down there, followed it up, and Haji has the schematics on the building. He’s downloading them to your GPS units now. Raine has the area under surveillance. No one’s been in or out, but we don’t know how many humans are inside or their relationships to the djinn-man.” His tone hardened. “Valjean says the place is crawling with demon sign, so innocence is unlikely. Still, if you encounter
humans, try not to kill them until we have cause. And we want the djinni contained.”

He disconnected. Sera tugged nervously at her necklace.

Beside her, Jonah shifted. “Can we hold a djinni?”

Arched didn’t look back. “We will.”

The two talyan glanced at each other over her head. Uncertainty radiated off them like a chill.

They closed on the gaunt, ugly structure in a rush of dark vehicles. The street in front was empty.

“Too much available parking,” Jonah muttered. “Never a good sign.”

Out of the cars sped a dozen talyan, silent and swift.

Sera half thought Archer would lock the doors on her, maybe leave the windows cracked open if she was lucky. But he didn’t say a word as she ran with them.

Later, she wondered if he’d guessed what they would find.

Jonah in the lead smashed through the glass front doors without slowing. The rest followed.

A wall of malice, black and frothing as a standing wave of oil-fouled water, met them.

She flinched at a painful grasp on her arm.

“Let us take care of it.” Archer took her hand and laid the haft of his smaller knife across her palm. “Don’t reveal yourself here.”

She gripped the knife. “Don’t touch me, and the thing between us won’t happen.” He stiffened as if she’d raised the weapon against him.

The other fighters weren’t waiting for them anyway. Instead, they ripped through like superheated scythes, steaming away malice in wide swathes.

The talyan pressed forward. Sera heard a whoop of satisfaction at the easy progress. Before the malice had been entirely dispersed, a tide of ferales swept forward.

But they were small and halfhearted in their attack, almost clumsy. One stumbled past the talya ahead of
her, and she put Archer’s knife through it. It collapsed without even a groan and only a thin trickle of ichor.

The fighters mowed through the ferales as easily as the malice, some pressing toward the center of the building and the basement access, some hanging back to guard the territory they’d taken.

“Birnenston has weakened these demons,” Archer said. “This must’ve been a nest for years and we never knew.”

She realized he’d been sticking close, but not close enough to touch, even as he contributed his share of the decimation. Making sure she didn’t screw up, she guessed.

She frowned. “Why would the djinn-man stay here if it poisons his demon?”

“Maybe we can ask him this time.”

She glanced at him, caught by the note of reservation in his voice.

By then, they were making their way down the stairs, a few scattered malice fleeing ahead of them.

She heard one of the warriors give a single cry, then fall silent. Her blood froze.

Archer shouldered her aside. “Wait here.”

For once, she didn’t argue. The rest of the talyan cleared the stairs around her, leaving her in the dim, dank space. A lone malice skittered aimlessly in the dark corner at the bottom landing, like an autumn leaf caught up in a swirl of wind.

A sob echoed through the basement door. All else was silent. She couldn’t stop herself.

She crept down the last few stairs and stared in.

Framed in the open doorway, head bowed, Zane was tied naked to a chair.

If all the malice and all the ferales they’d battled on their way down had bled like humans, still the flood would have been a drop compared to the pool of crimson surrounding the chair.

With a choked cry, Sera broke through the ring of waiting talyan, though Liam tried to catch her. “Someone untie him. Oh God, Zane.”

He raised his head to meet her gaze—except his eyes were gone.

Archer wrenched her back. “We can’t untie him. The bindings are acting as tourniquets. Until the teshuva gets its act together and starts healing the worst of the wounds, we don’t dare loosen them.” He lowered his voice. “It’s all that’s holding him together.”

Sera swallowed hard, until she had herself under control. “Let me go.”

With each step sliding or sticking in the insane spill of blood, she went to Zane’s side and crouched beside him.

“You guys found me.” Blood trickled from his mouth. Behind the broken and missing teeth, his tongue was split, whether from blows, his own teeth, or from the heavy shears on the floor just in her line of vision, she didn’t want to know. “Not a second too soon.”

“We were gonna stop for coffee, but . . .” She tried to keep her tone light, but she heard the quaver in her voice.

A few talyan in the circle, including Liam, turned away.

“I’ve got a theory,” Zane said. “When the teshuva came to me, I was so afraid to die, I would’ve agreed to anything. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“Hmm. Where’s the theory part?”

His breath rattled wetly in his lungs. “I think the demon is finally gone.”

“The djinn-man? Yes, he’s gone.”

“I meant my demon.”

Stillness rippled out from her to the listening talyan.

“It’s not death that frees you from the demon,” Zane said. “It’s the end of the fear of death. That’s peace. I knew you’d understand.” His voice trailed off.

Archer pulled her back. “Leave him be. Let the teshuva work.”

She bit her lip. “What if his demon is gone?”

Archer crossed his arms. “You think he wouldn’t be dead already with those wounds?”

She didn’t doubt Archer knew death intimately, but he didn’t know the knife-edge between life and death like she did. Years of hospice work had shown her both the precious fragility and the monstrous tenacity of life. “Demon or no, we can’t stay here. It reeks of evil.”

Archer nodded. “The birnenston. Probably why Zane’s teshuva hasn’t been much help.”

Unwilling to question him again about the demon’s continued presence, she let it pass. “I know you don’t think much of first aid, and we’re way past that now, but somebody should look at Zane.”

His lip curled. “Your faith healer?”

“I was thinking a little more practical.”

When the slow leakage from Zane’s body congealed, they gingerly cut his bonds. Only his rasping breaths told them he was still alive.