Seduced by Shadows (18 page)

He’d never been one to run from a fight, so he merely walked out quickly. Why he thought he’d won just because he’d had the last word, he wasn’t sure. He knew she wouldn’t be satisfied. So after he assigned Jonah and Raine their tasks for the evening, he returned to the apartment to mollify her with some suitably grisly tales of old hunts. If worse came to worst, he’d tear open another vein to his past. That had kept her quiet.

He stepped into the kitchen, wondering why he was so looking forward to another quiet night at home. Then the quiet really hit him.

Sera was gone.

CHAPTER 11

“Stay home, cook, and clean.” Sera stomped through the front door of the nursing home. “Oh, it’s okay if I don’t cook? Well, screw you, old fart. How ancient are you anyway? Cro-Magnon?”

“Hardly a day past ninety-ish, missy.”

Sera rocked to a halt. “Mrs. Willis. I didn’t see you.”

“So who’s the blind one around here?” The frail figure on the bench curved as if time were shaping her back into the brown ball of clay from which her maker had formed her. When Sera shut the door, a scrap of the quilting in her basket wafted to the floor.

Sera bent to retrieve it. “Lost one.”

Mrs. Willis gripped her hand. “My sisters would be sad. We’re all working on it together, you know.” Her cataract-filmed gaze drifted. “You might not cook, but you can finish a piece for your sisters.”

Sera gently untangled herself and tucked the colorful bits of material into the basket. “I only have brothers, Mrs. Willis, remember?”

The old woman shook her head. “So who’s the blind one around here?”

Sera stifled a sigh as she checked in with the evening nurse, then went to her father’s room.

She tapped at the open door. “Hi, Dad.”

He didn’t move from his seat beside the window where the square of darkness completely surrounded him. She braced herself against the jolt of pain and walked in.

She tugged another chair into place beside him. “Wendy said you liked the chocolate I brought while you were sleeping a few days ago.” She hesitated. “I guess it’s been more than a few days. A lot’s changed lately.”

She studied his face. Not much had changed here. Still the same, strong-planed features she’d watched twice a week at the pulpit for years. More gray around the temples, but far too young for this place.

“You could come live with me again,” she murmured. “You’d never notice I wasn’t getting older.”

The unfairness twisted inside her, threshing up the anger that never really settled. She could counsel her hospice patients to peace all day long and never feel it herself. What stillness she found had only ever been some paralyzing mix of doubt and confusion.

“Oh, Dad, I never wanted to talk to you about God, about death and Mom. About boys.” She lowered her face into her hands, her lashes a dry prickle against her fingertips as she closed her eyes. “And now, when I need you, I never will.”

How pathetic and stupid and childish to run away from her apartment. She’d boasted to Archer that she never backed down from a challenge. But how could she join the fight to save the world? She hadn’t saved her mother, couldn’t save her father, and had done a downright terrible job of saving herself.

Finally she looked up. The rain had started again, the first drops streaking the window, smearing the streetlights into watery stars.

Her father stared directly into her eyes. “Who are you?” His voice was low.

“Daddy?” She forced a smile. “It’s me, Sera.”

“What are you?” He pushed back in his chair. “What thing are you?”

She reached out. “I’m Sera, your daughter.”

He bolted from his chair, slapping her hand aside. “Don’t touch me.”

A stark chill swept her except where her hand burned with the shock of his blow. Her fingers curled into a fist. Like an echo, something in her turned away, resigned to the banishment. She clutched her hand against her chest as if she could hold on. “Daddy.”

“Get thee away from me. Away.” His voice thundered in the small room. “I cast thee out, Satan.”

“I’m not . . .” Her throat locked on the words. What was she, after all?

Lost. Archer had warned her. With sudden ferocity, she longed for his uncompromising presence, to fit herself against the strength of more than just his body. Only he, who’d killed the man he’d been, could understand what moved in her now. She looked up at her father.

He met her gaze and screamed.

The cry ripped through her. She jolted, knocking over her chair with a bang. She found herself on her knees in front of her father and held out an appeasing hand.

He cowered back. “Satan, Satan, Satan.”

She clamped her hands over her ears.

Wendy and an orderly burst into the room. The nurse hastened to the screaming man and folded an arm over his shoulders. He nestled against her, pointing at Sera.

“What is that light? It burns.” He straightened a little, eyes widening. “Let her go.”

Without warning, he lunged, gouging fingers aimed at her eyes.

The orderly hauled her to her feet and slung her toward
the door. “You’re making it worse. Get out of his sight.”

She stumbled out with one hand on the wall. She felt more feeble than the hunched old woman standing with her quilting basket at the front door.

Mrs. Willis patted Sera’s shoulder. “Your pappy remembers being a preacher, so he’s still swearing fire and brimstone.”

Sera dredged up a weak smile. “I just feel bad for upsetting him.”

“You’re a good daughter.” Mrs. Willis scowled. “Your brothers visit, but they don’t stop to talk quilting. Too busy, those boys. But your pappy was proud when he knew to be, and he’s proud still, somewhere.”

Sera tried for a slightly more sincere smile, until she saw Wendy coming toward them. Mrs. Willis disappeared into the television room. The evening news clicked on, the cheerful tone belying the description of a recent rash of addicts overdosing. “. . . Practically rots its victims from the inside,” blared out into the hall. She knew how that felt.

Wendy gave her a hug, but Sera couldn’t ease her muscles to return the embrace.

“That was bad,” the nurse said. “Arnie is calming him down. Arnie’s a little abrupt with visitors, but he’s got a nice touch with the confused ones.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t come back,” Sera murmured.

Wendy shook her head. “Don’t get melodramatic. One bad night doesn’t mean forever.”

Sera couldn’t help herself. She laughed. If only the other woman knew.

But Wendy smiled in answer. “See? Better already. You know there’ll be bad spells. He just took a bit of a fright. But I want Arnie to walk you out. Mrs. Willis noticed that guy’s been standing by the sidewalk since you came in.”

Even before she turned, Sera knew whom she’d see. The darkness of his trench coat swallowed up the light of the nursing home sign, and the flickering drops of rain made him look like something from a grainy old black-and-white movie. Probably the bad guy.

She sighed. “I know him.”

Wendy’s expression said she still thought she should get abrupt-with-visitors Arnie.

Sera contemplated sneaking out the back. But she’d have to ask Wendy to deactivate the alarms that kept the dementia patients from wandering. And that would oblige an explanation of why she wanted to sneak out. “Can I call you later to see how Dad settled?”

Wendy didn’t drag her eyes off the figure at the street. “Call me tomorrow. I think you’re busy tonight.” Her gaze finally snapped to Sera and widened.

“Now who’s melodramatic?” Sera stalked out the front door.

Archer waited for her at the end of the walk. “Turn left and keep walking. Do not stop.”

“What—?”

When her steps slowed in confusion, he wrapped his fingers around her elbow and propelled her forward. “At least one feralis, maybe two, are closing on this position. And I count three malice on this block alone.”

“Why—?”

“You’re a lure for every demonic influence in the city, beaming wrath and anguish like a fucking lighthouse of doom. And that djinn-man is out here, somewhere.”

“But why didn’t—?”

“We placed energy sinks around your apartment.” His grip tightened on her arm until she winced, but he never stopped scanning the darkness around them. “The sinks are reverse engineered from angelic artifacts and absorb the emotional output of possession.”

“Stop answering my questions before I ask them,” she snapped.

“Then answer one of mine,” he snapped back. “What the hell did you think you were doing, leaving your secured apartment?”

“How was I supposed to know it was secured?”

“I told you we were protecting you.”

“I thought you meant you, personally.”

“I was.” His voice was half demon snarl. “Until you left.”

So much for thinking he understood her. She hunched her shoulders against the rain needling down the back of her neck. “I wanted to go out.”

“I told you no.”

“And just what makes you think I’d listen?” As they passed under a streetlight, it abruptly dimmed. In the sudden shadows, a blob of deeper darkness fell toward them.

She shoved Archer away, and he stumbled onto one knee. She batted the dark shape away from her face.

A biting chill enveloped her hand, spreading like a killing frost up her elbow, toward her brain and heart.

Archer was at her side in an instant. “That was stupid.”

She gritted her teeth. “You’re welcome.”

“I haven’t gotten slimed by a malice in a very long time.”

Maybe she only imagined the pointed claws and prehensile tail wrapped around her elbow, but she definitely felt gnawing teeth. She gagged on the stench of rotten eggs. “Get it off.”

“You wanted to hunt. Lesson one. Don’t get slimed by malice. It stings.”

Stung like knives of ice. And creeped her out. And stank. “Lesson learned.”

He raised his head, a glint of violet in his eyes. “The feralis is circling. Drain the malice and let’s go.”

“Lesson two would be helpful right about now.”

He gave her a thoughtful frown, as if he wanted to be
sure lesson one had really sunk in—sunk in with needle teeth.

Finally, he nodded. “Remember the man at the bar?”

“If he got slimed, he didn’t seem to notice.”

“Oh, he got slimed. The malice was all over him. If he’d recognized the evil, he could have driven it away. You, seeing and feeling—smelling—the malice, have the advantage.”

“Great. So how do I get rid of it?” Enough theory, already.

“Wish it away.”

She stared at him. “You’re kidding. Do I click my heels together?”

He didn’t smile. “The demon knew the name of your darkness when it chose you. Now the demon’s power is yours. Know the essence of pain, fear, hatred, despair—that is the malice. Know it, and bleed it dry.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Now would be a good time.”

She didn’t follow his glance, not quite ready to skip ahead to lesson three. She squelched the urge to run in circles and wave her arm as if she were on fire despite the hard rain. With her free hand, she reached into the darkness.

Psychic roadkill, Archer had said. Grabbing it was like reaching into a cold, dead thing, past brittle hair and flaking, scaly skin, into rotting guts and the sharp shards of broken bone. The squirm of maggots and crunch of cockroaches gave it a horrific semblance of life.

It thrashed in her grip. A tail lashed, staining the air with streamers of a strange etheric smoke.

Archer stepped closer. The warmth of his body helped dispel her chill, but his voice was colder than malice teeth. “End it.”

She blinked away raindrops. End it how? Assimilate it, as her mother had been swallowed by the voices in her head? Lock it away in a part of her mind, like her
father’s ever-spreading forgetfulness? Or should she just deny all feeling, like Archer did, and dishearten the malice into oblivion?

Now that she had control of it, the squirming demon seemed pathetic rather than awful. The malice was wickedness given shadowy shape, but thanks to a really crappy night, she understood how easily that could happen to anyone.

“Do you have it?” Archer wrapped his big hands around hers as if they held a newborn infant.

“We were fighting and it came down on us.” The rain in her eyes cast a blurred shroud over her vision. “Did we make this together?”

“What?” His body recoiled, but his hands were steady on hers. “No. It was always here. Will always be here. We just gave it a little juice.” He scowled at her. “Don’t go all misty-eyed sympathetic on me now.”

“Sympathy means I feel sorry for you. Sympathy is cheap. To truly feel as you do, that’s empathy.” Could the man at the bar have fought the malice? Why did evil have to exist at all? She didn’t have answers, not a one. “I want to feel it—to understand—even if it hurts.”

As if her words had summoned the demon, her senses unfurled. The scene, already cast in a forbidding monochrome of black malice and silver rain on her white skin, shifted toward an otherworldly gray—the demon realm. Her grip slackened.

Archer swore and grabbed the malice. Reaching out to steady herself, she flattened her palms over his and laced their fingers tight together. The malice, snared in their joined grasp, bound them with threads of smolder ing ether.

It was the first time she’d really touched him since that desperate, dangerous coupling in his garden. With her demon ascendant, the firm heat of his grasp reverberated in every molecule of her being. An unexpected jolt of need coursed through her.

At the memory of his big hands tracing patterns on her skin, she looked up at him. His gaze fixed on hers with hungry stillness. She breathed the mingled scents of leather, wet concrete, and male, and her pulse thudded hard.

Mist thickened until it obliterated the world beyond.