Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (7 page)

Even the immortal talyan didn’t trust the old freight lift that had once delivered architectural salvage to the upper floor, so he took the stairs down. Sera’s boot heels clattered out of sync on the metal treads as she paced his slow progression. Was she making sure he didn’t keel over, or did she just want a front-row seat while the league leader straightened him out like a bent nail?

With most of the talyan resting from their nightly hunt, their edgy energy blunted by countermeasures invented by Bookkeepers, the interior halls of the warehouse could have housed any business—say, day-sleeping accountants.

Had his life unspooled differently, he could have been an accountant. That was probably true for most people—at least for people who liked their numbers in orderly columns. If he
had
been an accountant … No, he wasn’t going to start counting those ways.

He shoved open the door to the loading bay hard enough that Sera jumped forward to catch the rebound.

Though the big exterior rolling door was closed, the October cold leaked through the vaultlike room. Despite the icebox temperature reflected by the cinderblock walls, the league leader was stripped down to his jeans and a black vest, his shaggy black hair caught at his nape with an elastic tie. Of course, he had the glowing forge in the corner to warm him.

Liam Niall was a big man, which was not unusual for a talya. The monstrous hammer choked up in his wide palm only exacerbated the impression. He tapped out a delicate rhythm with the tool, belying its blunt force as he hunched over the anvil.

The hammering did get a bit more forceful as Sid approached. “You’re still alive,” Liam said. “I’m surprised.”

Surprised did not necessarily equal glad. Sid twisted his lips. “No doing of mine, I assure you.”

Liam smoothed the hammer one last time over the metal, then held up his work. The deer horn knife—two edged crescents interlocked so that the points gleamed outward toward the four cardinal directions—shimmered under the severe fluorescent lights with a stark and dangerous beauty.

Sid blinked. Etheric emanations sank into weapons just as the demonic energies brutally and exquisitely honed the bodies of the previously mortal hosts, much like Liam’s hammer worked the metal. Sid had studied printouts of the spectral analyses, but he’d never seen the evidence with his own eyes. Maybe he had never been so aware before, so personally affected by the outcome.

He blinked again, fascinated by the spangles that danced off the blades. How had he never noticed the way a beam of light poured down a finely honed metal edge? Certainly the Bookkeeper side of the equation had nothing so compelling. No dusty, stretched sheepskin, scrawled in ancient warnings, could match that shivery curvature of steel through air.

He blinked a third time and realized Liam was finally watching him, blue eyes steady and impassive.

Sid straightened, and the officious snap of his spine cut off the wayward fascination. “I would have been eaten by that feralis if not for the rogue female talya who came out of nowhere and saved my arse.”

While he quickly recapped the encounter, Liam’s gaze sharpened to rival the knife in his hand, as if Sid had finally shown himself to be interesting. “A rogue. In my city.” The blade glittered as he spun it between his fingers. “And female at that.”

Sid tensed at the threatening movement, and his shoulder
protested, though he kept his voice level. “An invaluable find.”

“For a Bookkeeper,” Liam countered. “A potential nightmare for the league. Do you know what that unbalanced energy does to the demons in this city? Repentant demon or tenebrae, it won’t matter in the face of such beguiling madness.” The teshuva’s mark at his temple flared violet with his heartbeat.

Sid averted his gaze before his own pulse could match the violence. From the time his father had inducted him into the Bookkeeper mysteries, he’d been taught not to follow the talyan in their torquing furies. Each had their place in the battle against evil; to confuse their roles was stupid, pointless, and often fatal—at least for the Bookkeepers.

So he tried to knock the sharp edge off his tone. He might have succeeded if he’d had a hammer bigger than Liam’s. “I don’t see how one woman—and she was tiny—makes things worse.”

Genuine amusement crinkled the
reven
next to Liam’s eye. “Didn’t your father exile you here because of a woman?”

The casual reference sliced through Sid like the multiple points of the deer horn knife, each one sharper than the last.

His father had told someone about that? Told a talya, of all people, even knowing the penalty of indiscretion?

“I would never reveal league confidences.” The words peeled from him as rusty and laced with pain as the soiled bandages back in his room.

Revealing himself had been the only thing Maureen asked for. Twenty-three months into their planned two-year pre-engagement cohabitation, they’d both been shocked and appalled to discover that, without divulging the league secrets, he had nothing left to share.

Liam’s smile flattened. “As Bookkeeper, you understand how outsiders are so disruptive.”

“A rogue is not technically an outsider,” Sid pointed out. Not the way he’d always been an outsider, even for those twenty-three months before he’d come to his senses.

“Lucky she was. Any rogue existing under our radar has a highly developed instinct for self-preservation.” Liam frowned thoughtfully. “Unless Bookie did know about her.”

Sid had gathered the gist of what had happened to his Bookkeeper predecessor. Suffice it to say, embezzlement had been the least of his crimes—not merely crimes, but sins. An image of his own unwritten rap sheet flashed in Sid’s brain. The “retired” Bookie might think himself the better man of the two.

“If your last Bookkeeper made note of a rogue, I’ll find it,” he promised.

“No need.” Liam’s words dropped to a growl. “Because we’ll find her.”

The implied menace curled Sid’s fingers as if around the haft of some imaginary weapon. “You can’t hurt her.”

“We do what we have to,” Liam said. “You can note that in your archives.”

“She’s no threat,” Sid insisted. In his memory, her pitiless hunter eyes blinked in slow disbelief.

Liam pursed his lips. “Tell that to the feralis she tore apart.”

“She’s fighting on your side. Every league needs all the weapons it can gather,” Sid countered.

“Not if those weapons are double-edged.”

Sid looked pointedly at the deer horn knife in the league leader’s hand, all its curves treacherously sharp.

Liam sighed. “Right. Most of them do have a regrettable tendency toward slicing off the hand that feeds them.”

“You asked for London’s help,” Sid said.

“No, I asked for access to your archives,” Liam corrected.

Sid pushed the specs higher on his nose. “I
am
London’s
archives. With Alyce as a baseline, I can do what I came here to do.”

“Alyce? You already named her?” Just the corners of Liam’s lips curved upward. On a lesser man, it might have been a smirk. “I suppose you have to keep her now.”

“If I can find her.”

“We’re on it.”

“You’ll be careful? You won’t scare her?”

Liam gave him a lowering look. “That fever must be spiking. Get some rest.”

Probably it was immortality that gave his voice that paternalistic edge. But Sid already had a disapproving father figure, thanks anyway.

Sera followed him back to his room, like a silent blond wolf watching for him to falter from his path.

He paused in his doorway, trying for a casual lean, though the jamb grated against his aching shoulder. “You wouldn’t let them hurt her.” When she didn’t answer quickly enough for his comfort, he added, “You could
be
her. Imagine possession—the conflicting energies, the impulse to violence, the isolation—without the structure and restraint of the league. Without that, the teshuva is only one long step from being djinni.”

Her gaze flickered with violet streaks, pupil and iris submerged beneath the demonic overlay. “You think I don’t know that?”

The waves of pain thinned his patience. If he wanted to win the respect of the talyan, he couldn’t keep backing down. Plus, he was more than ninety percent certain she wouldn’t hit an injured man.

“I think you were possessed less than a year ago,” he said. “I think I have almost three thousand years of written histories at my fingertips and another couple thousand of oral tradition on my tongue. So hand-to-hand, you might win, but in a debate I will wipe you out.”

With a quirk of her lips, all signs of her demon vanished.
“Well, hopefully the next feralis is willing to argue the finer points of possession with you. I’ll just tell you, this alleged rogue female isn’t a science experiment.”

“Of course not.” A proper science experiment would be easier, tidier, and already under lock and key in the lab. He tried a little wheedling. “Don’t you want to know how the
symballein
bond works between you and your mate?” Women—even demonically possessed women—always liked to talk about their relationships.

She snorted. “That’s not going to show up on any spectral analysis.” But her expression softened.

He wondered if he could achieve the same tempering response if he asked Ferris Archer, Sera’s other half, about the bond. He rather thought his odds of not getting hit would drop well below the halfway point.

But since Sera seemed to have mellowed, he might have a chance. “I want to go with the talyan tonight when you look for Alyce.”

“Liam will let you know.”

That wasn’t a yes. But it wasn’t a no either. “I’ll be much improved by a nap. See you tonight.”

She inclined her head, again neither yes nor no. He supposed ambivalence was as much a symptom of teshuva possession as violet-shot eyes. “Sleep well,” she said.

He’d sleep like the dead. Or someone who’d narrowly avoided death. He nodded back and slipped into his room.

Sera had left a pill bottle of analgesics by his bedside, and he dry-swallowed a tight fistful. It was not the recommended dosage, but the FDA had never anticipated off-label use as anti–demon spit painkiller.

He kicked off his filthy jeans and eased out of his shirt. He noted the bloodstains from his draining wound, and suddenly he had a better understanding of the league’s rather shocking clothing allowance. Standing in his boxers, he wrapped his shoulder in gauze, then crawled into bed with a
groan. The sagging middle where the springs had sprung sucked him down.

But sleep circled in the same way his inbound flight had gone endlessly round O’Hare, so he grabbed his specs and pulled one of his favorite books into his lap. His father hadn’t been thrilled to part with the illuminated texts, but Sid had convinced him the opportunity to study female talyan with original manuscripts in hand superseded jurisdictional pettiness.

He donned archival gloves in deference to the old man and the old paper and hoped if he fell asleep he wouldn’t drool on the pages.

From somewhere on the street outside, a truck honked, but through the gray concrete walls, the cacophony of the industrial district was more distant than a dream, as if the real world weren’t allowed to intrude on this demonic sanctuary.

His churning thoughts slowed. No wonder the talyan clung so tightly to their monastic seclusion. Personality studies indicated that disconnection from close human relationships made a person more vulnerable to demonic possession, so statistically more talyan would display antisocial behaviors. But the real reprieve wasn’t the teshuva’s escape from hell; it was the talya’s freedom from the tyranny of meddlesome life.

With league training and Bookkeeper tricks, the talyan stiff-armed death
and
life for the sake of their mission.

No wonder no right-thinking, right-souled woman would have them.

He and the talyan had more in common than he’d appreciated.

Eventually, his eyelids drooped. Through the haze of his eyelashes, the intricately drawn illustrations danced with strange wildlife, a tangle of angels and demons without clear distinction. That was probably true for most people—at least
for those who’d avoided possession by some force more definitively aligned.

He blamed his gritty eyes for making him blink dumbly when he looked up and saw the visitation, as if one of the ethereal figures from the primeval text had stepped off the page, a fever dream come to life. He fumbled his drooping specs higher. “Alyce?”

She ghosted across the room, her bare feet silent on the linoleum despite the slight hitch in her gait. Through the dark curtain of her tangled hair, her pale eyes glittered, amethyst over ice. “Shh. I’ve come to free you.”

A
ping
raced through his body, from the sudden acceleration of his heartbeat to his extremities, like a warning signal. “Free me?” He pushed the book aside, careful not to wrinkle the pages. “Did Liam let you in?”

“There was a devil-man at the gate.” She fisted her hands in her skirt. The grandmotherly housedress lacked the ichor stains of her last ensemble, but the powder blue polyester was worn to near transparency in places. And now—this wasn’t a good sign—there were fingerprints of blood in the folds. “I did not stop to ask his name, but I saw the devil in his eyes.”

The
ping
went round his innards a few more times, gaining particle-accelerator speeds. Had she killed Liam or one of the other talyan? That would put a wrinkle in his reintroduction strategy. “They are possessed,” he admitted, “but not by devils—or not evil devils, anyway. Their teshuva—the demons inside them—are like yours.”

“Evil,” she whispered. “Like me.”

“Repentant,” he corrected. “Fighting for the light now.”

“There is no light for me.”

“Not before, maybe. But now that you’re here, everything is different.”

She pressed her bloody palms together and raised her hands until her fingertips brushed under her chin. Despite
the prayerful pose, her gaze speared him without mercy. “Is this where I die?”

He recoiled. “God, no!”

“Won’t you banish the devil from me?”

“I can’t.”

Her hands fell back to her sides, and she averted her face. The
reven
around her neck guttered with a few violet lights, then faded to black, as if her teshuva hadn’t the strength to maintain its outrage.