Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls (38 page)

Despite the cold, a faint blush rose on her cheek where his touch had passed. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the violet had leached away as purely human pain surpassed the demon’s barriers. “I thought I had another chance,” she whispered. The gleaming points of the knives dipped away from his groin. “Why would she leave?”

“Maybe she wasn’t ready for another chance.” Now she might not get a third, but he didn’t think he needed to add salt to Jilly’s wounds.

“I just can’t believe she went back to him. She kept riding me what trouble you were, but then she went back to Corvus.”

Her words twisted in him, sharper than the knives. “So maybe you shouldn’t listen to her.” She glanced up, and he realized abruptly how much of the grievance was in his tone. “Maybe you should let the talyan get some rest, which you know they can’t do if you won’t call a halt.”

She swayed on her feet and glanced around her, as if she couldn’t quite remember where she was. As if she didn’t quite realize what it meant to be in charge of other people’s fate, balancing one against another.

When she finally looked back at him, her throat worked in a hard swallow. She put away the knives. Without a word, she followed the other talyan away from him.

He stood for one more moment, between the lake and his league. Except for Jilly in her wild red, their sleek dark clothes, so suitable for night hunting, made them outcasts on the sunny pier. The afternoon of rest he would give them was no vacation—more like purgatory, waiting for the burning to begin.

He turned his back on the water and headed for his men. And woman.

He ignored the one last flare of his demon at that thought.

 

At the warehouse, Liam followed Jilly to her room, feeling like the black shadow of doom hovering behind her.

“I’m not going to double back to continue the search,” she said, her voice dull.

“I know.” He pushed open the door and she edged past him.

It took her a full heartbeat before she realized he’d followed her in.

Her gaze snapped. He could almost see her shove her weariness away. Next she’d be shoving him away. “I said I wasn’t going to leave.”

“And I said I know.” He went to the window to pull the curtain against the sun. Still, enough light leached around the edges of the fabric that he didn’t have to summon his demon to see as he sat on the chair to pull off his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking my boots off.”

“Don’t fuck with me.” She huddled in her long borrowed coat, which took some of the threat out of her words.

“Truly, I’m too tired.” But now that she’d said it, some of his fatigue lifted. Which was unfortunate. Just so long as nothing else lifted, he’d be fine.

“Perrin is dead, Jonah mutilated, my sister missing.” She took an agitated step, prelude to pacing.

He caught her arm. “Sleep.”

She stiffened against his hold. “No demon mind tricks.”

“No such thing. And the demon’s got nothing to do with it.” Recklessness loosened his tongue. “Wouldn’t it be easier if it did? Then we could deny what’s between us with a righteous heart, knowing we were denying sin itself.”

“It is a demon,” she whispered.

He stood, barefoot, and stripped the shirt over his head. Then he faced her. “I don’t see the demon in your eyes.”

But he was playing with some kind of fire. He called himself a hundred kinds of fool as he took a step nearer and closed his fingers around cool red leather.

He slid the coat over her shoulder, down her arms. He trapped her there for a heartbeat, felt her sway toward him. He steeled himself for a head butt. Instead, her cinnamon-honey eyes were half closed, as if she were falling asleep in his arms.

He gave the borrowed coat another nudge, and it pooled in crimson at her feet. Underneath, she was in the same unrelieved black as his other people.

But she wasn’t like the others. And that’s what would get him in trouble. That’s what would destroy the world.

Still he could not release her.

Instead, he knelt, trailing his hands down her arms. His knuckles brushed the outer curves of her breasts, and she trembled. Down he went, pausing at her midline. He lifted the bottom of her T- shirt. The shrapnel gash in her side had knit to tender flesh, her
reven
swirled around to encompass the fading scar with the inky darkness of dormant demon.

With a flick of his thumb, he unfastened the button of her low-rider jeans and eased the denim over her thighs. Good little talya. Even her underwear was black.

He lifted her feet, one at a time, from the loosened laces of her boots. She braced her hands on his shoulders and looked down at him.

And he stopped cold.

He’d seen her charge salambes, leap across voids, tease the Veil that separated the realms, without fear. In her eyes now he saw the fear that he would hurt her, that he would not be what she needed.

And she was right to be afraid. Not of herself, or what she could do. Of him.

He didn’t speak, only rose to his full height and swept her into his arms. She didn’t resist. He carried her to the bed and laid her down. It was all his muscles doing the resisting as he tucked her against his side without desiring more. Or at least without reaching for more.

“Just sleep.” He didn’t recognize his own voice.

For a long minute, he listened to the grind of her teeth. But finally her fist, hard as a rock on his chest, loosened, and her breathing smoothed into sleep.

Gingerly, so as not to wake her, he smoothed her fingers over his heart. He stared into the dark as his pulse matched itself to hers.

Jilly awoke at a cool breeze running along the small of her back, like fingers.

That better not
be
anyone’s fingers.

She bolted upright, wrestling a moment in the covers that had been tucked around her. She wasn’t exactly cool, she realized; she’d just been warmer before. With that comforting weight at her back.

Liam eyed her warily from across the room, where he had pulled back the curtain just a bit. He reached for his shirt. She’d seen enough when he’d taken the shirt off, so she knew she should avert her gaze as he dressed. It wasn’t like he was some great work of manly art. The lean length of him was more whipcord than stud, and the wild tangle of his hair was definitely the work of demons rather than modern haute couture.

And yet she didn’t look away. Her fingers tightened on the sheet with the ancient-by-now memory of gripping his flanks as he eased into her. Only the faintest evening light trickled into the room, but traceries of old scars glimmered on his skin as her demon roused to the coming darkness. And the tripping pulse of her heart.

He did up the buttons of his shirt with quick fingers, as if it were some kind of armor. “I was hoping you’d sleep a little longer so I could change before I had to come back and make sure you didn’t run off.”

“You could tie me down.”

He paused, his stillness taking on a predatory air. Her breath caught.

Then she narrowed her eyes when she wondered if he might be taking her seriously. “Don’t even try it,” she warned. “Not when you won’t listen to any of my other suggestions.”

“Whatever keeps the rest of my crew safe.”

He didn’t make a sound, but she knew by the change of air pressure, by the whispered scent that was just his, that he had come over to the bedside. His voice was a low murmur that barely reached her ears. “I’d chain you to me if I had to.”

He might have come to lead the league by default, but he didn’t shirk his duty. His never-ending, undying—until he was summarily executed by some vicious hell beast—duty. And he didn’t have to say that she could get him killed too, just as Perrin had lost what was left of his life. The chill that had started in her spine when he’d left the bed enveloped her like the black lines of the
reven
that curled toward her heart.

“I won’t go anywhere.” She looked up at him so he could see the truth in her eyes.

The touch of violet lent his blue eyes a searchlight brightness as he studied her.

“I might find Dory without you,” she continued, never dropping his gaze. “But whatever else you think of me, I’m not stupid enough to believe I can take Corvus by myself.”

Still he did not speak.

So she added, “I don’t want to be bound to you any more than you want to be bound to me.”

She gave him a chance to say he
did
want it—wanted her. Instead, he stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but with her focus on him, she saw it. She knew it had been a cheap shot, but she didn’t really care. He couldn’t have his arrogant, dictatorial league-leader cake and eat her too.

She kicked back the covers, ignoring the flash of skin she was giving him. He’d already made clear he wasn’t going there, so what did it matter?

He averted his gaze—more than she’d done for him—as she grabbed her jeans. It was the same pair she’d worn looking for Dory, the same as she’d worn in the hunt for the salambe. The denim was soiled with birnenston, shards of glass, and blood.

She dropped it. “Go. I just want to shower. I’ll be here to hunt tonight, no worries.”

She turned away, stripping off her T-shirt, and heard him scramble. She huffed out a breath. She’d scared away men before, but not usually at this point. What an ego buster.

The bathroom wasn’t much nicer than a utility closet, her skin sallow in the humming fluorescents, but the water scalded away the filth and the worst sting of the past twelve hours.

Not that she expected the memory of Perrin’s broken body or Jonah’s spurting blood would ever go away. And ever was a very long time now.

She didn’t linger, and she barged back into her room wrapped in a towel, determined to shock her boss once and for all.

But Liam was gone. As were her dirty clothes. Fresh blacks were laid out on the crisply made bed.

“Sure knows how to wipe away all the evidence,” she muttered. “Like he was never even here.”

She dressed, wincing when she bumped the tender skin on her side. The demon was taking its sweet time patching her up. Although she supposed if she compared it with her recovery time after her stabbing, she should be grateful. No sense being all unappreciative just because she had to sell her soul. Her health insurance plan hadn’t been that great before either.

She pulled on the clean jeans. They were sized for her ass but a little too long in the leg, so she rolled the cuffs. Her new boots smelled of fresh leather, and her throat tightened briefly with ridiculous sadness. Her old boots had been perfectly broken in.

As she walked out into the hallway and closed the door to her room, she contemplated leaving the warehouse. But no, that was something best left to the clueless chick running toward danger, usually with her pants off. She’d keep her promise to Liam, since she’d already laced up her boots, so it was a little late to get half naked and full-on stupid. The moment for that had come and gone last night.

She passed the kitchen on her way out and saw a dozen talyan eating leftovers. A few looked up and nodded as she went by. She nodded back. She’d have to find some way to get the KP duties taken care of on a regular basis. The league didn’t offer a golden parachute—she blanked the image of Perrin going over the roof—so it could damn well provide a prep cook. She banished the memory of her sister at the counter too.

At this rate, she wouldn’t have many memories left.

The basement lab was dark except for one bright construction light clamped above the central table. Sera and Ecco hunched over an empty glass-walled container bracketed with metal electrodes. Off in the shadows, the fishbowl lay open, its angelic glow exhausted.

Jilly froze. “Did it get out?”

They glanced at her. Ecco lifted his hands, speckled with faint scarring like hers after she’d wrestled the salambe. “Had to take it apart, but we got a good shred.”

In the harsh light, Sera’s face was pale and drawn under her lopsided blond ponytail. Jilly wondered if she’d slept at all. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I dissected worms in high school biology. After that, it was mostly theory and philosophy.” She clenched her hands, as battle bruised as Ecco’s.

“So what’s your philosophical theory now?” Jilly edged closer to the table.

Sera reached around to rub her shoulder, knocking the ponytail farther askew. “We’ve already seen how the salambes seem to occupy a morphology somewhere between the incorporeal malice, which feed off of but never invade living flesh, and the ferales, which convert dead-animal matter into working husks for themselves.” She clicked off the desk lamp beside her and pushed a button on the side of the glass box.

Jilly blinked in the sudden dark, poised to rally her teshuva. But the electrodes on the box began to glow. A pulse crossed the glass. And the salambe within roiled into view.

“Dim the lights, send a few positive ions through—the same kind of energy that drives the Santa Ana winds that make people crazy and the opposite of the negative ions at the beach that seem to calm people down—and voilà,” Sera said. “Cool light show and absolutely no practical application.”

Jilly walked around to the other side. At closer range, she could see the solder gleamed with gold flecks. Some angelic force infused the box where Sera and Ecco had basically recreated the hothouse under more secure conditions.

The salambe’s coiling energy mesmerized her. She shook off the trance as the electrode pulse faded and the salambe dimmed again. Ecco turned the lamp back on. The salambe was all but invisible in the bright light.

“So the salambes occupy the same place in a haint as the soul used to,” Jilly mused.

Sera shrugged. “Nothing in league archives offers any clue. There are references to a vaster array of tenebrae than what we’ve seen, but previous Bookkeepers seemed to think everyone must already know what they were talking about.” She hissed out a breath. “Overconfident snobs. They thought they’d always be walking the same path, not necessarily winning the war against evil, but not challenged either. Now, when we most need that information, I don’t even know where to start looking.” She glared at Jilly through red-rimmed eyes. “Do you have any idea what sort of paper trail gets left in a handful of millennia? More like a paper mountain.”