The Darkest Night (8 page)

Inside, the home was almost ridiculously warm and smelled of cinnamon. Despite the fear and anger that had torqued through her since Fane’s return to the Mortal Coil, Bella felt her tension ease. She slipped out of her parka and left it on the bench by the front door.

“I can’t believe you two found these things,” Nanette said as they crossed into the spacious living area.

“Believe it,” Bella murmured. “Does Sera’s father go outside?”

“Not so often when the weather is bad. Why?”

The old preacher had noticed something amiss. “What does he do when he’s inside?”

“Well, he watches TV here with the others and takes meals in the dining room, of course. And he likes to watch the fish in the aquarium.”

Bella peered into the unlit gas fireplace. Nothing. “Fish, hmm? Show me.”

Nanette led her around the far side of the living area toward the dining room. “Here, where everyone can enjoy them.”

“Yeah, everyone.” Bella circled the large freshwater tank. “See anything new?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I’d—Oh. Oh no.”

The glass orb in the tank wasn’t as large as any of the others, but it had the same oily gleam, though the fish seemed unbothered. They cruised past the slowly roiling surface, their jewel tones distorted and weird.

Bella sighed.

“They were in here,” Nanette whispered. “The demons were in here.”

Bella pursed her lips. “The demons are everywhere.” She lifted the lid on the tank.

Nanette shifted uneasily. “Maybe we should leave it…”

“I think we were supposed to find it. Otherwise, why put it in such a public spot?” She wondered whether the bomber had been rushed, bored, out of souls, or what, that they’d only found a half dozen of the weapons. Certainly she should be able to ascertain a motive. After all, she was a monster too. She wriggled her fingers to expel the shakes. “Besides, if it goes off, the talyan are already here.”

The fish fled as she slid her hands through the cool water. She touched the orb’s surface carefully but found none of the wires of the versions outside. It did, however, feel as slimy as it looked, though nothing obvious slicked off on her fingers. She lifted the dripping ball from the tank, half tensed for a kaboom. But the oily luster continued its slow-motion boil across the surface, uninterrupted.

Nanette stared at the bomb, nibbling her bottom lip. “Maybe we should break it. Shouldn’t the souls be freed? It’s wrong to keep them imprisoned.”

“How very angelic of you,” Bella said. “But let’s stay down-to-earth for a little while longer, okay?”

She headed for the home’s activity room where Fane and the talyan had convened.

Nanette pulled the double doors shut behind them and faced the talyan. “Bella found one bomb inside. In the fish tank.”

Talya eyebrows shot up as Bella displayed the fist-sized orb, but the littlest talya—Alyce, who had come to the league as a rogue—nodded. “Thorne.”

Fane stiffened. “How can we be sure?”

Alyce shrugged and leaned against Sidney, her Bookkeeper mate, who wrapped his arm around her waist. “Thorne was a bomb maker in his solely human days life. And he likes fish.”

“Then why—?” Fane rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. So how do we spring this trap on him?”

Sid frowned. “I consider myself a fairly clever fellow, but I don’t think I follow.”

“Obviously Thorne intends this to be trouble for the league. He obviously chose this place because of your connection to it. So how can we reverse this, lure him in, use the souls against him, so I can…so we can end him, once and for all?”

Talya eyebrows rose even higher, and Bella too wondered at the words Fane left out.

“Warden,” Nanette said, with just a hint of shock in her voice. “We can’t put the residents at risk.”

“Ex-warden,” Fane snapped. But he seemed to sense the disapproval coming from the talyan as well. “There wouldn’t be much additional risk, considering this season is already spiritually difficult time for some people—”

“Fucker!” Bella punched him.

Or meant to. She wished she’d swung first, then yelled at him, because he ducked, catching her fist on the heavy padding of his coat.

He caught her second swing too and spun her into the steely cage of his arms. “What the hell?”

She bobbled the orb, making the talyan gasp. “Hell is exactly what you’d bring down on them, you cruel, egotistical,
evil
asshole. And you think I’m the—” She choked on her own fury and almost stupid slip.

Fane tightened his grip when she thrashed against his hold. “Calm down, Bella. You’ll break the orb. Or wake up the old people.”

“And you’d rather have them innocent and defenseless in their beds!”

“No one is innocent.” His low growl thrummed through her body, like a reminder exactly how innocent she wasn’t. “And they won’t be defenseless either, now that we’re here.”

He spun her away from him, and she staggered a few steps. Despite his brusque dismissal, he kept a grip on her wrist and didn’t let go.

Liam Niall—the big, steady leader of the league, who’d been the first of the talyan to see she was something more than a bartender, though he’d never pushed her to reveal more and she had never offered—watched them under hooded eyes, arms crossed over his wide blacksmith chest. “This is all very odd.”

She didn’t want him to think how odd, so she hurried to distract them. “It’s odder than you might have first seen.” Fane’s grasp tightened, driving tendon to bone, and she hissed. “Those aren’t soul shards in the orbs. I think the bombs are packed with tenebrae.”

The stifled uproar was bad enough that Nanette shushed them this time. “Unless you want to make breakfast for a dozen seniors. And I warn you, they all want their eggs cooked differently.”

Ecco flexed his biceps, making the razor-embedded gauntlets on his forearms bristle. “I only do scrambled.”

The exchange quieted the gathering, then Liam pinned Bella with a thoughtful stare. “So tell me your theory.” Despite his contemplative tone, his eyes churned with violet highlights, his teshuva on the prowl.

She swallowed back the chalky taste of her nervousness. She had dealt with talyan before. Usually by getting them drunk, but still. “The energy is wrong. You can feel it.”

“I can’t,” Fane said, grievance sharpening his tone.

She refused to look at him. “Nanette, repeat what you said when I pulled the orb out of the tank.”

The angel-woman frowned. “I don’t…I wondered if we should let the souls go.”

“Not yet,” Fane grumbled under his breath. “Not until we get Thorne.”

Bella shook him off and took a step closer to Nanette. “Why did you wonder that?”

“Because even if they are just shards, even if these are remnants from the solvo drug that tore people’s souls apart, it’s wrong to lock them away.” She wiped her eyes, but conviction rang in her voice. “They need to pass on, to find their way to a better place.”

With each heartfelt word, Bella advanced. And as she got closer to the angelic possessed, the ugly clouds on the orb swirled faster and darker, disturbed. The clouds circled away from the side nearest Nanette, as if the inhabitants tried to flee from her presence but couldn’t get far in the confines of the orb.

“Whatever’s inside doesn’t want her sympathy,” Liam noted.

Bella rolled a meaningful glare toward Fane. “Which is why you didn’t notice anything. They are responding to her compassion and gentleness, her love…”

He tilted his chin up in that arrogant way that seemed to put him out of her reach. “Demons don’t know love.”

“Yes, they do,” she countered. “And they know it has power over them, which is why they are trying to get
away
, not
to
her.”

Liam nodded slowly. “The orbs here are nothing like the soul bombs Corvus blew out of glass. Those were almost beautiful, but these… If this is Thorne’s work, he has taken the fight to a new level.”

Fane crossed his arms. “Soul or demon, it doesn’t matter. The end result in either case will be too many tenebrae in one place, with all the pandemonium that entails.”

Bella echoed his stance with her hands fisted on her hips. “And you think we should use the pandemonium against Thorne?”

“Corvus proved the tenebrae can be commanded.” Then he gave her an assessing look she didn’t much like.

The talyan, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents, were discussing among themselves.

“If only we had a mobile app version of the verge,” Sid mused in his oh-so-proper British accent. “If the bombs go off, the verge could swallow the tenebrae en masse as they broke out of the orbs.”

Bella couldn’t restrain a shudder. She’d heard the talyan talk about the verge, a portal into the tenebraeternum that had formed when Corvus Valerius sought to instigate direct war between heaven and hell. Although Corvus had intended to call forth the tenebrae, the talyan had claimed the portal occupying a dank basement at Navy Pier and managed to stuff more than one demon back down hell’s throat. She’d never seen it herself and never wanted to. The thought of being banished back to the tenebraeternum… It was everything she dreaded.

Ecco scratched his gauntlets across the back of his head with the sound of sandpaper. “Mini pocket hells. Like purse dogs, except instead of bacon bits, they eat demons. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before.”

“No need to be sarcastic,” Sid chastised. “See, it’s making the demons dance.”

Bella stared down at the orb. It did indeed look ‘happier,’ if the steaks of pus yellow and mucous green churning over its surface were any indication. But was it the talya’s sarcasm or her own sickly churning stomach reflected in the glass?

She tossed the orb to Fane. “It’s all yours, angel-man.”

He swore and caught it gingerly, cushioning its fall with cupped hands. She couldn’t help but notice he was more tender with the bomb than he’d been with her.

She refused to wonder if she was being unfair. Instead, she headed for the closed double doors and let herself out.

“Wait.” Nanette hurried after her. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t help here.” She went to the front bench and collected her coat. “The bombs, the verge, it’s out of my league.” Out of her league, maybe, but very much of her legion, the legions of darkness. She stared out through the leaded glass windows of the front door. The rectangles of framed night looked even blacker to her imp eyes.

God, why did the nights have to be so long?

“The buses won’t be running,” Nanette said. “Let me call you a cab this time.”

Bella nodded numbly.

“No.” Fane’s sharp denial was like a crack against the thin wall of her restraint. One more nudge and her own demon would come pouring out… “I’ll take her home.”

Yeah, there was the nudge.

She whirled to face him. “I don’t want you.” Her tone rang with the truth. And with the lie. Damn the demon’s double tongue.

Nanette clasped her hands in front of her. “Mr. Fane, it’s been a troubling night. I think maybe you should—”

“Ward.” His eyes glimmered with the gold sparks of his roused angel. “Your kind heart is not needed here.”

“Ex-warden,” she replied, much more mildly but with equal gold admonition. “A kind heart is always needed.”

Bella tensed. Was she going to have to jump into the middle of an angel war right here? Could this night get any worse?

After a long moment, Fane smiled tightly. It wasn’t a beatific smile of the sort favored by saints. It was more the sort an avenging angel gave as he listened to the blood of his enemies snap-crackle-pop on his flaming sword. “I think we have both been around the talyan too long. We have forgotten what we are.”

But Nanette did not soften. “I have not forgotten.” She touched Bella’s arm. “Shall I call that cab?”

Though she desperately wanted to take the angel-woman’s offer, Bella felt the weight of Fane’s glower like that missing sword dangling above her head. And she didn’t particularly want to leave him with the talyan. Who knew what he might tell them? “It’s okay. I need a ride and he has a decent car.”

Nanette nodded dubiously and went to the front desk to buzz them out.

Bella waved as they left but had to jerk her hand back before Fane slammed it in the closing door. She whirled on him. “What did you do with the orb?”

“I left it with the Bookkeeper. He’s trying to decide whether there’s a message from Thorne tucked inside along with the demons.”

“A message other than ‘fuck you’?”

“That part seemed pretty clear.” He crunched over the salt on the sidewalk as he headed for the Porsche. Bella trailed behind, staring down at her boots.

In the old days, salt was used as a defense against evil powers. The ability of salt to draw, purify and preserve on the corporeal plane had been extended to the metaphysical realm. Clothed in flesh, she felt nothing, but as an imp, she had avoided its sting. Did she dare rely on the protective power of potato chips?

She kicked a pebble of salt and watched it bounce across the pavement to hit Fane’s boot. He had stopped at the Porsche and was waiting for her, blocking the passenger door.

She wrapped her arms around herself, her coat suddenly seeming far too thin against the iciness of his glare. “Are we going?”

“Why did you use Nanette to show the wickedness in the orb?”

“Because the talyan and I couldn’t trigger that response.” She met his cold eyes with her own searing glare. “And neither could you.”

He pitched his voice low and intent. “The divine presence is still inside me.”

Who was he trying to convince? If she hadn’t been so miserable herself, she might have enjoyed mocking him. “Probably. But it’s buried so deep, I couldn’t get to it. Even when I tried.”

“I want to end evil just as much as Nanette. Her husband was killed by djinn-men, but I—” He slammed his palm on the car roof.

When he didn’t go on, Bella lifted her chin. “We all face demons. Some of us get to face them with angels inside. Some of us don’t. But the orb didn’t react to her desire to destroy it. It flinched from her love.”

His hand on the Porsche fisted, and his fingernails squealed against the paint. “I have that too.”