Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls Read online

  “We’re not talking about the lesser demons,” Nanette pointed out. “Corvus, by himself, opened a doorway into hell. Imagine all of them against us. That hasn’t happened since the First Battle.”

  Out on the freeway, an ambulance wailed, on its way to or from a siren-worthy accident. Though its haste implied there was still hope for someone, somewhere, by the time the sound reached them, the timbre had shifted, like waves through distorted glass, with overtones of malignancy.

  Alyce whispered, “What was the First Battle?”

  “When the traitors were tossed out of the divine realm,” Fane said. “When hell was born.”

  “Oh. That’s bad.”

  Talyan and angel-touched looked at her disbelievingly. She ducked a little farther behind Sid.

  He gave a decisive nod. “It is bad. By definition, the djinn don’t gather for good.”

  “It’s been to our advantage that evil hasn’t played nice with others,” Fane said. “Even other evils. If that’s changing …”

  “That’s bad,” Nanette and Alyce chorused.

  “As bad as the stench in here,” Fane agreed. “How convenient I have body bags in my van.”

  “Certain advantages to owning a disaster restoration business,” Archer muttered.

  As they headed down the hall toward the back exit, Sera peered into the darkened rooms. “What could they have wanted?” She cast an apologetic glance at Nanette. “There’s just not much here except you. And an intermittent healing touch isn’t much use to a demon-possessed immortal.”

  Archer snorted. “Maybe they wanted a flaming sword of their very own.”

  At the back door, Fane held up one hand, stopping them all in their tracks. “Speaking of swords. Just in case …”

  Sid tightened his fists as Archer, Sera, and Fane all drew steel. Why hadn’t he grabbed the djinn-man’s sickle? Other than because he’d be worse than useless with it, of course.

  Nanette fished in the front pocket of her jumper. “Daniel makes me lock up when I’m here alone. Here’s the key—”

  Archer booted the door hard enough to bash anyone on the other side, and the three armed warriors fanned out. Alyce crept after them, and Sid paced right beside her.

  The parking lot spread in front of them, cold and gray in the building’s shadow. A white van stenciled LAST CALL CLEANING was pulled up near the door. Just beyond was a green sedan in the only other occupied space.

  The driver side door was open, and a man’s knees stuck from the car, his dress shoes flat on the ground, as if he’d started to get out and then sat back again. A dozen sunflowers lay scattered across the pavement, bright yellow petals half-submerged in a spreading pool of blood.

  Nanette screamed and bolted through the door. Alyce grabbed the denim straps of her jumper. The devil inside her did not rouse, silent in the face of the inevitable, and she grappled with the other woman’s distraught strength.

  Nanette twisted against Alyce’s hold. “Daniel! No!”

  “Sidney, help me,” Alyce gasped.

  Together, they held Nanette back while the other two talyan and Fane ran for the car. All three halted short of the vehicle, faces set in identical stark lines, and Alyce’s heart withered.

  Her fingers slipped loose. Sidney held on for another moment until he met her gaze. She gave him a small shake of her head.

  Nanette wrenched away from them and dashed to the car. Fane caught her before she slipped in the blood. Her cry wavered and cracked as she reached out to the figure slumped down across the seat.

  Alyce turned her face away, concentrating on Archer’s slow prowl around the parking lot. His fixed glare promised annihilation. Would she ever have that kind of power? She waited until he ended his loop beside Sidney. “No chance?”

  The big talya shook his head. “Across the throat, deep. No sound, no struggle, no chance.”

  Sidney jerked his chin at the van. “They slashed the tires too, maurauding through, and he was just one more thing in the way.”

  “We killed them too easily,” Archer snarled.

  “It was not that easy,” Alyce reminded him. “And there will be more.”

  Sidney pulled off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If only we’d heard something.”

  “We were too busy sparring with Fane.” The axe handle creaked under Archer’s violet-knuckled grip.

  Even without a devil’s hearing, the warden, pacing toward them, must have heard the bitter accusation, but Fane didn’t protest.

  “We have to call the police,” he said. “Daniel’s death can’t go unreported, but we have all the evidence we need of a robbery gone wrong.”

  “Except they didn’t take anything,” Sidney murmured. “Just a life.”

  Fane glanced back at Nanette, tucked under Sera’s arm. “I forbid her from seeing you, but she said the league could be our salvation.” His lips curled in a sneer. “She couldn’t have been more wrong. Get out, and take the bones with you.”

  “Don’t leave her alone,” Alyce said softly. “There is more than one kind of verge.”

  Fane gave her a vicious look that set her back a step. “If only you demons had stayed on your side of it.”

  Sidney tensed, but Alyce clenched the back of his shirt. “No more fighting.”

  Sera paused beside them, her hazel eyes bleak.

  Nanette listed against her, as pale as if her blood had drained with her husband’s. “I’ve healed dozens in this place, but I didn’t even know he was out here, dying.” Her voice wavered. “You would have known, you talyan. Your souls are bound.” She raised her red-rimmed gaze to Alyce. “I didn’t even have a chance to help you.”

  Fane pulled her away from Sera. “Save your healing for yourself, ward.”

  Nanette shook her head. “That’s not how it works.” She looked down at her hands, half spread and empty in front of her, as if she didn’t know what to do with them. No golden light spiraled between her fingers now.

  Sidney retrieved a thick black plastic bag from Fane’s van, and the four talyan ghosted past the church office where the warden was saying into the phone, “Yes, I’m sure he’s dead. Now send a fucking patrol car.”

  Alyce tried to focus on their gruesome task, but Nanette’s quiet sobs filtered through the unlit church like incense smoke.

  Archer, the dead djinn-men’s weapons propped over his shoulder, herded them up the instant the last bone was bagged. “Out. Now. I hear a siren.”

  Sera drove. She pulled over to avoid a black and white car flashing its malice-red lights, hastening back the way they had come. Alyce looked down at the plastic bag and the shining blades jumbled behind Sidney’s legs. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and snugged the hem of her frock around her cold toes.

  She traced the hard, squared edges of the buckle that held her strapped to the seat. Under her finger, the invisible internal mechanisms latched together, holding fast. Fane had looked at her as if she were the opposite: ragged edged, dangerous, and ready to fly apart.

  And they were right.

  Had been right. But now she had seen the place where evil came. She had stood with the other talyan against that evil.

  This was why she was still here—to see that nothing set foot over the verge ever again. Or if it did, that it didn’t get far enough to hurt anyone. All the frantic screaming through the years would finally make sense.

  She half listened while Archer made a phone call, wrapping up the conversation with, “No question, this is bad.”

  After, Sidney quizzed Sera about the verge. She explained how a terrible lone djinn-man had used the power of imprisoned souls to rip his own hell-bound spirit from the Veil, tearing a pathway to the tenebraeternum realm of demons.

  “Possession has always been a trade-off for demons,” Sidney mused. “A demon matched to a vulnerable human soul is free of the tenebraeternum, but some of its powers are muted by human flesh.”

  Sera tilted her head thoughtfully. “The verge pinpoi
nts a pure demonic source. If the djinn-men start working together against us, they could have the power to reenact the First Battle.”

  “And make it the Last Battle.” Archer’s voice dropped to a dire octave.

  Alyce shivered at the faint echo of his teshuva. “That would be very bad.”

  “I would say unimaginably catastrophic,” Sidney said, “but very bad will do.”

  She bumped her knees together restlessly. The whys and hows and how-bads did not matter. She knew what had to happen next. “Take me to your league.”

  Sidney crossed one arm over his chest and propped his chin on his other fist. “After what just happened, Liam is going to have a lot to deal with. Maybe now isn’t the best time for the league to meet you.”

  “Westerbrook,” Sera said with asperity, “the talyan are immortal, but they know better than most that death is always waiting. They’re not going to want to wait to meet her.”

  “Maybe Ecco would disagree,” Alyce said.

  Sera pursed her lips. “Hard to tell with him sometimes.”

  “I will say I’m sorry,” Alyce promised. “I do not want to be alone anymore.” She put her hand over her throat, trying to keep her voice steady. “I don’t want to be djinni.”

  “Oh, hon.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, Sera reached back over the seat.

  To take Sera’s hand, Alyce loosed her death grip on the release button at her side. What a pleasure it was to touch and not draw ichor in black gouts. She smiled at the other woman.

  Sidney slouched, and the contents of the bag at his feet clacked with his restive movement. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not up to you,” Archer said. “Just take notes.”

  From the hard clench of Sidney’s jaw, Alyce feared he’d launch himself over the seat to get at the talya male. Sera clicked her tongue and faced forward.

  When they reached the warehouse neighborhood, the afternoon light was failing, and shadows spread from the alleys as if they’d just been biding their time. Alyce peered up at the five-story warehouse where she’d found Sidney. It sat curb to curb, alone on its block. Its black panes of unlit glass reflected the end of the day without revealing its own secrets.

  “At-One headquarters,” Sera said. “Stronghold of the Chicago league. Alyce, you’ll be our fourth female. At this rate, we’ll have a volleyball team by next summer.” She shuttled her gaze to Sidney. “You can be Bookkeeper and scorekeeper.”

  She drove around to the back of the building, pausing to let Archer hop out to open the gate. As they pulled through, the steel wire rattled closed behind them with the same ominous finality as the bones.

  Sidney got out and held the car door open for her. “Alyce, if you’re not ready …”

  “I’m finally ready.” The heavy metal trash box where she’d tossed Ecco sat askew. As she shoved it back into place, it screeched across the concrete and loose gravel.

  No one commented about the blood on the steps.

  As if they crossed some invisible boundary, she felt the prickle of the devil forces down her spine. Welcoming. Terrifying. And she was one of them.

  Archer leaned down to put his hand on the rolling door. “Ready?”

  She shifted from foot to foot, wishing they’d stop asking, and glanced back at Sidney who pushed his spectacles higher. A closed book would tell her more with its cover. Didn’t he want her here?

  Too late. Archer yanked up, and the metal slats rolled back with a hollow roar. A scent, bright and sharp as lightning, spilled out over them.

  Inside, the talyan waited.

  Sidney stepped forward, his body half in front of hers. “Alyce, this is Liam Niall. He leads the Chicago talyan.”

  Liam Niall was dark-haired like Archer. When he inclined his head, the shaggy locks revealed the black devil mark at his temple.

  Sidney continued. “And Jilly, his mate.”

  Alyce looked away from the Asian woman, only a little taller than herself. “His mate?”

  A third taller woman swept back the wild tangle of her sandy hair. “Bookkeeper’s got it wrong; he’s her mate.” She put her hand on her outthrust hip.

  The one-armed man Alyce recognized from her first encounter with Sidney hooked the woman’s elbow. “They are each other’s.”

  “Nim and Jonah,” Sidney said. Together, the two were magnificent, all tawny beauty and dangerous eyes. “Alyce, Nim was possessed just this August.”

  “Thank God I’m not the new girl anymore,” Nim said.

  “God did not do this to me,” Alyce said.

  Nim nudged her mate in the ribs. “I think she’s one of yours, lover.”

  Jonah’s smile matched the simple curve of his hook. “Alyce, if ever there was a place for God’s grace, it is here.”

  She shook her head. “My place is slaying devils.”

  Nim smiled with all shiny teeth. “Yeah, she’s one of us.”

  Sidney jostled Alyce’s hand, recapturing her attention. “Archer and Sera, Liam and Jilly, and Jonah and Nim are symballein. That means the unique signatures of their perpetual idiopathic forces—their souls—are so closely aligned that they are essentially two halves of a whole.”

  “Which means he can keep up when I dance,” Nim said.

  “Means he’s strong enough to stand up to me,” Jilly said, straightening her spine until her spiky hair barely reached Liam’s shoulder. He grinned down at her.

  “He loves me,” Sera murmured. The ring on Archer’s finger winked as he wrapped his arm around her.

  Alyce tried to breathe around the knot in her throat. They had found each other despite the shadows that lurked in their eyes and despite the devils that lurked under their skin.

  Sidney turned her to face the rest of the room.

  It was a roomful of talya males, all of them adorned in black, with big hands and piercing eyes. All without smiles. All without mates.

  “This is Haji, the league’s tracker, and Baird. Over there is Lev, and beside him Luka. Then Pitch, Amiri, and Gavril. Gavril has bare-handed techniques you might appreciate, Alyce. Against the far wall …”

  The names blurred in her head into a fog of glimmering eyes shot through with violet sparks. Around them, the air twisted with the edgy power of their teshuva.

  “I came here to kill devils,” she blurted. “Nothing else.”

  “Don’t worry about the killing.” Ecco limped to the front of the line. “That’s a given.”

  Sidney took another step forward until his broad shoulders were silhouetted against Ecco’s dark bulk. “Ecco, Alyce was worried she had hurt you.”

  “She did.” Ecco glared behind him when somebody snickered.

  Alyce took a breath and edged up beside Sidney. “I am relieved it was not lasting harm.”

  The hulking talya’s gaze lightened with the gleam of the devil as he turned back to her. “It might still be.”

  This conversation was fraught with undercurrents that plucked at the hairs of her nape. Her throat burned at the line of her collar where the black wheal of the devil warned her of danger.

  As if she needed any warning.

  Sidney sighed. “And here I thought unrepentant demons were bad.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Sid sat in the folding chair beside Liam’s desk, the thick legal pad in his lap bent nearly double under his fist. It was just as well Bookkeepers were taught to avoid exposing off-the-shelf electronics to amped-up talyan; otherwise he’d have cracked in half a thousand pounds’ worth of fancy tablet PC.

  “Pick a crisis, any crisis.” Liam hunched over his desk, his thumb and first two fingers in a stiff tripod over the reven at his temple. “If the city’s djinn-men are amassing somewhere, presumably they’ll have to come up with a secret handshake before they call to order and come to massacre us in revenge. So I’ll deal with Alyce first, since she’s closest to burning a hole through my league.”

  The cardboard under Sid’s fist collapsed. “She’s not—”

  “She need
s to be bonded, now, if not sooner,” Liam said over his objection. “Did you smell the ozone in that room? Or maybe that was brimstone, and they’ve forgotten they’re supposed to fight for good.”

  Pacing behind him, Jilly scoffed. “That was testosterone.”

  “Worse than brimstone.” Archer tossed a glance at Sid from his careless lean in the far corner. “This is a dangerous experiment you’ve begun. We balance on the edge between good and evil, and little Alyce is not a steadying influence.”

  Sid stared back at him without flinching. “All eight stone of her will drag us to our doom, undoubtedly.”

  “She got you out of your tweeds. That must be halfway to doom for a Bookkeeper.” Archer’s gaze weighed heavier than Alyce soaking wet. “Speaking of which, you might want to check that wound. You’re leaking.”

  Reflexively, Sid touched his shoulder. The gauze pad was still in place, but it squished wetly under his fingers, and a fresh bloom of crimson brightened the oxidized stains on the front of his shirt.

  A reminder that tweed was better; it was more absorbent, and the patterns hid all sorts of transgressions.

  Sera perched on the edge of the guest chair across from Liam. She’d tried to call Fane, with no answer, and she’d twisted her tension into the cherry red coat over her lap. “Alyce might not make our lives easier, but possession isn’t a choice. Not a conscious one, anyway. We can’t blame Westerbrook for her sudden appearance.”

  Sid gave her a flat look. Was that supposed to be a vote of confidence? As if he might have summoned a teshuva if he’d gotten around to it?

  Yet Bookie had done exactly that, and Sera’s possession was the result. Sid tossed the crumpled legal pad onto Liam’s desk. He wasn’t a fucking stenographer.

  He was supposed to be, of course. But never had the Bookkeepers’ untouchable tenets of detached observation grated so close to the bone. The creed had nearly destroyed him—twice. This time he wasn’t the one at risk; yet his heart beat harder with the urgency of his fear. “Alyce isn’t a project or a problem or a possessed paramour.”