Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls Page 11

  Did he want to be free? He forced the thought away.

  “We’re all trapped,” Jilly murmured. “Always have been. Which is worse? When we try to lock someone else in with us? Or lock everyone out?”

  Within the thickening blackness, glitter appeared like a hint of hoar frost, a chill gleam matching Jilly’s bracelet. Over the sulfurous stench of malice, a desiccating cold burned in Liam’s lungs as the tenebraeternum leaked into the world. A few whirling malice snagged on the points of eerie light. The ether that swirled behind them in translucent oily ribbons looped and coiled. And knotted together.

  More malice blundered into the knots, and the tangle expanded, capturing more of the seething tenebrae in a laced matrix of shadow and demon light, as finely woven as the fluorspar and waste metal of the bracelet. The smoky tornado turned to sludge and began to crystallize. One by one, the crimson stars of malice eyes winked out, leaving only needle pricks of oblivion behind.

  Leaving Liam and Jilly enclosed in a cone of shining black ice.

  In the stillness, the sound of their matched breath was preternaturally loud. She tugged her hand out of his grasp.

  “Jilly,” he said. “Wait.”

  She didn’t. She slammed her fist through the malice. He grabbed her and yanked her under the shelter of his coat as the shimmering blackness crumbled and the latticework of interlocked malice flaked like charred dust on the Chicago wind.

  She peeked out. “Good thing that didn’t bring them back to life.”

  He coughed and jumped down off the car roof. The malice storm had scoured the paint and etched the bare steel like scrimshaw on whalebone.

  He scowled, thinking of the car’s owner scratching his head in the morning.

  Jilly jumped down beside him. Her boots thudded like his heart. “What?”

  “I hate when the tenebraeternum leaves its mark on this world.”

  Her gaze flicked up to the reven at his temple, which he knew must be blazing with the teshuva’s amped energies. “You can only do so much.”

  “If by ‘so much,’ you mean fail again, you’re right.”

  “We survived.”

  “That is not enough.”

  “But it’s a start.”

  “After a century or two, you’re ready to finish it.”

  “And with that attitude, you wanted to be leader?” She shook her head. “I guess leader is not the same as cheerleader.”

  “I never wanted this.” He bit back the rest of the words that threatened to pour out of his exhaustion like so many unfrozen malice.

  She rubbed her wrist where the bracelet had dulled to matte gray again. He didn’t think it was a good sign that the demon’s gift came to life only when hell was rising . . . and when they touched. “Then why stay? Why do it?”

  The cold concepts of duty and mission he had jettisoned so readily while in her arms spiraled up around him again, locking him in place. “It is all I have left.”

  That was too honest. The chill was settled so deep in his bones, it didn’t even stop him from moving now. He crouched beside the wheel of the car where a drift of the black dust had collected. The license plate was polished to a featureless rectangle, and hairline fissures crazed the tires, as if the dust had parched and aged the rubber. After scraping a handful of the inert malice residue into his pocket, he rose. “If only the league had a veteran Bookkeeper, this might be interesting. Maybe even useful.”

  Her fingers flexed into fists, then opened again, as if she wanted to drag something more from him. “You can always do this again some other night. Since that’s all you have left.”

  He studied her. “I didn’t do that. Not alone.”

  She stared back. “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you feel it?” Disbelief surged through him when her gaze went as blank as the crystallized malice eyeballs. How could she deny that jolt of power? “Something bound us in that moment when we followed the fluorspar weave and trapped the malice together.”

  She took a step back, her fingers digging under the edge of the bracelet. “Hey, I’m already stuck with the demon. I’m not bound to anything else.” Anyone else. The unvoiced words echoed like a malice cry.

  Still the tough rebel, despite what they’d been through. Or maybe because of what they’d been through?

  Not that the reason mattered. He’d walked a fine line with his bitter, wounded crew long enough to know that prying into their emotions and histories only overturned rocks and released lots of creepy-crawlies—and they had enough of those in their immortal lives.

  They’d all been possessed for a reason. Their wounds resonated with the tenebraeternum, which brought the teshuva and the lesser demons down upon their heads. Or souls. After what happened tonight in the spillover of her anger and his lust, he should know better than to poke at her wounds and rouse those demons of the literal and metaphorical sort. And yet, he wanted to know her.

  She, clearly, didn’t return the interest. And maybe she was wiser than he, because thanks to Archer and Sera, he’d already seen what a mated-talyan pair could do—would do—if anything came between them. It seemed the only force more threatening to the world than evil was love.

  Merely thinking the word rippled the hackles up his neck.

  Damn it, he didn’t have time for any of this, not the strange and perilous trick they’d pulled with the even more strangely behaving malice, not the unnerving reactivation of the soulless haints, definitely not the needful wish to touch her that made his fingers curl into fists.

  This was exactly why he’d told Archer he couldn’t get involved.

  “Come on. We’ve had enough trouble for one night.” He walked around to the car’s driver side, tweaked his demon, and punched out the window.

  Jilly slipped in beside him when he opened the passenger door. She lifted one eyebrow. “Grand theft auto doesn’t count as more trouble for the night?”

  “Less trouble than the owner calling his insurance company, or maybe filing a police report. Or worse yet, thinking some supernatural phenomenon like city crop circles scraped all the paint off his junker and posting a conspiracy theory on YouTube.” He ripped open the steering column and hot-wired the ignition, grimacing at the spark that burned across his busted knuckles.

  She watched as the car sputtered to life. “You know, if it’s always such an issue, you should probably carry a screwdriver. When’s your birthday?”

  He held back a sudden grin. “Your young charges teach you as much as you teach them?”

  “Nah. I learned that from uncle number four.” She knotted her hands in her lap. “Anyway, kids these days just carjack. Nobody wants to put any effort into anything anymore.”

  When he’d read Jilly’s file, he’d noted that her mother had raised three children by herself. Apparently none of the uncles—how many had there been?—had stuck around long enough to make a blip on the dossier. He knew well enough that the seismic forces that shaped a personality often occurred too far below the surface to be remarkable. At least, not until the whole facade came shuddering apart.

  He wrapped his bloody fist around the wheel, the better to strangle memories of his own. “The league will reimburse the owner. You’d be surprised how many people take an envelope of cash with no questions asked.”

  “Not surprised at all, probably. I think the director at the halfway house was into something like that. I might be a pain in the ass, but he was just too glad to get rid of me. But what do a bunch of barely-off-the-street kids have worth taking?” She slumped in her seat. “God, is the whole city rotten?”

  “Don’t ask God.” Liam pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial. The phone crackled in his ear. “Archer, can’t talk long. Ran into a few malice, and their stain is playing havoc with reception. I need you to dump a car. No scrubbing. Just muddy the waters. I’ll meet you at Millennium Park.”

  Jilly focused on him as he disconnected. “You guys do this a lot?”

  “More often. It’s harder for u
s to hide these days.”

  “Maybe it’s time to come out of the shadows.”

  “We are the shadows.” He shook his head. “Our first and best disguise has always been that no one wants to know how close evil stalks.”

  “That could be why evil gets so close: because no one knows to look for it.”

  He cast her a wry look. “Considering your job, you already had a sense of how bad bad could be, and yet you still barely believe in the forces that have become part of you. How much harder for the rest of them?”

  She was silent a moment, looking down at her hands where etheric stains darkened her nails around the blue polish. She twisted the bracelet on her wrist. “I do believe.”

  Not in him. Not enough to reach out to him, to the connection building between them. A primitive urge to force her to acknowledge that link ramped up his pulse. But even though she’d accused him of doing anything for the league, he was not a monster. Or not the sort of monster who forced a woman to want him. He wrestled the ancient alpha-male part of his brain much as one would any reptile. He jumped on it before it could grab him in its sharp teeth, threw it in a gunnysack, tied a rope around it, and got the hell out.

  In the middle of the freezing night, Millennium Park was empty. He parked the car in a temporary zone across from the Art Institute, and he and Jilly got out.

  “Archer will meet us at Cloud Gate.”

  She waited for him to come around to the sidewalk. “You mean the Bean.”

  He glowered. “I mean the stainless steel sculpture in the middle of the park, the essence of which is more perfectly evoked by its given name than that ridiculous nickname.”

  “But that’s what everyone calls it.”

  As they made their way down the treelined promenade, he scoffed. “Since when do you do what everyone else does?”

  This time, she glowered. “You’re just showing off how superior you think you are by calling it Cloud Gate.”

  “If sticking with reality is superior, then so be it.”

  “Reality bites.” She bared her teeth.

  He smiled back. “That it does.”

  They climbed the shallow flight of steps to the sculpture. The bowed silver towered over their heads, reflecting the darkness and the city lights with equal distortion.

  Jilly reached out to touch it, just as many were drawn to do, judging by the fingerprint smudges across the surface. The bracelet—matte where the sculpture was shiny, intricately woven instead of smooth—winked with a fierce opalescent fire in its reflection.

  “Lovely.” She pulled her hand away before she made contact. “Will the malice come hunting us again?”

  “Not here. Something about art tends to hold them at bay.”

  She tilted her head. “Odd.”

  “Not if you think about how many artists talk about their work as free therapy to exorcise their demons.”

  “A way out of possession.”

  He shook his head. “Only the art seems immune. The artists are just as vulnerable. Maybe more so.”

  “Oh well. I can’t even finger-paint.”

  “I used to work with metal.” The revelation popped out of him like a spark from an overheated forge. He winced at the curiosity that brightened her face. “That was a long time ago. Anyway, Archer will be here soon—”

  “You were a sculptor too? No wonder you like Cloud Gate better than ‘the Bean.’ ”

  He shook his head. “Not really a sculptor. I just didn’t want you to think some artistic bent could have saved you. Plenty of artists fall prey to evil. It’s only their work that may be spared.”

  “So not a sculptor,” she prodded. “An armorer? You have enough in your basement.”

  “Nothing so violent. Or so useful. I was just a blacksmith back home.”

  “Home, as in Ireland.” She stilled. “How long ago was it exactly?”

  “I left in the winter of 1850. I’ve not been back.”

  She let out a slow breath. “That’s a long time. When you said ‘immortal,’ I didn’t really appreciate what that meant.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “Ah, to be so young and carefree again.”

  Her lips quirked up in answer, and she waggled a finger at him.

  Despite the invitation to share, he hesitated. Had anyone ever asked him about those days? If so, it had been long enough ago that he didn’t remember. That seemed ominous. “I was the smithy in my village. I repaired tools, shoed horses, made pots, nothing fancy.”

  Her gaze flitted across his face so that he wondered what was showing there. “I suppose the hammer makes a certain amount of sense, then.”

  “I was familiar with it.” His fist tightened.

  She studied him. “I would’ve pictured a blacksmith as heftier than you. Except for the shoulders, you’re more Scarecrow than Tin Man.” Then she paused, and he saw her calculating in her head. “The potato famine. That happened around your time.”

  As if she had summoned up one of those interminable public-television documentaries, the memories of his past threatened to bore him to tears. Or anyway, his eyes burned for some reason. “Like many others, that’s why I left.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as if she knew he wasn’t telling all, just as Cloud Gate reflected only the highlights and skyline, none of the alleys or gutters. No one wanted to see that ugliness anyway.

  She bit at her lip. “You didn’t—you aren’t still starving? Are you?”

  “The demon freezes us like a fly in amber, but I wasn’t possessed until later.” More questions welled up in her eyes, but he didn’t want to get stuck again as if a bug in fresh tree sap. “Archer will be here soon. You need to practice getting your emotions under control.”

  She scowled at him. A price he was willing to pay if it stopped her questions.

  But he shook his head. “See? Right away, you’re annoyed. I’m just trying to lead you.”

  “You’re telling me what to do.”

  He wondered how he had ever seen her as a pixie, when she was obviously more grumbling gremlin. “You’re not a child, Jilly, who needs to be tricked into doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have to coerce you to do what’s needed to survive.”

  “As if you could.”

  Last straw. Her challenge, along with the old memories, and the knowledge that, for the moment at least, they were safe from outside attack, cracked his self-restraint.

  He stepped into her, forcing her back against the stainless steel. “Oh, I could. In fact, I believe I already did. Once.” He drew a breath tinged with the scent of cherry gloss on her lips, and the crack in his discipline splintered.

  She tilted her head back to meet his glare. “You were hopped up on Lau-lau’s long-joy juice.”

  “Hmm. Is that why I was on top?” In the sculpture’s reflection, the harsh violet glow in his eyes gleamed back at him, mocking. He let the demon out another notch, revving up his senses so that his skin prickled with the auroral forces of her body near his.

  Something about her—something beyond the obvious immature rebelliousness of her unruly hair and piercing—was like a million testing fingerprints trashing his well-polished control. Unlike any maddening talya he’d known, she unerringly targeted his secret flaw: that he’d never really wanted to be in command. Indulging his temper was as stupid as swinging his hammer blind. It felt wild, wrong. And so good.

  Especially when she put the point of her finger in the center of his chest and took a step closer. He closed his eyes at the radiating pleasure. Why did the fate of the world matter again?

  “Don’t try to dominate me,” she hissed. “It annoys me and then I can’t back down.”

  Her voice lacked the double-octave lows of a rising demon. Which meant he pissed her off on a purely human level. Yay, him.

  “I am not trying,” he said. And he didn’t want her to back down.

  “Oh? That alpha-male bullshit doesn’t require any rational effort? Of course it doesn’t. Thinking is not the alpha-male forte.”
<
br />   He opened his eyes. “Unfair. I actually think quite a lot.” About her lips softening under his. Her head tipping back to bare her throat. Her hands clutching his shoulders . . .

  Her eyes narrowed. “Right. I can guess what you’re thinking.”

  “Demonic possession confers no mind-reading ability,” he said officiously.

  “Yeah, well, I think I have a certain power of mind over matter.” She zipped her finger down his chest and hooked the front of his jeans.

  Predictably, his cock surged to undeniable attention.

  She gave him a crooked grin that he answered.

  “Stalemate,” he murmured.

  “None of that mate crap.” Her fist closed on his fly. Not a prelude to the erotic, if exhibitionist, unveiling he might fantasize. No, she just wanted the upper hand, as usual.

  His smile faded. “Who burned you, xiao-Jilly, that this energy between us scares you more than a tower of tenebrae?”

  “I’m not scared.” The denial burst out of her so hotly, even she winced. “I just don’t like to be pushed around. And Mom’s boyfriends really liked to push.”

  “Really.” He didn’t move, but his pulse changed as his demon uncoiled.

  She must have felt it. She scowled at him and gave a sharp tug on his jeans. “Don’t go all vigilante. I took care of it myself. Anyway, it wasn’t any of them.” She looked down and seemed to realize how intimately she had taken hold of him.

  Her hand sprang open, but before she could step back, he laced his fingers through hers. Not in a confining gesture, but too entwined to easily pull away. He modulated his tone the same, not demanding, but not to be denied. “Who was it?”

  She shrugged as if it hardly mattered, but her grasp tightened. “After I left home, I couldn’t afford a place of my own, so I moved in with two other girls. They hung with a rough crowd, but that seemed normal. I didn’t even notice until I hooked up with one of the guys. We’d been going out for a while, and one night he got drunk and he smacked me.” She darted a look up at him.

  The shamed flush on her cheeks slammed through him, and Liam locked every demon-powered muscle to stop himself from pulling her into his arms. “I can find the bastard and kill him,” he offered casually. “The league has resources I just don’t use enough.”