Vowed in Shadows ms-3 Read online

  Jonah ignored the other talya. “He’ll run back to Corvus, given the chance.”

  Archer drummed his fingers. “Niall would okay that. He won’t kill a child, even one who’s sold out to the devil.”

  “Assuming Nim didn’t already kill him.” Jonah lifted one of the sticky notes on the map. “Andre said ‘flying,’ so you’re thinking airports.”

  “Niall said we aren’t to make a move without him. So I’m not thinking anything, officially.” When Jonah gave him a long look, Archer shrugged. “But since Jilly is down and our fearless leader is distracted, unofficially, I’m thinking a small team on a quick reconnaissance—”

  Ecco shook his head. “Better wait for the boss.”

  “Since when do you obey the rules?” Archer asked.

  “Since the girls started coming round and breaking them. Playing with them is more fun. And way scarier.” Ecco glowered at Jonah. “The next one was supposed to be mine.”

  Jonah’s hackles rose in atavistic response to the challenge. “They aren’t trading cards.”

  Ecco tapped the spoon against the side of the pot and turned slowly. “They should go to the strongest fighters.”

  Jonah flexed his fingers. “They did.”

  “Knock it off, you two,” Archer snapped. “We don’t understand the mechanism of the bond, but you can be sure there’s more to it than muscle.” He gave Ecco a long stare.

  The big talya returned the look, and in his hands, the spoon seemed suddenly lethal.

  Jonah smoothed his hand down the back of his neck. The short hairs prickled against his palm. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t the sort to beat his chest and crow. But the incense scent of Nim was still on his skin. This was why saints renounced the temptations of the flesh.

  “I’d join that advance team,” he said. “If Nim is in danger from her demon’s strength, I want that anklet.”

  “Not to mention, who knows what havoc Corvus could wreak with the artifact at his disposal.” Archer swept his hand over the map again, encompassing the city with his gesture.

  Jonah remembered the pull of Nim’s allure. “I think the artifact does the djinn-man no good without the matching demon. Which is why Corvus went after Sera last winter.” He flattened his palm on the map. “Which is why we’ll have no trouble finding him again.”

  Ecco stirred the soup with unnecessary vigor. “Because he’ll be coming for Nim. And you don’t seem to care.”

  Jonah stared at him from beneath lowered brows. “Tell me again how you think you could have her, and I’ll show you how much I care.”

  Archer sighed. “Your mark is on her, Jonah, as surely as the demon’s. Ecco is just teasing you about taking her.”

  “No, he’s not,” Jonah said, just as Ecco protested, “No, I’m not.”

  “No one is taking anyone.” Sera stood in the kitchen doorway, her voice more threatening than her mate’s. She cast an admonitory eye over all of them, lingering on Ecco. “Stop stirring so hard. You’re going to puree that chicken. Jilly only broke a few ribs, not her jaw.”

  Archer went to her side. The tender way he brushed her blond hair behind her ear made Jonah avert his gaze. “How’s she doing?”

  “Oh, you know how a sucking chest wound sounds worse than it is, at least when the teshuva are involved. All that gasping and bloody foam and turning blue, even though the demon is working its magic. The B team actually took a harder hit than we did. Haji will be down for three days at least with a compound femur fracture. The shattered bone did a lot of damage on the way out. And Nando almost lost an eye, which would have been . . .” Her glance went to his hook, and she stopped herself.

  Jonah waited for the gut-curdling shame that usually followed those mortified shifts of gaze. But it seemed carnal relations had an undermining effect on shame. “It’s always funny until someone almost loses an eye.”

  Sera drew her chin back in surprise. “Your mate is rubbing off on you.”

  “She has made rubbing an art.” The words popped off his tongue with Nim-flavored tartness.

  Ecco made a pained sound, slammed the spoon into the pot, and stalked out.

  Sera watched him go. “What’s his problem?”

  Jonah grimaced. “Where to start . . . ?” He’d taken his share of needling from the big talya over the decades and rarely found ways to return the favor. Another disreputable Nim skill he’d acquired with their demonic resonance.

  He rather liked it.

  “Start with the part where you believe Nim is a menace without the anklet,” Archer interrupted.

  Jonah gestured at the pendant hanging from the cord around Sera’s neck. “Did you ever try your tenebraeternum trick without the teshuva’s talisman?”

  “I never had reason to.” Sullen rainbows gleamed under Sera’s fingers when she touched the etherically mutated stone. “I’ve had the necklace ever since the demon first came to me, even before its first ascension.”

  Archer pulled her under his arm. “We always thought the desolator numinis was the weapon and Sera was the trigger. The same with Jilly and her knot-work trap.”

  “Jilly had her bracelet from the beginning too,” Sera said.

  Jonah wondered if he should be proud that his demon-matched cohort was the first to pawn her artifact and thus reveal a new facet of the female talyan. “Nim shows every sign of being as dangerously unstable as league records warn about in the few references we have to female talyan.” When Archer and Sera stiffened as one, he waved his hand. “Don’t bristle. I didn’t write those books.”

  “No,” Archer growled. “But your brand of dogma may have lost us our other halves for the last few millennia.”

  “Not dogma,” Jonah said. “Just the truth of what I’m finding. Nim is a lure, just as Jilly makes herself a trap, and Sera is an exit from our realm through demonic emanations. But Nim did it without the anklet. Which makes us stronger than we knew.”

  “Not if she destroys herself—or us—in the discovery process,” Archer said.

  “And not if you think of her like that,” Sera added.

  Jonah scowled. “Like what? A weapon? That’s what we all are.”

  “That’s not all she is,” Sera said. “Not to you.” But her tone wavered uncertainly.

  Archer completed her unspoken thought. “At least she’d better not be. Or maybe Ecco was right.”

  Jonah straightened. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You don’t know anything more than I do about how this bond works.”

  “Love,” Sera said. Again, her tone lacked conviction.

  Jonah shook his head. “They call it the mated-talyan bond. Nothing in there about love.” He narrowed his eyes at Archer. “You didn’t believe in love.”

  “No more than I believed in demons. And look where that got me.” He unfurled his fingers toward Sera in an oddly courtly gesture, but the smirk he turned on Jonah was decidedly fiendish. “Tell yourself what you will, if it helps seal your bond. But watch your sacrifices don’t cut too deep.”

  He ladled out bowls of soup while Sera rifled through the silverware drawer. Then she whisked herself out of the kitchen with the tray balanced in her arms. Off to feed the invalid and the hovering mate, no doubt.

  Caring and cooking pots. Before women had returned to the league, the talyan had been a tribe of taciturn loners, united only by their mission. After Carine was gone and they’d found him, their habitual solitude—bordering on the monkish—had suited him well. The loss of his arm, though . . . that had set him apart in a way he couldn’t abide.

  And when exactly had his separation—him from his arm, him from the league—ceased to eat at him? He thought he knew.

  “Nim is mine,” he said. “I won’t risk her, even for my own salvation.”

  Archer lingered, his hip propped against the counter. “Isn’t that why you were in Africa? To save others and thus save yourself? The demon lets you make the same mistake over and over. Until you don’t.”

  Having told
Nim the story already, Jonah found the admission slipped from him more easily this time. “Actually, I became a missionary for the adventure.”

  “Well, she’ll give you that too.” Archer’s grin flashed and faded. “We’re not perfect, Jonah. In fact, we’re as far from it as a mob of selfish, frightened, brutal bastards can be. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can be something else.”

  He headed for the door, and Jonah waited until the other talya had gotten halfway out before he spoke. “And what will I be? The man I was?”

  Archer didn’t look back. “Your list of sins is long enough. Don’t add stupidity.”

  Behind him, a half dozen talyan—looking lethal and hungry and all sleepy-eyed, except for Nando, who was wearing an eye patch and looked only half-sleepy-eyed—filed into the kitchen.

  “I smelled soup,” Nando said. He squinted around the eye patch, as if somebody might be trying to hide his supper.

  Lex jostled him. “Out of my way, pirate boy. You’re missing an eye, not a leg.” One of the other talyan elbowed him, and he ducked his head with a rueful grunt.

  Jonah left them to their dinner and jibes, and took his muddled thoughts with him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Nim awoke and knew she was alone. She stretched until her spine cracked, then settled on the one pillow.

  Not surprisingly, Jonah had sneaked out of their bed. If only she’d gotten around to lashing him to the four posters at the corners. He had too many hang-ups—some might call them morals—to do what he wanted without feeling bad about it. And he had wanted it, she knew, even though she had pushed him a little. Well, pushed him past his hang-ups—okay, morals—which had been a little further than a little.

  But she’d made a nice living teasing men out of their morals, so what was this curdling sensation in her chest that made her want to pull the covers up over her head? Did she actually feel guilty?

  If Jonah hadn’t stopped her, she would have taken Andre’s soul. And she hadn’t even cared that much for the one she already had. But Jonah had stopped her. Still saving souls, Andre’s and hers.

  And she’d thanked the missionary man by seducing him.

  With friends like her, who needed fire and brimstone?

  When she shoved the blanket away, the dark lines on her thighs startled her. Not that she had forgotten the demon’s mark. Not exactly. But somehow, her night with Jonah seemed unrelated, which was so completely delusional she almost laughed at herself.

  The only thing more pathetic than a john falling for a hooker was a stripper falling for the guy in the back row.

  Not that she was falling for Jonah, but she could see how some poor girl might, like the long-dead-and-turned-to-African-worm-food Carine—young, innocent, idealistic. Good thing Nim was none of those things. Only a heart as scarred as the insides of her thighs would keep her safe.

  Except the demon had all but erased those. Stupid demon.

  She grabbed the T-shirt and sweatpants at the bottom of the bed, refusing to think how sweet he’d been to remember that she didn’t have any clean clothes. Most men were thinking of ways to get her out of her clothes.

  “He’s not most men,” she reminded herself. Then she saw her thong neatly draped over the shower-curtain rail. The black cotton was still faintly damp, but the soap had been rinsed out. She shook her head. “He even does laundry. He is definitely not most men.”

  She kicked her sneakers around the bottom of the tub while she showered, knocking most of the muck off. Good thing they were already black. Afterward, she dressed in the clothes he’d laid out. She propped the wet shoes on the windowsill behind the thick curtain that blocked out the heat and light. Then she went snooping through his room.

  Or would have. But there wasn’t much to snoop. Her earlier impression of simplicity bordering on austerity was unchanged. No pictures on the dresser. No books except a copy of the Bible beside the table, but the binding wasn’t even cracked and there was nothing tucked between the pages. She went through the drawers and found only more T-shirts and jeans and briefs, until she yanked open the bottom drawer. She choked and jumped back before she realized the severed hand with forearm was fake.

  She poked it. The naturalistic skin was eerily soft and unmarred, quite unlike his calluses. Obviously, Jonah had decided the hook was more serviceable.

  Or maybe that was just another example of his painful integrity. Not even a fake hand for him. Thank God she’d never gotten around to buying fake tits.

  She slammed the drawer closed and headed for the door. Hand on the knob, she hesitated, took a breath, and pulled it open.

  She’d half expected to find Jonah on the other side, glowering. But the hall was empty. For a warehouse full of men, it was surprisingly clean. Maybe Jonah was in charge of housekeeping too. Unlike the basement, where all the haphazard decorations hung, the walls here were as bare as her feet. As if the league had saved all its focus for its mission of fighting evil.

  Which made a certain amount of sense, she supposed. But didn’t they hold anything back for themselves? Even the fresh-meat stripper knew better than to give it all away, no matter how loudly the crowd clamored for more, or there’d be nothing left at the end of the night. How much worse for the talyan who fought for years and years?

  Maybe that was why she was here. . . . No, she shouldn’t be thinking she’d somehow been specially chosen to—what?—show the ascetic talyan how to be selfish and extravagant hedonists? She really doubted Jonah would go for that.

  Except the missionary’s touch had been about more than the mission. She wasn’t deluding herself about that.

  A door ahead of her opened, and the blond woman, Sera, peered out. “I thought I told you. . . . Oh, Nim, it’s you. I figured Liam was still skulking around after I told him to get some rest before the night rush. Come in, will you?”

  Nim chewed at the inside of her lip. These girl-on-girl scenes usually made better fantasies than reality, but . . . She stepped inside.

  Jilly sat up in bed, her chest swathed in bandages up to her armpits, her jaw set off-kilter in a mutinous slant. She scowled at Sera. “If you think you can keep me quiet by telling bedtime stories to the new kid on the block . . .”

  Sera crossed her arms. “Do you want me to call Liam instead?”

  Jilly huffed. “He’ll wrap the gauze over my head.”

  “I like the stories where the evil stepsister gets eaten,” Nim offered.

  Jilly gave her a narrow-eyed stare, as if she suspected who the evil stepsister might be; then she grinned. “Sorry, I don’t do well when I’m stuck in bed.”

  “I do some of my best work there,” Nim said. “Maybe I can give you some pointers.”

  Jilly’s grin upended, and Sera laughed. “You fit right in here, Nim.”

  Nim considered. “Have you ever had someone who didn’t?”

  Sera shrugged. “From what I’ve read, the league was never big enough to take its members for granted.”

  “Except when it decided to evict its female half,” Jilly said.

  “And yet here we are again,” Nim said.

  They stared at one another, three women who’d never have found one another in the big city, except for the demons that bound them.

  Nim went to grab a chair. The stuffed wingback sprouted a few loose threads, and the desk beside it was missing all its drawers, but the room was cozier than Jonah’s, even with the massive hammer hanging beside the door. Nim decided it was the extra pillows that softened all the hard edges. Certainly Jilly was no gentling influence, not with the twin crescent knives hanging next to the hammer.

  She dragged the chair closer to the bed to prop her feet on the carved footboard. “So here we are. Sisters in arms.”

  “Which reminds me,” Jilly said. “You need a weapon.”

  “Besides my apparent ability to dazzle unwary demons and wayward souls?”

  “Sometimes it’s nice to have a pointy thing too,” Sera said. She settled at the foot of the bed
and hummed thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it seem providential that between us—the lure, the trap, and the end”—she pointed at Nim, then Jilly, then herself in turn—“we are some particularly heavy armament?”

  Jilly snorted. “Love the league-speak. Did Archer call us that? But if by ‘providential,’ you’re using the definition ‘supplied by God,’ then no, I don’t think it’s providence.”

  “Considering the whole demon-possession thing,” Nim agreed.

  “But the teshuva fight evil,” Sera said. “Which puts them on God’s side. Theoretically, at least.”

  “And we know how you like your theories.” Jilly’s teasing tone took the sting out of the words. “But we also know God hasn’t claimed the teshuva. That’s why they’re still fighting.”

  Nim curled her toes around the plump butt of an ugly winged kewpie carved into the bed. “I figured out a while ago that hanging your self-worth on the approval of a distant father figure is a really bad idea.”

  Jilly nodded vigorously, but Sera sighed. “Still, it seems to me that us coming together is an opportunity the league hasn’t had before.”

  “The league did have female talyan before,” Jilly reminded her. “And kicked us out.”

  “We won’t be letting them do that again,” Nim said.

  “When I first showed up,” Sera said, “Jonah was adamantly against female talyan.”

  Jilly harrumphed. “Self-righteous bastard. As if the choice was his.”

  Sera tsked. “It’s obviously not conceit. I think he holds women in too high esteem to believe they—we—should be vulnerable to possession.”

  Nim slouched lower in the chair. “Not a problem with me. The esteem thing, I mean. That’s how he ended up with me. To teach him a lesson.”

  She meant to sound snarky, and Jilly chuckled as intended, but Sera just gave her a long look. “The demons do resonate, with us and with one another, but for once, it’s not meant as punishment.”

  Nim shrugged and held on to her dismissive tone. “You’d have to ask him about that.”

  This time, Jilly didn’t laugh. “Liam said he’s never understood how Jonah was possessed. Oh, he’s pieced together the spider story over the decades, but it doesn’t explain why a demon chose him. He had a job and a wife he loved. He was involved in his community. Such connections usually offer protection against possession.”