Vowed in Shadows ms-3 Page 21

  He grabbed her arm and forced her back a step. “You have to stop calling the tenebrae.”

  She stared at him. “Didn’t you bring the others? Is it just you?”

  His jaw worked. She hadn’t been waiting for him alone. Wisely. Since there was nothing he could do. No, he couldn’t stop the feralis onslaught, but he had to stop Nim’s lure. “There’s only Liam and two others. Not enough to face what you’ve brought here.”

  She winced, and he realized his grip had tightened. “We didn’t know this would happen,” she said.

  “So you waited until the worst possible time, until we’d gone, to take your demon for a spin.”

  “We knew you’d try to stop us.”

  “For very good reason, wouldn’t you say?” He gave her a shake. “Now you must stop it.”

  Stop flaunting his orders. Stop calling to the horde. Stop making him want. . . .

  “I don’t know how.” She flinched away from him. “You can’t just beat it out of me.”

  To his horror, he realized he was halfway there. His hand sprang open without his conscious thought to release her. He staggered back, as if there were someplace to go, to escape. Jilly and Sera were occupied with the rising body count, or they probably would’ve added him to the pile of corpses for grabbing Nim so harshly.

  He had never—never—handled Carine with such disregard. He’d rather sever his remaining hand than see Nim shrink from him. “Nim . . .”

  “I told you, I don’t know how—”

  How could she know? He hadn’t tried to teach her, not even with the same naïve but sincere fervor he’d taken with him to converting all Africa. Or at least the same exhilaration at the adventure. From the first, he’d faced her with his arms crossed, resisting temptation.

  “Like you did in the VIP lounge,” he said.

  She stiffened. “What?”

  “Dance. Dance like you did then, just for me.” He took a breath, seeking the warm scent of her skin under the miasma of rot and rust and brick dust. And he took a step closer to her, to fill her view. “As if there were just the two of us. Alone.”

  She gazed up, her eyes glazed in a violet storm. “You don’t want this. Don’t want me.”

  “But you know I do.” He gathered her close, gently, cursing his lack of poise—he couldn’t even blame the unbalance of his missing hand this time—that had made him push her away when she had reached for him with such sweet relief. If she rejected him now, rejected the focus he offered, she’d let the last of the horde close around them. And he’d have only his own ridiculous inhibitions to blame.

  “You want to stop me.” The demon was in her voice, in the lower octave and an almost inaudible shrill of condemnation.

  “I can’t stop you,” he admitted. He brought her up against his body, let her feel the hard truth in the violent need of his flesh, the pulse that lifted him to her—never mind the constraints of his jeans or the certain death around them. “You danced for me once, and I’ve wanted you ever since.”

  The violet in her eyes flared and dimmed.

  Somewhere, Jilly called out wordlessly, and Liam answered with her name in a full-throated cry as he broke through to the inner circle. Stronger for being together.

  Jonah knew he needed to convince Nim. But how? With his body, with a look, with words? “I have nothing to give you in return,” he whispered. “My life is pledged to the league; my soul to the teshuva.”

  “I didn’t ask for either of those.”

  A heated flush rose in his face. This was the dance, he realized. The back-and-forth of what they could be to each other. For each other. “What’s left of my body isn’t worth the having.”

  “You lie,” she said. “And anyway, I’ve had that already.”

  The blush turned to flame and heated him to the core. “There’s nothing more of me.”

  “The tenebrae know there’s always more,” she said. “And they want the very last of it. Light and laughter. Hope and peace.” She hesitated. “Love.”

  The word hit him like a tenebrae fang through the belly, ripping upward to lodge in his throat. “I’ve no more of that either.”

  She shot him a glare and strained away from him with all her dancer’s strength and demon’s power. “You lie again.”

  He struggled to hold her, amping his teshuva against her fury, though his one-handed grip left him precariously unbalanced. “Nim, you ask too much.”

  In a blink, the violet storm in her eyes vanished, leaving only a deep murk. “And you never asked for anything, except a new right hand. But without the anklet, I can’t even be that to you.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  The closest feralis fell back on its haunches, pointed its muzzle upward, and let loose a howl of triumph. The rest answered in a cacophony that brought another rain of bricks tumbling down.

  Apparently, the tenebrae approved. Always a bad sign.

  Nim stood motionless. “If you can’t want me, why am I here?”

  Behind her, the ferales closed in. Nando stumbled and went to his knees. Jilly leapt forward with a battle cry . . . and Liam yanked her back, throwing himself into the fight instead. Ecco howled, trapped across the circle by a quartet of the roach ferales. Sera stood with both hands clamped around the desolator numinis around her throat. The chill of the tenebraeternum was a visible swirl of silvery fog, but the ferales marched onward.

  Jonah’s heart froze. They weren’t going to be able to fight off the horde. He couldn’t stop Nim’s lure. And he couldn’t give her what she wanted.

  In another second, if that orange-eyed feralis just beyond Nim’s shoulder had its way, his other arm would be ripped from him, along with the rest of his soul, and he’d be left with nothing. Truly nothing this time. Oblivion.

  Well, fuck that.

  In his head, he heard Nim’s laugh.

  When the orange-eyed feralis jumped, he met its attack halfway. Nim whirled as he arrowed past her, hook extended. The feralis flinched, and he caught it midchest. The hook buried past the thin metal “wrist” and lodged deep inside the feralis.

  Intimately close, he stared into its eyes. The dozen orange orbs, arrayed in a ring around its squat head, made the staring contest somewhat inequitable. It clacked its mandibles, and the clatter sounded suspiciously like a snicker. A thin spray of ichor burned on his cheek in a tenebrae kiss.

  This was the only sort of relationship remaining to him after he’d doomed himself by saying yes to the demon. Or so he’d come to believe.

  But his beliefs had failed him before.

  Nim cried out a warning. He yanked the hook free in a geyser of black rot. His teshuva reached with avid craving for the feralis’s faltering emanations. But Nim needed him.

  As he jerked around, his vision blurred between the fading tenebrae and Nim as he struggled to focus. His boots slid in the rubbish across the floor, and he windmilled his arms. And smacked a giant feralis in the nose—actually snout, razor fangs bristling—with his hook.

  The metal clanged against its teeth and the feralis snapped, faster than any creature of flesh alone, holding him fast.

  Nim screamed his name again as a second, winged feralis sprang over the hole in the inner circle to the left, where Liam had gone to Ecco’s rescue. The creature unfurled its wings, wide enough to shadow their pitifully small crew. The stink of burnt feathers blew up a with blinding backdraft of dust and glass.

  It scrabbled at Nim, and she punched back. Squealing, it dodged her blows. With one lucky snatch, it grabbed her by her hair and lifted off.

  She held on to its leg. Blood streamed through her fingers from the sharp quills. If she slipped, the feralis could break her neck with its awkward hold. Still, she batted at the wing nearest her, trying to upset its flight. It spiraled sideways, but steadied with another beat.

  In a moment, it would be out of reach.

  Jonah broke free of the feralis chewing its way up his arm. And he broke his arm too.

  The crack
of the upper bone reverberated through his body like a lightning strike. The violence snapped the straps of the prosthetic, and the hook dangled in the feralis’s mouth as he launched himself after Nim.

  He latched his fingers around her ankle. Before he could hope for any leverage, his boots left the floor. The airborne feralis tilted at the added weight, dipping dangerously over the sea of ferales, before it recovered.

  The tenebrae bellowed their excitement, and Jonah had a glimpse of the talyan’s pale faces—almost three stories below now—before he looked up at Nim.

  How sad. This might be his last sight on earth, and she wasn’t wearing a skirt.

  “Pull me up,” he shouted.

  She bent her knees, hauling his deadweight higher. She grabbed his broken arm. Bone grated against bone, and the demon’s hunter-light vision sparked with pure, white human pain. He fought it down and hooked his good arm around her waist.

  The quills from the beating wings sliced through the meat of his shoulder. Which would have hurt, except for the pain in his arm. And the humiliation of not having a fucking hand to rip the fucking feralis out of the fucking sky.

  Ignoring the grind of bone, he looped his broken arm over Nim’s shoulder and lifted himself higher. The feralis had gathered the detritus of hundreds of slaughters—avian, insectile, even a hint of humanoid shape to its features swelling around a fleshy beak. Its demonic emanations—twisting and slippery—rivaled his teshuva’s.

  Which left brute ferocity to determine the winner.

  The feralis certainly overwhelmed him in the appendages division, and its underbelly was armored with thick scales. So he reached higher, and punched his fist down its throat.

  The sharp beak tore at his forearm, and then up to his elbow. It pierced skin, then muscle, and ground against bone. Ichor burned his hand. His remaining hand . . .

  For an instant, he wanted to pull free, fall to the ground. He still had two functioning feet that could carry him away.

  But the thought shredded like the wicked soulflies, never to return. He wouldn’t let go of Nim.

  The feralis choked and spat ichor in black gouts. Struggling, it ripped at him with seven of its eight feet. Only Nim’s grasp on its eighth leg kept her from falling. To his horror, she grabbed at the thrashing wing tip, and the feralis lost altitude.

  A mere two stories. A survivable fall. Probably. If they were going to bail out, they had to do so now. Knowing he had mere seconds before the feralis beak would saw through his arm, he reached down inside it.

  But a feralis didn’t have a heart. Nothing to reach for but the void he’d always feared.

  He could do to the feralis what Nim had done to him. He turned it inside out.

  His arm went numb as he heaved backward. Boiling ichor and pieces of the decomposing husk erupted from the gaping maw.

  The spidery legs spasmed and tossed Nim outward. Her gaze locked on his, silent, and she fell.

  Entwined with the feralis, he plummeted on his own painful arc.

  In the heartbeat before he hit, lights beamed through the open windows. Car headlights.

  With an explosion of feathers and brick dust, he slammed into the ground. The feralis broke his fall, enough that he maintained consciousness.

  The cars had to be the other talyan. Archer’s bond to Sera must have ignited any alcohol he’d managed to get in his hands. The cavalry had arrived.

  Not a moment too soon. Actually, a few moments too late.

  All around him, the tenebrae stampeded. Plenty of exits through the broken windows, but talyan—black-clad shadows, fast and furious—poured through the openings in pursuit of the escaping ferales. Who could escape only because . . .

  The lure was broken.

  The realization sent him reeling upright. “Nim!”

  Where was she? The milling claws could easily tear her apart if she lay unconscious.

  Or maybe she was already . . .

  No. He wouldn’t think that. A fleeing feralis knocked him over. He reeled up again. Realized neither arm was working right. Didn’t care.

  Where was she? He caught a glimpse of scarlet amid the black. Human blood slicked over ichor.

  His own blood stopped in his veins. He staggered, slipped again, and went to his knees beside her crumpled body.

  He heard Liam’s shout, a million miles away, and the answering roar from his warriors. At the talya war cry, the ferales fled in all directions.

  Jonah huddled over Nim as claws crushed down on him. His back strained to take the weight off her body, lest some inadvertent pressure sever an artery or pierce a vital organ before the teshuva worked its tricks.

  “You fell barely two stories,” he murmured. “Anyone who can do splits vertically on a pole while wearing heels as high as you do can survive a little bounce off concrete.”

  He barely noticed when the last of the ferales had escaped or been dismembered by the talyan. He knew only that the battering had stopped. Externally, at least.

  He leaned forward to press a kiss to Nim’s lips, but his face was too ichor scorched to feel if she breathed. “Wake up.”

  “Jonah!” Archer skidded to a stop a yard away. The battle-axe in his hand thumped to the floor, and from the stark widening of his eyes, Jonah wondered how bad they looked.

  “She’s hurt,” he said. He would not allow for anything worse.

  Archer opened his mouth, then closed it. “Can you stand?”

  They must look bad if he had to ask. “I’m fine.” Jonah gathered his legs under him, hoping he wouldn’t tip over and reveal his lie. “We have to get her to the warehouse. The energy sinks will block her lure if she’s still broadcasting when she regains her senses.” Another hope; maybe another lie. He met Archer’s gaze and was horrified to see a spark of pity. He’d rather see fury there at his failure. “I couldn’t stop her.”

  Archer just shook his head. “I couldn’t stop Sera either. I’m just sorry it took us so long to get back here. I thought the alarm bells in my head were only about that drinking game. . . .” He rubbed his temple wearily. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Sera limped up to them. The chill of the tenebraeternum clung to her skin.

  Behind her, Jilly was streaked with feralis gore. “We need to set his arms first. If the teshuva heals them in that state, we’ll just have to rebreak them.”

  Archer’s eyes blazed violet. “Now you two care about hurting someone?”

  “No more fighting,” Jonah said. “We need to get Nim out of here. The ferales might circle back if she wakes and casts the lure again.”

  “We’ll rip them apart if they do,” Archer snarled. Despite the eddies of teshuva fury, Sera leaned against her mate.

  Jilly shook her head. “Now that you’re here, Jonah, you’ll be able to guide her.”

  “I couldn’t control her before.”

  “It’s not about controlling her.” Sera crossed to his side and gave him a few exploratory pokes in the arm that made his vision blur. “Displaced fractures of the humerus in both arms. But they’re still attached, obviously. No catastrophic blood loss and no excessive neural severing, which is all the teshuva needs to get to work. You’ll be good as . . . before in a couple days.” She held out her hand to Jilly, who knelt beside Nim. “Can I have your bandages? I think you need them less than Jonah.”

  Jilly fumbled down her neckline to unwind a swath of gauze.

  “Save it for Nim,” Jonah protested.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jilly said. “Her hands are healing already.”

  Hearing the words sapped what strength was left in his knees. “If she’s okay, why hasn’t her teshuva brought her around?”

  Sera and Jilly exchanged glances. “She’ll wake when she’s ready,” Sera said.

  He gritted his teeth. “Is that what you said to your dying patients—‘You can go when you’re ready’?”

  “And it always worked,” she said. “So don’t worry.”

  “Let’s go,” Archer growled. “
Maybe you’re convinced this will end all right, but there are a half dozen other wounded who’d like to be done with tonight.”

  Sera’s jaw flexed, but she finished wrapping Jonah in silence. She straightened the upper bones, politely ignoring the groan of protest he couldn’t hold back, and bound his arms to his chest. Knowing she’d been a than atologist, ushering out the dying, made him feel as if she were burying him in winding sheets.

  Sweat popped out on his forehead. This was how it might feel to have no arms. He’d not been grateful enough for what he still had.

  He stood over Nim.

  Jilly had straightened his fallen mate so she looked less like a broken doll. He didn’t think she’d appreciate a Sleeping Beauty reference, not with her skin streaked with blood and ichor thick as war paint. He couldn’t even reach down to brush back the tangle of her hair. He’d tip over in his sick fatigue. Oh, and not to forget, he had no hands.

  He turned away. “Get us out of here.”

  Archer tipped his head toward Nim. “May I?”

  Jonah nodded sharply. Archer gathered up Nim’s limp body, careful to support her head against his chest, his two strong arms making easy work of her unconscious weight. Jonah stared fixedly away to where a half dozen talyan, under Liam’s watchful eye and ready hammer, were emptying the tenebrae energy from the last twitching ferales. Swells of demonic emanations swept the brick dust and crystallized malice remains in eerily beautiful ribbons of black and red.

  A chunk of the ceiling crashed down, bisecting the patterns.

  Jilly ducked her shoulders. “I’ll have to remind Liam to send an anonymous complaint to the city. Make sure they condemn this place.”

  “Yeah,” Archer drawled. “Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen here.”

  That kept them silent out to the line of haphazardly parked cars.

  Archer tucked Nim into a backseat of a truck that had skidded in sideways; then he turned to stab a finger at each of the other women. “You two, separate cars. And not the one with Ecco.”

  Sera put her hands on her hips. “We’re not criminals.”

  “Actually, you were once.”

  “No,” Jilly said. “That was me. Sera was a good girl.”