Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls Page 22

  Alyce groaned. “I don’t think I could— Oh, it has hot peppers?”

  Therese beamed. “Is there anything you’re afraid to try?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Sidney drawled.

  A smile eased the thoughtful crease permanently etched between his brows. To have his focus firmly on her warmed her more than the spicy food. As a servant, she had been invisible. She had preferred to be invisible, since the alternatives were worse. The weight of his gaze, though, made her feel not pinned but wanted.

  Good intentions did matter. She told herself the prickling in her eyes was only the heat of the peppers.

  She was happy. She shouldn’t even think it, for the suspicion that feeling happy practically begged evil forces to snatch it away. Although her suspicion was entirely warranted, considering what she knew of evil forces. But maybe she had to be fair, since those evil forces had brought her to Sidney.

  And speaking of evil forces … “You want to look at the verge again, don’t you?” She pushed her plate away, the peppers suddenly roiling in her belly.

  He nodded. “I didn’t have the eyes to truly see it before. I’m curious.”

  In the storeroom, he uncovered the doorway. He started his descent while she tugged the door back into place.

  At the bottom, the glaring lights beamed on the verge and the recording machines whirred gently. Sidney picked his way across the patchwork of raised pavers that kept them out of the ooze and went to read their cryptic messages. She circled the mutant feralis husk and leaned in to watch the sluggishly churning other-realm energies.

  It still looked like a mouth to her. The ether inside it roiled like an incessantly licking tongue. Whether it had something to say or was just a hungry maw, she couldn’t tell.

  Sidney’s muttering distracted her, while the nearness of hell quelled her demon—and maybe she’d been a little too happy or she might have realized they weren’t alone.

  When she straightened away from the verge, a forearm closed tight over her throat.

  CHAPTER 16

  The leather-clad arm cut off her shout of warning as effectively as the overpowering wave of a superior demon disrupted her teshuva. She remembered this terrible feeling of helplessness. The crippling etheric blow had been the same the last time she’d tangled with Thorne.

  “Miss Alyce, what are you doing down this rabbit hole?” His whisper in her ear was pitched so low she almost missed it.

  Across the verge, Sidney was unfolding an accordion of paper that one of the machines had been spewing in a tidy stack beside it. “Interesting,” he said. “There was a spike just before we—”

  He whirled around. “Alyce?”

  The harsh lights left the periphery in darkness, but his gaze locked on hers for a heartbeat before shifting upward, to the devil-man who held her. “Let her go.”

  “That’s the first thing you want to say? Not ‘Who are you?’ Or maybe ‘What do you want?’”

  Sidney let the paper drift to the damp ground. “I don’t give a fuck who you are or what you want. You’re holding Alyce.”

  “Ah.” Thorne’s breath held a note of amusement—and a darker thread Alyce couldn’t pin down. “You must be Sidney, the symballein bastard. Well, I know you won’t be able to form a coherent sentence while she’s in my arms.”

  With a hand between her shoulder blades, Thorne shoved her away. She stumbled to her knees, and the soggy ground oozed between her fingers.

  Her teshuva flared and guttered, beaten back by the other demon. She stayed in a hunched crouch. “What do you want, Thorne?”

  Sidney moved toward her. “Alyce, you know him?”

  Thorne reached for the small of his back. From beneath the trailing edge of his black leather jacket he pulled a gun. “Just stay right there, Anglo. I’ve heard what you symballein pairs can do together.”

  Sidney took another step around the verge toward her. “She asked you a question. What do you want?”

  Thorne cocked the gun and aimed it at Sidney. “Didn’t I tell you to stay right there?”

  Sidney slid another half step her way. “You did, but I’ve been told I’m a better talker than listener.”

  Thorne shifted the small black mouth of the gun toward Alyce and pulled the trigger.

  She flinched from the boom, reverberating in the closed space, and braced for blood. Instead, mud splashed her from where the bullet struck a few feet from her.

  Sidney froze. “She’s immortal.” Despite the bravado implied in his words, his voice shook.

  “And I aimed to miss. I am an excellent shot with a large-bore weapon. By that, I mean both my gun and my demon. As for my personal endowments …” Thorne shrugged. “Not relevant. Unless we’re interested in finding out how enduring is the symballein connection.”

  “Forever.” This time, Sidney’s voice rang in the hollow room.

  Thorne’s teeth flashed in the bright lights. “Not quite so long if I put a bullet through her heart and my djinni prevents her teshuva from plugging the hole.”

  Sidney straightened. “Djinni?”

  Thorne’s gaze slid to Alyce. “You didn’t tell him you had a djinni ex-boyfriend? Ah, you wound me.”

  “I have wounded him,” Alyce told Sidney. “Or tried to, but he resisted.”

  Thorne laughed. “You’ve offered me plenty over the years, but never a blow I couldn’t take.”

  “The talyan killed Corvus Valerius,” Sidney pointed out in his official lecturing tone, but his expression was as dark and hard as the gun. “Before lunch, we stopped to pay our respects at the demolition site where Blackbird lost what was left of his soul.”

  Thorne’s smile vanished. “I’m nothing like him. I’ve never fought the league. Only Alyce, and she always starts it.”

  Alyce rolled her gaze apologetically toward Sidney. “I didn’t know the teshuva don’t attack the djinn.”

  “Because you lose.” Thorne twitched the gun restively when Sidney drew a breath. “I know, I know. Except against Corvus.”

  Sidney let out the breath. “If you aren’t here to fight us, then what are you doing here?”

  Thorne shrugged. “I heard about this flaw in the Veil, and I wanted to see it. I like oddities. A quirk of mine for which you should be grateful, since it’s why I didn’t kill your addled Alyce long ago.” He peered at her. “And since she’s here, I think I’ll take her back now.”

  After a frozen heartbeat, Sidney said quietly, “If you truly think you can take her, then we are going to fight.”

  “Oddities are collectible,” Thorne said. “Some of those collectors are big and bad—worse than me.”

  “I am not an oddity.” Alyce straightened from her crouch. The paver in her hands slurped from the mud. “And I am never going to be yours.” She flung the rough-edged square at Thorne.

  He fired off another shot, and a corner of the airborne paver shattered.

  But the bulk of concrete hit his hand. The gun spun off into the darkness to land with a splash somewhere in the shadows.

  The downside of being a clever male was talking oneself to death—or if not to death, to distraction.

  But Thorne’s djinni wasn’t distracted anymore. It came roaring to the fore in a psychic blast. Had it been acid, it would have stripped flesh from bone.

  The etheric blow tumbled her backward across the mucky floor. Two of the big lights exploded. Confused she might be, and mostly blinded, but even as she fell, she angled toward Sidney.

  She crashed through some piece of machinery. A metal edge ripped up her thigh, and she choked on a mouthful of mud when she caught her breath at the pain. But her flailing arm slapped into solid flesh where Sidney had been knocked down too.

  He pulled her under him, covering her against the cyclone of muck and shredding paper. “That might have been a little crazy.”

  “We can’t take him as we did the malice. Not even with two of us,” Alyce said.

  Sidney growled under his breath but said only, “I have
another idea.” He reached out to one of the upended machines. Despite the stinging whirlwind of filth, his fingers danced without hesitation across the surface. The little row of lights that strobed left to right suddenly reversed.

  “Thorne wants to start a collection? This usually collects stray ether to gauge demonic presence,” he said. “Get ready to run.”

  “What is it going to—?” The lights flickered faster, and the machine whined a high-pitched warning. “Oh.”

  “Sera’s notes said Corvus made a hole in the floor. That’s our way out.”

  The last light shattered, leaving them in darkness, except for a vicious yellow glow: Thorne’s djinni.

  Alyce clamped her hand over the gash in her leg as they scrambled across the slanting floor. With the teshuva dormant, the blood seeping through her fingers didn’t slow. As if to make up for the wound, the hitch in her step had all but vanished.

  Ah, the power of dread. Water rose around their ankles. “There’s no hole.”

  “This water came from somewhere,” Sidney said. “But where—?”

  The collector he had toyed with detonated. Amorphous scraps of ether streamed out, corkscrewing through the air. Too much chaotic energy for her teshuva. Her vision went utterly black.

  From Thorne’s wordless cry of rage, she guessed the same had happened to the djinn-man.

  Sidney dragged her onward, and, in one more step, they found the hole.

  Even the most dedicated Bookkeeper couldn’t bulk up enough to challenge a talya for a Mr. Fighting Evil in the Universe belt. Possession added a finishing cut impossible to achieve by bench presses alone. But since a stereotypical bookworm physique wouldn’t have helped his status, Sid had conscientiously penciled workouts into his schedule.

  If he’d known those boring laps in the pool would come to this, he’d have put in a few more hours—in indelible ink.

  Fortunately, the teshuva downed his breath and added an etheric boost to each stroke as it fled the djinni’s overwhelming waves. Slight Alyce was a deadweight in the water, dragging at his shoulder as he hauled her behind him.

  The pier was wide. He’d have to swim deep and long to get them out from under it. There was no way to avoid popping up where they might be seen. That worry didn’t even make his top-ten list.

  There it was—the jade glow of sunlight through water. He aimed for it, each kick and each reach of his arm a flare of agony as his muscles burned beyond the teshuva’s ability to repair the cellular damage.

  He burst to the surface. The air stabbed into his collapsed lungs like shards of glass. Delicious.

  He keeled over to his back and hauled Alyce up against his chest. Strands of her wet hair streaked oil-dark across her face, her skin as gray as the sky.

  “Lazy girl,” he gasped. “Breathe.”

  They’d emerged on the parking lot side of the structure, and no one lingered near the edge to throw them one of the rescue rings. But there was no Thorne either.

  Was the djinn-man coming after them? Or would he climb the ladder into the diner and go after Therese?

  Fear dripped down Sid’s throat like sour lake water, and he shoved the thought away with his first sidestroke toward the pier. There was no reason for Thorne to attack the woman. He might do a bit of terrorizing as he went through, but why would he bother with worse?

  Oh, because he was evil.

  After only a few strokes, Alyce regained consciousness in a thrashing of limbs. She knocked away Sid’s grasp—and promptly sank.

  He dove after her and dragged her up, both of them sputtering.

  She slapped at the water as if she could claw her way to the top. He maneuvered behind her to slip his arm around her chest again. “Relax,” he shouted, though it sounded ridiculous when bellowed into her ear. But it would be too damn embarrassing to drown this close to shore.

  He pinned his chin into the crook of her neck where the flesh around her reven had gone transparent with the unrestrained energy of her demon.

  “We’re safe,” he said, then added, in all truthfulness, “At the moment. Unless you push us under again.”

  Her legs kicked a few more times. “I didn’t drown. I am a witch.”

  She wasn’t naturally buoyant, but he was able to hold them steady as he treaded water. She stayed limp as he hauled them to the steel wall rising up from the water. There was no ladder, just rusted metal. With nothing to give him leverage, he couldn’t boost her up.

  She launched herself off his body and slammed her fist into the steel. Then she sank again.

  He dragged her up. “What the hell?”

  “Make another.”

  She hadn’t hit square, but he clung to the dent as he punched another hole. He hung on while she crawled up him to make another handhold in the impromptu ladder. Three more and they climbed out.

  They stood dripping on the empty sidewalk, Sid half bent over with his hands braced on his knees.

  “Do we have to tear apart the city while we save it?” he muttered. He pushed himself straight. “We have to make sure Therese is all right. And call Liam, but I’m sure my cell didn’t survive that dunk.”

  They cut through the small outdoor amusement park in the middle of the pier rather than going through the interior halls. No sense raising eyebrows at their sodden state or, worse yet, getting trapped by Thorne and raising hell.

  Alyce hurried beside him as they passed between the Ferris wheel and the towering window-and-steel wall of the Crystal Gardens building. “Thorne wouldn’t hurt Therese, would he?”

  “He’s possessed by a very nonrepentant demon. He tried to shoot you, remember? And then steal you.”

  “I think he still resents the time I tried to sink his boat.”

  “He has a boat?” The information diverted the sick churn in Sid’s gut at the promised kidnapping. “Did you see it when we walked through earlier?”

  She shook her head. “I would have said something.”

  “You two seem on close terms.” He winced at the note of accusation in his voice as the ugly mix of jealousy and anger curdled in him like crypt mud. So much for being diverted.

  She glanced at him sidelong. “We have been close. That is how he has shed more of my blood than any dozen lesser tenebrae.”

  “He said he had taken other things from you.”

  “A few good blows, yes, and insults when I had the breath.”

  “Did he take your teshuva’s talisman?”

  She hesitated, her bottom lip curling between her teeth. “I don’t know.”

  “Think, Alyce. Corvus tried to take Nim’s, to turn her powers against us. Did Thorne want the same when you fought?”

  “I—I can’t remember.”

  He grabbed her arms and faced her straight on. “This isn’t the time to retreat into your old trance.”

  She jerked out of his hold. “It isn’t my memory. I’m remembering more of my time before the demon, but once it came to me, it blocked so much. Whatever happened during my possession, that memory still belongs to the teshuva.”

  Sid speared his fingers through his hair. “This is bad.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, where his hands had been, and water sluiced from her no-longer-white dress. “Why are you angry with me? I tried to kill him, but he has always been stronger than I am.”

  Stronger than Sid too. The sensation of the demon quailing in him had been worse than food poisoning, a queasy mix of achy, shivering sick weakness, where the best idea had been to curl up and die.

  He’d lost his mother and Maureen to the demons. He couldn’t lose Alyce too. That threat poisoned his soul.

  When they rounded the farside of the pier, the exterior door of the diner stood propped open with a whiteboard A-frame sign advertising the lunch special.

  They peered cautiously through the door, and Therese smiled with a touch of confusion. “Back for another course? I thought you were downstairs.”

  Sid edged inside. “No one else came out?”


  She stiffened. “A few glasses broke, all of a sudden, for no reason. If someone came through from the back, I might have missed them while I swept. Was someone else down there?”

  What was he supposed to say? Sera’s notes listed Therese as friend with the only entry being She has seen evil. That wasn’t a security clearance, as far as a Bookkeeper was concerned.

  Not that he was a Bookkeeper anymore.

  “Please call Liam for us,” he told her. “Tell him we encountered … a difficulty. We’ll take another look.”

  Therese didn’t ask more. “Thankfully the lunch rush is over.”

  They went straight through to the storeroom, moved the shelf, and peered down.

  “Dark,” Alyce said.

  “Because we busted out all the lights.”

  “Yes. Also, the verge is breathing out the dark.”

  He recoiled a little. “How do you know?”

  She held out her bare arm and ran one fingertip over the pale upright hairs. “I feel it.”

  “A dunking in Lake Michigan in October might leave you a bit chilled too.”

  “I don’t feel the cold. They burned witches.”

  Why was she drifting back toward spacey Alyce? The stabilizing influence of the league should have been helping by now. He clamped his hand over her forearm. “You weren’t drowned. Or burned. Or hanged.” Despite the mark the demon had chosen to leave on her neck. “You weren’t a witch.”

  She rolled her arm under his hand and matched his grip, pulse to pulse. Her stare was icy. “Maybe not then. Let’s go.”

  They descended the ladder—Alyce hopping down each rung on one leg as if her knee bothered her—but the crypt was empty. Sid’s demon, on high alert, cast every corner of the chamber in an eerie demon glow.

  No lurking djinn-man. If there had been, the teshuva no doubt would have been hightailing for its hiding place behind his solar plexus.

  “Thorne must’ve dived out too.” Sid’s fists tightened at the thought of the djinn-man sharking through the water behind them. “Or maybe he broke the glasses to sneak past Therese.”

  “Or he went out the other way.” Alyce pointed at the verge. “Through there.”