Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls Read online

  Every morning of his long-ago life, he’d breathed over the black coals of his cold forge, rousing them to the fiery intensity that had been his livelihood. To fail then had been to go hungry, which was nothing compared with what he risked now.

  So he coaxed Jilly from the abyss, with his touch, with the words he’d feared to say.

  “My weapon. My woman. My heart.”

  Her lips warmed under his, and the breath she finally sucked down was his.

  He pulled her up tight against him when she cried out, “Where—?”

  “Hush. I’m here. I’m always here for you.”

  She clutched him. “I was trapped. I didn’t think I’d find my way out.”

  “Who better than a blacksmith to make the key? But now you’re stuck with me.”

  She gazed up at him, and the frantic whirl of violet calmed.

  “Forever.” He kissed her again, long and lingering. With eternity ahead of him, he vowed he would awaken her so every new morning. “Forever, if you will.”

  She lifted her hand from where he’d still held it tucked against his chest, and drew his arm forward. Snug around his right bicep, a torque gleamed with twisting threads that matched the strange glow of her bracelet. “Looks like I already did.”

  He rotated his elbow, admiring the seamless silvery flow that circled his arm. “The recoil when the hammer hit the djinni . . .”

  “What a tangled web of soulflies, demon bits, and shattered hammer.”

  She curved against him with a weary sigh, and he leaned close to shelter her from the rain. “Still,” he said, “the tenebraeternum armed me with a matching band, but it did not give me you.” He tilted her chin up to gaze into her honey-cinnamon eyes. An endless feast for his body and heart, yes, but only if she spoke the words.

  After he did, of course. He was still the leader. Though it counted to him only if she was willing to follow. With her beside him, he could go on forever. “I do love you.”

  He felt the shudder rip through her, and for a heart-stopping moment, he feared he’d opened some abyss worse than anything the league had documented.

  But she only smiled at him. “You say it with such conviction, just like you do everything else.” A sheen lit her golden eyes.

  Not just rain, he realized, tears. His rebel tyro cried because of him. A hammer blow to the chest would have been less shocking. “Trust me, Jilly, this is like nothing else. You are like no one else.”

  Her smile deepened. “I love you.”

  He would’ve stayed happily trapped in the moment, locked the world out. But around them, the bone-chill wind of the tenebraeternum whispered as Archer and Sera joined forces to shepherd the defeated demons back through the Veil. A malice screamed somewhere in the darkness, its ether unraveling, then fell silent.

  Jilly touched his temple, bringing his attention back to her. “Where’s Corvus?”

  He rested his head against her hand. “I don’t know. I was only looking for you.”

  “Well, the league won this battle, if not the war. We’ll get him next time.”

  “We?” He settled on the concrete as if they had all the time in the world—which they did—and there was no place he’d rather be. Which there wasn’t.

  “I realized there was something bigger than me,” she said.

  “That’d be me.”

  She nudged him, gently. “Not just you. Us.” A jerk of her chin indicated the other talyan, the warehouse, the league. “I get that now. The rebel finally has a cause.”

  “But the cause is not enough, is it? You showed me that.” He tucked back wayward blue strands of her hair, softened in the rain. “Everything I know the league should stand for—salvation for the city, redemption for the teshuva, hope for the talyan—all of it doesn’t matter if there’s not a place for this, for you and me.”

  She blinked, tears spiking her lashes, and he kissed them because he knew his tyro talya would always have her spikes, and he loved her for it. Her hand dropped to his chest and fisted in his shirt as if she’d never let him go. “Why did we have to take such a winding path to get here?”

  “I had to quit drifting,” he said, “and you had to come out from behind that maze of walls you built around you.”

  “I couldn’t have, not without you. You came over the walls for me.”

  “Through,” he said. “Through the walls. Hammers are a good weapon for that. But you followed me out.”

  “I will always follow you.” She tucked her head under his chin. “As long as you don’t do anything colossally arrogant.”

  “Not with you around to save me from myself.”

  She untucked enough to peer up at him. “This won’t be easy, you know. I won’t be easy.” When she bit her lip uncertainly, he caught a quick scent of sweet cherries, as if the wild wind had blown in an early spring.

  He pressed his lips to her brow and closed his eyes for a moment. “Then I’ll be the center of your storm.”

  He stood, lifting her to her feet with him. They turned to face the ruined street and the salvage warehouse with its windows cracked and ichor smears, the talyan standing in ragged ranks.

  She slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow and leaned close, the torque pressed against the reven that curled over her breast. He smiled down at her, his heart light—and his soul too—as if they wanted to spiral in on the woman beside him, now that they’d finally found their place. “Welcome home.”

  EPILOGUE

  “How convenient the league keeps a warehouse full of architectural salvage.” Jilly tweaked her teshuva to heft the heavy stained-glass window into the gaping hole left by the “unexplained gas-line-leak explosion.” The city inspector had eagerly latched onto that excuse, which Liam had offered without a single betraying blink. The only other explanation for such devastation would be an all-out war of some sort.

  And who would believe a war existed between evil incarnate and . . . well, not good guys, but repentant demons? Plus, Liam had promised to pay for the street, although Jilly wondered if they’d have to sell the last of the aging fleet to pay for it.

  “Convenient? Hardly.” Sera held up her end with equal ease despite the impatient April wind that pushed at the bright patchwork of glass. “The league just has a tendency to need replacement pieces.” Then she winced and cast a sidelong glance at the talya fitting the shims at the base of the window. “Oh, Jonah, damn it. I’m sorry. I might be sharing half my soul with Archer, but I shouldn’t let him take my discretion too.”

  Jonah, his arm stump held tight against his body, didn’t acknowledge her apology. “We should have abandoned this place, like we left our hotel last time we lost to the djinn- man. We can’t let the league’s mission be revealed.”

  From the doorway across the room, Liam said, “The league’s mission remains. But it’s past time to make a few changes, which includes standing up to the fight.” Jilly’s breath caught at the sight of him, tall and focused as ever, yet with a conviction now that drew her irresistibly. Good thing she was holding a window or she might just embarrass them both. He crossed to her side with a smile, as if he knew her thoughts. “Corvus and his djinni won’t find us so alone next time.”

  Jonah rammed the shims under the frame, all crooked, and walked away.

  Archer, who had arrived with Liam, stood to block him until Liam gave a small shake of his head. The blond talya shouldered past Archer into the hall, the crack of his boots on the linoleum louder than any demon worth its repenting would ever allow.

  Sera winced. “So who got the discretion? Nobody here obviously. He’s still hurting.”

  “The teshuva healed the wound,” Archer said.

  Jilly shook her head. “But he is still alone.”

  In silence, Liam adjusted the shims while Archer fixed the window in place.

  They stood back to survey their work. The plaster was broken in raw chunks and the metal fins of the window frame stuck out, but the spring sun blazed in riotous color across the flo
or.

  “Pretty,” Sera announced at the same time Archer said, “Last one.” They leaned into each other with matching smiles.

  Liam gathered Jilly even closer. “You got Dory settled in with the others?”

  “That’s why I couldn’t come to bed. I know we’re back on the hunt tonight, but I saw Jonah couldn’t handle the window by himself, and . . .” She leaned her head against his chest, taking comfort in the steady thud of his heart. “And there were just so many. I don’t know how Nanette will cope, even if she says she has other angelic possessed willing to work with Lau- lau’s dowsing technique.”

  He smoothed his hand over her hair, then lifted her chin to meet her gaze. “Maybe they can extract all the solvo, but there’s no guarantee all the pieces of her lost soul will find her again.”

  “And no promise the soul can take up residence in the body—I know. Nanette explained.”

  He brushed a tear from her cheek with the edge of his thumb. “Still, there’s a chance, so there’s hope.”

  “That’s what the mated-talyan bond gives us,” Sera said, her tone pensive.

  “A piece of our soul back?” Archer asked. “Since apparently discretion is nontransferable.”

  But Jilly understood. It was all she’d ever wanted to give the kids she’d worked with, all she’d wanted for herself. “A chance at hope.” She traced one finger down the lead solder in the stained glass, the dull metal holding such beauty together.

  “Is that what Corvus learned from us?” Liam mused. “Where there’s love, there is hope?”

  Archer snorted. “What does evil hope for?” When Sera frowned thoughtfully and took a breath to answer, he ran the tip of one finger over her lip. “Never mind. I’m sure we’ll find out. Later.”

  Sera nipped at him, then sighed. “Still so much we can’t answer.”

  “Together,” Liam said simply, “we will.”

  Jilly pulled her hand back from the window when her thumbnail dented the soft lead, gray as the demon realm. The tenebraeternum wouldn’t be so easily mastered. But if anyone could do it . . . She gave her man, her mate, a brash smile and pulled him down for a kiss. “Evil doesn’t stand a chance.”

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS FROM THE @1 ARCHIVES

  ascendant: The rise of a demon within a possessed human; refers to the initial incident of possession and subsequent risings.

  birnenston: Also known as brimstone. A sulfuric compound leached from some demonic emanations interacting with the human realm.

  desolator numinis: “Soul cleaver”; a demonic weapon.

  djinni: djinn (pl.) Upper echelon of demonkind; fallen angels who are content to stay fallen.

  djinn-man: A human possessed by a djinni.

  ether: The elemental energy of spiritual and demonic emanations.

  feralis: ferales (pl.) Lesser demonic emanation encased in a physical shell of mutated human-realm material. Physically strong but not so impressive in the brains department.

  ichor: A physical by-product of demonic emanations not compatible with the human realm.

  league: Isolated clusters of possessed fighters assigned to high-density human population areas with the mission of reducing demonic activity.

  legion-tenebrae: Blanket term for lesser demonic emanations, including malice, ferales, and salambes. Also tenebrae.

  malice: Incorporeal lesser emanation from the demon realm, typically small and animalistic in shape with protohuman intelligence.

  mated-talyan bond: The synergistic combination of male and female possessed powers.

  reven: The permanent visible epidermal mark left by an ascended demon.

  salambe: Highly emanating demonic form from the same subspecies as malice.

  solvo: A chemical version of the desolator numinis; produces opiatelike effects in humans while splitting off the soul.

  talya: talyan (pl.) 1. Sacrificial lamb, a young man, Aramaic. 2. A human, typically male, possessed by a repentant demon.

  tenebrae: Blanket term for lesser demonic emanations, including malice, ferales, and salambes. Also legion-tenebrae .

  tenebraeternum: The demon realm, separated from the human realm by the Veil.

  teshuva: A repentant demon seeking to return to a state of grace.

  Veil: An etheric barrier between the human and demon realms composed of captured souls.

  As a Chicago heat wave threatens to melt even concrete and steel, the city’s underground league of demon-possessed warriors readies for the final battle against a rogue djinni seeking to unleash hell on earth.

  Ex-missionary Jonah Walker lost his wife, his faith, and his soul when his demon came to him. Maimed in the league’s last djinni encounter, he’ll do anything to join in a talya bond, to find a new right hand to continue the fight.

  Too bad that right hand comes attached to the sexy curves and smart mouth of a down-and-out stripper whose touch is the spark that will burn him alive.

  Continue reading for a preview of Jessa Slade’s next Marked Souls novel,

  VOWED IN SHADOWS

  Available from Signet Eclipse in April 2011

  His congregation would have died—again—seeing him in a place like this.

  Jonah Sterlings Walker kept his arms crossed so he wouldn’t inadvertently touch anything. He’d learned that lesson the first night at the Shimmy Shack when his elbow had stuck to the tabletop. Presumably the tacky substance had been the congealed spill of some previous customer, but whether the spill was a beverage . . . If he could’ve kept both feet off the floor, he would’ve done that too.

  Unfortunately, the repentant demon that had shattered his soul in return for vicious fighting skills against evil hadn’t gifted him with the power of levitation.

  Or invisibility. From the gloom beyond the stage curtain, the woman’s gaze weighed on him like lead anchors. Violet-tinted lead anchors, a sign that her demon—which had been circling her without her awareness for more than a week by the league’s calculations and finally settled in three nights ago—was on the verge of its virgin ascension.

  The only thing virginal about her.

  The volume of the unrelenting din they called music dropped as the deejay exhorted them, “Put your hands together. . . . Scratch that, put ’em in your pocket—not your front pockets, you filthy jag-offs, your back pocket, and start pulling out those Lincolns for . . . our naughty Nymphette!”

  A few men hooted as told; a half dozen others tipped back their drinks as if suddenly very thirsty. She stepped onto the stage, bare as the day she was born. Barer, since even newborns slid into the world with more body hair than that.

  The costumes earlier in the week had been bad enough. Layers of vinyl and gauze, links of chain, strings of white eyelet lace from another century, adding insult to injury. And he’d suffered injury aplenty, with every knock of his cock against the back side of his zipper.

  At least the ridiculousness of the schoolgirl knee-socks, the maid’s apron, a kimono of all things, patently unsuited for the feral tangle of her dreadlocked hair, allowed him to steel himself—in more ways than one—against the inevitable fleshly display.

  Jonah snapped his eyes closed. Too late. Under the harsh lights, her dusky skin glowed, sleek as the snake threaded across her outstretched arms. The shine off her shoulders, the snake’s coils, and—ah, dear God in heaven—the fullness of her breasts burned on the insides of his eyelids. Unfair that she could invade his defenses with nothing more than . . . nothing.

  He might as well see his oncoming destruction. He opened his eyes.

  She glided across the floor toward him, her bare feet silent on the parquet. But she timed each footfall for every other beat of the music, so even though her approach was slow, his heartbeat quickened against his will to echo the incessant bass.

  Which made him wonder, exactly how repentant was his demon?

  As always, she moved with an almost agonizing grace, a difference from the other dancers he attributed to the forty pounds of reptile hung around her bod
y. Sweat glistened across the skin of her chest, but her spread arms were unfaltering under the weight. Only her rounded hips marked the cadence.

  After the gyrations and jiggling of the others and the gleeful flinging of G-strings, her prolonged tension unsettled the room. Jonah stiffened against the twist inside him that tightened his muscles and sharpened his senses: the demon reacting to the changing ambience, the first whiff of threat.

  Where was the teasing smile? The bustier and the stockings? He felt the uncertain shift in the men around him. Here were the tits and ass they had come for, and yet this was not their fantasy. This was too raw, too wild.

  The ropes of her dreads slid across her breasts, hiding, then revealing her dark areolas, and the blunt ends lashed the high upper curve of her buttocks. Achingly slow, she raised her arms, and the snake eased from her shoulders to spiral across her torso. The scales, colored in shades from chocolate to sand, rippled down her body. Its blunt diamond head poised for a moment like an earthy jewel centered above her navel, then continued lower.

  Her hands tracked its descent, easing over her breasts, lingering at the flare of her hips. She tipped her head back, throat exposed, and her dreads swung loose as the snake coiled down her thighs.

  It pooled at her feet like a shed skin. Unfettered, she stood exposed, her taut curves the same tawny brown as the middling tones of the scales, an illusion of snake to woman. Hell on the herpetological half shell.

  Jonah’s pulse thundered in his ears and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath in too long. When he finally did, it sounded like a gasp.

  In the middle of the stage, the lights aimed with such salacious focus not a single shadow remained on her; not the faintest female mystery was left to the imagination. And yet somehow, he knew he wasn’t seeing all of her. The purple smudges around her eyes seemed to absorb the light, but her gaze fixed on him, still and predatory behind the unnatural thicket of her lashes.

  The demon was rising in her, and it called to him, teasing him to reach out.