The Darkest Night (marked souls ) Read online

  “The only thing we can do.” Her low voice sounded raw, hurt. “I notice you don’t say it’s a good thing.”

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, wondering if he should be pleased she’d said we. “Only thing, good thing, whatever.”

  “Whatever.”

  He wondered if the doomed Mirabel had spoken that same word in that same hollow tone. Guilt nipped at him. As an angelic possessed, he was supposed to show the way to salvation. Before, he’d mostly hacked a path, machete-style. But he didn’t have his sword now.

  “You have a unique opportunity here,” he told her. “The teshuva and the djinn don’t really communicate with their hosts. No one knows why the demons lend all their powers but none of their knowledge. You may be the only ex-tenebrae in existence with a voice.”

  “I have nothing anyone would want to hear.”

  “Maybe that used to be true, but the Chicago talyan are different from any league that has come before. They are willing to take the fight beyond what this world has known, and they could use all the help they can get.”

  She faced him, her jaw off-kilter with rebelliousness. “Even from an imp?”

  “Their demons are repentant, remember? Which means they were wrong first.”

  “I’ve tried to give them hints where I could, tell them what I’ve seen of the tenebrae.” She tugged at one of the loose curls of red hair hanging beside her cheek and coiled it around her finger. He realized the boldness was only a frail mask over her anxiety, as distracting and delicate as her antique glasses. “Obviously I can’t tell them I’ve seen too much since their task is to eradicate monsters like me.”

  “You are not a monster.” The words came out more harshly than he intended.

  She flinched, but the hard set of her chin didn’t waver. “The imp I was swallowed more darkness than every winter night you can remember times a thousand. You might be angel-ridden, but you have no inkling how bad evil can be.”

  Silence returned.

  The nursing home was dark, closed up tight, when they drifted to a stop at the sidewalk. The spitting snow had gone, but the cold seemed more bitter for it. Fane hunched into his coat and strode around the front of the car to let Bella out. She already had the last statue.

  For an instant, the sight of her cradling the infant with its upraised arms—Madonna and sinner in one—froze him in his tracks with a memory colder and more bitter than even the Chicago winter wind.

  Bella glanced up when he did not move out of the way. She frowned. “Cyril?”

  The dead shine of her eyes and his name on her lips, wary and miserable, went through him like a sword of ice. He took a step back, slamming his spine into the edge of the door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” His voice sounded hoarse, shaken. He swallowed hard. “It’s three in the morning and I’m un-stealing religious statuary with a demon. A demon I fucked. What could be wrong?”

  She tucked her head down and slipped out of the car, avoiding him. The power cord dangled behind her like a severed umbilical.

  He turned away, bracing himself on the frame of the car. The breath caught in his throat, freezing and jagged as the ice floes shoved up on the lakeshore by the relentless wind. He closed his eyes.

  Through his tight-clenched eyes, a pale glow intruded. Reluctantly, he glanced over his shoulder.

  In the middle of the plastic nativity set, Bella had plugged in the baby Jesus, and the off-white light blinked. She knelt to adjust the controller before tucking the infant in, and the light steadied. Fane averted his gaze from her bowed red head, the only color in the ghostly tableau.

  “Fane.” Her soft call stiffened his shoulders.

  If she thought he was going to let her keep the last one… “Let’s go.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “I told you already—”

  “I don’t care what’s wrong with you now. Get your head out of your ass and let your angel eyes out. Something is wrong here.”

  Hands fisted against the bottoms of his coat pockets, he stalked across the lawn. “If they see us out here—”

  “Never mind what they’ll see.” She rocked back on her heels, revealing the manger where she’d been about to put the statuette. “What do you see?”

  He blinked back the sting in his eyes from the rising wind, but the oily sheen of the glass orb where the baby should have been nestled writhed sickeningly in his vision. “What the hell?”

  She nodded. “There’s a soul bomb in the manger.”

  Chapter 7

  Fane immediately called the league despite Bella’s half-hearted protest. “If the bomb releases soul shards, it’ll bring tenebrae from all directions, you know that,” he told her. “The teshuva can contain the damage.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself though nothing seemed to stop the chills wracking her. “I know. Just…please don’t tell them…” She tucked her chin into her coat. “I don’t want the damage they contain to be me.”

  Fane lifted his chin and studied her down the length of his clearly-never-been-punched-hard-enough nose. “You have to tell them eventually.”

  Why, when they hadn’t figured it out yet? But she didn’t say that. “I know,” she repeated. “But I want to do it my own way.” When his expression didn’t change, she added, “I want to do it right.”

  That seemed to mollify him, at least for the moment. Anyway, he was too busy making calls on his cell phone. While he did, she walked the perimeter of the building, and when she returned, he was standing with his hands on his hips, staring impatiently at her.

  “Four more,” she told him. “Quite a bit bigger than this, and they are all wired. Looks like a mess of trigger, timer and accelerometer.” She angled her face away. “Guess it’s a good thing we stopped by.”

  He mumbled something she wasn’t sure she wanted to decipher.

  She was spared any need to reply when the porch light blinked on.

  “I called Nanette too,” Fane said. “She’ll need to know everything.”

  Bella huffed out an exasperated breath to obscure her flicker of dismay. She didn’t get much chance to cultivate attachments with other people, and the angel-woman had been kind enough. While Nanette had seemingly forgiven the talyan for their role in her husband’s murder, would she be so merciful toward a creature of the tenebraeternum? “Don’t tell her about me either. She’ll have enough to worry about.”

  He nodded once, curtly, and strode toward the other angelic possessed. Bella didn’t want to be surrounded by their flickering golden stares, but neither did she particularly want to wait at the street for the talyan who were no doubt gunning their crappy cars en route even as she dithered.

  She followed Fane.

  Nanette pulled the door half shut behind her and wrung her hands. “How did this happen?”

  “We don’t know.” Fane glanced at Bella. They might not know how, but they did know when. The soul bombs hadn’t been in place when she took the baby Jesus. Not that a timeline helped them particularly.

  Nanette clutched her housecoat around her. “Do we need to evacuate? We’re understaffed, but I can call in nurses and families.”

  Bella cleared her throat. “If it was a real bomb, maybe. But if the tenebrae are targeting the home, moving everyone will just add to the chaos. Adding to the chaos is never a good idea when dealing with the horde. Better to hunker down.” She slanted an accusing stare at Fane.

  He ignored her. “We need to check the interior too. I want to find every orb.”

  Nanette waved them inside. “How can this be happening again? Corvus was defeated.”

  “But evil wasn’t,” Bella said. As if to underscore her point, a trio of beat-up @1 sedans turned the corner, targeting the nursing home like mangy sharks. “Why don’t you walk me around?”

  The angel-woman nodded distractedly, and Bella didn’t look back as the talyan poured out to confront Fane.

  Inside, the home was almost ridic
ulously warm and smelled of cinnamon. Despite the fear and anger that had torqued through her since Fane’s return to the Mortal Coil, Bella felt her tension ease. She slipped out of her parka and left it on the bench by the front door.

  “I can’t believe you two found these things,” Nanette said as they crossed into the spacious living area.

  “Believe it,” Bella murmured. “Does Sera’s father go outside?”

  “Not so often when the weather is bad. Why?”

  The old preacher had noticed something amiss. “What does he do when he’s inside?”

  “Well, he watches TV here with the others and takes meals in the dining room, of course. And he likes to watch the fish in the aquarium.”

  Bella peered into the unlit gas fireplace. Nothing. “Fish, hmm? Show me.”

  Nanette led her around the far side of the living area toward the dining room. “Here, where everyone can enjoy them.”

  “Yeah, everyone.” Bella circled the large freshwater tank. “See anything new?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure I’d—Oh. Oh no.”

  The glass orb in the tank wasn’t as large as any of the others, but it had the same oily gleam, though the fish seemed unbothered. They cruised past the slowly roiling surface, their jewel tones distorted and weird.

  Bella sighed.

  “They were in here,” Nanette whispered. “The demons were in here.”

  Bella pursed her lips. “The demons are everywhere.” She lifted the lid on the tank.

  Nanette shifted uneasily. “Maybe we should leave it…”

  “I think we were supposed to find it. Otherwise, why put it in such a public spot?” She wondered whether the bomber had been rushed, bored, out of souls, or what, that they’d only found a half dozen of the weapons. Certainly she should be able to ascertain a motive. After all, she was a monster too. She wriggled her fingers to expel the shakes. “Besides, if it goes off, the talyan are already here.”

  The fish fled as she slid her hands through the cool water. She touched the orb’s surface carefully but found none of the wires of the versions outside. It did, however, feel as slimy as it looked, though nothing obvious slicked off on her fingers. She lifted the dripping ball from the tank, half tensed for a kaboom. But the oily luster continued its slow-motion boil across the surface, uninterrupted.

  Nanette stared at the bomb, nibbling her bottom lip. “Maybe we should break it. Shouldn’t the souls be freed? It’s wrong to keep them imprisoned.”

  “How very angelic of you,” Bella said. “But let’s stay down-to-earth for a little while longer, okay?”

  She headed for the home’s activity room where Fane and the talyan had convened.

  Nanette pulled the double doors shut behind them and faced the talyan. “Bella found one bomb inside. In the fish tank.”

  Talya eyebrows shot up as Bella displayed the fist-sized orb, but the littlest talya—Alyce, who had come to the league as a rogue—nodded. “Thorne.”

  Fane stiffened. “How can we be sure?”

  Alyce shrugged and leaned against Sidney, her Bookkeeper mate, who wrapped his arm around her waist. “Thorne was a bomb maker in his solely human days life. And he likes fish.”

  “Then why—?” Fane rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. So how do we spring this trap on him?”

  Sid frowned. “I consider myself a fairly clever fellow, but I don’t think I follow.”

  “Obviously Thorne intends this to be trouble for the league. He obviously chose this place because of your connection to it. So how can we reverse this, lure him in, use the souls against him, so I can…so we can end him, once and for all?”

  Talya eyebrows rose even higher, and Bella too wondered at the words Fane left out.

  “Warden,” Nanette said, with just a hint of shock in her voice. “We can’t put the residents at risk.”

  “Ex-warden,” Fane snapped. But he seemed to sense the disapproval coming from the talyan as well. “There wouldn’t be much additional risk, considering this season is already spiritually difficult time for some people—”

  “Fucker!” Bella punched him.

  Or meant to. She wished she’d swung first, then yelled at him, because he ducked, catching her fist on the heavy padding of his coat.

  He caught her second swing too and spun her into the steely cage of his arms. “What the hell?”

  She bobbled the orb, making the talyan gasp. “Hell is exactly what you’d bring down on them, you cruel, egotistical, evil asshole. And you think I’m the—” She choked on her own fury and almost stupid slip.

  Fane tightened his grip when she thrashed against his hold. “Calm down, Bella. You’ll break the orb. Or wake up the old people.”

  “And you’d rather have them innocent and defenseless in their beds!”

  “No one is innocent.” His low growl thrummed through her body, like a reminder exactly how innocent she wasn’t. “And they won’t be defenseless either, now that we’re here.”

  He spun her away from him, and she staggered a few steps. Despite his brusque dismissal, he kept a grip on her wrist and didn’t let go.

  Liam Niall—the big, steady leader of the league, who’d been the first of the talyan to see she was something more than a bartender, though he’d never pushed her to reveal more and she had never offered—watched them under hooded eyes, arms crossed over his wide blacksmith chest. “This is all very odd.”

  She didn’t want him to think how odd, so she hurried to distract them. “It’s odder than you might have first seen.” Fane’s grasp tightened, driving tendon to bone, and she hissed. “Those aren’t soul shards in the orbs. I think the bombs are packed with tenebrae.”

  The stifled uproar was bad enough that Nanette shushed them this time. “Unless you want to make breakfast for a dozen seniors. And I warn you, they all want their eggs cooked differently.”

  Ecco flexed his biceps, making the razor-embedded gauntlets on his forearms bristle. “I only do scrambled.”

  The exchange quieted the gathering, then Liam pinned Bella with a thoughtful stare. “So tell me your theory.” Despite his contemplative tone, his eyes churned with violet highlights, his teshuva on the prowl.

  She swallowed back the chalky taste of her nervousness. She had dealt with talyan before. Usually by getting them drunk, but still. “The energy is wrong. You can feel it.”

  “I can’t,” Fane said, grievance sharpening his tone.

  She refused to look at him. “Nanette, repeat what you said when I pulled the orb out of the tank.”

  The angel-woman frowned. “I don’t…I wondered if we should let the souls go.”

  “Not yet,” Fane grumbled under his breath. “Not until we get Thorne.”

  Bella shook him off and took a step closer to Nanette. “Why did you wonder that?”

  “Because even if they are just shards, even if these are remnants from the solvo drug that tore people’s souls apart, it’s wrong to lock them away.” She wiped her eyes, but conviction rang in her voice. “They need to pass on, to find their way to a better place.”

  With each heartfelt word, Bella advanced. And as she got closer to the angelic possessed, the ugly clouds on the orb swirled faster and darker, disturbed. The clouds circled away from the side nearest Nanette, as if the inhabitants tried to flee from her presence but couldn’t get far in the confines of the orb.

  “Whatever’s inside doesn’t want her sympathy,” Liam noted.

  Bella rolled a meaningful glare toward Fane. “Which is why you didn’t notice anything. They are responding to her compassion and gentleness, her love…”

  He tilted his chin up in that arrogant way that seemed to put him out of her reach. “Demons don’t know love.”

  “Yes, they do,” she countered. “And they know it has power over them, which is why they are trying to get away, not to her.”

  Liam nodded slowly. “The orbs here are nothing like the soul bombs Corvus blew out of glass. Those were almost beautiful, but
these… If this is Thorne’s work, he has taken the fight to a new level.”

  Fane crossed his arms. “Soul or demon, it doesn’t matter. The end result in either case will be too many tenebrae in one place, with all the pandemonium that entails.”

  Bella echoed his stance with her hands fisted on her hips. “And you think we should use the pandemonium against Thorne?”

  “Corvus proved the tenebrae can be commanded.” Then he gave her an assessing look she didn’t much like.

  The talyan, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents, were discussing among themselves.

  “If only we had a mobile app version of the verge,” Sid mused in his oh-so-proper British accent. “If the bombs go off, the verge could swallow the tenebrae en masse as they broke out of the orbs.”

  Bella couldn’t restrain a shudder. She’d heard the talyan talk about the verge, a portal into the tenebraeternum that had formed when Corvus Valerius sought to instigate direct war between heaven and hell. Although Corvus had intended to call forth the tenebrae, the talyan had claimed the portal occupying a dank basement at Navy Pier and managed to stuff more than one demon back down hell’s throat. She’d never seen it herself and never wanted to. The thought of being banished back to the tenebraeternum… It was everything she dreaded.

  Ecco scratched his gauntlets across the back of his head with the sound of sandpaper. “Mini pocket hells. Like purse dogs, except instead of bacon bits, they eat demons. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before.”

  “No need to be sarcastic,” Sid chastised. “See, it’s making the demons dance.”

  Bella stared down at the orb. It did indeed look ‘happier,’ if the steaks of pus yellow and mucous green churning over its surface were any indication. But was it the talya’s sarcasm or her own sickly churning stomach reflected in the glass?

  She tossed the orb to Fane. “It’s all yours, angel-man.”

  He swore and caught it gingerly, cushioning its fall with cupped hands. She couldn’t help but notice he was more tender with the bomb than he’d been with her.