“How can this be?” His question was a low growl. “Demon need takes the place of all other cravings. Only the mission remains.”
Heat, equal parts desire and dismay, swept her. Here she stood in the icy rain, arm half eaten by malice, but just because
he
was with her, nothing else mattered. She almost let go, to slip toward the gray.
His grasp never wavered. “Where do you think you’re going? As if we don’t have enough troubles in this realm.” He pulled her closer, so the trailing edge of his trench coat lapped around her. His knee nudged between her legs. “Damn it, they can’t have any more of you.”
He meant the other demons. Where his fingers twined with hers, faint color bloomed, and she imagined that potency spilling into her. As when they’d made love, his touch drove back the shadows, drove back the demon realm that beckoned.
But he’d reminded her, they had a mission. She wanted to understand. This realm held only questions, and the malice lurked at the root of them.
“I already know the many names of the shadow,” she whispered. “My question is why. You promised answers, demon.”
As she had before in Archer’s loft holding the pendant stone, she focused where the world went gray. She held tight to his hands, like a diver’s safety line, and followed the nebulous link down into the other realm.
To her altered senses, the malice was a thin silhouette against the endless murk; Archer was a restless thunder-cloud
shot through with scattered lightning in violet and bronze.
She felt as if she stood on a precipice, shouting into the void, with no hope of anything but an echo. But she had to ask. “Why pain? Why sorrow? Why insanity?”
From the depths sighed a mockery of her word—
Wwwhyyy?
—as if something gigantic and unseen had roused at her call and breathed out, sending up more impenetrable drifts of darkness.
“Why death? Why damnation?” She shotgunned her questions into the gloom. “And why, for God’s sake, can’t we end it?”
“I can end it.” Archer reeled her up against his chest.
Their paired hands came together between tattered ribbons of ether. The furious raw heat of him through the rain-slicked leather of his coat jolted her from the other realm. The vastness inside her telescoped closed with an almost aural shock wave that vibrated her bones.
The malice gave a shrill cry and collapsed in upon itself with a gritty puff of sulfurous smoke, leaving nothing between them. She staggered. Only Archer’s grasp kept her upright.
Another malice’s squeal sounded in the night, and then yet another, farther off.
Archer’s hands clenched on hers as he straightened, nearly yanking her off her feet again. “What the hell were you trying to do? And I mean literally hell.” Despite the incensed grip, his face was ashen. “Enigma-class demon or not, you can’t psychoanalyze a malice into oblivion.”
She coughed on the lingering scent of rotten eggs. “You didn’t exactly suggest a better way.”
“I prefer to pop them like a balloon. Although that always leaves some shreds lying around. Where did this one go?”
“You tell me, oh popper of many demons. You squashed it.”
“No. You did before I could.”
“How, when you keep holding back what I’m supposed to do?”
They matched glares. In his widening eyes she saw him realize, just as she did, they were still holding hands.
They took identical long steps in opposite directions. She wiped her palms down her thighs, trying to erase the chill of malice goo. And the warmth of Archer’s skin.
Between the anger and embarrassment, his expression was fiery enough. “That’s not how we fight. You can’t just dance down along the demon’s link through the Veil into hell.”
She answered, “I didn’t do it alone. You followed me.”
He opened his mouth, but instead, the shrilling cry of a malice pierced the night.
The scream shuddered down her spine. “I heard the others circling. Will they attack?”
He shrugged distractedly. “Saves us the trouble of hunting them down.”
“And the ferales?”
“They hunt us.” He refocused abruptly, the glint of violet back in his dark eyes. “I don’t know what happened, but malice stain is always blood in the water to a feralis. Let’s go.”
He spun on his heel and slipped into the night. Staying half a step ahead, he asked, “What did you think you were doing tonight?”
“How should I know? I’m not the ancient warrior.”
“I meant, why did you leave?”
She raised her face to let rain trickle down the corners of her eyes, as if mere water could wash away the remnants of the malice. “I wanted to visit my father. You said I didn’t need to cut all ties yet.”
“So you listen when it’s convenient. I listened too, to the screaming.” He glanced back, his gaze piercing.
She looked away. “He just had a bad night.”
“Bad because preacher man knows his beloved only daughter sold her soul to a devil.” His
reven
-marked hand was a fist. “Some people see through the mask of our flesh and glimpse the shadow underneath. The rare holy person, the mentally ill, some children, or an artist—the kind of people who are inclined to see things differently anyway. No one listens to them, so if they speak out, they aren’t heard.”
She bit her lip. “I didn’t want to frighten him.”
“Then don’t return. As the dementia advances, you’ll do more harm than good.” His voice dropped to a rumble. “Not uncommon for the demon-ridden.”
Abruptly, he halted, his hand upheld to stop her in her tracks. Violet raced along the
reven
.
“There.” His voice barely carried over the hiss of tires on wet pavement. “Under the trees.”
Even in November, the oaks held their kraft-paper leaves. The ground underneath was an irregular checkerboard of shadow and light from surrounding streetlamps.
Sera followed Archer’s pointing finger. “God, it’s bigger than the last one.”
“No God here,” he said grimly. “Just us.”
“Oh right, we’ll take care of this. So I guess it’s okay he’s been slacking for the last two thousand years. Anybody else we can call for backup?”
Wind rattled the wet leaves with a sound like hands rubbing in anticipation. Archer flicked her a razor-wire smile. “You wanted to hunt.”
She seriously doubted a feralis popped like a balloon, unless maybe like the Hindenburg. She swallowed. “It’s moving deeper into the trees. Does it know we’re coming?”
“Probably. You need to learn to keep your emotions in check.”
Just like him. He’d said possession compelled the deadening of feeling, but she wondered. “I thought we were going to lure it someplace.”
“Remember how you said your patients didn’t get to choose the time of their dying?”
Oh sure, the one time
he
decided to listen to
her
. . .
Archer kept the line of parked cars between them and the feralis as he stalked. Sera stayed low, trying to stifle her burgeoning dread. Though each step took her closer to the feralis, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Archer just ahead.
He glided through the dark, his coat flaring at his heels. The axe was out, long and wicked looking to her worried eyes. After hearing how the teshuva had come to him, she understood why he didn’t trust guns. But to get so close . . .
When he glanced back, lights flared violet in his eyes—the demon coming out to play.
No, not play. His expression was tight and grim. If he’d taken savage joy in destroying evil, he’d lost it along the way.
He cut between the bumpers of two cars and melted into the tiny woods. She couldn’t leave him.
The dark trees closed around them.
The feralis had gone deeper. She listened for the sound of its retreat, but heard nothing over the rustle of leaves above.
“Archer,” she hissed. The smell of wet, decayed earth clung in her nostrils, along with a fouler stench, like rotted meat. “Ferris, wait.”
He’d pulled ahead, one more shadow among shadows. She shook her head, trying to master the fear tight on her heels.
Something was on her heels anyway.
The back of her neck prickled, and she whirled.
The feralis dropped from a tree limb overhead. The thud of its clawed feet shook the earth. It straightened
until the bulging dome of its head brushed the leaves. It raised stunted wings, and its howl scattered leaves in all directions.
She spun around to run, to catch up with Archer and his suddenly too-small axe.
The second feralis appeared before she could scream.
CHAPTER 12
If he truly wanted to be alone, Archer knew he would’ve been grateful for the scream.
He whirled.The feralis filled the path, its chitin-armored back to him. It lunged at something out of his sight.
“Sera!” He sprang, blade low.
Not knowing where she was, he couldn’t afford to flail indiscriminately. He climbed the feralis’s back, like ice picking a mountain. The mutated insect flesh was as hard and uneven as any scree slope.
He wrapped one arm around its neck to get the axe in place for a throat cut. It scrabbled a multijointed limb at him, and he cursed as the barbed guard hairs clamped over his shoulder in the same spot the last feralis had wounded him. So much for preternaturally fast healing.
As he struggled to free himself, he saw Sera faced a second monster. She was trapped between the two. His heart stopped; the demon strength faltered in his muscles.
Ferales never hunted together—or they hadn’t before hunting her.
She evaded the winged feralis’s long arms with the same graceful twist she’d used last night at the club.
“Don’t dance with it,” he shouted. “Run.”
She glanced up wildly and spotted him.
The feralis she faced turned as well and lifted moth-eaten wings. He knew he could keep both demons occupied while Sera escaped.
Whether he’d escape too . . .
His feralis mount bucked, but not before he caught a glimpse of her face. He groaned at the sight of her jaw set obstinately off-kilter. She wasn’t going to run.
She kicked leaves at the winged feralis. “Hey, you ugly son of a bitch, no tag teaming.”
The feralis crouched and spun halfway around.
“Sera, catch!”
Archer released the hidden knife from the haft of the axe and flung it toward her, counting on her demon reflexes. Time slowed as she tracked the weapon’s arcing flight with an outstretched hand. Her body was already in motion, turning to confront the feralis, as the leather-wrapped handle slapped into her palm.
Time jumped to catch up, and she struck. The creature leapt back with a shriek, the retaliatory slash of its claws a many-tongued hiss in the night.
Despite his precarious position, Archer couldn’t take his eyes off Sera. His heart raced, but not for himself. He wanted to toss her the axe, improve her odds, but he feared the slick of sweat on his palm would betray him. Just his luck, to end up beheading her.
“Go for the throat,” he shouted. “Or the eye. Or the spine.” He should’ve skipped ahead to lesson thirteen: Vulnerabilities of Corporeal Demon Physiology. But he’d been giving her shit about pitying the malice.
His feralis flailed more determinedly. He had to finish it before it finished him and moved on to Sera.
Suddenly, dying in the glory of battle to send his hollowed soul to its questionable reward seemed like it could wait.
The feralis lumbered in a circle as if it had an itch
it couldn’t quite scratch. As it swiped at him again, he grabbed the jointed limb, avoiding the spiky protrusions. Summoning all his desperate teshuva strength, he yanked the feralis off balance.
It bellowed and twisted to reach up at him. The clawed point sliced into the back of his thigh, a piercing agony, but it lowered the shoulder pinching his weapon arm.
He laid the edge tight against the underside of its neck.
And loosed his own demon.
The axe bit deep. The feralis shrieked. The shriek died in a gurgle as the feralis came down like a mountain slide under him and pinned his injured leg. His head slammed into the hard-packed earth.
He choked on wet leaves and heaved himself up, hurling off the deadweight. His vision starred with nonexistent lights, he leapt at the feralis stalking Sera.
It turned to face him, its slavering maw opened in a cry of rage.
“No,” he growled back. “She’s mine.”
They collided with battering-ram force, his arm driven halfway down its gullet. Its teeth razored up his arm, and he stared into the bulging eye.
He cut its throat from the inside.
It fell, taking him down in a geyser of moldering leaves. Dying spasms locked its teeth on his arm just above the elbow, and he lay in the dirt, staring into the orange eye.
As the demon fury ebbed, as the pain crept into the emptiness, he knew he had won another battle, that his teshuva had taken another step on its path to redemption. In the feralis’s livid eye, he stared down that hellfire path. And saw it never ended.
Half adrift from the blow, his gaze wandered beyond the feralis and fixed on a darkness among the trees: a man, cloaked in shadows not cast by the trees, and betrayed
by sulfur yellow points radiating where eyeballs should have been.
A djinn-man. Come to finish them off in their moment of weakness.
Human adrenaline and demon vigor surged and stuttered in Archer’s veins. Of all the times for the djinn to finally take an interest in the chores of a teshuva garbageman.
Then, just as suddenly as the figure had coalesced among the shadows, it melted back and was gone. Wet leaves glinted with the reflected yellowish lights of streetlamps.
“Archer?”
Sera’s whisper brought him back with a snap. Had he seen anything at all? No djinni would pass up such an effortless opportunity to destroy one of its traitorous, repentant brethren, would it? The jolt to his skull must have stunned him, seeing evil in every puddle of darkness.