“Thank you for forgiving me for last night.”
“I didn’t go quite that far.” She tucked the stone under her sweater, and he sighed to himself. “I’m no saint to offer forgiveness.”
“No saint. Demon-ridden. And demons don’t lay blame for anything. It’s the other side that withholds absolution.”
“Since we’re both demon-ridden,” she said, “maybe we should just let it go already.”
He inclined his head. “The naïve apprentice surpasses the master.”
“I said mentor,” she reminded him. “Not master.”
He smiled. “My mistake.”
“You won’t make it again. Zane is teaching my first lesson in fighting this afternoon.”
He tried to look solemn. “I shall be duly afraid.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Weren’t you leaving?”
He bowed and left.
Despite years of sporadic residence, his room was barer than hers. He imagined the tart comment on her lips and fell into bed, the stench of destruction lost in the lingering perfume of honeysuckle.
Archer woke hours later, showered, and e-mailed his night’s counts to Bookie, then headed down to the kitchen where Niall stocked a gourmet larder, though the copper-bottomed cookware shone from lack of use.
There’d been a lot of broken dishes in Sera’s apartment. He wondered if he had the cojones to ask her if she actually knew how to cook.
Maybe if she hadn’t joined Zane’s fight club yet. He grimaced and poured himself a glass of organic orange juice.
Niall had once tried to engage him on the topic of sustainable agriculture, but Archer had looked him hard in the eye and reminded him he wasn’t a farmer anymore. That shut Niall up, though it hadn’t stopped his sighs at the mountains of empty wrappers of decidedly nonorganic doughnuts, nachos, and things that could be microwaved in his otherwise-pristine kitchen.
Archer settled at the counter just as Ecco sauntered in, rubbing the back of his neck. The talya grunted something unintelligible. Archer nodded coolly.
Ecco grabbed the juice from the fridge and sat at the far end of the bar. He took a swig from the carton.
Archer raised one eyebrow. “We have glasses.”
Ecco swallowed another deep draft. “I’m going to drink it all. Why bother?”
“Because a feralis wouldn’t.”
Ecco stared at him.
Archer sighed and elaborated. “Because we’re civilized human beings.”
Ecco laughed. “I saw the laundry you left for pickup. You had to double-bag it. Obviously you spent a very civilized night.” Suspicion brightened his eyes. “After you peeled that veneer a little too close to the bone, did you come home and put that boner to good use? Did our sweet new talya make you feel like a gentleman again?”
Archer put his glass down gently—or gently was his intent. The glass shattered. Shards pointed up from the circular base like a screaming malice mouth.
“Never,” he said softly. And he did speak softly, though the annihilation-class harmonics raised shivers in the broken glass so the jagged teeth sang discordantly. “Never speak of her again.”
Ecco sat back. “That’ll be tough. She’s part of the league now.”
Archer reined in his cold fury. “Then treat her with respect, as you would any of us.”
“Do I respect any of you? But anyway, she’s not like us.” Ecco’s expression clouded. “Everything’s changing. A female possessed. Ferales hunt in packs now. Malice leaving the shadows. I smell djinn on every quarter of the winds, and it drives me mad. Are we truly losing this war?”
“At least no one will make you use a clean glass.”
Ecco glared. “You go out as furious as any of us. More. So quit pretending you don’t care.”
“I’ve lost wars before. It’s not as hard as you think.”
Ecco crumpled the OJ carton and pitched it. The container bounced off the wall into the recycle bin. “You call us garbagemen, right? Hard to charge into the apocalypse when you’re hip deep in your own trash.”
He rose and sauntered toward the door.
Archer lifted a hand to halt him. He’d never thought of the brutish Ecco as prescient or even particularly lucid, but the talya’s conviction struck him hard. “I’ve seen you at least knee-deep in ferales guts, and you didn’t use the word ‘apocalypse’ then.”
“Knee-deep? Oh yeah, I remember that. Good times.” Ecco shook his head. “This is different.”
Archer let him go. Interrogating Ecco worked no better than asking a woolly caterpillar how it knew to grow a woollier coat when the coming winter would be harsh. He grimaced at the homespun analogy that came so easily to his mind after years of denial. Yet another change.
He’d talk to Bookie about the stone, about Sera, about the never-ending battle that seemed balanced at a turning point. And on his way to the lab, maybe he’d stop by the ballroom and contemplate the source of Ecco’s unease.
CHAPTER 14
In the hotel ballroom, Sera eyed a pair of fencing foils crossed on the wall. “I wouldn’t want to face even a malice with just those.”
“Once upon a time, those were the weapon of choice,” Zane said. “They say ferales weren’t so large as today.”
Sera blinked in the misty daylight bouncing off the wall of mirrors. “Demons evolve? Fascinating.”
“Before my time. I’ve only seen them big and scary as shit.”
“I’d still rather have this.” She walked down to the machine gun display. “Doesn’t quite go with the theme of the room, but feels more reassuring.”
“The theme of the room is ‘Save your ass.’ ” Zane grinned. “The league teaches combat skills from the martial arts, swordsmanship and marksmanship, wrestling and tumbling. But possession gives you all the raw fundamentals of gutter fighting.”
Sera wrinkled her nose. “Gutter fighting?”
“Anything goes and there are no style points, because in the world of demon destruction—Hey, what’s that?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw him swing a closed fist. Her pulse ramped into overdrive, and her
heart picked up a strange syncopated beat, as if assimilating another rhythm. His fist seemed to slow, trailing an afterimage.
She threw up her elbow and deflected the blow, then spun on the ball of her foot, put herself behind him, and shoved him away. “What are you doing?”
“Testing.” He rubbed at his forearm. “You pass.”
She scowled. “No more pop quizzes.”
He turned her toward the mirror, urging her with a smile when she resisted. “Did you feel the demon ascend?”
She stared into her own violet-flecked eyes. “Maybe.”
“You’ll learn to call on it, to use the power of evil for good.” He brushed one fist over the ragged hem of his cutoff sweats. The
reven
below his knee was a simple geometric wave—it lacked the intricacies of her mark or the raw boldness of Archer’s. “Sometimes, you won’t want to turn it off. It’s just easier to let the teshuva run rampant.”
She shifted uneasily. “Sounds a little too much like the kind of demons the preachers warn against.” She tried not to remember the sound of her father’s cry—anger, fear, and hatred like a writhing ball of biblical serpents.
“No doubt. Let’s try some moves. The teshuva may win the night, but training can save you some flesh and scars.”
When she’d contemplated taking Betsy’s self-defense class, she’s never imagined needing it to slay demons. Probably that went without saying. She’d thought it would build strength and confidence, be a good workout. Now, she had all the strength she could need and had lost confidence in anything she ever knew. At least it was still a good workout.
She panted through a third cycle of the stylized routine. “Any reason the demon couldn’t give me buns of steel along with immortality?”
Zane ogled. “Why mess with perfection?”
She rolled her eyes back. “You know what I mean.”
“You’re still human, mostly. And your life isn’t in danger, so the demon stays latent.” He drummed his fingers against his thigh. “Maybe it’s not supposed to be too easy.”
She dropped into a lunge and tried not to topple over. “Trust me, it’s not.”
“I mean redemption. Doing the wrong thing seems easier.”
“Stagnation and decay are inevitable.” She slowed to let the routine seep into her muscles. “Entropy is the fate of the universe.”
Zane scowled. “Bummer.”
“All else being equal,” she amended. “Our presence infuses fresh energy into the system.”
“But we can never give up or rest, or the other side—chaos—wins.” He stared down. “We’ll never win.”
“The hardest moment in my old job with hospice patients was accepting the moment there was nothing left to do.”
“Then they died,” he reminded her. “We don’t do that. Not easily, anyway.”
“Point being,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I had to be satisfied with just being present, that being there was all I was meant to do, and it was enough.”
He glanced up. “And were you satisfied?”
She wondered when she’d decided that her old job was just that—old, in the past. And that it hadn’t really been enough. She wrinkled her nose. “At least you get to kick the ass of the things that annoy you.”
“Now so do you.” He raised his fists. “Let’s fight.”
“Enough.”
The voice from above brought them up short. In one of the balconies overlooking the ballroom floor, Sera caught a glimpse of a darker shape.
“Archer.” Zane tipped his head back with a ready smile. “What do you think?”
To her disgust, she found herself holding her breath to hear the answer.
“She drops her guard on left-side attacks.” Archer stepped to the front of the balcony. The weak sunlight left shadows to curl down his arms into the demon mark.
He jumped over the balcony railing and, before Sera could scream, had dropped the two stories into a neat crouch a few steps away.
“Don’t try that at home, kiddies,” Zane muttered. “Not unless you can call on your teshuva at will.”
“Don’t ever do that again,” Sera said, much louder. She wanted to yell over the pounding of her heart in her ears. “You scared the life out of me.”
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “The demon won’t let you go that easily.”
Then he attacked.
Silent and so swift she didn’t see him move, much less catch the afterimage. He pinned her right hand behind her back. He didn’t guide or suggest. He just held her tight.
Her skin tingled at his touch, her muscles wanted to yield before his greater strength. Like an inexorable time-lapse tide, desire lapped over her. Only fury at her own lack of self-control kept her afloat on the relentless flow of craving.
She pivoted on the ball of her foot, not fast or strong enough to break his grip. But she caught a glimpse of the violet sheen in his eyes.
Oh,
now
he wanted to play for keeps. And how pathetically needy was she to soften just because he’d said a few nice words about how she probably wasn’t unut terably evil?
She feinted right again, since he expected it. When he started to follow, she wrenched left. She ignored the grinding pop in her right shoulder as she aimed her left elbow for his temple.
He ducked to avoid the blow and she was free. She danced away a step, then pounced.
Let him make all the snide comments he wanted about her weak left side. Her only desire was to throttle him with both hands. But her right arm wouldn’t move.
He grabbed her left wrist. “Hold, Sera.”
“Oh sure, stop the fight when you’re losing. Again.” He’d walked away quick enough last time.
His lips twisted, amusement or annoyance, she wasn’t sure. “Your shoulder.”
As soon as he spoke, the radiating pain made her gasp. She glanced down at the unnatural wrench of her arm.
“Out of joint,” Zane said. “You got her?”
“Wait,” she said.
Archer reeled her in. Zane took her elbow in one hand and held her upper arm with the other. “Take a deep breath and let it out while I count down. Three. Two . . .”
In one steady pull, he slid her shoulder back into place.
She yelped and rocketed away. Her flight carried her halfway across the room. Her gaze locked on the mounted machine gun a long moment before she turned to glare at the men.
“Now, Sera.” Zane held up both hands.
She rubbed her shoulder. “Don’t even.”
Zane slanted a glance at Archer.“We could’ve worked on the left side tomorrow.”
“And if she met another feralis tonight? I tell you, she encounters them with unnerving frequency.”
She bristled. “I’ve walked away fine from every encounter. Except when I’m fighting you.”
She caught a glimpse of regret in the half-mast of his dark eyes before he turned back to Zane. “Make her work both sides every time. No sense setting her up for failure.”
“Standing right here.” She waved. “And not deaf.”
“Just a newbie on the fight scene,” Zane said soothingly.
She scowled. “Not so new. One malice dispatch and three feralis assists.”
Archer rolled his eyes. “And learning fast.”
“You’re not the only teacher around,” she shot back.
“But I’ll be one of them.” He made it sound like a threat.
Zane brightened. “You’re sticking close for a while? Jonah said I should ask you for some pointers.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to get back to the bat cave?” Sera muttered.
Archer didn’t even glance in her direction. “I want to go through some archives.”
Zane pursed his lips. “Those old things? Looking for something in particular?”
Archer shrugged.
Sera stifled her own spurt of curiosity. Whatever he did was his business. He’d made that clear enough. “Ready to try again, Zane? I think I’m starting to feel my demon ascend.”
Archer shook his head. “You need a chance to heal. You and I will go a round tonight.” Before she could protest, he said to Zane, “Shall we spar while I wait for Bookie?”