A murmur swept the room. Such a long possession indicated a demon of incredible power. The demon would need to keep human flesh alive through centuries of cellular decay and the inevitable madness of isolation brought on by such unnatural longevity. And, of course, win every battle with every angelic host it encountered.
How dark must the djinni be to never release its stranglehold on one man? And how twisted must that man be? Archer’s own heart withered at the thought.
Bookie went on. “The register says Corvus was an arena slave who fought his way to gladiator rank. On the verge of earning his freedom, he was pitted against three cannibal savages, a lion and a bear, and an alleged Amazon—at the same time. He lost. League chronicles from then on repeat variations on the Corvus name.”
“Why the bid for apocalypse now?” Archer wondered aloud.
Bookie shrugged. “Because he can?”
“There’s never been a better time,” Jonah said. “Or should I say, a worse time. Today, one bomb maims hundreds, one disease wipes out thousands, one dictator dooms millions to poverty and terror.” In his vehemence, blood trickled from his barely knit flesh. “Evil isn’t just beating us. It’s pointing and laughing and racking up frequent-flier miles too.”
“Well, statistically,” Bookie said, “there are more people on the planet, so of course more people bleed, suffer, and die.”
Niall rubbed a hand over his face. “So now God is a numbers runner? If anybody’s running, it’s us, out of options.”
“Not really,” Bookie said. “Do what you’ve always done. Just keep playing along.”
Ecco stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“The angels and djinn fight a holy war that can never be won. The teshuva fight for a redemption they can never earn. And you all are just along for the beating.”
Bookie tapped the papers against his leg. “Keep up the good work and nothing has to change.”
Archer’s gut twisted at Bookie’s interpretation, even though he’d come to the same revelation a long time ago—though not so long ago as Corvus, who’d apparently decided to end the stalemate.
In some sick way, he understood. As Sera had said, empathy meant feeling, truly feeling, another’s pain. He had less than two centuries to Corvus’s two millennia. Now that she’d brought his emotions back to life, reminded him what it was to fear, he could only dread what Corvus was capable of, having lived ten times the agony.
Bookie cleared his throat. “I’ve also finished the workup on the most recent possessed.”
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “Sera.”
Bookie shrugged indifferently. “Her technique for dispatching malice brought up some disturbing questions—”
“Skip to the point, man,” Jonah said.
Bookie glowered over the rim of his glasses. “The continued tenebrae activity is due to persistent damage in the Veil. And she is the one preventing the Veil from sealing.”
“The Veil is always in flux after a crossing,” Ecco said. “Although not so long, usually. Her teshuva—”
“Not her teshuva,” Bookie snapped. “She.” His gaze narrowed on Archer. “Sera.”
Archer felt a chill go through him. “How? She’s human. Demon-ridden, yes, but still human.” Suddenly, the distinction seemed terribly elemental to him.
Bookie frowned. “In the ESF reading, Sera’s soul force radiates outward into our realm, conjoined with the demon, just like any talya/teshuva possession. But her soul force also cascades
backward
along her teshuva’s remaining umbilical. Through the Veil. Into the tenebraeternum.” He gave a little shrug, with an expression like reluctant admiration. “You could almost say
that instead of the demon possessing her, she is riding the demon.”
Archer stiffened. “No one would choose to be possessed.”
“That’s your occupational myopia. If you’d look around, you’d see people are capable of more than you suppose, all on their own.”
Reluctantly, Archer considered Sera’s history. Between her mother’s suicide, her career in death, her accident, her relentless delving into mysteries with no answers, maybe she hadn’t chosen to bargain her soul, but a conspiracy of circumstances had cut off any other path.
Niall asked, “What does this mean to Corvus’s plan?”
The pages in Bookie’s hand crinkled as he clenched them. “I can’t say. I just thought it was interesting. Has to make one question Sera’s intent, unconscious or not. And, actually, the true strain of her demon since it apparently crossed over in response to Corvus’s tweaking the Veil.”
Valjean straightened. “You think we’ve been harboring a djinn all along?”
Archer took a step forward. “No.”
“Djinn or teshuva, the flaw in the Veil remains,” Bookie said, “so it doesn’t really matter either way.”
Jonah sputtered. “She’s conspiring to free all the denizens of hell, and you don’t think that matters?”
Archer spun on the other man. “Sera does not want to destroy the Veil. She fights for us.”
Jonah scowled. “I won’t risk losing my soul just because you’ve lost your head fucking a djinn whore—”
Archer punched him. He aimed the short, vicious blow for the neck wound. Fragile, new flesh parted under his knuckles, and blood sprayed. Jonah reeled back, falling to his knees.
With a harmonized shout, the other talyan piled on
Archer, pinning his arms. He braced his legs against their weight so they couldn’t take him down but stood unresisting.
He stared at Jonah through narrowed eyes as Niall helped the other man to his feet, hand clamped over the reopened wound.
Niall scowled at Archer reprovingly. “He wasn’t hurt enough?”
Archer cocked his head, assessing. “I could punch a hole in the other side, even him up, since he’s such a stickler for appearances.”
Jonah croaked something unintelligible. Niall led him to the lobby chairs and handed the bleeding talya a decorative pillow. “Hold that against your neck until it clots.”
Ecco chortled. “Now we see how our fine gent here is part of her connection to the demon realm.”
Bookie, who’d put half the room between himself and the scuffle, halted his retreat. “What do you mean?”
“You said you saw the link to the demon realm in the spectrograph. What I saw on the ESF recorder down in the lab were three strands. The thin umbilical of Sera’s demon, and piggybacked on that, Sera’s bright soul line. And then the third line, stronger and darker than the others. Archer.”
Archer remembered the braid of light pictured on the screen, the three strands in an intricate weaving dance. “The third strand would be the malice.”
Ecco shook his head. “No way would the emanations from a single malice show up as such a high-amplitude wavelength. And it’s the amps that get you. Sound like anyone we know?” He hooked his thumb meaningfully at Archer.
Everyone stared at Ecco. He shrugged. “Shit, guys. I’m not just a pretty face, and I do know my malice.”
Bookie wrinkled his lip toward a sneer. “And you think
he
is linked too?”
“The bond between them is damn strong, emphasis
on ‘damned,’ ” Ecco said. “Just ask Jonah. When he stops foaming blood.”
“Ecco,” Archer said softly without turning to look at the man, “I don’t want to hurt you too.” But he would. He figured that part went without saying.
“You’re an arrogant asshole,” Ecco said, “but you don’t lie to yourself. If Sera is the bow, you’re the arrow. The power and the point. She held the fissure in the Veil, and you rammed the malice back through.” He secured his grip on Archer’s arm. “Kinda like the aforementioned fucking that’s got you wound so tight around her.”
A bone-deep tremor shook Archer—every atom of his being coursed with demonic fury. He held himself stone-still, though the room around him glimmered with the black-light effect of hunter’s sight.
“I suppose there is historical precedence,” Bookie said grudgingly. “If you consider that women have always been in charge of life and death. And, anecdotally at least, a woman had first dealings with a devil and suborned her mate later.”
Ecco laughed. “I so dare you to say that to Sera’s face.” The big talya tightened his grip another notch, as if he feared his next words would be even less well received than the last. “She might have the soul connection to the dark side, but when Archer saw she was in trouble with the malice, he jumped in with annihilation on his mind. If Eve had him around, farmer boy here would’ve made her apple pie.”
Valjean, hanging off Archer’s other arm, grunted. “Explains why we’ve never seen this phenomenon. No female talya.”
Ecco nodded. “And no way was I going to have sex with any of you lot.”
“When was the last time I thanked God?” Valjean let go of Archer. “This is all very titillating, but we’re no closer to finding the djinn-man. How Archer and Sera
send demons back through the Veil won’t save us if all the demons come pouring over to our side first.”
Niall glanced over the tense group, his gaze narrowing on Archer. “We’ll find Corvus and stop him. We’re going to trap him.”
“Liam.” Despite the arcing demon energy, Archer’s blood froze. “No.”
“Trap him?” Valjean perked up. “Have to admit, it’d be easier if he’d come to us. Why would he—?”
“Not Sera.”
Archer stiffened, hearing the words screaming in his head spoken aloud. He glanced over at Bookie.
The historian shook his head. “You can’t use her as bait. We can’t risk Corvus taking her from us.”
From his chair, Jonah snorted, spurting blood.
Niall frowned at him. “I said hold that pillow tight.” He turned his attention to Bookie. “Corvus wants to exploit her teshuva’s connection to the tenebraeternum. He doesn’t realize he’d be stealing half a weapon that could destroy him.” His expression remained impassive, as if he weren’t discussing sending Sera to her likely doom.
Archer spurred his demon, felt the ripple through his body, and fixed his gaze on Niall. The league leader should know the other half of his new weapon wouldn’t be passively aimed. “I won’t let you sacrifice her.”
“It’s what we do, who we are.” Niall’s gaze never flickered, his demon latent as he spoke the cold truth. “And it’s all our souls at stake.”
Into the tension, Bookie said, “The probability of catastrophe halved is still fifty percent too high. Why hand Sera to Corvus on a silver platter now? Give me time to finish my work.”
Archer knew what Sera would say to that idea. He wrenched out of Ecco’s grasp and stalked toward the door.
Niall called out, “Where are you going?”
“The birnenston is making me crazy. I’m leaving before I do something I might regret.” He glanced at Jonah on the way past. “Which is not you, by the way.”
Jonah flicked him off with vigor, and Archer was grudgingly glad he hadn’t killed the man.
He had enough undying regrets. But if the only way out for him had to be paid with Sera’s gold head on a silver platter, he would live with those regrets. However long—or short—that might be.
CHAPTER 21
When Archer slammed through the safe house door, he left a glimmering violet outline of his palm embedded in the wood. He must be radiating on all wavelengths, overwhelming the house energy sinks, to leave such blatant demon sign in his wake, but he refused to name the emotions that narrowed his vision to the woman before him.
He curled his hands into fists, wanting to reach for her, but fearful of what marks he’d leave this time.
Sera, focused on her laptop, didn’t even glance up.
He towered over her. “Get up. We’re going.”
She pecked a single key on the keyboard. Still looking at the screen, she said, “Can’t,” and held up her arm with the tracking bracelet.
He slipped his fingers between the manacle and her wrist. The contrast between the slick coolness of metal and fine silk of her skin hummed in his senses. He snapped the bracelet in two.
The halves fell to the floor with echoing thuds.
“Oh dear, my unbreakable titanium alloy.” She lifted her gaze from her bare arm, still cradled in his grasp. “Bad day?”
“Getting worse,” he growled. But the warmth of her penetrated his icy rage. The tug that lifted her to her feet was only as abrupt as simple male arrogance required. “Come on.”
“I was in the middle of something.”
“Yeah, you are. What do you think’s making it worse?”
A flicker of alarm crossed her features. She stopped being a deadweight. “Where are we going?”
“Away.”
“Let me get my bag.”
“Now.” He’d made clear to Niall he wasn’t okay with the baited-trap idea. It wouldn’t take long for Niall to figure out that “wasn’t okay with” meant “was going to stop it.”
Luckily, the house was almost empty, and he’d yanked the telephone landline on the way in. By the time Niall connected with a talya close by, Sera would be safely away.
Archer didn’t want to hurt anyone else today. And he didn’t want to wonder why he was willing to kill for this blond wisp of a demon-ridden woman at his side—just because his experience with demons and her link to the other side combined into a weapon unlike any found in talyan archives. . . .
More than two millennia of league knowledge—not to mention his almost two centuries of numbing annihilation—had been thrown into utter confusion, and all because of her.
Two cab rides and a fast walk with several doubling backs brought them to the greenhouse. Sera glanced over her shoulder as he unlocked the door. “So whom am I watching out for here?”
“Anybody who looks like a bad guy. Or a bad guy pretending to be a good guy.”
“Right. That about covers it. Except for the good guy pretending to be a bad guy.”
“We don’t have any of those.”
“Yeah, we do.”
When he glanced down, she was looking at him. He pushed her into the building and locked the door behind them.
She rubbed her hands up over her arms, and he realized he’d dragged her out of the house without her coat. Preoccupied with his suspicions, he hadn’t even offered his.