Jessa Slade - Darkness Undone

Thorne stood and plucked his mug from the half of the mantel that had survived the wreckage. The coffee was hot, molecules excited by all the thrashing energies in the room. He took a sip and grunted with satisfaction. The day wasn’t looking too bad, after all.

He dashed the rest of the beverage in Carlo’s face. The djinn-man sputtered to life. He traced the tangle of iron through his chest with shaking fingers, and his whimper emerged in a bilious froth from the holes.

“Now crawl back to your bitch queen with your tail between your legs,” Thorne said, “and hope this time she listens when I say no.”

Sid woke in his own bed—well, not his cozy, duvet-covered bed in London, but his assigned synthetic brick, complete with threadbare hobnail spread, at the @1 warehouse—and squinted at the svelte blonde pushing back the noncomplementary curtains. The sudden light did nothing to dispel the cheap motel room ambiance.

He fumbled for his specs, knocking blood-soaked gauze from the bedside table. “Good morning, Sera.”

“It was once I flushed all the feralis filth out of your shoulder.”

He cleared his raspy throat and grimaced at the lingering chemical sourness of his body’s shock on the back of his tongue. With specs in place, he fastened his gaze on the china cup just beyond the flattened tube of antibiotic ointment. “Is that tea?”

“It’s my tea.” She snagged it and took a sip to demonstrate.

So she’d mend him, but she didn’t want him to think that meant anything—as if their attitude toward him hadn’t been made perfectly clear already. He pushed himself upright against the pillows and winced at the piercing twang through his shoulder.

“Don’t pull out my stitches,” she groused. “Here, have some water.”

God, they wouldn’t even share their tea bags. And he thought he could tease out the secrets of their unorthodox battles. “Thanks.” He took the bottled water she offered and cocked his head to peer at the line of stitches through his flesh. “Thanks for this too.”

Sera narrowed her eyes, as if she thought he was being sarcastic. “It’s crooked. We don’t do much darning here in Chicago.” She put an extra twist on the harsh middle a .

“I don’t do much needlepoint either,” he said mildly. “Which is why I said thank you, since I’d still be bleeding otherwise.”

Her glare didn’t change. “We don’t want you dying here.”

We don’t want you here at all. She didn’t have to say it aloud. With Sera Littlejohn serving as interim Bookkeeper for the Chicago league, Sid hadn’t realized he’d be stepping on quite so many toes—or toes so capable of kicking his ass. He thought they’d be relieved to have a replacement. Though the leagues strictly maintained their self-sufficiency, London-trained Bookkeepers, renowned for their learning and discipline, were in high demand. Even if he’d been a backwater Bookkeeper from one of the less rigorous, outlying schools, Liam and his crew should have been relieved. Talyan were never interested in books and stats and tests.

But the Chicago league seemed to delight in blasting never sky high.

If he could just get through to them, the exclusive research material would prove his merit as Bookkeeper once and for all. Even his father would finally have to concede and could rest easier knowing his life’s work would continue. “I need to talk to Liam. Is he still up?”

“Undoubtedly. He won’t sleep until he knows everybody survived the night. And since you were passed out in Jonah’s car …”

Sid gritted his teeth into something like a smile. “How inconvenient my maiming won’t heal in minutes.”

A spark of violet flared across her hazel iris. “You’d rather be possessed?”

He started to snap back but caught himself. What words had been about to leap off his tongue? Nothing to endear him, certainly. He said only, “I don’t want to die here either.”

Sera huffed out a breath he couldn’t interpret as approving or disappointed. “I’ll send Liam in.”

How humiliating, to interview the league leader from bed. “No, I’ll get up.”

“Liam told you to take the night off.”

“I did, and look what happened. Where can I find him?”

Sera stood back, neither helping nor hindering as he struggled out of the sloping bed and found a clean shirt. “He’ll be down at his forge in the loading bay. He had some things he wanted to pound out.”

What brilliant condition he was in to face the league leader. Sid managed to lock his knees enough to stay upright while he eased his aching arm through the sleeve. If he bent over to grab his trainers, he’d faint. That would be almost—not quite, but almost—as bad as grabbing the slip-on loafers out of his duffel.

The bloody bandages, oxidizing to a rusty brown, lay scattered like mute indictments of his vulnerability. He tried to console himself with the excuse of his near death as he left the room barefoot.

When the league’s last headquarters had been contaminated in a djinni attack, the warehouse had been remodeled with individual apartments on the second floor for the solitary talyan. Of course, they’d put him at the ass-end of the hall. And most of the fluorescent bars in the ceiling were out since talyan didn’t need artificial lighting. Now the distance between the darkened doorways seemed to stretch with spoofed horror-movie absurdity. But he gritted his teeth—though the tension sent a warning pang through his shoulder—and propelled himself forward. If nothing else, momentum would keep him going.

Even the immortal talyan didn’t trust the old freight lift that had once delivered architectural salvage to the upper floor, so he took the stairs down. Sera’s boot heels clattered out of sync on the metal treads as she paced his slow progression. Was she making sure he didn’t keel over, or did she just want a front-row seat while the league leader straightened him out like a bent nail?

With most of the talyan resting from their nightly hunt, their edgy energy blunted by countermeasures invented by Bookkeepers, the interior halls of the warehouse could have housed any business—say, day-sleeping accountants.

Had his life unspooled differently, he could have been an accountant. That was probably true for most people—at least for people who liked their numbers in orderly columns. If he had been an accountant … No, he wasn’t going to start counting those ways.

He shoved open the door to the loading bay hard enough that Sera jumped forward to catch the rebound.

Though the big exterior rolling door was closed, the October cold leaked through the vaultlike room. Despite the icebox temperature reflected by the cinderblock walls, the league leader was stripped down to his jeans and a black vest, his shaggy black hair caught at his nape with an elastic tie. Of course, he had the glowing forge in the corner to warm him.

Liam Niall was a big man, which was not unusual for a talya. The monstrous hammer choked up in his wide palm only exacerbated the impression. He tapped out a delicate rhythm with the tool, belying its blunt force as he hunched over the anvil.

The hammering did get a bit more forceful as Sid approached. “You’re still alive,” Liam said. “I’m surprised.”

Surprised did not necessarily equal glad. Sid twisted his lips. “No doing of mine, I assure you.”

Liam smoothed the hammer one last time over the metal, then held up his work. The deer horn knife—two edged crescents interlocked so that the points gleamed outward toward the four cardinal directions—shimmered under the severe fluorescent lights with a stark and dangerous beauty.

Sid blinked. Etheric emanations sank into weapons just as the demonic energies brutally and exquisitely honed the bodies of the previously mortal hosts, much like Liam’s hammer worked the metal. Sid had studied printouts of the spectral analyses, but he’d never seen the evidence with his own eyes. Maybe he had never been so aware before, so personally affected by the outcome.