Jessa Slade - Darkness Undone

Archer lifted his head. “That is not for you to know. Be grateful we’re showing you the verge. It’ll blow your dissertation—and your mind.”

More new words rolled around like careless cannonballs until Alyce thought she might be crushed. “I thought we were getting food.”

“The verge is dessert.” Archer ushered Sera past, then Alyce, but let the door swing shut toward Sidney.

Sidney stiff-armed through with a glower.

The tang of peppers swirled past Alyce, and her stomach growled. She passed Archer, who was talking to the dark-skinned woman behind the counter where silvery tureens brimmed with stews and vegetables.

Sidney slid a tray in front of her. “What do you want?”

“Everything.”

Sera laughed. “Say what you will, the girl knows her mind.”

Sidney ignored her. “Let’s start with something basic.” He nodded at the woman behind the counter. “Just the rice and beans. I’ll have the curry. Extra spicy, please.”

Archer bumped Sidney’s tray with another. “Make it two, Therese.”

“Tough guys,” Sera said under her breath. “I’ll have the rice and beans too, and kanyah for after.”

Alyce curled her lips in and hoped she wasn’t drooling as Therese passed the bowls plus a teapot over the counter.

Sidney leaned closer. “Do you remember your last meal? Maybe before you were possessed?”

“Sid,” Sera snapped. “Really, the only thing worse than asking about a woman’s age is quizzing her about her diet. If you ask her weight, I’m going to deck you.”

“I can estimate her weight.” Sidney straightened his eyeglasses. “It’s the rest I want to know.”

Alyce missed the warmth of him, lingering at her shoulder. “I want to know too, but …” She shook her head, not sure if she wanted to jar the memories loose or warn him away.

Sera herded them toward the far corner with a view to the kitchen. “This is the talya table. You can tell by the extra jars of pepper flakes.”

Archer squeezed into the booth beside Sera, but Sidney put his tray down and pulled an extra chair to the end of the table. Alyce clenched her empty hands. Maybe he’d seen her salivating and didn’t want to sit next to her.

But he pushed a bowl her way along with a cup of yellow-green tea, and she decided to forgive him for the moment. The scents wafted up, complicated in a good way, as words could never be. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

When she opened her eyes, her spoon clattered against the bare bottom of the bowl and the other three were staring at her. Sidney pushed his plate toward her. “I can’t finish.”

He hadn’t even started. Sera and Archer sat with spoons poised and still sparkling clean.

Alyce took a slower bite, savoring. “Thank you, Sidney. Sera, may I have the peppers, please?”

Archer snorted. “Yeah, she’s talya.”

Sera grinned at her. “Serves that teshuva right if you burn it out of you. It should have fed you better.”

Sidney leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, subtly distancing himself. No, not so subtly, Alyce thought. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked for the peppers, but the spreading warmth felt nice. And he had chosen to sit over there, away from her.

Sidney tapped the hinge of his eyeglasses, as if ticking off possibilities in his head. “How much of the memory loss might be long-term metabolic shock, not just faulty demonic integration?”

Sera passed pieces of kanyah around the table. “The teshuva provides perpetual physical maintenance, but some of the fine points get lost. Like daily sixty-thousand-mile overhauls without the detailing.” She leaned against Archer. “And some of those details are really important.”

Archer wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “Don’t need a memory to massacre tenebrae. And after a while—never mind how long a while is—maybe you don’t want to remember.”

Alyce met his hooded gaze, the sugared peanut treat sticky in her fist. “I try to remember, when Sidney asks.”

“Yes,” Archer said softly. “Let’s go downstairs and see what else gets shaken loose.”

Sidney stayed firmly in his seat, blocking the way. “I don’t like this.”

“You haven’t even seen it yet,” Archer said. “As a Bookkeeper, don’t you think you should not like something only with full knowledge of what you’re not liking?”

Sidney’s jaw clenched, and Alyce wondered what words he was holding back. He never seemed to bother holding back words, so they must have been very bad.

“I want to see,” she told him. “If it can help me remember, if it can help you, I won’t be afraid.”

Archer’s low laugh raised her hackles. “No reason to stop now.”

Sid had worked with enough ancient papyrus scrolls to know when something was crumbling out of his grasp. The harder he clutched, the quicker this meeting was coming apart.

He flanked Alyce as Sera led the way to the back of the diner where Therese gave them a distracted wave. Archer shouldered aside a full shelf of canned goods, easily balancing the heavy load to let Sera push back a plywood panel. She dropped out of sight, and Alyce reached out for the edges of the dark opening.

“Wait,” Sid said. When she perked up, clearly hopeful that he would think better of this, he nudged past her. “Let me go first.”

Could the talyan have found a more rickety descent? An old extension ladder was propped haphazardly on a painter’s scaffold forty feet above the ground, and an even older ladder spattered with paint spanned the lower distance. The wooden frame stuck a purely spiteful splinter in his palm as he clutched the rails.

When he got to the dirt floor—half silty mud, as if a flood had passed through a tomb—he forgot the petty pain as he followed a thick tangle of power cables to a row of glaring klieg lights. The aluminum hoods were focused with unblinking intensity on a … What?

In the middle of the otherwise empty chamber lumped a meter-high hillock of bleached bone and twisted glass. If he squinted, he could decipher the outline of the detonated soul bomb Sera had described in a few terse paragraphs in the league archives. The glass orbs embedded in the freakish sculpture had contained the energy of damned souls like spiritual shrapnel. When the bomb had gone off, it had left a crater, not only in the floor, but through the Veil between the realms and right into hell.

Mostly, though, the verge looked like an unwanted exhibit shoveled straight out the door of the Art Institute’s newest wing; abstract post-futuristic surrealism at its ugliest and most nonsensical.

Sid pushed his spectacles higher and tilted his head.

Nope. Still ugly.

Alyce dropped to the ground beside him with a splat. Conscious of her limping steps in the uncertain footing, he half turned to steady her.

From the corner of his eye, the hellhole gaped like a screaming mouth, aimed right at them.

“Holy shit!” He jumped toward the ladder, one hand on the highest rung he could reach.

Alyce, however, took a halting step forward.

Sera moved to join her. Archer leapt down from the scaffold above, his leather trench coat flapping. Sid flinched as the other man’s boots barely missed his head. When he straightened and faced the verge, its glassy fangs seemed to have lengthened while he wasn’t watching, each point glistening with a drop of black poison.

Alyce whispered, “It’s hungry too.”

In the hollow emptiness of the crypt, she sounded like a ghost. Sid could have done without the rapt expression on all three talya faces. What did they see? When he stared straight at the portal, the verge was a pile of trash. But in his peripheral vision …

It wanted them. It wanted to suck their souls and hawk up their empty corpses like sunflower seed shells.