Jessa Slade: Vowed in Shadows

“He’s going to cut through the Veil like he cut through you,” she told Jonah.

“I don’t care, not anymore. Not if it means losing you.”

“And now I do care.” She smiled. “It’s what you wanted, right?”

Stuck between the water and death, he canted toward her, every line of his body straining to reach her. “I want you .”

“I love you.” She whispered the words and trusted the demon lows to carry the truth through the shrill malice cries and the sudden boom of thunder as the clouds cracked and bled rain black as ichor.

Droplets clung to her lashes, lending light-spiked stars to the night.

Then she turned and ran toward the ring of monsters, jammed the broken tip of the lamppost into the concrete, and launched herself into the sky.

Damn her! Jonah vaulted from the boat to the pier railing at her first step away from him and hauled himself over with one wrench of his arm.

Nothing compared to her leap, of course. Adding the teshuva’s strength to her own daredevil insanity, she flung herself up into the open layer of night between the ferales roiling across the pier and the flaming cloud of salambes.

For an endless beat that threatened to drag his heart from his chest, she lingered at the top of the arc, a silhouette against the inferno.

The lamppost had no pole-vault flexion, only the demon’s power to get her past the tenebrae ring.

It wouldn’t be enough.

The sea of tenebrae was already turning to follow her flight, drawn unerringly to her.

Not that he blamed them.

He crashed into their rear guard, the sword a blur even to his teshuva vision. A head, a claw, a wing, a tail yielded to his blows. Ichor flowed below his boots, thin and viscous in the rain.

She was gone. Lost on the other side of the darkness.

And everything that remained of the man he’d been—no, of the man he wanted to be—was gone with her.

But he’d heard her last words. They echoed in his soul, stripped of demon harmonics. From the lips of his twisty, lying Nymphette, words simple and true.

Three quiet words sunk so deep into his heart, no hook would ever fish them out. He wanted her to say it again and again and again, to drown his disbelief forever in her sea-change eyes.

And he needed to say the words to her, to let the cry that echoed out of his soul.

The ferales closed around him. She was tenebrae temptation, no doubt, but he was a force they dare not deny.

The teshuva rose in him, fierce and furious with his desire. Where the loss of his hand had left him unable to balance it, now its havoc matched the tenebrae chaos like the dark water matched the sky. The triplicate edge of the sword and its shining point led him forward, a focus to his yearning for her.

Nothing would keep him from her.

His conviction was nothing mere demons could stand against. Hell itself didn’t stand a chance.

He spun and slashed. Every blow was a followthrough that eviscerated another feralis. The teshuva’s turbulent ascension spun curls of backwashed energy through the salambes.

A shiver went through the ether, and in mid-dance they paused.

Somewhere, the tenebraeternum was opening.

The league had reached the pier.

“Jonah!”

He looked up through the rain to see Archer beyond the ring of tenebrae. He’d fallen into a nightmare rhythm. Slash. Whirl. Parry. Duck. Slice. Repeat. With his teshuva rising higher, he hadn’t realized he had fought almost clear of the ferales.

From the other side of the ring, Archer wielded his battle-axe in an annihilating swing.

Beside him was Fane. To Jonah’s teshuva, the angelic host’s hand-and-a-half sword did indeed flame, giving the tenebrae one choice: fall back or fall to pieces.

Standing between demon and angel, Sera emptied the husks so thoroughly, no trace of ether remained, banished to hell. The chill of the tenebraeternum hovered over them, as did the cold realization that Nim wasn’t with them. They hadn’t found her as they fought their way inward.

The four of them circled, back to back.

“Where’s Nim?” Sera gasped. “The others are clearing the pier on their way here, but we need her.”

“She’s gone,” Jonah said. It had been so easy to track her here. The thunderhead of demonic emanations rising above the pier had been an unsubtle-as-Nim clue. Now his teshuva senses were muddled with conflicting energies, and he had only his need for her, his desire, to lead him.

“Gone again?” Archer slammed the axe through a particularly insistent feralis. “I’d be starting to get a complex if I were you.” He winced when his mate elbowed him. “Sorry. That’s right. I did get a complex when I was you.”

Jonah traced his sword through the last of the oncoming horde and smiled. “Complex? No. It’s really quite simple.”

“Nothing is simple,” Fane growled. “Or I wouldn’t be here. Your symballein has ruined millennia of perfectly good ignoring each other.”

The storm wind yanked at his shirt hem and traced up his skin with wild fingers to unlatch his heart. Jonah was proud. If it was the kind of pride that went before a fall, he already knew who he’d fallen for. “Nim is hard to overlook.” The powers of heaven couldn’t resist, so what chance had he?

“We’ll retrace our steps,” Sera said. “She’s on this pier somewhere. We’ll find her.”

Archer put his hand on Jonah’s shoulder. “She can’t have gone far.”

Jonah tipped the blade toward the salambes-laced sky. The tenebrae around them screamed their frustration. Or was it fear? They must feel the conviction that swept through him and aligned every impulse within him. “Not without me.”

Nim landed in a crouch and rolled, hoping she didn’t impale herself on the throwing knife at her back. She came up running, and the tenebrae didn’t follow her. She would have thanked God, but she suspected a much closer, slightly less holy power was fighting on her behalf.

She slowed and came to a stop when she spotted the hulking shape ahead of her on the sidewalk

“You nearly killed me,” Corvus bellowed. He still had his lamppost and he shook it at her.

From the deepened slur, she figured the man was in charge at the moment, since the djinni probably didn’t much care about death. Except that it still needed something from the man.

“If you’d given me the anklet—”

“Too late. Your league is here. They’ll open the way for me.”

“Not on your life.”

“That is no longer necessary.” Corvus’s guttural voice smoothed. The djinni ascended. “And neither are you.”

He leapt at her, bashing with the post. She ducked and whirled. The lamppost slammed into the window of the vacant shop front, and glass sprayed.

When she straightened, Corvus was gone.

“No way.” She spun. The sidewalk in both directions was clear. She looked up. Could he have made that three-story vertical leap? She knew she couldn’t, even with the teshuva.

She eyed the abandoned lamppost, wedged into the shattered window.

She gritted her teeth against the grind of glass on her palms and climbed through.

Unrelieved darkness, of course. A girl could get tired of never having the spotlight again. She crouched on the table where she’d landed and tweaked the teshuva to survey the interior. The space had obviously been a fast-food joint, and needed only a fresh coat of primary colors and somebody to crank up the deep-fryer to be functional again.

She stared over the counter toward the kitchen area. Toward a glimmer of real-world light.

Nothing to lose. She eased off the table, careful not to crunch on the glass. Tiptoes were good for sneaking.