Jessa Slade: Vowed in Shadows

“Yeah. Let’s wait till we get to the place. Yours, or do you have a hotel somewhere?”

Jonah stopped for a moment, so she did too. He lifted his head, eyes half-closed. The hairs stood up on her nape, and she had the creepy feeling he was listening to something she couldn’t hear, the aural equivalent of that strange emptiness in his flesh around the tattoo.

A trick, she told herself, part of his little demonic fantasy.

“Can we get this over with?” At an apprehensive twitch in her leg muscles, she shifted in her wedge sandals. Maybe she should have worn sneakers. She was faster in sneakers. Although why she had the feeling she should be running . . .

Jonah turned his face one way, then the other, a furrow between his brows as if the signal he wanted wasn’t coming in clear. “I don’t have a home,” he said absently. “I have a boat.”

She bit her lower lip. “It’s expensive to keep a boat.” She let her voice slide up in a question.

“Yes, the Shades of Gray came at a high price, even though I stole her from a thief.”

For some reason, the admission didn’t settle the twisting of her nerves. “I wouldn’t have guessed we had that much in common.”

“More than I’ve told you.” He opened his eyes wide and a glint of violet startled her. “We’ll find one soon. This is a good neighborhood for them.”

“Them? What one are you talking about?” Okay, she was definitely wishing she had her sneakers now. Or at least Mobi in her hands. “I changed my mind. I am afraid.” She wished she hadn’t said that aloud.

But this time Jonah did turn his attention to her. “You’re honest. Painfully so. I didn’t expect that.”

“You want honest? Okay, you’re creeping me out. Give me Mobi and we’ll be on our way. And by ‘we,’ I mean me and Mobi.” Not you. She figured she didn’t need to be that blunt. He was crazy, but not stupid.

He ignored her. “This way.” And he walked off.

He had Mobi, so she couldn’t just go the other direction, even with every nerve in her body screaming that she should run.

Actually, not every nerve. Just half of her nerves. The other half . . .

The other half, including the little hairs on the back of her neck, told her to follow him.

That couldn’t be good.

He was almost a block ahead of her and moving fast. She stumbled to catch up, cursing her slutty heels. They weren’t going to get her a bigger tip, as she’d hoped; they were going to tip her over.

Jonah ducked down an alley, and she sighed. Of course. A dark alley. He fantasized about demons, after all.

“Demons could live in hot tubs too, you know.” She paused in the mouth of the alley and scanned the shadows. “Let’s do a possessed-hot-tub scenario. It’ll be all hot, just like hell. But sudsy. Jonah, damn it, where’d you go? You have my snake.”

An echoing hiss from beyond a half-open door lured her deeper into the alley. “Mobi? Shit. I danced alone for years. I could do it again.”

Despite her couldn’t-care-less words, she crept through the doorway. There was too much broken glass to kick off her sandals. At least the cork soles were quiet.

Inside should have been all black, the brick walls broken only by a narrow bank of clerestory windows high in the second story. But when she blinked, a glow hazed the interior, as if someone had rimed the palettes and stacked boxes with white paint and kicked on a black light. Which, she supposed, went with the demon theme. If her dreads had been any shorter, she was pretty sure those would be standing on end too. She was going to be seriously pissed if something jumped out at—

With a shriek, she spun to face the shadow-within-shadow sneaking up behind her. How she’d known it was there . . . “Jonah, you fucker—”

It wasn’t Jonah.

God, it was nasty. Squat like a pile of something left on the sidewalk after the dog walker went by. Its flesh accordioned down to blunt, cloven feet, like cow hooves, except white and bulbous.

Before she could close her slackened jaw, the thing jumped at her with a squeal to match her own. She turned to run, felt the snap in her ankle, and fell headlong across the floor. Her dreads tumbled forward, blinding her.

Damn the strap for breaking now. But it wasn’t the strap. Pain arrowed up her leg, shocking her vision brighter as she pushed her hair from her face. In the sudden clarity, she saw the crest of oily bristles on the creature, could almost count the teeth in its gaping mouth as it bounded over her. Those approximately one million teeth snapped with an evil whistle through the air where her head would’ve been if she hadn’t fallen.

It whirled to face her, its rows of flabby, inflamed skin spinning a split second behind, like a zombie ballerina’s dead-flesh tutu. The row of protuberant orange eyes fixed on her.

She’d gotten one sandal unstrapped, so she threw that. If the monster was going to eat anything first, it’d be the damn shoe that had tripped her up.

The thing didn’t even flinch. It took one step forward, then stopped. Which gave her a chance to throw the other shoe right in its gaping mouth. “Fucker!”

A gout of black ooze spewed from its mouth. Flecks of the noxious fluid spattered over her legs and burned worse than nail polish remover on a torn cuticle. She shrieked again and crabbed backward, dragging her ankle.

“I could do without the swearing.” Jonah’s head popped up over the creature’s shoulder.

She screamed yet again, then realized he wasn’t wearing a monster suit. He was standing behind it, his hook buried deep in its neck, which had kept the monster from coming after her.

“I could do without the screaming too, now that I think about it.” The muscles in his arm stood out in stark relief as he restrained the thrashing thing.

“What the fuck?”

“Wonderful. Screaming and swearing.” Despite his even tone, his face was tense with the effort, and sporadic streaks of purple lightning raged in his eyes. Though the thing was shorter than him, it was three or more times his weight, and it yanked viciously against his hold, frenzied to escape him. Obviously, it was smarter than she had been.

Nim swallowed against the sour tang of bile. “What is it?”

“It’s a demon.”

“I thought you said the demons were in us.”

“The teshuva—the repentant demons—are. This is an impenitent demon, escaped from the demon realm to wreak havoc in this realm.” He twisted the hook and another flow of black liquid gushed from the creature’s throat.

She put her hand over her mouth. “Stop it.”

“You want me to let it go?”

“No!”

“Do you believe in demons now?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded ragged from the screaming. When he just stared at her, she said more shrilly, “Yes. How can I not?”

“You’d be surprised what people will ignore, even when it’s right in front of them.”

“I believe it’s bleeding on me.” She recoiled from the rivulet of ooze, stinking and smoking across the floor.

“Ichor. The rot of a physically manifested demon like this feralis. I need to incapacitate it before I drain it completely.” He ignored the thing’s half-choked sob.

“You knew it was here.”

“I baited the area yesterday. If you calm yourself—”

She hissed, and he gave her a reproving glance. “If you calm yourself and pay attention with your sharpened senses, you will notice the demon smears on the walls. I drained a dozen malice—another sort of demon—here last night and left their remnants. This feralis came poking around, hoping for an easy meal.”

“And found me.” Outrage warded off the sickness in her belly. “You were going to let it kill me to prove yourself.”