Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

She paced in front of his desk, all impetuous curves and spiky nerves. He tightened his jaw against the clomp of her impatient boots. She wasn’t much more disciplined than the kids—streetwise teen hooligans, more like—she claimed as her own. But he’d bent wilder spirits to this unending task. “I can’t promise that.”

“I don’t believe in promises anyway. Give me something real I can sink my teeth into.” She swung to face him, her hand cocked on the hip of her low- riding jeans. “Give me something bigger than that stupid box cutter and I’m your warrior woman. For tonight anyway.”

He felt the tightening in his muscles, the prickle of his skin, as the demon in him stirred at the unruly battle cry in her words. He wrestled down its ready and willing mayhem, so in tune with the young woman before him. The demon possessing him might take hungry leaps toward repentance, but every swing of his war hammer thrust him away from the desperate detachment keeping what was left of his soul—what was him —intact.

Once, he’d worked with his hands to create; now he was half ravager. And the molten gold of Jilly’s eyes only lured him closer to his doom, like a stupid moth to singeing flame.

“Come on, then.” He thrust to his feet and strode past her.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m giving you what you want.” Avoiding the jumble of iron railings, reclaimed brick, and unique old tile, he led her through the halls. The stairs down to the basement were hung with empty picture frames, too opulent to hang above any couch and too battered for a museum. At the bottom of the stairs, he slapped his palm over a pale green lit square. When it beeped at him, he threw open the double doors. The lights brightened automatically.

Axes, double-edged swords, daggers, razor-tipped gauntlets, and more lined the sterile white walls. Even under the buzzing fluorescent fixture, the blades shone with brutal, honed beauty.

Jilly cleared her throat. “At least I know where to arm myself if World War Three breaks out.”

“It already has.” Liam strode into the room, then turned to survey her. He tried to keep his gaze critical as he swept her once from blue-streaked locks to heavy black shit-kicker boots. “Good weight on the bottom, at least.”

She stiffened at his perusal. “You saying my ass is big?”

It took all his unholy strength to move his gaze onward. “I’m saying, no sense throwing off your balance with an oversized weapon.”

“I’ve handled bigger weapons than yours.”

Her bold words rebounded between them. The first hint of uncertainty he’d seen in her—even when she faced the ferales in the alley with nothing more than a dull razor blade—flushed her cheeks with color, and she bit her lip.

The hunger that stirred in him at the slight vulnerability had nothing to do with the demon. He swallowed hard against it, and leveled his tone coolly. “No doubt your bravado has served you well. Did the demon come to you with the promise that now you’d finally be able to carry through with all that bluster?”

She stiffened at the question; her cinnamon-honey eyes narrowed.

“The demon always makes an offer we haven’t the strength to refuse,” he explained. “It knows us better than we know ourselves. I suppose that is the nature of temptation.” How fortunate for him that he’d been around long enough to amass scars of resistance.

“I’m tempted,” she said, “to grab that spiked mace and take a swing.”

He forced himself to focus on work. Pairing an unproven talya with the right weapon was vital. “If you want to try it out—”

“Just on you.”

Ah. He balanced on the balls of his feet as the demon shifted eagerly within him. “Always happy to help my tyros, my new fighters.”

“Yours?” When she wrinkled her nose, the piercing there glimmered.

Oh, so the ancient military term didn’t bother her, just the implicit hierarchy. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am the boss.”

Her hands clenched as if longing to wrap around that mace handle. Or maybe just his neck. “If you’re the boss, you should know human resources regulations don’t allow you to ask how people were lured to the dark side.”

“You’re not a human resource anymore, and technically, we’re the repenting side, which is at least a half dozen steps from the dark side.” Thinking of her hands on his skin wasn’t helping his focus at all. But how had the demon cozened her if not through her boldness?

He took a long step back—physically and mentally—and swept out one hand. “Choose.”

In his many years commanding the league, he’d learned a new talya’s choice of weapon indicated something about the man and the teshuva inside him. He was getting ahead of himself, putting Jilly through his tests so soon, but the urgency that had ridden him since the appearance of her unbound demon strengthened when she was near.

And with her hell-bent attitude, he suspected she might need all the weapons she could get.

He held himself silent and still though every muscle twitched to follow as she stalked past him to circle the room. She paused near the mace, slanted a molten glance at him, and kept moving.

She passed the white- men-can’t-jump wall of massive, double-handed swords representing a wide, bloody swath of European history. The aesthetically organized Asian collection of katanas and throwing stars earned not even a second look. Instead she came around again to the blunt-force-trauma corner. “No guns? No rocket launchers?”

“Rocket launchers tend to get noticed. We try not to be. More important, our teshuva need to get up close and personal with the tenebrae to destroy them.”

“I tracked down my sister’s pimp about a year ago, trying to find out where she’d gone. He stabbed me.” She put her hand against her left side, just under her breast. “Punctured a lung. Nicked my heart. But you already knew that—didn’t you?—from the dossier your people put together. Did it tell you that, even coughing up blood, I managed to knock out a few of his teeth?”

Liam pursed his lips. “So you’re saying you don’t need a mace.”

The protective cup of her hand slid around to settle on her hip again. “I’m saying I don’t need a mace.”

He wanted to argue in favor of the mace, full Kevlar—never mind that body armor interfered with the draining of demonic emanations, which was the sole reason for their immortal existence—hell, throw in a popemobile too. After all, the ferales had sniffed her out for some nefarious reason. And she was the one who’d asked for a weapon.

Ah, of course. He’d dealt with some angry, violent men in his time with the league, but nary a one as prickly as Jilly. She needed a weapon—she might even want one—but she wouldn’t want to need his. Or him .

Understanding didn’t blunt the poke of annoyance at her rejection. Just what he needed: yet another fiercely temperamental, insubordinate diva to go with the others—female and male—he already had. The teshuva seemed inexplicably drawn to the type, himself excluded, which often made him wonder how he had ever become their leader. Despite her rebellious independence, she’d come back to him. He would make her see she needed his protection.

And yet, he couldn’t quite curtail a pang of reluctant respect. Like all incoming talyan, she had to be confused and scared, but unlike some tyros he’d dealt with, she hadn’t collapsed in a catatonic trance, overwhelmed by the teshuva’s energies. Instead, he suspected her teshuva was going to have its hands full reining her in. Much as he himself would.

Refusing to indulge the image of his hands full of her, he gave a deliberately casual shrug. “When you change your mind about the weapon . . .”