Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

“To say no to the demon.”

Liam Niall had regrets. Many regrets. Any 180-year-old man could expect to fuck up now and then. An immortal man could expect to survive the fuckups with the burden of guilt weighing ever heavier.

As the word “demon” reverberated between them, he contemplated the incredulous woman before him. His delay finding Jilly Chan, his failure to warn her that she’d been chosen by an unbound demon that would possess her soul and doom her to an eternity fighting the endless battle between good and evil . . . Yeah, this particular fuckup was going to haunt him for a very long time.

But as the leader of the Chicago league of talyan—soul-damaged warriors possessed by repentant demons called teshuva seeking salvation—he’d long ago stopped listening to the little voice inside that warned of danger and destruction and doom. Damn it, he was possessed by a demon hell-bent on obliterating every lesser demonic emanation from the other-realm that had the bad luck to cross his path. The little voice inside him was always freaking out.

And so he had squelched the restlessness that had kept him wandering the streets long after the rest of the league retreated for the day to sleep off their wounds. But as the nights passed, the little voice had gone from a whisper to a scream, until he was frantic with the need to silence it. Roaming the neighborhoods, he’d felt like he was missing something, and the sensation had been unnerving.

As the league’s leader, missing something was tantamount to betrayal. He’d looked for a ferales’ lair or malice flock, or another potentially disastrous tear in the Veil like the one that had nearly spelled their end just a few months ago. Even a disturbance in the other-realm ethers could mean yet more peril for his possessed fighters.

And then he’d found it.

Found her .

Trailing her unbound demon like a silk scarf, the pixie with the triple-X-rated curves had instantly caught his eye, as both a demon slayer and a male. Her black hair, spiked with propane- flame blue, matched the titanium loop piercing the nostril of her flat- bridged nose. Both affectations faded beside the golden honey and cinnamon of her eyes.

That exotic regard had passed over him without interest, focused as she was on handing out socks and sandwiches to the homeless who’d gathered in the park that day. But even that glancing heat had turned his watery bones to steam.

It shamed him now—without changing his belief that he’d do exactly the same again—that he’d run back to the familiar cold comforts of the league.

But one of his best fighters, Ferris Archer, had looked him over and said, “You found her.”

For the first time in a long time, Liam rejected necessity and played blissfully ignorant. “Found who?”

“You can’t just blow off the mated-talyan bond. I should know.” Archer lifted one eyebrow in a self-deprecating gesture. Winning that recent battle to save the city had proved easier than winning Sera, the first female talya in living history, though in the end, she’d only asked Archer to give up his death wish, his bloody arrogance, and his heart.

“We don’t know anything about joined talyan,” Liam objected. “Thanks to Bookie absconding with the only extant reference.” He peered at Archer. “Unless Sera has found something you haven’t told the rest of us bachelors.”

Archer schooled his expression, but a glint of sinful pleasure—and a touch of that arrogance—brightened his eyes. “She’s been working her way through the archives, trying to find any references to female talyan, the mated bond, soulless armies, and all the other crazy shit we’ve been facing lately. But there’s a lot to go through, especially with no trained Bookkeeper.”

“Then if you don’t know anything—”

“I know that even with demon-amped strength, you can’t run from this.”

“Since when do you believe in destiny?”

“Who said anything about destiny? I mean you can’t run from this fight.”

Bowing to the inevitable, Liam had sent the league’s best tracker to find the new female possessed. Haji had learned that Jilly Chan spent more time on the street than at her desk for her job with Reach Out, a halfway house for homeless teens, but she’d been absent from her usual haunts, no doubt subliminally unsettled by the other-realm forces focused on her. The tracker had chased the intermittent energies of the unbound demon with no luck. They’d missed picking her up before she got to her apartment one night, and then a surge in demonic activity had distracted them.

Finally, following the relentless echo in his chest, like an indefinable hunger determined to assuage itself, Liam had found the source of his unease facing down not one but three ferales, with their demonic emanations clothed in menacing corporeal husks.

The recent pack behavior of the previously solitary ferales was worrisome enough; to think that they’d had Jilly cornered, her demon’s powers latent and inaccessible until the final ascension, made his blood curdle.

Now, staring at the pint-sized woman with the hot-toddy eyes, he wondered which lucky bastard would help escort her through the terrifying new life that awaited. For the merest heartbeat, he wished . . . But no, overseeing the league itself and the repentant teshuva’s eternal mission to atone was his calling.

He glanced down at her shit-kicker boots. He didn’t necessarily envy the man chosen to guide her next steps.

She narrowed those heated eyes at him. “Demon?”

He stifled a sigh. If the league kept adding new fighters at the current rate, he’d have to come up with a welcome kit, a handbook, and probably name tags. Since when had fighting evil included management issues?

“This sounds insane, of course,” he started.

“Yeah, why stop the reality thrill ride now?”

“These . . .” He toed the butchered feralis. “These are lesser demons, drawn to the demon that has possessed you.”

She straightened, though the extra inches barely lifted the blue spikes of her hair up to his chin. “Is my head coming off next?”

Ignoring the ichor staining the hammer, he slipped the weapon back into the sheath in his coat. The move didn’t seem to particularly reassure her. He couldn’t blame her. “The teshuva demon in you is repentant, seeking to atone for its sins. Like the one in me.”

She stared at him. “You’re possessed. By a demon.”

“You’re finding it hard to believe, I know. But soon your demon will make its virgin ascension. Its influence will spread completely through you. Then you’ll understand what I’m saying. For now, I just need you to believe that you could’ve been killed tonight by these monsters. And more of these will be drawn to you until you’ve fully integrated the teshuva. So you’ll take the guard I give you.”

Her glare struck him like a match head.

He shrugged. “Think you can stop me?”

She looked down at the tiny blade in her hand and echoed his shrug.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “And you’re not crazy, seeing these entities or listening to me. I know you’ve gone through some rough times lately, that you’ve been feeling isolated and alone, as if you’ve drifted away from your life.”

“I suppose you stalkers prefer isolated victims.” She flicked the blade in the box cutter another notch longer. “I should warn you, lonely or not, I won’t go easy.”

“No doubt.” He refrained from explaining that a demon-ridden warrior who went easy wouldn’t be much use in the never-ending battle against evil. “I’m just telling you what we know of possession. The other-realm entities that possess humans always mark people already trapped between hammer and anvil, with fire all around.”