Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

Sera leaned sideways a few inches so her shoulder pressed against Archer’s. Liam wondered if that touch relieved the kind of tightness that seized his chest at Jilly’s words. Finally, he nodded. “Corvus and his djinni have been together a very long time.”

“Yeah, true love,” Archer growled. He winced when Sera elbowed him. “Meanwhile, where are we going to find him?”

Jilly straightened, and Liam glanced at her. “What is it?”

“True love,” she repeated. “Dory wanted Corvus that much. So where would a drug-addicted prostitute and her evil lover go?”

Archer shook his head. “We already checked her old apartment.”

Jilly hung her head. “Not where she lived. Where she turned tricks. Where I got stabbed.”

Liam ached to reach out to her. But he couldn’t take away her pain with a touch. He’d only made it worse. But as far as walks down memory lane went, this one was a real bitch.

Anyone who hunted evil for a living ended up in bad neighborhoods. Not that evil was limited to bad neighborhoods, of course, but bashing the shit out of evil tended to be less frowned upon in places where people were scared to look out their windows.

And somehow, it had always seemed more righteous to Liam that the league be most heavily dispatched among the places where people cared the least.

So police tape, cars on blocks, security grilles, and the smell of old blood were nothing new to him. And yet the street Jilly led them to offered horrors deeper yet.

Malice sign was everywhere, etheric hieroglyphics etched into the brick and cement. Faint smears of ichor glowed under his teshuva’s vision, marking where ferales had drooled over their prey. Maybe the bestial demons had snagged just cockroaches and pigeons, but Liam feared the worst.

Or maybe around here, a quick, violent death was less unspeakable horror and more business as usual.

Jilly stopped on a corner beneath a busted lamp and stared down the street. “That’s it, down there. This is as far as I got after Rico stabbed me.”

His teshuva shifted, tasting the passage of innumerable malice that had followed the riot of negative emotions that swirled on the street. However much of her blood had been spilled here, though, it had been trodden away by many careless boots.

“You made it a good long way.” Liam wondered whom he was trying to soothe, her with her pained memory or himself with his present fury. As if breaking into the Cook County prison to remove her attacker’s lung was justice. Still, his fist clenched at the thought.

She cast him an indecipherable glance. “Yeah, I made it all the way into the demon’s arms.”

They’d been his arms. Or the teshuva had taken his appearance anyway. He knew her one glimpse of him before the demon came to her hadn’t been the seed of her possession, just a symptom. But he wondered if she could ever forgive that essential betrayal.

Actually, how could she, when he continued to lead her deeper into danger and damnation? He wouldn’t forgive himself, even if this time she was leading.

She shook off her hesitation. “This way.”

He glanced back at the couple dozen talyan ranging behind, awaiting his command. Would they find a battle with Corvus and his minions? Or just a strung-out frightened girl? “Let’s go.”

The flophouse actually wasn’t the worst on the street. It sat back from the sidewalk a short ways beyond a wrought iron fence. Someone had stuck red plastic daisies along the walk. The gate was open.

The scent of the rusting metal caught in the back of his throat, though he didn’t sense the presence of salambes. Traces of ichor were well aged, though malice sign smeared the place thick enough he could almost taste the despair himself.

Archer prowled past him. “If Corvus’s djinni is dormant, we’re not going to pick it up. He’ll be just another wretched human.”

Liam drew breath to correct Archer’s harsh interpretation, but let it go. Since it seemed fairly accurate. “Once we’re in, the djinni won’t be dormant long.”

Archer inclined his head in agreement. “Flush the Blackbird?”

Ecco approached on the last words. “Did someone say flush? This place is the toilet to do it.”

Liam rubbed his forehead and sighed. He knew now was not the time for a lesson in compassion. Not that men possessed by demons had much room for compassion. “It’s not a big building. Teams of two. Door-to-door. No need to call out. We’ll know if you find him.”

Liam held Jilly back with a hand at her elbow as the rest broke along their preferred lines and filed into the building. She tensed against him, not hard enough to yank free, just enough to let him know she begrudged the restraint.

“You’re afraid,” he said. At her hard glance, he tsked. “For Dory, I know. But don’t add your negative emotions to the maelstrom. Even if you don’t bring a malice storm down on us, you’ll still cloud your view.”

She took in a breath, and though she didn’t meet his gaze again, for just a moment, she leaned into his touch. Then she set her shoulders back and gave a stiff nod. “Right. Can we go now?”

“Do you know which room was hers?”

“The girls didn’t have their own rooms, just took whatever was available.”

He blew the demon’s senses wide as they proceeded between the daisies. From the mingled strains of lust and disgust soiling the general pall of apathy and consumption, he guessed the building was still a bordello in daily use. The miasma was so thick, he couldn’t tell if Dory or Corvus had come through. No drifting scent of rain washed the air.

Maybe if he was touching Jilly . . . but that was just an excuse. They’d find out soon enough.

The talyan spread through the building, their soft footfalls lost beneath the creak of bedsprings, muttered curses, and the draft that moved through the shabby halls.

“Come on.” He headed down an empty hall.

Jilly followed. “Maybe this is pointless.”

“Maybe.” He figured she knew that, on some level, she didn’t want to find out what happened to Dory. Because it wouldn’t be good.

He flattened his hand against the first door and spurred the teshuva higher. The walls and ceiling pulsed with old energy signatures, malice and human, but nothing else. He knocked anyway. No answer.

Jilly stood a few steps away, her head cocked and gaze fixed on the stairway at the end of the hall. “Let’s go up.”

“But . . .” He stopped himself. “All right.”

They had just started toward the stairs when the scream rang out.

Jilly bolted ahead of him. Despite his burst of speed, she was already up to the landing before he caught her arm.

“Let me go.” Her voice vibrated with the demon. “That was Dory.”

“I know.” He didn’t let her go, but he hauled her along as he strode for the source of the shriek.

Lex hovered in the hall, staring into an open doorway. He took a step forward just as a body came flying backward through the door. Talya, Liam guessed, by the black clothes, but moving too fast to identify. He shoved Jilly behind him and leapt to the fight.

He had only a brief impression of nicotine- stained walls, and then the etheric blaze of Corvus’s djinni blinded him. He continued forward in a rush. But he left the hammer sheathed. He couldn’t risk hitting Dory, even though she was screaming loud enough to track if she’d stop racing from corner to corner like a panicked rat.

He closed with Corvus in a blunt collision that rattled his bones. For all the damage done to him in the building collapse earlier in the winter, Corvus was still a powerful man, his body honed from many lifetimes of battle.

Liam knew he couldn’t sap the teshuva or he’d have no chance against the djinni, but he couldn’t clear the demonic dazzle from his vision.