Jessa Slade - The Darkest Night

The league leader gave him a crooked smile. “Besides handing over your car keys?” He beckoned to his mate, Jilly, who clomped over with authority although her big black boots put the bright blue spikes of her hair barely on the level with Liam’s chin. “Show our new fighter the plan. I need to take care of some human resources issues. Or teshuva resources, I suppose. Otherwise there’ll be grumbling about the angel.”

Jilly gave an amused snort as Liam headed out toward the other talyan, the hammer balanced easily in his hand. “Never mind the grumbling. It’s the silent shiv I’d worry about.”

Fane helped her spread the map again. “You were one who spoke up for healing me when Nanette brought me here after my last shiving with Thorne.”

She batted her hand as if he’d said thank you, which he hadn’t. “I’m practical. We need bodies, as many as we can get. Plus, I’m still new around the league.” Violet trickled into her pupils; a sign of her teshuva’s power spreading through her. “Some of the guys remember times when the sphericanum hunted the talyan to the death, like any other demons.”

“Maybe there was a time for a three-way war. But that time is not now.” He flattened his palm on the paper. “So what can I do to make up for my less enlightened brothers and sisters?” He paused as he studied the map. “Wait. This isn’t the nursing home.”

“We might not have a three-way war, but we’re still fighting on multiple fronts. The nursing home isn’t the target, or not the only one.” She curled back one page to reveal another map underneath. “We thought the nursing home was a test, Thorne messing with us, knowing we have a personal interest in the place.”

Fane traced the bull’s eyes on the map. “But it’s not a test. It’s a distraction.”

She nodded. “That’s what we’re thinking. A distraction we can’t ignore, not with Sera’s father and Nanette there. But if we focus all our attention there—which we might have done if we, meaning you, hadn’t found the bombs so early—what is Thorne up to elsewhere?”

“No good,” he murmured.

“Exactly. Which is why we started looking for other traces.” She touched one red circle on the map then three more. “Here are where we found djinni remains. And by remains, I mean mostly sulfur-scented dust and old bones. Thorne has killed several powerful djinn-men we know of, so he has to be making enemies of our enemies.”

“And yet he is still not our friend.”

“Not hardly. It seems he’s consolidating power—terror is such a great leadership skill—among the rest.”

Fane considered the arc of kills. “He’s setting up a boundary.”

“Apparently. Which puts his HQ somewhere in here.” She spread her fingers wide over the map.

“That’s a lot of ground.”

“Which is why we’re all going out tonight and tomorrow: last-minute Christmas shopping and recon.”

His gaze drifted across the map, marking landmarks. “What about the tenebrae orbs at the nursing home?”

Jilly wrinkled her nose, making the small stud glitter. “We’re splitting our forces. That attack is meant for us—whenever it goes off—and we won’t leave them undefended. Sera and Archer are there now, of course, with a few others.”

“My house has sphericanum shields built into it. Maybe your Bookkeeper can reverse engineer the protections for next time…”

Her expression softened into a wry grin as he trailed off. “Yeah, there’s always a next time, isn’t there?” Then even her smile faded. “Are you sure about this?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why is everyone questioning my intentions lately?”

She lifted one brow. “Not sure who you mean by everyone, golden boy, but maybe we don’t all have your easy access to faith.”

He stared at her. “What the hell makes you think it was easy?”

She didn’t drop her gaze. “We fight hard and, unlike us, you don’t have a teshuva’s eternal mission statement to keep you alive. Thorne could gut you again with your own sword, and we might not have enough of our abraxas shard to bring you back. Worse, it was Nanette’s touch guiding the abraxas last time. Since her husband was killed, she hasn’t been quite… Well, you could end up dead.”

He straightened his shoulders. “The sphericanum is unyielding, no doubt, but the league doesn’t appreciate how we…they have fought against evil through the ages without the benefit of superior strength and speed, enhanced senses, immortality, all the other advantages of the demonic—tenebrae and teshuva alike.” He stared at her hard. “You call me golden boy, but I am not that soft. If I die, I’ll die fighting. If not with the sphericanum, then with the league. And if not beside you, then alone. But I will fight.”

After a long moment, she shrugged. “I’ve always been a sucker for hard-luck cases.”

“Then let me borrow a sword and assign me to a team.”

She nodded and pursed her lips, glancing over to where Liam was still addressing the other talyan. “Might be hard to get somebody to ride with the golden boy.”

Fane gave her a tight smile and dangled his car keys. “I think I can find somebody.”

In the end, he didn’t have to let anyone else drive. There was a quick scramble among the talyan who didn’t want to end up in the sad league sedans, and he found himself piloting three talyan, including Nim, formerly the Naughty Nymphette and now a demon-possessed warrior with her high-heeled combat boots kicked up on the dash of his Porsche.

He slanted a glance at her. “How is Mobi?”

She beamed at him. “You remember my snake? How fabulous.”

“I still have nightmares about him crawling over the seats.”

“That’s so sweet.” She ruffled the sheaf of papers she had with her. “And it’s probably because you are such a good person that you got me as your navigator for tonight’s adventures.”

One of the talyan in back let out a strangled sound. Fane met their rolling eyeballs in the rearview mirror. He knew them by name—Gavril and Pitch—but nothing else about them. He shifted back to Nim. “Where is Jonah?”

Her smile upended into a scowl. “He’s going in a different car to a different part of the city. We’re having a thing.”

Pitch leaned between the front seats. “I’m telling you, if you would just—”

“La la la.” Nim held up the papers to block him. “An extra hundred years of existence has not improved your understanding of relationships.”

The talya thumped back in his seat. “Ecco let me borrow his magazines.” Gavril gave a disapproving sniff, and Pitch protested, “Not those magazines.”

Fane shook his head. After his own run-ins with Nim’s one-handed mate, he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience, especially sans sword. “I would have thought the symballein bond meant you’d never have ‘a thing.’ Otherwise what’s the point of finding someone whose broken soul perfectly matches yours?”

Nim thrust out her lower lip. “Oh, I still love him. I just might kill him before I tell him so again.”

Not wanting to know more, Fane guided the Porsche out behind the stream of dark sedans. Spatters of ice in the rain made threatening stars on the windshield until the wipers swept them away.

Nim rattled her papers. “First stop, the old post office building. There was another fire last night. They’re calling it a creosote build-up, but it burned a long time, so it could’ve been birnenston combustion.”

“Maybe just a feralis nest,” Gavril said. “Can’t have been much birnenston if they managed to put it out at all.”

“Let’s hope it is just a lone feralis,” Fane said. “Having Thorne holed up in a major landmark straddling the expressway could get…tricky.”