Jessa Slade: The Darkest Night

The nights before Christmas were annoying enough to make even an angel swear.

Cyril Fane forgave himself as he cursed and swerved his Porsche around a minivan of suburbanites gawking at the holiday lights strung along the Magnificent Mile. Not yet rush hour and already Chicago’s downtown bustled with holiday crowds, filling the early darkness with their shopping bags, their good cheer, and their damnably low-horsepower vehicles. If they knew how the longer, darker nights provided ever-deeper shadows for the demonic tenebrae, they would all scuttle home.

Of course, not everyone had a home waiting for them.

Fane crushed the thought like a burned-out Christmas light bulb. Useless. But the warning from the afternoon visit with his only remaining friend in the sphericanum still scalded: “…Lost your abraxas to the djinn-man… Conspiring with the talyan… Exiled… Don’t come back, Fane, or we will slay you.”

With friends like that, who needed demons?

Swearing again, he cut over to Lake Shore Drive, aimed toward his big empty house, and punched the Porsche up to law-of-man breaking speeds. God would forgive even an ex-sphericanum warden like him.

Or not.

At the last exit, Fane changed his mind and circled into the city, past the high rises and towers, back toward the rougher neighborhoods. No twinkling lights here, just the fading blacklight glow of demon ichor, faintly visible to the angel within him, marking where the tenebrae had passed on their own nefarious tasks. Spits of icy rain caught the yellow, sodium-vapor glow from the street lights, as if the heavens were pissing on him.

The winter weather—if not the unseen demons—seemed to have scared off the crowds as he cruised past the Mortal Coil. The night club usually had a long line of hipsters, ravers and Goths straggling around the three-story brick building into the alley, where they did whatever hipsters, ravers and Goths did in alleys. But tonight, nothing, nobody.

Maybe the talyan had commandeered the place for a twelve-step meeting. The Chicago league of demon-possessed warriors often spent their afterhours in the crude and morally questionable environs of the night club. Step whatever: Admit that a Higher Power has totally hosed us…

He parked the Porsche directly under one of the street lights, said a skeptical prayer it would still be there when he returned, and headed for the door. For once, he might be able to appreciate a good bar fight.

The old bricks were rounded with age, but the stained glass in the circular window above the door glittered sharply. The snake eating its tail seemed to stare at him with ageless mockery in its one yellow eye. He ignored it and reached for the handle, but the curved wrought iron jerked out of his grasp.

In the darkened doorway, Bella gasped, one hand over her heart. “Jesus Christ.”

“Not for a few more days,” Fane said. “There’s still time to shop.”

She glared at him, almost as baleful as the snake above her. Behind her old-fashioned, cat’s-eye glasses—out of place on her youthful face—her eyes were clouded, reflecting a blue-white smoke. Fane peered at her, wondering how much she could see through the cataracts. He’d heard a couple of the talyan wondering the same, and not just in the physical sense. The Mortal Coil’s young mistress knew things sometimes, things most people couldn’t fathom. The cataracts made her eyes look old when she couldn’t be much past her mid-twenties.

Whether she saw or just sensed his perusal, she patted her red beehive self-consciously. “We’re closed.”

She must be able to see something, he decided. How else could she arrange such an elaborate hairstyle? The red locks were plumped high and smooth with only two curls wisping down on either side, and he guessed those mirrored runaways were probably deliberate. From what little he knew of Bella McGreay, she had too many secrets to let a stray hair be just a stray hair.

Without touching him even though he’d claimed a good chunk of the doorway in his double-breasted, black wool peacoat, she took a step forward. “Can’t you read the sign?”

He leaned sideways, not willing to give up his space, to read the paper taped in the window. “ ‘Go home for the holidays, you fucking delinquents,’ ” he read aloud. He tapped the glass. “The Santa hat on the skull and crossbones is a nice touch.”

“Thank you. I was feeling festive. Good-bye, Warden Fane.” She reached around him for the door handle, and the fake fur cuff of her coat grazed his hand.

A little spark of static electricity—not uncommon in the dry winter air—jumped between them. He frowned at the sting. “Ex-warden. I was hoping to find Liam and his crew here tonight.”

She pointed one gloved finger toward the sign. “Closed. Go home. Remember?”

“I know they didn’t go home to their families.”

“No. Their cousins are on the prowl tonight, as every night.” She lifted her face to the black sky. For a heartbeat, the yellow of the street lights flashed across her glasses. “They’ll never go home.”

Fane wasn’t sure if ‘they’ meant the talyan or the tenebrae demons they hunted, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The league talyan, possessed by repentant teshuva demons, were every bit as cast out as their decidedly unrepentant brethren.

As he was cast out.

He widened his stance, forcing her back a step if she didn’t want to touch him. “Maybe I can leave them a message with you.”

She scowled. “Just because I’m eloquent with pen and paper—”

“I’ll be quick.”

“Ever heard of the telephone?”

“This isn’t the sort of message I want anyone else to hear.” The talyan had evidence that the sphericanum, for all its divine calling, had a predilection for infiltrating more terrestrial calls. “Warrantless wiretapping seems to be all the rage these days.”

Her scowl deepened. “Then go find them. They’re out there, somewhere. Look in the dark corners.”

“I doubt they want to see me again, considering my abraxas is empowering the enemy. As if almost getting the oldest known female talya and their Bookkeeper killed wasn’t bad enough.”

After a moment, she swept her hand inward. “Fine.” Her long-suffering sigh wreathed the freezing air around her beehive. “Quick, though.”

He stepped into the cavernous club and waited for his eyes to adjust. For all the winter darkness outside, inside was gloomier yet. Illuminated rope lights lined the bar at the far end of the room and one pendant light glowed over the cash register, but other than that, only the red glow of the exit signs lit the space. His breath puffed out—was it colder in here than out there?—and he pulled his coat tighter around him.

He followed the clack of the red heels on Bella’s high-laced fake fur boots. The echo across the dance floor seemed louder than it needed to be, a rhythm of annoyance. He could relate.

At the counter, he paused while she went behind the bar. From beside the cash register, she pulled a kitchen ticket book and pen, and yanked off a page. “I can’t promise I’ll see them anytime soon,” she warned. “They only come here after really bad nights.”

“Then I imagine they’ll be in here sooner rather than later.”

She tilted her head as if studying him, or maybe just considering the nature of the threat behind his words. She took a breath, then let it out again in a swirl. “What do you want to tell them?”

“I met with a friend in the sphericanum today,” he started.