Jessa Slade - Seduced by Shadows

For a moment, Corvus wondered.

But no. A djinni was no paltry darkling to be shooed back to the Darkness that did not fade. Unbidden, his breath quickened. The acid sting of his demon scoured the backs of his eyes.

Sometimes even demons wouldn’t forgive temptation.

He focused his burning gaze on the talya. In her present condition, the brute darklings that lurked in the basement would find no sport with her. But their smaller brethren. . . .

He jerked her up onto her good leg. She paled around the red imprint of his knuckles, but didn’t cry out. Her strength wouldn’t save her, but would only keep her around long enough for his plans to reach their inescapable conclusion.

He hauled her downstairs, dragging her behind like a broken marionette when she stumbled.

He’d chosen the tower because the riverside location opened on soaring views over the city, views that brought him some measure of quietude. Only later had he discovered the dank basement with its river access.

Over time, his presence lured a plague of darklings to the passageways. The noxious morass of birnenston seeping from them had fueled his research into odd weapons that had hooked politicians, generals, and terrorists in many countries. They’d thought they were using him for their own ends. In a manner of speaking, they were right.

If contact with the poison sometimes forced his djinni into hiding deep within him, it always seemed to recover.

Even with their violence subjugated to his energy and the birnenston, the darklings were a malevolent flock. The occasional stink of corpse wafted from the basement when they snagged the homeless mumblers, the young runaways, the overdosed prostitutes. Sometimes he threw them a proverbial bone—or a not-so-proverbial bone.

Lucky darklings, this was one of those times.

Through waves of pain, Sera grasped at consciousness. A tiny voice told her coming awake wasn’t going to make the nightmare go away. But not knowing was worse.

She gritted her teeth and pulled herself into awareness—cold, damp, stinking awareness. She coughed on the mingled stenches of stagnant water, rot, and sulfur. Yeah, sometimes knowing was worse.

“You’re free.”

She pushed herself up. The stone under her hands was slick with mold and other things she didn’t want to identify. Too dark to see, anyway, without her demon’s help, since only torches lit the cavernous room.

“Honest to God,” she said hoarsely. “Who uses torches anymore?”

“It makes the darklings feel at home.”

Sorry she’d asked, she rubbed her wrists. Embedded glass stung, but he hadn’t lied. He’d left her unbound. “Free at last, free at last.”

Corvus stood between the torches. “You can run for the stairs. I won’t stop you.” He swept his hand one way, and the torchlight shadows jumped on the old iron door that guarded the stairs. “Or you can swim.” He pointed toward the waterside dock. “It is more than was ever offered me.”

The dark around him winked with tiny crimson stars. Malice eyes. How unfair. Once she knew what to look for, even with her defenses stripped, she could still see them.

Then she saw the others.

They stood unmoving, facing her, eyes clouded and unseeing. Something about that wall of empty eyes—human-colored in mixtures of brown, blue, green, but blank stares—made her flesh crawl.

She kept her voice from trembling. “Friends of yours?”

“They are nothing. Quite literally. Pay them no mind. They can’t help you any more than they could help themselves, but they won’t stop you either. They wanted their freedom too.”

She raised her chin. “I wouldn’t think a slave would keep prisoners.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles rippling. “I won my own way out.”

“Funny. Rumor has it you lost your last bout.” She studied him. “Judging by the reven , your arms were—what?—both broken? What did the demon promise you? The chance to take up arms again?”

“No.” The torch flames made the marks writhe. “It said I could lay down my sword forever. It gave me deadlier weapons instead.” He straightened, as if regretting his words. “They aren’t prisoners of mine. They took the chains upon themselves. I loosed them. And now, with you, I’ll free the rest of hell, and my struggle will be done.”

Her teshuva had been right to make itself scarce. If Corvus wanted it, she couldn’t let it out.

She dug her nails into the stone wall behind her. Clenching her jaw until her teeth just added another pain in the chorus, she forced herself to stand. “I won’t open the Veil. The demons stay.”

His face twisted, old scars contorting. “You want us to fight for them, angels and demons, forever? Let them suffer and die if they are so inclined.”

She swayed, trying to make sense of his anguish. “Did Bookie even understand what you wanted? Do the demons? Or are you still the gladiator, thrown into the ring by his masters? Alone?”

His expression settled into something like calm. “If hell fancies burning, then let it truly burn. As for God and his judgment, let us see how he fares on his own against the devils at his gate.”

Slowly, so she didn’t knock herself over in dizzy pain, she shook her head. “I won’t sacrifice the world just to teach God and hell a lesson.”

“Then go.” Corvus spread his hands.

“Right. Run or swim. No bicycle portion of this triathlon? Oh wait. My leg’s broken.”

A poison yellow gleam brightened his eyes. “Ah. True. This would be a good time for your demon to make an appearance. Before the rest of the darklings get home for dinner.”

She contemplated the djinn-man, the shifting mass of malice, and the blank-eyed watchers against her MIA demon. She just had to make sure the teshuva stayed lost. “Damn,” she muttered.

“If you do or if you don’t,” Corvus agreed.

She glanced at the rank, black water and shivered, remembering the lapping tongue of river against cracked windshield glass. That was out. She wouldn’t want to drown before she was brutally killed.

She wheeled toward the iron door and started to run—or hobble.

She wasn’t even halfway there when the malice descended.

Of course. He’d said he wouldn’t stop her. He just hadn’t mentioned anything about his pets.

She fell, and the malice swarmed over her.

They bit deep, latching on to her hands and glass-cut wrist, one ankle, her neck, and cheek. They snapped at one another when they couldn’t reach her.

With each ravenous pull of malice mouths, terrible images played through her head, as if the vile little monsters sucked every ugliness to the surface for their feast. Her mother’s waxen skin. Her father’s screaming mouth, opened wide. Her own body, mangled after the car accident. Every dark and dreadful thought brought back to life, to haunt the heart like ghosts or zombies.

The sick weight of the malice made her wish she’d chosen to jump into the water, after all. Maybe she could drown them, float them away—as her mother finally had.

A low moan raised tremors down her spine. For an awful moment, she thought the sound came from her.

She twisted her head and met the vacant stares of Corvus’s prisoners. From the black holes of their slack, gaping mouths came the whispering groan, despair or hunger or both.

They’d wanted freedom from this, she realized, from the torment that fed the malice so richly.

The watchers grew dim as her vision grayed, like shades of her hospice patients. Had guiding them to quiet grace been a terrible deception, only to assuage her own fear of the end they were all coming to someday? Was grace an illusion, peace a myth?

She was going to die with her questions unanswered. Or maybe only in her death would she have her answers.