She bit at her lip. “You didn’t—you aren’t still starving? Are you?”
“The demon freezes us like a fly in amber, but I wasn’t possessed until later.” More questions welled up in her eyes, but he didn’t want to get stuck again as if a bug in fresh tree sap. “Archer will be here soon. You need to practice getting your emotions under control.”
She scowled at him. A price he was willing to pay if it stopped her questions.
But he shook his head. “See? Right away, you’re annoyed. I’m just trying to lead you.”
“You’re telling me what to do.”
He wondered how he had ever seen her as a pixie, when she was obviously more grumbling gremlin. “You’re not a child, Jilly, who needs to be tricked into doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have to coerce you to do what’s needed to survive.”
“As if you could.”
Last straw. Her challenge, along with the old memories, and the knowledge that, for the moment at least, they were safe from outside attack, cracked his self-restraint.
He stepped into her, forcing her back against the stainless steel. “Oh, I could. In fact, I believe I already did. Once.” He drew a breath tinged with the scent of cherry gloss on her lips, and the crack in his discipline splintered.
She tilted her head back to meet his glare. “You were hopped up on Lau-lau’s long-joy juice.”
“Hmm. Is that why I was on top?” In the sculpture’s reflection, the harsh violet glow in his eyes gleamed back at him, mocking. He let the demon out another notch, revving up his senses so that his skin prickled with the auroral forces of her body near his.
Something about her—something beyond the obvious immature rebelliousness of her unruly hair and piercing—was like a million testing fingerprints trashing his well-polished control. Unlike any maddening talya he’d known, she unerringly targeted his secret flaw: that he’d never really wanted to be in command. Indulging his temper was as stupid as swinging his hammer blind. It felt wild, wrong. And so good.
Especially when she put the point of her finger in the center of his chest and took a step closer. He closed his eyes at the radiating pleasure. Why did the fate of the world matter again?
“Don’t try to dominate me,” she hissed. “It annoys me and then I can’t back down.”
Her voice lacked the double-octave lows of a rising demon. Which meant he pissed her off on a purely human level. Yay, him.
“I am not trying,” he said. And he didn’t want her to back down.
“Oh? That alpha-male bullshit doesn’t require any rational effort? Of course it doesn’t. Thinking is not the alpha-male forte.”
He opened his eyes. “Unfair. I actually think quite a lot.” About her lips softening under his. Her head tipping back to bare her throat. Her hands clutching his shoulders . . .
Her eyes narrowed. “Right. I can guess what you’re thinking.”
“Demonic possession confers no mind-reading ability,” he said officiously.
“Yeah, well, I think I have a certain power of mind over matter.” She zipped her finger down his chest and hooked the front of his jeans.
Predictably, his cock surged to undeniable attention.
She gave him a crooked grin that he answered.
“Stalemate,” he murmured.
“None of that mate crap.” Her fist closed on his fly. Not a prelude to the erotic, if exhibitionist, unveiling he might fantasize. No, she just wanted the upper hand, as usual.
His smile faded. “Who burned you,
xiao
-Jilly, that this energy between us scares you more than a tower of tenebrae?”
“I’m not scared.” The denial burst out of her so hotly, even she winced. “I just don’t like to be pushed around. And Mom’s boyfriends really liked to push.”
“Really.” He didn’t move, but his pulse changed as his demon uncoiled.
She must have felt it. She scowled at him and gave a sharp tug on his jeans. “Don’t go all vigilante. I took care of it myself. Anyway, it wasn’t any of them.” She looked down and seemed to realize how intimately she had taken hold of him.
Her hand sprang open, but before she could step back, he laced his fingers through hers. Not in a confining gesture, but too entwined to easily pull away. He modulated his tone the same, not demanding, but not to be denied. “Who was it?”
She shrugged as if it hardly mattered, but her grasp tightened. “After I left home, I couldn’t afford a place of my own, so I moved in with two other girls. They hung with a rough crowd, but that seemed normal. I didn’t even notice until I hooked up with one of the guys. We’d been going out for a while, and one night he got drunk and he smacked me.” She darted a look up at him.
The shamed flush on her cheeks slammed through him, and Liam locked every demon-powered muscle to stop himself from pulling her into his arms. “I can find the bastard and kill him,” he offered casually. “The league has resources I just don’t use enough.”
She didn’t laugh—smart girl, she believed him—and her grip on his hand eased. “In a sick way, he smacked sense into me. I looked around, realized I was reliving my mother’s life, blindly falling into the same trap she’d endured, and I refused.”
And she’d been refusing ever since. The insight into how hard she’d fought against a different sort of hell didn’t exactly surprise him. But he was shocked at his twinge of envy that her teshuva—discord class though it was—had found a perfect resonance with the warrior she’d become.
He shifted his hold until his thumb rested on the blood beating below the skin of her wrist. “Jilly—” He hadn’t meant for that note of yearning to color his voice.
The deliberate scuff of footsteps made them spring apart.
Archer crossed his arms. “Interrupting anything?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
Liam laughed softly when Jilly rolled her eyes at him.
Archer didn’t smile. “We have to go. Ecco found another cluster of haints. But these aren’t our old zombie friends. They have hostages.”
All amusement and desire fled Liam, the void they left jagged as a bomb blast. “Our people?” The last time he’d lost a man . . .
But Archer shook his head. “Human.” His expression softened with pity as he glanced at Jilly.
She took a step closer to Liam, as if he could deflect that sympathetic sorrow. “Andre?”
“No. Your sister is one of them.”
CHAPTER 9
Jilly wanted to pump Archer for more information, but he’d already said he didn’t know any more, that Ecco had made the cryptic call from a pay phone before racing back to the entrenched cluster. A howl echoed in her head, louder than the junker car as Archer floored the crap engine. Liam had refused to abandon the malice-molested vehicle, protecting the league’s mission even as her life swung toward disaster.
She stared her outrage at the back of his head, but he was flying through his speed dial, rallying the troops to this unknown threat.
Despite his calm voice as he relayed commands, tension glowed off him. The
reven
at his temple flushed violet, and the skin around it had gone almost translucent with a darkness she couldn’t bear to look into, as if shadows ate him from the inside.
Which, she supposed, they did.
All this save-the-world shit had seemed very theoretical—and not so unnerving—until she was caroming through the midnight streets at sixty- five miles per hour in a car tagged with demon graffiti.
With her sister at the other end.
Liam finished his calls and sat in deep silence a moment. Then he glanced back at her. “The dossier we put together on you was rushed, but it included the basics on your family. Your sister’s been an addict for a long time. The chances that she hasn’t already started on solvo aren’t good.”
She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just wait until we find her before we decide she’s dead.”
“Undead,” Archer chimed in. “Mostly.”
She resisted smacking him in the back of the head only because he had the car almost up on two wheels around the corner.
Liam ignored the other man and the stunt driving. “Dory didn’t even come around after you took that knife for her.”
A toxic mix of guilt and rage churned in Jilly’s gut. “I got her to leave her pimp.”
“Not because she chose to leave him, but because your bloody DNA sprayed everywhere helped put him in prison. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
He’d taken away everything else. The car’s tires squealed around another corner, shrill as a malice crying foul. She knew the unvoiced accusation was unreasonable. But considering how much she’d lost—not just because of the demon—she wasn’t willing to lose another chance.
From his down-turned mouth, she knew he’d read her refusal without her saying another word.
They paralleled the L for a few blocks before Archer pulled over. “This is the address Ecco gave us.” From just beyond one of the support columns for the elevated tracks, a man stepped out of the gloom. “Ah, there he is. And Jonah and Perrin are across the street.”
“I called everyone in,” Liam said.
Even if Archer hadn’t pointed them out, the men would have caught Jilly’s wary attention under any circumstances. Though varied in their police-blotter descriptions, they each exuded a dangerous stillness she associated with TV wildlife programs of big cats right before they pounced on something, all taut muscle and focused eyes.
Sheathed claws had been replaced, though, with unsheathed blades, cudgels, and other weapons of up-close and-personal destruction. The headlights gleamed off the razored gauntlets that embraced both Ecco’s forearms. The second man, Jonah, stepped up beside him, blond hair shining almost as brightly.
Jilly tightened her bare fists and wished she hadn’t been so cocky down in the weapons depot at the league warehouse.
They parked and got out. As she glanced up at the windows of the apartment building above them, the smells of cold metal and trash reminded her too much of that night outside Dory’s apartment. Except for the L train tracks, this vibe was almost exactly the same. Life just a few steps off the street. Her chest ached, not where Rico’s knife had slipped between her ribs, but spreading out along the dark threads of her
reven
, and she knew her teshuva was coming online. She welcomed it, if it drove away the fear.
She couldn’t be afraid, not if she wanted to save Dory again. Maybe for the last time.
The big man—Ecco—stalked up to them. He nodded at her once, eyes assessing, but addressed his comment to Liam. “You know how I love me some malice. I found these while hunting tonight. They’re crawling all over. Seemed like too many for one place, so I poked around. That’s how I found the haints. And the others.”
“This is not good.” Archer shook his head. “I told Sera to swing by the warehouse and grab some of the ESF equipment before she came. Maybe we can pick up some changes in the emanations to explain what’s going on.”
Ecco snorted. “You trying to keep her out of the fight? Good luck. She’s onto you, man.”
Archer pursed his lips. “Yeah, I know. But it sounded legit.”
Ecco snorted again. “You guys ready, then?” He slanted another glance at Jilly.
“I called in reinforcements,” Liam said. “Let’s give them a minute. No sense getting dead for nothing.”
Jilly shifted restlessly. “If Dory’s in there now . . .”
Ecco crossed his gauntleted arms over his massive chest and stuck his jaw out. “She is. Now aren’t you thankful you’ve been possessed by a demon and that we crawled all into your past so I’d recognize your sis? She looks just like you.”
“She’s my half sister—not that it matters—and she doesn’t look like me at all. She’s tall and blond.”
“Same lost-little-girl look, though.”
Jilly mirrored his crossed arms. She couldn’t match his bulk, but she beat him on the glower. “Hardly.”
Ecco lowered his arms with a
zhing
of stropping blades. “How long are we going to stand around without smashing something? I’m not going to live forever.” He smiled, a flash of teeth as sharp as his gauntlets. “Oh, wait. . . .”
“Yeah, you can wait.” Liam stared up at the building. “I don’t like this. Another massing of malice so soon.” He glanced at Jilly.
She huffed. “What? I didn’t do it.”
“Not you, no. But the conjunction of your emergent demon and the change in malice behavior is suspect.” He lowered his voice. “Not to mention whatever we did that trapped them together.” When she opened her mouth, he said, “And by ‘not to mention,’ I mean let’s not mention that yet. Nothing gets this crowd more fired up than the possibility of unleashing an untried new weapon with unknown consequences.”
“I’m with them,” she muttered.
The edge of his jaw hardened. “No. You’re with
me
.”
In the next few moments, a half dozen men filtered out from the shadows. Jilly found herself pressed a little closer to Liam. Not out of nerves and the fact that she was topped by at least head and shoulders by each man, merely by the fact she didn’t want to get sliced or bruised on their bristling armament.
She cleared her throat loudly. “You can’t go in there flailing.”
She realized she’d interrupted their plans when they all stared at her. Liam was the only one not returning her scowl.
“Why not?” Ecco propped his fists on his hips. “To flail is divine. Or damned. Whichever.”
“There are innocents in there.”
“There are no innocents,” said one of the other men—Jonah, she remembered.
“Jilly’s right,” Liam broke in over the others’ muttering.
Everyone—including Jilly—gaped at him.
He unsheathed the hammer. When he swung it down to his side, it hummed through the air as if in agreement. “Not about their innocence,” he clarified. “That’s irrelevant. But about flailing and failing. We need to know what this new cluster is, what these haints are up to. Flailing doesn’t get us answers.”
“It gets us closer to salvation,” Jonah growled. “Which is why we’re here.”