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.
Damn, but Corvus was strong. The djinn- man’s hands closed around his skull, and Liam wrenched backward to prevent Corvus from twisting his head off.
“Liam!” Jilly’s cry was a clarion call in the darkness. With a sudden shock, his vision snapped into hunter’s light. Eerie tracers of etheric energy patterned the room. If only he could turn those tracers into bonds to trap the ascendant djinni.
Instead, he jolted forward again to head-butt Corvus. The
reven
at his temple flared, bright enough that even he could see the violet gleam blazing from the interrealm rift that marked him as possessed.
Corvus staggered back. He reached for Dory as he fell.
“No, you don’t,” Liam growled.
But Dory held out her arms, wrapping herself around the windmilling djinn-man. They went down in a tangle. That looked like a setup. Liam released the hammer.
Jilly dragged at his elbow. “Don’t hit her.”
Like he’d done the salambe- ridden woman in the haint-haunted apartment. He’d known that moment would come back to get him.
In a heartbeat, the djinni rose in a smoky yellow column. It dragged Corvus up behind it more quickly than any human could have moved. Dory was knocked aside in a loose-limbed sprawl.
With Jilly crowding close, Liam couldn’t swing without risk. Corvus gave him a single meaningful look, his lazy eye rolling as if in sympathy. Then the half- loose djinni yanked him backward out the window.
“Damn it,” Liam growled. “Not again.”
The glass shattered. Corvus disappeared, with that faint teasing grin still on his lips.
Liam raced to the window. He could hope for a terrible splatter, but they were only on the second story. An easy fall for a powerful djinn-man.
Sure enough, Corvus landed on an abandoned car. His impact knocked the cement blocks out from under it and the dent in the roof was impressive, but he swung himself down and landed on his feet.
He glanced up once, meeting Liam’s gaze, and then he ran.
Liam pulled himself into the window frame, ignoring the shattered glass.
“Oh no.” Jilly’s cry drew him back. “No.”
He paused for a moment, torn. Literally and figuratively, judging by the amount of blood pouring from his hands.
He went to Jilly.
She was cradling Dory. “Not again,” she moaned, echoing his words.
No, not again. This time it was worse.
The faint whiff of rain clung to Dory, and her smile was vague.
Unlike angels and djinn, the teshuva had lost the ability to see souls when they were exiled from both heaven and hell. But Liam didn’t need that dubious talent. He knew what he wouldn’t see.
Dory had lost her soul.
CHAPTER 28
Jilly guessed she must be crying because she saw the spatter of wet on her hands as she clutched Dory, but she didn’t feel anything. “Too late,” she whispered.
Dory blinked up at her. “Jilly.” Her voice was thick, and her words came slowly. “Hey. Is it late? That must be why I’m so tired.”
“Yeah.” Jilly knew the other talyan had gathered. A few had gone in pursuit of Corvus. She’d heard Liam issue the order. But he’d stayed.
So had Sera, and with her, Archer, who hovered near the window as if he’d rather be out on the street. “You’d think Corvus would’ve developed a healthy fear of heights after I threw him out the last window.”
Sera shushed him.
Jilly could have told her his flippancy didn’t bother her. Nothing hurt her. “Dory, where’s the rest of the solvo?”
“I took it all. He said then we could be together.”
“He’s gone,” Jilly pointed out.
“No. We’re together.”
Jilly supposed her sister was right, in a way. Soulless together. She glanced at Liam. “We have to get her somewhere safe, somewhere the salambes can’t find her.”
He hustled them out of the apartment and down the hall, his fingers firm around her arm. She didn’t protest. His grip steadied her. No, more than that, held her together.
She’d had to attend court dates with her kids, and once, identify a body of a young man who’d passed through the halfway house. She’d done it with tears—half sorrow, half frustration—burning in her eyes.
Escorting her sister’s upright cadaver, she summoned the strict control Liam had pushed so hard. She placed her boots with precision, side by side with his, her eyes dry as the tenebraeternum’s bone-dust wind.
One tenant peered out as they passed, her salt-and-pepper hair in rollers. “That’s right. You empty that trash out of here.”
Sera wrinkled her nose. “She’s no worse than the rest.”
The old woman returned the grimace with a snarl. “Oh, she’s the emptiest kind of all.” She slammed her door.
Jilly tried to summon up some curiosity about whether the woman was another like Lau lau, mysteriously cognizant of the war around them. But it was hard to care when she couldn’t feel.
The league had been on foot, and there was no way they were going to summon a cab in this neighborhood. They made it only halfway down the block.
“I’m tired,” Dory repeated.
Liam glanced at Archer. “Find us a ride.”
“Around here, they’re probably already stolen anyway.” Archer disappeared down a side street with Sera in his wake.
Liam settled himself on Dory’s other side. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t like the way those malice are gathering.”
Jilly glanced up, the first hint of feeling coming back to her. A feeling of fear. “Can they get to Dory?”
“Without her soul, I don’t know why they would. Which is what’s worrying me.”
Jilly shook her head, trying to get some sense back. Of course he was right. The malice fed on negative emotions. Dory was just one limp noodle of indifference, not a meal at all.
Still, she kept an eye on the flittering oily shadows that paced them down the street. “I got in the way, didn’t I?”
“You were worried about Dory.”
She noticed he hadn’t said no. “I should have been focused on Corvus.”
He kept scanning the shadows. “Your impulsiveness is no more changeable than . . .” He hesitated. “I was going to say your eye color, but of course that changes, even more often than your hair, I imagine.” He rubbed his temple. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“Do you blame me?” Her voice sounded small in her own ears.
He was silent a moment. “Maybe I don’t know any more why we’re doing this. Is it to save our souls? The world? Or to save people like your sister?” He shook his head. “I’m as lost as you are, Jilly.”
And that
was
her fault, she knew. He’d led the league fine, one fight, one night at a time. Then she’d come barging in.
“I won’t make that mistake again.” She didn’t add that she had no more reasons to make that mistake. “I’ll be the perfect talya. I’ll do whatever you say.”
She bit back what sounded awfully like a sob. No need for her feelings to come back now. Just as well if they’d stay dead forever.
Liam didn’t respond, his gaze fixed on a car turning the corner ahead. “There’s Archer.”
She sagged, relieved he didn’t scoff. She wouldn’t blame him for deciding she was more trouble than she was worth.
The late-model Cadillac that pulled up next to them sparkled more than anything on the street, obviously well loved.
“There were plenty less flashy,” Sera was saying as Liam opened the door.
“Yes.” Archer drew the syllable out with teasing patience. “But he said he had anything I could possibly want. I wanted his car.”
“He meant the drugs or possibly that girl on his arm, obviously.” Sera quieted when Dory moaned. “How’s she doing?”
“You have solvo?” Dory’s voice was pitiful.
The pointless surge of fury almost made Jilly drop her sister into the car. She steeled her demon-amped muscles to guide the bowed blond head past the doorframe. “No more, Dory.”
Maybe she was worse than Corvus now, to withhold the only thing that would soothe her sister. A faster slide and deeper descent into nothingness.
There was plenty of room for the three women in the back, even with Dory sprawled across the seat. Jilly held her sister’s hand, but between the two of them, she doubted they could have melted an ice cube, given the coldness of their joined hands.
She let the cold seep deeper. Maybe it would kill the ache. Maybe it would finally harden her, sharpen her into the weapon Liam wanted her to be. “Stop at Laulau’s.”
Liam glanced at her. “The energy sinks around the warehouse should keep the salambes out.”
She didn’t call him on the “should.” “The league doesn’t care about soul-struck humans. If anyone can help, it will be someone like Lau-lau, another human who knows what we’re up against.” Jilly wasn’t that person—wasn’t even
a
person anymore.