Through the haze of weakling tears she glimpsed the starry night of red watching eyes.
Ah, that was who was so excited about her misery.
Without raising her head or drawing attention, she murmured to Nim, who stood closest, “Do you see them? We’re surrounded.”
“Can’t miss ’em. Tall, dark-souled, and disgustingly handsome. You’d think in a few thousand years between them of walking this earth, they could come up with one pickup line.”
“I meant the devils.”
“Yeah, all that teshuva tweaking makes the reven light up like a pinball game.” Nim scowled. “Sorry I made you the shiny silver ball.”
“The dress is very pretty.” Alyce brushed her palms down her thighs. Around her, the net of etheric energy pinged on her skin as it tightened another notch. “I’m talking about the tenebrae.”
“What? Where?” Nim whirled, her hand at the small of her back. She kept a blade there, Alyce had noticed. The grim-faced man at the door to the club hadn’t noticed, despite his air of officiousness, because he’d been too busy looking at Nim’s long, bare legs.
But the concealed knife would do no good against these devils.
“Up,” Alyce said. “No, don’t look. You’ll bring them upon us.”
“We can take them.”
“You are stronger,” Alyce agreed, “but the panic downstairs would be … messy.”
Nim nodded. “The horde-tenebrae always like the juicy tang of panic.” She leaned toward Jonah and spoke into his ear.
He stiffened but didn’t look up. “Let’s take it outside.”
As if someone had thrown a match on the line of black powder connecting them, the demon marks on all the talyan flared violet at once.
Tucked like black mold into the nooks and crannies in the ceiling girders, the malice shrieked and were echoed in a deeper register by the larger salambes. The cry reverberated in the big gray boxes that boomed music below. The song cut out and projected the horde’s voice in a vicious roar. People on the dance floor dropped to their knees, hands clamped over their ears.
Alyce winced. “We have to get out. Maybe the devils will follow us.”
“They will if I tell them to,” Nim said. She threaded her fingers through Jonah’s.
To Alyce’s astonishment, the talya tucked her into the crook of his arm and kissed her. It was a scandalizing kiss, her breasts tight against his chest, his hook gleaming low against the yielding curve of her spine. The backlash went through the teshuva and tenebrae alike in a shuddering wave.
Alyce was already heading for the stairs, shoving between the frozen talyan.
Sidney stepped in front of her. “What—?”
She grabbed his hand and yanked him along.
Her passage broke apart the stillness, and they fell into line behind her and Sidney. Liam was right at their heels. “Thank all the saints you were paying attention.”
“There are no saints here.” She hunched her shoulders against the gathering storm cloud of devils overhead.
“Through the back, to the alley,” Jonah said. “Nim will lure the malice with us.”
In a wave of blackness all their own, the talyan swept through the stunned crowd. Someone was tugging at wires around the big music boxes, muttering, “Damn speakers.”
Yes, Alyce thought, all the talking had almost damned them. She didn’t want to hear any more from Liam and the others about all she would be with them—or worse, hear the words they didn’t say; the look, lonely and hungry, that was only in their eyes.
She’d show them what she did with lonely and hungry.
They burst out the back door into the empty alley. The windowless walls of the buildings rose up four stories on both sides, a canyon of chipped brick and rusting steel. From the vents and grates in the upper floor of the club and from over the roofline poured the greasy smoke of the devils.
“Time to rumble,” Jilly muttered.
As if in answer, the music inside the hall kicked on again, the deep notes throbbing through the walls.
Sidney tugged at Alyce’s hand. “What’s happening?”
She pointed. “You can’t see them.”
He frowned. “Just … shadows?”
“Horde.” Nim’s voice was almost a croon. “Come to Mama.”
They came in a stinking rush of broken rotting eggs, as if night’s darkness sped down the wall, obliterating every detail.
Alyce had never fought with others before, and she tried to watch with her new understanding, the new words Sidney had given her, though her muscles cramped with the urge to flee. If this many of the devils had come for her alone …
But the talyan stepped forward in a wall of male flesh, the two talya women nearly lost between the broad shoulders. A furious sweep of etheric energy belled out ahead of them. The devils that hit the teshuva power boiled into foul steam.
“Bloody hell. I should have had another drink.” Sidney rubbed his eyes and squinted, as if trying to separate what his eyes saw—or didn’t see, or half saw—and his mind knew. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, is it? Why are there so many?”
“Nim and her demon call them to slaughter,” Jonah said. “Makes hunting far more efficient lately.”
But Nim shook her head. “I can’t take the credit. These were already gathering, even before I called. Alyce saw them first.”
Half of Liam’s attention stayed on the talyan slowly shredding the tenebrae. “What did they want? You?”
“Not me,” Alyce said. “They wanted the wanting.”
Liam pointed at Sidney. “You. Care to decode?”
Alyce pulled her hand free of Sidney’s when his gaze settled on her with as much curiosity as he’d had when he’d studied the horde above them.
He didn’t seem to notice her withdrawal as he considered their little grouping. “The league is usually so careful about damping its energy. All the desires and fears and furies. The emotions that power all of us are amplified by the teshuva, which give the talyan more strengths—and more vulnerabilities.”
She didn’t need more vulnerabilities. It was bad enough to be alone, afraid, confused. But she did know one thing, and she’d wanted to show them.
She stepped outside the protective circle of talyan.
Sidney’s surprised call didn’t stop her; nor did the other talyan. The bright flare of their eyes followed her.
The ferocity of their teshuva had thinned the devils, but the dozens that remained were whipped to a rage. Singly, they might feed on despair or frustration and be content to spread their malaise like a creeping sickness.
En masse, they wanted to devour her.
So she let them.
Sidney shouted again, more vehemently this time. From the surge through the talya energy, she knew they had rallied to hold him back.
Really, they should get a little farther back.
The devils surrounded her, their nasty mouths latched on the flesh exposed by her pretty new dress. They fed her their horrors. No, not theirs. She hadn’t recognized that until now, when Sidney had made her face her flickering memory. These were her own half-known horrors, sucked from her and regurgitated, more vile than before.
Their whispers leached through her veins. Master. Madness. Hang the witch.
The reven around her neck tightened as the teshuva finally roused. She had thought maybe she had to hurt for it to hunt. But now she understood; it was too weak to waste itself on the chase. She was staked out as victim while it waited to take its unwitting prey from behind.
Now that her eyes were opened, the experience was rather more gruesome. But she stood, swaying, hands in fists.
The malice exulted in her fading strength as they consumed the last of her sickened outrage and the pain of their violation and delighted in the more delicate flavors of deepest despair. A larger salambe loomed closer, not so patiently waiting its turn.