She glanced over her shoulder and saw him watching. A hint of rose warmed her cheeks. “I thought you must be empty.”
He thought of his father and Wes taking tea. “I’m not really in the mood for brunch.”
“Not you. The demon. It sustains itself on tenebrae. I didn’t understand any of it, but even in the beginning, when we fought the devils, I felt it feed.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Brunch sounds better.”
“The talyan hunt at night, but the devils—your tenebrae—are less guarded during the day,” she told him. “That’s when I fight them.”
“The teshuva, like all demons, are stronger when our human sides are disadvantaged; in darkness, under stress, whatever. The league prefers to fight at night to hide any leftovers.”
He joined her at the rail, and she pointed. “Look—there’s a likely spot for malice.”
Across the river, a broad walkway seemed to float just above the waterline. Benches and lampposts decorated the riverwalk, but now, under the menacing clouds, the concrete path was empty. “What am I looking at?”
“The ichor around that doorway.”
The feeble October sun hardly bothered to cast shadows through the vellum of clouds, and still it washed out the elusive demon sign. Her senses must be finely honed to pick up any etheric disturbance. “I see a closed maintenance access.”
The building at street level, above the riverside path, was under construction. Judging from the tattered vinyl sign flapping from the security fence, work had been under way for some time. Probably the weak economy hadn’t helped the speed of renovations. One more winter of Chicago winds and there’d be nothing left of the sign.
“Closed, but not sealed,” she said. “A dark place for the malice during the day, and they can sneak out with the night to find their brunch.”
“Their preferred meal being us humans.”
“Not us, not anymore.”
The reminder set him back a mental step, and he followed a stride behind her as she crossed the bridge and took the stairs down to the riverwalk. How quickly he forgot he wasn’t entirely human anymore. No wonder years had passed for her without note.
The riveted metal door spanned wider than his extended arms and must have once accepted deliveries at water level when the river had been more a path of commerce. Now, tufts of brown moss sprouted from the crack between door and frame.
Sid frowned. “So, how do we do this? We could find a way in from above since there’s no real security. I didn’t see a camera or—”
Alyce kicked the corner of the door—once, twice. The metal buckled with each blow. “Or we could just go this way.” She grabbed the corner and peeled upward.
He winced at the squeal of stressed steel and glanced back toward the sidewalk where they’d looked down at the door. The cars whizzing by on Wacker seemed oblivious. “That is more straightforward.”
She slipped out of her coat and folded it into a tidy triangle, which she left on the nearest bench. “But we could talk about it some more.”
“Certainly not.”
She eased past the bent metal.
How loudly would the other talyan laugh if he suggested they attempt to leave the city in better shape behind them? But as they stepped out of the light into the glimmer of red malice glares, he remembered “better” had different meanings.
“There are more here than there were in the alley,” he murmured. “And that time, they almost sucked you dry.”
“Good thing you are with me this time.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Neither did I.”
“But you do now, yes?”
She crept farther into the darkness, luminescent in her white dress, with the malevolent stars twinkling above her.
His vision shivered and refocused, and he realized the teshuva—quiescent in the sunlight—was rousing.
Rousing and hungry.
The damp stink of old brick couldn’t hide the fouler stench of rotten eggs. “I smell birnenston,” he whispered. “This is a feralis lair.”
“Was,” Alyce said. “Only old bones now.”
She stopped in the center of the chamber. The space stretched to all sides, far enough and dark enough that his teshuva didn’t even bother enhancing the view. His skin prickled. When he’d said he wanted to know the talya secrets, he’d thought that would involve more knowledge, more light, less … Yeah, that was dread.
Alyce raised her hands, and the malice freaked.
Sid might have indulged in some shrieking of his own, but the malice didn’t leave an opening on any frequency. They scattered, the gleam of their eyeballs leaving crimson contrails through the gloom.
Those closest to Alyce spiraled down toward her outstretched fingers. But before the oily specters reached her, they thinned to nothingness as her demon overwhelmed the lesser energies. Only their cries lingered.
That left about three-quarters of the horde heading straight for the open door—the open door behind him.
Alyce spun toward him, the dissipating ether a graceful streamer behind her. “Stop them, Sidney.”
He held out his hands as she had.
Instead of thinning, the malice hit him like an avalanche of half-frozen, rancid marmalade. Sticky and bitter, it grated his skin with broken ice crystals.
He might have screamed then.
His teshuva flailed in the tenebrae chill, and his muscles locked seizure-stiff. With each pull of the malice mouths, he tasted the sour corrosion of their evil.
No, not theirs. His.
How deeply had he hid his exhilaration when Wes’s departure cleared the way into his father’s heart? How far down had he buried the guilt over his mother’s death? Not so deep or so far that the malice didn’t find it and dredge it up like a putrid hairball.
No wonder a demon from hell had found a place for itself in the cracks of his soul.
He sank to his knees.
“No, Sidney.” Alyce knelt beside him. The white folds of her skirt washed into his narrowing vision. “Don’t let them so close. Hold them back.”
The malice or the memories? Now he understood how she’d survived tenebrae predation. The teshuva hadn’t let her remember how she deserved this pain and horror and sickness.
He would like to forget too. But that wasn’t his way. He’d never forgotten his feelings; he had just bottled the wretched things and observed from a careful distance, as he would any dangerous energy. Such was the Bookkeeper way.
He wanted to pull away from her—or maybe from himself—but she reached through the malice barricade to take his hands. Her pupils contracted to pinpricks as the teshuva’s violet swelled. Though he outweighed her by a few stone, she wrapped her arms around him and dragged him up with her, breaking through the tenebrae crust. “Be with me, Sidney.”
He could watch. He could contemplate. And he could die.
He’d been trained to be dispassionate, but the crave demon wanted. It wanted more. It wanted her.
It seemed ill-advised, thoughtless, and rash to do anything but run, so he kissed her.
He tightened his grip, and her heat sizzled through the deep freeze in his veins. The demon within him reveled in the sparks that raced through his veins, centered in the reven that pulsed oh-so close to parts of him that wanted to be even closer to her.
Mouth and breath and racing heartbeats matched one to the other.
Whatever flaws the demon had found in his soul seemed irrelevant when he was with her. Whatever was broken, missing, or ugly in him no longer mattered.
When he raised his head, the malice were gone, and only the faintest smear of ichor gloaming lit the basement. “What just happened?”