On one hand, she was probably right. Now that he’d met her and felt the black-hole magnetism of her demon, he didn’t think that Chains or any of the other skeptical djinn-men would hesitate to join her. The counterculture associates of his day had liked to proclaim “power corrupts,” and if the opposite was true—that corruption was power—then Magdalena was absolutely powerful. What djinn-man could resist such magnificent malevolence?
He wavered a little in his stolen shoes. She never dropped her gaze, but the thick fringe of her lashes narrowed. She was calling on her djinni, not to bring him to his knees, but enough to weaken his resolve.
And if he didn’t bend, she would break him.
His heartbeat hung suspended, as it had the moment all those years ago when he realized, with his fellow revolutionaries sleeping in the house above the basement lab, the timing device on the bomb was locked and counting down.
Alyce had always feared that the demon-ridden were monsters. With Magdalena, there was no need to question.
She was definitely a monster.
But he kept his voice as light and steady as the touch he’d used on unstable explosives. “With such excellent specimens as Carlo, I think you don’t even need me.”
“I want you all.” Her dark eyes widened, and from the black depths peered the same hunger as when she’d looked at the children. It was not so different, really, from how those children must have looked at the Halloween candy that had once filled those empty wrappers now scuttling ahead of the wind.
The limo coasted to a stop beside them, and Carlo stepped out onto the curb to open the back door for Magdalena. “My lady, let’s go. The fundraiser dinner starts in an hour.” He squinted at Thorne, an evil look compounded by the smears of blood from his broken nose. “He ain’t worth missing the hors d’oeuvres.”
Thorne forgave the wise guy for all his bad manners if he’d just hustle his damn lady out of there. Nevertheless, no open bar tab, no number of courses to a meal, would fill the void in those bottomless eyes.
She slipped into the maroon leather interior, but Thorne’s relief was short-lived as she rolled down the window. “I’ll find you again,” she promised.
And although he had nowhere else to go, nothing else to lose, he was suddenly afraid.
Nowhere to go and nothing to lose—was this how birdbrain Blackbird had raged as the pieces of him were chipped away?
Thorne crouched beside the white van’s shining tires and tucked the equally black strands of his unbraided hair behind his ears. He sliced the lock pick across the pad of his thumb and grimaced at the stink, worse than the new rubber next to him. Blood, ichor, and birnenston welled up in threads of red, black, and yellow, festive as a coral snake and far more deadly.
With unhurried thoughtfulness, he painted his cheekbones. The toxic ooze ate into his flesh, and he tasted salt as the deep furrows siphoned his tears downward.
Corvus died to reach his vision; there must be another way.
The white clouds had thickened all day to an ashen gray, condensing toward black like his poor boat. They bellied down now to spit rain in his face, but nothing could extinguish the burning pain of the birnenston on his flesh.
The Princess was drowned. A cruel goddess was rising. And his innocent little Alyce … had never been his.
See, this was why a man was better off alone.
The talyan would come to curse the symballein lash, he had no doubt. But in the meantime, they’d triggered a torrent of changes that had yet to run its course. Who would be left standing and who would be swept away?
He’d bragged to Alyce, and to Carlo of the gaping chest hole, that he walked his own path. That was what he’d told himself while his grandmother dragged him down from the apartment roof one night short of his seven-night vigil. He would find his own way.
And look what a clusterfuck had ensued.
He’d been a slow student at the rez school, and worse when he’d been sent to his grandmother in the city. Maybe if his spirit guide had appeared. Maybe if the bomb hadn’t gone off, or—better yet—if he’d never twisted the wires together. Maybe if the radiance he’d seen in Alyce had held out any chance for him … But no. He was what he was.
Possessed by evil. But he would not allow anyone else to lead him by the nose. It was time he mastered the darkness in him, by himself, since the light had never been burning for him.
That last encounter with Alyce had shamed him. Held at bay by an Anglo toting his own gun … He needed to get back his edge.
War paint complete, his djinni roused to a fury, he crept past the Last Call Cleaning van. SERVICES IN DECONTAMINATION AND STERILIZATION, promised the lettering on the vehicle.
They’d need those services after he was done.
“Idiot!” Nim bounced hard on the mats.
“Who?” Gavril straightened his black T-shirt. Throwing Nim over his shoulder had left a wrinkle. “You or me?”
“You! Okay, me. Just … ouch.” She pulled herself to her feet with a grimace.
Alyce stepped forward. “I’ll try now.”
Nim limped off the mats to stand in the wan gray light filtering through the warehouse windows. Fretful rain spattered against the glass. “Did you see what I did wrong?”
“You let him catch you.”
Nim snorted. “My mistake.”
Gavril took a few circling steps to the side as Alyce walked into the empty corner amidst all the salvaged junk. He had bowed to Nim. He did not do the same to her, Alyce noticed.
She followed him along the circling path he’d set, their bare feet silent on the mats.
He studied her, eyes unreadable. “Jonah asked me to work with her, to streamline the reflexes her teshuva has given her. He worried—needlessly—that his missing hand makes him less of an instructor. He worried—rightly—that he would be too gentle with her.”
Nim snorted again. “His mistake.”
Gavril inclined his head, but his gaze did not leave Alyce. “You do not need such streamlining.”
Nim put her hand on the lush swell of her hip. “Did you just call me fat?”
They both ignored her. Alyce shrugged. “We have been together a long time, my demon and I. But we are weaker than we should be because I do not know what to give it. I don’t know how to be with it.”
Gavril’s gaze was still dark. “Your symballein mate should show you. He has no excuse not to.”
“He has many excuses,” Alyce said softly.
Nim sucked in a breath. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”
Gavril held up one hand. “I have no intention of pursuing this opening.” His smile at Alyce was cool and sharp. “No intention of pursuing you, other than here, around this attack.”
“I don’t intend to be caught. In either way.”
“Then let us begin.”
Gavril did not catch her long enough to throw her—although he laid hands on her twice and managed to trip her once—but the chase left her panting. In the end, she managed a leap that sucked the last of the energy from her legs. She planted both heels in Gavril’s chest with a mighty kick that drove him back to the windows. His elbow cracked a pane, and if she’d gone for the follow-up, she might have shoved him through the glass to a debilitating, if not fatal, fall.
She hit the mat and rolled backward, coming to a stop in a low crouch, one hand steepled before her. The demon arched through her, straining toward the fight. In the bottom of her vision, the rivet ring glinted with a twinge of violet.
Gavril waited against the windows. “You might not know all the demon needs, but your instincts haven’t failed you.” He gave her the bow he’d withheld before, as smooth as the raindrops rolling down the glass behind him.