“It was cold,” she said finally. “And there were lights. Not like candles and not like those.” She jerked her chin at the neon over the gas station. “Like lightning behind clouds at night, but unfading. So beautiful …”
Sid shook off the mesmerizing drift of her voice. “That’s the etheric signature of an unbound demon,” he said briskly. “Of course, you couldn’t see it until the penultimate moment, but it was coming for you.”
She turned abruptly to face him. “Like tonight. Like the one coming—”
“No.” He cut off her rising agitation. The redoubled harmony in her voice—the demon’s echo—chilled him. Why did she have such trouble focusing on the task of remembering? “The frequencies of the lesser tenebrae you fought tonight are much different from a repentant teshuva. You’ll learn.”
At his correction, she curled one arm around her belly. The shielding gesture stung him almost more than the feralis bite. But she had so much to know if she was going to join the league and leave her rogue wandering days behind her. It had taken him years to get where he was; she’d have only one chance to prove she wasn’t a threat to the league.
Where she clutched at the front of her dress, the neckline had tugged down, and he studied the teshuva’s mark. The lines of a reven most often lay quiet in the skin, like nothing more than the sketchings of an erratic tattooist. The contours and complexity of the fractal design hinted at both the subspecies and the energy level of the possessing demon.
On Alyce, the reven was a simple wheal around her neck. Though she had tried to hide it with the conservative collar, the thin black wave ran just beneath the delicate line of her jaw and peeked out whenever she turned her head. Only a few curls spiraled off the central thread. Not a powerful teshuva, then. Perhaps she had survived so long and yet not thrived precisely because of her weak demon. She’d not been driven to self-destructiveness, but at the same time, she’d been unable to find her way to others like her.
Still, she had demolished two ferales and scared off two more, so weak was relative.
“Sidney?”
He startled. When had she knelt beside him? He hadn’t told her his name. But, of course, she had heard his father say his name. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I said, you are losing too much blood. You should not fall asleep or you might not wake up.”
“I wasn’t falling asleep. I was … looking at you.” Good God, he’d been less than an hour in her company, and his filters were already on the blink.
“Oh. That explains your fleeting insensibility.”
He drew breath to disagree, then peered at her. “Was that a joke of some sort?”
“Yes.” She settled on her heels with a frown. “Or perhaps not. I remember that men have looked into my eyes and forgotten how to speak.”
Had that been before the demon, or after? He managed to bite his tongue. Time enough to work on her after he got her to his lab.
There was a delicacy to her, though—if one saw beyond the streaks of blood, ichor, and grime—that might very well silence some men. Her skin was smooth, almost luminescent—an advantage of a youthful possession, demonic healing, and an eternal night shift without even fleeting UV damage. And though she was below average in height, she made up for the lack with a pleasing proportionality. When the fretful breeze tugged at the ugly dress, he noted a breast-to-waist-to-hip ratio that might be, in fact, considered something like perfect.
He swallowed and realized he hadn’t said anything in quite a long minute.
“Keep me awake then.” He cleared his throat of an alarming huskiness.
She tilted toward him a few degrees. “How?”
Her pale eyes glinted violet. Blood trickled at his shoulder with the sudden acceleration of his heart. Was he talking to the girl, or to the demon? No, he shouldn’t think of them as separate entities. They were one being, one soul, one dangerous hell-bound killer.
Learning that was his life’s work, with no room for error—or for anything else.
A flash of headlights blinded him as a car U-turned in front of them. Before the rust-speckled banger had come to a stop, the passenger door swung open.
Sid squinted against the brightness.
“What the hell, Westerbrook?”
“Something like that.” He staggered to his feet, holding back a groan. “Miss Alyce, may I introduce you to one of your fellow talyan, Jonah Walker?” He stumbled in a half circle. “Alyce?”
But in the harsh wash of neon and metal halide lighting, he found nothing. He lifted his gaze to the night beyond.
She was gone.
CHAPTER 3
Alyce folded herself into the shadows to watch the one-armed man help her Sidney into the carriage.
Car, she reminded herself. With no one to share her wonder and fear, she hadn’t bothered with the endless changes of the world, but she’d noticed the way Sidney winced at her oddity. At the memory of his expression—as appalled and reluctantly curious as if he’d cracked open the only fresh egg for breakfast to find a half-feathered chick inside—she sank deeper into the darkness.
Across the lighted street, the one-armed man—Jonah, Sidney had named him—lingered beside the car door. The hook where his right hand should have been shone almost as bright as his amethyst eyes while he surveyed the night.
His gaze passed over her. The invasive chill inside that never left her tensed for the attack, but she held herself still. The flares of devilish light that pulsed around the man and the car and Sidney would blind him to her small self.
Jonah climbed into the car beside Sidney and wheeled the vehicle from the curb with a squeal against the pavement like a temperamental horse.
At least Sidney had said he would have help for his wound. She looked down at the scalds from the devils’ blood on her hands and curled her fingers into her frock where congealed blood had glued the folds together. These marks would heal without any help at all, she’d learned.
How long ago had that realization ceased to make her lonely? And why was the terrible feeling—more caustic than ichor—back with a vengeance now?
Memories teased her, as elusive as falling leaves swirled on the autumn wind. She passed through them without pause. Maybe she couldn’t grasp the memories, but a clean frock was still within her reach—if she could just remember where she’d left the stash she’d taken from the church charity box.
She followed the flow of cars beneath the raised railroad tracks. The shriek of metal on metal as the train passed overhead was louder than the devils’ death knells. Despite the assault on her senses, she stopped when she spied the shadowy presence leaning against a lamppost. Though the lamp was intact and shining brightly, the tall, lean man seemed to stand in a darkness all his own.
“Go away,” she said softly, knowing he would hear over the clatter and squeal.
He tilted his head so his long braids swung over the lapels of his coat. In the stuttering light from the train windows above, his hair glinted as shiny black as the leather. “And a good evening to you, Miss Alyce. I saw the fireworks from afar and had to come find you.”
“Because you like to watch the devils play.”
He stalked toward her. “Because your glow when you vanquish them is irresistible. Like watching a baby stealing candy from the monsters.”
He had told her long ago to call him Thorne, and she had remembered, because the name fit him well. His skin was burnished brown, like the cane of some ancient bramble, and his gaze sharper than any barb. Though the sleek blackness of his hair softened the thrust of his cheekbones, the yellow flames in his eyes burned away any chance of mistaking what dwelled within him.