No, she was thinking of herself in the same way she’d accused Sidney of doing, as nothing but an interesting footnote. Small and weak—and lost and insane—she might be, but she was more than that too. She’d needed more from Sidney, and he’d been unable to give it.
So she would be that something greater. Thorne and Sidney were both in for a surprise.
She took another breath and, staying low, pushed herself out a little farther for a better view.
Thorne had herded the Halloween partyers into the side room. Pacing between them and escape, he held the sword at a low angle in front of him, as if it weighed at his arm. Or maybe the light hurt his eyes.
Alyce squinted against the gleam. What did the others see? The child had seen the sword and the “black balloons” of malice that circled around him in a constellation of evil. An artist or holy person—or asylum patient—might see the truth, but the rest would delude themselves.
As far as Alyce could tell, Thorne hadn’t used the sword against anyone. No bodies lay on the floor; no disembodied souls floated free to tempt the voracious tenebrae.
But neither did he look as if he would wait much longer.
She took a third breath—only the third of the entire time, she realized, as her head swam—and drew her legs under her to stand. What she would say …
From the other side of the atrium, a storm front of etheric energy swelled through the room, so potent the leaves of the palms shriveled at the edges. Curls of the rough bark spontaneously ignited, the woody slivers burning like incense sticks.
Hard-soled footsteps drummed on the tile, the boots of a dozen new intruders.
The djinni army had arrived.
CHAPTER 27
Wrapped around the sword, Thorne’s fingers burned and blistered and wept blood and healed in ever-thickening scars that shredded under yet more blisters. He might have screamed once or twice at the unreal pain, but eventually his nerves retired for the evening.
The djinni wasn’t helping much as it flooded the wounds with the etheric equivalent of bile, raging against the angelic presence. The demon didn’t appreciate what he was trying to do, which might have been why the eternal battle between good and evil was taking so damn long.
But it was inevitable that eventually someone would tire of the stalemate.
By the time Carlo arrived with his good little soldati in tow, Thorne’s scarred hands had stopped oozing. Maybe enough ichor had drained from him to take the edge off the djinni.
“What are you doing, Thorne?” Carlo spun on his heel, taking in the cowed crowd. When he wheeled back, the light of the sword made him squint. “Magdalena got your message and has one question for you: Are you mad?”
Thorne considered a moment. “Do you mean insane, or still angry about the scuttling of my boat?”
Carlo’s left eye twitched. “She told you she would find you.”
“After the first date, the man should make the next move. I’m old-fashioned that way.” Thorne traced the tip of the sword in an idle pattern. A toxic droplet of birnenston sizzled off the golden edge with a stench like death.
Carlo shook his head as if he didn’t realize how precariously heads were attached. “What do you want, Thorne?”
“I want my Princess.” Thorne’s voice broke across demon harmonics. Apparently not as much virulent ichor had been drained from him as the pain would seem to indicate.
“Why, when you can be with a queen?”
Thorne looked down at his mangled hands. “Queen of Spades, maybe. The black widow card. She’ll dig a hole right into hell.”
Carlo shrugged, calling attention to that tender curve where shoulder and neck met. “If that’s where the treasure is. But she wants more. She wants you.”
“I’ll bring her more,” Thorne promised.
He stepped over the hole the sword had scorched in the floor. Perhaps it was the flare of righteousness in his heart that made the weapon come alive in his hands.
He swung it in a tight arc, and Carlo’s head never had a chance.
For a heartbeat, only shocked silence vibrated through the crowd. Then a malice shrieked, triggering the flock, and their cries soared in unholy descant to the human screams.
Sid stumbled across the atrium, half-blind and all sick as the last of the verge mists evaporated from around his feet like dry ice. The blind part he blamed on the teshuva’s flickering vision. The etheric interference of Thorne’s djinni was giving it fits. The sickness …
Why had he let Alyce leave without him?
He’d always longed for a love without provisos, without specifications. He’d wanted his father to love him despite his being a second son. He’d wanted Maureen to love him even though he had a calling she couldn’t share. But when Alyce had offered him exactly that, freely, without question, he’d fled. He’d had incontrovertible proof of the existence of demons and evil, but he’d never really believed in the love he sought.
The symballein bond wasn’t a guarantee any more than an atomic bond could prevent a plutonium neutron from being knocked askew and triggering a nuclear meltdown. It was nothing more than a chance.
He’d never been good with games of chance. But the alternative was unthinkable. He would find her, he would—
When the screaming started, he realized he’d found Thorne too.
Shite. Now they had the panic on their hands they’d hoped to prevent. The city’s entire parasite load of horde-tenebrae would swarm on the pier like the least appetizing aspects of vultures, rats, and maggots combined, to feed on the emanating darkness. Worse, they’d have armed authorities backing up their terror with bullets. An unlucky round or three could bleed out a talya before the teshuva could repair the damage, especially with the interfering energy of the tenebraeternum. Even worse, there might be cameras.
But he had bigger problems—or actually, just one smaller one.
He crouched in the hazy concealment of a smoking palm tree. He’d found her.
From where he hid, her small form seemed not much more than another figure in the painted Halloween procession on the folding screen. He crept around the other side of the palm and had a clear shot to where Thorne loomed over a fallen man. Most of the crowd had drawn back in horror, hands over mouths, faces averted, but a dozen more people milled about in more active consternation.
As Sid’s teshuva tried to focus, a sulfurous yellow plume billowed above the body. It was another djinn-man Thorne had killed, which meant the other people, now gesturing furiously at Thorne, were also—
Thorne swung the sword.
And missed.
The tapered edge fell far short of the djinn-men’s bodies. But the light from the sword shot out and bathed them in a blue-white glow.
Two more columns of vicious yellow oozed upward, fleeing the light. Holding their hands out in front of them to block a blow that hadn’t come and staring at each other in confusion, the two djinn-men remained standing.
For a moment.
Then one fell to his knees. His legs crumpled. No, crumbled. The etheric winds swirled up twin dust devils from the cuffs of his pants. He let out a thin cry before his chest caved in, and then he had no throat to cry from as he puffed away.
His empty leather jacket sagged, a thin cushion to his companion, who staggered as the years of his possession caught up with him. With no demon to hold the ravages of time at bay, his muscles atrophied and his skin spotted. He clutched at his heart with one hand, the other reaching helplessly for the uprooted djinni.
The rest of the djinn-men stepped back from Thorne.
He swung again, aiming at the freed demons. A keening cry rose from the djinnless-man, echoed by the djinni that swirled above him, as the sword seemed to stretch hungrily toward them.