She murmured some appropriate response. Ecco did not introduce himself.
Archer put himself between Sera and the two men. “Emphasis on the guard?”
Zane ducked his head. “Niall said you weren’t exactly sure. . . .”
Ecco growled. “Thought we might have to take her out. Since you couldn’t.”
“You might try.” Sera smiled sweetly, but Archer, his demon ascending at the hinted violence, felt the sudden race of her pulse. From the curl of her fingers, he knew the fierce rush of the demon rose in her too. “Unless you’re no better at the wet work than the undercover detail. Maybe you should stick to doll making.”
Zane choked.
Archer smirked, his demon subsiding. “Shall we go up?”
Zane jumped forward to swipe his entry card at the door. The heavy glass etched with the @1 insignia swung open with a dull clang, and they filed in.
Archer almost bumped shoulders with Ecco as the other man tried to fall into place behind Sera. Their stares clashed. After a heartbeat, Ecco gestured him ahead, lips twisted with insincerity.
Archer narrowed his gaze, then stepped past, following Sera through the retro Metropolis lobby.
The elevator rose thirty-five floors in strained silence.
Archer glanced over at Sera. She’d been looking at him, but her gaze slipped away before he could do something—take her hand, coldcock Ecco, something—to reassure her.
Zane cleared his throat. “I remember the first time I met the league, with a mischief-class demon newly embedded in my soul.” He pitched his voice as if he spoke only to Sera, although of course they all heard. “I was piss-myself scared, sorry to say.”
Sera gave him a fleeting smile. “Seems reasonable.”
“But you shouldn’t be scared. Not of us. And the teshuva are pretty chill too. Kinda like living in an efficiency apartment with a roommate who works days while you work nights. You share the same space and sort of help each other out, but you never even see the other guy.”
“He must be the one who keeps leaving the toilet seat up,” Ecco said. “Asshole.”
“Anyway,” Zane said, “that just leaves bad demons to worry about. And you’ve already racked up an assist in a feralis takedown.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You keep score?”
He flushed. “Well, not officially. The reckoning’s all in the soul, I suppose.”
“And the hash marks in your flesh,” Ecco growled.
Sera glanced at him. “Don’t you heal? I thought that’s the demon’s half of the deal.”
Ecco smiled, full of teeth. “Doesn’t stop it from hurting like hell.”
When her gaze slid to him again, Archer kept his eyes fixed on the elevator doors, which thankfully opened. Ecco and Zane stepped out, but Sera balked on the threshold. Archer tried to see the room as a newcomer.
Decades ago, the league had converted the old hotel to apartments for its talyan. When Niall had taken over as leader, he’d opened the penthouse suite with its massive sunken living room as a gathering space, trying to foster community among the almost pathologically re clusive fighters. The hotel wasn’t the tallest or finest in the city, but the wall of windows framed an impressive swath of skyline and morning light.
Despite the elegance of sleek modern furnishings in black and chrome highlighted with crimson, Archer didn’t think any particular awe of the decorating held Sera in place, clashing violet lights in her eyes.
Maybe her reluctance had something to do with the couple dozen large, powerful men—variously scarred and reven marked, and at the moment liberally sprayed with ichor—rising from their scattered seats, all with violet-tinged gazes fixed on her.
When Zane had said they’d waited after rounds, he’d meant they’d all waited.
Archer put his hand at the small of Sera’s back. He paused while she angled herself a single degree toward him, toward the comfort—or at least the familiarity—of his touch. He noted how every man’s eyes flicked to that point of contact.
Only then did he guide her forward to the man standing in the middle of the room.
“Sera Littlejohn,” he said. “This is Liam Niall.” He cast his gaze wider. “And the Chicago league of the teshuva, those who would repent.”
The talyan fighters stood motionless, but tension lapped the room in almost visible waves.
“ ‘Pleased to meet you’ seems a little . . . ,” she responded, hesitating, then finished, “beside the point.”
Niall’s lips quirked up. “Hello is fine. Truth is, we’re as surprised to meet you as you are to find us.A woman, with a powerful enigma-class demon.These are puzzling times indeed.” He shook his head. “But we are very pleased to meet you. It isn’t every day—or every decade—that we welcome a new convert to the league.”
“I think that’s probably a good thing.” Sera’s sideways glance took in the room of silent men.
“Not if we’re going to stay ahead of the bad guys,” Niall said.
Ecco hovered nearby, if a man with biceps the size of tree trunks could hover. “We are the bad guys. We’re just not the really bad guys.”
Niall shot him a quelling glance. “Don’t scare her.”
“Too late,” Sera murmured.
At the same moment, Zane said bracingly, “She’s not as nervous as I was. I about puked the first time I smelled a malice.”
“Thank you, Zane,” Niall said with a wry twist to his lips.
Sera shifted uneasily. “I guess I have already seen some of the nastiness.”
“Not the worst, you haven’t,” Ecco said.
She slanted a glance at Archer. He folded his arms and leaned against the column that separated the elevator entryway from the steps down into the living room. He’d done his part, shepherding her through the possession, bringing her into the fold. The camaraderie Niall and Zane dangled with their tag-team routine, even Ecco’s ominous hazing, wasn’t something he could offer her.
It had been a mistake to claim her so blatantly in front of the others. Just because the destroyer in him sent portents through his dreams that something—some demon, someone—was coming his way, didn’t mean she belonged to him.
A man who lived forever—until he was brutally slaughtered by unholy minions of darkness—didn’t find dating an easy proposition. Girlfriends wondered who’d left the ichor stain on the shirt collar. Wives grew suspicious when their husbands didn’t grow old.
Worse, the demon’s dread of compounding its burden of sin turned every touch into an inner battle that, over the years, became not worth waging.
But a female talya . . . Every man in the room eyed Sera as if she were the fantasy haunting his lonely dreams. If Bookie was right about the last female talya disappearing into antiquity, maybe something in their demonic DNA was waking up. The hungry stares roused a protective instinct Archer thought eradicated in his lone-wolf existence.
At least he could tell himself his unsubtle claiming would give her a bit of breathing space in this room of rogues and killers. Of course, what his mind told itself had nothing to do with the primal impulses raging through his blood.
In the face of his silence, Sera glanced uncertainly back at Niall. “I don’t know what Archer told you about the feralis attacking, but I’m no fighter.”
“If you survived possession, you are.” Niall gestured her deeper into the room.
The other men quietly arranged themselves to points equidistant on the other low couches and single chairs, as if too shy to approach, too fascinated to leave. Archer stayed beside his column.
Sera’s gaze slid from one side to the other, keeping them all in view. She took a seat on the edge of the couch across from Niall. “Metaphorically, perhaps. But I think you all live a little more literally.”