It bellowed and twisted to reach up at him. The clawed point sliced into the back of his thigh, a piercing agony, but it lowered the shoulder pinching his weapon arm.
He laid the edge tight against the underside of its neck.
And loosed his own demon.
The axe bit deep. The feralis shrieked. The shriek died in a gurgle as the feralis came down like a mountain slide under him and pinned his injured leg. His head slammed into the hard-packed earth.
He choked on wet leaves and heaved himself up, hurling off the deadweight. His vision starred with nonexistent lights, he leapt at the feralis stalking Sera.
It turned to face him, its slavering maw opened in a cry of rage.
“No,” he growled back. “She’s mine.”
They collided with battering-ram force, his arm driven halfway down its gullet. Its teeth razored up his arm, and he stared into the bulging eye.
He cut its throat from the inside.
It fell, taking him down in a geyser of moldering leaves. Dying spasms locked its teeth on his arm just above the elbow, and he lay in the dirt, staring into the orange eye.
As the demon fury ebbed, as the pain crept into the emptiness, he knew he had won another battle, that his teshuva had taken another step on its path to redemption. In the feralis’s livid eye, he stared down that hellfire path. And saw it never ended.
Half adrift from the blow, his gaze wandered beyond the feralis and fixed on a darkness among the trees: a man, cloaked in shadows not cast by the trees, and betrayed by sulfur yellow points radiating where eyeballs should have been.
A djinn-man. Come to finish them off in their moment of weakness.
Human adrenaline and demon vigor surged and stuttered in Archer’s veins. Of all the times for the djinn to finally take an interest in the chores of a teshuva garbageman.
Then, just as suddenly as the figure had coalesced among the shadows, it melted back and was gone. Wet leaves glinted with the reflected yellowish lights of streetlamps.
“Archer?”
Sera’s whisper brought him back with a snap. Had he seen anything at all? No djinni would pass up such an effortless opportunity to destroy one of its traitorous, repentant brethren, would it? The jolt to his skull must have stunned him, seeing evil in every puddle of darkness.
“Ferris?” She crept closer.
“Yeah. I’m alive.” Hence the pain. “Just contemplating my glorious triumph.”
She crouched beside him. “How’s it feel?”
“Cold and wet. And tastes like blood.”
She ran her hands down his arm, exploring the trap. “Don’t pull. These fangs slant backward like a shark’s.”
“I noticed.” He hesitated. “Did you notice anything? Any other demons?”
She glanced around in alarm. “More ferales? I was sort of occupied with these two.”
“No. Never mind.” He gritted his teeth at the acid burn of ichor while she levered open the massive jaws. He released himself in a gush of his own blood.
“Oh God.” Her hands hovered over his arm where the feralis’s bite had peeled skin and muscle down to the bone.
“Don’t.” He clamped his arm close to his chest, molding flesh into place. “The demon will take care of it.”
“It certainly did,” she said tartly.
“My demon,” he amended as he pushed himself to his knees. She started to help him to his feet, but he shook her off.
He cast teshuva senses outward. An annihilation-class demon came factory standard with tracking skills, but no djinn scent rode the etheric winds now.
But someone had been interested enough to toss Sera’s apartment. Would that djinn-man have followed her? Then why hadn’t he made his move and killed them both?
After another long moment, Archer leaned down to wipe the gory axe on wet leaves. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sera do the same with the smaller knife.
“You poked it a couple times,” he said.
“Just enough to burn myself on its blood.”
“It didn’t gut me from behind, which it would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
She lowered her head. “If not for me, it wouldn’t have been lurking. I just wanted to visit my dad.”
“A nice quiet night? A nice quiet life?” Archer folded the axe blades and collapsed the club. He held out his good hand.
She passed the knife to him, hilt first. “Wishful thinking? Worked on the malice.”
“Ferales are a little harder to do away with. As for wishing your life back the way it was . . .” He spread his hand toward the downed ferales and let her draw her own conclusions.
He saw the slump of her shoulders, started to wish something himself, and stopped it cold.
“You played your part,” he said at last. “Let that be consolation enough.”
At the defeat in her expression, he almost reached out to her. He knew that feeling. But what solace could he offer? “Garbagemen don’t ask where all the trash comes from. They just haul it away.”
She eyed the splayed beast. “Looks pretty heavy.”
“It’s not empty yet. I disabled the corporeal shell, but it holds the demonic energy. Look at the eye, still orange.” He stood over the carcass, gathering his own energy and the teshuva’s. He swayed on his pierced leg. Apparently, what energy he had to gather wouldn’t fill a shot glass.
Despite his earlier brush-off, she stood beside him and threaded her arm around his waist. A whiff of honeysuckle teased past the sour stench clogging his head. A surge of desire sent the last of his blood careening around his body.
“You don’t have to do it alone,” she murmured.
“Yes, I do.” He stiffened at her touch, summoning teshuva strength against the temptation to rest on her offered shoulder. Since the malice had disappeared between them, his control had gone sketchy, as if some other carefully maintained barrier had fallen. “Your deathbed vigils might be all kum ba yah. Out here you fight alone.”
“That’s been your choice. But I’m right here, right now.”
When had someone last fought at his side? Keeping company with destruction left no room for another. But he needed her, at least for tonight.
Wounded arm clenched against his belly, he forced himself to step away from her. “Draining a feralis is easier than a malice, once the corpus is out of action. Locked in the husk, it can’t get at you.”
She wrung her hands, as if remembering the malice slime. “So, remind me what I did with the malice?”
He wasn’t sure, hence his hope she’d do it again. When he’d grabbed her to get the job done, he’d fallen into her inward spiral. Just as when she’d been drawn through the Veil in the last stage of her possession. If he’d managed to stop himself from tearing her clothes off this time, he had only the malice in the way to thank. They’d touched, the malice suspended between them, and then it was gone. Not just drained, but gone.
When he didn’t answer, she crouched beside the carcass. She wiped her palms nervously, then lifted the massive head. She tilted it to one side, staring into the hellfire eye. Ichor drooled from the slack jaws and curdled the grass with a charred stink.
“When the malice got me,” she said, “I was thinking the man at the bar never had a chance. The malice goaded him; he attacked. Where was hope when he needed it? Compassion? Where was peace?”
“Just as there are angels to balance the djinn, some say the horde-tenebrae are countered by smaller lights, called blessings.” Pain reverberated from shoulder to thigh when he shrugged. “I’ve never seen one. Just more figments of wishful thinking, I think.”
“Why would you think that? Why would you want to think that?” As she half cradled the throat-slashed feralis like some perverse pietà, her eyes gleamed, not with holy benediction, but with violet challenge.