Bookie added the biopsy to his rack of samples, more bits of her lost to this change. “I have enough here. I’ll get back to you on the rest.”
Clearly dismissed, she rode the elevator back upstairs. At least Bookie must think she wasn’t an immediate threat if he let her walk out. Unless he was even now calling the firing squad. She rubbed her arms at a chill she hadn’t noticed before, wincing when her hand scraped the needle hole.
He hadn’t even offered her a bandage. Stupid complaint, since the wound would heal before she looked at it again. She closed her eyes, trying to summon the memory of a motherly kiss and unnecessary Band-Aid.
To get there, though, she had to claw past the last vision of her mother and the black lapping water. Had her mother’s soul floated out in that last moment? And where had it gone? She knew what her father’s religion would say. She sighed and opened her eyes with the elevator doors.
Without the large restless men, command central almost echoed with emptiness. She stepped out onto the balcony. The wind seemed colder, the night blacker, her spirit lower than a couple of vials of missing blood could justify.
She leaned over the railing, remembering her dream of flight. If she launched off the balcony, she wouldn’t be making snow angels; she’d be making a mess, a mess she doubted even the demon could clean up.
Could possession have saved her mother? Certainly the demon of depression that led to her fatal choice could have predisposed her to accept a teshuva’s alternative, the same as Archer.
Sera tightened her grip on the rail. Would she have wished this fate on her soft-eyed mother? In her fury and confusion after her mother’s death, she’d told her father she would never set foot in his church again, not when his faith consigned suicides to hell. He’d accepted her decision, always thinking, she knew, that she would relent.
Relent. Repent. She’d believed in her father’s sermons just as she’d believed her mother could love her family enough to get out of bed, even on the bad days. Once the questions started, they didn’t stop.
Now she was finally going to get some answers on the really big questions of death, salvation, the fate of innocence. She touched the pendant. Maybe even know the shape and heft of a soul.
She rolled back her sleeve. Tiny knives of wind pricked her skin, but the hole in her arm was gone, except for the ache.
She hoped her answers wouldn’t prove as ephemeral.
He moved through the night, painting himself with the psychic screams of drained malice, swallowing down his own screams. Unraveled ether curled in his wake like a dread banner.
Even humans who considered themselves dangerous, who eyed him from their own gloom, melted away when he passed. Only the ferales hunted him, and they hunted with vengeance in their gleaming rust eyes.
Somewhere beyond the endless waves of evil, he sensed a presence, darker yet, that he could not reach, though he hacked his way through demon after demon. He slogged through the destruction of his own making until caked ichor welded the blades to his hands. But the darkness casting the deepest shadows eluded him with a whisper of mocking laughter that even the howls of the ferales could not disguise.
Dawn came. Washed of hue like a faded malice eye, the sun glinted a moment as it rose above the lake horizon. Then a bank of gray clouds swallowed it.
Still, that momentary gleam diverted the rage in him. He walked out onto the pier and stripped off his gore-spattered clothes.
He stared impassively at the ichor dried into the creases of his hands. Then he leapt, letting the demon-powered shove of his thighs thrust him beyond the boulders at the base of the pier.
He was flying.
Then falling. The freezing water shocked through him, jolting his heart as if it hadn’t been beating before. He flailed through the slap of wind-pushed waves, back toward shore.
Free of tenebrae stench and scum and sting, Archer hauled himself up onto the rocks. He huddled for a moment beside his filthy clothes, wracked with shivers.
A jogger and her dog passed above him on the sidewalk. The dog caught his scent, yelped, and bolted ahead, the oblivious jogger swearing and staggering to keep up.
He held his breath as he donned his clothes again. His cleaning service was going to double their fees again. Or maybe this time they’d just lock the doors when they saw him. He wouldn’t blame them.
He’d been drawn, against his will, to stand outside the hotel. He’d looked up and seen the golden beacon of her hair.
His heart stopped then, as he watched her lean dangerously over the void. He would catch her; that’s why he had come, why he’d been drawn back, why he’d been put on this earth for so many years with a strength he used only for annihilation. . . . Then she pulled back out of view, never noticing him so many stories below her.
He went out to destroy.
That, he reminded himself, was truly why he was here.
He trudged back to the sidewalk. He wouldn’t ask any cab to pick him up, and he wasn’t in the mood to call Zane for a ride. The league hotel was closer than his loft, and he kept a change of clothes there.
So despite his best intentions, he found his weary steps turning toward the one place he’d decided was off-limits.
He knew the league had been out in force the night before, having encountered other lingering shreds of etheric energy. Only Haji, a closemouthed talya whose blinding speed with the enormous curved blade did his boasting for him, walked the otherwise quiet halls on the residence floor.
They nodded as they crossed paths. Archer turned at his private room, fumbling for his key. Then he hesitated.
He glanced over his shoulder. Haji had disappeared into the elevator. He glanced in the other direction down the hall.
He closed his eyes. His enhanced senses, battered and raw as his flesh, prickled.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing in front of a door not his own. He knocked.
He stood there, hearing nothing but the shush of blood through his veins. He swayed a little on his feet, half asleep. Finally, the door opened.
“You weren’t going to answer,” he said.
“My first reaction.” Sera blocked the entrance with one arm braced across the opening, her stance forced casual. “Was that the right one?”
“Probably.”
“I didn’t think you’d leave.”
“Probably not.” He studied her through heavy-lidded eyes. From her soft yoga togs, he couldn’t tell if she’d just gotten up or was getting ready for bed. His pulse kicked up a notch, and he stopped himself from thinking any more about her bed. “Can I come in?”
“I suppose we don’t need more gossip with you standing outside my bedroom door.”
“Technically, it’s a suite, not just a bedroom. So this could be league business. And technically, manly warriors don’t gossip; they relay information.”
She stepped back. “Just so the information they’re relaying is not that you’re fucking me.”
He winced as he stepped inside. The outer room looked hotel generic except for a blanket thrown over the couch beside a haphazard pile of books. “I came to apologize for that.”
“For not fucking me?”
“Can you not,” he said with great dignity, “use that word now.”
She raised her eyebrow. “Squeamish?”
He raised his arms, mutely displaying the spatters and stains.
She sighed. “Fine. Apology accepted. Go take a bath.”
Images kaleidoscoped through his mind, raising more than his pulse this time. “I am out of practice with relations between men and women. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Our relations were fine. Twice fine, as I recall. I wasn’t hurt.”
He managed not to grit his teeth. “I didn’t mean physically.”
She rubbed her forehead. “When I accepted your apology, that meant we don’t have to talk about it anymore. I know office romances never work out.”