He stalked toward the cage.
The bird cocked its head toward him, feathers fluffed to twice its size.
Just beyond the cage, the Worm watched him as warily.
Corvus glanced over at the man. “The darklings misunderstood my command. I’ve neglected their breeding since my army has changed. But I still need Sera Littlejohn. The solvo blanks must be near to punch through the weak point in the Veil when her teshuva ascends.”
The Worm shrugged, obviously trying for detachment, as if he could shed his anger and fear like the crow’s feathers shed water. “It’s too late. The league will be alert now, watching for you.”
Corvus waved his hand. “I have aeries all over the city. The miserable talyan never look up from their desperate grubbing.”
“After that attempt on the hotel, they’ll know this wasn’t some anomalous ferales attack. If they have their noses to the ground, it’s only to pick up your scent.”
“That is why I have worms to muddle the way.” Corvus eyed the other man. “And now I think you will help me again.”
The Worm backed away. “This is getting too risky. I never thought—”
“Because you are a Worm,” Corvus said patiently. “My ferales failed, but you can bring me Sera Littlejohn.”
The Worm stiffened. “Me? How can I—”
“You will have to bring your squirmings out of the shadows, of course.” Corvus touched the ring, the stone cool and smooth under his caress. “After the last talya, I have learned something of extracting demons from their mask of flesh. Bring me Sera Littlejohn, and you will finally have your reward.”
The Worm’s gaze fixed on the ring. “You’ll do it?” His voice rose again with barely suppressed glee. “You’ll strip her demon and give it to me?”
Corvus bowed his head. “I promised. You will know intimately the power of the Darkness.”
Archer woke at a hand on his shoulder. He’d know that gentle touch anywhere.
“Sera.” His voice sounded rusty, as if he were some penitent monk who hadn’t spoken for years. He cleared his throat. “What’s wrong?”
He’d taken the couch in the safe house’s common room as his command post, collating reports from the haunt- and reaper-class talyan trackers in the field. Now his time sense told him it was the deepest part of night.
“It’s Zane. He’s . . .” Her breath caught on the next words. She tried again, substituting, “He’s not doing well.”
Archer surged off the couch. “The teshuva should have—”
“It’s gone.”
From a few steps away, he turned to glare at her. “A demon doesn’t just wander off.”
“I don’t know where the hell it went. But his wounds haven’t healed at all. In fact, there’s a new one. In his leg. The djinn-man hadn’t gotten that far.”
Archer’s blood ran cold.
The halls were dark and empty except for the two talyan in chairs flanking the door to Zane’s room.
Sera’s brows drew down in angry bewilderment. “No one would go in to sit with him.”
Archer slowed, looked closer at her. Just as the teshuva could take away the wound, but not the pain, it couldn’t erase her sorrow, though the lines of grief would never etch her face. “Have you been here all day?”
She nodded mutely.
The bedside light cast a soft glow over Zane. Other than that, his skin had bleached the same color as the bandages.
Archer sat heavily on the chair beside the bed. Carefully, he peeled back the lower half of the sheet and the gauze Sera had laid over Zane’s leg.
The slice in his white flesh wasn’t worse than what had already been done to that battered body. But Archer felt the last of his hope drain away with that slow welling of blood.
Sera murmured in surprise. “His reven is almost gone. You can barely see the shadow on his skin.”
Archer nodded wearily. “The demon took its mark with it.”
She stilled. “It’s gone?”
He didn’t repeat himself.
She spun for the door. “Then we’ll take him to a hospital. They’ll heal him the human way.”
“Sera.” The harshness of his voice stopped her in her tracks. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him.”
“But . . .”
A chill stole over him, as if his blood pooled on the floor to mingle with Zane’s. “His initial wound, the one that brought the demon on him, is back, along with a lifetime of damage done while fighting for the teshuva.”
She hesitated. “So every wound he ever took . . .”
“Will now bleed him dry. He’s a walking battlefield of wounded in one man.”
“My God, the agony . . .”
“That, at least, is spared him. Since the teshuva couldn’t take away the pain when the wound was inflicted, Zane lived through it then, so it doesn’t come back now. As if that’s any consolation.” The coldness in him flared to fury. “Cowardly, useless fucking demon to leave now.”
“We can’t do anything?” Sera’s voice was small.
The fury faded as hope had. The cold remained. “Wait.”
“I always hated that part of my old job,” she said softly. “The waiting.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.”
He didn’t answer.
The shuffle of bare feet separated them. Ecco stood in the doorway, his face expressionless.
Archer gave up his seat, and Ecco took it—a measure, Archer knew, of the damage done.
Ecco crossed his arms. “He’s dying?”
Sera took a breath and nodded.
“Just when I was starting to like him.”
She frowned. “You’ve been living and fighting together for almost forty years.”
“The fighting part got in the way of the living part. Well, both are over for him now.”
Sera closed her eyes with a “God, give me strength” sigh. Archer almost smiled.
Ecco studied the comatose man. “Aren’t you going to play the harp or something?”
“After a patient told me dying would be sweet release from my attempts, I gave up the harp. Plus, the music always sounds a little depressing, don’t you think?” She took a breath. “I usually just sang.”
Ecco voiced Archer’s surprise. “You sing?”
“A little. I haven’t killed anybody yet.”
“So sing us something.”
Quietly, so at first Archer thought she was only humming, she began. He retreated to the back of the room.
She segued into familiar notes that had lulled him more than once on the front porch of his home, where he’d lazed with evening heat and the childhood conviction that summer would never end.
“ ‘Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. / ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.’ ”
How old had he been? How many years before the war that would take everything? The voices singing had been lower and far wearier than Sera’s, rich with the slow cadences that had all but deserted him. As the verses of “Amazing Grace” rolled over him, he swore he caught the drifting scent of sun-warmed honeysuckle. He rested his head back against the wall.
“ ‘ Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, / I shall possess, within the veil, a life of joy and peace.’ ”
The last note faded, and Archer straightened. He sensed the change in the room and glanced at Sera. Her head was bowed. She’d dropped her hands into her lap, and from the tension in her laced fingers, he knew she felt it.
Death had come.
On the bed, as if he knew too, Zane stirred. “Mom?”
“Just us,” Ecco said. “Sera and me. And Archer.” He glanced over his shoulder where the hall had filled with silent talyan. “And everybody else.”
Zane tilted his head from side to side, though what he was looking for, Archer couldn’t guess. “I’m tired.”