Sera touched his forehead. “Then rest. You’ve worked hard, for a long time.”
Zane let out a sigh, too long for the air that must have been in his lungs. Archer held his breath as if he could stop the last exhalation.
But Zane wasn’t quite ready to go. “Archer?”
“I’m here.”
“Someone came in after my eyes . . . I heard someone call him Corvus.”
“So we have a name,” Archer said. “Good. Don’t wear yourself out.”
“I am worn-out.” Zane sighed again, even deeper. “I think Corvus is too. He’s old, older than any of us. He said he wanted it to end.”
“Any time,” Ecco growled. “The minute we find him, he’ll be over.”
“His djinni is too powerful. It stole . . .” Zane’s hands flailed on the sheet, as if in remembered shock. “It stole my teshuva. I felt the demon ripped from me, and then it was gone. Just gone.”
Silence spread in waves from his words.
“But there’s no way out for Corvus, no one to stop him,” Zane said softly. “He’s found a way to rip through the Veil where the teshuva’s crossing weakened it, to free all the demons of hell.”
“My God,” Sera whispered.
Zane nodded once. “God will have no choice but to open the gates and send forth his armies of heavenly host in response.”
Archer rubbed his hand over his face. “Yeah, that would pretty much be the end.”
“He said his army of corpses is massing against the Veil, but he only liked to talk when he was hurting me, so it was hard to pay attention.”
From the talyan in the hallway, ripples of questions came back. “How can he do that?” “Rip open the Veil?” And louder, “What can the dead do? No one reaches across the Veil from this side.”
Archer stiffened. Across the room, Sera lifted her head, awareness a violet tint in her eyes. “Actually, maybe we can.”
CHAPTER 20
Sera supposed there was a measure of relief in having some clue what the djinn-man intended. Bad enough that her demon had weakened the barrier between the realms, but now whatever wicked quirk or misplaced kindness allowed the teshuva to send others back through the Veil, Corvus wanted to use it for his own ends.
Well, all their ends, apparently.
She pushed the frightening knowledge away. She’d panic later, when she had a free moment.
She stroked Zane’s brow, ignoring the seep of blood from all his wounds as his body quit holding itself together.
Teshuva and cellular cohesion gone, only his spirit and the memory of pain remained.
“That’s it,” Zane whispered. “Will you sing again?”
She took a breath and watched him inhale with her.
Now comes the nighttime, little bird, be done. To the nest with feathers soft, come home. Bright eye, close. Let the moon keep her watch, Guide your dreams through the dark hours.
She went through the verses, remembering her mother singing to her youngest brother in the womb. By the time he’d been born, her depression had been full-blown and she never sang again. Sera refused to let the memory tighten her throat, not now.
Sleep, my nestling, in the quiet boughs.
One last sigh now, settle you down.
Sleep deep, my child, fuss no more.
And my kiss shall wake you in the morn.
She held on to the last note. Finally, the limits of her still-too-human lungs faded her to silence.
Despite the muscled bulk of talyan who’d crept close, the air felt too light, the room empty. Sera pressed the back of her hand to her eyes a moment, then laid her fingers against Zane’s neck.
The slow seep of his wounds had stopped with his heart.
“He’s dead,” Ecco said.
As one, the men straightened. A murmur swept through them. Surprise, sadness, anger? Sera couldn’t tell. She’d felt all of those emotions herself. Once upon a time, her job had been to sit with the family after the death, guide them the first steps down the path to acceptance and, eventually, joyful memory.
Not this time. Not when the path out of the death-watch led toward the end of the world. She stood too quickly and swayed on her feet. A hand at her elbow steadied her.
Archer, of course.
“Come on,” he said. “Time for somebody to sleep, anyway. Plain old sleep, though, nothing metaphorical.”
She tried to dredge up a smile, but he was having none of it.
“This way.” He steered her past the talyan.
“What will happen to him now?”
“We have a place outside the city. Used to be a farm when land was the core of the league’s wealth, but Niall returned it to a native prairie reserve. Zane will be buried there.” He stopped outside the door to an empty bedroom. “It’s peaceful.”
Sera looked up into his dark eyes, haunted with remembered losses. “Are many buried there?”
“The graves are unmarked, and talyan cadavers decompose quickly once the demon leaves. Who knows how many fighters have been lost in a battle most people don’t even know about and wouldn’t believe anyway?” Rage curled around him, sparking violet.
She touched his sleeve. Underneath, she knew the demon mark ran rampant. She took a step backward into the room. “Come inside.”
The violet in his eyes flickered out behind a cloud of confusion. “What?”
She took another step back. “I don’t want to be alone.”
She thought he would run. Technically, according to the stages of grief, denial came before anger.
He didn’t move. “What will this solve?”
“Nothing. It’s not a problem or a question. I just won’t be alone tonight, and neither will you.”
“It’s not tonight anymore. It’s almost morning.” He sighed, longer even than Zane’s last breath, followed her inside, and locked the door.
He took off her clothes as if he’d never had the chance before, unbuttoning and unzipping with rapt concentration. He pressed his lips over each uncovered inch with exquisite gentleness.
She shoved at his shirt with impatient hands and bared his chest. But when she reached for the fly of his jeans, he captured her wrists.
“Slowly,” he murmured. “We have forever.”
They might not even have the rest of the dark hours. But his lingering caresses stole her breath, made her forget what she was going to say, banished even the thought of later.
He led her to the bathroom and finally shucked his jeans. With the light still off, he started the shower, and steam curled through the little room. To her demon-enhanced vision in the unrelieved blackness, an aura outlined him with scintillating lights of smoky, silvery green.
Where they touched, as he led her under the spray of water, the lights shot through with gold.
“How do you see me?” she asked wonderingly.
“As a mystery I’ll never understand.”
“I meant the colors. Is this part of the talyan bond?”
He stilled. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what the bond is, what it’s doing to us.” He turned her, back to front, and pulled her close against his chest, letting the water tumble over both of them.
She nestled against the insistent nudge of his erection, but he didn’t try an answering grope. Instead, he slicked his hands over her hair, then drew the warm, wet strands down over her breasts, barely grazing her nipples. Despite the heat, she shivered.
“I want to thank you,” he murmured against her cheek, “for what you did with Zane.”
The hot water, or maybe Archer’s looming presence behind her, kept the worst of the coldness at bay as she considered. “It was my fault. We shouldn’t have been there.”
“Taking out the horde-tenebrae was his job. And the only way to redeem himself.”