But her soul, the other half of her soul . . .
“Ferris!”
The demon, roused at her cry, burst across her senses. The dark cavern flared to eerie black-light incandescence, demon sign smeared across the walls. The wild power drew down to her core and swirled in the mark over her hips and thighs. Between the violet-shot lines of the reven, her bare skin faded to other-realm translucence.
The etheric supernova rose, exploding through her in a shock wave that shook the shadows and reached between the realms.
Desperate, dying, she fell toward the Veil.
CHAPTER 25
Corvus climbed the stairs three at a time, cursing with each crash of his foot against the treads.
Igniting the apocalypse was proving more troublesome than he’d anticipated.
He supposed he should be grateful to the male talya intruder, since his appearance had triggered the resurgence of Sera Littlejohn’s teshuva. But so much for enjoying the end of the world in peace and quiet.
He swept his hand over the glass-working tools on his desk. Where was the stone? He’d removed his ring as he always did before his rougher work. He didn’t see the cold silver glint among the dark steel and iron.
With another curse for the woman who’d distracted him, he shoved all the tools off the desk, almost knocking over the gilt cage.
The crow cackled. The batting of its wings sounded like airy laughter.
Corvus turned.
The crow stilled. It took one slow, sidling step.
Corvus lunged, then swung open the cage door. The thieving crow shrieked and pecked at his fingers.
He wrapped his fingers around its neck and dragged it out. He didn’t notice when the black talons stopped tearing at his hand.
He sighed and reached for the sullen gleam half hidden in the discarded sunflower hulls.
Archer thought she was dead. Her eyes were closed, shutting him out. Ice congealed around his heart. The ferales piled over him, slashing through flesh to bone.
In that numb moment where even piercing fangs couldn’t reach, he realized death would bring him silence and stillness, but peace wasn’t what he wanted.
He wanted Sera.
And he’d fight through hell itself to find her.
Crying her name, he burst out from under the ferales in a spray of blood and fury. He reached for her as if all the space between them were no obstacle to his need.
She lay crumpled on the floor, her skin shocking white against the purple panties he’d given her.
He knew the moment she reached through the Veil. As her physical weakness loosened her hold on the world, she followed her demon’s link to its realm and turned her vulnerability into preternatural power.
The walls of the basement seemed to bell outward, rippling into other realms. The ring of soulless let out a collective moan that raised his hackles. They held out their empty arms, as if they wanted to follow her down—down through the Veil, that tangled web of disembodied souls. . . .
Suddenly, he understood what Corvus had wrought. The soulless army—like a fire’s backdraft—would implode against the Veil, weakened where Sera’s demon had so recently crossed, sucking down the souls that imprisoned all the demons of hell.
All the remaining demons, that is. Archer summoned his own and tore through the ring around Sera.
But they were too many, their hungry need too great. He took only three steps toward her before the ground between them cracked.
From the corpses’ gaping mouths, a groan shivered the air, rising toward a gasping yowl. The patchwork brick and cement of the cavern floor broke apart. Thin tendrils of fog snaked out.
Archer caught himself on the edge of the crack. The hem of his coat fluttered forward, drawn as if by a breath.
The ferales pounded toward him, his blood already in their teeth.
Still too far away, Sera lay swamped in malice. Surrounded by rings of evil, she couldn’t even see him. The soulless army would swallow the Veil and crack open the demon realm upon the world, and he couldn’t do a damn thing.
By himself.
“Sera,” he roared, “I won’t lose you.”
Through the shifting morass of malice, a glint of blond shone.
“I can’t do this alone.”
The last was merely a whisper as time warped between the realms, but he caught a hint of hazel as Sera lifted her head. He wanted to scream at the dark bruise high on her cheek and the raw welts left by hungry malice mouths.
With a hiss of retribution, the crack in the floor raced thin and jagged halfway across the room toward her, and sucked down a malice.
The demon squealed and was gone.
The other malice sprang in all directions with a dissonant chorus of shrieks. An other-realm vortex, like the winds that held the spirit birds aloft, spun up. Malice were swept into the air, like red-eyed bats in a cyclone, screaming as they were drawn toward the maw. Archer staggered with its force, though the torches burned steadily on.
A feralis, turning to flee, reeled into one vein of the gray fog. It bawled as its substance unraveled and poured into the void.
With each step he took toward Sera, the frenzy of the vortex increased. More gray tendrils reached out from the rift. The ferales hunched under the invisible inhalation of energy. A handful of the soulless slumped as if their bones had turned to jelly.
One of the torches leapt toward the ceiling, then extinguished itself. The rift glowed with a nacreous, mesmerizing energy.
When he’d danced this dance with her before for the lone malice and the two ferales, they’d broken free of each other easily. Now, the link between them had taken on a dangerous power of its own, just as he’d always known it would.
Without turning away from her, he deflected the attack of another feralis. A strand of the rift engulfed it. The continuing arc of the axe sunk into another feralis leaping out of the shadows.
The demon split apart in a noisome collapse of rat bones and roach shells. Archer jumped back and released his hold as the blade was sucked through the vortex in a glittering trail of particles.
The rift wasn’t consuming just demonic energy.
Avoiding the tendrils, at last he dropped to his knees next to Sera. The malice were gone, the bruise already fading from her cheek.
“Rise and shine,” he murmured when she blinked as if waking from a dream—or nightmare. “I guess you’re already shining.”
Brilliant amethyst winked at him as she took in the whirling gray fog. “This looks bad. The Veil . . .”
“You gave us a chance. I took it.”
“A chance? I should have died rather than risk—”
“No.” He gripped her shoulders hard. “Risk.”
What wouldn’t he risk for her? His life? Of course. His soul? In a heartbeat. Ah, yes, his heart . . . He lifted her to her feet. “But the Veil is breached, just as Corvus planned.”
Her gaze shifted to the ring of Corvus’s soulless army, their mouths slack in unvoiced screams. “Do we kill them? Will that stop it?” Her tone was bleak.
“Too late. Corvus said they were dead. He knew death wouldn’t save them. We need to stop him from calling any other demons through.”
“Call them? How?”
“Those spirit birds circling.” He knelt in front of her, hands gentle on her thigh, making sure her teshuva was setting bone and muscle straight.
Through gritted teeth, she asked, “You could see the sculptures from the street?”
“We saw the spirits. We thought they were Bookie’s soul at first.”
Her expression darkened. “Corvus stripped the essences of the birds like he did Bookie, bound them to the glass. Why?”
“Birds have always been associated with the soul. The soulless that Corvus created homed in on them. Unbound demons crossing the Veil, seeking vulnerable spirits, will be lured too. Can you walk?”