“To me!” the host called. He hadn’t moved from the top step of the helipad.
The demon’s call went unacknowledged as his army deserted him. That made sense, too: Anyone who chose the monstrous existence of a wraith was fundamentally selfish to begin with. They wouldn’t stay to fight for the demon if it cost them their lives, the very thing they had traded their humanity to sustain.
Talia stalked across the clearing deck to the stairs. The helicopter was ready; why wasn’t the demon and his host aboard, safe?
She looked closely for signs of subterfuge.
The host was corpse pale, expression lined with stress.
“Kill us quick, before it takes me completely,” the man said, gasping in a human voice. His white-knuckled grip on the railing trembled as the demon snake poured itself into his ear. The host’s jaundiced face contracted into a rictus of pain, his eyes wide-open, sightless, and horrified. Thick tar coated the inside of his mouth and bled from his nose.
Talia understood. The host, lesson learned, was making one last choice. Withstand the demon’s rape of his body, wait for the scythe, and be freed.
“Half-breed…” the demon said, voice pitched to a feral growl, in command of the host’s mouth again.
Sharp, sweet power rose within her as Talia raised the scythe.
“…whore’s get…” The host, overcome, lost his battle and released the railing to scramble, crawling, toward the waiting helicopter.
The power ached beautifully in her muscles and tingled to her fingertips. Fantasies of death played in her mind. Her blood roared to stain the ship’s deck with a smear of demon.
She stalked the demon-host abomination, Adam at her back. There was no way the demon could escape. No place to hide and no time.
Talia gathered the force of her scream, and channeled it into a great, slashing swing.
The blade sang through the air and cut the abomination in half. Talia trembled on the edge of rapture with the thrill of the kill.
The man whimpered into death as the demon split, its sinuous form condensing into a dark tongue of shadow before losing all cohesion, just like his hellhounds.
Dead.
For a moment, Talia couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to anyway near the dispersing black gases.
Then the cloud of demon reek convulsed.
Talia jumped back and bumped into Adam. His strong arm circled her waist protectively.
Out of the stagnant black cloud, a dusky hand whipped out, midair. The hand jerked just as suddenly back into oblivion. Before Talia could take another breath, the arm again clawed through the center of darkest shadow, as if fighting against an unseen force.
Talia’s heart seized. Another demon? Her hands tightened on the shaft of the scythe. She could do this. Her muscles coiled to strike, waiting for the moment the being emerged.
“Be ready,” Adam murmured. She felt his body tense at her back.
She pulled on shadow, the source of her power. Pulled hard until the scythe glowed overhead amid layers of darkness. Pulled until…the being himself emerged out of his wild prison and into the world.
Talia shook with shock and recognition.
The being fell to the deck in a cascade of seething shadowcloak and gleaming long black hair. When he straightened, his tilted eyes coming to rest on her, there could be no doubt whatsoever. Death was her father.
They regarded each other for a long moment, the intent of his gaze rippling the surrounding veils.
Talia raised her chin, heart hammering, and returned his scrutiny.
Her father had a face like a dark angel, ageless with cruel compassion. His body appeared strong and healthy, though shadows of death circled—the very same shadows that twined about her. His stillness had grace, yet she knew his strike was brutally fast, the results a mess of pain and hurt.
No wonder people stayed away from her.
“You have your mother’s face,” he said at last. His voice was dark velvet, brushing over her like a caress.
Talia’s heart leaped with emotion. She had no words.
But Adam did. “Is it over?”
Shadowman’s gaze slid to Adam, leaving her bereft. “Chaos is back where it belongs.”
Her father inclined his head again to her. The tide of shadows lapped strongly at her body, as if to draw her into its sea. Through its dense waves she could feel the solid press of Adam’s body, and deeper to the core of his emotion.
“How did this happen in the first place?” Adam’s tone was hard, demanding. The pain of his loss was so acute, Talia wondered that he didn’t shake his fist in Death’s face. She thought of her own mother, taken at her birth, Aunt Maggie, Melanie, Patty, Custo. Death everywhere.
Shadowman canted his head, but not in contrition. “I parted the veils between life and death when I had no call to do so. Chaos escaped and took root in the mortal world.”
“You—? Why?” Adam’s voice was coarse with strain.
“I loved a woman.”
“Was it worth it?” Adam mocked Death.
Shadowman’s gaze shifted to Adam again. “Is Talia worth it?”
Adam’s body went rigid behind her, anger—and something else—surging within him.
Talia felt herself grow old with a hideous knowledge that blotted everything else out. Shadowman and her mother—the fairy tale—ending in a scourge.
“All those people died because of me?” Her broken whisper carried clearly across the veils. The scythe clattered to the deck. If Adam weren’t behind her, she might have fallen with it.
“Did you kill them?” Death’s pretty face was impassive.
“No, but—”
Shadowman raised a hand. “Then, no. The demon escaped to the world because of me. I should have been the one to face him, but I was bound by my own transgression.”
“All those lives lost because…” Talia couldn’t finish the sentence. She swallowed the words. How could Adam love her now? How could he love her when the same act that brought her into the world destroyed his family?
Talia straightened slightly, pulling her weight from Adam’s body with a step forward so that she couldn’t feel him anymore. Shadow succored her.
“The demon’s children made their own choices. Not even chaos could compel them to join him without their consent. Their actions are theirs and theirs alone.”
“And the ones they fed on?” There was no mistaking the bitterness in Adam’s voice.
“Crossed. They are where they belong.”
“And the wraiths that got away?” Adam shot back.
“Must be sundered as well, the souls within them freed.”
Talia drew the shadows more tightly around her, willing its chill folds to freeze the aching part of her into numbness.
“Are you ready, then?” Shadowman asked her. Of course, he noticed her separation from Adam and interpreted it correctly.
Adam reached for her and met only shadow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean to take my daughter home.”
The darkness broke into vibrant colors the likes of which Talia had only seen in snatches of dreams, and yet, their hues were familiar. Music filled the air, drowning out the noise on deck. She heard a song at once sweet and sorrowful, sung in a round unending.
“What? You can’t have her.” Adam may as well have been shouting at the wind.
“For your unparalleled aid,” Shadowman continued, “I grant you the immortality that these others sought, but without their sharp hunger.”
“You mean without Talia,” Adam corrected. “No. You hear me. NO.”
“Talia is fae, and as such, belongs in Shadow.”
“She is half fae, half mortal, and all mine.”